The parenthetically inclined (ad)vance(d) is the work of Dutch sound collagist Mars Wellink, who might be better known to some as half of the equally obtuse Vance Orchestra - a project with its aesthetic roots in the European post-industrial / tapemaschinenmusik school which spawned the likes of H.N.A.S., Cranioclast, and P16.D4. Vance Orchestra produced one of the early singles for Drone Records, and now has released a 10" as part of the Drone curated series Substantia Innominata. On the first side of 24, Wellink contextualizes all sorts of very commonplace sounds (a tea-kettle whistling, toothbrushing, telephones ringing, and the roar from highway overpasses) within a claustrophobic set of tones, drones, and strange bits of electronic sequencing. At times, this track really has all of the trappings of those Atelecine recordings, although Wellink doesn't have the benefit of having Sasha Grey as a sidekick. The flipside is a much darker affair, opening with a massive thrumming tone that might have some difficulty with some lesser turntables, that steadily evolves into a series of undulations of detuned voice and rolling drones, not too far removed from where Stapleton guided Salt Marie Celeste. Atonal chirps, synthesized filter sweeps, and radiophonic blorp disperse in various directions beyond the sea-borne drones alluding more to the Daphne Oram side the equation. Wellink makes all of these references seem pretty easy in this mix. Nicely done, we must say!
We realized recently, that although we were huge fans of the black metal label Kunsthauch, and the metalheads around here have collections filled with Kunsthauch releases, we had for some reason, never actually reviewed ANYthing on the label. To address that oversight, we got in touch with Kunsthauch directly and are now beginning a campaign to shine some aQ light on some of our favorite Kunsthauch releases, new and old, beginning with this, a compilation from Russian outfit All The Cold, released in 2009 and collecting the group's earliest demos, tracks from various splits as well as a few unreleased songs as well. One Year Of Cold is actually the only proper sort-of-full-length the band has, their catalog being made up entirely otherwise of demos and splits.
All it should take is a couple minutes of opener "Last Winter" for you to fall under ATC's wintery spell, trafficking as they do in a sort of cold, frosty ambient black metal, a la Paysage D'Hiver, Alrakis and other aQ faves, and while the band seem to drift and drone and lumber doomily more than actually thrash and blast, it's precisely that slow temp and atmospheric focus that makes these tracks so mesmerizing. "Last Winter" unfurls a blurred hazy blackened dreamscape, that could go on forever, and really, is only barely black metal, before disappearing in a squall of whipping winter winds, only to have some proper black buzz emerge, creeping, a haunting doomy trudge, the melodies wistful and melancholy, floating above a field of washed out warm buzzing thrum, loping and melancholy, and again almost more dark dreampop that black metal, the music box like melody sounds almost like Burzum's "Rundgang Um Die Transzendentale Saule Der Singularitat" if it were in fact an actual black metal jam. "Through The Dead World" offers up more of the same, beginning with some plaintive harpsichord melody, before the guitars come in, all jagged and buzzy and chuggy, and while there seems to be potential for chaotic blackness, the sound instead sprawls and oozes and transforms into a thick black cloud of warm buzz, of pounding slo-mo drum damage, some seriously super distorted demonik vokills, and more of those plaintive melodies. Occasionally the tempo does get cranked up, and in come the blast beats, but weirdly enough, those moments are even LESS heavy, the sound growing more ethereal and washed out, only those wicked vox keeping the sound from floating into some sort of 4AD bliss out dreampop (albeit with blast beats!). And so it goes, wintery and haunting and dreamy, stretches of grim gorgeous blackened buzz interspersed with long expanses of gauzy ambience, and peppered with bits of classical sounding composition, creepy cinematic synthscapery, grim industrial dronemusic, and lovely winter-sun dappled chamber music, all woven into a fantastically frosty and phantasmagoric blackened songsuite. WAY recommended!
Last list we raved about UK crust / noisecore combo Sore Throat, and in that review, we mentioned that perhaps, besides making some of the most amazing and brilliantly brutal music EVER, they were also most likely directly responsible for these guys, the late great Anal Cunt, who over the years have been equally beloved and reviled, maybe better known to most for their ridiculous and often hilarious and even more often offensive song titles, not to mention their violent and brief live performances, but fans of extreme music, have know for ages, that these guys also made some seriously kick ass noise. And yeah, we mean noise, cuz while they are often classified as metal, in the early days, their sound was more like short, sharp concentrated bursts of Merzbowian white noise, each 'song' a burst of feedback drenched chaos, all tangled riffage, amp buzz and drums-down-the-stairs anti-rhythms, peppered with the occasional stumbling melody, or buzzy guitar grind, these tracks are fierce and feral and furious and easily some of the most face meltingly kick ass grind/noise you'll ever hear.
Not for the faint of ear, the tracks gathered on these two disc are the band's earliest, and thus most raw and unpolished (if anything they ever did could be considered polished), with most of the songs lasting mere seconds, and so many tracks that on cd, and even on record, there were clumped together as whole records, here the tracks are whole record, whether it be the "47 Song Demo", "The 88 Song EP", or various splits with other noisemakers like the Meat Shits or Seven Minutes Of Nausea. Probably the most remarkable track here is the "5,643 Song E.P.", which besides featuring a little piano intro(!), also happens to be what is essentially 16 Anal Cunt tracks playing at once, over three hours of music, crammed onto a 7", and onto two track here, those 16 AxCx jams on top of each other, blasting and stumbling simultaneously, and other than sounding way more dense and thick and HEAVY, it still sounds like pure AxCx sonic chaos. Fans will definitely want this, tons of rarities, lots of stuff on cd for the first time, loads of pix in the liner notes, as well as detailed notes on each song from AxCx mainman Seth Putnam from before he died earlier this year (R.I.P.). And while many metalheads will fail to see the appeal, anyone into noise and grind and pure sonic punishment, no doubt already understands. Andee AND Allan approved, and wholeheartedly RECOMMENDED!!
