THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
What is it with Moon Duo (and Wooden Shjips) and holidays? Between the two bands, it seems like they've done a special release for most holidays there are. We're holding out for the Groundhog Day single or the Columbus Day cassette. Anyway, while we usually write these sprawling gushing epics about Moon Duo records, we're guessing this one probably doesn't need all that much. It is indeed a special holiday release, in this case, Halloween, even though we didn't receive our copies until well after . It's limited to 1000 copies, AND it's already sold out and out of print at the label, which means these copies we have are the last ones we'll ever be able to get, and while we got a BUNCH, we're guessing they'll still disappear pretty dang quick, especially considering the fact that this might just be our favorite Moon Duo record yet.
The record opens with the sound of footsteps, and a creaking door, scaaary, then the drums come in, the guitars follow, and the song unfolds in druggy organ driven dronerock style, definitely heavy on the Spacemen 3, the guitars dripping with flanger and warm distortion, the vocals laid back and weary, and wreathed in echo, the melody and hook, maybe the catchiest yet, and then the vocals drop out, and that's it for singing, the whole rest of the record is all instrumental. But that opener continues on, the guitars piled up, layer after layer, all tangled up in warm psychedelic swirls, while the rhythm pounds away, and the organ whirs underneath. "Causing A Rainbow" is short and poppy, the guitar muted but distorted and super crunchy, the organ laying down a hazy high end drone underneath, fuzzy and sunshiney, but it's the 10+ minute "Sickener" that might be our favorite, starting out super poppy, softly chugging guitars over billowy organ chords, and chiming soft focus melodies, total krautrock style rhythmic blissout, droney and hypnotic, super minimal and mesmerizing, it's not until about 4 minutes in that anything changes, when a thick, blown out buzz drenched guitar swoops in, and proceeds to grind away over that motorik groove underneath, adding a blurred fuzz guitar gauze over the whole track, that guitar getting wilder and wilder, noisier and more chaotic, eventually erupting into full on chaotic psych shred, the drum machine / organ groove never wavering, even at ten minutes that track is WAY too short. Best MD jam EVER. Finally the record finishes off with the two and a half minute coda "Circle Of Evocation Pt. 2", which is nothing but the processed sound of what seems to be running water, or the sounds of engines or both, blurred into a hazy whir, a strange finish, to a strange, but pretty goddamn great records. And again, this is LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one numbered, these are the last copies there are, so once we run out, it's gone for good.
Arguably director Terence Malick's best film, Days of Heaven from 1978, is an incredibly rich and atmospheric period piece starring Richard Gere, Brook Adams, Sam Shepard and the always amazing '70s cult child actress, Linda Manz (Out of The Blue, The Wanderers). Like the dusty, brooding, moodiness of a Faulkner novel, the story centers on the complicated triad relationship of a young migrating farmhand couple posing as brother and sister (Bill and Abby played by Gere and Adams) and the rich dying farmer (Shepard) they work for who has taken a fancy to Abby. Seeking opportunity, Bill convinces Abby to marry the farmer to reap the benefits of the dying man's will, but not everything goes as planned...
It is said that Malick abandoned his script during the middle of filming to force the actors to "seek out the plot" on their own, through their characters. This gives the film a dreamy circuitous quality that unfolds slowly but naturally. Though the incredible cinematography of the vast Texas prairie and the period atmospherics are engaging enough to watch without the need to be driven by a central storyline. Truly a cinematic masterpiece, it took Malick 20 years before he could make another film.
One of the first big scores of his Hollywood period, Ennio Morricone, delivers a beautiful cinematic score largely based on Saint-Saen's Aquarium sequence from The Carnival of The Animals (the go-to classical piece to depict an alluring, but ominous wonderment), which is also included here. Largely parlor music pieces of haunting piano, harpsichords and strings that eventually swell into larger orchestrations as the drama unfolds: devastation of crops by swarming locusts, a barn fire, a young couple's desperation to either speed up their plans or lose their relationship forever. Also features pieces by Leo Kottke and Doug Kershaw as well as an excerpt from Linda Manz's keen-eyed narration.
This is a special 2 disc set that features the full soundtrack on disc one and the various film cues used in the picture on disc 2. Highly Recommended!
We recently reviewed The Unspoken Hymns, an odds and collection from Aussie ultra-mega-doooooomlords Mournful Congregation, and somehow, as we mentioned in that review, it was the very first record from MC we had ever listed (excepting their 4 way split with Loss, Orthodox and Otesanek, which weirdly enough just got reissued and is relisted elsewhere on this week's list!). Here we are a few weeks later, and we've got a brand new full length from MC, their fourth full length since 1994, and it's a sprawling crushing collection of slo-mo funereal doomdirge miserablism, which manages to sound modern, but also straight out of the nineties, reminding us in equal parts of diSEMBOWELMENT, Thergothon, Esoteric, Winter, Skepticism and the like, but there's a huge melodic component, these songs are harrowing, and emotional, darkly melancholic, in some ways it almost sounds like My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost at 16rpm, a mournful depressive dirge, the vocals a rumbling inhuman demonic bellow / gurgle, over plodding glacial pound, and long droned out riffage, all wrapped in spidery minor key melodic leads. It's dark and depressive, but also majestic and epic, this is not the sort of abject sludge creep of Bunkur and Moss and the rest, the sound of Mournful Congregation is much more beholden to classic doom, atmospheric and lush, rife with clean chant like vocal, swirling reverbed ambience, clean guitars, stretches of almost liturgical sounding loveliness, giving way to skull caving crush, only to slip right back into another sprawl of strangely blackened dronefolk.
The 12 minute "The Bitter Veils Of Solemnity" is all acoustic, spare drums, steel string almost-Appalachia, hushed whispered reverbed vox, gorgeously moody and mysterious, acting as a sort of intro to the insanely epic closing title track, which clocks in at a whopping 33 minutes, and is essentially a slo-mo prog doom epic, slipping from doomic churn, to swirling almost psychedelia, to classic metal chug and back again.
Definitely recommended for fans of ANY of the aforementioned bands, as well as anyone into epic slo-mo melodic heaviness, which we would imagine might just be a whole lot of you...
The first record we've reviewed from local label Father/Daughter (which also has another bass of operations in Miami) comes in the form of this split between Ohio/Boston based combo Mutual Benefit and Brooklyn combo Holy Spirits, who crossed paths on tour earlier this year and decided that sharing a record would be the logical next step.
Mutual Benefit offer up a sweetly melodic indie pop, and open up with a dreamy bit of thumb piano and handclap driven dreaminess, with lush vocals draped over a warm skeletal instrumental bed. The rest of MB's tracks are equally swoonsome, lush distorted guitar shimmer, wrapped around chiming melodies and softly reverbed vocals, simple acoustic guitar strum and squiggly sci-fi electronics, tinkling chimes, and music box like lullabies, whirring warbly organs and washed out sun dappled thrum a sort of hushed shimmery dream poppy indie folk, with some lilting sadboy vox and a warm layered production.
Holy Spirits are a good match, not nearly so twee, instead a bit darker and more contemplative, shuffling minimal percussion, lush steel string guitar, woozy weary vocals, a sort of Appalachian folk pop, with a lush orchestral vibe, and some cool strange percussion, not to mention some almost choral harmonies, and some thumb piano as well!
Our favorite HS track might have to be the lush and lovely "Handmade Sun", with its minimal melodic swells, spidery guitars, hushed almost whispered vox, and then a little bit of shoegazey bombast, only to slip right back into that whispery drift, laced with subtle electronics, slipping easily from delicate fluttery folk to a crashing almost chaotic climax, before a dreamy and delicate wind down. So nice.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, pressed on swirled cream vinyl, and includes a digital download.
Latest blast of black metal murk from this French duo, whose grim brand of depressive bedroom black metal has been getting lots of play around here, the sound muddy and muted and washed out, lo-fi for sure, but lush in its low fidelity, the long stretches of blasting buzz, seeming to melt into a more droned out buzz, the tempos constantly shifting, with a second guitar adding some woozy post rocky melodies, not to mention some tripped out synths that add a folky vibe, that sounds almost Native American at times, opener "Face Of Extinction" is the perfect example, it's all grim buzz, but the sounds are sort of soft focus, blurred a bit, instead of being fierce and frenzied, it sounds warped and droney and sort of druggily dreamy, there's some gnarled Deathspell style riffery going on, and its easy to hear that with a huge production, these guys could sound epic, but this murkier sound suits them, the lurching lumbering groove wreathed in strange atonal guitar melodies, and underpinned by bursts of double kick drumming, and then when that synth swoops in, it's weirdly dramatic and folky, and at last here almost Native American sounding.
The sound on the rest of the record is pretty varied, with lots of more traditional blackness, for sure, but also plenty of swooping backwards effects, warbly droned out guitarscapes, that sound like Fear Falls Burning or some other experimental guitarscaper, there are stretches of doomic plod, rife with twisted melodies and bursts of distorted crunch, plenty of loping post rockisms, some D-beat pound (coupled weirdly with monklike chanting), and plenty of noise drenched midtempo lo-fi blackness, culminating in the strange anguished abstract atmospheric blackdoom of the closer.
Been a while (8 years?) since we've heard from Nettle, or DJ /Rupture for that matter. Nettle is the live band project of DJ /Rupture, the amazing mix master (and self-described "border-crossing bass visionary") responsible for, as we put it, "plunderphonic dancehall turntable mashups" on his various rad mixes (2001's Gold Teeth Thief being THE classic). We know he's got a show on WFMU, still does music and mixes, but we didn't know that his band Nettle was still active, or rather that it had been reactivated. So this new Nettle album is unexpected, but nevertheless awesome.
El Resplandor is a concept album, the quite cool concept pretty much revealed in its subtitle: The Shining In Dubai. Yes, we're in imaginary soundtrack territory here - what if, Stephen King's The Shining were set in an abandoned luxury hotel in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, on the Persian Gulf? Musically, this turns out to be an excellent idea... you keep the spooky psychological horror stuff (family moves into isolated empty hotel, things get weird, dad loses his shit, etc.) and add an ethnic Middle Eastern music element as well.
DJ /Rupture, credited with "electricity, mudd", works with an ensemble of musicians, including guitarist Andy from The Ex. So there's guitar, cello (x2), violin, and guembri (an African 3-stringed skin-covered lute) - along with lovely, wordless female vocals, something that's always perfectly suspense soundtrack worthy!
