Here we have, well let's call it a "couple project", combining the talents of Ben Chasny (Six Organs Of Admittance) and Elisa Ambrogio (Magic Markers). What's that gonna sound like, you may wonder? Well it's a lot more on the gentle folky Six Organs side of things, that is, not at all noisy like MM can be. Acoustic guitars all the way. So, kinda like a mellow Six Organs, but with female vocals. A lot's gonna depend on how you feel about Ambrogio's singing. Her voice is perfectly fine, and intimately recorded, with a weariness to her delivery, and a bit of girlish affectation, not necessarily like what we remember from Magik Markers, though they did get more tuneful on 2007's Boss at least. And her singing is the prime focus here, with the pleasant guitars more of an accompaniment.
Let's just say this is very "coffee house" sounding. Nice music and all, if perhaps not the most interesting or out-there Six Organs related thing we've ever heard. But give the sound samples a listen, maybe you'll be in the mood for the languid strum and sweet singing here, if you're a Six Organs fan or otherwise.
We've always been suckers for mathy metal shred, in all it's variations, The Fucking Champs, Meshuggah, Pysopus, Scale The Summit, Electro Quarterstaff, and loads of others, and with that kind of sound, really the shreddier and more over the top the better, which is precisely why this new record from D.C instrumental prog metallers Animals As Leaders is kicking our asses so hard, beyond just the extreme instrumental shredding by all the players, the rhythm section KILLS, and is definitely a fine match for axeman Tosin Abasi, this is definitely not just about shred, their are actual songs, the sort that actually stick in your head. But those songs are only made that much better by some crazy catchy riffage, the dual guitars unwinding insane rhythms, not to mention some killer shredding harmonies, and some of the leads are just nuts, like Yngwie nuts. But like lots of prog metal nerds, these guys definitely have a thing for fusion, which creeps into a lot of the songs here, giving some of the jams a weirdly noodly metal jazz vibe, and they also incorporate some cool electronics, and some programmed rhythms (their first record featured all programmed drums apparently), and when the bass and guitars lock into insane noodly harmony shreds/leads, it almost sounds like some sort of alien krautrock.
You don't have to love Yngwie and Satriani and metal fusion and shred jazz to dig Animals As Leaders, but it helps. If you don't, you can just skip those fusiony parts and revel in all the rest of the wildly technical over the top mathprog heaviness.
It's kinda tough to pin down these Canadian black/death metal crushers, their sound straddles a bunch of different metal subgenres, whether it's grim blasting blackness, or furious downtuned death, or even weird crusty gloomy mathiness, they weave all of those into a sick, primitive, raw heaviness that definitely pushes all of our buttons, regardless of classification. To these ears they're definitely closer to black metal than anything, most of the tracks are progged out super complex blasts of furious frenzied riffing and blasting drum pummel, the vocals though are distinctly death metal, an impossibly deep demonic gurgle croak, but, this is not all tranced out blackness, the band are super dynamic, the songs super intricate, dizzying so at times, with stuttering start/stop arrangements giving way to churning slo-mo ultra doom creeps, which give way to furious blurred blasts, all of which speaks to the band's death metal roots. Ultimately who really cares what we call it, the important thing is that this is some of thee most gnarled and twisted blackened heaviness that we've heard in ages, and amidst these squalls of detuned death and blown out blackness, lurk some crazy catchy riffs, and some surprising melodies, all blurred into a roiling, churning, dizzying, mathed out blackdeath blowout. Another Profound Lore winner.
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ACTRESS "Rainy Day Dub" (Honest Jon's) 12" 12.98 AERIAL RUIN "Valleys Of The Earth" (Vendlus) cd 12.98 ANIOL, ADRIAN "It All Falls Apart" (Utech) cassette 4.98 ARNOLD, KOKOMO / CASEY BILL WELDON "Bottleneck Guitar Trendsetters Of The 1930s" (Yazoo) lp 17.98 AUTHOR "s/t" (Tectonic) cd 17.98 BECUZZI, GIANLUCA (KINETIX) "Memory Makes Noise" (Small Voices) cd 10.98 BIG PINK "Stay Gold" (4AD) 12" 11.98 BIG TROUBLES "She Smiles For Pictures" (Slumberland) 7" 4.98 BLACK FACE "I Want To Kill You Monster" (Hydra Head) 7" 9.98 BUSH, KATE "50 Words For Snow" (Anti) cd/2lp 13.98/28.00 BYETONE "Symeta" (Raster-Norton) cd 17.98 CALEXICO "Selections From Road Atlas 1998-2011" (Quarterstick) cd 14.98 COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER "The Resurrections Unseen" (Type) lp 19.98 DAVIS, MILES "Live-Evil" (4 Men With Beards) 2lp 25.00 DEARDARKHEAD "Ocean Side: 1991-1993" (Captured Tracks) cd/lp 14.98/16.98 DELAY, VLADISLAV "Vantaa" (Raster-Norton) cd 17.98 DOC RHYMIN' "Practitioner Of Rhymes" (Numero Group) 12" 8.98 EL POLEN "Cholo (OST)" (Lion Productions) cd 16.98 ELVES, THE "And Before Elf... There Were Elves" (Niji Entertainment) cd 14.98 EVANGELISTA "In Animal Tongue" (Constellation) cd/lp 14.98/19.98 FM3 "HeXieFu" (FM3) cd 25.00 FULL TOILET "Full Toilet" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98 GLITTER WIZARD "Solar Hits" (Archers Guild) lp 16.98 GOATVARGR "Black Snow" (Cold Spring Records) cd 17.98 GOLD PANDA "DJ Kicks" (!K7) cd 14.98 GOLDMUND "All Will Prosper" (Western Vinyl) cd 14.98 GREEN DOOR KIDS, THE "Muzikal Yooth" (Optimo Music) lp 16.98 GREX "Live At Home" (self-released) cd-r 9.98 GUIDED BY VOICES "We Won't Apologize For The Human Race" (Matador) 7" 5.98 GUYER'S CONNECTION "S/t" (Medical) lp 20.00 HAMBURGER, NEIL "Alive (With Pleasure)" (Boo Hooray Gallery) 7" 12.98 HEAVEN & EARTH "Refuge" (Lion Productions) cd 15.98 HEAVENLY BEAT "Suday / Desire" (Captured Tracks) 7" 6.98 HUMAN INSTINCT "Burning Up Years" (Sunbeam) lp 24.00 HUMAN INSTINCT "Pins In It" (Sunbeam) 2lp 34.00 IMPERIAL DOGS, THE "Live! In Long Beach (October 30, 1974)" (ID Music) dvd 22.00 INVADERS "There's A Light There's A Way" (Fresh) cd 17.98 JACASZEK "Glimmer" (Ghostly International) cd/lp 11.98/17.98 KALEIDOSCOPE "Faintly Blowing" (Sunbeam) lp 24.00 KASHMERE STAGE BAND "Texas Thunder Soul: 1968-1975" (Now-Again) 2cd 19.98 KING MIDAS SOUND "Waiting For You..." (Hyperdub) cd 21.00 KING TUBBY "Meets Rockers Uptown" (Get On Down) cd 15.98 KOSS / HENRIKSSON / MULLAERT "The Mollan Sessions" (Mule Electronic) 2cd 22.00 KUNG FU / MAN IN THE WILDERNESS "OST" (Film Score Monthly) cd 15.98 LES MALEDICTUS SOUND "s/t" (Mucho Gusto) lp 21.00 LIJADU SISTERS, THE "Danger" (Knitting Factory Records) cd/lp 13.98/21.00 LOUVIN BROTHERS, THE "Handpicked Songs 1955-1962" (Light In The Attic) lp 22.00 MAGNETIC FIELDS "Holiday" (Merge) lp 17.98 MALTS, TERRY "Something About You" (Slumberland) 7" 4.50 MANATEE "Single Payer Class War" (Slumberland) 7" flexi 4.50 MASCIS, J "Circle" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98 MOAB "Ab Ovo" (Kemado) lp 21.00 MONOMONO "The Dawn Of Awareness" (Sound Way) lp + 12" 26.00 MONSERE, ANNELIES & RICHARD YOUNGS "Three:Four Split Series - Volume 3" (Three:Four) 10" 17.98 OHNO, MATSUO "I Saw The Outer Limits" (EM Records) lp 26.00 OREGON BIKE TRAILS "High School Lover" (Father / Daughter Records) 7" 8.98 ORTHODOX "Sentencia" (Alone Records) cd 19.98 PERSONAL & THE PIZZAS "Diet, Crime, & Delinquency" (Oops Baby Records) 7" 8.98 PERSONAL AND THE PIZZAS "Dead Meat" (Total Punk) 7" 5.98 PIKE, DAVE "The Doors Of Perception" (Vortex) lp 14.98 PINCH & SHACKELTON "s/t" (Honest Jons) cd 22.00 POEME ELECTRONIQUE "The Echoes Fade" (Anna Logue) cd 17.98 PRETERITE "Pillar Of Winds" (Handmade Birds) cd 14.98 PRIMARY STRUCTURES "s/t" (Gold Robot) lp 11.98 RADAR EYES "Best Friends" (Hozac) 7" 6.50 REED, LOU & METALLICA "Lulu" (Warner Bros.) 2cd 18.98 REIGNS "The Widow Blades" (Monotreme) cd 16.98 SADIER, LAETITIA "La Piscine" (Wool Recordings) lp 16.98 SANDSTONE "Can You Mend A Silver Thread" (Lion Productions) cd 14.98 SEAPONY "Sailing" (Hardly Art) 7" 5.50 SKY BURIAL "Aegri Somnia" (Utech) cd 14.98 SLUSSENANALYS "Aquila Helvetos Asfaltos" (Ektro) lp 22.00 SNOWY RED "s/t" (Dirty Dance Records) lp 25.00 SNOWY RED "The Right To Die" (Dirty Dance Records) lp 25.00 SPENCE, JOSEPH "Bahaman Folk Guitar" (Doxy) lp 26.00 STRANGE MEN IN SHED WITH SPANNERS "s/t" (Drag City) lp 15.98 SURT "Ragnarok" (Brotherhood Of Light) cassette 5.98 SUZANNE THE MAN / KONKI DUET "Split" (BS) lp 5.98 TEAGARDEN, WARREN & THE GOOD GRIEF "s/t" (Meaningless Words) cd/lp 12.98/16.98 TH26 "La Haine" (A Silent Place) cd 10.98 THOMAS, URAL "Fade Away / Smile" (Mississippi / Change) 7" 8.98 THOMAS, URAL "Push 'Em Up / Deep Within My Heart" (Mississippi / Change) 7" 8.98 TRAMPLED BY TURTLES "Palomine" (Banjodad) cd 14.98 TROPHIES "Become Objects Of Daily Use" (Monotype) cd 14.98 TURRA, LUIGI "Enso" (Small Voices) cd 10.98 TYVEK "Fast Metabolism" (Mlady's / Water Wings) lp 14.98 V/A "Avandaro: Festival De Rock & Ruedas" (Ludell) 2cd 24.00 V/A "Bangs & Works Vol. 2: The Best Of Chicago Footwork" (Planet Mu) cd/3lp 14.98/23.00 V/A "Brand New Wayo: Funk, Fast Times & Nigerian Boogie Badness 1979-1983" (Comb & Razor Sound) cd+book 24.00 V/A "Don't Trust Your Neighbors: Early Albanian Traditional Songs & Improvisations, 1920s-1930s" (Hinter) lp 27.00 V/A "Fac.Dance: Factory Records 12" Mixes And Rarities 1980-1987" (Strut) 2cd/2lp 16.98/28.00 V/A "I Have My Liberty! 