Local label Valley King are on fire, after singles by local space rockers Carlton Melton, SF psych stoners Golden Void, witchy Swedish rockers Spiders and Sweet Apple, the project of Witch's Dave Sweetapple, comes this, the debut from L.A. supergroup Anywhere, which we have to say, we were a wee bit skeptical about. Not just because of the often bandied about 'supergroup' tag, but also cuz it seemed like a strange hodgepodge member-wise, Cedric Bixler Zavala of The Mars Volta and At The Drive In, Christian Eric Beaulieu of the late great Triclops!, Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE obviously, and finally Rachel Fannan from SF dreampsych combo Sleepy Sun. Weird right? The label explains how these folks all fell in together, but even then we weren't sure what to expect, but whatever it was, it wasn't this, a weird sort of psychedelic rhythmic acoustic guitar driven dronerock, laced with electronics, and tabla like percussion, a bit proggy and druggy and dreamy, the A side plays out like the first movement of an epic sidelong prog masterpiece, the guitars lush and shimmery, those tabla sound rhythms often run through glitched out effects, the melodies majestic and soaring, some classic sixties psych guitar laid over the top, it's a shame it ends after only 5 minutes, when we had been plotting out the rest of the imagined song in our heads. Needless to say, it was a hugely pleasant surprise and had us hankering for more.
The B side adds vocals to the mix, Fannan's hazy stoned croon, perfectly complimented by the warm, whirling acoustic strum and toy xylophone like percussion, the song ebbing and flowing in soft swells, even more than the first side, sounding like some lost sixties band, all Laurel Canyon, witchy folk flecked psychedelic classic rock, brooding and moody and darkly dreamy. Gorgeous stuff for sure, and here's hoping they can manage a full length!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Already sold out, we have the last 20 copies, and then this is gone for good. Like the other Valley King releases, super swank sleeves with striking cover art by artist Alan Forbes, signed and numbered, includes a sticker as well.
There are countless reviews on our site where we have to remind ourselves of that age old lesson about not judging a book (a record) by its cover. As all too often we have fallen in love with some amazing records that we were initially resistant toward because of their awful cover art. But every so often, our attraction to the cover pays off, as we discover a record that lives up to the joy of its cover. Such is the case with this wonderful 1973 Korean folk/psych gem. The cover shows the two men behind April & May hands locked as they run through a field, both of them clad in dapper duds and with big smiles on their faces. It's such a sweet and endearing image, and the sounds on this best-of collection seem to match those visual sentiments so perfectly.
While they often get billed as the Korean, Simon & Garfunkel, there is much more of a range to their sound. From catchy ye-ye like pop, to orchestral show stoppers, to stripped down folk, to candy color happy psych-pop. Equal parts Kuni Kawachi, The Free Design, Billy Nicholls, Francoise Hardy, Happy End, Hermans Hermits, and The Left Banke. We also would love to put some of these songs on a mix for folks like Belle & Sebastian, Cornelius, Jens Lekman, and Saint Etienne.
We so want to mimic the cover when listening to this record, putting on our favorite outfit and scarf and skipping down sidewalks and fields hand in hand with our best friend in the world. One of our favorite discoveries of the year.
This week the Kismet label brings us two rare sitar infused flower power psychsploitation oddities: The 1971 sitar and electronics groove of Holland's Okko (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this far-out mindwarping "children's" record for the hippie acid kids: Kali Bahlu Takes The Forest Children On A Journey of Cosmic Remembrance from 1967.
Incredibly strange music indeed! This album is 4 long drugged out sitar, flute and gong meditations narrated by the child-like Kali Bahlu as she talks (a bit ditzily, we might add) to leprechauns, trolls, gnomes, witches, devils and moonchildren about comic consciousness or something to that effect. If anyone is familiar with Lucia Pamela, the eccentric bandleader and musician who made the hopped up Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela album about an imaginary trip to the moon, Kali Bahlu sounds like Lucia Pamela if she had discovered marijuana, opium and acid at the same time and then soon after found God. We can definitely appreciate the exotic novelty of such a record, and this would be excellent and fun to sample in a DJ set or mixtape, but it might be a stretch to appreciate it for anything deeper than that.
One of two splits on this week's list from local psychedelic space rockers and aQ faves Carlton Melton, both amazingly appropriate team-ups. The other one is a super limited 7" with UK space rockers Mugstar, and then there's this, a vinyl-only split with legendary Phillie psych rockers Bardo Pond, who prove to be the perfect match for Carlton Melton slow burning laid back psychedelic drift.
CM's side-long "Slow Growth" (a title by way of an early AQ Carlton Melton review by our very own Scott) definitely describes CM's sidelong jam here, easily one of their best, and most musically cohesive, finding sharp sonic focus even amidst the seemingly freeform drift, the track beginning as a soft hazy swirl, softly churning guitars over what sounds like whipping wind, the vibe tense and ominous and darkly dreamy, it takes a few minutes for the song proper to kick in, but when it does, the guitars immediately swoop in and distort, blossoming into massive crumbling swells, heaving and howling over delicate crystalline strum and simple propulsive motorik drumming. The drums eventually drop out, leaving the sound to slowly implode, growing muddier and murkier, stretched way out into muted drones, laced with shards of feedback and little fragmented melodies, all before another slow build, back into a seriously dense sonic squall, still muted and murky, but seriously black hole dense, a roiling cloud of blackened psych, which billows wildly until the drums gradually return, offering a rhythmic anchor and guiding the track to its final resting place.
Bardo Pond counter with one of the best tracks we've heard from them, the sound fierce and epic and lush and SO heavy, launching immediately into a gorgeous sprawl of free form psychedelia, clouds of swirling guitars, tangled melodies, the drums loose and free and awesomely wild, but still managing to somehow hold everything together, but just barely. The vibe is blissed out and druggy, it's the sort of jam, that could go on forever, and sort of does, and is somehow simultaneously static and hypnotic, but also impossibly active and constantly shifting, a swirl of melodies and textures, the guitars unleashing some seriously kick ass leads, filling the sky with sonic contrails and swirling chordal clouds, the flute shows up late, and flutters subtly beneath the ever intensifying guitar freakouts, the vocals come in even later, and then only briefly, but add the perfect sort of gauzy / ethereal vibe to the proceedings, the song seeming to just organically wind down, leaving us to imagine that somewhere else there's a version, that does in fact go on forever.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES!!! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
The return of long running Man Is The Bastard offshoot Bastard Noise, who now have a body of work that dwarfs their previous group's comparatively tiny catalog, but who took a long time to win us over. Not sure if it was the disappointment of no more MITB or that suddenly Bastard Noise seemed to release a million records, or that our heart belonged to Amps For Christ. Whatever the reason, it took a few years, but we learned to love BN, even more so lately as they've seemed to have become a real band, a real HEAVY band. Gone are the days of harsh noisescapes and power electronics, the band are now a serious sonic forces to be reckoned with, in BAND form, and on their latest, they continue on the path set forth on A Culture Of Monsters, melding tripped out psychedelic ambience, to lurching lumbering doom, the rhythm section as tight as MITB ever was, the shrieked vox seriously harrowing, a good foil for the monstrous guttural growls, and as we mentioned in our Record Of The Week review of A Culture Of Monsters, the bass tone, and the overall bass driven heaviness, had us not only thinking of the legendary Nomeansno, but also another MITB offshoot, former Record Of The Week-ers Geronimo, whose krautrock like rhythmic mesmer seems to have found its way into BN's new sound.