While in the past, this outfit sounded something like a beat-heavy, uber-distorted Muslimgauze, with hiphop elements even, El Resplandor is more restrained, atmospheric, and eerily evocative, in keeping with the concept. There's much somber shimmer and string pluck, and of course tape manipulation and electronic glitchery, with DJ /Rupture applying his mixing/editing skills to what may have been improvised solos from the various instrumentalists - we're not sure of the compositional method, but it certainly involves some measure of computer processing. The eleven varied tracks all individually contribute to the haunted, alienated, edge-of-the-desert vibe of The Shining in Dubai idea... From the stately exotic dance of "Espina" to the buzz, crackle and chaos of "Simoom (Wasp Wind)", this is a beautiful and dramatic disc. One that makes for a good late night listen, excepting the presence of that "Simoom" track, where thing get a bit... disturbed... that might wake you up from your reveries!
The digipack packaging features scene-setting liner notes by none other than imaginative architectural essayist Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG fame (great blog, check it out if you haven't before) and equally appropriate photographs by Lamya Gargash. Quite recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We first heard the New Lines on a split 7" with Still Corners, who went on to put out a album on Sub Pop, which we also reviewed recently. But when we reviewed that split 7", we went absolutely apeshit for the New Lines track, and even now still listen to that jam all the time, and we wondered why it was Still Corners who ended up in Sub Pop, cuz as much as we dug Still Corners, it was these guys we were obsessing over. An obsession that shows no signs of letting up, especially now that we have a whole new full length.
And like that track on the 7" the band are masters of retro pop, fuzzy analog synths, swirling organs, chiming melodies, lush harmony vocals, the production totally old fashioned but fantastically lush and expansive, we hear the Beach Boys, Stereolab, the Zombies, Elephant 6, the High Llamas, the Rollo Treadway (look it up on the aQ site, you won't be sorry), they manage to sound both like a modern throwback, and like an genuine article from some lost psychedelic sixties, the sounds lilting and lovely, a little bit druggy and dark, definitely psychedelic. The opener is some sweetly dreamy fuzz pop, and after a splatter of wild drumming, the second track is all surfy twang and Beach Boys harmonies, as is the next track, although that one is rife with swirling electronics and hazy reverby shimmer, if there was still a Duophonic label, these guys would be right at home.
The band mix their fuzzy futuristic retro pop with strange little sonic interludes, be it electronic skitter, or mad scientist bleeps and bloops, or strange electronic / drum jams, but the cool thing is those incidental pieces, sort of bleed right into the songs proper, with even the prettiest jangliest track rife with all manner of mysterious buzz, and constantly shifting layers, it's hard to know what else to say about these guys, other than we're crazy into this record, and the track from that split 7" of course, and we're just wondering how long it takes the rest of the world to catch on. Check out the sound samples, we're imaging that will be all it takes. Fans of ANY of the above mentioned bands, and anyone into dreamy retro pop, and Pet Sounds / Smile worthy pop deconstruction/experimentation, these guys just might be your new favorite band.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, includes a digital download as well. Already sold out at the label, so these may be the last copies we can get unless they repress. But while they last, all of the copies we got come with a special cd-r mix the band put together JUST for aQuarius, which features a killer mix of the band's favorite jams, including some seventies British folk, Tropicalia, Japanese psychedelia, dream pop, and more, including a handful of stuff we'd never heard! No info, no track list, just a fantastically varied hodgepodge of killer jams.
This is record number two from NYC electro synth-wave downer poppers Nihiti, who as we mentioned in our review of their first record, are infamous for their tripped out light heavy live shows, and who traffic in a sound equal parts witch house, big beat electronica and home brewed electronic experimentalism, which is what we were expecting from this new ep, but in fact, the band have offered up something totally different, and in fact, totally acoustic. No electronics, no beats, no glitches or buzzes, instead, it's all acoustic guitars, strings, even trombones, and vocals, real songs, darkly folky and at times sort of psychedelic, definitely poppy, and in a way, they almost sound like the more song based tracks from the first Nihiti record, arranged for acoustic guitar and violin. Almost.
So fans of that first records, it's not a lock that this will be your cup of tea too, but it is pretty great, folky, but still a bit gloomy, the vocals are fantastic, lush intricate harmonies, slipping from croon to falsetto and back again, dark and dramatic, moody and moving, a little seventies British acid folk, a little bit modern psych folk, the strings soar and sing, adding tension and drama, the vocals and guitar often playing off each other, the B side gets a little bit waltzy for a track, the violin so mournful and melancholy, sounding very gypsy-ish, but it quickly returns to something more psychedelic strum. Cool stuff and a nice surprise for sure. Guardedly recommended for fans of the first record, but heck, we dug that and we're digging this too.
If you've been reading this week's New Arrivals list in alphabetical order, you've already come across many interesting items, lots of cool stuff to sate your drone jones, get your indie pop fix, etc., right?? But, you might also want sumthin' that just simply kicks out the jams, in a badass heavy rock n' roll / metal kind of way. Of course you do. Like, the list before last's Danava for instance, or Children Of Doom not long before that. This time 'round, a record we discovered recently and immediately knew we just HAD to order in and review, that's just the thing for all you denim clad longhaired Satan worshipping beer swillers (or at least for your INNER denim clad longhaired Satan worshipping beer swiller, as the case may be).
Mortui Vivos Docent is the debut from Swedish stoner/doom outfit Obrero (and as an aside, we're beginning to wonder if the international community is gonna have to consider placing musical export restrictions on Sweden, as it's unfair to other countries how many amazing bands they produce, though of course we're not complaining!!!).
It offers up eight awesome trax of ripping, rollicking riffage, doomed-out atmospheres, and fists-clenched vox. The singer's ballsy, rough wail is one major component of this band's appeal, he's got a shrill edge that, in combination with the music, makes us think of Trouble (the band) some of the time, maybe Metal Church too. Meanwhile, the riffs are up there with those on the first Witch album, which we think you know we like a lot. So, yeah, Sabbath inspired sonics for sure, also early Judas Priest is probably an influence. To mention some of them Swedish bands who this is at least as cultishly cool as, well, imagine a combo of Graveyard and Grand Magus, perhaps. But with more umlautish umph even than that. Americans Ogre could be another comparison, as would Pharaoh Overlord with their recent Out Of Darkness lp.
This is one of those albums wherein every component moment contributes to the baddassitude of the whole, and will have you throwing the horns the whole time it's on. We're finding it hard to pick the tracks to mention in particular 'cause we're digging 'em ALL, but definitely "Son Of Tutankhamun" is an utter epic rockin' classic, and we're partial to the good time groove and stoner stomp of "Santovit". Reverend Bizarre fans will be happy with the hammering metal of "Charles The Hammer". And how can you not love a song, "Exterminate", that's about Daleks!?!? (And comes to a rather transcendent, musically uplifting conclusion, too).
Basically, one of the best heavy metal bands writing actual rock n' roll songs we're heard in a long while... Damn catchy, weird in a cool geeky way (heck they're into Dr. Who), with plenty of proggy light and shade amidst the out 'n' out headbanging material, of which there's plenty. Probably not for everybody, but what on our list is? If this is something you "get" though, you'll be glad you got it!!
This long out of print lp (originally released on vinyl via Yik Yak, then reissued on cd by Narnack) is finally available again on wax. 3 is one of the last of the early OCS records, before the OCS became Thee Oh Sees, and this one man bedroom project became a proper band, here's our original (slightly altered) review from WAY back in 2005, long before most of the rest of the world had gone crazy for Thee Oh Sees...
Ah, the sweeter side of John Dwyer. It's always been a struggle for Dwyer, between his sweat soaked spazz rock, club smashing, instrument battering side (Landed, Pink And Brown, Coachwhips, etc.) and his lonely boy, mix tape, bedroom, acoustic and sensitive side (OCS). Well by the time 3 was originally released, Dwyer's garage rock combo the Coachwhips had called it quits, making OCS Dwyer's main focus and setting the stage for the transition from OCS to Oh Sees. Dr. Jeckel has regained control and banished Mr Hyde to wait patiently in the background....
Like the first OCS record, released on Andee's tUMULt label (And still available!), this is a fantastic collection of beautifully ramshackle, intimate and home recorded lo-fi indie bedroom folk. However, unlike the tUMULt release, which included a second disc that was a clattery, crunchy, crashing NOISE record, the sound here steers clear of that sort of noisiness, and is chock full of simple strummed guitars, echoey percussiony, big empty room rhythmic clatter, distant distorted melancholy melodies, haunting reverby electric guitar, quavery falsetto vocals, drowsily affected jangle shuffling snare drums and hazy atmospheres... all occasionally peppered with swooping stuttering psych rock space effects, chirping birds, and creaking rattling soundmakers of all kinds. For fans of Sentridoh, Shrimper and all things 4-track, lo-fi, jangly, shuffley and strummy! Fans of Thee Oh Sees who missed out on the early years, would do well to check this out, and see where it all started...
Copies from copies of copies upon copies to copies through copies on copies of more copies. Daniel Lopatin was but a babe in the early '80s - the global time frame which stands central to his Oneohtrix Point Never project, where Russian TV advertisements, faded slow-jam hits, and forgotten futures all get misinterpreted, rewired, and misremembered through an android dream. Much of his past work revolved around the step sequencing and ambient swoosh that filtered through the kosmische aesthetic of Conrad Schnitzler with plenty of sci-fi sound design moments thrown in for good measure amidst the angular trajectories of his obtuse electronica. Where Lopatin had been instrumental in bringing this retrogarde aesthetic to a broader audience, he's dropped much of the compositional framework that went into albums like Zones Without People and Betrayed In The Octagon. Some of the swelling Vangelis synth pads reappear on Replica, but this album has much more in common with a plunderphonia aesthetic, with his 'ghost vocal' samples getting caught in an inexplicable feedback loop as a self-perpetuating syntax error within a Cray supercomputer which got hung up trying to come to terms with the audio-visual data from bad VHS transfers from old episodes of Max Headroom. Some of Lopatin's sounds originated from a series of compilations of late night TV commercials from the '80s, with the saccharine strings, flutes, and pianos cycling in elliptical patterns that scrub backwards and forwards. On "Sleep Dealer" in particular, these loops snap with a hard-disc rigidity more in common with the Oval disc-skipping mantras on Diskont 94 or the winking electronica of The Books. "Submersible" locks onto a middle-eastern rhythm, conjuring the ghost of Muslimgauze in an appropriation of an appropriation. For as much hype as this record has received, Replica is a very abstract and deliberately confusing proposition for OPN, one which we have been digging quite a bit. Killer cover art to boot!
