Indian-born singer Asha Puthli has had a crazy life. Raised with European and Indian classical traditions in Bombay, she always had a penchant for western popular music and started vocally improvising with Indian Jazz bands, which got her attention in western jazz circles. After making it over to the US on a Martha Graham dance scholarship, she was sought out by record executives and found random vocal session work. She cut a few tracks with Ornette Coleman on his Science Fiction lp and sang nearly naked for Peter Iver's Blue's Band. While she wasn't huge in America, she found an audience in Europe. Her bold sexuality and stunning vocal performances made her gravitate towards glam and in 1973 CBS released this solo debut produced by Del Newman who oversaw Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Making fresh use of songwriters of the day, John Lennon, Bill Withers, and especially J.J. Cale, Puthli's debut is a beautiful array of glittery soul and spacious rare groove. Her vocal range can navigate high peaks as well as the deepest valleys, especially in the opener, "Right Down Here", which is pretty much worth the price of admission alone. A startling funky take on the J.J. Cale classic, we first heard this years ago on a mysterious mixtape made by local soul record collector shop, The Groove Merchant (we also discovered Betty Davis on that same tape), and it's been one of our favorites ever since. She went on to make other incredible records, especially The Devil is Loose, which is a proto-space-disco masterpiece. But her debut is less disco, although not any less unusual or unique. Sensual, soulful and kind of strange!
Georgia's answer to Emeralds? That's probably not too far off the mark. Quiet Evenings are the psychedelically laced ambient duo of Rachel and Grant Evans; the former is known for her beloved Motion Sickness In Time Travel project which recently unleashed several epic albums for Digitalis that match monochromatic electronica to the humid surroundings of rural Georgia and plenty of stoned gazes up at the satellites orbiting the earth. Grant has his own moniker, Nova Scotia Arms, which up until now has released a bunch of cassettes of impressively washed-out psychedelic drone-song. Their Quiet Evenings project is suitably blissed-out in their slow-moving ambient constructs. "Manna From The New Age" is about as perfect as title as Quiet Evenings could give to one of their side-long tracks on Intrepid Trips. Splashes of guitar plucked with spectral effects and sodden delay ripple through the brightly toned ambient swoosh coupled with Rachel's voice extended into a sustained chorale. "Radiant Endless" interjects all of the smeared paisley ambience of classic Tangerine Dream and Popul Vuh with subtle sequenced percolations, oceanic currents of glowing synth-tone, and delicately crackles of what might as well be rain on a contact microphone. It easily harkens to John Elliott's work over the years in Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods, etc. This beautifully trance-enducing album is pretty damn limited, just a little over 300 copies were made. All on purple vinyl and certainly not long for this world.
Simon Scott produced one of the best records of 2009 with Navigare, an album whose shoegaze dronemusic was dotted with radioluminescent dream-pop numbers. It was hardly a surprise to us when we learned that he was the drummer of Slowdive way back when. Since then, Scott has produced a single for Immune and a collaboration with Jasper TX, both equally fantastic. For his second proper record, Scott makes a slight detour; but one that is well suited to everything else that's been released by the hauntologically leaning Miasmah records. The album opens with a languid series of smoke and mirror abstractions flickering above a nocturnal jazz rhythm that gives way to a Caretaker-esque melody of disembodied historicism amidst subterranean clatter and eerie scrapings. A walking bassline follows this as the only constant to the next track "Betty" whose distant cacophonous guitars slide into audibility through a dense fog of reverb, with a trip along the drumkit taking one tempestuous fill before succumbing to Scott's omnivorous reverb, sounding not all that far from Supersilent at their grooviest and some of those bleached Crescent instrumentals, if anybody remembers that Bristol outfit. With the breathtaking "Radiances," Scott relives his shoegaze past with a song directly out of the Slowdive playbook: a halo of guitar ambience brightens a classic Brit-pop maudlin rhythm section, where the droning slipperiness of the guitar is perfectly countered by the easy pace of the bassline. It really does sound like "Albatross" off of the Blue Day album by Slowdive, and we mean that as quite a high complement. Scott reprises this dream-pop sensibility on the equally deft "Drilla," with electro-static crackling and plenty of ephemeral drone-guitar work to fill in the blanks.
Ty Segall's Goodbye Bread record has been in constant rotation since it came out, so we were super psyched for this brand new single, but we were totally unprepared for what at first blush sounds like some crazy heavy noisy freakout, the title track opening with SUPER distorted guitar, all crunchy and in the red, which proved to be just a false start, but then the main riff comes in, and it too is totally heavy and sludgey, and we were convinced it was playing at the wrong speed, but no, this is just a dense slab of psychedelic garage pop heaviness, all murky and dirgey and almost doomy sounding, distorted echoey vox over that churning blown out riffage as well as some rad psychedelic guitar. The second track also has a bit of a false start, and while a bit more traditionally psychedelic and garage poppy, it too is petty noisy and distorted, lots of feedback, still a killer pop song, like the first one, just slathered in noisy distortion, and it sort of suits him.
The flipside is way more groovy and sixties garage rock sounding, fuzzy and poppy with a killer chorus that definitely reminds us of the recent Mikal Cronin Record Of The Week. This is definitely our new favorite single, and might even trump Goodbye Bread in terms of our favorite Ty Segall release. WAY recommended.
Latest strange sonic missive from aQ beloved UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one from a multi media artist/musician/filmmaker/soundscaper named Lary Seven, who most of us here had never heard of, but who we discovered is a bit of a NYC fixture, a legendarily cantankerous maker of art, both audial and visual, there's very little in the way of details about the sounds here, other than they were recorded live in 2001 and 2004 in different spaces in New York. The first track is a gorgeous bit of looped minimal buzzing, darkly rhythmic, and strangely hypnotic, quiet enough that you can still hear the conversations in the room, which makes for a strange collage of random voices, textured electronic crunch and stuttering blurred glitch, impossible to determine the sound source, but it does seem to essentially be a collection of whirs and hums, clicks and chirps, very machinelike and robotic, like an ungrounded speaker or an instrument with the cable just barely plugged into the jack, creating a strange array of fluctuating statics, which are then sculpted into something that sounds a bit like a way more lo-fi home brewed Raster-Noton recording.
The second side / set again features the room sound, footsteps, voices, throat clearing, sneezes, various scrapes and shuffles, until finally, Seven introduces some electrical buzz, which then undulates, pulses and thrums, extremely minimal, lushly layered but in the context of a live performance in a big room, almost like a symphony of appliance hum, eventually, Seven does crank up the voltage, creating another framework of skeletal rhythmic skitter, the electronic fields swirling around a dark, throbbing industrial thud, like some sort of weirdo mad scientist primitive house music, being performed with an array of malfunctioning Tesla coils. Again, pretty dang cool, and another weird and wonderful set of sounds to add to the Tapeworm's twisted canon.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, with cover art by Savage Pencil (see more SavX art and various other Tapeworm cover art in the Art Of Worms book, that's reviewed elsewhere on this week's list!).
Sadly, rock has always been a bit of a boy's club. Sure most things are, but rock especially. And it only gets worse as you move toward the heavier and darker side of the sonic spectrum, metal, industrial, noise, women are few and far between. That's not to say there aren't woman making serious noise in those realms, there most definitely are, maybe none more fearsome than Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose who traffics in some of the darkest, heaviest, filthiest sludge, blackened doom and abstract industrial we've heard, and whose particular brand of abject blackened noise is on full display here, a collection of various live performances over the years 2009-2010, and finds Rose, backed up by a full band, and engaging in some seriously harrowing soundmaking.
The opening track begins all thick bass buzz and keening feedback, soon industrial percussion emerges, and Rose's echo drenched wail, the bass buzz coalescing into sludgey dirgey riffage, while all around it guitars and samplers and effects fill the blackened sky with all manner of blackly psychedelic noise, the sound lumbers and lurches, before shifting gears in a flurry of horror movie shrieks, becoming more of a blackdrone, all layered hiss and skree and rumble, chaotic but weirdly hypnotic. The second track, the relatively brief "We Ate Their Eyes", introduces more of a groove, albeit just barely, more like a monstrous dirge, rhythmic and grimly propulsive, buried beneath an avalanche of shrieked vox and caustic low end crumble, before giving way to "Mother Agony" that channels Laibach and Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten into a Swans like creep, all hazy and washed out, the sound laced with streaks of high end, of sonar like pings, of gristly crunch and super distorted buzz, there's a definite Wolf Eyes vibe too, and then the vocals swoop back in, hysterical and terrifying, curdled with effects, it manages to be the most mesmerizingly hypnotic track here, while still retaining an unhinged mania.