The opening title track might be the most epic thing BN has ever recorded, a creeping ambient drone/dirge, that finds the band churning and chugging, howling and pounding over a hazy shimmery smear, their metallic crush augmented by some hushed ethereal flutter, the sound almost Native American, it's a strange combo, but it works, weirdly, the track easing up partway through its 13+ minutes, the band unfurling a kosmische sci-fi shimmerscape, before lurching and lumbering back into action, and pounding out the last couple minutes.
Much of Skulldozer actually seems to have the band channeling their former group, with short bursts of jagged punkish power violence, but then the band slip right into their other incarnation, the other side of the band we love, their abstract psychedelic space drift ambience, last heard in full bloom on their awesome Rogue Astronaut record, and so goes the rest of Skulldozer, lurching from churning powerviolence crush, to glitched out abstract sci-fi drift, to experimental ambience, to blackened metallic pound and back again. Totally ruling, and most definitely a new favorite!
First single from Big Troubles' most recent full length, one of our favorite pop records in recent memory, even more remarkable for the fact that BT had transformed from lysergic noisy warped weirdo pop into straight up jangly un-ironic eighties beholden classic pop, and it truly suited them. The A side here is on the record proper, a fantastic slab of fuzzy dream pop, with a quirky main riff, a sweetly melancholy melody, warm muted jangle and lush dreamy vox that slip easily into a soaring falsetto. The B side though is worth the price of admission alone, hard to imagine why they left it off the record, as it's easily as good as anything else on the full length, in fact, in some ways it sounds even bigger, almost like Teenage Fanclub or something, all fuzzy and jangly, with a killer chorus and hooks for days. If you LOVED the full length, this is definitely worth picking up for the extra track, or if you just want to get a taste of Big Troubles, this will definitely do it, and very likely whet your appetite for more.
When we listed a previous edition of this some years ago, it was back when our reviews were, um, a lot shorter. So all's we said then was that it was a proto-metal essential, from Japan's answer to Black Sabbath. And maybe that's enough, but since we dig this album so much, and it has at long last been reissued again, let's go for something a bit more expansive...
First off, Blues Creation's Demon & Eleven Children, their second and most classic album, dates from 1971. That's right, 1971!!! Of course it does. They'd started off in '69 with a record of all blues covers, but by '71 they'd heavied-up, and were ready with an album of originals, obviously influenced by the likes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple's In Rock. And dig that cover art. If you're one of our many proto-metal lovin' customers, you NEED this.
Among early '70s Japanese heavy psych hard rock bands, THESE guys (next to, arguably, Flower Travellin' Band) were indeed the heaviest we've heard. And definitely the most Sabbathy (though FTB did cover Sabbath... and Flied Egg came close too, even putting albums out on Vertigo). But really, just listen to the opening track here, "Atomic Bombs Away". No question. Sounds like a song Sabbath wrote for their first album, but let Blues Creation have instead. Heck if you didn't know better, it really sounds like Iommi's playing the guitar riffs and solos, and Geezer's on the swinging, lumbering bass! Obviously, it's heavy, gotta be when it's called "Atomic Bombs Away" (we wonder if it was was weird for a Japanese band to title a song that, only about 25 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The song ain't actually about atomic bombs, actually, like most of the tracks on Demon & Eleven Children, it's about lovin' and leavin' (or being left). Which can be heavy stuff too. Sample lyrics from "Atomic Bombs Away": "First time I lay you in the rusty shack / Black night keep fallin' in your gypsy eyes / Keep on movin' till the end of time / Lord have mercy for my sin / Set me free from my destiny".
The next track is called "Mississippi Mountain Blues", complete with harmonica... but it's urgent and rollicking, and in any case about as conventionally blues rock as they ever get here. We call this proto-METAL for a reason. Just check out the rockin' riff-fest of an instrumental, entitled "Brane Baster" (aka "Brain Buster"), to see what we mean. It's not all about Sabbath emulation, either. They're proto-Priest in parts, too, or at least, they've got tight twin guitar action on here that'll impress the Wishbone Ash and Thin Lizzy fans. Definitely pretty badass for when and where they were from. Tracks like "Sorrow" do the slow and sad thing pretty well too. It's not all heavy - there's the gentle "One Summer Day", as lovely as its title suggests. But if you want heavy, '71 style, this album won't disappoint you at all, indeed, you'll be be freaking out. It concludes with the epic, and ripping, 9+ minute title track, and if you're not bowing down to Blues Creation by then, your name had better be, like, Ritchie Blackmore.
Julian Cope ranked this as #17 in his Japrocksampler top 50, not bad. From a proto-metal point of view, though, it's top ten material, and we're not just talking Japan. Up there with Bang and Dust and Buffalo and Leaf Hound and all the rest.
Reissued in one of those wallet-digi packages, numbered.
Several years ago, we made the first archival release from housewife turned experimental electronic musician Ursula Bogner our Record Of The Week, even knowing full well, that there probably is no Ursula Bogner. On the surface it definitely seemed like the find of a lifetime. The story involved someone's casual interaction with a man on a plane, discovering that this man was the son of a virtually unheard experimental electronic musician, a mom and pharmacist, who had built a recording studio in their home, and who had recorded for twenty years, those recordings proving to be impossibly prescient, the sort of sounds that would stand up to similar recordings at the time by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That initial release was filled with all manner of documentation, photos, notes, like we said, it seemed like the real deal. But it also seemed like an ingeniously perpetrated hoax. The man in question who supposedly ran into Bogner's son on a plane, was none other than Jan Jelinek, whose music is not all that dissimilar to Bogner's. Perhaps we're just the suspicious types, but there seems to be little or no information about Bogner, other than that provided by the label, which could just speak to her absolute obscurity, but could also speak to the fact that it's all a put on. To be honest, we want to believe it. How cool is that story? But that said, as we mentioned in the review of that first release, if it IS a hoax, we like it even more. So meticulously planned, photos, hand written notes, then the music� Similar to those funereal violin cds we carried a while back (that guy not only recorded all the cds, he also wrote a whole book about the history of funereal violin!), it would require a whole other level of creativity, but enough about all that, it is ultimately about the music, as much as we love the story, true or not, and like the first record, this is another fantastic collection of 'early' primitive recordings, these newly unearthed tapes featuring a focus on the voice, which was not present before, and our first actual exposure to the voice of Bogner, who supposedly passed away in 1994. Opening with piano and vox, the sound fluctuates as the tape speed falters, the sound is murky and definitely sounds old, plenty of spaced out effects, female voices processed into mysterious melodies, percolating rhythms, primitive and very low fidelity. Some of the tracks feature kitschy sounding organs and snippets of looped pop music, but they are transformed into cool sixties style tape music, occasionally lush and lovely, other timeshaunting and austere, there's one track in particular which finds Bogner reciting numbers over a backdrop of hiss and static and blurred melody, that most definitely is a nod, intentional or not, to the perennial aQ fave The Conet Project.
