It's easy to tell something very witch housey is going on with these guys, present are all the usual signifiers, the band name is actually spelled with a triangle instead of the first 'A' in the band name, the song titles are a mix of lower case and capital letters, as well as all manner of symbols, but the proof as they say is in the creepy, electronic gloom pop ambience, and so it is, as the band unfurls a haunting expanse of swirling ominous ambient synthscapery, before the beats kick, an awesomely distorted and blown out dream-drag groove, a little bit skitter, the beats crumbling in clouds of buzz and crackle, the opener is super epic, almost a sort of cinematic theme type vibe, you can almost imagine some backlit figures walking in slow motion through the ruins of some old Victorian ballroom. And so it goes, we're gonna stop feeling like we need to defend witch house, cuz separated from the blog hyped hipster championed genre signifier, there's very little NOT to dig about this stuff, and this tape in particular. The second track offers up a sort of decayed Portishead, a skittery slowcore downtempo creep, the vocals an almost death metal cookie monster growl, but slowed way down so it sounds even more demonic, the in-the-red synth stabs, that sound more like a malfunctioning dubstep bass wobble only add to the woozy off kilter feel. There are of course creepy angelic (demonic?) female vox, gloomy and gothy and dreamy, with later tracks almost sounding like bastardized gloom pop versions of radio ballads. For everyone into Zola Jesus, LA Vampires, Circuit Des Yeux, Esben And The Witch, as well as the usual witch house culprits like Salem, Mellow Grave and Mater Suspiria Vision. But again, unlike those outfits, Aimon deliver something more darkly dreary and fuzzy, gloom-poppy and bestially balladic.
Of course as these things always are, EXTREMELY LIMITED, includes a download coupon as well!
We just reviewed the double disc reissue of Aelter I and II, a double cd reissue of two lps from this Wolvserpent / Pussygutt offshoot, the sound a sort of shoegazey dreamfolk blackdrone drift (as we described it in that review), so really we were expecting more of the same on the latest Aelter, his first for boutique outsider metal label Handmade Birds, but we were pretty surprised by what it actually ended up sounding like, both sides, part one and two of one album long song, dramatically different, and neither like anything we'd heard from Aelter before.
The A side was maybe the biggest surprise, as it's all synths, no drums, no guitars, just swirling dreamy synths, a sort of Tangerine Dream / Emeralds style drift, hushed and layered and new agey, dreamily droning, the layers softly pulsing, all hazy and washed out, minimal and mesmerizing, until the last minute or so, where things turn dark, and the sound gets low and distorted, sounding almost like throat singing, which is right where the B side takes up, those throat singing like drones a backdrop for some dirgey woozy metal, definitely the most metal we've heard Aelter get, all low slung bass and dreamy almost shoegazey vox, peppered with almost atonal sounding crescendos, tense and haunting and quite dramatic, but that metal blossoms into something entirely different for the second half of the track, a gorgeous sprawl of hazy gloom pop, fuzzy bass, and swirling synths, and dreamy female vox, the shoegaze element in full effect, a gorgeous, surprisingly pop final movement!
packaged in super swank purple and black covers, with a printed full color 12"x12" insert.
And be warned, we got VERY FEW of these, way less than we wanted, and we won't be getting any more, they're out of print already, so grab one quick if you can (apologies if they're gone by the time you order).
Alrakis are a little like a German Darkspace, the same sort of epic cosmic blackness, the same obsession with the cosmos, the stars and space and the galaxies around us, but instead of a blown out hypersonic blur, Alrakis conjure their spaced out blackness from something much more depressive and dismal, a mournful blackbuzz dirge that creeps and lumbers, the music melodic and melancholy, wreathed in a warm gauze of blurred buzz, the vocals an anguished wail, the drums a skeletal plod, buried in the mix, all epic and emotional, repetitive and cyclical, heaving and majestic, a loping sprawl of buzzing black mesmer, slipping dreamily from churning black trudge, to hazy celestial shimmer, all droned out and atmospheric, long stretches of contemplative hush, which gradually supernova into another burst of cosmic buzz, and the more we listen to this, the more the Darkspace comparison seems somewhat apt, if you assume that Alrakis does sound like Darkspace just at 16rpm. Which makes sense, the idea of these sounds floating weightless, a black buzz drifting against a glimmering starfield of distant flicker.
Ultimately, the cosmic/celestial focus is invoked by the music's lonely vibe, it conjures up the feeling of being lost in an inky black endless sky, of drifting alone, forever and ever, it's definitely a sad record, and based on the subject matter, we can only assume that it is the imaginary soundtrack for the final journey, whether a literal trip to the farthest reaches of the universe, or the more metaphoric great unknown, this is the perfect score, haunting and harrowing, a grim black depressive missive that is easily one of the coolest depressive black metal records we've heard, with much more going on that just buzz and plod and pound, the sounds are lush and layered, even folks not that into black metal could be lured in by some of these tracks, sounding a bit like a slightly blacker Nadja, the same sort of minimal dronedoomdirge, and many of the tracks are completely ambient, unfurling a sort of grim kosmiche shimmer that seems to drift endlessly into the endless comsos.
Way recommended for sure, one of our favorite new black metal discoveries. Comes in a super swank oversized A5 style digibook, adorned with, of course, images of space and stars...
Ah, Utech! Always bringing us something good. And dark. And difficult to describe. This is the first of a brand new batch of autumn Utech releases to see review here, and it's quite excellent indeed. 2nd album for this resonant experimental outfit centered on an artist from Italy (now based in Berlin).
Circling, shimmering drone pulsations start this disc off with a ominous build up of dark density, that sounds like it's somehow made not with conventional instruments, but with specialized scientific measurement equipment. Ten minutes in and you're thinking this is what this album's all about, and that wouldn't be a bad thing at all, mesmerization complete... but then the very next track introduces ghostly female vox, over quietly drifting, echo-effected bliss, and it becomes evident that Urania (named for after a venerable Italian science-fiction magazine) is deeper yet... the echoing rhythmics continue as the disc progresses, it's almost some sort of sci-fi dub-drone music, trance inducing, spooky and spaced-out. The sort of thing we KNOW a lot of you are going to love. Highly, highly recommended.
Packaged with the usual Utech care, in a slim black-on-black sleeve with fold out insert bearing inscrutable art by Reuben Sawyer.
With Bradford Cox seemingly concentrating on both equally these days, it's difficult to tell which is actually the 'side project', Deerhunter or Atlas Sound. Parallax is Cox's third solo outing as Atlas Sound and finds him continuing his quest for dream-pop glory. The two best tracks on his last album, Logos, were the songs where Panda Bear and Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab) essentially stole the show. This time out besides a guest spot by MGMT's Andrew Vanwyngarden, the focus is for sure on Cox's voice and spacey song constructions. It's an album that doesn't explode out of the speakers, but the songs slowly unfold on repeated listens. A grower, not a shower for sure.
NOTE for mailorder customers, if you're considering ordering this on vinyl: Unfortunately this week's shipment from Matador/4AD/XL arrived today with one corner of every single piece of vinyl in the box slightly bent, argh. So, don't order this now if you're super anal about such things. We'll get replacements next week. Folks buying this in person in the shop, of course, can see for themselves if they mind the bent corner or not. Sorry!
The first we heard from French black metal crew Aurvandil was on a recent split with the Weakling worshipping Dead As Dreams, we described them as sounding very Norwegian, very Burzumic, drum machined buzzy midtempo blackness, and we were definitely primed to hear more, which brings us to this, the latest from Aurvandil, released on the same label as the Murmuure raved about elsewhere on this list, Aurvandil is not nearly as twisted or bizarre, but still totally slays. After a lengthy folky almost Viking sounding intro, all lilting acoustic guitar and programmed drum machine, the band burst into a buzzing electrified version of the same song, an odd way to kick off your record, especially considering that the next track EXPLODES in a frenzy of impossibly blasting frantic blackness, the programmed drums so fast they almost become a drone, the guitars frenetically riffing along, totally trancelike, a series of swells, beyond the furious buzz and black blast, it's mesmerizing and hypnotic and relentless, even when the track shifts gears, it's to another strangely frenzied blast, but it's not that simple, the guitars are still buzzing madly, but beneath the guitar a melancholic synth drifts and shimmers, and then the drums and vokills come back in, and it's a weird, hard to describe black metal that is impossibly intense, but also washed out and dreamy, a totally strange combo, that could not work, but instead, transforms this into some sort of ambient blackness, that still buzzes and blasts, but without shattering the strange spellbinding energy the songs invoke. There are strings, and cellos, and mysterious voices, the arrangements seem simple, but they are definitely simple in unexpected ways. The record finishes off with another weirdly folky chunk of blasting blackness, but the three songs in between those folky bookends, nearly 30 minutes, are an incredible suite of psychedelic avant trancelike black metal dronemusic, that would probably be ranking first in our new black metal obsessions, if it weren't for that Murmuure, but hell, it's a seriously close second!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, these are the last of these we'll ever see...
Longtime readers of the aQ list and followers of Andee's tUMULt label are no doubt familiar with Pyha, whose Haunted House album still ranks as one of our favorite black metal records ever, made even more noteworthy by the fact it was created by a Korean teenager! It was a personal and intimate study (by a teenager) on loss and death, focusing on Korea's wars, the music bleak and blown out, weirdly atmospheric and hypnotic, any black metalheads out there who have yet to check it out, do yourself a favor. SO what the heck does that have to do with this new full length from Korean punk/grind duo Bamseom Pirates? Well, Mr. Pyha is all grown up, he's been in and out of the military (it's compulsory in Korea), he's engaged to be married, and he's still politically active, but his protests now come in the form of short sharp blasts of grinding punk rock. Granted, the Pyha connection might be a bit of a tenuous connection to convince metalheads to pick this up, and really, unless you're into punk rock and grindcore, odds are you're not gonna dig this. That said, there are plenty of metallic moments, and some of the grinding is wicked fierce, and as metal as anything else out there, but there's definitely a serious sense of humor running through the proceedings, and the more metallic grind numbers are outnumbered by the punk rock jams, so metalheads you have been warned, everyone else, this is pretty fucking ruling. Just bass and drums, the bass super distorted to the point that it basically sounds like a guitar, the vocals are yelped and howled and grunted and squealed, we're reminded of legendary power violence jokers Spazz as well as Japanese grinders Bathtub Shitter, all the lyrics in Korean, the booklet too, so much of the lyrical content, and any of the politics are definitely lost on non-Korean speakers, but if you're after some wild pounding punk and some seriously furious grind, with some twisted weirdness and a little bit of goofiness mixed in, this will definitely hit the spot. And if you're like us and CRAZY obsessed with Pyha to boot, well then even more reason to grab one.