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We talk a lot in reviews about not judging books (or records more specifically) by their covers, but when we do, it's almost always in the context of doing just that, and realizing that by doing that, we had missed out on something cool. Which leads us to this, the latest instance of us judging a book by its cover, or in this case a record by its label, the newest from power poppers the Barreracudas (and yeah, that's the spelling, assuming it's referring to barre chords), whose debut is in fact the first thing we've ever reviewed on the, uh, Douchemaster label. And yeah, judging books by their covers blah blah blah, but c'mon, it's a little tough not to judge that book's cover when the cover says Douchemaster, but that said, these guys kick up a fantastic old school big guitar super hooky power pop racket, beholden to Cheap Trick, the Shoes, the Raspberries, the Dwight Twilley band, all the great seventies and eighties power poppers, and yeah, the guitars may be a bit crunchier, the production a little louder and punkier, but only a little, at their heart these songs are pretty goddamn perfect power pop and definitely sound like they could have been transported directly here from back in the day. In fact they remind us a lot of another modern retro power pop group (which just so happens to feature a member of Cheap Trick), who we raved about a while back, Tinted Windows, just check out "Baby Baby Baby". There's also a serious punk pop vibe, think The Dickies, the Ramones and other punk bands who were always more pop than punk. All the tracks here rule, hooky and heavy, crunchy and jangly, and quickly becoming out new favorite (power) pop record!
Latest from this SF by way of Australia (by way of SF again) singer/songwriter, and first with a newly formed band featuring members of Comets On Fire and the Castanets. The sound is all over the map, drifting from crunchy post punk, to woozy psychedelic drift, to countrified rust belt songsmithery, and several other stops in between.
Opener "Straight Spines" starts things off with a blast of low slung bass heavy post punk, definitely reminiscent of the Wipers, with a killer weird constantly shifting tempo, slowing down, then speeding right back up again, in a way the deftly makes that tempo shift an integral part of the song. Hooky and a little bit heavy, driving and catchy like crazy, and that tempo shift just kills us every time, so unexpected, but so cool.
Then there's "There Is No Edge Of The World To Run To", which sounds like some lost Uncle Tupelo outtake, Beach's vocals rough and warmly ragged, over some simple twang and strum, darkly emotive and intense, and when the drums come in, the song becomes a cool sort of droney countrified slowcore. There's also the drifty twangy shimmer of the title track, and the warm jangly balladic closer, "So Said The Bird", which broods and soars, underpinned by whirring organs, the deep crooned vox wreathed in the dusty twang of the guitars, and a blurred reverby patina. Beach peppers the record with brief experimental interludes as well, which range from noisy psychedelic freakouts to woozy late night drones. Gorgeous stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES and already sold out and out of print. So these are the last ones we'll be able to get.
In past reviews of earlier Beets records, we found ourselves imagining them as the result of some sort of Thee Oh Sees / Shaggs sonic breeding experiment, a mix of naive primitivism and fuzzy reverby garage rock pound, and on this latest, not too much has changed, although the things that have, only serve to make these guys sound better than ever. The production is way less lo-fi, the more polished production perfectly complimenting the stripped down instrumentation, and the songs, still stripped down and minimal, sound somehow more fully fleshed out and way catchier (although subtly so). The vibe is also a bit darker and dronier, with a huge Velvets vibe, woozy and druggy and hypnotic, most of the songs with just one or two parts, repetitive and jangly, with the more upbeat jams sounding almost Beatles-esque, classic three chord jangle pop, over shuffling drums and peppered with some twisted atonal sort-if-solos (there's even some flute!!). For the most part though, this is just some perfectly dreamy, jangly, catchy, stoney and droney left field ramshackle folk pop bliss, that we just can't seem to stop listening to.
And like all of their other records, more of that immediately recognizable cartoon cover art depicting the theme of the record (all The Beets records have themes), this one about "letting the poison out of your system."
This Train is most definitely a solid record, one that serves as a compliment to film auteur David Lynch's recent solo effort, Crazy Clown Time. Cave-like reverb that echoes and deepens, surf-esque tremoloed guitars, simple drum loops and synth pads. Chrysta Bell, unknown to us until this record arrived, has a superb voice: pretty but not showy, thick but not overbearing. She's no Julee Cruise, though, and this record is not The Voice of Love. Missing are the unique songwriting skills of Angelo Badalamenti, his emotional depth and incredible sense of melody. Whereas Crazy Clown Time held its own (the humor, the strange meditational rant in the middle of the record), This Train feels a bit flat at times. Overall, it has a very soothing mood, the production and the tones, but it's not a very energetic or varied record. Halfway through, "Real Love" and "Bird of Flames" pick up the pace a bit and add some heavier sounds and distortion. The opening track "This Train" also stands out. Bell sings on every song, backed up by Lynch and Dean Hurley (Lynch's collaborator on Crazy Clown Time), and John Neff.
We've been waiting for this one for ages. And thus, are having a lot of trouble figuring out what exactly to write about it. We've literally been obsessed with this band and these records for more than two decades, and one aQ-er in particular was even in a band who was heavily influenced by the late great Bitch Magnet. In the realms of late eighties / early nineties postrock / postpunk / mathrock, there's a very elite pantheon, made up of names you no doubt recognize or at least should: Slint, of course, Rodan, Codeine, Bastro and of course Bitch Magnet, who amongst those band might be the least well known, and perhaps the most unfairly under appreciated. The various members of BM would go on to other bands we love, bass player and vocalist Soo Young Park would form Seam, guitarist (and aQ pal) Jon Fine would go on to form Coptic Light and Vineland (and play briefly in Don Caballero), and drummer Orestes Morfin would end up playing in Walt Mink. But it's Bitch Magnet that was the perfect combination of the three, creating a sonic template for much to come, and creating one of the most incredible bodies of work in underground rock. An impossible hybrid of progged out mathiness, moody introspective indie rock, brooding slowcore, and an almost metallic heft, woven into actual songs that would and will stick in your head forever. They wrote the sort of parts that were effortlessly catchy, some crazy weird time signatured progmath breakdown could be as hooky in their hands as a jangly bit of melody or a soaring majestic chorus, and it's precisely that magic ingredient that makes this stuff sound as good now as it did 20 years ago.
This new collection features tons of bonus tracks, but really, those are mostly of interest to folks who already love Bitch Magnet, and everyone who already does is definitely gonna want this, for those tracks sure, but also just for a new remastered fancy versions of the records you already treasure, cuz Bitch Magnet were one of those rare bands that engendered crazy obsession and slavish worship from their fans, who were eager to offer up both. For the rest of the folks out there, who somehow missed out on BM the first time around, or were perhaps too young at the time, the records proper are more than enough.