As with the other record, there are expertly penned liner notes, translations of original texts that Bogner wrote to accompany the pieces (especially the boxed cd version which features a massive 100+ page book of liner notes and artwork), all very cryptic and Eno-esque, tons of photos, of installations, of the reel of tape these tracks were discovered on as well as Bogner herself (again, especially in the book that accompanies the cd!). Very recommended of course, for fans of vintage sixties experimental music, of Jan Jelinek, and of impeccably crafted musical hoaxes.
Of the three records Japanese trio Boris released in 2011 (yep, three!), the one we were most excited about was the hardest to get, at least until now. We reviewed both Heavy Rocks (the second Heavy Rocks, confusionally titled the same as their 2002 album), and also Attention Please, which featured all songs sung by guitarist Wata, and of the two, we got kind of obsessed with that Wata one. But we had also been hearing about a third record, also confusionally titled New Album, which originally came out in Japan only, and which featured different versions of many of the same songs from the other two records, but in dramatically different form, with most reports claiming that New Album was in fact Boris' J-Pop record, which sounded pretty dang appealing to us. And while some folks we know (as well as at least one aQ-er) took the plunge and plopped down $40 for the import, it's now finally available domestically, and holy crap it is without a doubt the best of the three. A friend of aQ was giving us shit for digging this so much, claiming that he knew we would, cuz we love that indie pop sound so much, which is actually totally true, and if you're coming to New Album looking for anything remotely heavy, you will be sorely disappointed. Sure there's some crunchy guitar here and there, but it's in the service of electronica flecked indie rock jangle, shoegazey J-pop, synth heavy electro, skittery new wave, and pretty much every fuzzy electro pop nineties style variation Boris could whip up.
And yeah, 4 or 5 of the songs are on other records, but they are dramatically different here, arrangement, instrumentation, everything, and this is one of those times we're not gonna do a song by song blow by blow, just know that of the three new ones, this one is definitely our favorite and sounds more like Blonde Redhead mixed with M83, with some of the tracks sounding like they should have been on the late great French electronic pop label Gooom, some of Boris' best songs ever, alongside some of their weirdest. But if you ever wondered what Boris would sound like playing nineties shoegaze indie rock electro pop, this is the record for you!
This is one of the coolest, weirdest takes on the metalcore sound we've heard. Broken Promises are from Belgium, and their sound is equal parts full on metalcore mayhem, and dynamic restraint (read: space). The first song is epic, with a repeating, muted
We've got just a handful of these expensive new Burning Witch 4lp/dvd boxes, they're fancy and SUPER limited, so odds are once we sell out we won't be able to get more. Seems likely that only super obsessive fans are gonna want this, but just in case, here's the aQ lowdown on Burning Witch, via our review of the 'complete' Burning Witch double cd we reviewed a while back, we'll get to the box and all the craziness it contains in a moment�
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably one of our favorite doom bands EVER, so we're maybe biased biased, but this record changed us forever, and we're not entirely sure if that's a good thing. This record makes us want to hide in our room, lower the shades, and never come out.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched,bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved. So this new vinyl box set includes these 4 lps (and we're including all the pertinent technical details direct from the Southern Lord):
--Towers� LP: Recorded by Steve Albini during the vernal equinox 1996 at Robert Lang Studios, Seattle. Originally released as a demo tape in 1996 then released by Slap-A-Ham on vinyl in 1998. 2k were pressed. Southern Lord released a cd version (including Rift.Canyon.Dreams) in 1998. Remastered from the original 1/2" master tape (lost until this version) by Mell Dettmer.
-- Rift.Canyon.Dreams: Recorded by Aaron Evil during the autumnal equinox 1997 at Robert Lang Studios, Seattle. Originally released by Merciless Records on LP in 1998. 500 were pressed. Not only is this lp super rare the covers were very flimsy so most existing copies have a lot of cover damage! Southern Lord released a cd version (including Towers) in 1998.
-- Bleeder b/w Rift.Canyon.Dreams.: Bleeder was a unreleased track from the Towers... (Albini) session. It originally came out on the split cd with Goatsnake on Hydra Head in 2000 now out of print. This song has never been released on vinyl (although test pressings for the Goatsnake split were made finished vinyl was never produced), the Rift.Canyon.Dreams track was an unfinished outtake from the Rift.Canyon.Dreams session. It was mixed/completed by Dahlquist & Randall Dunn circa 2003 and then released on a split with ASVA (BW bassists Stuart�Dahlquists' then new project). 475 copies were pressed. The track was remixed by O'Malley and Dunn in 2007 released on the "Crippled Lucifer" 2xcd reissue via SLR and is the version presented here.
-- Live at the China Club 1996: Raw, grimm live evocation is the only Witch recording ever released with original 2nd guitarist Greg Anderson. This incantation was captured in Ballard, WA at the China Club (previously known as the Red Dragon) in 1996. The Witch was opening for At The Gates and Napalm Death. Anderson played 2 shows with Burning Witch, this being the second (and last!) This is the first time this is available on vinyl. Although not as realized as the studio recordings this give a dark vision of the horror that was to come!
Wowsa! There's also a perfect bound 40 page 12" X12" book that the label describes as "an aggressive visual documentation of the History of Burning Witch", packed with rare photos and liner notes from Aaron Turner (Hydra Head Records / ISIS) and Chris Dodge (SPAZZ, Slap-a-Ham Records). There's also a DVD of never before released Burning Witch performances. Including the band's first ever live show in Seattle from 1996, and features SUNNO)))'s Greg Anderson on second guitar. Also included is an infamous Burning Witch performance on Public Access television!! All the lps are 180 gram vinyl, all housed in Stoughton printed tip-on and direct to board jackets. Everything packed in a heavy duty�Stoughton made slip-case. Phew. You know you want one. We sure do!