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Latest release from this Australian soundscaper / dronologist, another collection of self described "weird-ass psychedelic drone/field recording/collage", and really, no matter how many ways of describing the oddly monikered Berber Ox, we have yet to come up with a more succinctly accurate description. But while that is a pretty accurate thumbnail descriptor, it doesn't really do justice to Berber Ox's dark and surreal dronescapes. Four lengthy tracks, the shortest, 7:41, the longest a whopping 28:07, the sourced field recordings are for the most part blurred into impressionistic smears, layered tones, lush drifts of muted electrical crunch fused to shimmery soft focus chordal whir, a deft balance of grit and gristle, thrum and drift, the opener begins with some strange grinding bits of low end, almost rhythmic, which are quickly stretched out and subsumed by a whirring flow of tangled tones and blurred ambience. There does seem to be some fragments of the original field recordings, bits of click and skitter, but those elements merely add texture to the tracks glacial forward momentum. The much longer second track, is another bit of breathless shimmer, all soft swells and softened edges, it's not until well into the track, where the vibe begins to feel mildly industrial, with the background whir and hiss gradually overtaking the more melodic hum in the foreground. Darkly dreamy and utterly meditative.
The flipside begins with another short one, the awesomely titled "Bear And Vortex", which unfurls an ultra minimal rumble, that sounds almost like the wind whooshing past a microphone (and could very well be just that), and doesn't really move much beyond that, a hushed murky murmur of a track, with other haunting incidental sounds creeping into the picture, the result much like the sound of exploring some old abandoned underground bunker, a low level thrum, distant reverb drenched barely there ghostlike echoes, all softly blurred into an ultra minimal expanse of hushed grey ambience.
Finally, the record finishes off with the nearly half hour long "Kong", which again continues Berber Ox's dark and delicate exploration of some otherworldly / subterranean sound work, another dark expanse of layered softnoise shimmer, and buried melodic fragments, the field recording are most noticeable here, the occasional clang, tolling bells, what could be animal sounds, everything wreathed in a foggy sonic haze, until about three quarters of the way through, when the fog seems to dissipate, leaving something much more overtly musical, melodies become more fully formed, the background noises, almost rhythmic, the tolling bells, woven into something lustrous and lovely.
Fans of all things dark and dreamy and droney will dig this, Berber Ox definitely deserves a spot on your shelf alongside Tim Hecker, Thomas Koner, Philip Jeck, Machinefabriek and the like, assuming of course you have a very strange way of alphabetizing your records...
Printed bright yellow cassettes, housed in super colorful J-cards, limited to just 111 copies.
By now Best Coast are practically a household name, at least around our households, as they've proven to be one of the most irresistible pop bands to emerge from the lo-fi garage pop scene over the last several years. Make You Mine was a really early 7" and has been out of print for ages. It's finally been repressed repressed, as a limited edition double 7" pressed on clear vinyl.
The songs here are Best Coast at their most raw and fuzzy, for sure. Melding their love of girl group glory and Beach Boys west coast pop at its most stoned and hazy. In fact it opens up with a cover of the Beach Boys' classic "In My Room." The three other songs kill as well, reminding us just how fuzzy and reverby and gloriously druggy and dreamy BC were just a couple years ago. Got a feeling these aren't going to stay in print too long, so best to act fast on this one.
This experimental supergroup, comprised of Tom Greenwood of Jackie O Motherfucker, the Opalia brothers from My Cat Is An Alien and frequent MCIAA collaborator, Ramona Ponzini, recorded these 4 untitled long-form improvisations live during a two month 2005 European tour. Sounding at times like early Ash Ra Tempel or Cosmic Jokers, the acid-y and druggily unhinged early krautrock influence is more apparent in this live setting than on previous studio-recorded outings from either camp, showcasing an immediate onstage chemistry that is refreshingly engaging!
Two new tracks clocking at right around twenty minutes, from one of our favorite 12-string guitar playing wonders, James Blackshaw. Perfect time of year too, for these meditative blissed out songs. So perfect for taking a much needed break and to step away from the madness of the holiday season that is just about upon us. Blackshaw has the ability to make music that not only seems to make the outside world fade away, but it's also so perfect for those intense moments when you are in the midst of soul searching and deep introspection and you need a soundtrack to help you make sense of it all.
This 12" feels like a really nice nod to his earlier more sprawling and solo guitar recordings, though there are some nice subtle touches of clarinet, violin, and flute throughout these recordings. Just like the first time we listened to his records like O True Believers and Celeste, we are once again so swept away and transported to a place of total transcendence by these two beautiful songs. Essential fall/winter listening.
In our review of the most recent single from these modern eighties retro revivalists, we proclaimed Blouse as possibly our favorite purveyors of what we've come to call the 'Captured Tracks' sound, which is a sort of contemporary take on eighties electro pop and new wave, and while there seem to be about a million bands mining the same sonic territory, Blouse do manage to meld that sense of seemingly misplaced nostalgia (the eighties? really?) to a sound that is darkly cold wavey and jangly gloom poppy, and one that comes replete with actual proper songs, choruses, hooks, often sounding like, barring the strangely murky home brewed production, they could have come straight off that cool mixtape you made as a teenage goth.
Where as the band had a tendency in the past to strip things way down, many of the tracks rhythmic and skeletal, even then the sound had a distinctly 4AD vibe, and borrowed liberally from the Cure, and goths turned eighties poppers like Simple Minds, but on this, their debut full length, the sound is surprisingly lush, opener "Firestarter" is warm and shimmery, lots of high end streaks and stereo panned synth swirls, wrapped around a fuzzy low slung bassline and dreamy reverby angelic vocals, not to mention all sorts of very eighties exotic effects. The second track "Time Travel" might be our favorite, and does definitely make a serious case for Blouse hanging on to their Captured Tracks crown, darker and more propulsive, an ominous mix of Carpenter / Goblin psychedelic space synth, with a more ethereal pop, add in some killer fuzz, thick distorted bassline and a mesmerizing machinelike groove, and suddenly the idea of time travel, and Blouse traveling back in time and ruling eighties MTV doesn't seem far fetched at all. And heck that's just the first two track, the rest of the record unfurls like some eighties goth pop synth wave primer, chiming minor key melodies, crunchy echoey guitars, lush whirling jangles, lots of buzzing synths, propulsive basslines, dreamy ethereal vox, loads of spacey effects, minimal analog electronics, and some seriously killer songs. We've yet to hear a more perfect mix of modern retro-futurism, and total eighties MTV electro pop, goth wave worship, and we're thinking we might not ever. Absolutely recommended.
When this latest Frkwys collaboration was first announced between New York psych rockers Blues Control and experimental new age composer, Laraaji (Edward Larry Gordon), we were curious as to what this would sound like. But ever since we got it in the store, it's fast becoming our favorite pairing in the series, which is no small feat, since we absolutely adored the Arp & Anthony Moore collaboration as well as the Juliana Barwick & Ikue Mori release. Blues Control has toned down their usual rollicking psych kraut chug, and instead create four long-form interconnecting pieces with tempered down cosmic guitar and electronic atmospheric manipulations, while Laraaji plays treated zither and African string instruments over them. Building from quiet oceanic ambiance to slowly evolving cosmically focused and tripped out deep spiritual meditations which feature choral and resonant vocal accompaniment provided by Laraaji. On the third song, "City of Love", a percussive momentum with a heavier guitar drone foundation briefly intensifies, while clouds of kora, kalimba and mouth harp vibrational tones bounce back and forth across the aural field to gently lilting psychedelic effect. For late night devotional listening for any fan of modern day psych and new age, this is simply stunning!!
The first Doug Blunt release, Gentle Persuasion, we made record of the week almost a year ago and people went totally nuts for it. And it's really not hard to see why. Blunt's mellow brand of lo-fi outsider funk is both catchy and rather odd. Sounding like a smoother, Caribbean-inflected Wesley Willis, made with simple keyboard loops, congas and Blunt's own acidy guitar solos. It also had a off-kilter timelessness to it, where we couldn't tell if it was recently recorded or made decades ago.
Doug Blunt came in the store the other day with this new (?) release, Big Top, an ep composed of three songs and three instrumental versions. Complete with cheap color-copied covers of a screen shot from the one video performance we have seen on Vimeo of him performing,"Gentle Persuasion" with an all female backing band (it's totally worth seeking out if you can find it!). While these are new songs, the backing tracks sound almost exactly the same as the tracks on Gentle Persuasion, but with stranger lyrics mostly about being under the stoned spell of sexy freak show women. But the songs are still catchy and crazy as ever, and we may like these new ones even better!
As always it's hard to tell what the real story with Doug Blunt is. Though a super nice guy, sometimes we get the sneaking suspicion he's pulling one over on us. Every time he drops off more cds, he always leaves with a slightly mocking chuckle, as if to say, "those crazy fools". Indeed!
"Archive FMP Edition" via Atavistic's Unheard Music Series of this classic Euro-free-jazz blow-out starring pianist Fred Van Hove, mad percussionist Han Bennink, and tenor sax terror Peter Brotzmann. The fourteen minute title track, a Brotzmann "composition", starts off quietly before erupting into mayhemic sax chatter, piano note-scatter, percussion clatter, and even some weird vocal patter. The rest of the album follows suit, the "free-action" of this soon-to-be legendary improv power trio taking no prisoners. All three players could -- and do -- fill solo albums with energetic, interesting art, so the combined youthful musical fervor of the three of 'em is something to behold, on this, their debut trio recording (and only the second FMP label release ever). The tracks on "Balls" are fierce yet tightly wound, making strong statements, no messing around, even as they explore a wide range of sounds, and even silences.
The four tracks from the original, long-out-of-print 1970 LP (remastered from the original tapes, packaged in a careful facsimile of the original LP design) are joined on this cd reissue by two untitled, previously unissued tracks cut by the trio in the same era, an exciting bonus indeed.
Nice!! One of our favorite Can, nay krautrock, nay any-kind-of albums ever (that is if you don't ask Andee, who for some insane reason doesn't like Can at all), given a fancy 40th Anniversary reissue! What's so fancy about it you ask? Well, first the packaging, it's in a nice gatefold miniature lp style sleeve, with the original art of the German lp edition that came out back in 1971 (yay, 1971!). That's nestled inside a cardboard wallet-like folder which bears the cover from Tago Mago's UK release in 1972, a movie still of singer Damo and drummer Jaki on stage, in action, dramatically lit. For some reason they made big deal about this alternate cover being used on this reissue, it's cool to have it but we're happy the original art is also present and accounted for on that gatefold sleeve. Also inside the folder, a thick booklet with vintage photos and plenty o' detailed liner notes, including some by the guy from Primal Scream.
More importantly though, what makes this so special is that it includes a whole extra disc, a previously unreleased, 48 minute live performance from 1972! They do "Mushroom" and "Halleluwah" from Tago Mago, as well as "Spoon" from that year's equally amazing Ege Bamyasi, that song here stretched out to almost a half hour in length! Any true Can fan will want this just for the live disc, even though you probably already have one or more remastered versions of Tago Mago proper. But yeah, with the live set and the nice packaging, this is definitely worth getting, it's an upgrade all right.