The Star Booty ep, originally released in 1988, finds the band at their most indie rock, they're still heavy, and a bit mathy, but way more indie rock / post punk than anything, in fact much of this record is downright poppy, maybe more along the lines of other contemporaries like Superchunk and Squirrelbait, jangly and crunchy and hooky as hell, for many of us, this was our first exposure to Bitch Magnet, and it didn't take us long to realize we had a new favorite band. But it was really the following year's full length Umber that sealed the deal, and like Slint, must have launched a million copycats, cuz holy shit, Umber is a monster, the band way more mathy and heavy, opener "Motor" starting things off with a wild squall of chaotic drumming and dive bombing guitars before launching into a song that sounds like a more aggressive version of something off Star Booty, but then there's "Navajo Ace" which to this day remains one o our favorite songs from that era, with its crazy opening the weird times bass drum groove, the off time guitar chug, the swirling high end guitar crunch, and then when it launches into the meat of the song, blasting and pounding and furious, only to suddenly switch times again, only to switch it up again and lurch right back into it, the vocals sung/spoken, very Slint-y for sure, we won't postulate which came first, doesn't even matter, similar styles, two dramatically different results, and from there on out Umber doesn't let up for a second, the band trying their hand at all sorts of sonic variations, the Codeine-esque slowcore of "Clay", the almost Spacemen 3 sounding hypnorock of "Joan Of Arc", albeit a bit supercharged, the woozy bass driven dirge of "Douglas Leader", the almost "Just Got Paid" Southern sounding riffage on "Goat Legged Country God", the crazy catchy indie rock of "Big Pining", the almost Lemonheads sounding indie jangle of "Joyless Street", the metallic mathy bombast of "Punch & Judy", the very brooding Slintiness of "Americruiser" (is that where Urge Overkill got the name for their 1990 album of the same name? Hmm).
At the time, we were fairly sure nothing could beat Umber, it was practically perfect, a brilliant balance of catchiness and heaviness and mathiness, we continued to think that at least for another year, when Bitch Magnet released their final album Ben Hur, and all it took was one listen to the nine and a half minute opener "Dragoon" to convince us once again, that NOW nothing could get better than this, which was sadly proved true when the band called it quits. But what a way to go. "Dragoon" has such an epic opening, all big ringing chords, and spaced out pounding drums, it's the sort of stretched out tension that could go on forever, but when the song proper kicks in, it's easy to forget all about that, some killer angular riffing, insanely powerful drumming, crazy catchy melodies, and this time a HUGE production to match, everything sounding massive and heavy and appropriately epic. It took ages before we could stop listening to "Dragoon" and make it to the rest of the record, but once we did, like Umber before it, it pretty much killed from front to back, the band again, much more varied than folks probably give them credit for, mixing a dark brooding slowcore, with their particular brand of post punk mathiness, and hooks galore, definitely hints of what was to come in Seam in some of the melodies and vocal parts, but here, they are woven perfectly into Fine's dense guitars and Morfin's impossible drum damage. We could go through Ben Hur also, song by song, but trust us, once you're a song in, you won't want to stop until it's over, and then odds are you'll just want to start again.
It should be noted that Bitch Magnet are one of Andee's favorite bands OF ALL TIME, and the other folks of similar age around aQ hold similarly strong sentiments about these records, and the fact that listening to them now, we can still hear the influences these guys are having on new bands twenty years later speaks volumes.
Absolutely essential and utterly and wholeheartedly recommended.
Super fancy packaging too, the 3cd version comes in a 6 panel digipak style sleeve, with the album covers reproduced on the jackets, with an attached booklet featuring tons of live photos and flyers. The 3lp version come in massive triple gatefold jacket, with the inside 3 panels covered in rare photos and flyers, while the actual lp sleeves feature reproductions of the original album covers and the track listings. The lp version also includes a download coupon as well. And for the eagle eyed out there, look for the tUMULt logo on both, while this is not an actual tUMULt release really, it is at least in spirit!
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.
Release number ten from local label Time Released Sound, a one man operation that produces some of THEE most extravagantly packaged micro releases we have ever laid eyes on, with every element of every release meticulously assembled by hand, or built, or drawn, or collaged, or whatever it takes to realize these miniature works of art. Which is precisely what these are, they are records obviously, and the music is fantastic, but that steep price tag is because this music is paired with the perfect packaging, that both represent the sounds within, the unique and ephemeral nature of sound and of music, and these works of art offer a visual analogue to the music, thematically linked in a way that's not always super obvious.
Needless to say, every release is fantastic, sonically, visually and aesthetically, and we're lucky to even get any of these considering how ultra limited they are.
Which brings us to this, the latest piece of musical art from Time Released Sound, which comes to us from musician / field recordist Will Bolton, who here indulges in his interest in the industrial revolution in the UK, by setting his miniature epics in the Quarry Bank Mill, one of the largest and most important textile mills in the UK, and is again an actual functioning mill. Bolton made repeated trips to the mill to capture the sounds of manufacture, of looms and machines, all manner of industrial whir and clatter, rumble and hum, around which he weaves lush and lovely drones and drifty bits of soft focus psychedelic folk. We're reminded a bit of Rameses III, a sort of pastoral folk, but performed on the floor of some old functioning factory.
Little bits of acoustic guitar shimmer, shards of melodic filigree, looped and fragmented, layered and woven into the sounds of machinery, Bolton's own drones deftly blurred into those of the mill, until it's impossible to tell what is field recording and what is music, until the music gradually fades leaving just the sound of the mill, which is surprisingly musical on its own. A deft application of effects, and of manipulate samples, sound reversed and layered, truncated and stretched out, creating these darkly delicate lullabies, rife with music box tinkles and folky flutter, laid out in dreamlike swells, and draped over the sounds of that aged mill. So lovely.
And as always, the packaging is top notch, a printed, hand distressed, 6" square cloth bag, made from raw unfinished cotton, at the actual Quarry Bank Mill, there's also a hand distressed, printed and numbered tag, while inside, the disc is in a full color digipak, and is accompanied by a hand worked and sewn textured paper booklet, with liner notes, as well as images from and photos of the mill. So fantastic, and SO LIMITED. JUST 100 COPIES. We have a dozen and will most likely not be able to get more.
Of the three records Japanese trio Boris released in 2011 (yep, three!), the one we were most excited about was the hardest to get, at least until now. We reviewed both Heavy Rocks (the second Heavy Rocks, confusionally titled the same as their 2002 album), and also Attention Please, which featured all songs sung by guitarist Wata, and of the two, we got kind of obsessed with that Wata one. But we had also been hearing about a third record, also confusionally titled New Album, which originally came out in Japan only, and which featured different versions of many of the same songs from the other two records, but in dramatically different form, with most reports claiming that New Album was in fact Boris' J-Pop record, which sounded pretty dang appealing to us. And while some folks we know (as well as at least one aQ-er) took the plunge and plopped down $40 for the import, it's now finally available domestically, and holy crap it is without a doubt the best of the three. A friend of aQ was giving us shit for digging this so much, claiming that he knew we would, cuz we love that indie pop sound so much, which is actually totally true, and if you're coming to New Album looking for anything remotely heavy, you will be sorely disappointed. Sure there's some crunchy guitar here and there, but it's in the service of electronica flecked indie rock jangle, shoegazey J-pop, synth heavy electro, skittery new wave, and pretty much every fuzzy electro pop nineties style variation Boris could whip up.
And yeah, 4 or 5 of the songs are on other records, but they are dramatically different here, arrangement, instrumentation, everything, and this is one of those times we're not gonna do a song by song blow by blow, just know that of the three new ones, this one is definitely our favorite and sounds more like Blonde Redhead mixed with M83, with some of the tracks sounding like they should have been on the late great French electronic pop label Gooom, some of Boris' best songs ever, alongside some of their weirdest. But if you ever wondered what Boris would sound like playing nineties shoegaze indie rock electro pop, this is the record for you!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's a nice pairing, featuring Expo 70, who needs no introduction to the aQ readership, and Brainworlds, an Atlanta based guitarist whose work at least here rivals that of Expo 70. Both of these long tracks are recordings from a night of cosmic meditation in 2010 at the seminal performance space Eyedrum in Atlanta. Brainworlds' deep guitar tones float weightlessly in a shimmering expanse from his hypnotic loops and evocative cosmic solo work outs that come across like some lost Ash Ra Tempel jam getting remixed by Troum at their most stratospheric. Really stunning work, and this would have been great to see live given the reverberant acoustics of Eyedrum. Justin Wright was in more of a cosmic mindset for that performance too. Wright's guitars take after some of Michael Rother's phrasing at the beginning of his set, locking into a darker heavier mantra as the performance moves forward with a pulsing rhythm and heavy chords reminiscent of Expo 70's masterful album Black Ohm. Classic drugged-out space drone bliss from both Brainworlds and Expo 70. We're pretty sure this is a 60 minute tape; it's damn long regardless... but it's limited too, just 100 copies released from the Hooker Vision imprint run in part by Rachel Evans of Motion Sickness of Time Travel.
Record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
Vinyl only for now, cd version to follow in a few weeks.