The good news, is that this disc will be absolute heaven (or hell if you prefer) for the doom obsessed, for those who NEED utter and extreme heaviness, who thrive on massive walls of sludge, of creeping crumbling downtuned riffage, of skull splitting rib cage rattling drum pound. And the fact that this disc contains exclusive tracks from four of THEE heaviest and THEE doomiest bands around. The bad news though, is that somehow, this disc is already sold out at the label, so this could very well be the last we see of Four Burials. We did get a bunch of these, but since so many of the aQ faithful are of the doomier persuasion, odds are these will disappear in no time.
So most doomlords will see the above names and that's all it'll take, four exclusive tracks, LONG ones, from Loss, Orthodox, Mournful Congregation and Otesanek. For avid readers of the aQ list, you too are probably familiar with 2 or 3 of those. But just in case, we'll give a quick rundown of the bands / tracks that make up the Four Burials here...
Otesanek is up first. Last heard from splitting a disc with Japan's Coffins. They are definitely doomy, obviously, but might also be the heaviest of the bunch, a sort of Eyehategod meets Moss thing going on, and one of the few bands this slooooooow, to also fuck things up big time. Super strange arrangements, ultra dynamic, lots of weird starts and stops, angular riffs, crazy vocals (both male and female, both super intense and harsh). Definitely for fans of Khanate and Bunkur and all that sort of ultradoomdirge, but weirder and more fucked up. Definitely dying to hear more from these guys.
Next up is Loss, whose approach to doom is much more classic and melodic, beginning with some unnerving samples, woven into a spare doomy plod, the band slip into some seriously melodic post rock, all clean guitar and sparse drumming, eventually morphing into a sound majestic and massive, a bit like old My Dying Bride, impossibly loooow vocals, super mournful melodies, very dramatic and miserable. The song weaves back and forth between that classic doom-ic crush and the melancholy loping post rock, eventually somehow fusing the two.
Then comes longtime faves Orthodox, from Spain, whose sound, especially here, is way more spacious and spare, very minimal. with long stretches that are practically inaudible over the daily din of the store (this is headphone doom for sure!). Chanting, monk-like and somber, clean guitars drifting and shimmering, simple stripped down drumming, some wailing dramatic vocals, the sound an abstract mysterious slowcore that seems to get more and more strangely psychedelic, without ever getting overtly heavy. Really strange, but fans of Orthodox will already be well used to their, umm... un-Orthodox approach to all things doom.
Last up, legendary purveyors of true doom, Australia's Mournful Congregation, whose sound is sad and sorrowful, melancholy and miserable, a gorgeously epic lugubrious crawl, super melodic, but totally washed out and painted in sweeping shades of black and grey. Think Skepticism, Thergothon, Esoteric, Asunder, the sort of dark, slow motion, soul stirring creep we could listen to forever.
We made last year's Old Pride, from post screamo heavies Pianos Become The Teeth our Record Of The Week when it came out, as it pushed all our buttons: the furious chaotic, post hardcore of screamo, the soaring epic emotion and about-to-crack vocal-ed intensity of emo, and the brooding slow build intensity of post rock. And on this most recent record, the band continue to hone this hybrid, pushing all of those elements further and further, crafting something this time around that dials back the chaotic punkish intensity just a bit, and focuses more on the expansive majestic side of their sound, pushing them in a direction more along the lines of Explosions In The Sky, the sort of sound, that sans vocals, would be the perfect music for some super moving moment in a film or a TV show, when everything comes crashing down, and the main character is walking dejectedly in the rain, head hung low, contemplating just what to do next, overwhelmed by life. This is the sort of 'punk rock' we grew up on, intense and emotional and moving, the sort of stuff you'd put on that cathartic crush / break up mixtape, and blast in your car, to either get the guts to talk to that crush, or to try desperately to forget about your broken heart. The power of punk rock here recast as something more lush and layered, the songs intricate and carefully crafted, but without losing that intense drama, or that extreme emotion, and while the screamo/punk elements may be dialed back, they're still present, and are exactly what gives this stuff it's power, the guitars chiming and ringing out one second, buzzing and grinding the next, the drums dense and wild and heavy hitting, the songs brooding and building into churning psychedelic squalls, the anguished super emotional vocals, just pushing it over the top. It sounds cliched, but they really don't make music like this anymore, or more specifically, they probably actually do, it's just nearly as amazing as this. Definitely a new favorite from an old favorite, and another one of those records that easily could have been another Record Of The Week, just like the first one.
Another super limited, and super lovingly packaged Record Store Day release from our pals at Temporary Residence, this one for Black Friday, and the second part of a set, the first half of which was released on Record Store Day proper earlier this year.
The A side is classic Pinback, that bass driven loping pop that sounds like no one else. Super melodic and lush, there seems to be strings too, which give parts of the track a subtle E.L.O. vibe, catchy and darkly melodic, surprisingly dramatic and intense near the end, and as always the vocals sound AMAZING. The B side like one of the tracks on the first volume, sounds a lot like some sort of Heavy Vegetable / Pinback hybrid, the phrasing and complexity of the vocals is the HV element, that chiming melodic bass and dreamy melodies, the Pinback. Another killer song, and one that like the A side, we find digging almost more than anything off the last record proper.
Stick around 'til the very end too, there's a strange secret track, a glitchy high pitched buzz, brief, but very mysterious, could be some sort of secret code, related to the weird cryptic conspiracy artwork.
And like Pt. A, the packaging is super swank, a printed paper bag designed to look like a evidence bag, sealed shut with special red Record Store Day tape, each one stamped and dated. Inside there's a full color sleeve with some super haunting images of a forlorn house and some strange sort of machine, the inside printed to look like some mysterious redacted governmental document, and also included is a little insert with what appears to be a transcription of some overheard conversation. So cool!
VERY LIMITED!! We have a bunch of these, but since it was a special Black Friday / Record Store Day release, these will probably sell out quick.
As the witch house genre falls out of favor, bands that were part of the first wave (and second, and third�), seem to be reinventing themselves, often without changing their sound all that much, just rebranding it as something less flavor-of-the-month, but witch housers Pink Playground have definitely pushed past the strictures of witch house, and thankfully dragged much of what we loved about that stuff with them, and fashioned it into a sort of ethereal shoegaze dream pop, with skittery skeletal beats, angelic female vox, and lots of swirling synths, and billowy clouds of blurred melody, but they've also added some buzz and crunch, channeling classing noise pop shoegazers like Jesus And Mary Chain, as well as nineties outfits like the Swirlies, their jams delicately balanced between the sweet and dreamy, and the blown out and psychedelic. After a brief intro, that is definitely witch housey to these ears, the band launch into "Ten", that sounds like M83 if they were a bedroom dram pop band recording for Slumberland, the sound softly fuzzy and jangly, the sweet simple pop smothered in warm layers of buzz and thick tangles of melody, but as the track progresses the noise gets cranked up until the band are spitting out a serious din, bit even then, it's still impossibly sweet and poppy, which is pretty much how the whole rest of the record plays out, fuzzy, dreamy shoegaze noisepop, that should have fans of all things buzz and jangle, Slumberland and Spin Art, My Bloody Valentine and A Sunny Day In Glasgow, in buzzpop dream jangle heaven.
Full length number two from these Bellingham Washington psychedelic spacekraut hypno rockers, and as we mentioned in our review of their first cd-r, PRND features one of the members of late great weirdo ramshackle doom blues outfit The Reeks And The Wrecks, and while some of that ramshackle blues vibe does find its way into the new band, the sound is much more low fidelity, still loose and improvised sounding, but darker and more driving, rhythmic and spacey and droned out, and more along the lines of other modern krautrock revivalists like the Moon Duo.
In that same framework of slow burning extended jams, with wild squalls of blown out guitars, motorik skeletal rhythms, and long stretches of layered ambience, PRND make that sound even more abstract and tripped out, letting the guitars buzz and rumble and howl, often blurred into extended smears of almost SUNNO))) like glacial dirgery, but just as often, they dial back the buzz, and let the sounds shimmer and skitter and creep. Just take the sprawling opening track, which begins with a long stretch of blurred riffage, and woozy spidery melodies, a sort of slo-mo almost Barn Owl sounding twangscape, haunting and cinematic, the guitars in-the-red, but muted and shaped into dark swells, the sound eventually getting louder and louder until the guitar sounds seem to crumble, and the meters peg, and that blown out distortion becomes like another instrument, pulsing and throbbing, while the band weaves a dreamy psychedelic swirl underneath. It's not until about 7 minutes in that the drums first show up, and like the first record, the rhythm is some rinkydink Casio keyboard preset (or at least sounds like it) and is also super distorted, locked into a shuffling looping groove, that the band then wrap in wild squalls of heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind style soaring swirling guitar shreddery, loping and hypnotic and sorta heavy, which is sort of how we pictured the whole rest of the track to go, but then band switches gears again, shedding the wall of guitars, and leaving just that skittery rhythm, some wheezing keyboards, and little melodic fragments, and bits of twang and buzz, drifting in the surrounding space. There are strange reverbed sonar like chirps, moaning chordal hum, the song creeps and slithers dreamily before finally fading out.
And so goes the rest of the record, each of the tracks a dreamily propulsive skeletal rhythm, locked and looped, the band unfurling warm tangles of muted melody, and lush layers of buzz and hum, sometimes loping and meandering, other times churning and almost doomy, sounding glimmering and crystalline one second, murky and dirgey the next, always spacey and psychedelic, finally finishing off with a nearly ten minute abstract space jam, that is all sputtering rhythms, echo drenched organ stabs, stunted fragmented riffs, super abstract and almost ambient, and very very dubby. Killer stuff for sure. And like the first cd-r, absolutely recommended.
SUPER LIMITED, each one hand numbered, and gorgeously hand painted.
- MPEG stream: 1
- MPEG stream: 2
When I found out we were getting this record, I (Allan) just about flipped. Psychomania!? THE Psychomania?!? The soundtrack -- never before released, as it turns out -- to the creepy British zombie biker horror flick that has haunted my nightmares for years and years, ever since I saw it on TV, unsupervised by my parents I have to assume, when I was a little kid in the early '70s! Actually for a long time growing up I never knew it was an actual film, I kinda thought all these weird freaky mental images of maniac hippie bikers with British accents were my own imaginings from some bad dream but then as a teenager I found out the truth about my childhood trauma when I ran across the Psychomania VHS tape at a local video shop -- "Hey! That's the film I must have seen!" Perhaps you've seen it too, maybe even under similar circumstances (several people I've described it to have had long-buried memories come to the surface, and in fact one of the people who contributed liner notes mentions a similar experience to mine!).