The epic "Chained To The Cage Of Existence / A Lifeless Dreaming" seems to be the centerpiece here clocking in at 16+ minutes, and again begins as a blackened rumble, all buzz and blur, peppered with strange industrial clanks and clunks, before erupting into another grinding dirge, Rose's haunting deathlike vox adding a serious creep factor, the song a droned out rift, that seems like it might go on like that forever, until it splinters suddenly into a full on drum driven chunk of blackened noise metal crush, lurching, lumbering, shrieks and atonal riffage nestled amidst swells of black buzz and pounding rhythms and lots of feedback, before slipping right back into a sonic death march that continues until the end of the track, loping and minimal, laced with some cool metallic melodies, again slathered in feedback, and Rose's vox, that here remind us of the hysterical shrieks of black metal horde Bethlehem. And then finally, "Slavepiece" finishes things off, the most metal of the bunch, but sounding like it was recorded on a wax cylinder, the sound brittle and blown out, the band locked into a super in-the-red, feedback drenched riff heavy dirge, that sounds like an even more unhinged take on Brainbombs / No Balls. Fucking awesome, but most definitely only for the iron eared.
Fans of other blackened filth like Gnaw Their Tongues, Aderlating, Demonologists, Gorgontongue, and Hallowed Butchery as well as classic industrial / noise / blacknoise weirdness will be in heaven...
Elsewhere on this week's list (in fact, probably right above this review) you'll find the Disciples Of Shit cd, a collection of live recordings from blackened industrial noisescaper Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose, a seriously brutal, but blackly beautiful collection of caustic live performances. Now that you know what Rose is capable of on stage, here's a glimpse of what she can do in the studio, and as you might expect, it's not to far removed, if anything, it's darker, heavier and LOUDER. But otherwise the same sort of droned out industrial crush, a bleak cinematic blackness that definitely reminds us of Gnaw Their Tongues, lots of industrial clank and clatter, a keening distant high end tone that seems to drift atop monstrous hissed vokills and streaks of blackened sound, the long stretches of buzz and crush infused with mysterious melodies.
The flipside is more riffy and dirgey, with some seriously creepy (and weirdly sexy) whispered vox, the buzz thick and corrosive, all tethered to a lurching mechanical rhythm, all within thick clouds of hiss and hum and whir, the vibe moody and murky and very soundtracky, but still bleak and menacing and seriously harrowing, shades of Wolf Eyes too, but the more we here from Sewer Goddess, the more we're beginning to think she really sounds like nobody else.
SUPER LIMITED, comes in a cool silkscreened jacket with a printed fold out insert.
What should we expect from headbanging Ohio heshers Skeletonwitch here, on full length number four? More of their raging blackened thrash extremity, no doubt, and that's indeed what they deliver, after a brief acoustic intro! Eleven aggro tracks packed with rasping vokills, skilled melodic soloing, and blasting battery.
We've been fans of this band since back when they were about as underground as you could get, now they're on the cover of the big glossy metal magazines, touring with the likes of Arch Enemy and Danzig, but still stick to their original MO of mixing old school '80s thrash with more modern black and death metal stylings... and doing it with poseur-killing panache. Their brand of speedy shred is tight and ripping, leavened with moments of classy melodiousness.
While the entire album seems intended to be consumed (or consume you) in one sitting, track after track flashing/thrashing by, each one of 'em wrecking necks before passing the spiked baton to the next song, several stand out in particular, such as the remarkably poppy "The Infernal Resurrection".
And at just over 32 minutes in length, Forever Abomination doesn't overstay its welcome, instead leaving us wanting more, which of course leads to pulling out their previous albums, as well as discs by such bands as Destruction, Dissection, Aura Noir, Coroner, Audiopain, Defleshed...
The cd comes in a digipack, with embossed cover art, the double lp version is housed in a nice thick tri-fold sleeve and is on colored wax to boot.
Swedish rhythmic post everything combo Skull Defekts have always been tough to pin down, their sound changing dramatically with seemingly every release, although it seems that gone are the days of the dense and brutal drones that defined their early records, the band blossoming into their current form, meditative and repetitive, rhythmic and sort of post rocky actually, this latest record culled from a single day's recording session, undertaken mid US tour, with Daniel Higgs accompanying them on vocals, and aQ faves Zomes opening up, so given the opportunity everyone piled into the studio, and recorded three tracks, the first of which is a loping, drum heavy groove, with Higgs laying down his unique and twisted vocalizing over the top, even bellowing at one point "The Skull Defekts salute you!", the music lush and gorgeously mesmerizing, with organs swirling, guitars churning, loping and hypnotic and trancelike. The second track starts off with just drums, then some detuned dirgelike riffage, again Higgs in full shaman mode, delivering another selection of cosmic wisdom, crooning, bellowing, mewling, the music slithery and lugubrious, all manner of random percussion peppering that dirgelike groove, like the first track, all about repetition, circular, cyclical, total ritualistic sonic trance out.
Finally, the last track, which is a gorgeously understated bit of meditative mesmer, hazy organ drones, wheezing harmonium, a minimal mini raga, Higgs practically whispering, his delicate croon wreathed in those lush, layered drones. So lovely.
And as if that wasn't enough the whole record is repeated on the B side in reverse, the record playing from the inside out, as if the B side is literally taking up right where the A side leaves off, and as you no doubt know about us by now, we love backwards sounds, they just make everything sounds more tripped out and psychedelic, which is true even here, the backwards versions somehow also darker, and more intense, more demonically harrowing, the perfect balance for the A side, forwards and backwards, light and darkness, good and evil.
We had long been dreaming about a singles compilation from long running UK noise rock / psych dirge combo Skullflower, who are not a 'singles' band by any stretch, but somehow, peppered throughout their lengthy career, and a clutch of classic albums proper, lurk some of the most iconic singles ever, FOUR of which are gathered here, on cd for the first time ever. And the fact that those singles are essentially just the bonus tracks here, should give you an idea of exactly why this was a shoe in for Record Of The Week.
Two of our favorite, classic Skullflower jams, long out of print, now available again together along with the aforementioned singles: Carved Into Roses, originally released in 1994 on VHF, and Infinityland, released a year later on HeadDirt, with the classic SF lineup of Stuart Dennison and Russell Smith (of beloved nineties psychedelic scuzzdub heavies Terminal Cheesecake), two guitars and drums, no bass, both records featuring Simon Wickham Smith and Philip Best of Ramleh as guests. At first we were wondering why exactly these two records were being re-released together, similar lineup of course, and listening to them again, they are sonically very similar, marking the band's shift toward a somewhat different sound, shedding some of the pummel and thud of their earlier releases for something a bit more abstract and tripped out, still heavy and noisy of course, but edging a bit closer to the murky muddy psychedelic drift and gauzy blurred noise-psych drift of their sonic brethren in the Dead C, the sound here in many ways sounding very much like classic NZ noise rock of the era, the tracks lengthy headtrip blissouts, everything wreathed in feedback, the drums and vox buried in the mix, while the guitars writhe and swirl, droned out and raga like one second, fierce caustic squalls the next. SO already it makes sense to bundle these two records together, even more so though once we discovered that they were originally conceived of as one epic sprawling double disc set.
The opener of "Carved Into Roses" pretty much sets the scene, channeling vintage Dead C, and thus finding Skullflower at their very poppiest, reminding us a bit of Dead C offshoot Gate, a sort of meandering Velvets-y drift, lazy and laid back and lugubrious, the sound druggy and droney, a pop song swaddled in thick sheets of wild guitar and smeared psychedelic freakout, almost like some sort of super abstract and seriously drifty space rock, definite foreshadowing some of the sounds of today (White Hills, AMT, etc), the dirgey lope like one of those modern psych bands slooooowed waaaaay down, all swirling washed out guitar skree, ethereal buried-in-the-mix vox, it's downright meditative in its own heavy softly noisy way. The whole record isn't so blissed out and hazy, "The Rose Wallpaper" explodes into a tangle of free jazz freakout, the drums wild and octopoidal, what sounds like some sort of Middle Eastern horn bleats and skronks, the sound growing ever more noisy and chaotic, a seriously heady chunk of OUT-noise jazz if there ever was, which leads right into "Shiny Birds Of Doom", another dark dirge, this one laced with what sounds like organ, or maybe more horns, the lumbering industrial sounding drumming, pounding away through thick swirls of hum and buzz, some howled vocals drift in and out, surprisingly catchy melodies appearing now and again, but more often then not dissipating into the creeping abstract gloom, fans of Gnaw Their Tongues and similarly cinematic black doom will definitely dig.
"Silver Glove Puppet" is a hissy high end stretch of noise pop rendered in shades of grinding crunch, and fractured chaos, sounding a bit like a WAY noisier unhinged Swans, the song getting noisier and noisier, those tangled guitars unwinding thick barbed streaks of effects drenched buzz, but simultaneously becoming more and more song-like as impossible as that seems. Then there's "Metallurgical King", which brings back the horns, and lays them over a cool looped guitar, and some almost krautrock like drumming, super hypnotic, and cyclical, it's only 12 minutes, but you can totally picture this stretching out to fill up a whole live set, totally mesmerizing noisejazz krautdrone hypnorock bliss. And finally Carved Into Roses finishes the way it started, with a stretch of murky out-pop moodiness, the strangely titled "Ge4050" unfurls thick slabs of coruscating guitar buzz, warm washed out melody, never quite coalescing into a proper pop song, instead, seeming to blossom into some sort of psychedelic supernova, all blown out guitars and glimmering sonic blur. Another track that's way to short at seven minutes...