Way back in the nineties, when we were first getting into black metal, we discovered an Austrian horde called Korova, that were pretty much everything we wanted in a weirdo black metal band, blasting riffage, soaring baroque keyboards, over the top male/female vox, their sound constantly mutating and getting weirder and weirder, the band eventually introducing electronica and other non-metal weirdness into their sound, and transforming into what was essentially an experimental blackened pop band. Sort of. The band eventually transformed into Korovakill and released a sort-of concept record called Waterhells, which continued the band's descent into sonic madness and progression towards a grim/kvlt-metalhead-alienating whattthefuckness that we of course LOVED. That record came out nearly a decade ago, so we just assumed that Korova/Korovakill were no more. That is until a few weeks ago, when we got an email from a band with the odd moniker of Chryst, who it turns out were the latest incarnation of Korova. We got a copy of the record, and were a bit confused by the bizarre and surreal cover art, the front of which features a plastic model of christ crucified on one of those wind turbines, a silhouette of which forms the 'Y' in the Chryst logo. Flip over the record and there's a strange man with a head of hair, a beard and mustache made from photoshopped clouds, oh and alongside his head is a fish floating in the air. Pretty ridiculous for sure, but once we threw the record on, it all made sense. Sonically, the record sort of sounds exactly how the artwork looks, surreal and over the top, twisted and confusional, and pretty geniusly baffling.
Our first impression was that Chryst sounded like a crazy mash up of Hammers Of Misfortune, Uz Jsme Doma, Hollenthon, Judson Fountain doing that witch voice, Cradle Of Filth, and Orff's Carmina Burana (which they do an a cappela version of at one point!!), look those up on the aQ site and see if it doesn't make perfect sense. And it's really not that far off the mark, the sound is super theatrical, and totally twisted, and not a little bit ridiculous, and in lesser hands it could have been a total clusterfuck, but there does seem to be a method to their madness, moving well beyond the weird metal dabbling of their previous incarnations, and leaving other weird metal contemporaries of theirs like Dodheimsgard, Borknagar, Arcturus in the dust. And creating a sort of modern avant black metal cabaret.
There's really too much going on, and the songs change direction and sound it would take forever to describe the whole record, but let's go through the first few songs and you should definitely get a feel for how fantastically freaky and totally ruling this really is.
The opener "The Awakening" starts off like some traditional black metal, some killer buzzing riffage, pounding drums, howled demonic vokills, then it switches gears, into a furious blast, still pretty straight ahead except for the weird insectoid theremin melody, and then the deep dramatic crooned vox, but still well within the realms of black metal for sure, that is until the background vocals come in, a weird falsetto choir, and the strange extra percussion, the productions seeming to shift, until everything stops, leaving just a haunting stretch of chimes and harmony vocals, only to lurch right back into that blasting metal, only to have the track start changing speed, slooooowing waaaaaay down, then speeding back up super fast, then slooooooowing doooooown again, and finally finishing off in a blaze of hyperspeed buzz, which leads directly into the super dramatic synth/vocal opening of "I Are You", which is where those croaky shrieky Judson Fountain witch-like vox surface for the first time, then some orchestral percussion, some strange pseudo operatic vocals, and then the band launches into some furious blackness, with some insanely fast drumming, and those operatic vocals continue within the buzzing and blasting, a strange mix, but it definitely works in some weird way.
Then there's "Leaving The Ashes" with its buzzing cold wave synthy opening, which leads to some seriously ruling keyboard/vocal heavy epic power metal replete with horns, which abruptly shifts into "Storming Outside", a furious blast of punky heaviness, rife with slippery atonal guitars and more moody vox, all wreathed in swirling maniacal synths.
And so it goes, not necessarily getting stranger and stranger, merely keeping the already off the charts level of weirdness throughout. Most of the tracks are quite short, more like movements, all woven together into a single flowing epic, the sound shifting constantly and relentlessly, lots of black buzz, and the black metal parts are definitely black enough for the true grim hordes, but even those parts are twisted all up into new freaky fantastical shapes, but as should be obvious by now, for every bit of black blast, there's plenty of other stranger sounds, that range from carnivalesque cabaret to strange almost sun shiney Beach Boys vocal flecked freakfolk/Appalachia, but ultimately the key to this fractured fucked up schizophrenic avant metal opus, is that every part, be it straight ahead (relatively) or twisted beyond recognition, is impossibly catchy, so the ADD arrangements become an embarrassment of sonic riches, with your initial disappointment when a part ends, mitigated by the beginning of a new, equally kick ass part, which is most definitely a rarity in most music, metal especially.
Absolutely recommended for all the aQ-ers out there who love their metal demented and damaged and totally ridiculously over the top, and for the metal shy, this might just be the sort of gateway record that could very well lure you over to the dark (weird) side� Here's hoping!
We're beginning to think Jazzman might just be our favorite jazz/funk reissue label. From that Spiritual Jazz comp, to Lloyd Miller's A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz, From Bobby Jackson's The Cafe Extra-Ordinaire Story to the best of Jef Gilson, from the Natural Yogurt Band's Away With Melancholy to Nathan Davis' Best of collection, and now this, an amazing compilation from band leader, drummer and Mexican jazz legend Tino Contreras, who really is mostly unknown outside of Mexico, even though he's recorded more than 40 albums and has been performing for 50+ years and continues to play today. And since this is essentially a career retrospective, it samples all the various and varied sounds Contreras has explored over the years, from hard bop to Latin jazz, to experimental free jazz and beyond, he covers Elmer Bernstein's James Bond theme, incorporates psychedelic production and percussion into his sound, offers up some wild drumming and chaotic percussion workouts, digs into some tropical jazz, explores themes of Christianity, Hinduism, there's even a sprawling 11 minute epic dedicated to the late great Ravi Shankar, which of course includes a killer drum solo, his own homage we presume.
Contreras has had an incredible career, and had such a huge impact on jazz in Mexico, and that career is explored in great detail in the liner notes, too much detail to go into here, needless to say, it's a fascinating read. Sonically though, this collection is tough to beat, waltzes and calypsos, Latin jazz, Afro jazz, far out and freaky, traditional and spiritual, and even though this collection spans decades, and dips into all sort of sounds, it holds together perfectly as a record proper, and to be honest, since this came in, we've really wanted to listen to little else.
Includes a massive booklet with extensive liner notes in both English and Spanish, with comments from Contreras himself, as well as lots of rare photos and notes on each track and the album it was from. Did we mention the groovy cover art?! So great!
We've established that Finland is a strange place. And it's a strange place that produces some seriously strange sounds. None stranger we think than weirdo (sort of) black metal horde Dead Reptile Shrine. And placing them at the top of the fucked up and freaky Finnish music heap is definitely saying something. Especially when you consider that means they are outweirding: Circle Of Ouroborus, Aanal Beehemoth, Circle, Aavikko, Cleaning Women, Jumalhamara, Keuhkot, Nightsatan, Oranssi Pazuzu, Ride For Revenge, Will Over Matter, and that's just scratching the surface. And those last two should really make it clear just how baffling these guys are, cuz as far as we're concerned, Ride For Revenge / Will Over Matter are like the pinnacle for fucked up Finnish weirdness, that is except for Dead Reptile Shrine.
The Sun Of Circles And Wood was originally slated to be a double cd on Andee's tUMULt label (and hopefully still will be), is now available as a massive double lp, released by the super cool Weird Forest label. And if you think Weird Forest is kind of a strange label for a Finnish black metal band, you probably haven't heard Dead Reptile Shrine, who are only sort of a black metal band much of the time, in fact, they are like Circle Of Ouroborus in that respect, beloved by almost every black metaller we know, but sonically, often about as far removed from actual black metal as you can get.
Just check out the 11 minute opener, "Summoner Of Clarity", which does contain some riffs, some subtly blackened buzz, but it sounds more like some sort of twisted No Neck Blues Band / Avarus jam than any black metal we've heard. the riffing chugs along for a minute before fading out, and then returning a few seconds later, seeming to offer more texture than anything, while multiple voices moan and chant, intoning ominously over pulsing electronics, a fuzzy low end synth, rumbling and undulating, peppered with haunting melodies, atonal and abstract, there are bird sounds, bits of buzz and hum, the sound seeming to melt into a woozy swirl, we just realized those bird sounds were actually just the vocalist 'caw'ing, the synths shimming, weaving dreamy crystalline melodies over that buzzing pulse, and those haunting vox, it never explodes into a burst of black buzz, or a churning doomy pound, it just sort of hums and shimmers and eventually blinks out. And the Dead Reptile ritual has begun!
Probably a bit of overkill to go track by track, there are TWENTY after all, spread out over 4 sides, and while the next track opens up with some serious guitar buzz, it's abstract, and the riffage sprawls and oozes and weaves a bombinating backdrop for more strange chanting. It occurs to us that really anybody who loves Circle Of Ouroborus, should really love these guys too, especially if they're after something a bit less overtly folky, and more weirdly ritualistic. And when the band does dip into some 'proper' black metal, like on "Blasphemous Cover" it sounds downright demented, blorpy basslines, detuned guitars, stumbling off time drumming, maniacal strangled mewling vocals, the song lurching and lumbering, like a black metal Shaggs, so totally 'off' and twisted and whatthefuck it almost makes your eyes water.
Elsewhere the band explore some meandering clean guitar doom, which definitely suits them, again all woozy and stumbly, definitely reminiscent of German 'wooden metal' outfit Varghkoghargasmal, the song still driven by chanting, and some demonic croaked vokills as well, the guitars warm and buzzy and almost krautrocky, but still totally fractured and fucked up.