As near as I can remember/surmise, it was about a gang of bikers who commit suicide and come back from the dead to terrorize innocents. Hence the cover tag line "Seven Suicides - and they roared back as The Living Dead!" But I also think that maybe someone gets turned into a frog? Or the bikers worship a frog, maybe? (Their must be a significant frog in the film, anyway, 'cause I remember one and there's a track called "The Frog" on here -- also the studio musicians on this soundtrack are billed as a band called Frog!)... Definitely some weird witchy LSD biker 'sploitation happenin's. A unique formula for a grade-Z flick to be sure. Released in 1972, this film about a cult has itself become a cult film, resulting a last in this release of composer John Cameron's soundtrack music.
While I can't really comment on the merits of the film (I still haven't seen it again since way back when, and while I'm tempted to find it and rent it now, I doubt it could compare to that initial experience!), it turns out that the soundtrack is KILLER. Yes indeedy. From the first track to the last, exploitation film scores don't get much better. It's got it all -- total Morricone/Goblin/Carpenter horror flick spookiness, interludes of suitably weird dialogue from the film (someone's mother telling him she's worried the police will arrest him and his delinquent friends gets the response: "the word, mother, is fuzz...the word, mother, is busted"), and lashings of evil acid rock/funk to further pander to and/or corrupt the long-haired kids to whom this must have been marketed. Repeatedly, you'll hear the band (that'd be "Frog") vamping on a simple but effective fuzz riff, presented slightly differently on every occasion. You can't argue with it, it's good. Oh, and let's not forget the folk-pop biker ballad "Riding Free" as sung by Harvey Andrews. Then it's back to the scary music and effects (was that a croaking frog?).
John Cameron explains in his liner notes that this was recorded before synths were in common use, so "every trick was used: Musser vibes through phase and wah-wah pedals, phased bowed bass, drumsticks inside a grand piano, electric harpsichord through a compressor, Hammond organ fed through a phase unit and Leslie speakers, and wordless solo voice." Thus, experimental ominous psychedelic bizarroid film music that gets our highest recommendation. And everyone we've played it for has been equally enthused. (We wouldn't make this Record Of The Week *just* 'cause of some repressed childhood memory...) Rev up your bikes and ride for the FROG. (Vinyl coming next week, for those who want even more of an authentic '70s experience.)
This is the first we've heard from these Boston indie rockers, who find themselves on uber hip taste-making label Mexican Summer, which is definitely a good fit, although the more we listen, the more it almost sounds like something that could/should have been on Sacred Bones or Woodsist, it's a sort of jangly, dreamy, folky, psychedelic pop, the sound stripped down but still lovely and lush, the female vox wreathed in reverb and doused in some subtly but strange effects, and while on the surface, these songs sound pretty straight ahead, there's lots of weird stuff going on just below the surface, twisted melodies, all manner of swirling tripped out FX, the opening track starts off all simple and sunshiney jangle, but as it progresses, it seems to get dubbier and trippier and way more spaced out.
Which is basically a good description of Quilt's sound, a classic pop sound, equal parts psychedelic folk and seventies folk, we hear hints of Pentangle and Incredible String band, not to mention sixties SF style psych rock woven into the band's dreamy jangle and fuzzy blissed out shuffle.
A few of the tracks do get downright rocking, reminding us of the current crop of garage rockers, like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, etc (albeit with a subtle sort of hippie / Godspell vibe) but most of the record is spent somewhere else much more jangly and folky and fuzzy, washed out and sun dappled. Be sure and stick around for the closer, a killer chunk of freak folk Appalachian stomp.
A much needed reissue of two magnificent pieces of Holy Minimalism from Eliane Radigue! Much of Radigue's classic work from the late '60s and into the '80s had never been presented outside the context of live playback, due to the simple fact that vinyl couldn't handle more than 25 minutes to a side without serious loss of fidelity. So with the advent of cds, the vast archives of her reel-to-reel tapes of very-long form compositions and stasis-oriented dronemuzik began to see the light of day well after the work had been completed and shelved. Radigue had studied composition in the INA-GRM studios in the mid-'60s and was one of many artists who became enamored with the potential of feedback as a tool within composition. The long sinewy drones of a controlled feedback loop became a signature of her earliest works, with synthesizers gradually enveloping those sounds with their greater control and tonal palette.
Composed in 1972 and 1973 respectively (though these recordings were made several years later), "Geelriandre" and "Arthesis" represent some of the earliest work demonstrating Radigue's maturation as a minimalist. "Geerlriandre" - for prepared piano and Arp synthesizer, ripples with a melancholia through a beautiful chorus of tightly oscillating electric drones occasionally punctuated by the sustained yet muffled resonance of the piano, anticipating what Brian Eno would present many years later on Thursday Afternoon albeit with none of the romanticized impressionism. "Arthesis," using the Moog, is a more ominous affair, whirling back and forth between low end frequencies amidst a glacial progression of bleak ambience. This album isn't only good for historical documentation, but also is an exceptional precursor to the drone-tastic pursuits of current artists like Thomas Koner and Andrew Chalk.
Originally released about ten years ago on Giuseppe Ielasi's Fringes, and Ielasi wisely reclaimed these recordings for his new imprint Senufo. If you didn't get it the first time, you should certainly pick this one up now!
A really lovely tape from the anonymous Reedbeds who seems to be a one-person pastoral ambient project for guitar, synth, and looping pedals. It's pretty easy to confuse some of these tracks with those from Mark McGuire's earlier cassettes and albums, in the delicate interplay of drone-strum and repeating melancholy melodies that gradually evolves over the long arcing passages cast in hues of sodden blues and damp greens. Through the four tracks on this 44 minute cassette, Reedbeds maintains an unhurried and understated pace to their work with plenty of space for the repeating patterns to wrap their tendrils around other loops, keeping true to minor-key ambience and glum romanticism of these mesmerizing blissout guitar jams. Just 100 copies from the Hooker Vision imprint run by Rachel and Grant Evans of Motion Sickness of Time Travel and Nova Scotia Arms separately, or Quiet Evenings collectively.
It's hard to keep up with this Rinse series, so much so that we just realized we actually haven't ever reviewed any of the mixes at all, even though they include some killer sets by folks like Skream, Skepta, Kisma, and more. But we couldn't let ourselves sleep on this one, as Roska has emerged as one of our absolute favorite artists in the UK electronic dance scene.
His debut full length is a record we still blast loud on repeat all the time, filled with soul and such high energy, blasting sounds. We can't think of a DJ we would like to hear more when we're out on the floor. And that's what this disc is all about, over an hour of dance floor intensity that mixes dub step, house, and UK garage. Along with his own tracks, he also remixes and mixes in tracks by Katy B, Magnetic Man, Ms. Dynamite, and a bunch of other dubstep and Garage names, many new to us completely.
What separates Roska from the flock is that the man undeniably has soul oozing from his body, as all the tracks he makes, selects, and remixes have a kinetic energy that even the stiffest of folks would be hard pressed not to move to. Roska stands as one of our favorite electronic musicians to emerge in the last few years, from the UK or otherwise, and this is just another record that further seals the deal. So damn good!
Latest blast of epic sprawling instrumental heaviness from this Chicago power trio, and with every record these guys just continue to get better and better, heavier and heavier, and their songwriting too, so much more intricate and nuanced with every record, which is pretty important, especially when your band is instrumental, considering the biggest problem with most instrumental bands is that you find yourself wondering when the vocals are finally gonna come in. But with Russian Circles, it doesn't sound like anything's missing, in fact, vocals would just get in the way at this point, these guys deftly weave dense metallic soundscapes that weave brooding slow building post rock to churning mathy metal, and they don't shy away from serious experimentation, whether that means stretching out sounds into spacey psychedelic drones, are mashing everything together into dense proggy blowouts, or even dipping their toes into some almost grooviness, but even those groovier moments typically splinter into something much heavier and mathier, slipping from chugging churn, to glistening soundtracky moodiness (like a more metal Majeure at moments), to full bore metallic crush, to almost krauty hypnorock, to crushing lumbering doom, to gorgeous almost shoegazey buzz, these guys don't miss a beat, effortlessly cramming all those disparate sounds into a single record, hell, into a single song. While we happen to be particularly partial to instrumental music, especially of the heavier variety, and even though there's no shortage of bands doing this sort of stuff, there are definitely few who do it this well, and who manage to craft a sound that is pretty uniquely their own.
Fans of all things instrumental and/or heavy and/or hypnotic a la Mogwai, Godspeed, Explosions In The Sky, Pelican, Circle, Magyar Posse, Salvatore, etc, these guys should already be in your pantheon. And metalheads who are up for some serious heaviness that's maybe slightly more hypnotic than heavy, would do well to check these guys out...
The first in a new series of archival shoegaze reissues from Captured Tracks comes from the late great and almost entirely unsung Texas shoegaze outfit Should, who were in fact called shiFt when these tracks were first recorded and released in 1995, the record was re-released a few years later with more tracks including some killer covers (18th Dye, Jean Paul Sartre Experience) and the cd version of this collection is essentially a new version of that record (the lp version includes the bonus tracks as downloads), and Should / shiFt offer up exactly what you would expect from a mid-nineties shoegaze combo, shimmering atmospheres, dreamy male/female vocals, hushed minimal drumming, and warm washed out woozily distorted electric guitars, the guitar sound of particular note, as the liner notes explains that Should mainman Marc Ostermeier not only didn't own a guitar, but also couldn't PLAY guitar, so created loops and samples from pre-recorded guitar parts, and also didn't own any distortion or effects pedals, so basically just misused and abused his mixer to achieve the desired effect, and the results are pretty fantastic. Indie rock jangle, a little twee, wreathed in thick swaths of warm whirling guitar buzz, minimal programmed beats, lazy vox, sun dappled and dreamy, warmly distorted, sometimes thick and lush, other times delicate and crystalline, but dreamy and divine throughout.
Not long ago, we hope you recall, we highlighted a pretty rad release on the Rephlex label, a double disc compiling the entire recorded output of early '90s "Britcore" rappers The Criminal Minds. They had been billed as being something akin to a "UK Public Enemy", and we agreed! In our review we made mention of some of TCM's contemporaries, that we were now also quite curious to hear: Hijack, Silver Bullet, the Demon Boyz...