Which leads directly into Infinityland, which starts off with the epic nearly 13 minute long "The Idiotsburgh Address", which opens with a long stretch of layered guitar, blurred and buzzy, droned out and raga like, it's not until about 90 seconds in when the drums kick in, and those guitars coalesce into something again, almost poppy, dirgey, buzz drenched doom-pop creep, woozy and washed out, the guitars soaring and fierce, wrapped around a lilting minor key melody, some wailed wordless vocals, the drums occasionally explode into bursts of delirious drum damage, and of course the guitars are constantly splintering into wild blinding squalls of crunch and howl, but for long stretches, much of that heaviness peels back, again revealing a sort of dirgey industrial almost krautrock sounding meander, haunting and meditative, but still plenty heavy and noisy, and again, hard not to compare this to vintage Dead C. Which leads directly into "White Fang", which is one of the classic Skullflower jams, short by comparison, but the only track that really recalls the Skullflower of old, a pounding almost industrial rhythm, some chugging churning riffage, wild squiggly psychedelic leads, basically the freakout heart-of-the-sun space rock final finishing jam transformed into a whole song, one sounds like staring into the sun, blown out and gloriously blissfully heavy.
"Pixie Dust" is another favorite, darkly haunting, and creepy heavy, the opening riff seriously haunting and ominous, the sound immediately locking into a serious sprawl of noise drenched space-psych mesmer, the sort of thing that would have modern day psych rockers bowing down in reverence, as would follow up "Abraxas", which sounds a bit like Wooden Shjips with a heavy noise makeover, a tranced out groove pounding away within a constantly shifting cloud of psychedelic swirl. "False Magic Kingdom" offers up stretch of serious trip out, the 'free'-est track here for sure, a sort of psychedelic ambience, lots of random rhythmic skitter, pulsing looped buzz, streaks off feedback, clouds of cymbal shimmer, a total outrock freeform epic, before finally finishing off with the comparatively brief closer, "Blood Orange", a gorgeously noisy coda, which melds melancholic clean guitar melody to chaotic rhythms and blown out guitar buzz, yet another track which would have benefited from another 10 or 15 minutes...
And if that wasn't enough, there's a whole 'nother 50 minutes of glorious Skullflower skree, the aforementioned 7"s tracks, "Choady Foster" / "Spent Force" originally released in 1994 on Helter Skelter, "White Fang #2" / "Glassy Essence", also originally released in 1994, on Freek, the Village Sorting 7" originally released in 1995 on Self Abuse (featuring Tim Hodgkinson of Henry Cow), and finally The Art Of Skullflower, originally released in 1996 on Way Out Sounds, which features Bower solo as Total on the B side. Definitely some of our favorite SF jams, and we're so psyched to have them on cd finally. "White Fang #2" is a wild unhinged, super lo-fi, in-the-red, psychedelic dirge rock blow out, that is the most 'rock' SF has ever sounded, while "Glassy Essence" is a thick undulating sprawl of corrosive blackened drones, drifting on a muted chaos of drum stumble and cymbal sizzle. "Choady Foster" sounds like it could have come from the same sessions the produced Carved Into Roses", a murky, psychedelic space rock, motorik groove and thick gouts of frenzied guitars, over a totally mesmerizing stripped down hypnorock framework. "Spent Force" strips away the rhythm, and most of the low end leaving a strange stretch of minimal buzz and glitch and hiss, underpinned by minimal muted drumming and loads of tape hiss, not to mention the occasional super dramatic and cinematic sonic swell. The live version of "Metallurgical King" from the Art Of 7", finds SF in full on abstract trip out drift mode, the drums less a driving force and more another texture floating amidst billowing clouds of feed back and effects drenched sonic swirl. The Total track from the flipside, is similarly drifty, but somehow much darker and heavier, with more heft, and a more serious low end, but still all tangled up in feedback and crumbling distortion, although the main guitar unfurls a thick, SUNNO))) like thrum. And finally, the epic Village Sorting 7", which finds the track "Village Sorting" split into two halves and spread out over all 14 minutes available on that original slab of wax, a plodding drum beat, a fog of insectoid buzz and jagged shards of atonal melody, all blurred and smeared into what sounds like some sort of lo-fi slowcore dirge melting before your very ears, the song laced with some serious free jazz style skronk, the second half / flipside eventually sheds the drums and lets the grinding guitars and bleating horns freakout over a shimmering bed of rumble and buzz. SO GREAT! Here's hoping the rest of the SF singles find their way onto cd, but for now, we've been spinning this disc nonstop, at least when we weren't spinning the other two. Definite contender for reissue of the year, and absolutely essential for fans of all things heavy and psychedelic, abstract and spaced out, noisy and rhythmic.
The packaging is pretty gorgeous too, a super deluxe 6 panel digisleeve, all full color textured paper, with something we had never seen before, the abstract oil painting from the cover printed on the jacket and then the paper sleeves affixed over the top, so parts of the painting our visible around the edges, it's really striking, and inside the various records and 7"s are reproduced in miniature, with extensive track notes, all that and a Japanese style obi too!
Surfer Blood's debut Astro Coast, was easily one of our favorite pop records of 2010, due in no small part to the opening track, "Floating Vibes", which has to be one of our all time favorite pop jams, jangly surfy, fuzzy, catchy as all get out, so much so that we spent wholly half the review of that first record just talking about that one song, although we did stress that the rest of the record was in fact nearly as good. We played that record to death, its weird mix of Pavement, Beach Boys, XTC, Weezer and that classic eighties pop sound, something we never seemed to tire of, easily some of the catchiest, jangle pop we'd heard in ages, the sort of smart pop, that few bands can pull off anymore. So we were anxious for a new record, and were so psyched to discover this had just come out, and while it's not a proper new album, it is four new songs (and two remixes) which is more than enough to hold us over until the next record. And while there may not be a "Floating Vibes", opener "I'm Not Ready comes close, with all the things we loved about the first record still firmly in place, the production a little more polished, but for the most part, these songs sound like they could have been plucked from the same sessions. The second track "Miranda", sounds like it could be an Ovens song, if it were about two minute shorter, the same sort of impossibly hooky classic power pop, plenty of jangle and crunch, and some really great vocals, slipping effortlessly into the higher registers, that song leads right into "Voyager Reprise", which is another pop gem, these guys have their shit down, their own secret formula, that seems to make all their songs crazy catchy, and totally irresistible, which is also the case with "Drinking Problem", which is the weirdest track here, all low slung new wave bass, strange percussion, sort of funky drumming, a woozy high end melody, and echoey vox, the new waviest of the bunch, which we'd proclaim our fave, if we weren't digging the other tracks just as much.
The remixes are sort of throwaway, fun, but not super essential, the first one turns "Voyager Reprise" into a housey electro pop groove, while the second transforms the already dark "Drinking Problem" into a funky chunk of fuzzy dirgey gloom pop.
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK. THE ULTIMATE DRONE RECORD.
We love this record so much. The Taj Majal Travellers are so utterly mind blowing. This is a double cd reissue of this legendary Japanese psych ensemble's second lp which has been unavailable for several years now, but when we did have it in stock, if anyone asked about drones, this is the record we would always suggest. One of the most hallowed artifacts of the psych-rock collector scum scene (originals on vinyl could set you back more than $1000!), this album is an epic higher key improvised drone extravaganza, all performed live on beaches and deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated. Feedback, time-space lag, horns, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound. So unbearably awesome. And this is not electronic music, or studio based carefully constructed drone music, this is massive and organic, dreamy and natural, waves of sound drifting through sun and sky, rain and fog, trees and electrical wires, the shape of the earth, the temperature, the wind, all affecting the sound, changing the timbre ever so slightly, band members spaced out over hundreds of yards, improvising on an impossible grand scale, the earth as their stage, nature as their recording studio, a deliriously abstract sound world of subtle drones and drifting ambience. Imagine some long hairded seventies Japanese psych rock combo, but filtered through the Jewelled Antler Collective, jamming with Chris Watson, set up on sandy dunes, grassy knolls, forest glades, each not necessarily -playing- their instruments, but instead coaxing sounds from within the instruments, setting those sounds free and sending them skyward, watching it drift downwind, where a bandmate snatches the sounds and coaxes complimentary sounds from his instrument, sending a sonic respone, until these messages, these sounds weave into and around each other, the sky full of warm warbly mysterious sound. Psychedelic for sure, but more a sort of eyes closed, mind open dream drift drone psychedelia. ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITE RECORDS!!