For those of you who aren't big Can fans already, this would be a fine place to begin your love affair with this amazing band (c'mon, Andee!). Here's what we wrote about Tago Mago when it was last reissued:
1971's Tago Mago double album was Can's third full-length release, and their first with expatriate Japanese singer Damo Suzuki (whom they discovered busking on the street outside a club). It's truly a sprawling masterpiece of krautrock. Witness the weird noise/drone stuff on the 17 minute "Aumgn", or the totally hypnotic rhythmic psych groove of the equally side-long "Halleluwah". Again, we probably don't have to say much more, you already have this, right? But if Can's new to you, we'd recommend this (as well as Monster Movie and Ege Bamyasi and Soundtracks) as among their best efforts. PS: If you like Circle and you don't have this record, get it!!
Seems like we're not the only ones who have become obsessed with anonymous minimal mutant techno producer Chasing Voices, whose first two 12"s we could barely keep in stock. And there was indeed some confusion with those, as they both were packaged in cool silkscreened sleeves, and both bore very little in the way of any useful information, and of course the fact that both tracks (every Chasing Voices 12" seems to be a one sided affair) sounded like two parts of the same epic minimal techno masterpiece. Well, it seems that maybe that masterpiece is more epic than we imagined, as here comes part three, the latest one sided 12" from Chasing Voices, and like the two that came before, Acid Bathory and Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit, Another Walk is another dark brew of dubstep and techno, minimal acid skitter, dark brooding ambience, tense and intense, moody and subtly malevolent, darkly propulsive, less about the dancefloor, and more like some soundtrack for a mysterious futuristic chase scene through some crumbling city, beneath a bruised black sky, the sound reflecting the machine cause chaos, the throbbing rhythm encircled in a relentlessly swirling cloud of glitches and squelches, minor key melodies and woozy textures, a seriously and gorgeously grim slab of futuristic techno that is just as good as the other two 12"s, and most likely just as limited...
A gorgeous new lp recording from the venerable minimalist composer Rhys Chatham, who in the recent past in New York and Paris has been staging, and revisiting, his multiple guitar orchestras (sometimes numbering in the hundreds!), performing his long form pieces of large repetitive clusters of sound. However, on Reve Parisian, Chatham returns to solo trumpet after a nearly twenty year hiatus from the instrument. Unlike his martial horn compositions of the eighties and nineties, the four pieces here are delicately layered cloud-like compositions of horn tones that billow and pulsate in rich harmonic textures and atmospheres. The first three tracks on side 1 are improvisational pieces for solo trumpet that build tonal free jazz passages into airy fields of circular momentum. The side long piece on side two, "Un Chanson Si Vieille" however, was composed for multiple trumpets resulting in a plaintive and moving piece where the lush warm wind tones weave a gossamer like sound environment that eventually no longer seems like horns at all. It reminds us somewhat of Harold Budd's instrumental collaboration with members of The Cocteau Twins, where tendril like vibrational layers of treated piano and guitar combined in a vast misty breath-like condensation of sound, yet Chatham creates these tones solely through the use of horns to wonderfully stunning effect. Originally created as a sonic component to a visual art show by collaborator Jacob Kassey, the lp is packaged in a stunning gatefold with an arced die-cut cover, and is limited to 1000 copies. Recommended!
We raved about Cloaks' 2009 release Versus Grain, a caustic collection of crushing beats and sculpted noise, with sounds sourced from recordings of breaking glass and clanging metal, and live shows reported to rival the craziest rock bands in terms of blood, sweat and destruction of gear. It was in fact a record that we ended up listening to so much and for so long, we realized in retrospect that we really should have made it a Record Of The Week. So here we are 2 years later, and Cloaks return, but VERSIONS Grain is not a new record, instead, it's their own twisted idea of a remix record, with Cloaks contributing a couple new tracks, but with the bulk of the record made up of reinterpretations of jams from Versus Grain, by an eclectic crew of "remixers", including Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, Pale Sketcher, etc.) and former Record Of The Week-ers Legion Of Two, as well as Dead Fader, Ancient Methods, Devilman, Volt Music and Oyaarss, who all manage to retain the originals' beat heavy brutality and almost avant dancefloor destroying noise, while adding whole new dimensions, that make this easily as worthwhile as the original.
The record opens with Cloaks own reworking of Versus Grain's closer, and like the original, it's a lurching sprawl of super distorted crunch, weird industrial robotic whirs and buzz, lots of gristly static and blurred muted white noise, like the sound of some alien factory set to some dubbed out crumbling slowed down DHR beat. Which leads directly into Legion Of Two's version of "Against" which ends up sounding like it could have been plucked right off LO2's own Record Of The Week, with live drumming, wild dubbed out snares careening all over the place, thick undulating almost dubsteppy basslines, lots of super blown out synths, cascading decaying electronics, way groovier than the original, but totally spaced out and psychedelic at the same time, another heady chunk of industrial machine funk that kills. Broadrick takes on "Rust On Metal", and actually cleans it up a little, the original was claustrophobic, the sounds bleak and blackened, and while there is still a bit of a grim vibe, the beats are more skeletal, the melodies more synthy and swirly, and then about 2 minutes in, it explodes into something way more metal, churning industrial beats and chugging distorted riffing, not to mention howled dub drenched vox, total Godflesh territory for sure, peppered with bouts of skitter and droned out mesmer and finally finishing off in a blaze of white hot buzz.
Ancient Methods also dial back the crunch and robotic churn on their version of "R.F.I.D.", wreathing everything in a cloud of gristly static, strange processed vox, woozy low end rumbles, and then some pulsing dubby minimal techno beats, lots of clipped samples, truncated melodies, stuttery and staggery, weirdly hypnotic and off kilter, that over the course of its 9+ minutes is barraged by twisted sci-fi electronics, warm warped distorted guitar melodies, lush swirls of fuzzed out synth, more strange voices, that beat slipping from muted and minimal to speaker destroying block rocking crunch. "Sixmenace One" finds Cloaks imagining a first part to accompany the second that showed up on Versus Grain, and it gets a serious working over, even more damaged and noisy, super filthy and crusty and distorted, weirdly creepy and soundtracky, while ultimately just a gnarled ever shifting tangle of crumbling pulsing synths and swirling swaths of electronic hiss and some seriously brutal almost-beat heavy buzz. Oyaarss follows up with their version of "Sixmenace Two", which is drastically different, adding a weird ethereal almost shoegazey sheen to the proceedings, a super thick, slithery big beat fat bass dubstep, with some of the filthiest most distorted bass wobble ever, but melded to some dreamlike melodic shimmer not to mention some drifty harplike melody, for dubstep headz, this might be THEE jam here, we can't help but imagine this as a 12", and the sort of rib cage rattling dancefloor destroying damaged that would result. "Dead Fader" keep the spirit of the original "#00148", which opened Versus Grain, if anything, they just stretch it out, brighten it up a bit, strip away some of the murk, but add their own extra ingredients, which includes some twisted beats, some strange wailing synth melodies, not to mention all manner of synth squiggles, and grinding glitch. Devilman's "Against" again reinvents the original as something much more abstract, at least in the beginning, and buzzing, hissing, fuzzed out industrial creep, until the beat proper lurches into motion, and the track becomes a weirdly mesmerizing noise-dub groove, that lumbers and swaggers menacingly, until the last minute or so, where it seems to transform into some strange sort of post Bollywood whatthefuck, with all sorts of weird 'rewinds', chaotic drum programming, and cloying melodies, which go surprisingly well with the extremely dense and brutal buzz.
Finally, Volt Music finish things off with another version of "R.F.I.D.", which starts out all murky and staccato, before the song stumbles into motion, and unwinds like some super slow-motion gabber track, sped up this would be a pounding acid anthem, but here it's a maniacally mesmerizing rhythmic churn, laced with little bits of jungle-y filigree, not to mention all sorts of distorted and decaying FX.
Awesome stuff. And the sort of electronic music that should appeal to heavy music folks as well, dark, distorted, loud as fuck and so good.
We love Rob Crow solo records. Of course we're huge fans of his main gig as one half of Pinback, and will always worship at the altar of late great pop combo Heavy Vegetable, but its on Crow's solo records that he's really able to indulge in the wide range of his idiosyncratic sonic nature. While you can for sure hear the core of what has made Pinback's sound so recognizable and popular, Crow also unleashes tracks here that definitely remind us of his numerous other projects like Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, Optiganally Yours, etc. We're always reminded that one of the things that makes Rob Crow's music so awesome and stand above so many other similar sounding indie artists, is that he has never lost his punk roots. Not that his music sounds "punk", but there is still something so economical and DIY about how his songs are crafted and the spirit they are delivered in. Whether he's making the perfect bummer pop hit, or throwing the record for a loop with a short blast of hardcore glory ("Build"), we're always 100 percent trusting of his vision and individuality.
We read reviews sometimes that compare him to Elliott Smith or other singer songwriters, but we really think he has carved out a world of his own. No matter what kind of record he makes, you can tell it's a Rob Crow record right away. Being able to create a signature sound in this day and age is so fucking rare. He Think's He's People is an awesome collection of new songs that we can't stop listening to, not many folks have the ability to create pop songs that get under our skin and burrow into our ears and STAY there, the way Crow does. One of these days someone needs to release a Rob Crow box set, as he really is responsible for hundreds of incredible songs!
Pretty much everyone at aQ LOVES Crystal Stilts, and their last full length In Love With Oblivion had to have been one of thee most played records in the shop, getting spun at least once a day, sometimes more, which definitely says a lot. So we were super psyched to discover there was a new ep out, and while we love this new one just as much, it somehow hasn't made us listen to the last one any less, now we just listen to both like crazy. And really what more can we say about these guys that we haven't already, their sound dark and garagey, fuzzy and jangly, organ driven and dreamily dour, we can't help mention all the Aussie bands we're so reminded of, Celibate Rifles, Scientists, Radio Birdman, Hoodoo Gurus, so much so that some of us were actually sorta surprised that these guys are from Brooklyn.
Very much like In Love With Oblivion's opener "Sycamore Tree", which has to be our jam of last year, Radiant Doors opens with another killer, "Dark Eyes", which immediately became a new fave, with its handclap rhythm, thick buzzing organ, reverbed vocals, the whole track hazy and softly psychedelic, weirdly noisy, but the noisiness more dreamy than anything, very droney and washed out and hypnotic, we literally listened to this track 10 times before we could bring ourselves to move on. And as always, we weren't disappointed, the title track is much more dreamy and jangly, more traditionally poppy, the vocals deep and dramatic, the melodies lilting, a pretty perfect pop song for sure, laced with cool little bits of sci-fi synth, but for the most part, stripped down and catchy as heck. The rest of the EP is more of the same, a heady mix of dreamy jangly pop and whirring organ driven droniness, finally finishing up with the droned out and dreamily druggy "Frost Inside the Asylums", that almost sounds like a lo-fi version of the Editors or something, the sort of dramatic gloom pop balladry that could catapult them into the 'big time'.
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!