And so it goes, the record veering wildly all over the sonic map but definitely dipping heavily into black metal, at least various twisted Finnish outsider strains of black metal. "Forcefield Across Odensland" is a sort of buzzing post rock, with some seriously fucked up vocals, and some of the most awesomely constantly shifting tempos ever, "Walking Under The Winter Sun", is a blast of blown out blackness, oozing with strange effects, sounding almost like black metal Butthole Surfers, but insanely blown out and lo-fi, "Beholding The Necrocult Relic" is a gorgeous stretch of medieval sounding synthscapery, "Solstice D'Hiver" might be our favorite 'black metal' jam here, the drums tinny and lo-fi, the guitars so muted they're barely audible, the vocals, crazy, on of them a wild falsetto shriek, all over this strange skeletal muted barely there blast. So weird and so INCREDIBLE. And that's just the first lp!
The second one starts out all loping slowcore post rock, with some ominous dramatic crooning vox, some spidery guitar melodies, still more chanting, lots of feedback, before launching into a cool droned out raga, all deep vocal drones and sitar like buzz, which leads directly into some stumbling demented, strangely melodic doom, which in turn leads directly into some blurred blackness, that is about as traditionally old school black metal as these guys get, mostly cuz it's all a buzzing black blur. From there on out, it's a series of twisted blackened missives, slipping (un)easily from abstract experimental ambience, to churning punky chant flecked blackened noise, from weird almost new wave sounding lo-fi dirgery, to tripped out almost dubby spaciness, and from chaotic abstract ritualism to stumbling, atonal, almost catchy weirdo new wave blackened pop, which finishes things off.
Needless to say this stuff is fucking NUTS, and absolutely RULES. Circle Of Ouroborus fans line up, and anyone who like us, loves Finnish weirdness, and demented blackness, this is about as good as it gets!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a super swank, full color gatefold jacket.
Bjork has always thrived on collaboration, the list of folks she has worked with is pretty much a dream list of musicians and producers including Matmos, Konono No.1, Will Oldham, Zeena Parkins, Timbaland, Tricky, and tons more. But up until now she's never made an actual full album as a true collaboration, and while some of us had our doubts if the Dirty Projectors were worthy of this co-billing, it's actually a totally awesome match up.
Bjork's most resent album, Biophilia, is as dark as it is challenging yet so totally rewarding, but it's nice to get to enjoy a much more bright, colorful, and pop side of Bjork's magical presence. Dirty Projectors are all about bright colors, swirling melodies, and infectious pop, so they bring that element into these tracks, while Bjork guides them to create songs that feel like vocal miniatures from some awesome early Steve Reich or Philip Glass album. There is a feeling of bright eyed innocence and openness on this record that makes it one that we think could win over folks who have taken a little break from Bjork lately. Such a perfect record for a crisp winter day.
Los Angeles-based Jimmy Tamborello, veteran of the SoCal emo/indie rock scene (remember Strictly Ballroom? Further? The Tyde?) and current member of electro pop outfit Figurine returns after a lengthy absence with another solo record as Dntel. After two
So far, the only thing we've reviewed on the awesome Ormolycka label, run by aQ pal Jason, was the cassette version of Liturgy's Renihilation, the one that featured a bad ass Liturgy jungle remix courtesy of our very own Andee. But we do carry everything else on the label, we just get such limited copies, they never make it onto the list, tapes by Pistol Disko, Anthro Rex, Synt.Tofs, Shams, M Ax Noi Mach, Modern Witch, Dubknowdub, GDFX, Pushups, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, A Magic Whistle, Juiceboxx, Frak, Narwhalz, Death Grips, Pictureplane, Kalambya Sisters and more! Phew. Ormolycka has also just started doing 7"s, the first two of which we have in stock, and we've go just enough to list!
Don't know much about the oddly named Dog Leather, other than they follow in the footsteps of other snotty white rappers like the aQ beloved Hawd Gankstuh Rappuh Emsees Wid Ghatz. Whiney and bratty, but the music changes everything, on the A side it's a killer lo-fi / hip hop tripout, all low slung, echoey and distorted, stripped down and super rhythmic, noisy groovy and distorted, sounding almost like hip hop via Animal Collective or Wavves or something. The flipside is all dubbed out, boomin' system low rider style, still fucked up and lo-fi and a bit electro, but way more banging, while Dog Leather flow over the top.
Limited of course, and pressed on fancy gold vinyl!
Really fucking spooky! Of course, we wouldn't expect much less from John Duncan, whose sound research specifically seeks out the most intense of psychological states. As the most infamous case, Duncan's Blind Date performance piece tells of his presumed experience with necrophilia as a masochistic ritual for depositing his last seed in a dead body before undergoing a vasectomy. While the audio documentation of Blind Date is cold and precise in what it says, Duncan neither confirms nor denies any of the details beyond what is told in that recording. It could have been a fabrication; but he plants the idea that he *might* have broken the most significant taboo of human civilization. Since then, Duncan's psychological research through sound, visual art, and performance has become far more sophisticated in approach and content. For example, there's his convoluted Pynchonesque album Our Telluric Conversation with CM von Hausswolff, and there's the masterful recapitulation of the sounds from the Stanford Linear Accelerator into The Crackling - a cavernous, sublime electric chorale which magnify the smallest of particles into massive discordant drones.
There Must Be A Way Across This River was a performance / installation that Duncan presented inside a refrigerated basement at a performance hall in Bologna, where he presented a slow-developing soundtrack of arctic drones layered with darkly vibrating shortwave patterns, whispered declarations from Duncan himself, and these strange violent bursts of electronic noise. While he never stated this to be the case, we wonder if he demanded that the audience be naked, as he has done for a handful of his other claustrophobic, black-box performances. That might have been even too cruel for Duncan! The sounds of There Must Be A Way Across This River are relatively subtle for Duncan's catalogue of work, but they are darkly evocative, eerie, bleak, and ominously threatening. Another very strong piece in his ever impressive body of work.
The flip side of the record is a strange collaboration between Duncan, Z'ev, and the EVP hunter Michael Esposito. Originally, Esposito, Duncan, and the medium Heidi Harman set out to make recordings in Duncan's childhood home outside of Chicago. Despite making arrangements with one of the occupants at the house, they were refused access, all the while Esposito was recording their conversations. During those recordings, 18 EVP invocations occurred, one of which addresses Duncan by name - an allegation that Harman confirmed through her own psychic contact. These 18 invocations were then given over to Z'ev who manipulated them into a suitably frightening set of interwoven drones and spectral undulations. If that particular EVP citation of Duncan's name is on these recordings, Z'ev has thoroughly eradicated the syntax into a slippery, ectoplasmic sound. It's one of the best things we've heard from Z'ev outside his kinetic percussive assaults, and rounds out a terrifyingly great piece of wax!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Volume four in the ongoing Sublime Frequencies Guitars From Agadez series, comes in the form of this extremely limited tour 7" from Group Inerane, and it might just be the heaviest most hypnotic jams we've heard from these guys so far. Which is saying a lot.
The A side, which plays at 33, features two fierce numbers, the first, some seriously distorted desert blues, fuzzed out guitars, wild drumming, a propulsive groove, spidery mesmerizing melodies, all distorted and in-the-red. The other track is a wild dense tangles of heavy guitars and soaring vocals, swirling and dizzyingly rocking, the sounds blurred and buzzy and gloriously incendiary.
The flipside, which plays at 45 rpm, offers up another fiery, blistery, buzzing Afro-blues blowout, all churning distorto guitars and some incredible, guitar playing, the sort of guitar mastery that puts most other technical shredders to shame, so tranced out and hypnotic, groovy, fuzzy and so so soulful.
And again, ULTRA limited, these could very well be the last copies we can get...
Full length number two from Chicago grind thrashers Harpoon, which just so happens to feature Toney Vast-Binder, vocalist for the late great legendary weirdo grind combo 7000 Dying Rats, but don't be expecting any metalhead baiting skits or grindmetal versions of TV themes (although we do love that stuff), Harpoon is a much more serious beast, and a beast it is, describing it as grind or thrash really doesn't do these guys justice, sure there are definitely elements of both, and they're pretty punk to boot, but Harpoon's sound is epic and heavy, intricate and pretty complex, even a bit proggy at times. Opener "To The Tall Trees" is a perfect example, with its grinding tempos, and woozy slippery guitar riff, not to mention the moment about 2 minutes in when the band lock into this killer repetitive mathmetal groove, that almost sounds looped, and it's so hypnotic and so good, it's almost a disappointment when they finally pull out of it. At which point they lay down some creeping dirgey doom, only to shift into something hushed and atmospheric, and we're barely three minutes in, the sound builds and slowly grows more and more vicious and heavy, churning and chugging and finally finishing off in a squall of tangled feedback.
Which is pretty much how the whole record plays out, the songs super complex, the riffing gnarled and convoluted, but rife with melody, the second track in fact, almost sounds like it's borrowed a bit from the Fucking Champs, the same sort of Thin Lizzy meets Carcass metal hookiness, the band mix it up once again, exploding into a blasting punkish pound, the guitar doing all sorts of weird shit along the way, soaring into little melodic trills, weaving woozily into seasick lopes, the sound blossoming unexpectedly into Torche style pop-sludge, complete with clean vocals, and shit, it suits these guys, so much so, that if they ditched all the warped grinding heaviness, wouldn't be hard to see them getting big, but then where's the fun in that, and the poppiness here is so great cuz it's so unexpected, and it's unexpected that these guys would be so good at it. But fear not, it's not long before the band shifts gears and unfurls some metal that sounds strangely like late period Carcass, or At The Gates, their knack for melody infusing whatever heaviness they conjure up with a ridiculous hookiness, and those clean vocals keep popping up, revealing the record to be a whole lot poppier than we first expected.