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Boy / girl lo-fi electro duo Tearist were originally lumped in with the whole witch house movement, in part we would imagine because of a cd-r release on witch house flagship label Disaro, but even back then Tearist were doing something way different than the hordes of slo-mo death drag creepers, sounding much more like some warped version of Zola Jesus, or a way more fucked up Glass Candy, a sort of eighties new wave by way of Eurodisco by way of lo-fi psychedelic industrial murk, and yeah, a little dash of witch house.
On Living, which seems to be a retrospective of sorts, we're treated to what appears to be a live show, with all the old hits getting aired out, the weird thing is, the live recording, the lo-fi sound, the weird mix, the crowd sounds, the various conversations, the vocals way down in the mix, actually makes this sound WAY more witch housey than these songs are proper, but which actually makes this stuff somehow even cooler. Muddier, murkier, messier, there are moments where the new waviness shines through, her voice sounding a lot like the woman from the Divinyls, but elsewhere, things get grimy and downright sick, like on "Lo V" (we think, hard to tell where songs start and stop), Tearist unleash a cool churning electronic rhythm, that even on its own is super mesmerizing, frantic and frenzied, stuttery and a bit off kilter, growing ever more fragmented, the vocals super dramatic, and doused in effects, and still elsewhere, like on "Closest" (again we think), Tearist get all gloomy and gothy, a sort of slo-mo doom pop, swirling synths muted rhythms, the vocals dramatic and dark, it's these moments that will have the Zola Jesus / Glass Candy crowd smitten. And so it goes, from almost poppy eighties style new wave, to dirgey dancey murkiness, to warped druggy electro, to hazy Euro synth wave, to droned out industrial drift, a pretty twisted and killer sampling of live Tearist.
This is the second lp from UK psychedelic instrumental space rockers Teeth Of The Sea, their third record over all, and another twisted batch of heavy twisted psych, it makes sense that it would be on Rocket, home to other aQ fave space rock heavies like The Heads and Gnod, and these guys traffic in a similar sound, but one that is most definitely all their own, just check out opener "The Ambassador", one of THEE heaviest, trippiest slabs of space psych we've ever heard, thick low slung bassline, weird burbling electronics, tripped out processed vox, all hazy and buzzy and gristly, it sounds like a spaced out dirge rock Butthole Surfers almost, the guitars thick and distorted, the song a lugubrious crawl, until a second guitar swoops in, playing a slithery stoner riff, and the horns, the HORNS, bleating out a dark funereal drone, those freaky voices making everything way more druggy and demented, the drums come pounding in, it's not until about halfway through, that the guitars unwind wild peals of psychedelic leads, the drums grow more tribal, and yet, it never full explodes into conventional space rock, this is something else entirely, the song blisses out part way through, weird sci-fi squelches and more horns drifting in an expanse of distant guitar shimmer, and muted rhythms, everything gradually fading out leaving just tabla like drumming, subtle organs and swirls of electronic bloops and bleeps, and hell if that's not the way to start a record...
And the rest of the record, defies convention still by never quite settling down into anything even resembling proper space rock or psych rock, even compared to their last record we reviewed, this is as about far out as it gets. The next track is all drum machine, weird industrial electronics, processed voices, swirling synths, almost like some heavier take on Goblin / Carpenter soundtrack stuff. The title is all horn flecked slow burn drift, a gradual build to a more post rock crunch, building to a sort of Godspeed climax, but one that's all super high end guitar tangles draped over the otherwise seemingly sedate sonic background, dramatic and tense and surprisingly cinematic. The rest of the record continues to take the concept of psychedelic space rock and twist it all up, from pulsing kosmische synths, to almost cheesy, eighties sounding soundtrack music, like a more metal Beverly Hills Cop or Miami Vice (!), to murky hazy washed out ambience, all muted processed guitars and blurred gauzy melodies, to a weird final track that's a hazy shoegazey soundscape of minimal drumming, chiming guitars, and lots and lots of horns, again very haunting and cinematic, and really quite gorgeous.
Weird these guys seems to still lurk so beneath the radar, might be cuz they're just to far out and freaky for the psych/space rock crowd, which is a shame really, cuz this is some of the coolest stuff we've heard in ages.
Metal in the form of a magazine, in a bag, with a cd sampler. Cover star, Michael Akerfeldt of Opeth (who is "liberated from the shackles of metal" he says). Also inside, Mastodon, Tombs, Black Cobra, The Devil's Blood, Wolves In The Throne Room, Absu, Evile, Textures, and plenty more. The cd sampler's got tracks from Mastodon, Evile, Skeletonwitch, Fleshgod Apocalypse (check them out!!), and others as well.
Metal in the form of a magazine, in a bag, with a cd sampler. Cover star, "genius" Devin Townsend. Also inside, Cradle Of Filth, Skeletonwitch, In Solitude, Sepultura, Hammers Of Misfortune, Machine Head, Dimmu Borgir, and plenty more. The cd sampler's got tracks from Hammers, The Devil's Blood, Amebix, Absu, Craft, and others as well.
A lot of folks discovered defunct San Diego bass heavy post rockers Three Mile Pilot retroactively, having learned about them through either Pinback (which features 3MP bassist Zach Smith) and/or the Blackheart Procession (fronted by 3MP guitarist/vocalist Pall Jenkins), and while both of those bands are definitely informed by Three Mile Pilot, that band had such a distinctive and unique brooding dark beauty, that nothing since could really compare. In the nineties, Three Mile Pilot were one of a handful of bands (along with Heavy Vegetable and a handful of others) creating a super unique scene in San Diego, and in the process evoked a slavish devotion from their fans (two of which are now aQ employees), their shows so dramatic and intense and cathartic, which the band managed surprisingly to capture on record as well.
Na Vucca Do Lupu was their debut, originally released in 1991, and is probably our favorite, just bass, drum and vocals, the sound literally unlike anything we had ever heard, sparse and spare, a sort of slowcore, but one that built to some seriously aggressive and propulsive heft, the drums mathy and intricate, the bass impossibly complex, multiple melody lines, slipping from chiming and delicate to churning and buzzy, the vocals melodic, but just raspy and again super distinctive, just check out the sample for "One Step Ladder" which might just be our favorite 3MP song ever, totally epic, super varied, catchy as hell, impossibly lush and heavy for what was essentially a two piece, even now, twenty years later, and it still sounds better, and more original, that pretty much 99% of what's out there. The rest of the record is just as good, super rhythmic, the low end creating a dark droning vibe that runs throughout, so great. An all time favorite for sure.
A lot of folks discovered defunct San Diego bass heavy post rockers Three Mile Pilot retroactively, having learned about them through either Pinback (which features 3MP bassist Zach Smith) and/or the Blackheart Procession (fronted by 3MP guitarist/vocalist Pall Jenkins), and while both of those bands are definitely informed by Three Mile Pilot, that band had such a distinctive and unique brooding dark beauty, that nothing since could really compare. In the nineties, Three Mile Pilot were one of a handful of bands (along with Heavy Vegetable and a handful of others) creating a super unique scene in San Diego, and in the process evoked a slavish devotion from their fans (two of which are now aQ employees), their shows so dramatic and intense and cathartic, which the band managed surprisingly to capture on record as well.
After the just bass and drums, stripped down sound of the band's debut Na Vucca Do Lupu, Chief Assassin To The Sinister, originally released in 1993, found the band expanding sonically a bit, with Jenkins now playing guitar, and although the guitar definitely added some color and texture, the core sound of the band remained the same, the driving intricate basslines, the propulsive drumming, the moody brooding songwriting, if anything, the sound got a bit heavier, just check out the sample for "Circumcised", which melds the band's early sound, bass heavy, dark and dramatic, with something way more rocking and driving, a pretty potent combination for sure, one that got the band noticed by the world at large, with this record eventually being picked up by Geffen who reissued this record a few years later. There are also a handful of tracks here than hint at Jenkins post 3MP outfit the Blackheart Procession, the sort of funeral piano driven balladry that would define that band.
And while that first record might be out favorite, this one is a VERY close second.
After two totally kick ass 7"s, these Aussie electro-punks return with a full length that manages to trump them both. Thee Oh Sees head honcho John Dwyer warned us how good this was, and boy was he was right, a killer collision of dark, brooding retro garage punk and vintage electronic new wave, melded into something totally tripped out and irresistible, weirdly krautrocky, spacey and psychedelic. Opener "See More Glass" could go up against Moon Duo for pure blissed out psychedelic hypno-drift, the monotone intoned vox over the pulsing electronic throb and swirling layered buzz, all wreathed in streaks of muted feedback, the sound slipping from crunchy and caustic to muddy and murky, the electronics glitchy and distorted, all draped over a warm, whirling bit of kraut infused abstract psychedelia, like a fractured new wave take on Spacemen 3, peppered with dreamy little synth squiggles, adding a touch of kosmische to the proceedings. Follow up "Retiree" is a bit more straight ahead rock, but even the, the riffing is locked into these droned out arrangements, and the vocals again hauntingly monotone, making even punkier jams sounds tripped out and spacey.