It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally, TWO aQ staffers accidentally review the same record, and usually, we try to just cram them together into one (sort of) cohesive single review, but this time we figured, screw it, here's two different aQ-er's takes on the latest from Byetone, a record we liked so much we reviewed it twice! See if you can guess who wrote which!!
Review one:
It's weird to say, but it seems like the most compellingly funky electronic music is coming from a camp that pretty much perfected the ultimate cold clinical electronic sound. Raster-Noton for years has been home to icy cold collections of bleep and click, him and hiss, taking music and seemingly reducing it to it's most elemental form, and arranging it into machine like rhythms. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE that stuff, and hearing pristine arrangements of ultra low, rib cage rattling lows, and dog whistle highs, rhythms created from clipped static and 1 bit bursts, total mad scientist genius. But all along, it seemed like something lurked just below the surface. A funkiness that the artists seemed to be combating, as if the whole thing was an elaborate sonic ploy to keep the funk at bay. And then suddenly, one of the brave ones, decided to let a little of the funk seep into his audio experiments, and it was good. Too good. Too good to not let more in. And soon, it was too late, and then against all odds, and in an ironic twist of sonic fate, people like Alva Noto were crafting some of THEE funkiest sounds we'd ever heard, all assembled from the same elements, beeps and clicks, 1 bit bursts and sine waves, culminating in the recently reviewed Univrs record.
But then along comes Byetone, not to be outdone, takes those same elements, and decides to not just let the funk seep into his sounds, but to go all out, and craft lush expansive soundscapes, epic and cinematic, proving that those same ingredients could be twisted up into all new shapes, which brings us to Symeta, a gorgeously lush collection of electronica, that slips easily from super clinical click and buzz, to warm lush chordal swells, often in the same song, the various elements arranged into killer grooves and funky beats, with some of the tracks sounding almost Pop Ambient, that lush and lovely, while others stayed more clinical, and still others found a middle ground, which strangely enough sounds like a weird take on the whole Goblin/Carpenter sci-fi future-retro synthscape thing, but somehow cooler, and more -actually- sci-fi sounding, and more hauntingly futuristic, with Byetone coaxing some seriously gristly buzz and tripped out psychedelia from his strange sonic laboratory.
Awesome!
Review two:
Olaf Bender's Byetone project is hardly prolific, but he has proven to be strongly consistent in his clinical electronica, which nudges the signature Raster-Noton sound of glitch 'n' tone on a trajectory that might not be all that averse to the dancefloor. Symeta comes three years after the much acclaimed Death Of A Typographer; and like that earlier record, this one also owes quite a bit to the formative work of Pan Sonic and Mika Vainio's solo album Metri. The hypnotic, adrenaline-pulsed piece of minimalist techno on "Opal" is right out of the Vainio playbook, slowly ramping a militant drum-roll from Bender's drum machine out of a throbbing basspulse radiating ominous hisses and x-ray frequencies. "Helix" and "Black Peace" nod toward the latter Pan Sonic works of gnarled, distorted electronica through an excellent track of grimy blocks of electronic riffage, caustic blasts of noise, and dubstepping electro backbeats, in the construction of some exceptional, high-pressure chamber electronica. Lest you think that it's all Vainio all the time, the first three blips from the album opening "Topas" are devilishly close to the robotic sequencing that Kraftwerk used to build their onomatopoeic "Boing Boom Tschak." Another great record from Raster-Noton.
At first we thought this was going to be just like a regular old greatest hits collection, which would be cool for folks who don't have any of their records, but we soon found out this is in fact a collection of very rare tracks culled from their tour only cd's from the last thirteen years. Which makes this even cooler!!
At this point Calexico doesn't need much introducing as their Southwestern pop, laced with delightful amounts of twang and even mariachi influences, have made them one of the most respected and consistent bands for over a decade. We couldn't be more stoked to get sixteen tracks we had never heard before from a band we love so much. These songs really display all we love about the band. From sprawling instrumentals made to be the soundtrack for your next roadtrip, to earnest and soulful country tinged pop nuggets that will always stand the test of time.
Sadly the massive limited vinyl box-set that included all the tracks from every tour cd that this collection is drawn from has already gone out of print, but at least this disc is still available to quench our endless thirst for the everlasting quality of Calexico.
We've said it before, and we'll say it again, sometimes it feels like some records were just made specifically for aQ. And this is one of em. So thanks Trensmat, for picking two of our favorite bands, and putting them together on one record, with exclusive (and killer) tracks from both. SF's very own Carlton Melton, offer up a gorgeous bit of thick psychedelic haze called "Company", a serious slow burner, and maybe one of their heaviest yet, a simple stripped down beat anchoring thick undulating layers of blurred guitar buzz, shot through with warm spidery melodies, a brooding chunk of pulsing hypnotic sonic mesmer with a seriously blown out heavy heavy explosive finish. Be sure to download the bonus material (the link's on the sleeve) to get the epic nearly 12 minute long version, which is how this was meant to be heard, sprawling and druggy and EPIC. Too short for us even at twelve minutes. Also with the bonus download you get another track, "Death Whisper", which is another murky brooder, a hazy minimal lo-fi raga, which lopes and lumbers dreamily through fields of buzz and static and dreamy chordal swirl.
Former aQ Record Of The Week-ers Mugstar offer up another fantastically epic psychedelic space jam, thick driving buzzing bassline, dense busy drumming, shimmery guitar jangle, churning moody riffage, a sinisterly slow build, that manages to grow more tense and ominous and intense, without ever actually getting louder or exploding into a crashing cacophonous climax, instead, weaving a dense sprawl of churning psychedelic krautrock-style hypnorock that almost sounds like a more muscly Circle. And with the bonus download, you get a second track, the hushed minimal "Never (Part 1)", which is all sun dappled and dreamy, hushed and hazy, all soft swirls, skittery rhythms, whirring organs, definitely shades of Spacemen 3 or Loop, a sort of druggy blissed out spacepsych drift. So great.
Nice full color sleeves, and as mentioned above, a download with tons of bonus material, SUPER LIMITED of course. Already sold out at the label, which means these are the last copies we'll ever be able to get.
It's like Christmas around here (we know, it is ACTUALLY like Christmas around here right now), whenever we get a new batch of tapes from Auris Apothecary, not only is it bound to sonically all over the map, without fail the packaging is totally stellar, often high (or low) concept, meticulously hand assembled, often involving organic matter, or broken glass, or sponges, or scrolls, or who knows what else. Needless to say, every AA release is special, and is often as much a work of sonic art, as it is a piece of music.