In fact we were sort of digging this, but after a handful of listens, we're becoming pretty goddamn obsessed. One of our new favorites for sure!
One of the most intoxicating male voices we've heard in so long belongs to Mayer Hawthorne. On How Do You Do, he makes the leap from the indie Stones Throw to the big time, now finding a home on Universal, but luckily his soulful music is not compromised one bit. In fact when we first heard Mayer Hawthorne a couple years ago we had a feeling he could get HUGE. Looks like maybe we were right.
His blue eyed soul shines nice and bright on this new outing and shows off both his ability to create such a seductive mood, while also his super strong song writing chops. Equally influenced by amazing singers like Al Green, Dusty Springfield, Otis Redding, Smokey Robinson as well as sweet sounding west coast pop like The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Herman's Hermits and The Louvin Spoonful, there's just no denying he creates make-out jams that sound so damn good, and thus he's amassed a pretty awesome list of bigtime fans which include Dam-Funk, Peanut Butter Wolf, and even Snoop Dogg who appears on "Can't Stop", a totally killer track on How Do You Do. Speaking of amazing guests, legendary psych-funk guitar god Dennis Coffey plays on two tracks as well.
The only thing we don't love about this record is the album cover and the marketing campaign that Universal has launched in support of it. We understand that they want to make him a huge star, but truthfully Hawthorne is so much more talented then what major labels like to push as the next big thing.
He is not just a pretty face and voice, he wrote and produced every track on the album, and his sense of arrangements and pop structure are so spot on. But like we we were always told, you can't judge books or records by their covers, cause what's inside is what really counts, and the songs on How Do You Do are pure proof.
Amazing live collaboration between Kieran Hebden of Four Tet, and (formerly) frequent collaborator, the late jazz drummer Steve Reid, who were joined by talented Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, the recording/performance taking place just a year before Reid's passing, in 2009 in the foyer of Queen Elizabeth Hall at London's Southbank Centre, as part of the Ornette Coleman curated Meltdown Festival.
As documented on this double disc set, the synergy between these three is something to behold, although the track that is worth the price of admission alone, features barely any Gustafsson (if any at all): that's the 17 minute opener "Morning Prayer", which sounds like a more kinetic propulsive Necks, dark and cyclical, droney and psychedelic, mesmerizingly textured, Hebden providing lush textures and dark melodies, over which Reid plays his heart out, subtle and minimal and abstract, yet forceful and intense, it's the sort of transcendental performance that happens rarely, and to actually capture it on tape, is incredible. And listening to it now, it's hard to imagine this being performed live. Totally hypnotic, the sort of sound you don't ever want to end, we've played this track about 20 times since this first came in, and we show no signs of stopping now. But in the interest of reviewing the record as a whole, we'll take a break from repeat listens.
The vibe throughout is pretty similar to that opener, with Hebden providing all the low end, as well as all manner of swirling effects, constantly shifting layers, melodies and strange electronic percussion, with Gustafsson adding his own powerful melodies, and we were actually expecting more skronk, but he really plays to his two collaborators, coaxing all sorts of buzzes and drones from his horn, a few of the tracks sound more traditionally jazz, but where these three really shine is where they weave a sort of droned out jazzy minimalism, mirroring that opening track, and letting Reid do his thing, and Reid's drumming here is just so amazing, you could literally strip away everything the other guys are doing and it would still be totally mesmerizing. But as a trio, these guys are powerful and emotional and dynamic and these are definitely some of the coolest jams we've heard, jazz or otherwise. A fantastic and moving swansong for Reid too, and a monument to his emotional innovative drumming and his legacy as a jazz icon. Totally recommended.
Canadian dronescaper and ambient deconstructionist Tim Hecker's most recent record, Ravedeath 1972, was, as we proclaimed in out review of that record a few lists back, probably our favorite yet, which is all the more notable for belonging to a body of work that impossibly seems to consist of nothing BUT favorites, but there it is, Hecker has tapped into a unique sound that manages to evoke feelings of loss and memory, of some otherworld, some othertime, a music both modern and experimental, but still classic and timeless, deftly casting ambient music as something so much more than simple ambience. Lush and textural, haunting and emotional, the rare sort of sounds that the listner can't help but get gloriously lost in, this latest manages yet another remarkable feat, offering a glimpse into the process Hecker goes through to create his record, the most recent in this case, and offering those 'sketches' as just that, sketches, while presenting what is essentially, to these ears at least, another fully formed Tim Hecker record, one that had it been presented as just that, we most certainly wouldn't have batted an eye. Which again speaks to Hecker's sublime mastery over sound. That these tracks are 'works in progress', not the finished product they so appear to be.
As the title suggests, the focus here is on the piano, the sound minimal and spare by Hecker's standards, trading the often think gristly walls of buzz and crumbling thrum, for something much more stately and sparse, washed out and delicate. But even so, this is not a collection of raw piano recordings, the sounds are already blurred and bleary, sun dappled and crystalline, seems impossible these could be untouched original recordings, but even with a minimal amount of processing, the tracks here have already been transformed, gauzy soft focus squalls of swirling piano, give way to haunting funereal ballads, rife with creaks and thumps and various other room sounds, the low notes stretched out into deep resonant rumbles, laced with the subtle swoop of muted backwards melodies, hazy old timey shimmer drifts on the tinkling of music box like melodies, the notes heavy with effects, the sound seeming to melt under a warm summer sun. There are what appear to be solo piano pieces, but close listening reveals all manner of subtle sonic weirdness just below the surface, in many cases, those strange subtleties taking over completely, swallowing the piano whole, while other times the notes seem to bleed into one another, blurring into dramatic swirls of sound, tense and dark and very cinematic.
Most of the pieces here are brief, all of them could have been stretched out to fill up the whole record, and we would have happily blissed out to any or all of them, but even so, Dropped Pianos does not sound fragmented, the various pieces, even in their 'sketch' form, woven into an album in its own right, culminating in the final sketch, which is probably the most fully formed proper Hecker piece, the piano, maudlin and mournful, buried in buzz, a crumbling distortion that comes in swells, those heaving washes infused with their own melody, the sound shifting dreamily from blurred muted crunch, to ethereal drift, occasionally fusing the two into something darkly divine.
Vinyl version forthcoming, maybe later this month.
We're liking this Nordic notion of 'jazz fusion', all right. The heavy duty debut from the Hedvig Mollestad Trio comes to us from Norway's Rune Grammofon label, who specialize in such things - the 'death jazz' of Supersilent, for instance, and also the likes of Scorch Trio, Ultralyd, and Bushman's Revenge - the latter of whom even covered Motorhead on their latest disc. Well, not to be outdone, the Hedvig Mollestad Trio cover the Melvins, here! That ought to give you an idea of where they're coming from, jazz-wise.
These guys - actually, two gals and one guy, on electric guitar, bass and drums, respectively - are a skronky power trio who rip it up instrumentally, their tunes twisty, turny, and full of distortion and feedback. In other words, they rock, rollercoaster style, reminding us of AQ instrumental faves Stinking Lizaveta at times, and eponymous guitarist Hedvig Mollestad has a dash of Nels Cline in her playing.
Though the band members are all jazz-trained musicians, their brand of fusion is heavy on the grungy rock side of the equation, though they tone it down for the moody meanders of "Doom's Lair" and "The Valley" amongst a few mellower moments. Not to be counted among those moments, of course, is that Melvins cover (the chunky, rockin' "Blood Witch" from A Senile Animal), the only song here to feature vocals.
All in all, this is catchy stuff, as far as noisy noodling jazzrock goes! Recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubs, capturing a lot of raw energy and jaunty glee indeed. Available as a digipack cd, or on lp w/ download code.
We have to say, anything that we could mistake for Pink Floyd one moment, and Freedom Hawk the next, is pretty darn cool. And thus, this is! The vinyl-only debut release from a local San Francisco groop whose hypnotic, propulsive neo-kraut rhythms are wedded with muscular rock riffery in a kind of stoner rock meets retro prog blend that should appeal big time to folks into the likes of Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, White Hills, Lumerians, 3 Leafs, and Circle.
The guitars sprawl psychedelically, the drums (played by the former drummer of trance-inducing Bay Area black metal legends Weakling, also ex-Saros) lock into endless grooves, and upon occasion cleanly-sung melodic vocals soar up and over those mesmeric beats and churning, chiming guitars... There's also heck of analog synths put to traditional good use here, especially on the album's big finale, the nearly quarter hour "Fading Twilight", an epic track, both gorgeous and powerful, that you could play alongside your favorite, most spaced-out, pot-perfumed '70s album sides for sure. Hollow Mirrors really display their authentic love for real old school prog (a la Atomic Rooster, Eloy, Far East Family Band, ELP, Steve Hillage, and anything Roger Dean ever painted an album cover for, probably) on that one! And elsewhere too, although overall Hollow Mirrors are a modern, original band, not a retro exercise to the extent of say, an outfit like Astra or BigElf (cool as they are).