And so it goes, the sound slipping from loose garagey jangle, to super catchy new wave pop, from weird low slung gloomy synth heavy drum machined electropop to old school power pop, from fuzzy hooky downer pop to creepy primitive abstract electronics, from doomy slow core balladry to tripped out psychedelia, all somehow strung together into something cool and cohesive. The pop songs definitely tapping into the classic Aussie post punk of the past a la the Scientists, Hoodoo Gurus, Celibate Rifles, as well as similarly minded outfits like the Wipers, but the magic is in when those two sides mix, the garagey punk jams laced with electronics, and the crunchy synth electronic workouts that seem to be fashioned into something more rock and roll, and even when those bits remain separate, there's something cool about a wild rambunctious jam devolving into a spaced out bit of celestial shimmer before slipping right back into some gloomy jangle. This is most definitely a new favorite!
What more can we say about Texas slowcore doomgaze heavies that we haven't already? We made their debut our Record Of The Week and sold TONS of them, they played our South By Southwest showcase and completely destroyed, they played the Noise Pop festival here and totally stole the show, they are without a doubt one of our favorite bands of the last few years, and we are so psyched people are finally discovering these guys (and gal). But then how could they not, one listen, the very first time we heard the very first song on that very first record, that was it. That record still gets played ALL the time, as does their equally ruling follow up, they're like some modern version of our nineties slowcore faves, Codeine, Low, Seam, but way heavier, their songs brooding and moody, the sound lush and blown out, and so utterly distinctive, at this point, they may be reminiscent of those other bands, but they sound like no one else. Hooks deftly woven into droned out dirges, fuzz drenched dream pop rendered in thick slabs of sun baked guitar, simple doomkraut drumming, and weary washed out vox, we could listen to this stuff forever, and pretty much do.
This latest 12"s is a sort of odds and sods collection, with some alternate versions, and some tracks from the demo that were left off the new record, it might not be the best place for newbies to start, but really, even hearing this record first, we'd be surprised if anyone wasn't immediately blown away.
The acoustic opener is an alternate version of the closing track on the most recent full length, a gorgeous acoustic folk number, which leads directly into the epic title track, the main reason to pick this up, 14+ minutes of hazy heaviness, of blissed out dreamdoom slowcore dirgery, the band letting it rip more than they often do, building to a serious psychedelic blow out, before finishing off with 4+ minutes of droned out abstract psych guitar drift. So awesome. "Bathyscaphe" is up next another track from As High As The Highest Heavens, which doesn't sound that different from the album version, but it's a beauty, and well worth hearing again. And again. And again. The last two tracks are from their 2009 demo, "S.Y.B.", a slithery sun dappled creep, gauzy and woozy and washed out, the distinctive shimmery guitar twang in full effect, the band drifting and meandering hypnotically, the whole this wreathed in warm fuzz guitar shimmer, and finally "S.F.H.D.", which displays the band at their poppiest, sounding like some lost nineties classic, the vocals powerful and not at all buried in the mix, and the boy/girl harmonies utterly divine.
Obviously, everyone who bought either/both of the other True Widow records (and that's a LOT of you) is probably gonna want this, at least to tide you over until the next proper record, but even not as a stopgap, as a proper release, this half-hour ep stands up pretty gosh darn well, and is actually the sort of thing most other bands spend their whole careers trying to pull off...
And FYI, we got as many copies as we could, but like a lot of vinyl-only Kemado stuff, this is limited, no doubt, and we don't know when/if we will be able to get more...
Oh boy. Editor / expert in chief Mike Stax and crew have done it again. Here's a fat new issue (176 pages) of our favorite magazine of ye olde rock n' roll (garage, punk, psych, power pop, and maybe a side of prog). This time 'round, there's typically in-depth, heavy duty features on a whole lot of interesting artists, some more obscure than others... Them, The Vibrators, Finchley Boys, The Sloths, Creation Of Sunlight, The Contrasts, freakbeat faves Wimple Winch, and plenty of others - including one REALLY obscure group with the amazing name of $27 Snap On Face, some Sonoma county weirdos circa '77. Along with a look at the psychedelic side of Paul Revere & The Raiders, the usual vast array of reissue reviews, the regular columns, et cetra. Oh, and a page devoted to "The 20 Worst Hard Rock Obscurities" to be avoided. And really that's just scratching the surface, as always an issue of Ugly Things requires a few solid hours of devoted study. For anyone who loves "wild sounds from past dimensions" this is sheer manna in magazine form.
Everyone has a specific music they're especially fond of. And sure we're all pretty omnivorous when it comes to the music we love, but there's always that one sound or style you find yourself returning to again and again, that one thing on your iPod that gets played over and over like crazy, around here, folks tend to be partial to jangly pop, blackened metal, abstract noise, seventies proto metal, field recordings, sixties psych, Warped Tour emo metal, techno, or dubstep, among other things. But one thing everything here can agree on, is the importance of 'sleeping' music. Those blissed out sounds that are perfect for late nights, for that moment when your consciousness begins to drift, where for a moment, you get just a glimpse of the other side, before the curtain parts and your incorporeal self slips past, and doesn't return until the next morning. The soundtrack for that crossover is also very personal, some folks listen to buzzing black metal to drift off, others the mesmerizing thump of minimal techno, but there is a certain strain of ambient music that everyone here is equally enamored of. Minimal techno label Kompakt has coined the phrase Pop Ambient for this strain of electronic music, one that is not so much standard ambient music, or even new age, but more an electronica/techno with the beats removed, leaving just the ethereal ephemera, that at one time was a backdrop for the beats, but sans rhythms, those sounds become the focus, and are loosed from any sort of proper structure, allowed to flow and drift, to swirl and shimmer, this new music that is indeed ambient, and perhaps even a little new agey, but is ultimately something much more evocative and experimental, songs and sounds that acts as mysterious soundtracks for sleep, music that simultaneously serves as background ambience, but can also invoke active listening, allowing the listener to immerse themselves in the sound, to travel sonically to these otherworlds, to explore, and to get gloriously lost.
This double disc collects some of the current crop of ambient alchemists, a handful who are already aQ faves including Leyland Kirby, Klimek, Biosphere, Oneohtrix Point Never, Atlas Sound, Wolfgang Voigt, Markus Guentner, and Maps And Diagrams (whose cd on Time Released sound we reviewed recently), but even more that are brand new discoveries, all of whom are poised to become new favorites for sure, and pretty much instantly, this comp became out go-to late night listening collection.
The first disc is heavier on the new discoveries, opening up with a track by Orla Wren, who weaves a glitchy stretch of crystalline skitter, that reminds us a bit of Oval, all warm and liquid, hushed and delicate, but which soon blossoms into a lush thick swirl of layered buzz and softly swirling shimmer, laced with chiming melodies, and hazy bell like tones, one track in, and we already find ourselves wanting to hear more, which happens again minutes later when Rafael Anton Irisarri's track begins, a warm, swirling cinematic thrum, a very Caretaker-sounding sprawl of murky muddy strings, of looped string section shimmer, all blurred into something hazy and drifty, wreathed in soft hiss and warm record crackle, looped and lovely and hauntingly mesmerizing. The oddly named Let's Go Outside continue with their own brand of dreamy drift, a blissed out dreamdrone raga of metallic buzz and lush layered loveliness. Bvdub (aka Brock Van Wey, one of the curators of this collection) offers his own bit of looped and layered swirl, all effected steel strings, a sort of folky flutter smeared into lush string like swells, the lengthy track peppered with epic majestic bursts of heaving high end buzz, again all blurred into something more more ethereal, and so it goes, this is one of those rare comps, that not only plays like a proper album, but that doesn't slip up once, every single track here is gorgeous, and is woven deftly into the sonic fabric of the whole.
The second disc is where most of the more familiar names can be found, many of those Pop Ambient veterans, Klimek (who even released a record called Music To Fall Asleep), starts things off with a field recording flecked slow burn drone, very darkly dramatic and ethereal, which leads directly into a track by Andrew Thomas (the other curator of this collection), his number a moody chunk of shimmery slowcore, all twangy Earth-like guitars over a hushed hazy backdrop of warm strings and glistening analog crackle, sounding almost like a Pop Ambient Barn Owl. Oneohtrix delivers some very minimal and dreamy celestial kosmische, while Biosphere weaves a gorgeous bit of orchestral thrum, all deep swirling strings, pizzicato melodies and mysterious percussion, while Markus Guenter finally introduces a beat, a murky minimal pulse, beneath another gorgeous sprawl of glistening droned out shimmer, and again, so it goes for the rest of the second disc as well.