Wow! Given the acrimonious break-up of Disco Inferno after their aesthetically fraught album Technicolour in 1996, we're a little shocked, yet totally stoked to see anything from Disco Inferno back in print, let along the rare EPs reissued here. This London trio formed in 1989, releasing three albums and seven eps that amounted to a brilliant mish-mash of sample-based technology, post-punk intensity, and a profoundly British mope that hangs throughout their catalogue. The first recorded forays by Disco Inferno found the group wearing their influences proudly on sonic sleeves - Joy Division, Wire, Durutti Column, and The Smiths - with the band twisting those influences into a narcotized torpour through an elliptical rhythm section that grounded the suitably delay-riddled, arppegiations and repititions from guitarist / vocalist Ian Crause. The band quickly took to MIDI technology, often sampling Crause's own guitar and alchemically rendering those into percolating satellites of effervsecent sound that orbit the song with peculiar trajectories and angles. Over time, the sampling became more and more of the focus in the band, appropriating sounds outside of their studio and fracturing all of those sounds into a more and more bizarrely splintered electronica that mutated into something grotesquely baroque, all the while hanging onto the core principles of the pop-art melody. This emphasis on sampling was an obsession for Crause after reading what David Stubbs and Simon Reynolds were championing in NME, as those two fixated on a technological thread that ran through My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, and The Young Gods. Crause was single-minded in his pursuit of figuring out how technology could be seemlessly integrated into the context of a British art-rock band, in frantic anticipation of what anybody might be doing elsewhere in the world. As such, Disco Inferno and Robert Hampson's post-Loop project Main were at the vangarde of ostensible pop bands disintegrating themselves before their audiences' eyes and ears. Where Hampson did achive escape velocity from rock's heavy gravitational pull with little to show for it after Motion Pool, Disco Inferno's internal disputes over where that technology needed to go caused so much strife as to destroy the band, with none of the members doing anything memorable since.
The 5 EPs featured here showcase that transition from an artful post-punk project conjuring the ghost of Martin Hannett into a complicated electronica ensemble that predicted how Christian Fennesz would deconstruct the spirit of The Beach Boys, but without the benefit of granulating laptop tricknology. We mentioned above that the band released seven EPs, the first two of which were compiled with their first album on the anthology entitled In Debt. The first EP in this anthology is "Summer's Last Sound" from 1992 and features two tracks that sparkle with harsichord-like patterns from the sampedelica, pulled back down to the ground by the thickly strummed bass from Paul Willmot, not to mention Crause's wistful, unpretentious vocal delivery of his deeply sad lyrics. "A Rock To Cling To" from 1993 finds the band in more of a traditional rock mode with guitars, bass, and drums, whose repetitive groove is offset by soaring bursts of sampled vocals that stretch like vapor trails glowing in moonlight. The B-side to that EP, "The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea", introduces a sample that would become common place in the ever-abstracting repetoire of Disco Inferno, that of shattering glass whose tinkling fragments of sound lock into an elegant Terry Riley patterning of minimalist rhythms. "The Last Dance" (also from 1993) features two versions of the title track, where Ian Crause has penned a damn good song that could have fit neatly in with the Johnny Marr songbook of The Smiths, but with jittery electronics and melancholy appropriations of schoolyard song puncturing Crause's crisp guitar lines. The B-side of "D.I. Go Pop" (the name of their second record, which didn't feature this track, oddly enough) is a manic affair of tape-revving guitar noise, threatening to unravel and unhinge as a spastic dervish. "Scattered Showers" is the other B-side, a beautifully poetic abstraction of British melancholy through sampled motorcycle engines forming the patterned tension beneath Crause's rain-drenched guitar strum. This EP and the next, "Second Language" from 1994, stand as the best material in Disco Inferno's short-circuited career. The title track of the latter single finds the band recycling Crause's sparkling Vini Reilly guitar into enchanting, hypnotic echoes out of which Crause concludes the track with a triumphant Brit-rock riff obviously alluding to the comtemporary bombast of Oasis. "At The End Of The Line" follows the aforementioned "Scattered Showers" as Disco Inferno's penchant for beautiful miserablism cast through refracted guitar lines into shoegaze bliss. The final single "It's A Kids World" finds the band at odds with itself, creating a jubilant kaleidoscope out of the drum crash from Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" with Umbrellas of Cherbourg-esque flute trills of baroque pop guiding this atypically uptempo number. The B-side "A Night On The Tiles" is a Felini-esque collage of vaudevillian records, screaming girls, and smashed glass coming across more like a diabolical Nurse With Wound track than anything else found in their catalogue. Whew!
If you've just so much as glanced in the direction of Stereolab, Notwist, Fennesz, My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, and/or Animal Collective, you really owe it to yourself to check out Disco Inferno. They really are that good! We can only hope that D.I. Go Pop and In Debt (both of which are long out of print) will see the light of day once again, given the inevitible interest that will come from this anthology from one of the pioneers of avant-rock.
Yet ANOTHER self titled record from the Fell Voices / Ash Borer black metal axis, which makes it even more difficult to keep track of which is what, but this one IS subtitled 2008 demo, and as that would rightfully lead you to believe this is FV's 2008 demo, previously available only on cassette, on vinyl for the first time, and the packaging is swank and deluxe, but more on that in a second.
This is FV's very first recording ever, and as such, demonstrates two things, one, a much more lo-fi sound quality, and two, an already fully formed sound, that the band would hone on subsequent records, the sound quality and recording fidelity improving as they went, that said, even with a more raw sound, these two tracks are incredible, the band already masters of the sidelong black metal epic, the A side beginning with a slow build, all chaotic drums over clan guitars, weird and woozy, the sound building and building, eventually coalescing into something more buzzy and blast, but even then the guitars remain super low in the mix, and SOUND clean still, which gives the sound a cool strange vibe, add in some bellowed demonic vox, some stretches of doomed out dirgery, all deep droning vox and tribal drumming, and then a crazy chaotic mathrock/noiserock outro. Lo-fi for sure, but still so epic and heavy and intense.
The flipside is much more black metal sounding, but with some serious D-best sounding stretches, a little punky, but still plenty black and blasting, with cool droned out guitars, and a super stunning interlude that's all blurred drones and muted feedback, which leads directly into some spaced out psychedelic drift, before the band lurches back into the fray.
PRESSED ON 180 GRAM VINYL!! Housed in thick sleeves, with a printed insert, LIMITED TO 367 COPIES!!
Freaky early '70s psych rock from Japan here folks, as you may know already on account of how we highlighted the reissue of this band's second album on our last list. This one, with a truly hard-to-beat title, was Flied [sic] Egg's debut, released originally in 1972, on Vertigo -- with Flied Egg one of the few, if not only, Japanese acts to appear on the roster of that legendary UK-based label known for proto-metal, jazz-prog and other "hairy funk" delights. This album dishes such delights all over the place, ranging from the Blue Cheer meets Uriah Heep heaviness of "Rolling Down The Broadway" to the weird choral interlude of "15 Seconds Of Schizophrenic Sabbath" to the classical prog flourishes of "Oke-Kus" (sounding like a warped version of ELP) to the sheer hippie psych-pop lunacy of the title track. And more! All in all, this is quite as crazy as its Dali-esque cover painting indicates. Definitely an essential for our Japanese '70s psych section, and anyone who loves them some acid rock guitar!
Blaze Foley is one of country music's great unsung could have beens, his life marked by misery and misfortune, and a streak of bad luck a mile wide, that even a friendship with the late great Townes Van Zandt could counter. And while he's beloved now amongst in-the-know country fans, that appreciation came too late, Foley having died at age 40 while defending a neighbor in a drunken feud that escalated until guns were drawn. A dramatic end to a dramatic life for sure, one marred by drug addiction and homelessness, but against all odds, Foley managed to record some of the most beautiful music you'll ever hear, music that definitely sits comfortably alongside that of his friend Van Zandt, and hearing this stuff now, it's not surprising to learn that his songs have been covered by folks like Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, John Prine and Lyle Lovett, and it's easy to see why, this collection gathers up some impossibly beautiful and heartbreaking songs of woe, of love and loss, of hopelessness and of salvation.
Apparently, his one proper record was recorded and ready to go, when the producer of the record was arrested on drug charges, the master tapes confiscated by the FBI, the only existing copies of the record eventually bartered for beer and cab fare by a despondent Foley. The tracks here, the first time on vinyl for many (maybe all) of these songs, have been gathered from various cd reissues, many of the recordings live, most of them just Foley and a guitar, his playing fluid and lovely, his voice rough and warm, the music lush and melancholy, sometimes there's harmonica, or sweetly sorrowful strings, but regardless, it's about the songs, haunting, and personal, our favorite might have to be "Election Day", for the song as much as the sound, the recording lo-fi and murky, Foley's voice especially deep and sonorous, the guitar hushed and minor key, but intricate and melodic, but all the tracks here are amazing, and it's heartbreaking to know so few people have actually heard this stuff, and that someone so talented, was relegated to the fringes of country music history. Fans of Townes Van Zandt while dig this big time, as will anyone into dark, moody country. Wouldn't have been surprised to see this on Australian country reissue label Omni, so anyone who's been digging all the great stuff they've been releasing, for sure check this out too.
Back in January of 2010, we discovered a mysterious group of noisemakers called Net Shaker, their record having shown up in the mail one day, a dark and twisted minimal assemblage of gnarled detuned guitars, murky rhythms, moaning melodies, glitched out electronics, the various elements constantly shifting as if someone was messing with the tape speed, but all woven into a blurred but of hypnotic krautdrone, space drift whatthefuck, so much so, that we had a lot of trouble describing it, and figuring out any bands to compare them too. Since then, we've begun to imagine them as beholden to the mighty Starfuckers, and we're sure fans of that band would no doubt enjoy Net Shaker, but somehow, Net Shaker seemed even more twisted and confusional. Needless to say, we played that disc to death, and sold a ton, so we were pretty excited when Net Shaker mainman dropped us a line to let us know he had a new solo record, which is this right here, cryptically titled Operator, and wouldn't you know it, the solo apple doesn't fall far from the Net Shaker tree. In fact, we wouldn't have batted an eye had Gibson told us this was the new Net Shaker. Just check out the opener, "Low Mote House", a looped warbly bassline, wreathed in swaths of random sound, of swirled shimmer, of industrial whir, the sounds again seeming to melt and speed up and slow down, we describe a lot of things as woozy, but this really IS woozy, the melodic component in constant motion, whirling and swirling, while that relentless bass anchors all the strange and ever shifting proceedings, and like Net Shaker, it seems Gibson on his own is not as concerned with songsmithery as he is at creating truly strange sonic events, which do seem to contain songlike elements, but are much more textural, more about mood and ambience, with strange swells of warbly melodies, bizarre tangles of noise, what sounds like multiple tape experiments all piled on top of each other. But also like Net Shaker, this is far from noise for noise' sake, with most of the tracks coalescing into something more rhythmic or hypnotic, often reminding us of Strotter Inst and his prepared turntables, the same sort of robotic anti-groove, but often blossoming into something impossibly lovely. Check out "Lake Scene" which wreaths it's pulsing rhythm in hazy swirls of smeared melody and dreamlike shimmer, or "Lit Trees" which sounds like a soundtrack for some filmic nightmare, all ominous and sinister but again, strangely lovely. Many of the tracks are super brief, more like little experiments or interludes, but they are deftly woven into the fabric of the whole record, often serving more as a sonic segue, joining two disparate movements, and even sometimes blurring the boundaries between songs and sounds. There's some heaviness hidden throughout, like the horn driven dirge of "Everyone In Here", there's also the careening lurching rhythmic lumber of "Way I Walk there Sick" and the super scary blackened creepscape that is "Your Voice On Tape", which definitely uses shifting tape speed to create haunting melodies, wound up in disembodied guitar twang, and vocal driven drones, it's all pretty fantastic.