If we had to make any (hopefully constructive) criticism at all about these killer spacegothkrautstonerjams from Hollow Mirrors, well, maybe we'd like to hear a bit more dirt and grit in the production next time, it's almost a bit too clean, and could possibly be heavier too, considering the metallic pedigree of some of the folks involved (like the aforementioned drummer!). But that's not really a criticism, just an observation. They can do their thing their way and we're happy to hear it. 'Tis fine stuff we think a lot of you will like. A lot.
When someone just walks in off the street and hands you a 7" and tells you to "check it out, you'll probably dig it," odds are that's not always necessarily true. But a ways back, someone did just that, and handed over an Indian 7", and we were completely blown away. Super heavy and sludge-y stonery doom from a band who we had never heard of and by all rights should have been up there rocking along side bands like Pelican and Isis and Mastodon. So we played our 7"s to bits, just biding our time for a full length, cuz let's face it, super droney stretched out druggy stoner doom doesn't really have the space on a 7" to unwind and trudge through epic 10 minute plus songs the way that music was meant to. It's almost cruel keeping that sort of band confined to a 7". Like keeping a wooly mammoth in a tiny enclosure at the zoo. Before long those steel bars will be gone and there will be plenty of blood and gore and folks trampled under foot. And we can't imagine a more apt description of the finally unveiled Indian full length. The first track is a glacial Earth / SUNNO))) like drone, thick guitars squirming and slithering in a big tangly cloud of feedback, but that's only to ease you into the mighty ass kicking you're about to receive. Massive, lumbering, feedback soaked, groove flecked stoned and drugged out space sludge of the highest order. A bit like Eyehategod mixed with Kyuss, this is bile spewing evil stuff, maybe even a bit like Khanate if they decided to 'rock' and get some girls to like their band. Then there's the vocals, instead of a Kyuss-y raspy growl or an EHG sort of bellow / howl, the vocals here are a grim icy demonic screech, each track an unholy union, equal parts stoner sludge and frosty black metal invocation. Fucking awesome. Fans of the new breed of post rock / metal hybrid (Pelican, Isis, Tides, Conifer), and the sludge-y doom of bands like EHG, Khanate, Sleep, Electric Wizard, SUNNO))) as well as ALL things drone sludge shriek buzz and blur, might as well just get the rusty razor out right now and carve INDIAN right there on your scarred and tattooed forearm along side the rest of 'em! Killer crown-of-thorned-monkey cover art too!!
Debut full length from these French atmospheric doomlords who weave a gorgeous dreamlike doom from lumbering slo-mo heaviness, majestic gloom pop moodiness and classical bombast, heavy on the synth and mournful melody, sounding at times like a doom version of Alcest / Amesoeurs, that sort of wistful indie pop sound, but here rendered in swaths of soaring swirling atmospheric synths, delicate hushed pointilist pianos,
and crushing, classic old school style melodic doom metal a la My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. The sound is a deft balance between the chugging churning riffs, and the hazy dramatic synthy swirl, the vocals mostly growled and demonic, but occasionally cleanly crooned, hushed and emotional, and there are even horns, which add a haunting and stately elegance to the proceedings.
While this is definitely doom, and a somewhat classic strain at that, it's so melodic and so infused with a dour depressive moodiness, that it does seem to veer into distinctly gloom pop territory, which is not a bad thing at all, in fact it kind of transforms this into something much more interesting. The tracks almost orchestral and symphonic, the sound anguished and abject one minute, dark and dreamy the next, but always epic and dramatic and cinematic, like the soundtrack for some futuristic art film about outer space, the musical vibe evoking sweeping celestial vistas and the bleak blackened landscapes below.
Two new killer tracks from one of our favorite modern day kosmiche music crews, Jonas Reinhardt. Before we get to the music we got to say the vinyl itself is pretty fucking cool, both sides have etchings on them and side A is pressed as a 7" to be played at 45rpm, and side B is cut as a 10" to be played at 33rpm, but ON A 12". Ok, now that we got that out of the way we can also geek out on how great the music is.
If it's possible this might be the most intergalactic and spaced out Jonas Reinhardt offering yet, as the synths pulsate and glide with other dimensions on their mind. Channeling Klaus Schulze and Manuel Gottsching, in a spirit similar to other kosmisce explorers we love like Expo 70, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Emeralds. We dig that for how cosmic and baked these tracks sound, there is also a sense of song writing and structure within the grooves that really makes it a record you just want to flip over and over, dazed and blissed out by the these sweet sounds...
Import, limited to 500 copies.
The third volume in Kirby's four part Intrigue & Stuff lp series is another brilliant and baffling collection of sounds, one which manages to stay true to Kirby's trademark 'sound', which is to say a sort of warped and warbly, decayed and memory-faded, looped and layered mystery, while at the same time continuing to drag that sound into new and ever more fantastically confusing directions, which is what the Intrigue & Stuff seems to be for. An outlet for the various pieces that didn't quite fit into the woozy old timey vibe of the Caretaker, or the hauntological alchemy of Kirby's records proper.
But like the previous volumes, those elements still exist, they're just all twisted up and tangled up with a whole mess of new sounds. Just take the opener, "The Start Of Wars And The End Of Eras", which plays like the soundtrack to a planetarium show gone utterly haywire, it's glistening and kosmische and celestial, but it's also distorted and rhythmic, soaring and majestic, blurred and muddied and smeared into woozily warped shapes, slipping from angular and intense to washed out and sweetly melodic, occasionally it sounds like the organ player in a theater, albeit filtered through a ceiling high bank of malfunctioning effects, but it is pretty fantastic, swirling and heady and fractured, textural and tense and psychedelic.
The second track immediately changes tack, although some of the sounds are similar, it's a sort of muted whirl of melodies, peppered with a strange rhythmic squelch, and underpinned by whirling wind like hiss and hum, like a crumbling lo-fi Goblin / John Carpenter.
The flipside starts off with some James Ferraro style retro eighties style pop, all cheesy synths, and handclap rhythms, Casio grooves and swirling synths, but Kirby pulls it apart, the sounds seemingly transferred from a 10th generation VHS tape onto a 20th generation VHS tape, and played back on one of those VCR/TV combos, it's fantastically retro, and druggily warped and crumbling before our very ears.
That weird eighties vibe oozes into the next track, where Kirby ditches much of the buzz and crumble, and instead weaves an almost funky, eighties made for TV movie soundtrack groove, all electronic percussion, swoonsome synths and fuzzy basslines. Which leads to the final movement, a dreamy bit of new age drift, all prismatic shimmer and soft swelling chordal whir, laced with tinkling chiming melodies, and brief bits of rumble and crunch, dreamy and meditative, and just a little twisted and tweaked.
If you have the first two volumes, you're obviously gonna want this one too, and more than the others, this might be the one to appeal to fans of all things retro eighties synth: James Ferraro, Dylan Ettinger, Xander Harris, Gatekeeper, Innercity and the like, although this stuff is a fair bit more warped.
Now a visually-augmented dvd-r release, this music was originally released on vinyl via the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt (whose solo Kranky debut we reviewed here recently). Fictions is release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as far as many of us were concerned, to steal the show.
And those who did see the show, also got to witness the accompanying visuals, a gorgeous collection of films created by Teller-Craig's partner Sabrina Ratte, whose fantastical prismatic impressionism is the perfect visual accompaniment for Teller-Craig's futuristic kosmische. synthscapery. Let's revisit the music first, as the music here is the same as on the lp:
The three tracks on Fictions plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the first track, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the mix, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda.
The second track starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof!-like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl.
And Ratte's visuals, as mentioned above, could almost be described in the same way, the images and colors and moving shapes, are almost musical, flickering and slowly shifting, with rainbow solar flares, and vintage video game grids, mysterious shapes and flashing colors, it's like equal parts video game and fever dream, some of it looks like a James Ferraro album cover come to life, bold and bright colors and shapes, all retro VHS / late night cable psychedelia, a head spinning, mind melting feast for the (third?) eyes. Gorgeous, sonically AND visually.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, comes in a slim dvd style case, with full color art inside and out, as well as a printed clear plastic insert.
The name Thaniel Ion Lee might not be immediately familiar to most folks, but avid readers of the aQ New Arrivals list might know him as the man behind blackdrone / ambient blacknoize outfit Black Escutcheon, whose cd-r we reviewed (and sold out of in a flash) and who shared a split tape with aQ faves weirdo outsider black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement.
This latest missive, an outrageously limited (25 copies) and extravagantly hand made cd-r box collects a handful of material recorded over the last 3 years, and never released until now. And it seems that on these tracks, the blackness and noise are dialed back, leaving some lush layered dronemusic that will definitely appeal to the aQ dronelords (and droneladies), with its smoldering layered shimmers and buzzing SUNNO))) like glacial dirges, laced with bits of lazily strummed acoustic guitar, sweet soft swells of melody, swirling clouds of abstract effects, the sound slipping deftly from slowcore drift, to churning lowend heaviness, and from hazy spectral blur, to hushed almost shoegazey creep, often in the same song.