ANYone who loves the Pop Ambient series will flip for this, as will fans of all things darkly dreamy, be it minimal electronica, abstract krautdrone, cinematic ambience or anywhere in between.
Analog Africa strikes gold once again! Just when we thought we might need a little break from '70s African psych/funk reissues, we're reminded again just how much amazing music was recorded without seeing wide release, sounds that so deserves to be heard and blasted loud and proud! This time out Analog Africa put their crate digging skills to work on the raw beginnings of the Burkina Faso sounds recorded between 1974-1979. With its geographical roots running through the Sahel, these sounds incorporate Afro-funk, Islamic rhythms, and Malian guitar sounds. It might sound cliche, but there is really no other way to describe the songs on this collection without using words like smoking, blazing, raw, and on fire. Not a record you want to listen to softly, these are songs you want to blast as even the slow burners on here cut right to the core. We had never heard any of these sixteen tracks before, and with the awesome 44 page booklet that accompanies this release we now get to not only listen but learn about amazing music we had very little knowledge of beforehand. Isn't that what being a music lover is all about, so damn rewarding!
We've raved about the amazing Dust-To-Digital label before, their releases are always incredible, from the recordings to the liner notes to the packaging, few can touch these guys when it comes to elaborate and over the top packaging. But let's take a second to gush again a bit about aQ pal Jonathan Ward, who besides having one of the most incredible collections of industrial music (not industrial as in Throbbing Gristle, but as in music created by and for corporations, commercials, etc), also runs the amazing Excavated Shellac blog, which is a treasure trove of lost recordings, and Ward writes beautifully about the records and their provenance. Ward curated the amazing Excavated Shellac: Strings lp on Parlortone a while back, which we can't recommend enough, but this long in the works boxset does that compilation one better. Or maybe four better. Four discs overflowing with incredible sounds, all gathered from 78rpm shellac phonograph records, most of which have never been heard outside of Africa, as these discs were not recorded for ethnomusicologists or as the liner notes suggest "curious Westerners", but for the local population, and thus were much more difficult to track down, but as we stated above, Ward's collection of 78s is stunning, and essentially, this boxset is like a physical version of his blog, with his extensive liner notes on each of the ONE HUNDRED (!) tracks here, totally fascinating and informative, not just discussing the song, but offering an overview of the time, the culture, and more extensively going into the hunt for, and discovery of these records, as well as the reasons behind their limited distribution and the difficulty of tacking down records from different regions. It's as good a read as it is a listen (like the blog!), but the music, so divine, so varied, from pretty much every region of Africa: Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Kenya, Congo, Cameroon, Malawi, Burundi, Seychelles, Namibia, Angola, Niger, Somalia, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and beyond� The tracks range from celebratory, almost high life sounding folk music, all tribal drumming and call and response vocals, to hushed intimate solo performances of just voice and buzzing strings, some songs are wild and chaotic and full of joy, others are mournful and melancholy, we could go track by track, but pretty much everyone who's heard this has been immediately smitten, and if you're a fan of that Excavated Shellac lp (or the blog), any of the other Dust-To-Digital comps or anything on Sublime Frequencies, this is a must have.
And as mentioned above, the packaging is incredible, a book sized red and yellow cloth slipcover, inside the 4 cds housed in a fold out 8 panel full color dvd style gatefold sleeve, alongside a massive soft cover book, filled with tons of photos, as well as Ward's extensive liner notes. So totally recommended!!
Got a few copies of this cd-r compilation via our pals the Oakland band Pigs, who have a track on it taken from their album Illuminati House Party, that we know a lot of you liked. Other acts also on here, and equally AQ-approved: US Christmas, Shit And Shine, Sons Of Tonatiuh, and a bunch more (13 in all) that are all pretty great. Although it's a diverse selection of bands, somehow the tracks that appear on this comp all go pretty well together. There's a tilt towards mathiness and heaviness, and also to weirdness and psychedelia, all good things as far as we're concerned. Lots of it is instrumental, as well.
We won't bother to describe the entire disc track-by-track (especially since it's cheap enough, just buy it!!) but will mention a few things that stood out... Shane Perlowin from prog-punk outfit Ahleuchatistas starts things off with a lovely bit of solo guitar action, vaguely exotic-sounding, something that Six Organs fans should enjoy, though the hypnotically jittery track by Ahleuchatistas proper that pops up later on the disc is more in line with the technically complex, frantic rockin' we've heard from 'em before on their Cuneiform albums. Meanwhile, Russian (???) band The Grand Astoria do a pretty rad space-rockin' cover of a song by Ash Ra Tempel. And then there's the oddly monickered yellowthief (a grindy duo consisting of drummer "yellowsun" and guitarist "yellowmoon") who contribute six tracks, all but one of 'em short sharp shocks of mathy spazz (and some moody melody) barely longer than 30 seconds apiece, with gibberish song titles. Ruins and Hella fans ought to dig, and we'll definitely be on the lookout for more from yellowthief in future.
Oh, and Pigs, if you haven't heard 'em yet, do their song "Lurch" which is exemplary of their Sabbathy, Melvinsy sound. The heaviest stuff here is probably by Sons Of Tonatiuh, though, who get two feedback-laden tracks to kick out the ugly doom jams, Eyehategod style. Shit And Shine don't wimp out, either, wrapping the disc up with a crushingly distorted atmospheric soundscape of sorts. And the other bands we haven't yet mentioned (The Wayward, The Asound, Akris, Enoch, Yuugen Syndrome) are all worthy too.
Certainly a cool comp that turned us on to some neat stuff we hadn't heard before, from denizens of a particular (and somewhat peculiar) underground scene that we hadn't quite conceptualized previously, though now it makes sense that these bands would all belong together on this comp - to the extent that you could almost listen to this and pretend it was ALL by the same, really amazing band! Comes with a sticker, too, by the way.
Not sure how we managed it, but this is the first we've heard from noise rock heavies Vaz, which is kind of weird for a couple reasons, one, this is their 3rd or 4th record so far at least, and those past records were on some seriously kick ass labels, and two, Vaz is in fact two members of the late great AmRep outfit Hammerhead, who we LOVED. But better late than never, and this is indeed a serious chunk of blown out super hooky and heavy noise rock, pop at its core for sure, but wrapped in some thick, crumbling ultra distorted riffage, not to mention some tripped out psychedelic guitar action, anchored by the drums, a wild chaotic pound, and the vocals, surprisingly melodic, which positions Vaz more alongside other poppier heavy rock combos like Torche, but Vaz definitely twists up their sound, atonal and off kilter, jagged and frenzied and frantic, sleeping easily from twisted crunch to soaring hookiness and back, with a definite brooding downer pop vibe running through some of the songs too. And some ridiculous hooks tucked amidst all that crunch and pound. We gave this a quick listen when it first came in, and thought it sounded pretty good, but when we finally sat down to really dig in, it quickly became a new fave, sounding suddenly like some impossible hybrid of Nomeansno, The Melvins and Torche, with a hint of the Wipers� and we've been listening to it like crazy ever since, which pretty much says it all.
Killer stuff, and definitely recommended for fans of heavy pop and poppy heaviness.
Packaged in swank silkscreened jackets, includes a free download as well.
Deteriorated Broadcast is a short-run cd-r from Chicago power-drone engineer Blake Edwards (aka Vertonen), and we can't help thinking to back to John Duncan's minimalist opus Phantom Broadcast, given that Edwards too has sourced at least some of this work from the spectral palette of shortwave radio. There are plenty of sublime moments where Edwards (like Duncan) creates an electonic bath of rarified drones, whose sustained, shimmering chorales emerge as those transmissions from another plane that Thomas Edison once thought possible through the birth of radio communication. Muffled voices and cavernous room thrumming snap into a volatile cascade of haptic vibration and sinusoidal shortwave hues, that slowly give way to a monochromatic dead-circuit tone, which is akin to a particular strain of noxious interference that runs rampant through the shortwave spectrum in urban areas. Phased static and additional sinewave tones gradually modulate through this slumped sonic field as a ghostly residue of some type of broadcast filtered through the earth's atmosphere and all of the irradiating fields that drift through our cities. Some 30 minutes into the 50 minute piece, Edwards intensifies his psychoacoustic crucible of sound with metallic slashes whose mutated and bloated abrasions gradually collapse into a chest-compressing sound-pressure wall of low-end frequencies matched with industrially charred hiss. A great album for sure for fans of Joe Colley, The Hafler Trio, and Francisco Lopez; but be warned this is limited to less than 100 copies of which we only have a handful!