But a tough one to describe for sure, it definitely seems like the sort of stuff that would appeal to fans of all strains of looped mesmer, Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, the aforementioned Strotter Inst, but the rhythmic element make this equally appealing for folks into dark minimal hypnorock, Gibson's sound like a murky, minimal, slo-mo analog to Circle's repetitive rock mantras, but somehow WAY weirder.
We've gotten to the point with every review of a new Gnaw Their Tongues record, where we're essentially at a loss for words, if you have a look on the aQ site at past reviews, you'll see these sprawling ultra wordy descriptions that read like some sort of sinister poetry, because really, that's the only way to describe the twisted sound world of cinematic black doom outfit Gnaw Their Tongues, the work of a single man called Mories, who as we've established in the past, must be one twisted fellow. Cuz no one that wasn't utterly demented and deranged could create sounds like this. We have the genre in iTunes for this as 'Industrial Symphonic Cinematic Black Doom', which is as succinct a descriptor as we could come up with. And is fairly accurate. Odds are if you're a fan, you can't get enough, and you're gonna want this one too, after all these sorts of sick sonics engender obsessiveness, trust us, we're totally under Mories' thrall as well, and greet every new slab of twisted genius filth, like some bowl of rotting porridge slipped between the bars of our cell. We beg for the darkness, we imbibe of the blackness, we devour the sounds we are given.
But for those new to this bleak world of chaotic sonic mystery and abject cinematic noise, have a gander at the song titles, "Human Skin For The Messenger's Robe", "Urine-Soaked Neophytes", "Fallen Deities Bathing In Gall", "Bonedust On Dead Genitals", "The Storming Heavens As A Father To All Broken Bodies", which should give you at least a rough idea of the spirit of GTT, now imagine those sentiments rendered in sound, and you have Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus, which in English translates as "with blood and whip, we worship the dark", which again, should leave no doubt as to what lies beyond the blackened gates, a world of churning black metal offal, of demonic symphonies, the sound of Gnaw Their Tongues is precisely what we would imagine Satan's symphony must sound like, epic and majestic, but utterly bleak and blackened, the sound swirling and blurred, erupting into thick gouts of black buzz, but just as often collapsing into something more akin to the score for a bloodletting. The sound does occasionally let up, but it's usually only to build tension, offer dynamics, or unveil the sound of some poor wretch retching, or the cries of people as their skins are flayed, Gnaw Their Tongues is a torture chamber in sound, but so exquisitely rendered, we often find ourselves wondering why Mories isn't scoring every twisted horror film in Hollywood, probably because these sounds are too evocative, and paint too much of a distinct picture, that the need for actual images is practically null.
The thing with GTT records, is that often, there's too much going on, and the can become a head spinning wall of sound, a swirling roiling cauldron of black noise, but more often the balance is just right, and Mories' creation is perfectly balanced, equal parts buzzing blackness, abject doom, and haunting symphonic mesmer, a melding of horror score, outsider abstract doom metal and epic classical music, and Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus seems to be maybe the most perfect specimen yet, spending less time grinding and howling and blasting and buzzing, and more time conjuring up some seriously soul stirring ambience, and some blackly symphonic sonic horror.
As always, utterly intense, ridiculously epic, and has us wondering what kind of demented mind can conjure up such glorious filth, and then actually creates it. Grim genius!
Such a gorgeous second solo effort from Danny Paul Grody (The Drift, Believer, Moholy-Nagy, Tarentel). Adding beautiful elements of harmonium, synthesizer, bows, and bells to his blissful guitar playing, Grody has made the perfect autumnal album. These instrumental tracks take you to a place where your mind and body start to gently sway, and the stress, sadness, and loss of being alive are both acknowledged while also allowing you to drift into a dreamier state of mind, recalling some of our favorite records by folks like William Eaton, James Blackshaw, Bruce Langhorne, Jozef Van Wissem, and Steffen Basho-Junghans.
While many other solo records by great guitar players can often feel as a show off session for how well trained they are, In Search Of Light is an album more invested in creating an actual mood and atmosphere then hitting you over the head with tricky playing or trying to sound exactly like John Fahey. In fact it's the patience and subtly of Grody's playing that always attracts us to his work and keeps us listening for the reward of repeated listens. So perfect for fall, this record makes us want to put on our favorite autumn sweater as we cuddle up near a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and read a book of poems or just daydream the afternoon away. Highly recommended! Comes with a digital download so you can also dream the day away while in transit or at your computer...
In our review of the last Hanging Garden record, we described it as being the prettiest black metal record we've ever heard, and this latest one is more of the same. Ostensibly a depressive black metal combo (featuring aQ pal Morbid from Happy Days, another awesome depressive black metal outfit), their music is more like a gloomy melancholic pop, it's really just the vokills that cast it as black metal, delivered in a crazed falsetto shriek, which definitely adds a strange tension, and a degree of blackness, but strip the vocals away, and you'd be left with what is essentially some super melodic, gloom pop, all dirgey tempos, and fuzzy guitars, dreamy jangle and mournfully melancholic lead guitars, and of course there are plenty of samples too, intimate moments captured from various films, the music perfectly suited to the sad scenarios and heartbreak presented in those samples, the vocals anguished and dramatic, but so over the top they almost sound operatic, reminding us a bit of the more Ethel Merman-y vox in Urfaust.
But when we say pop, we mean serious pop, the songs are urgent and intense, with the guitar melodies evoking such emotion, hauntingly and miserably catchy, if the vocalist was singing in a deep dramatic baritone, it wouldn't be hard to imagine this as some sort of cold wave relic, albeit with buzzing guitars. And it's those vocals that will probably dissuade most dabblers, without them we'd be hyping this to everyone into M83 and other like minded eighties sad pop shoegazers, and heck maybe we still will, but for the black metallers out there that like their black metal melodic, and dangerously pretty, think Lifelover and Urfaust and Crooked Necks and Hypothermia but with a touch of Katatonia, and those crazed over the top vocals, then this will definitely do it for you. Needless to say, we love it, vocals and all, and we dream of a day when some modern Breakfast Club style teen drama will include songs like this, the perfect soundtrack for the breakup scene, when the couples are walking separately through the rain, thinking about what could have been...
Both Mark McGuire and John "Blue Randa" Elliott maintain quite a public profile outside their work in the kosmische synth-guitar trio Emeralds, but the third member of that outift, Steve Hauschildt, has remained relatively quiet. We had a super limited cd-r of his solo work on Gneiss Things which came and went in a just a few days, but beyond that, nothing outside Emeralds. Tragedy & Geometry is Hauschildt's first full album beyond a small and unavailable selection of cassettes, and it's found a suitable home on Kranky. If McGuire and Elliott have embarked on parallel trajectories for effervescent, impressionist ambience through guitar and synth respectively, Hauschildt's own vision is that of the machinist - ratcheting the electronic percolations that he brings to Emeralds within very precise grids and architectural blocks for his electronics to operate. Oneohtrix Point Never is also obsessed with the mathematical poetics of electronic music; but where OPN always skews his retrogarde flares through lost time, Russian mistranslation or sci-fi replication, Hauschildt adopts a tightly controlled rigor in his engineered electronica. Nowhere is that more true than on "Batteries May Drain", with its clockwork drum machine ticking at autobahn speeds amidst rasping motorik electronics and comet dusted synth melodies, in line with Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. Elsewhere, hints of Emeralds' signature bittersweet atmospheres seep through the pulsing arpeggiations and synthesizer swoosh, aligned on tracks such as the "Overnight Venusian" which alludes to Aphex Twin's heralded Selected Ambient Works Vol. II. Quite fine!
Latest short and sharp blast of snotty, punky power pop from these former Record Of The Week-ers, the A side is a doozy indeed, woozy and warped, total classic seventies style power pop, but cracked and fractured, the guitars melting and detuning, the vocals that unmistakably whiney croon, the band seemingly on the verge of total collapse, the song veering druggily from propulsive classic rock jangle to lysergic warble and back again, but rife with crazy hooks - albeit they're not always so obvious, but then that's sort of the magic of Home Blitz. The flipside is more of a Stones-y / Stooges-y / Velvets-y swaggery groove, loping and mesmerizing, with a cool weird second half, where the track gets wild and noisy, everything wreathed in a cloud of noise / static / hiss, and like the A side, buried classic rock hooks make this stick in your hand no matter how warped and damaged it sounds. As always, so good.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
We first heard Pat Maher's Indignant Senility project via last year's Plays Wagner, where he created haunting and murky atmospheric compositions sourced from a thrift store copy of a Wagner opera, which we loved. Maher, who also creates music under the guises of DJ Yo-Yo Dieting and Diamond Catalog, returns with his second Indignant Senility release and his source material is wider, but even more mysterious. Industrial ambiance is still the primary mode of his music making, but the sounds take on a more tweaked concrete mode of vintage avant garde composition, sometimes invoking the metallic shard like sounds of Iannis Xenakis or Harry Bertoia. Towards the end of the third track, "No One", the listener can make out the far off plaintive strands of a string quartet seeping through the foggy murk, adding a funeral tension and gloom to the proceedings. Beautifully bleak!
It has been a while since we've heard from the hermetic M.S. Waldron and his ignoble project irr. app. (ext.), and now he's released two cassettes through his Errata In Excelsis imprint, continuing his slippery alchemy of surreal collage, spiraling drone, and cracked intention.
If that title looks a little familiar (as well as the cover), it is in fact an homage to the 1987 split album between AMM's Eddie Prevost and Organum, entitled Flayed / Crux which sported a bizarre mandala of Victorian-era clip art as cover art. But it's not just the title and the cover that Waldron is riffing upon, he's created two stellar 'covers' of those two lengthy tracks. The originals found Organum's David Jackman accompanying Prevost for "Flayed" with a signature acoustic drone from Jackman's bowed cymbal underlying a reverb-saturated, free-falling excursion around Prevost's drum kit. The irr. app. (ext.) reinvention in "Flux" is nearly flawless in keeping up with Prevost's polydactyl splutter and tempestuously rolling drum fills, while building an equally impressive simulacrum of Jackman's bowed cymbal thrumm of surging electrified friction.