Folks who dug the blacker and noiser aspects of the two Blood Escutcheons, might still find much to dig here, it is still dark and droney and hauntingly atmospheric, but folks into dreamy dronemusic will be in heaven, although the last track, the nearly 16 minute "And You Will Know Him By His Deeds" does get grim and grisly and sonically sinister before blossoming into something much more glistening and celestial sounding.
LIMITED TO 25 COPIES!! Each one housed in a white cardboard reel to reel box, with a xeroxed insert and a white paper doily, each box hand numbered and titled, wrapped in twine.
The Clearing is the latest from the Chicago duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hanuum, now seemingly permanently expanded to a trio with Steven Hess on drums, and like past records, these guys effortlessly conjure up another series of haunting dronescapes and blackened ambience, opening with a creeping sprawl of funereal piano, wreathed by all manner of distant industrial clatter and metallic buzz, before finally transforming into a proper song, complete with clean vocals, loping drums, laid atop a wild squall of feedback and squealing guitars, all blurred into an undulating stretch of softly caustic mesmer, the result a sort of noise drenched slowcore, dramatic and intense, a little bit doomy, before finishing off with a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone.
"Augury In An Evaporating Tower" starts off all power electronics buzz, the sounds layered and shifting like some sort of deconstructed riff, which could have gone on forever as far as we're concerned, but instead the band slip into some serious buzzing and blasting blackness, the transition is fantastically abstract and creepy, but once they're in it, it's about as black metal as we've heard these guys, the black buzz rife with al manner of tangled melodies, the sound strangely muted and woozy, eventually giving way to a buzzing psychedelic second half, that sounds a bit like a more fracture blackened Barn Owl, moody and melancholy, before slipping right into "Corprolite", which begins with a gorgeous bit of decaying sound, a little Tim Hecker, a little Philip Jeck, warbly and crumbling, which is soon joined by some acoustic guitars, and some tribal drumming, until other guitars surface, adding heft and turning it into something resembling a Swans jam, albeit still minimal, instrumental, and wreathed in crumbling crackle.
The 17 minute title track finishes things off with a slow build epic, starting with some John Carpenter like pulses, overlaid by some heavier synth buzz, some spidery guitars, and lots of other layers gradually creeping into the picture, while way off in the background, vocals howl, drums pound, electronics hum and whir, the sound staying pretty abstract the whole time, but eventually building to a sort of wall of black buzz, before fading out in a squall of sine waves, throbbing synths, fractured electronics, and looped industrial noise. Seriously killer stuff. We're often skeptical when bands release so much stuff, but these guys never fail to deliver.
Packaged in super glossy jackets with some of the coolest cover photography we've seen. Includes a printed insert and a download card.
Here it is, the long awaited new album from blissed out shoegaze eighties retro pop master M83, aka Anthony Gonzalez, whose gorgeous records have long been HUGE faves around here, so we were pretty excited about this new one, even though we had already heard one track with just a wee bit too much saxophone, but once we started playing it in the store, we knew we'd probably end up digging it a lot, although the most mentioned comparisons we could come up with were bands like Thompson Twins, Peter Gabriel, and Men At Work!! So yeah, the eighties thing is in full effect, and the opening intro, with Zola Jesus, is a primo slice of M83 blissout for sure, all soaring synths, and swirling melodies, Zola Jesus' voice a perfect match for Gonzalez' Peter Gabriel like croon, and the lush eighties slow dance psychedelia he seems able to so effortlessly conjure up.
"Midnight City" is the aforementioned song, and listening to it now, the sax is not too bad, tucked away at the end and buried in the mix, and the opening is thick and distorted and crunchy, with thick Justice / Daft Punk like synths, over a strange, but crazy hooky chirping melody, the song slipping from hazy synthy slow jam verse to distorto synth pop blowout chorus, and yeah, there's a sax solo at the end, but all our favorite eighties jams had sax solos, so why shouldn't these? And while that track was an obvious choice for a single, cuz it sounds the most like classic M83, the rest of the record definitely leans more toward the Thompson Twins / Duran Duran / Howard Jones eighties radio pop side of the spectrum, which when done right, still sounds so good, and c'mon, this is M83, so for every bit of total retro pop, is a blast of superdistorted in-the-red almost witch housey synth buzz or hazy ethereal droned out shimmerscape.
We really can't imagine anyone who LOVED M83 before to hate this, but you really have to dig the sound of the eighties, and we mean the REAL sound, not the ironic lysergic reinterpretation of the eighties, we mean tracks that sound like you might have danced to them at your eighth grade prom, or blasted it in your mom's car on the way to the mall. That all said, Gonzalez has a knack for pop songs, and he kills it here, hooks galore, the sound soaring and epic and shoegazey one second, cheesy and synthy the next, but always crazy catchy, every single track sounding like the inspiring, rabble-rousing score to the ultimate final montage in some classic eighties movie about the outsider finally getting the girl or winning the big game. We could all use a little bit of that sort of inspirational dream pop in our lives anyway, right?
A brand new 7" single from the infamous Charles Manson, to commemorate his 77th birthday on 11/11/11, recorded surreptitiously in his prison cell, on a smuggled in hand held recorder... a fascinating document, musical and otherwise of a man many consider a madman, but who some others consider wrongly imprisoned. Musically, Manson has a long history, most famously as a friend of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and of course many have postulated that it was his frustration with his musical career that may have initiated the events that led to his incarceration.
This single is two sides of urgent, rambling, ramshackle folk, not that far removed from his other recordings, but it's definitely a glimpse into the soul of a man who has spent most of his life in prison. There aren't so many proper 'songs' here, it's more a flowing, sort of freeform folk ramble, with Manson, rambling sung spoken lyrics one second, crooning the next, slipping into crazed rants or maniacal laughter, using different voices, speaking in tongues, but for all the bits of weirdness, there's some seriously good stuff here, the opening of the B side features some super pretty guitar, and Manson's voice when it comes in, while rough and ragged, is still emotional and powerful. The majority of the record is stripped down, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, and Manson just wandering vocally, it's pretty compelling for sure, and anyone who has the other Manson records is gonna want this too.
It comes gorgeously packaged in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve, inside a printed two side page of liner notes, one side, a defense of Manson, the other a wild ramble signed Horse Fly, who we presume is Manson himself.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!
So far, the only thing we've reviewed on the awesome Ormolycka label, run by aQ pal Jason, was the cassette version of Liturgy's Renihilation, the one that featured a bad ass Liturgy jungle remix courtesy of our very own Andee. But we do carry everything else on the label, we just get such limited copies, they never make it onto the list, tapes by Pistol Disko, Anthro Rex, Synt.Tofs, Shams, M Ax Noi Mach, Modern Witch, Dubknowdub, GDFX, Pushups, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, A Magic Whistle, Juiceboxx, Frak, Narwhalz, Death Grips, Pictureplane, Kalambya Sisters and more! Phew. Ormolycka has also just started doing 7"s, the first two of which we have in stock, and we've go just enough to list!
Although we've never reviewed anything by Mincemeat Or Tenspeed, some aQ folks have been fans for a while, in fact he played a while back at a secret brunch show in a cave right by the water. We have no idea who Dan Friel is, but this is some sort of collaboration, hence the tongue twisty moniker.
Not sure what we were expecting but it sure wasn't this, the A side starts out all awesomely gristly rhythmic buzz, wrapped in distorted keening melodies, sounding a bit like Amps For Christ or Bastard Noise, all sorts of warped squiggles, and stuttery glitched out rhythms, surprisingly melodic, almost poppy in its own way, like some fractured blast of rhythmic soft noise bliss out.
And if the A side is -almost- poppy, then the B side is full on pop, sounding a bit like some super catchy chunk of indie rock, rendered in glitched out analog buzz, a looped sort of hooky lo-fi electro that is just about the catchiest shit we've heard in ages. Awesome.
Limited too, and pressed on swank milky blue vinyl!
Surveys show that, like, 25 percent of Icelanders believe in elves. And we're pretty sure the other 75 percent fervently believe in post-rock. Actually, there's probably a lot of overlap there... Here's the first album from Miri, "four guys from the remote east fjords of Iceland" who play a mostly instrumental form of indie pop post-rock, with a knack for pretty melodies amidst their moody mathiness. What we weren't expecting - and what immediately grabbed us - was how the very first track is chock full of dubby attacks, everything suddenly all awesomely echo-effected out. Love that!!
Other interesting production twists exist throughout the album, courtesy of Icelandic electronica artist Curver, who similarly also added a lot of cool glitch to a disc we liked long long ago by metalcore act Minus. And in addition to the electronic studio trickery of Curver, this is graced by guest musicians, among 'em members of Mum and Benni Hemm Hemm, who expand the group's instrumentation to include harmonica, vibraphone, flute, and marimba. Also, we noticed Brooklyn's Scotty Hard (of WordSound fame) namechecked in the credits, we don't know what he had to do with this exactly (since we're not fluent in Icelandic) but were were surprised to see him there, or maybe not, what with that aforementioned dubbiness!!
Sometimes noisy yet sunshiney, mildly mathy yet melodic, often calming but also rhythmically compelling (do Icelandic elves dance to stuff like this?), Miri's Okkar is definitely a contender for post-rock record of the month. Heck, let's declare it post-rock album of the winter (it's not even winter yet, but they're from Iceland so it's appropriate... plus this will keep us warm then, with its bright, mesmeric grooves).