Well, we just discovered that emcee Silver Bullet's debut full-length from 1991, Bring Down The Walls The No Limit Squad Returns, was recently reissued by a new label called Original Dope, an imprint of Cherry Red that's focused on UK hiphop. Cool beans! 'Cause on eBay, original copies of this Silver Bullet cd were going for like 40 bucks - plus this is remastered, with worthy bonus tracks and brand new liner notes.
And hearing it, it's for sure something that anybody who liked TCM will dig. Fast, funky, and frantic, with a definite dark vibe. SB's rough, raw, rapidfire flow is well matched by the uptempo beats of his DJ Mo, the disc is energetic and intense from start to finish, and dense with sampling. Like TCM, this has got that PE/Bomb Squad feel as well, but especially apocalyptic and adrenalized. In fact, Silver Bullet was hand picked by PE to open a European tour of theirs, and one of the 4 bonus tracks tacked onto this reissue is a Bomb Squad remix of SB's "20 Minutes To Comply" (a track built around a sample of ED-209's "dialogue" from the movie RoboCop, by the way).
Movie soundtracks, particularly horror movies, were a big part of the Silver Bullet sound... you'll hear John Carpenter stuff, the Twilight Zone theme, etc.; in some sense Silver Bullet could also be said to have pioneered the "horrorcore" subgenre of rap (a la Gravediggaz), lyrically too. Just check out signature cut "Bring Forth The Guillotine"! Which, of course, is also political, as are tracks like "Undercover Anarchist", which also probably attracted PE's attention.
This reish is nicely done, with detailed Silver Bullet bio provided in the cd booklet, wherein we learn that his career derailed after this album due to run-ins with the law (as he admits now, he was young and dumb, and is lucky that in living out his gangsta rap fantasies, playing around with guns and stuff, things didn't turn out worse for him than they did). He should have paid attention to his own tune, "Guns Of Mind Alone"...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Maria Kapel is a special tour only lp from Six Organs Of Admittance, aka Ben Chasny, released to coincide with a European tour earlier this year, and mostly sold out, we got a bunch direct from Ben, but odds are once these are gone we won't be able to get more. Which is a shame, cuz this is really really great. Compiled from two live performances in 2010 and 2011, the opening and closing tracks were recorded earlier this year in Massachusetts, the opener is all wheezing harmonium, a gorgeous stretch of psychedelic mesmer, swirling and shimmery, laced with bits of acoustic guitar, very hypnotic and raga-like, gradually growing more lush and textured as the track progresses, extra layers, tangled melodies, all just beneath that glorious harmonium hum. The closer sort of bookends the record with a similarly droney sound, but this time with what sounds like organ, still very raga like, all long layered tones, and constantly shifting overtones. Gorgeous and intense.
But between those two drones, are a handful of recordings from 2010, recorded live in Tilburg, Holland, a fantastic collection of spare, sparse minimal Appalachia, in the background you can hear feet shuffling, people moving about, but nothing can distract from Chasny's darkly meditative guitarscapes, which include some of Chansy's most intense playing, super percussive and buzzy, downtuned and intense, sounds like he's getting a little Orcutt on some of these jams, but it definitely suites him, and even at his most aggressive, he manages to make the tracks lush and lovely and still impossibly melodic. Fantastic stuff as always.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one in a hand painted/made cover, with a printed insert. Already out of print, so these are likely the last copies we'll see...
In the year since its release the Soft Moon's debut full length has become a rare unanimous favorite here at aQuarius, and many other places too we would imagine. The songs were immediately gripping, but over time we came to the realization that the album is, dare we say, pretty dang perfect, and within the sea of similarly styled bands who would describe themselves as "dark" that record is one that will stand out as a classic. We often find ourselves wondering how something could be so goddamn amazing, managing to sound both familiar and unique to itself. Soft Moon mainman Luis Vasquez has taken things to the next logical step by assembling a full band to bring these songs to the live stage, and with the arrival of this brand new ep, Vasquez and company effortlessly show the world that there is more where that came from. The only issue we have here is Total Decay's short running time - but then it's an ep, so who are we to complain. Clocking in at under 15 minutes, we are already salivating for the next Soft Moon platter, but like the two singles that preceded the debut album, where we were given some months to digest the tunes and think about what might come next, Total Decay works in setting a mood while you hunger for what's around the corner. And yet, the ep also works well as a brief but wholly contained slab of music, beginning with "Repetition", where a murky post-punk bassline sets the flow over steady driving rhythms and frantically atmospheric synths that are as chillingly sexy as they are ominous. "Alive" would be a good place to start for someone who has never heard this band, displaying all the Joy Division / Wire / whatever influences they have merged into a sound that really belongs only to them at this point, with Vasquez's strange shouted whispers (or whispered shouts?) occasionally soaring into the disembodied falsetto that has become one of the band's trademarks. No doubt the standout here is the title track, which lurches forward midtempo with an industrial buzz and provides the perfect score to wandering alone through all the creepy abandoned parts of town. The heavily effected vocals feel like the voice of some sexless robo-narrator guiding you along and offering no guarantees that you won't get your ass kicked by whoever or whatever happens to be lurking around in the shadows as beautiful buried synths bring all kinds of strange melodies into the mix. The final track, "Visions", is a claustrophobic percussion workout with more creepy ambience that, again, has most of us desperately freaking out in advance for the next full length. Guess we'll just have to be patient, but until then Total Decay will be on constant repeat.
We were originally trying to track down enough of these to make it Record Of The Week, arguably one of the greatest records from one of the greatest, most ridiculous and utterly genius crust / grind / noisecore bands EVER. Maybe described as Anal Cunt crossed with Napalm Death, or early Carcass via Lawnmower Deth, or Amebix crossed with Electro Hippies, or something equally ridiculous and nonsensical. Andee bought a copy when he was in Japan, and considered the whole trip a huge success, based on his procurement of said cd, which should definitely give you an idea of the sort of high regard we hold this glorious piece of sonic filth in around here.
Sore Throat were born of the same scene that produced Carcass, Napalm Death and the various other legendary early Earache bands, but the group were extremely opposed to commercialism in all forms and took great pains to musically talk shit and call bullshit on bands they considered to be sell outs, even bands on their own label. Frontman Rich Walker, who would later go on to play in doom metal outfit Solstice and runs the Miskatonic Foundation label, was a legendary shit talker, who purposefully alienated bands, labels and whole scenes, which only made Sore Throat that much more fun to listen to, and fun to see piss of all the bands around them, in that way they were sort of like a proto Anal Cunt, and in fact, the A side of this, their final record, Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid, definitely set the template for Anal Cunt and other noisecore outfits, short sharp blasts of chaotic noise, many as short as a few seconds, 90 songs in 22 minutes, so many that they're all clumped together so as to not exceed the limit of 99 songs on the cd, all these brief blurts and blasts laced with weird buzzes and bleats, strange effects, processed vocals, bizarre samples, the sound often drenched in effects and reverb or totally dubbed out. It may be noisy and brutal and blown out, but it's also weirdly listenable, and we often find ourselves listening to the whole of side A, a twisted fragmented noise grind songsuite that NO band since has come close to matching. In fact if this disc was just those 22 minutes, it would still be worth it. But this disc also includes the rest of the Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid record, which displays the band's other side, longer songs, midtempo, crusty doomy punk rock, more like Amebix or Doom (which featured members of Sore Throat) or Antisect, churning and heavy, dirgey and crusty, swaggery and snotty.
As if that weren't already enough grinding crusty noisy bliss, the rest of the disc is filled up with Sore Throat's equally ruling first full length Unhindered By Talent, which is way more punky and thrashy, pounding d-beats, grinding riffage, bellowed vox, wild squiggly guitar solos, but the band was already well on their way to being grind/noisecore legends, with Unhindered featuring tons of sub 30 second songs, with 14 or 15 not even cracking the 10 second mark, plenty of goofy stuff too (a killer, warped reinterpretation of Sabbath's "Iron Man" called "iron Lung"), but also some seriously fierce heaviness, some of it easily some of the best punkmetal crust EVER.
Needless to say, TOTALLY RECOMMENDED, cool artwork with extensive liner notes and lyrics, and be warned, it took us ages to get enough copies to list, so when we run out, it might take us a while to get more, if we even can.
Slumberland looks to the UK once again to snag another awesome indie pop peddler. Spectrals excel in laid back, lazy day bittersweet pop. With a dazed and washed out guitar sound, and Louis Jones' swaying melodic vocals that sound so at ease while but also so assured. That voice is in an awesome place somewhere between Jens Leckman and Julian Casablanca, and the woozy instrumentation underneath serves as the perfect breezy driving force that propels the songs along at such a perfect pace. It makes sense that Spectrals were taken on the road by Girls, as this is pop that's as smart as it is passionate.
There are different kinds of heavy for sure. There's the grim black corpsepainted buzzing heaviness, there's the lurching lumbering knuckle dragging doom sort of heaviness, there's also the face melting noise rock sort of chaotic heaviness, and of course there's the conceptual heaviness, like "ooooh, that's really heavy, maaaan", and there's about a million different sorts of heaviness in between, all strains, some heavier than others, but then there's the mightiest heavy of them all, just a classic, pure, heavy metal heaviness. Few bands can achieve that sort of heavy purity, a rare confluence of killer riffing, howling throat shredding (but still melodic) vox, blasting pounding drums, shredding guitar leads, hooks galore, catchy choruses, all woven into a metal blowout that causes immediate headbanging, that could start a pit in a stuffy office, the power of the riff, the power of real metal.
This is a power Denver's Speedwolf wield like a bloodied mace. Before we even get to the music, all the signs are there. They're called Speedwolf to begin with. Their record cover is a badass binder art / side of a seventies van black and white drawing of a huge scythe and hourglass wielding cloak-ed skull headed death, hovering in the sky above a gang of Speedwolves, wolf headed toughs on motorcylces, cruising down the highway, there's also a naked woman wearing the skin of a wolf, looking sexy and howling at the moon, their logo is a wolf pentagram, and they have song titles like "Up All Night", "Out On Bail", "I Can't Die", "Death Ripper", "Ride With Death", "The Reaper" and of course "Speedwolf" cuz any heavy metal band worth it's salt has a namesake 'theme' song. So yeah, all the signs point to pure heavy metal heaviness, and the sounds inside do not disappoint. We've raved about past Speedwolf records, they even played our South By Southwest showcase last time, and blew EVERYbody away, we have been dying for a proper full length ever since, and finally here it is, with a handful of our old favorites re-recorded, as well as a clutch of new jams, with a massive production, the sound is crushing, and the songs of course kill.