As good as both Prevost and Waldron's tracks are, the best work is reserved for the flipside. The original of "Crux" featured an all-star Organum line-up with Jackman surrounded by Andrew Chalk, Dinah Jane Rowe, and Steven Stapleton who's credited performing on "chair." Waldron does list the objects that went into the formation of his reinterpretation entitled "Crayfish" including the enigmatic use of a "chair" in the assembling of this rebirthing drone-construction. Was the chair particularly squeaky? Did Stapleton drag it around to create a muffled texture somewhere in the mix? Did he just sit down and get high? Those same questions can be asked of Waldron, in his use of the piece of furniture in this beautiful swarm of acoustic drones from sustained cymbal drones dappled with shortwave radio detunings and a ritualistic flute that hangs sadly above all the droning surfaces. Waldron's version rings true with the eerie, yet beautiful atmospheric construction that Organum mustered during the height of their career, with the notable differences found in Waldron's use of squishy textures and squeaks that dot the heavy-droning swarm. That said, both the original and this cover should be lauded alongside those magnificient pieces of holy minimalism by Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young, and Charlemange Palestine. Yeah, it is that good! As you know, tapes like this are usually limited, so don't wait around on this one!
It has been a while since we've heard from the hermetic M.S. Waldron and his ignoble project irr. app. (ext.), and now he's released two cassettes through his Errata In Excelsis imprint, continuing his slippery alchemy of surreal collage, spiraling drone, and cracked intention.
The 11-Year Backwards Sleepwalk is something of a detour for irr. app. (ext.), but then again what isn't a detour for irr. app. (ext.). Here, Waldron is basing his excursions upon the step sequencing of a virtual EMS VCS3, making a foray into the retro-progressive electronica of Oneohtrix Point Never and Zombi, with of course, Waldron fucking about with all of the sounds much more than anybody else in that current revivalist camp. As such, irr. app. (ext.)'s audio madness really does have a lot more in common with the classic Goblin sound whose prog-rock tricks lent to plenty of sideways glances and jarring angularity in contrast to the motoring, spooky vibes from the Goblin / John Carpenter axis of grizzly synth lines. Tense streams of intertwining electronic pulsations lead through the interconnected tracks, which ebb and flow with typical collage elements for irr. app. (ext.) -- slashing mechanoise drones, aqueous oozing field recordings, splintered No Wave guitar freakouts, distended appropriated vocal exhortations, cackles, and bellowings -- including a strange snippet of a conversation between Waldron and Steven Stapleton about a lost fruit basket. All of these mutations and disquieting moments bend those streaming electronic percolations into a surrealist fun-house exploration of the archetypal '70s sci-fi / horror score sound design. It's a weird and wild ride from irr. app. (ext.), that's for damn sure! These are stupidly limited, too; so don't wait around on this one!
Hot damn! No sophomore slump here, Justice return with a fucking cool follow up to their awesome debut from four years ago. Audio, Video, Disco finds the group pushing in a much proggier / poppier direction, in fact everytime we listen to this it sounds more and more like an amazing combination of Daft Punk and Rush, in the best possible way. A little less four on the floor and in your face than the debut, but with much better actual songwriting. In fact there are parts of this record that rival the ecstatic pop of folks we love like Cut Copy and Hot Chip, but instead of pulling from '80s pop bands for inspiration we get the feeling Justice has been listening to as much Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, and Queen as they have dance bangers since they released their debut. It serves them so well, as their sound now seems to have a more expansive reach, without losing the immediacy and intensity that made us first fall in love with them. There's even an awesome reference to the great CSNY song "Ohio" on here. But don't worry the record still packs a dynamite dance floor punch!
Super exciting to see a group who got tons of attention and popularity, not play it safe and make the same record twice but instead push themselves and come out with something different yet still totally rewarding.
Ever been to the Alps? Well, even if you haven't, you can imagine that in a landscape of towering mountain peaks, tiny human beings might have to find some unusual ways to get around. Travel along the vertical, as well as horizontal, axis, is the necessary norm. The ground may be crazy steep, or far far below.
Field recordist Ernst Karel, whose Heard Laboratories cd documenting "the sound of science" we've previously recommended, visited Switzerland and produced this disc which will help you to imagine that lofty Alpine landscape, in a unique way, by presenting the sounds of the various modes of, indeed, Swiss mountain transport that he encountered - various suspended gondolas, an aerial tramway, a "transverse-seat chairlift" (the last one in Switzerland, now out of service, we're told), a helicopter, and a couple funicular cable cars (inclined trains, which are wonderful things, as depicted on the back cover of this release).
Of course, as a sonic experience only, this "documentation" is as (deliberately?) mysterious as it is enlightening. The mechanical clanking, the whirring, the wind, the murmurs of passengers... these ambient sounds sometimes quietly soothing, sometimes noisy, certainly curious. Makes for a nice companion to Chris Watson's El Tren Fantasma highlighted last list, for those into journeys through sound (of journeys) - though this one is raw audio verite, not a "fictionalized" construct like Watson's disc.
A few color photos are provided on the packaging, along with location, date, etc., specifics of the individual tracks (details for, ahem, trainspotters). Nicely done, from the same great field recordings label that last brought us the Water Beetles Of Pollardstown Fen (more of those soon on the way, btw!).
All of you who loved Light In The Attic's career-spanning collection of music by Korean psych guitar maestro Shin Joong Hyun, that we recently made Record Of The Week, should be happy about this. It's an brand new official reissue, the first in a series, of Shin Joong Hyun related albums. As you perhaps recall, soothing psych-pop-folk singer Kim Jung Mi, backed by Shin Joong Hyun and his group The Men, appeared on that Beautiful Rivers And Mountains anthology with a song called "The Sun", which we said reminded us of Galaxie 500!
This 1973 full-length from Kim Jung Mi, as masterminded by Shin Joong Hyun, is also quite special. "The Sun" is just but one of the ten dreamily melodic tracks found here, including a four minute version of the song "Beautiful Rivers And Mountains" itself, a signature Shin Joong Hyun tune. Other titles include "Wind", "Blow Spring Breeze", "It's Raining", and "Lonely Heart", and although the lyrics are all in Korean, we get the idea that love and nature form much of the subject matter here (actually, the thick cd booklet provides English translations of the lyrics, along with EXTENSIVE, ultra-laudatory liner notes and lots of full-color photos of the sexy young chanteuse). In those liner notes, Shin Joong Hyun is quoted as having said: "There is no person who can sing Psychedelic music as well as Kim Joong Mi".
Kim Jung Mi's lovely voice will go straight to your heart, and the emotive music accompanying her is moodily lush, majestically melancholic... it's not really about hard-edged fuzz guitars, though they surface occasionally, as more often do propulsive psych "beat" grooves, but for the most part this album seems to hover on a higher, more heavenly pop plane of psychedelia than that suggests... The groovier stuff, though, reminds us of Serge Gainsbourg's Historie De Melody Nelson at times (on "Your Dream" especially). And it's no stretch that the liner notes call Kim Jung Mi the "Francoise Hardy of Korea". Recommended to any fan of the Forge Your Own Chains comp, in addition to those who already heard her on that Shin Joong Hyun collection. Gorgeous!
Comes nicely packaged in a miniature lp-style sleeve, with that aforementioned info/photo packed booklet. There's a vinyl version forthcoming as well, fyi.
We'd never reviewed a proper record from mysterious ambient industrial folk duo Kinit Her, the only thing we'd heard before now was a collaboration with Clay Ruby's Burial Hex project, but as with most collabs it was tough to tell which sounds were contributed by which outfit... which brings us to Gratitudes, the brand new full length from Kinit Her, and right off the bat it defies easy categorization / description, beginning with a SUNNO))) like churn, all detuned chordal drift, before that sludgey riffage is joined by strange guttural monklike chanting, and what was sounding like some droney doominess is suddenly transformed into some sort of pagan ritualism. But it doesn't stop there, soon, some even strange vocals swoop in, inhuman wailing, distorted and haunting, the result a sort of No Neck Blues Band pagan folk jam, until about six minutes in when some black metal guitar buzz surfaces, fast picking, epic and majestic, as if the band might explode into a blurry blast any second, but instead, that guitar fades out leaving a folky strum, accompanied by what sounds like funereal trumpet. then some swoonsome strings, the sound becoming darkly cinematic, before devolving into some sort of high end dronescape laced with weird bird call like trills, and gurgly demonic vokills. Weird, but pretty great. And it continues on in that fashion, the whole records like some sonic document of arcane rituals, a field recording made of some strange sect, found in the darkest depths of the forest, observed surreptitiously, as they unfurl these sonic rites, the thrum of what sounds like throat singing, strange swooping effects, guttural voices, urgently strummed guitars, deep dramatic crooned vocals, the folkier bits definitely heavy on the acid folk, but then out of nowhere, some crazy squiggle distorted theremin like psychedelia will play the melody of acoustic guitar and martial snare, before slipping right back into what sounds like some mysterious medieval court music, very Renaissance Faire, but much more sinister and caustic, and the record progresses similarly, slipping from dark droney creep, the tripped out psychedelic doom folk, to jaunty medieval folk music, often with those elements bleeding into one another, culminating in the final track, a bookend of the opener, darkly liturgical, all layered drones and choral voices, mysterious and malevolent.
Most definitely for fans of the darker strains of acid folk, a la Comus, Death In June, Cromagnon, Hexvessel and other sonically similar musical cults...
Brooklyn's La Otracina, whom we first knew as a "space rock" band, sure have gotten a bit more "metal" lately; their most recent full length for Holy Mountain, Reality Has Got To Die, incorporated a whole lotta retro-thrash headbanging amidst their usual psychedelic stoner groove and progged out excess.
On this brand new 7" single, with no room for 20 minute space rock jams anyway, they definitely set their controls for the heart of the mosh pit... Raucous rockin' A-side "Madness Of Mind" careens along like a garagey NWOBHM throwback, motorin' most enjoyably as their singing drummer belts (and bashes) it out. They chug it up even more on the B-side, "Twisted Branches", more heads down metallized thump there, it's almost like they've been listening to old Anthrax! Though both trax have their psych side to 'em too, wild guitar soloing in that mode for sure.
For fans of Danava, Saviours, the latest Pharaoh Overlord, and local boys Glitter Wizard...
First release on the new label run by one of the La Otracina guys, named after a Budgie Song, natch. On see-thru green vinyl.
For a while it seemed like West Coast one man black metal horde Leviathan was no more. More and more disillusioned with the modern black metal scene, an ongoing dispute with his label, a seemingly constant battle with personal demons (which no doubt inspired the sounds of Leviathan), 2008's Massive Conspiracy Against All Life was seemingly to be Leviathan's swan song, and it was a pretty epic finish to an already epic career. Then it seemed the whole world was talking about Leviathan again, or specifically the man behind Leviathan, Wrest, aka Jef Whitehead, but the focus wasn't musical, it was personal, as Whitehead was involved in a high profile series of disturbing allegations, which for now remain unresolved, legally and otherwise, and definitely had many fans writing Leviathan off completely. And as if testament to the fact that demons drive the music of Leviathan, this recent experience, and its ongoing ramifications, seemingly inspired Leviathan to start back up, and to record again, creating art from pain, and ultimately making one of the meanest, darkest, heaviest Leviathan records yet, no doubt reflecting the anger and confusion that has consumed Whithead's life over this last year. One need look no further than the album title, or the track titles, it's definitely not subtle, but then black metal never really was. And if singing about Satan was considered grim and kvlt, we can only imagine what folks will make of True Traitor, True Whore, where as the subject matter is indeed grim, the spirit hateful and brutal, TTTW is a musical venting like no one has seen before. Sure the histories of rock music, and metal music are littered with angry missives to ex-lovers, to enemies, hell, even to friends, but rarely has that anger been so fully rendered as pure black sound.