We reviewed a record by Dante Augustus Scarlatti (the group, not the person, we think) a while back, a fantastic collection of rumbling drones and blurred psychedelic soundscapery, and this latest one is sort of a continuation of that, utilizing 15 separate drones, culled from strings and voices and organs, in the form of buzz and hiss and skree and thrum and hum and whir, laid atop one another, bleeding and oozing into each other, the sound MASSIVE, and thick and layered, the sounds crumbling and constantly shifting, on the surface, this is a noise tape, but the noise is blurred and washed out, and more droney than noisy, thick billows of sound, textured and strangely lush (but still fairly low fidelity), dubbed onto recycled tapes, with the idea that any imperfections in the original tapes, be it bleed through of the original sounds or decay from worn magnetic tape, would all contribute to the sound, and those random imperfections only serve to add texture to the already heavily textured dronescapes. Fear of noise should not keep anyone from enjoying this stuff, cuz as we mentioned, it's a warm, thick, muted undulating noise, that washes over you like a glorious low end avalanche.
LIMITED TO 405 COPIES, each one hand printed, in ELEVEN different color variations, a printed insert along with the tape housed in a stickered and sealed plastic bag with a spray painted white printed label.
We were pretty into the inaugural release in Captured Tracks new Shoegaze Archive series, the collected works of Texas dreampoppers Should (reviewed last list), so we were super psyched to check out the second in the series, this one from a New Jersey band with the strange moniker Deardarkhead, and who had an even stranger sound, at least initially, and in the context of a shoegaze series. Their sound, at least at first, based on the first few tracks, was much more deathrock, more gothy and gloomy than shoegazey, not that we're complaining, in fact some of us dig the deathrock side of the band much more. The liner notes featuee much gushing over Robert Smith and Ian Curtis and Ian McCulloch the Jesus And Mary Chain, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise, just check out the opener "Fish": thick low slung Joy Division bass, wild squalls of psychedelic guitars, and then the vocals, deep and dramatic, a gothic croon if there ever was, when we first threw this on, we were hearing Kommunity FK and the Abecedarians, in fact it brought to mind the Scream compilation, which chronicled a parallel scene happening in LA around the same time, one where DDH would have felt right at home.
While their sound did get a little bit shoegazier over the course of their career, they never shed that gothiness, and compared to a lot of shoegaze, these guys were pretty heavy, their sound big and brawny, the guitars heavy, the drums loud, the production thick and lush, reminding us more of bands like Swervedriver, which is most definitely not a bad thing, the big change seems to be that that deep croon softened and became more fey and ethereal and Morrisey like, while the music remained mostly dark an dreamy and surprisingly heavy (for the time at least, and certainly for that scene), sonically, this whole collection is pretty bad ass, from the early gothier deathrock jams, to the later buzz drenched guitar heavy shoegaze blissouts, and we seem to be listening to this a whole lot in the store, which is usually a pretty good sign.
Includes a booklet with liner notes and rare photos.
The cover story (Lamb Of God: Inside 2012's Biggest Metal Record) we could do without, but the rest of this issue is a damn good metal read all right. Behemoth, Krisiun, Red Fang, Encoffination, Serpentcult, and more. Including Cryptopsy's None So Vile getting the Decibel Hall Of Fame induction treatment. And, Decibel's editors unveil their picks for the Top 40 albums of 2011! Mostly good choices, though as much as we love In Solitude (#4), what do they have that Portrait (who don't make the top 40) doesn't? They're both great. Well at least the Loutallica album didn't get anywhere near this top 40 (unlike in The Wire, ahem).
Plus, there's the usual news and reviews etc. so grab this if you're a metalhead, duh.
It's been a couple of years since we've heard anything purely electronic from the Finnish techno abstractionist Vladislav Delay. Recently, Sasu Ripatti (the man behind the Vladislav Delay moniker) has fronted an electro-jazz quartet, emblazoned with the rather obvious name - the Vladislav Delay Quartet, a project that must have been inspired by Ripatti's time as the drummer for Mortiz Von Oswald's hypno-jazz trio which sported an equally eponymous nom de plume. By contrast with all of the wooden explorations of post-Kosmische grooves that hinted at Terry Riley, Can, and Cluster, Vantaa turns back to his celebrated work for Chain Reaction, radiating its dub-inflected electric lullabies from within the heart of the machine. As Vladislav Delay, Ripatti has been known for a decentering form of abstracted techno, where the rhythms are erased, blurred, muted, shifted, and otherwise obfuscated amidst a constantly morphing array of whirring mechanics and granulated synthesis, making this some of the most difficult forms of techno to try to tap out a rhythm to. Vantaa continues brilliantly along this line of thought, with organically spun networks of electrical synapses responding through metabolic fluctuations and dream-like dubbed echoes. By the time, he slips and trips his way to "Lauma" at the end of the record, Delay glides into a high-octane techno pulse without anybody really noticing; but with all the shimmering hypnotic electronics cast suitably in loads of delay patterns, the track becomes more of an accelerated ambient tonic. Vantaa is downright messy for the machinist rigidity one can normally expect from a label like Raster-Noton, but the album is all the more sublime for it.
Wow. Never thought we'd be reviewing a Dinosaur Jr. record. I mean, they are one of those bands that were always around. We all loved them. Had all of their records (at the time). Had the cassettes on the floor in the frontseat of the car, just a quick lean from the driver's seat, ready to pop in for the next long drive. They definitely stopped being relevent (and -good- some might argue) after Bug, their third record. But for three or four years there, Dinosaur Jr. took everything we loved and stuffed it into one perfect little indie rock package. Punk rock snarl, metallic crunch, indie jangle, squiggly guitar solos (!), and a Neil Young like whine in the form of frontman J. Mascis' stoned drawling vocals. You can definitely hear the influence Dinosaur had on Nirvana, Polvo, Swervedriver, and about a million other late eighties rock bands! Lou Barlow, bass player for Dinosaur Jr., would go on to send indie rock from the studio back to the practice space and launch a million bedroom rockers with his home recorded 4-track project Sebadoh (whose first official release was actually a track on the second Dinosaur Jr. record You're Living All Over Me) while Mascis (formerly of punk sludge outfit Deep Wound and metal weirdos Upsidedown Cross) would go on to more commerical success before dropping off the face of the earth and giving up music altogether. But for those first three records, Dinosaur Jr. were the shit. And damn if these records don't sound just as good now almost a decade later! All three re-issues have liner notes by Byron Coley and bonus tracks!