Vita Noctis were a peculiar Belgian synth-punk trio operating the early-to-mid '80s that come across as something of a strange hybrid of the sneering irony of Der Todliche Doris, the stripped simplicity of Young Marble Giants, and the general weirdness of Alain Neffe's Insane Music label. Recording with all second hand gear - just a couple synths, a drum machine, guitar and bass - Vita Noctis produced a handful of cassettes, one mini-LP, and a few tracks for compilations, all of which have been reissued on this handsome 2LP set from Dark Entries. The trio was unafraid to unravel their songs, with the drum machines revved up too fast, spiralling beyond their ability to keep up with the plink-plonk melodies and cat-scratched guitars. The naive experiments did warrant some peculiar results, such as the Club Moral-esque tinny tirade of "Civilisation," but not all was winking idiocy evoking contempt through a dedicated lack of craft. Vita Noctis would pen some downright catchy numbers such as the Slits-meets-disco groove of "She Likes Me," the spirited jangle of "These Lies" (documented in two different versions), and the calculator melodied "Hade," which could have been a nerdy love ballad, if the lyrics weren't declaring the exact opposite. Vita Noctis is not easy to love with all of their warts, crude productions, and drooling babble proudly displayed; but then that's probably why we're digging this record as much as we are.
Preeminent field recordist Christ Watson returns with a bit of a twist on El Tren Fantasma. Pretty much all of his work up to this point (outside of his contributions to Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio way back when) has been audio verite. Even such albums as Weather Report, which edit field recordings from the African savanna (for example) into a condensed journey, are pristine, realist documents codified through the exquisite, lush details in Watson's enviromental sounds such as that of a lion panting after a successful hunt. El Tren Fantasma is much more engineered, imagined, and processed than anything else in his solo career; and this fictionalized Watson is no less compelling, no less dramatic, and no less awesome.
El Tren Fantasma - The Ghost Train - traces a now-defunct passanger rail line which ran from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Veracruz on the Atlantic Coast. Watson had the opportunity to make this journey while working as a sound recordist for the BBC for their Great Railway Journeys. His compositions work with extracts from that excursion travelling across Mexico along with archival recordings whose origins are not specified. As he's stopping throughout the Chihuahuan Desert, Watson does capture the stunning chorales of chirping frogs, buzzing insects, and the blaring call of a California Quail (whose syllabic chortle is often mnemonically transcribed as "chi-CA-go" as if it were seeking a more temperate climate); but it the train's power and mass that provides so much of the impact for Watson's album. By the fourth track "El Divisidaro," Watson captures a series of loops of the train - with the bellowing horn pitched back and forth into a sustained symphonic tone and the clatter of the train's engine becoming an ersatz rhythm track, which in turn gets tricked out with some Martin Hannett styled, phasing delay work. It's easy to get lost in the majesty of this track, much like the expressive electronica that Wolfgang Voigt produced on Konigsforst as Gas. What a brilliantly simple transformation executed to perfection! "Mexico D.F." reprises this strategy with rhythmic churns building out of the grinding brakes and the roiling tumult of steam blasting through the train's pipes, becoming an almost militant thump on a lone drum. The train's horn drifts suitably in a cloud of reverberation at the end of the album, dissolving into the ghostlike apparition Watson intended it to be. As brillliant as this work is, we should also point out that Watson is not alone in composing such fictionalized scores purely through environmental sound. We would be remiss if we failed to point out the work of Australian composer Tarab, whose deft psychogeographical albums share the scope and execution with Watson's El Tren Fantasma. So great!
Finally, a full length record from Heather Fedewa, aka one woman psychedelic jangle pop new wave garage rock combo Wax Idols, which seems to have been expanded to what essentially amounts to a full band for this full length. Fedewa is a member of aQ beloved recent Record Of The Week honorees Blasted Canyons, and she was a former Bare Wire as well of one of the punx in Hunx & His Punx, so with a pedigree like that it didn't really take a genius to figure out that we'd dig Wax Idols, and dig it we do, the first single we reviewed a while back was a big hit around here, with a fuzzed out garage rock girl group sound that didn't stray too far from the sound of her old band The Bare Wires, which was just fine with us, although as we mentioned in that review, the sound tended to be a bit darker, with more crunch, more murk, a definitely gloom pop vibe, although we have to say, none of that is present on the opening track here, which is fuzzy and crunchy and jangly, with plenty of tough girl swagger, reminding us a bit of the Runaways, especially with Fedewa's snarled echo drenched yelp on the chorus, although the rest of the song is pretty fuzzy and dreampoppy. "Hitman" too, could almost be Best Coast, or the Dum Dum Girls, raw and urgent, fuzzy and crunchy, with chiming guitar melodies over the fuzzy riffage, but then something strange happens, the chord progression of the chorus has this weird turn right at the end that's a little bit sour, and makes the hook have just a little bit of edge, which is probably a good description of this whole record, fuzzy, jangly, a little new wavey, but with just a little bit more bite than other sonically similar bands. In fact, if there was a girl group battle of the bands, that was in fact an actual battle, all of those other bands would get their asses KICKED. Just check out "Dilno", super rocking, blown out and fuzzy, distorted, rollicking and rocking, with some weird vox and a super dynamic stuttery chorus.
As the record progresses, the songs seem to get a bit more moody, the sound stretching out into gloom pop territory, which totally suits the songs, and balances the more sunshiney numbers nicely. And then the record finishes off with maybe the poppiest jam here, all echo drenched vocals, warm shimmery strum, and sweetly melancholy minor key melodies, but even there, the song has plenty of dynamics, the multiple guitars weaving a lush almost shoegazey haze over the second half, but not enough to obscure Wax Idols' fuzz pop perfection.
Fans of Bare Wires, Blasted Canyons, Thee Oh Sees, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Best Coast, Girls At Dawn, Grass Widow, etc. this just might be your new favorite record.
A few years back, there seemed to be a glut of dour angular new wave combos, many of which we dug like crazy, band after band of sharply dressed, angular hair-ed rockers kicking out some of the hookiest jams in ages, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, Frightened Rabbit, The Editors, Interpol and the like, and however much of a glut there may have been, we could never get enough. And We Were Promised Jetpacks, not only benefited from having a bad ass band name, but they also seemed to up the ante on guitar crunch, and heavy buzz, and they wedded that extra muscle to some killer songs, often ditching the whole short sharp new wave thing for brooding slow build post rock epics, all underpinned by a distinctly dark, low slung Joy Division gloomy undercurrent, it's like they read our minds and took Mogwai, Godspeed and Maximo Park and created some sort of Frankensteinian epic hook filled new wave band just for us, and then to top it off gave said band an awesome ridiculous name.
Needless to say we were pretty psyched for this new one, and the opening track instantly convinced us that the wait was not in vain, a wild progged out epic post rock opening with tumbling drums and crashing chords, all woven into some dizzying stop start mathiness, then the riff comes in, and it's a killer, and then the band come in and sound crazy heavy, the song shifting to bass / drum verse, peppered with bursts of crunchy guitar jangle, there's even a crazy majestic epic post rock crescendo finishing off in a blaze of new wave buzz and pound. And while we're tempted to proclaim that the best track here, pretty much everyone we listen to becomes our favorite, at least until we move on to the next one, "Through The Dirt And The Gravel", is some seriously heavy noisepop, with some thick buzzing bass, and a hook to die for, and closer "Pear Tree" is dark and heavy and brooding, the perfect new wave slow build post rock hybrid, the sort of song that sans vocals would sound right at home on a Mogwai record, but as is just might be the perfect finish to a nearly perfect record.
Fans of the above mentioned bands, as well as other sonically similar outfits like Kaiser Chiefs, Futureheads, Arctic Monkeys, Art Brut, Bloc Party and the like will go crazy for this. And if you've yet to hear these guys, this is the perfect place to start, just check out that first sound sample, odds are you'll be as smitten as we are.
Debut full length from this awesome San Francisco band who are bringing a much needed shot of carefree energy and exuberance to the current crop of lo-fi and garage pop peddlers. We loved their 7" from last year which while being right at home in a stack of records by such likeminded folks as The Fresh & Only, Nodzz, and Woods, also had its own really cool unique energy. 1x1x1 proves that while these guys do have a lot in common with the new wave of indie pop greatness they also tap into the golden age of indie rock with melodies as bright as Superchunk and the charged rhythm of The Feelies. They also have this really cool ability to merge different elements into their overall sound. Somehow bridging the gap between the all out party raucousness of bands like Hunx & His Punx and Shannon & The Clams, while having an ease and breeze to their sound similar to Beach Fossils and Melted Toys. Snotty without being obnoxious, and so catchy without being saccharine. This is how we love our pop music to sound.
The idea of decay in sound has always been super appealing to us. Malfunctioning machinery, misused and abused effects, damaged tape, drop outs, hiss, hum, all the various imperfections that most music strives to eliminate, we tend to embrace, and that weird fucked/damaged element informs so much of what we are attracted to sonically. Which is why we were especially thrilled by our discovery of the French electro-grind / glitch-metal duo Whourkr, whose album Concrete we made a Record Of The Week a few years ago. Whourkr seems to embrace that who damaged fractured thing we love so much, but instead of their sound being about decay and destruction, it's some strange form of creation, and hybridization, melding blurred lightspeed metallic crunch with stuttery chaotic electronics, but again in keeping with that same vibe, their mission is not to make that interaction seamless, instead it's a glorious head spinning sonic trainwreck. There's definitely a method to the madness, and their mastery of both metal and electronics is something to behold, but as one of us casually mentioned when listening to the other Whourkr record recently, "why does all of our favorite music sound like the cd player is malfunctioning?". Which is as good a place to start as any with this, the duo's 2007 debut, Naat.