Like a supercharged Motorhead, or a tighter heavier Venom, or like a cranked and kick ass version of our faux metal heroes Bad News, these guys kick out the jams, relentless and punishing, furious and frantic, but at the same time with that weird sort of positive heavy metal party energy that few bands can conjure without diluting their heaviness. We were most excited to see two of our favorite Speedwolf jams revisited, "I Am The Demon", which still sounds like a more metal Danzig, and includes a drum solo, complete with cowbell (which shows up here and there elsewhere on the record, and is another signifier of pure heaviness!), and of course "Speedwolf" which after a creeping ominous almost Maiden-y intro, really does sounds like a Motorhead 45 at 78rpm, and the rest of the tracks too, everyone sounding like some lost early heavy metal classic, but delivered with a ferocity that is undeniable. These guys have been toiling away in relative obscurity, it's about time the rest of the metal world took notice, and bowed down before these masters of metal. And while the vibe is definitely speed/thrash metal, this totally destroys all those other retro thrash revivalists, and transcends any mere metal classifications, and ascends to some sort of true metal pantheon on high. Where they belong.
With a name like Spirits Of The Dead and an album title like The Great God Pan, you'd think this would be something super dark and occultic, probably metal, but this new Swedish outfit has more of a gentle, pastoral vibe to 'em than you might expect. Pagan prog rock, really, more than metal, even though they're on metal label The End in the States. Everybody remember wonderfully melodic, McCartney-esque AQ faves Elope, who also hail from Sweden? Well these guys sound kinda like Elope if they took their retro-'70s trip to an extreme and went totally prog! (Well, ok, not too totally prog, since none of the song lengths here get into the double digits...)
It's a dramatic (but at the same time laid back) mix of dreaminess and distortion, with sweet singing that reminds us of Burke Shelley from Budgie's mellower moments. Guitarwise, there's lots of blissed out psychedelic soloing full of light and hope, mixed appropriately with fuzzy riffs on the "retro-proto-metal" side of things, a la fellow Swedes Witchcraft, Graveyard, and especially Dead Man... Title track "The Great God Pan" is appropriately folky, with flute, and achingly beautiful singing as heard all throughout.
Oh, and of course there's the other Swedish retro psych prog sensations we haven't mentioned yet, Dungen. Yep, Dungen fans who think they might like something just a bit more wicked and Wicker Man-ish should check this out. Likewise if you weren't thrilled about Opeth's new all-prog, no-metal one, Heritage, which we haven't reviewed yet and might not... this is what that album should have sounded like!
Second 7" from these Bay area psychedelic space rockers, featuring a redone version of one of the tracks from their Clouds cassette and a brand new B side, and both kill. As we mentioned in our review of the first 7"s, fans of Wooden Shjips / Moon Duo should be al over these guys, as they traffic in a similarly minimal spaced out hypnorock, borrowing liberally from Spacemen 3, the Velvets, not to mention various kraut and space rock forebears, but they definitely have their own sound, both sides of which are represented here.
The A side title track is fuzzy and heavy and distorted, the drums are driving and propulsive, the vibe is swaggery and almost Stooges-y, the guitars wild and psychedelic, the main riff a monster, plenty of reverb and echo, it's the kind of jam that should have other local space/psych rockers shaking in their boots.
The flipside, "Long Road Out" is way more retro, the drums stripped down and low slung, the main riff all surfy and reverby, the vocals a laid back drawl, the melodies all buzzy and a little sitar-y, there's even some harmonica, all very fuzzy and dreamily druggy and not a little bit hippie. Great stuff, another couple songs to tide us over until these guys finally release a full length.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Pressed on clear yellow vinyl.
Most of us had been on the fence about St. Vincent up until this point. We definitely appreciated that she had a nice voice, but her records always seemed a bit middling to us. It wasn't until Andee saw her play on a late night TV show, covering BIG BLACK (!!) and was totally blown away by her performance, that we decided to give this new record a close listen, and damn we're glad we did cuz this is a really interesting and awesome album. Way more complex, eclectic and unique than we expected.
With a voice that's equal parts Elizabeth Fraser, Kate Bush, and Sinead O'Connor, and guitar playing that is so rad and even dizzyingly dense at times, and songs that take unexpected twists and turns. In fact, there are even a couple songs here where she seriously shreds and it's like this awesome melding of Marnie Stern and Cocteau Twins. We also really dig how there are these very '90s indie rock moments on the record that could have been from a Helium album. We're glad that we gave this record a chance, because it's turning into one of our new favorites.
Back in 2007, Stephen O'Malley approached Nurse With Wound about reworking SUNNO)))'s 00Void, urging that Steven Stapleton push the sound of SUNNO))) towards the classic NWW sound of Soliloquy For Lilith. The resulting 'remix' found its way onto the Daymare 2cd version of that same record and stands as a fantastic disc of haunting drones and abstract soundscaping, constructed using the glacial doom of SUNNO))) as the building blocks, which is surprising considering how shimmery and serene much of this is. While we had a handful of that Japanese release it's hardly surprisingly that it went out print rather quickly. Fortunately, O'Malley found another outlet for these recordings through his Ideologic Organ imprint of Editions Mego. Side A here features "Dysnystaxis" - one long slow billow of sound, gentle clouds of muted metallic reverberations, deep resonant chiming tones, soft smeared bass notes, all blurred into a creeping drift, that is more Chalk or Coleclough than SUNNO))). Side C's "Ash On The Trees" is even more abstract, isolating vocals which had been previously obscured from the original recordings, peppering the dreamy drone with strange metallic clang, moaning horn like bleats, sprays of hiss and buzz, all over a warbly wandering bassline; the bass getting thicker and thicker, coated in grit and grime and hiss, breaking glass, weird industrial clatter, and lots and lots of hisssssssss. Pete Stahl (Scream, Wool, Goatsnake) was responsible for those vocals which occasionally drive the piece at points as a nasally croon entangled in the track's gauzy gurgle then dipping into an effected, almost demonic howl. Side two of both lps split the 25 minute track "Ra At Dawn" into two parts, with additional material thrown in for good measure. Expect more of that gorgeously minimal drone, the sound of SUNNO))) smeared and blurred and muted into a hushed thrum, soft subtle layers shifting and blending, warm and rich and textured but simple and spare, near the end, voices and radio static surface, but still barely audible, another whispered layer beneath a sea of tranquil hushed whir. Pretty dang cool, even if it's fairly far removed from the sound of the original; but then again, that's sort of the mark of a good remix as far as we're concerned.
Spokes is the debut full length from aQ customer Jeremy Young and is a fantastic collection of impressionistic dronemusic and miniature guitar compositions, blurred into a sprawling sonic drift, it's a "conceptual tone-cycle" which incorporates text from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs Du Mal (1857), and features a handful of aQ faves reading Baudelaire, Aki Ondo, Liam Singer, and others, and while we're often a bit put off by 'spoken word' records, Spokes is something else entirely, the brief bits of spoken word are in fact very brief, and are often deftly woven into the sounds surrounding them, in fact the 12 minute opener, features a spoken word intro, but then proceeds to unfurl a fantastically mesmerizing stretch of abstract minimalism, from droning upper register tones, to hushed dreamlike shimmer, from hazy almost pop ambience, to a folky soft focus psychedelia, not to mention a long stretch of what sounds like field recordings and tape experiments, and some cool electronic glitchery, all held together by a drone that seems to run throughout.
Elsewhere, the spoken word bits are laid upon soft billows of glistening shimmer, wreathed in gauzy streaks of warm thrum, or set amidst field recordings of rushing water and all manner of wildlife, but surrounding those brief bits are still more lush stretches of sound, Barn Owl like atmospheric twang, strange bits of sci-fi electronics wrapped in lush undulating Niblock like tones and overtones, cinematic soundscapes laced with melancholy melodies drifting through clouds of static and hum, it's all quite hushed and lovely and dreamily haunting reminding us of Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, and other explores of similarly hushed ambient beauty and abstract dreamlike songsmithery. So nice.
Packaged in a minimal, super striking 4 panel digipak, and wrapped in recycled hemp twin with a manilla tag.
Latest full length from this long running Norwegian one man black metal horde, whose sound has remained relatively unchanged throughout his nearly two decades of buzzing and blasting, if anything the sound of his records has just gotten better, but essentially Noregs Vaapen is another fantastic disc of frantic and frenzied blasting blackness, killer riffing, bad ass drumming, shrieked vox, some samples here and there, lots of guests this time around: Nocturno Culto, Attila Csihar, Demonaz and a bunch of others, but really it's Hoest's show, and always has been, his vision and sonic representation thereof unwavering, gloriously grim, his black buzz infused with plenty of classic metal riffing which makes the sound, and this record in particular, heavy and hooky and the sort of blackness we can never ever get tired of.
Oh, and did we mention the banjo solo? Yep, the only truly bizarre moment on the record, in a song that already might be the best of the bunch, with some awesome guitar trills and some wicked riffs, but then a little over halfway through, the banjo comes in, and besides sounding totally bizarre, it's also utterly genius, and after the shock of first hearing it, it suddenly sounds PERFECT and you wonder why every song doesn't have banjo, or every record, or every black metal band, and when the banjo drops out, you'll have to fight the urge to skip back and hear it again with every fiber of your being. We'd say it's worth it for just that part, and that song, but the whole record, even as lacking in banjo as most of it is, is utterly ruling Norwegian blackness and comes highly recommended.
The Taj-Mahal Travellers double cd 'August 1974' has to be one of the most essential drone music documents of the 20th century. Our description of that record describes the Taj Mahal Travellers sound perfectly: "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas
Three extended tracks of sublime and transcendental musique concrete/drone. Sparse and spacious. With vocals and electronic trumpets augmenting the violin, contrabass, harmonica, sheet iron, castanet, vibraphone, guitar, percussion and radio oscillators. Dreamy and otherworldly, three epic tracks of hum and rumble, squeak and skree, clatter and tinkle envelop you in a completely new world of sound. So essential.