Bug was what you would call Dinosaur Jr's breakthrough. Or maybe sell out record. But who really give a shit what you call it. This was the ultimate kick ass indie rock record. Period. Heavy and catchy, melodic and weird, totally derivative and totally original! The song "Freak Scene" is what did it. A perfect pop song if there ever was one. AND the best use of expletives in an indie rock song ever. Even people who didn't know the song, would sing along to -those- parts: "So fucked, I can't believe it", and "Just don't let me fuck up will you, cuz when I need a friend it's still you", at the top of their lungs. And why not? Every inch of that song was a stone cold hook, the chorus, the verse, even the guitar solos. Track two, "No Bones" is maybe as Neil Young as Dino Jr. got, a totally unforgettable riff, and perfectly drawled vocals. Then there was "The Post", a doomy dirge that somehow morphs into into a perfect little pop ditty, wrapped around one of the most kick ass rock riffs ever and some wicked leads on top! This is maybe the first (and only?) truly perfect Dinosaur Jr. record. The sound is still buzzy and heavy, guitars are big and distorted, but the pop songs are just too strong to stay buried and against all odds, and often battling crushing guitars and freaked out noise, they rise to the surface and shine brightly through swirling shroud of distorted psychedelic haze. So so so great!!!
Bonus tracks: videos for "Freak Scene", a sill assemblage of wacky band hijinks and some poor kid getting his head shaved, and "No Bones", a gorgeously arty live video, that perfectly captures the mood of the song!
Folks outside of the Bay Area may not be privy to the burgeoning black metal scene known as the Black Twilight Circle, a small insular group of musicians all playing in multiple bands, all on different instruments and in different arrangements, a scene modeled after the legendary French Les Legions Noires, which featured Mutiilation, Belketre, Aakon Keetrah, Torgeist, Vlad Tepes and others. In the case of the Black Twilight Circle, the bands include Blue Hummingbird On The Left (the only one we've reviewed on the aQ list until now), Volahn, Ashdautas, Axeman, Arizmenda, Kalathonn, Kuxan Suum and others, but Dolorvotre is the first group to get a proper cd release, and on the ruling Ajna label to boot, previously released on tape, several times in fact, this is the first full length from the duo Dolorvotre, and is raw and lo-fi, primitive in part, but also surprisingly progressive and experimental, the band offering up simple slabs of black blast alongside haunting doomy creeps, their songs laced with surprising melodies, weird little guitar filigree, the vocals often doused in strange effects, the tempos shifting constantly, the two piece managing to sound surprisingly lush and full, even with the primitive recordings, the vibe crusty and almost D-beatish at times, those elements though woven deftly into something much more grand, with headphones, much of what sounds raw and primitive reveals itself as way more layered and complex, the record peppered with haunting folky interludes, acoustic guitars draped over chanted vox and swirling synths, the haunting moodiness of those interludes bleeding over into the songs proper, and imbuing the record with a strange black energy that definitely transforms it into something much intense and unique.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
After producing three seminal art-punk records from 1977 to 1980 that moved in rapid trajectory away from the short-sharp economy of Pink Flag to the tongue-twisting surfaces of 154, Wire dissolved for the first time. Call it a hiatus, call it an acrimonious break-up, call it a fuck-you to the major label that signed them; but regardless of what may or may have transpired in 1980, there were just too many ideas in those four blokes to be contained in the trappings of a four-piece punk band. Given what came immediately after 154, it's pretty clear where all of those radical shifts came from - Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert. Sure, Colin Newman produced a pretty decent solo record in A-Z, but in all of the projects that Lewis & Gilbert produced, there was a torrent of amazing material that included Duet Emmo, Cupol, P'O, and what proved to the best of the lot - Dome.
In quick succession, Dome produced four albums between 1980 and 1982, all of which now are just referred to by their numerical order, although Dome 4 was originally released under the title Will You Speak This World. As much as these records were explorations of deconstructing the punk song into drone, atonality, minimal synth abrasion, and polyglot perversity, Lewis & Gilbert would also tease with hints at what Wire had previously manifested. This audience baiting was also demonstrated on Wire's live lp Document & Eyewitness which condensed the classic Wire songs "12xU" down to 15 second fragment that never launched into that pogo-punk beat. As such, Dome would build songs out of repetitive guitar & bass patterns that would parallel one of the exuberant numbers like "Outdoor Miner" or "Mannequin" but the song would then detour into ellipsis with alien drones and discordant counterpoints. "Here We Go" from Dome 1 was a prime example of this punk-tease, furthered by tracks like the wild-eyed delirium of Lewis' ranting on "Cancel Your Order" also from Dome 1. The much ballyhooed highlight from that first record is the sublime track "Cruel When Complete" sung by Angela Conway, who coos breathily over an elegant if very cold electronic pattern with quintessential minimal wave detachment. Dome 2 continues along the convoluted art-punk abstraction through the two part "Red Tent" framed by plenty of abstracted electronic fragments and rhythmic work-outs that parallel what This Heat was doing at the same time.
Dome 3 found the duo hitting their stride, where the synthetic rhythms and loops play a central role in the arrangements accompanied by weird percussion, distorted vocals, feverish minimalism, abstractionist drones, and industrial overtures. All of the tracks are given names more fitting to Kurt Schwitters "Ursonate" such as "Ar-Gu," "Roos-An," and "An-An-An-D-D-D," providing more of a connection to Dada than to punk. Through these synthetic noises, Dome find them the perfect bridge between Throbbing Gristle and Zoviet France. Dome 4 stretches out the fragmentary brilliance of Dome 3 into longer, more thoughtfully composed pieces such as the archaic sounding folk-hymnal "To Speak" where Lewis' baritone intertwines with a languid violin and lots of cathedral reverberations.
Jump some 8 years to when Wire had reformed to produce a couple of fantastic art-pop records, when Dome also reconvened with the aid of late-80s technology: samplers and MIDI sequencing (as opposed to the tape loop and primitive synth work of the early recordings); and they recorded an album entitled Yclept which didn't get released for another decade. Here, the machined rhythms, repetitive noise collages, and loping basslines rejoin the realm of the song, albeit fractured somewhere between Aphex Twin, Greater Than One, and SPK, with Lewis crooning as he would occasionally do in Wire and on his under-appreciated He Said solo projects.
These 5 lps come packaged in large box filled with photographs, posters, and liner notes plus the requisite download coupon and inexplicably a box of matches. Don't set yourself on fire, please.