And while much of what we loved about Leviathan remains, we had mentioned in a previous review that while we might have trouble telling much black metal apart, Leviathan was, and seemingly always will be immediately recognizable, but, a lot has changed, in the last three years, that disillusionment with black metal has resulted in much of TTTW moving away from the black buzz, and the production too, handled by Sanford Parker, who also had a hand in Nachtmystium's transformation into something much more psychedelic than black, but the opening track, "True Whorror", at least for the first two minutes, are definitely as grim and black and buzzy as ever, Whitehead's demonic croak in full effect, the guitars insectoid and wildly frenzied, plenty of gnarled atonal melody, and some wild chaotic drumming, but then at about two minutes, we get our first hint of what is to come, a lilting surprisingly melodic bridge, with some cool almost sitar sounding guitars, some strange industrial sounds in the background, a weird creepy sample, and then it's back to the buzz and blast, but the sound flits constantly from grim to melodic, from frantic and twisted, to woozy and almost psychedelic.
"Her Circle Is The Noose" is almost like nineties post rock, blackened, with weird reverbed vox, plenty of clean layered guitars, loping rhythm, the main riff, more of a haunting arpeggiated melody, the Slint vibe is huge, it's not until about 3 minutes in, that the song launches into a blurry blast, but the guitars spitting out wild upper register skree, only to slip right back into that blackened post rock lope. "Brought Up To This Bottom" is a bit more black, but it's also even more tripped out, with some strange sonar like pings, a super dynamic stop/start arrangement, the sound definitely much more lush and psychedelic than past releases, the recording epic and massive, with some of the sounds so in-the-red they seem to be crumbling from the speakers, the drums sounding better than ever, definitely the most live, reminding us at times of Don Caballero's Damon Che. "Contrary Pulse", is all echoey and reverby and strangely murky, a washed out droney chunk of hypnorock, that occasionally splinters into something more black and buzzy, but even then, the sound is much less about buzz and blast, and when the song is creeping and droning, the vibe is weirdly industrial and seriously sinister.
A couple old tracks from the early demos (and later compiled on the tUMULt double disc Verrater) get redone here, the first is "Shed This Skin", which works surprisingly well in this new context, and benefits from the modern overhaul / reinterpretation, Whitehead's cool sinister croon, and with an added lushness that was only hinted at on the original, not to mention more clean guitars, and a way more psychedelic vibe. "Every Orifice Yawning Her Price", is another one that bucks black metal convention, minus Whitehead's inhuman howl, the music is weirdly post rocky, and almost sea shanty-ish, with some cool bits of warm psychedelic clean guitar swirl, as well as a cool tripped out, droney second half, where the drums continue to pound away, beneath a wild tangle of spidery melody and garbled vox, as well as thick chordal swells that swirl and pulse. Which leads right into the way more metal "Harlot Rises [Mesmerized Again]", that adds some Kiss-like flange to the drums to great effect, and after a pounding almost doomy into, switches gear, and becomes almost poppy, still blackened and post rocky, but definitely with a pop vibe. And this track might be the weirdest of all, splintering partway through into a sort of spaced out breakdown, that shifts from twisted dramatic synth/drum workouts to woozy psych trip-out, and a seriously dreamy droney outro.
Finally, the record finishes off with another old demo track, "Blood Red And True", which was definitely one of our favorite classic Leviathan jams, and like "Shed This Skin", ends up sounding amazing in its new form, the guitars impossibly thick and chunky, the vocals sick as ever, a churning chugging blackened melodic doom, the heavy parts epic and majestic, the tripped out parts, way more psychedelic, layered and lysergic, the sound impossibly lush and evocative, about as close to soaring epic Godspeed style post rock as Leviathan has ever gotten, a super dramatic finish for sure.
Yet again, Whitehead continues to push the limits of black metal with Leviathan, even moreso now that he seems to have abandoned any bonds to the scene that claimed him, and while this is definitely the most bitter and angry Leviathan record yet, it's also probably the strangest, and most progressive, and our favorite in a while, managing to keep the true core of Leviathan's sound while moving well past the tired tropes of the grim and the black, and here's hoping that this is not the last we hear from Leviathan.
Packaged in a super striking digipak, with reflective ink printing, and cyrillic style type.
Really, where would aQ be without Satan? He sure has helped us promote and sell thousands of metal records. But this classic old school country gospel record with its iconic cover, has done so much more to promote the reality of Satan than any metal record we can think of. Long an example of notable novelty or "bad" record covers, it may come as a surprise to those who have never actually heard it, that it's quite a beautiful commingling of gorgeous vintage country harmonies, and sad tragic southern gothic narratives. Like our favorite Porter Wagoner songs, these are tales of life's darker turns and the unending battle between forces of good and evil. Yet, The Brothers here don't take a judgmental tone, but rather, one of caution and gentle honey-toned persuasion towards salvation.
The Louvin brothers have long been respected artists among contemporary folk and Americana artists, so Light in The Attic has added a second disc of influential Louvin Brothers songs recorded between 1955 and 1962 hand-picked by modern day artists like Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, M. Ward, The Black Angels, Beck, Kris Kristofferson, Devendra Banhart, Will Oldham, and others, to showcase the fact the Louvin Brothers singing and songwriting talents far surpassed the novelty of their most famous album cover. Includes a 40 page booklet, new notes and info for a free download to a 2010 Charlie Louvin interview. Hails!
No one is scary and sexy like David Lynch. Of course, this IS David Lynch, so the phrase "scary and sexy" includes images of some weird dude just standing in the middle of the sidewalk with his dog a la Blue Velvet, more than a bit of violence, and possibly rabbits. Music and sound production have always played large roles in Lynch's movies, from the squirrel-cheeked cabaret number in Eraserhead to Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive, and for much of that span, Angelo Badalamenti has been the primary musical composer and performer. As much as Badalamenti's beautiful piano work is missed, Crazy Clown Time definitely holds its own among the ranks of Lynch's oeuvre: accessible on the surface, but pretty fucking weird when you dig into it a bit.
Lynch follows two basic themes for much of the record: reverb-laden, stark guitar-driven pieces similar in vein to his work in Thought Gang (on the Twin Peaks soundtrack) or the Mullholland Drive soundtrack, and lusher, sometimes faster electronic tracks. The production on the entire record is phenomenal. The lows rumble and the white noise really crackles and everything has this great washiness that doesn't so much blur clarity as it does add depth. "Pinky's Dream", featuring Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, opens the record. Vague imagery of potential car crashes and open mouths is conveyed through Karen O's sexy delivery. The rest of the tracks feature David Lynch himself doing the vocals, sometimes more effectively than others. He doesn't have the greatest voice, but he plays this limitation off well through various effects and by not taking himself too seriously as a singer.
Numerous parallels can be drawn between Crazy Clown Time and Crispin Glover's record The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution, the Solution = Let It Be, and not just because they are both records done by Hollywood types of the weirder variety. They both feature clowns (Lynch's title track and Glover's single Clowny Clown Clown). Their vocal deliveries are sometimes uncannily similar, although at times Lynch also sounds a bit like Alan Bishop performing as Alvarius B at other times remarkably like Sparklehorse, both music AND vocals. Both Lynch and Glover like to have a lot of sex and like to write songs about it. Both records also incorporate spoken word. The longest track on Crazy Clown Time ("Strange and Unproductive Thinking", running at seven and a half minutes) is basically a lecture about transcendental meditation given by David Lynch-as-a-computer. At first maybe a bit jarring, the song is actually totally hypnotic in its stream-of-consciousness. Where Glover is overt in his self-deprecation, however, Lynch's humor is more complex and subtle, and overall, Crazy Clown Time commands more respect from its listener.
This record in no way comes off as a vanity project. It is a well-conceived, well-executed piece of art. FYI, regarding the vinyl version: download card? Yes!
There has been no shortage of bands using The Cure as a major point of inspiration over the last several years. While most of those bands take from the more obvious, goth and gloom side of The Cure, what makes Minks stand way above that crowded field is how they inject a warm breeze into that sound capturing the romantic side of early '80s dark pop and in the process creating what really is some of the most irresistible pop of the last few years.
The A side is another immediately catchy and rewarding track, the kind you put on mixtapes for months to come. The B side shows that Minks are capable of expanding their reach beyond their most obvious influences as this is a track that sounds nothing like The Cure, but instead some awesome version of The Chills covering Big Star. Wow!
Final pressing!! It's taken a long while to get enough of these in stock to list, as they've flown out the door since we started stocking it back in June, and then our distributors kept being sold out of it. Makes a lot of sense that folks have been freaking out over this, as the sounds on Science Of The Sea are some of the most blissed out sounds we've ever heard.
Originally recorded in 1982 (there is debate over that, we will get to that later) by an oceanographer in Germany while living on a houseboat. The sounds on the album undoubtedly talk to the sounds and feeling of the sea. You not only feel like your floating but often that you are underwater yourself. With soft waves glowing in their ripple, as such warm shimmering sounds come gliding out of the grooves of this record. Imagine the right kind of new age bliss injected into the most pastoral & ethereal side of kosmiche glory and you begin to get a picture of what kind of beautiful sounds are found on this album.
While some doubt has been risen as to whether this really is a reissue of some obscure private press from 1982, or in fact the work of a modern artists, perhaps even Brad Rose, the man behind Digitalis. But who knows, and in the end who really cares, as its the music that matters, and the music on this album is beyond gorgeous!
The latest release on the Substantia Innominata label, an offshoot of Drone Records label run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri and Troum, comes from uber prolific aQ faves, doomdrift duo Nadja, whose contribution is a sprawling 40 minute single track, split into two movements and two sides, the first half, beginning with barely there skeletal guitars, hushed vox, a creepy ethereal drift, a sort of doomic slowcore, abstract and dark, the programmed drums come in, but the track continues to creep, and crawl, more melody drifting in, the sound very reminiscent of Codeine, but even slower and lethargic, quite gorgeous and haunting. It's not until the flipside that the doom drops, and instead of being crushing or heavy, it's gauzey and washed out, very My Bloody Valentine, but WAY murkier, the drums remain skeletal, the vocals still hushed, just everything is now wrapped in a heaving halo of effulgent buzz, shot through with soaring melancholic melodies, epic and majestic, doom for sure, but soft shoegazey dreamdoom, and the doom begins to fade about 7 or 8 minutes in, before winding back down to the same slowcore crawl that started things off, growing ever more hushed and soft focus, until the last few minutes, a blurred layered outro of muted backwards guitars, and looped layered melodies, all washed out and whispery, but even near the end laced with haunting, slightly ominous low end melodies, before finally fading out completely. As always, gorgeous and minimal, haunting and heavy.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on thick metallic gold vinyl, and housed in a super swank full color jacket with some seriously stunning artwork.