A Dimmu Borgir dude glowers at us from the cover of this new issue of the UK's premier metal mag. And inside, something for everybody, of every metal persuasion: Burzum, Black Cobra, Venom, Morbid Angel, Kvelertak, Megadeth, Cathedral, Krisiun, Finntroll, Iced Earth, The Devil's Blood, and plenty more! Plus, there's the usual free sampler cd included, with an exclusive Devin Townsend cut plus tracks by Venom, Cormorant, and a bunch more. Seriously, if you like metal, you should be reading Terrorizer. We have for years, and look at us now!
We don't always list each issue of this long running indie (and otherwise) rock magazine out of Brooklyn, but we should... On the cover this time, the Vivian Girls. Inside, interviews with the likes of Best Coast, Fountains Of Wayne, Edwyn Collins, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, The Left Banke, Steve Ignorant of Crass, and members of Iggy & The Stooges (James Williamson and Steve Mackay).
See, various faves both new and old. Note: some of these interviews are, like, parts 2 or 3 of extended sessions, continued from previous issues of The Big Takeover. Plus, there's tons and tons of reviews of records and live shows, an article on D.O.A. and other old school Vancouver punk, short bits on Animal Collective, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Slumberland Records, etc., and editorials on such subjects as politics, REM, and the music biz (including one about cd pricing in which Andee is quoted in his capacity as tUMULt overlord)... Total page count: 174.
First issue of this rad old school style zine, all about the SF music scene, and featuring tons of aQ faves, and before we go any further, we should really decry the lack of actual zines, sure, we love blogs as much as the next music nerd, but there's something about zines, the passion and energy put into actually making something instead of just sitting in front of your computer. Lots of cutting and pasting and actual physical layout, and going to Kinko's, cutting, stapling. It's like cds and vinyl versus mp3's, there's just no comparison. There's still nothing like picking up a zine, and reading about bands you love, and hopefully discovering some bands you might not even know about yet.
So here it is, issue number one of Thick Fog, which really captures the spirit of music fanzines that we love so much, opening with an interview with The She's, who we have yet to hear, but who have a new record coming out any day, and we're now excited to check out for sure. There's also a piece about Tim Cohen, he of the Fresh & Onlys, Magic Trick and of course Amocoma. There's a goofy interview with Swiftumz, an interview with Brilliant Colors, and one with Dominant Legs, not to mentions some other fun stuff, with a cool mix of humor and lightness and some really great writing. Anyone interested in the SF music scene should pick one of these up. Can't wait for future issues! And hell, while you're at it, make your own zine too!
Throbbing Gristle could hardly be confused for a hit-making machine; but in their repertoire of ghastly noise cohabitating with mechanoid rhythms, there are certainly some tracks which stand out more than others. Subtitled "Entertainment Through Pain," Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits delivers everything that it sets out to, and it also compiled some of the singles which had never appeared on one of TG's proper records. The most obvious 'hit' would be the minimalist yet sultry disco number "Hot On The Heels Of Love," with all of the other tracks being much more obvious in their subversion of the song through transgressive lyrics, subliminal horrors, corrosive electronics, and / or aleatoric appropriation. The sickening, psychoacoustic track "Hamburger Lady" opens this album of hits, with the lumbering electronic oscillations setting the stage for a gross-out spoken text from a letter about a woman languishing in a hospital burn unit. Of the singles featured on Greatest Hits, you'll find the blood-curdling scream of a track in "Subhuman" and the angular perkiness of the Kraftwerkish tracks "United" and "Adrenalin." But everything else comes from the earlier records, including the stellar churned cybernetics on "Six Six Sixties" and "What A Day," the woozy blurt of "20 Jazz Funk Greats" as well as a 'backwards' rendition of one the many recordings of "Slug Bait" recast as "Tiab Guls."
The bonus disc of Greatest Hits doesn't follow suit with the other four cd reissues; as the program does not include live material, but a continuing program of 'greatest hits,' including the B side stunning synth burble on "Distant Dreams (Part Two)" which is one of the high-points for the Chris Carter facade from TG's production. There's also a studio version of "The Old Man Smiled" found on Heathen Earth - a track that uses the same arrangement from "Six Six Sixties" with different lyrics, and an alternate mix of the revved-up step sequencing on "AB/7A." But aside from those, the other 'greatest hits' include "Persuasion," "Five Knuckle Shuffle," "Dead On Arrival," and a few more.
And like the other TG reissues, the lp does not include the bonus disc, and is limited to 1000 copies.
While cataloged as the 'fourth and final' studio recording of Throbbing Gristle, Heathen Earth documents TG in a live context, as TG invited a couple dozen friends and hangers-on into the Industrial Records studio to witness the band in an intimate setting, while recording the proceedings to 8-track tape. Much of the slashing noise, atonal cornet blurts, and discordant oscillations from TG's live persona is front and center, but such brute noises are thrust against the clarity of sound from TG's step sequencing and electronic rhythms. Throbbing Gristle rework some tracks from the back catalogue, as the apocalyptic guitar drone of "Six Six Sixties" becomes all the more distorted and menacing in its new guise "The Old Man Smiled;" and some of that self same sequencing that went into the Schniztler-esque track "Dead On Arrival" re-emerges on "The Worlds Is A War Film." Presumably, a version of "After Cease to Exist" surfaces in the morass of murky noise that TG delves into, but it's hard to tell where that emerges as this track was such a gnarled abstraction to begin with. The cold electronic rhythms of "Don't Do As Your Told, Do As You Think" mirrors the jackbooted intensity that TG produced in their live-only cut "Discipline."
As with all of the other remastered versions of the cd, Heathen Earth comes with a bonus disc of live materials with a single at the end. Strangely enough, a track entitled "Heathen Earth" is featured in the live material, but was not included in the "live-in-the-studio" album. It's quite an incendiary number with pounding heartbeat drum machine grounding Genesis' tortured vocals and piercing feedback tones. A subterranean creepiness befits the track "Auschwitz" with bellowing cornet and distant drone sound design, prescient of pretty much every dark ambient / death industrial act to follow over the next three decades. The live material follows this trend up to the finale in the utterly haunting "We Said No," rounding out what is probably the best live material that TG has presented in this series of reissues. The finale seven inch is "Subhuman / Adrenalin" - the former being a throat-burning tirade from Genesis above a smoldering backdrop of electric noise, while the latter centers on the mechanoid sequencing of Sleazy and Chris Carter.
The vinyl version comes sans bonus disc, and is limited to 2000 copies!
Viktor Timofeev is probably better known as a visual artist, this NYC resident hails from Latvia, and has been making a name for himself in the art world, but he also counts himself a member of electro synth-wave downer poppers Nihiti (whose new surprisingly folky ep is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and painted the very distinctive cover of the first Nihiti, his solo record is something totally removed from Nihiti, both the electronic and the folkier versions, on his own, he instead traffics in expanses of layered drones, and looped riffage, of atmospheres and ambience, but active ambience, with sounds blurred and tangled, rhythmic without actual rhythms, the label drops names like Stars Of The Lid, SUNNO))) and Godspeed, and we do definitely hear elements of all of those, it's droney and dirgey and haunting and almost classical sounding in places, but the tracks are super varied, while retaining an oblique cohesiveness, the opener is all dirgey blackened atmospherics, reminding us a little of Blackwolfgoat, looped and layered riffage, lurching and stuttering but super hypnotic, ultra lo-fi, muddy and murky, but the sort of thing we would have been into seeing fill up both sides of the record. The second track is totally different, instead it's lush and shimmery, a dreamlike dronescape laced with streaks of feedback and a haunting distorted melody that runs throughout. The final track on the A side begins with field recordings, birds and running water, all beneath a series of warped and woozy tape experiments, lush chordal swells, repetitive and mantra-like, finally transforming into an almost orchestral looped industrial outro.
The flipside is separated into three tracks, but they seem to be woven into one sidelong epic, a cinematic symphonic landscape of drone and melody that almost sounds like a black metal Arvo Part, droney and dirgery and dramatic, sinister and ominous, the vibe menacing and super intense, the sort of track that broods malevolently, but is totally hypnotic and mesmerizing, the whole side is like a sonic black hole, the listener immersed in the dense deep blackness, until the last few minutes, where the track finishes off with a strange bloopy almost new wavey sounding outro.
Definitely recommended for fans of dark drones and droney darkness, and for sure has us wanting to hear more sounds, and see more art from Timofeev.
Last year's album, Color Your Life, by Twin Sister was one of the total sleeper hits of the year for us. Such dreamy, soft breeze, pop perfection. They've followed it up with their first proper full length and have really fleshed out their sound, adding an even more lush instrumentation and a fantastically warm production to their swirling, swaying and colorful approach to songs, the sounds flowing with such ease and bursting with Kodachrome like colors. Like Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab on a road trip with Taken By Trees, or Pram, Heavenly, and Saint Etienne lounging around in the park together. We also hear a nice Glasgow influence in their sound, as certain songs really do find a perfect space between The Pastels and Belle & Sebastian.
Latest collection of haunting experimental dronemusic from these aQ faves. Ural Umbo is the duo of Reto Mader (RM74) and Steven Hess (Haptic, Locrian) and here they unfurl another sprawling soundscape of sonic ritual and mysterious atmospheric ambience.
Right from the get go, this is some scary stuff, deep thick swells of distorted chordal thrum, metallic bells struck, the sound allowed to gradually seep into the the surrounding buzz, the tension constantly building, the sonic energy gaining momentum as the track progresses, more and more layers, the sound thickening and expanding, getting louder and heavier and more intense, gradually making the shift from hushed low end drift to near caustic blackened noisescape, building to a furious black crescendo, before quickly fading back into a shadowy shimmer. And that's just the first track.
Needless to say dronelords and heavy minimalists are gonna want to dig way deeper into Illusion Of Hope. Each of the tracks here playing out like some sort of blurred message for the other side, delivered via arcane ritual, the messages scrawled in black blood, occasionally splintering into lurching distorted rhythms, blown out and blackened, other times, expanding into glimmering driftscapes, laced with gurgling demonic voices and tinkling chimes, and still other times transforming gradually into strange buzz drenched percussive ceremonies, the sort of thing that would definitely appeal to fans of SUNNO))) and Aun and other slow and low audio minimalists/alchemists. The B side offers more of the same, a series of greydusted drones and grinding blackbuzz liturgies, ancient sonic rites rendered in crushing percussive pummel and wheezing organ drones, moaning horns and skittery rhythmic fragments, delicate crystalline drifts and dense effects doused dirges.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Super striking cover art, pressed on clear vinyl, and also includes a cd version of the record.