In our review of Concrete, we offered a brief thumbnail description of Naat, which we might as well repeat here:
"Like a malfunctioning metal record and a freaked out techno record, all scrambled up together, tangled up and spit out, a skittering, skipping, looped, grinding chunk of electronic metal weirdness. The vocals howl, but then get processed and looped and become something else altogether, the drums and guitars so gnarled and stretched and twisted up, the band exploding into flurries of rapidfire mathematical grind, way faster and more complex and convoluted than any human could possible play. A total headfuck. Like the fastest freakiest grind, made even faster and freakier, but with a little techno thrown in for good measure. Remember the Drum>MachineGun compilation, of insane drum machine driven grind? Whourkr makes that stuff sound so so tame in comparison."
And listening to this again now, we're reminded how fucking nuts this stuff is. It's definitely death metal, but some sort of alien death metal, where the churning riffs splinter into little shards of digital flutter, while the belching cookie monster vocals get stretched into weird gurgling drones, it's heavy and hypnotic, like some sort of mad scientist took his Cannibal Corpse records and Necrophagist records and removed the sound bit by bit, byte by byte, and then meticulously assembled this demented slab of digital death. Less insanely glitchy than Concrete, this is way more death metal, but still so completely and fantastically fucked up, that its transformed into a sort of death metal for outsider weirdo music electro metal nerds. If there are such things, well, besides us!
The apocalypse has come to mean 'the end of the world' but its original Greek definition is that of 'revelation,' albeit a really fucking heavy revelation of how the world is going to end. The differences between the pop-cultural definition and the biblical definition are somewhat semantic, but it's apt to mention in regards to Chelsea Wolfe's second record which situates the title in the context of the Greek alphabet. It's pretty clear that the revelations that Chelsea Wolfe spills across her brilliant doom-folk album don't aspire to the allegories and mystical visions pronounced by David Tibet, rather she seems to be clamoring about the conditions leading up to the end of the world. With demonic possession, toxic wastelands, and haunted sexuality being so prevalent in her ghastly world view, it's no wonder she's bellowing that the end is near.
Wolfe's first record - The Grime And The Glow - was a home-recorded affair, whose tape murk added to the choking-on-smog atmosphere of the dour songs. The sparse arrangements aggressively strummed on acoustic guitar shot all of the attention back on Wolfe's beguiling voice which takes cues from PJ Harvey, but way darker and witchier. The songs did liken themselves to the early apocalyptic folk aesthetics of Sol Invictus and Current 93; and that's still the case for Apokalypsis, although she has fleshed out her sound with a full band, capable of delivering minimalist Goth ballads, swamp-rock menace, and harrowing bursts of distortion to match the mood of her songs. Wolfe twists the fairytail beginning of "Tracks (Tall Bodies)" into gritty depressive dirges, reflective of the goth sound of her native LA some two decades ago (e.g. Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, etc.). She also reprises two songs from The Grime And The Glow, including the infernal barnburner "Demons" and the antebellum blues number "Moses" which retains its minor-key mope and slavehouse misery. The stalking-in-the snow pace of "Pale On Pale" lurches at a pace even slower than that of True Widow, with Wolfe's mournful voice lifting above the churning, blackened guitars. There's a grit and a severity to Chelsea Wolfe that makes her a very compelling figure in contemporary music, almost like a musical reincarnation of The Process Church in neo-goth form. Very highly recommended.
Originally this two song 7" came bundled for free with the vinyl copies we had of the first pressing of Wooden Shjips' latest full length, West. But that lp+7" combo was crazy limited, and of course disappeared in a flash, but NOW, Thrill Jockey has made that 7" finally available on its own, and as you might imagine, it's still crazy limited, so if you missed out the first time around, grab one now while you can. The A side is a non-album track called "Photograph" which features some seriously heavy guitar crunch, and sounds like it could easily have been included on the record proper, while the flipside features a Peaking Lights remix of "Looking Out" from the album (re-titled "Lights Out"), which spaces out the original a bit, makes it a bit dubby, and cranks the druggy Spacemen 3 vibe way up, and in the process manages to make it even more dreamy and psychedelic. In a full color sleeve, the same packaging as the first press...
It's hard to believe that it's been five whole years since Wooden Shjips effortlessly materialized into the psychedelic musical landscape. Between then and now they have become semi-hugely successful, almost right under our noses, and taken on the identity of sage-like masters of their psychedelic craft. Indeed, at the beginning, the Shjips appeared to be on the cusp of something new, not quite a "revival", but perhaps a much needed re-imagining of hazed psychedelic rock that sounded just as good in revved-up motorik excursions as it did in slow, confusional wanderings. Perhaps the one thing that bound it all together so perfectly was the band's patience and their ability to really bring out hypnotic grooves, starting with a perfect riff and just taking it all the way into the ever after. Each band member has a specific role within the group, and they know exactly what needs to be done for the song. Sure, a lot of bands will talk that game, but not many people are able to so expertly strip this music to its minimal core as the Shjips, and the formula has changed little over the years - a simple drum pound with no fills, a rumbling low end anchor of bass, wandering organ grooves, and a fuzzed out guitar that inevitably leaves the world behind to venture into clouds of acid-fried soloing. Sitting perfectly within the swirling instrumentation are the low crooned vocals that bring to mind everyone from Alan Vega to a sedate Lizard King to, hell, Elvis? The remarkable thing is how Wooden Shjips have managed to bring about so many comparisons while sounding only like Wooden Shjips.
Album #3 comes to us from the highly esteemed Thrill Jockey label, maybe the most ideal home imaginable for this band in 2011. Unlike the band's previous outings recorded in their practice space, West marks the first time Wooden Shjips have gone into an actual recording studio. How does it sound, you ask? Well, REALLY FUCKING GOOD to put it mildly. We loved the lower-fi murkiness of those other records but the clarity of the recording here brings out an expansiveness that wasn't previously there while also working itself into the record's themes of relocation and expansion to the American West. Ya know, like, San Francisco man. Freedom. Exploration. Rebirth. That kind of deal.
The record opens portentously with "Black Smoke Rise" and sets the tone for what is to come. It rides out with a cool midtempo biker riff while describing the crazy allure of the unknown. "Crossing" moves forward in a warm fuzz blanket with a tambourine clink keeping things nice and steady. Unlike what you might expect from the title, "Lazy Bones" is a hyped up jaunt with ominous little organ melodies adding to the confusion, before the slow burning "Home" brings things down a notch with an organ that has a bit of a Southern swamp vibe. "Flight" kicks in with a nice... uh, "boogie-rock" inspired riff that works really well against the devil may care rhythm and a super catchy organ line. This is probably the closest the band will ever get to making a song to strut down the street to, and it's a motherfucker. "Looking Out" is another uptempo romp with percolating organ chords and the tremeloed guitar shifting hazily in the speakers. Strange, sitar-like guitar notes that could have been beamed in from Sandy Bull, wherever he is, come and go and present a lovely array of musical notes that expertly do as they please. The closing number "Rising" brings things full circle by reversing "Black Smoke Rise" and stretching out the ambience with the rhythm provided by that awesome backwards swooping sound we all love.
Making this Record Of The Week is a no brainer. We've loved watching Wooden Shjips' journey unfold over the years, and they have yet to disappoint. They are a quintessential San Francisco band, and wherever they go, we're along for the ride.
While supplies last (which might not be long), the vinyl lp version of this comes with an exclusive limited edition bonus 7" single. Non-album track "Photograph" b/w a Peaking Lights remix of "Looking Out" from the album (re-titled "Lights Out"). In sleeve with full-color artwork. Definitely a collector's item, only available from a very few lucky stores (like us) and super limited. Sorry cd folks, no bonus with that format...
Finally, one of our all time favorite Yo La Tengo albums gets reissued on vinyl! Released in 1993, Painful represented a really important moment for and shift in YLT's sonic scope. While their early records were brimming with feedback and displayed a Sonic Youth like approach to rock, Painful fully introduced the more dreamy, blissed out and intoxicating side of their sound which they have continued to develop and master as the years have gone by.
Painful opens with the bittersweet "Big Day Coming", and gorgeously unfolds with some of the most beautiful and sad pop songs ever recorded, including "Nowhere Near" which still freezes us in our tracks and gives us goosebumps every time we hear it. While later albums like And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, and I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, might be more widely recognized as classic albums, Painful really was the blueprint for the sounds that would evolve making Yo La Tengo one of the best bands of our generation. An absolute must have!