This legendary grunge classic and big time aQ fave now available as a NON deluxe, way more affordable vinyl lp.
Really, what needs to be said about Nirvana's Bleach? Nothing probably. But also everything. Most of the folks here probably rank Bleach as their favorite Nirvana record, and some of us might even include Bleach in our best of all time list as well (c'mon, we know you keep one too, even if it's just in your head). And listening to this again today, it's shocking out great it sounds, not at all dated, better than 90% of the music coming out today, and it cost like $600 to record. EVERY song here is a goddamn classic, equal parts punk rock, pop, sludge, grunge, everything perfect, the vocals raspy and raw, the drumming killer, the guitar parts weird and wonderful, thick and heavy and grimy and so utterly catchy. Half the bands around today wouldn't even exist if it weren't for this record, hell, the musical landscape would be WAY different if it weren't for Nirvana, sure we grew up listening to Bleach, but we can only imagine discovering this record today, it would blow your fucking mind. How could a band on their first time out create a record that would basically reinvent rock for a new generation. Odds are most folks probably have this, and some of you are probably big ol' Nirvana geeks like us and will need to buy it again, for the improved sound, the killer packaging, the bonus live show tacked on the end, but if for some crazy reason you've yet to hear this, drop everything, don't buy another record until you take this one home and immerse yourself in its utter rock genius. Listen to the sound samples, and either be reminded how good this record is, or discover your new favorite band and let your life be changed, the way ours were when we first heard this 20 years ago.
At last!! It's been a while since we last caught up with entirely UN-orthodox Spanish dooooooooooom mongers Orthodox. Yeah, doom with so many o's that we're surprised they had any left for the 3 in their name. But also doom that takes a lot of strange twists and turns into the furthest far out zones of the genre.
This band's first two outstanding albums, Gran Poder and Amanecer En Puerta Oscura, were issued stateside by Southern Lord back in 2007. Now, six years later, we have the Spanish release of the their fourth opus, Baal. (Their third album, 2009's Sentencia was MIA at aQ, but maybe we'll be able to get some now that we tracked down an import supplier for this new one.) Billed as a return to their heavy doom Gran Poder roots, after the psychedelic, almost jazz-like experimentation of the last couple, this IS hellishly heavy, though still quite avant-garde, as well.
Lead off instrumental track "Alto Padre", despite its deep distorted low-end, is definitely more psych than doom, in fact... skittering percussive pitter-patter and chiming guitars conjure a hazy, mellow mood. It's a woozy ritual that could easily appeal to Six Organs Of Admittance fans, for instance. But then the band brings the doom hammer down, big time, on the next song, "Taurus", quite a surprise for some of us here who didn't know what we were listening to... Crushing, crashing chords and peals of feedback begin the jagged death march that continues over Baal's remaining four tracks. You don't listen to this for conventional "songishness", nor really even for riffs (though there are RIFFS), more for the totality of the experience of Orthodox's tectonic rumble and psychedelic sickness... It's a combo of lumbering sludge bulldozing, twisted gnarled leads, and alien, underwatery atmospheres. And vocals - with a weird, wavering effect on 'em, very much like OM meets YOB, intoning grim and desperate chant. With those vocals, one starts to think about the band inhaling from a balloon filled with, not helium, but some other, psychotropic gas... actually maybe not sucking on the balloon, but being sucked INTO it, the entire band inhabiting some impossible, drug-filled inner space. Which also sounds like it could be deep under the earth. Soon you'll be trapped there too, possessed by the churning metallic attacks, spacious drones, and proggy freakouts found throughout the demonic Baal...
The grande finale, 14 minute "Abrase Le Tierra" sums it up, explosions of distortion detonating over drum clatter and organ drone, then the guitarist goes offffff and it's a doomed out Earthless... before a wild, heavily effected finish. Imagine a mix of Yob, Gallhammer, Earth, and even Comets On Fire, here!
If the well-used terms psychedelic and heavy, which have been cited umpteen thousand times on this list alone, have any relevance to your listening habits, especially at their extremes, then we suggest you get this Orthodox album (and The Wounded Kings also this list, and the Elder reviewed last time, too, for that matter, if you haven't already), you'll be happy you did!
Full length number three from Kentucky one man black metal horde Panopticon, aka Austin Lunn, hot on the heels of his split with Wheels Within Wheels, which displayed a much different side of Panopticon's sound, one that was all hazy and washed out and super melodic, a sound we imagine was tailored to WWW, the two bands sounding eerily similar on that split, and while some of that washed out loveliness remains, the sound on Social Disservices is more of a return to the sound of his past full lengths, long tracks, epic and progged out, tons of parts, grim buzzing blackness woven into psychedelic drifts, loping stretches of post rock splintering into black buzz chaos, and Panopticon is definitely a band with a message, we've joked in past reviews that he was the first (and only) anarcho / vegan / pagan black metal band, but judging from the album title, and the samples, which consist of crying babies, sobbing children, etc, the message here is definitely a critique of children's treatment by the system, and in the extensive liner notes, much is written about Lunn's first hand experiences with kids slipping through the cracks while working at a shelter. Pretty intense stuff, and that intensity is definitely reflected in the music, tense and emotional, dramatic and epic, the four songs woven into a distinct narrative, "Resident", "Client", "Subject" and "Patient", each song a constantly shifting narrative in sound, slipping effortlessly from frenzied black blast, to droned out drift, the drumming as insane and chaotic as ever, the melodies mournful and melancholic, the sound thick and lush and layered, with what sounds like strings swooping in occasionally, adding extra gravitas to the proceedings. "Client" might be our favorite of the bunch, after an extended sample of crying children, eventually underpinned by some ominous distorted drones, the song explodes into some super intense, and darkly melodic black buzz, shot through with all sorts of extra guitar lines, keening and melancholic, the whole vibe, so emotional, and darkly miserable, it's rare that a black metal track can evoke such emotion, but the whole song just exudes a sort of sorrowful vibe, that infuses the song with such power, and the various guitar lines and leads, are super catchy, unfurling even more sonic melancholia. The song eventually twists and shifts, more guitars layered and interwoven, the structure growing more jagged, more complex and intricate, finally fragmenting into some serious chug and churn, before the soaring dramatic final movement. Awesome stuff. And we're only two songs in.
The 9+ minute "Subject" is a whole other sonic story, a lurching distortion drenched doom, that quickly transforms into all clean guitar and echoey vox, before transforming again into some blackened post rock, super melodic, almost indie rock sounding if it weren't for the distorted guitars, sick vokills and black buzz, but otherwise, totally melodic and hooky and POPPY, the weird thing is it totally suits him, reminding us of an even poppier Lifelover. And finally, the 20 minute closer "Patient", which sounds appropriately dreary and depressive, a lumbering mid-tempo trudge, all melancholy melodies and sorrowful ambience, but at 20 minutes, you know there's gonna be parts like crazy, and Lunn does not disappoint, flitting from post rock, to dirgey blackened doom, to spaced out shimmer, to churning black blasts, to string laden melancholia, to epic soaring majesty, and finally to hushed psychedelic skitter, ending with two minutes of just the sound of night, crickets, wind, hard to say if it's meant to be a happy ending or not, but it's definitely a cool way to end a darkly powerful and sonically ambitious epic like Social Disservices.
It's "NWOFHM" in overdrive overload this week, with not one but two new albums from key exemplars of that Circle side project "scene" up there in Finland. The new vinyl-only offering from Steel Mammoth called Radiation Funeral, you'll find reviewed elsewhere this list, and then there's this, Out Of Darkness, the new cd from Pharaoh Overlord. With fists in the air (and tongues possibly not in cheek?) these two releases have really upped the ante regarding the METAL part of the NWOFHM equation.
Quick recap for those out of the loop: Finnish space prog neo-Kraut band (and massive AQ faves) Circle like to dabble in the metal realms, on their own albums and also by means of various side projects, enough of which exist to populate a self-proclaimed, quasi-parodic New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal movement, NWOFHM for short. These bands usually use metal "signifiers" for their own twisted purposes, making music that's as much experimental and pop and prog as it is metal, but done up in leather and spikes basically for fun.
Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord was originally more of a stoner rock take on Circle's motorik mesmerism, dark and psychedelic and heavy. But not "metal". Then they did the album entitled #4, which was NWOFHM almost to the point of being "actual" metal (though still totally repetitive and hypnotic a la Circle of course). But #4's follow up, their previous disc to this, Siluurikaudella, was, while we liked it quite a bit, a definite departure, more of a freakout/improv thing, definitely not remotely metal (or NWOFHM).
So for anyone a bit confused by Siluurikaudella, you'll be happy to hear that Out Of Darkness returns PO to headbanging territory, and then some!! Definitely a metal album, and a rockin' one. Well, it starts off with a lovely acoustic guitar intro, "Eyes Of The Pharaoh", but starts rockin' about 43 seconds later, when the title track erupts, total classic metal riffage with Danzig meets Hetfield vocals courtesy of the singer from US stoner metal band Night Horse, who also appears on the disc's killer final track "I Am The Light". He's not the only guest, as Circle's big hero Bruce "Jesters Of Destiny" Duff and his bandmate Frank Meyer from LA sleaze rockers Angus Khan have cameos too, providing some guest vocals and lead guitar on a few of the cuts here as well.
The nearly ten minute "Devastator" demonstrates that Pharaoh Overlord haven't abandoned the "Circular" style of minimalist repetition, that track devastates indeed with its seeming endlessness (which is awesome). Somewhat poppier is the next track, the chugging "Doomsday Mourning", that's got some psychedelic Uriah Heepishness to it, laden with synths, psych soloing, and dramatic vocals. And that's more the norm, this album being really pretty darn catchy throughout, Pharaoh Overlord mixing their '80s metal obsessions with some Teutonic '70s proginess, and whatthefuckever else they desire. Our heads aren't just banging, they're spinning. Turns out they weren't kidding with the song title "We Came To Rock"! Ok, it gets a bit goofy on the two Bruce Duff sung tracks (especially "No Speed Limit") but that's entertaining too, however for the most part this is a REAL metal / hard rock album, or at least sounds that way, being strange rather than silly when it's not full on metal. For fans of Circle, Queen, krautrock, Thor, La Otracina, Blue Oyster Cult, Accept, Judas Priest, Metallica, Steel Mammoth, Destruction, Anvil, Lucifer's Friend, White Boy And The Average Rat Band, uh, and everything else that's awesome.
Oh, if this wasn't cool enough already, love the outer space neon lazer tiger cover artwork!!! Purrfect for the tight ripping soundz within. The cd booklet also contains an interesting quote from R. Buckminster Fuller. Didn't know he was a metalhead.
FYI, there's another new PO album too, vinyl-only effort called Horn, that we're hoping to get soon too. Haven't heard it yet, don't know where it falls on the NWOFHM spectrum...