The first Total Freakout comp from years ago (which was in fact purportedly the third, although we've never been able to find the first two, if they even exist) has become an all time AQ favorite. An amazing collection of totally obscure French, Belgian, and French Canadian late sixties/early seventies psychedelia. So many cuts from that record have been mainstays on every mix we've made and DJ sets we've played. It's where we first heard what has become an all-time favorite song of ours, "Ani Kuni" by Madeleine Chartrand.
We've been waiting for a long time to see if there would ever be a follow up to that classic comp and now finally there is! But before we go on and gush about how great it is, we should warn you that they only pressed 500 of these and it won't be coming out on cd or any digital format. So it's probably best just to get this asap, because who knows, by the time you finish reading this it could already be out of print!
We had great faith that the same folks who brought us that first collection wouldn't put out another one unless it could pack the same thrilling punch, and we have definitely been proven right. This time out we get fourteen tracks spanning 1967-1973 filled with one mind blowing slice of French/French-Canadian psych after another. Besides another track by Madeleine Chartrand, it's a completely different roster then the first collection which means we now have thirteen artists we never knew about before who are totally blowing our minds.
The music is a lot grittier, spacier, and more damaged then the ye-ye side of French pop, but it still maintains such amazing melodies and songs that totally intoxicate. One of our favorite collections of the year!
Not sure what exactly the occasion is for this black metal meeting of the minds (the liner notes claim it's bands with long histories in the metal underground), but who can argue with such a stellar line up, and the uber metal cover, a blood splattered naked woman with a severed pig's head between her legs, not to mention the legend underneath the tray: "play loud or don't fucking bother". This Meads Of Asphodel curated black metal 5 way split finds the Meads themselves teamed up with Japanese weirdos Sigh, Norwegian grimlords Taake, UKBM horde Thus Defiled, and the new to us Evo Algy (although those names might sound similar to you, cuz Evol Algy is a duo comprised of Evo, the drummer for punk legends the Angelic Upstarts, and Algy Ward who was in Tank, the Saints AND The Damned!).
Evo Algy start things off with a Status Quo cover, all sitar buzz and fluttery flute, before launching into some punky NWOBHM style metal crunch, heavy and buzzy and swaggery and total old school hard rocking heaviness. Taake offer a brief blast of furious pounding blackened punkiness, which it turns out is actually a GG Allin cover, two minutes of super distorted punkmetal buzz and pound. Next up is Sigh, who do not disappoint and unfurl some twisted cosmic space prog blackness, all thick buzzy bass, ethereal operatic vox, swooshy FX, circusy melodies, synths galore, not to mention a constantly shifting dizzying arrangement, oh and sax too of course, all woven into a fantastically twisted chunk of carnivalesque black prog.
Meads of Asphodel are up next with their awesomely titled "There's A God In My Gruel", the trio's latest blast of Christ mocking weirdness, and like their last record, they continue to craft what essentially sounds like a Satanic version of Godspell, a demonic sort of musical, with growled sinister vox over cheesy keyboards, muted fuzzy guitars, sci-fi effects, epic and majestic and dramatic, and very very weird. Not getting truly metal until the last minute or so, and even then, it's super over the top, a Broadway musical gone haywire, the performers possessed and spewing fantastically vitriolic sonic filth.
Finally UKBM crew Thus Defiled lay down an epic sprawl of melodic blackness, that slips malevolently from midtempo classic metal gallop, to furious frenzied buzz and blast, replete with killer riffing and wild shredding solos.
Fans of any / all of these outfits will most likely want this, and we'd have to concur with the liner notes: PLAY LOUD OR DON'T FUCKING BOTHER!
It's been a while since we last heard from Von Himmel, and this lp is actually a reissue of a now out of print cassette put out by Sloow Tapes a few years back. As was written on that label's website, Space Communion is "absolutely deserving of a vinyl reissue on some hopelessly obscure American private-press psych label." Thankfully the future is now, and if you weren't one of the 70 people to get a tape you'll want to do yourself a favor and pick this up NOW, and not only because the lp is itself limited to a mere 300 copies. You'll want it because Space Communion is a completely mesmerizing piece of multi-layered drifting free psychedelia and one of those records that seems to exist outside of time and location. That said, the major touchstones here are of a decidedly '70s German variety (the band's name no doubt a reference to the song "Von Himmel Hoch" from the first Kraftwerk lp), think Ash Ra Tempel, early Cluster, German Oak, NEU!, and all the other greats. Throw in some ESP-Disk styled experimentation and it only makes sense that we would make this a ROTW.
The album begins with "Moon Moss", where lush atmospheres merge to form an ambiguous, slightly disconcerting vibe not unlike that moment right before the drugs kick in. We were reminded of Sun Ra's wild Moog experiments from the Space Probe album we reviewed a while back, in addition to all the great library music collections we love from labels like Trunk and even more recent favorites like Anworth Kirk. It's not difficult to imagine this as some educational 1970s soundtrack whipped up by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and one can almost hear David Attenborough's mellow voice describing the living habits of leafcutter ants or something. "Astronomer" opens with what sounds like a flute (or maybe it's a synth?) and some sparse percussion, which slowly builds and shifts to a more aggressive rhythm while still maintaining a degree of restraint. You get an image of bearded longhairs recording in a field under the stars before the drums cease and you are left with pure buzzing bliss. The first song to utilize a more "rock" based structure is "Sun Spots" with its steady rhythm and hypnotic bass groove. Bits of electric guitar strum away in the background as the keyboards swirl their way into the mix. It's similar to something you might hear on a Wooden Shjips record, but even more skeletal. In other words, it's a good one to get lost in. "Mantra" works in some field recordings (we couldn't tell if they were played in reverse or not) of a man chanting as the band's melodies shimmer beautifully loose and free. You close your eyes and zone out, but then you gotta flip the record over to side 2 where Von Himmel ups their experimental tendencies even more with two lengthy tracks. "Strawberry Hill" opens with an evil buzz that sounds like it's seeping out of a medieval dungeon. This one definitely had us thinking of German Oak, as well as something you might here in a film like the Devils or anything else where witches are burnt at the stake, sorta like the snippets between Electric Wizard songs. At around 7 minutes, frantic free jazz drums enter followed by a bleating saxophone, spinning wildly before fading into a barely audible hiss. Closer "Country Bog" begins with a sitar drone and more nature sounds before a subsonic bass gets things rumbling into somewhat doomy territory. The sounds here blend in and out so perfectly before wrapping up with a moaning voice and more clattering percussion.
Space Communion is one of those rare records that exists in its own world, outside the notions of "psychedelic" or "experimental" music that most bands today adhere to. Things here are brilliantly presented on their own terms, not merely as some modern day interpretation of an old Krautrock record. Bold words indeed, but we ain't fucking around, and neither is Von Himmel.
Ye olde '70s prog rock treat time here, folks, particularly for those (like us) who like lots of flute in their prog! Coming to us via the excellent Guerssen label, who last list brought us William Nowik's Pan Symphony In E, this reissue of Belgian proggers Waterloo's one and only album First Battle from 1970 reveals another one-off gem from the dusty prog past that we had never heard of before but now are digging big time. This group's music is infused with the paisley psych poppiness of the likes of The Beatles and The Kinks, but also provides lots of pounding organ and flute rippage, making for a bombastic prog bounty indeed, a catchy one as well. Presumably influenced by certain of the British progressive rock outfits of the day, such as the The Nice, Jethro Tull, and Mk1 Deep Purple, this gets heavier too, sounding at times not unlike Uriah Heep, but with flute! It's got it all, really: sunny pop balladry, groovy brass rock arrangements (a la Blood Sweat & Tears), jazzy moves too (including some scat singing in the midst of 11 minute epic album closer "Diary Of An Old Man"). And plenty of flat out flashy instrumental action, guitars organ drums and FLUTE all in full force, charging forth on the battlefield of rock like triumphant prog troopers.
Fits in well with some other prog obscurities we've recommended previously... Blast Furnace comes to mind, also Supersister, Tetragon, Bachdenkel, Culpeper's Orchard, etc. Once again, we're wowed by the wonders of the reissue realm. How many more bands like this can there be??
To be sure, 'cause of how poppy this is, it might not be for those ONLY looking for the super dark or weird - though some of the lyrics ARE rather strange, like ferinstance the line "Can't you tell me where black children come from, daddy?" from the song "Black Born Children". What's that about? Also, don't expect any conceptual side-long song suites here, no this ain't Yes, in fact by prog standards only one song (the aforementioned "Diary Of An Old Man") is a double digit epic, the rest stay within the normal temporal parameters of pop single radio play, 2-3 minutes or so. But if you like the lighter (though no less tighter) side of prog, then check this out. It can only be regretted that Waterloo's First Battle was their last. Although, this reissue buffs up the original record's ten tracks with six extra bonus cuts from post-album singles and such. And, the cd booklet provides an in-depth history of the band in the liner notes, including mention of 'em jamming with members of Magma at one point!
The Latin Issue! Do you dig, do you spin, do you dig spinning and digging?? Vinyl collectors and music lovers, if you've got groove, this magazine is for you. As always, colorfully illustrated, deeply informed/informative. Lowrider oldies, Fania & Alegre All Stars, Cal Tjader, Speed Records, and on the cover, Eddie Palmieri, among the many treats this time 'round.
A disembodied scream becomes noise becomes drone becomes the sound of swarming bees. Such is the course laid out by the oft-performing / occasionally-recording East Bay noise technician A.C. Way on this mighty fine 3" cd-r. This man has performed in numerous projects over the years, bringing his battered turntable, abused sampler, and array of distortion pedals to such projects as Maleficia, French Radio (with MX-80's Bruce Anderson, no less), Carrion, Riqis, and probably a few others that have slipped our mind. All of those aforementioned elements work their way into the crosshatched structure of this 20 minute composition. Whatever Way is sourcing for the initial blast of noise is downright terrifying. As much as we'd like to give credence to the thought it's a reverberant scream captured inside the half-mile Baker-Barry Tunnel found in the Marin Headlands, it's probably a fortuitous abrasion manipulated from Way's turntable. As encrusted distortion and corroded noises begin to dismantle these unsettling sounds, a glowing tone also emerges as something of a shimmering, gilded beacon, that's as beautiful as the noises that preceded it are not. When the sound of the bees flutters through that ephemeral drone, Way hints at another wash of sonic horror but resolves those sounds as a vibrating massage of ecological white noise. Really nice work, and limited to 50 copies.