We all love the Sublime Frequencies, pretty much every release offers up something new and exciting, and we really don't know a single person who hasn't gone nuts over at least something on SF, be they metalhead or dronelord, pop kid or indie rocker, the sounds Sublime Frequencies discover and disseminate are strangely effecting and truly universal. So it would make sense that other soundmakers would become even more obsessed, not just with the songs and the groups, but with the sounds themselves, and in some cases, might just be inspired to create their own sonic tribute to the label, and the releases.
Which brings us to Subprime Frequencies, a strange collaged audio experiment, created without the use of computers, all done old school, with every sound sourced from a Sublime Frequencies release, including Radio Palestine, Radio Pyongyang, Guitars Of The Golden Triangle, Radio India, Bush Taxi Mali and Latinamericarpet, all manipulated and arranged by Dereck Donohue, who eagle eyed aQ-ers might know from his groups Horseflesh, Ozmadawn and Perineum, all of whom we've raved about on the aQ list, and which is how we know he is a master sonic manipulator, which is even more obvious here, as he transforms these collections of world music into gorgeous gristly soundscapes and blown out drones and dirges. Don't let the opening track scare you off, it's a noisy one, but it's strangely pretty too, a crumbling distorted filed of glistening melodies, all crunchy and buzzy, an in-the-red distorto-raga that sounds a bit like some strange Sunroof! / Our Love Will Destroy the World mash up. The second track is differently dreamy, the sounds muted and woozy and washed out, a jumble of layered percussion, and swirling overtones, one that builds gradually to a soaring swirling majestic high end bliss out, before slipping into the next track, which takes a playful jingle and explodes it, turning it inside out, and transforming it into something fierce and ferocious, a wild tangled of buzzing melodies and grinding tones. The rest of the record unwinds dreamily, but like some sort of sonic fever dream, "Burning Voice" is a slow motion undulating swell of blurred voices, disembodied harmonies smeared into a Jeck like warble, while "Jungle Dream Machine" is all churning rhythms, skeletal and looped and darkly hypnotic. "Hermit Kingdom Choir" is a dreamy sun dappled shimmer of softly swirling voices and hazy washed out melodies, which eases you into "Slice Of Calcutta", a crumbling drone, rife with melodic buzz, the track blossoming into a dizzying whirl of lush chordal thrum, before collapsing back into "Golden Hallucination, which is truly hallucinatory, a dense wall of ever shifting layers, of tangled melodies, dense overtones and lots of buzz and hiss, and finally, the collection closes with "Crescent Of Fertility", a 9+ minute epic, that is super melodic, the melodies wreathed in fuzz and hum, slipping from proggy crunchy whorls, to cascading sheets of glimmering, glistening high end, to deep vocal laced cavernous dronemusic, epic and weirdly haunting. Gorgeous stuff.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in fact, each one comes with a whole booklet, written out by hand, tracklist, liner notes, credits and everything, hand stamped and housed in a black digipak with a paste on front cover.
Big ups to Daptone for pulling together this smoking collection of tracks from 45's by one of the most underrated masters of souk/funk out of Benin in the 1960s and '70s. We first heard El Rego (Theophile Do Rego) on the awesome Analog Africa compilation, Legends Of Benin, in one of his many incarnations as El Rego Et Ses Commandos, and we totally dug that track so much, that we were stoked to realize he had a golden vault of tracks hidden away, all from this magical era.
El Rego has a similar sound, energy and spirit to folks like Fela Kuti, James Brown, and Archie Bell, while also having the ability to slow things down and allow the rich grooves to drive the meditative focused vocals into a blues like trance. It makes sense that Rego was not only a performer, producer, and engineer, but also owned nightclubs, as his sense of timing and the importance of creating a mood and making bodies move is undeniable in these stellar tracks.
The vinyl edition comes with a bonus 7" of one of his most sought after funk tracks, while the cd comes in deluxe packaging including a booklet filled with photos, artwork from the original 45's and El Rego's story of his life and music.
We don't haul out the multiple 'o's as often as we used to. Seems like doom bands these days inspire in us just the usual 'double o', but for the return of aQ beloved psychedelic drug doom combo Esoteric, we might as well unleash the torrent of o's these guys have so earned. Cuz the sound of Esoteric remains delightfully and unequivocally pure, twisted, psychedelic dooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. And unlike most bands, who's overall weirdness dulls as they progress as a band, or whose sounds stops being so twisted as the band either become better players, or get better at recording, it seems exactly the opposite has happened to Esoteric. Paragon Of Dissonance is easily their best sounding record, the production is huge, the guitars thick, everything lush and crystal clear, which would normally seem not so good, we like our doom murky and muddy and washed out, but as we've established, Esoteric are no ordinary doom combo. And beyond the sound, it's yet another double disc, Esoteric's preferred doomic delivery method, and one that suits their ridiculously sprawling doom-prog epics. The record opens with some dense chugging, wreathed in swirling high end guitar skree, some furious double kick drumming, the guitars growing more agitated, the sounds more frantic, and then suddenly the sounds start swinging wildly from speaker to speaker, ear to ear in headphones, and blam, we're fully immersed in Esoteric's drugged out doomworld, and it is good. So good. Seven tracks, ninety minutes, of droney, doomy creep, of lurching slo-mo lumber, the sound managing to be totally tripped out and bizarre, but simultaneously strangely melodic, the traces of epic true classic doom loom large in Esoteric's world for sure, but they do their damndest to twist it all up, stretching riffs way out, dousing vocals in crazy effects, dubbing out EVERYTHING, adding weird bits of acoustic guitar, unlikely percussion, and of course that production, all over the map, thick and dense, blurry and brittle, one track here even sounds almost like a doomier Three Mile Pilot, but sort of fusion-y, which sounds bad written, but sonically is totally brilliant, especially as it leads into some seriously pounding epic metal, that is barely even doomy. But fear not, these flights of sonic non-doom fancy, are surrounded on all sides by sludgey tarpit doooooooom, however, those weird bits do pop up more than you might think, there's the super fuzzy, almost poppy opening of "Non Being", which is equal parts gloom pop and indie rock, and doom, doom too, then there's plenty of loping post rockisms in "Disconsolate", and all manner of noise rock, classic metal and who knows what else throughout, but c'mon, it's Esoteric, who do what they damn well please, and who over the years, have fashioned a twisted, idiosyncratic doom, that at this point sounds like absolutely nobody else but them. And is in fact so fucked up, we're often surprised they're as popular as they are, but for us, and quite possibly you, and our (and your!) love of all things sonically warped and twisted and bizarre and baffling, Esoteric are the true doooooooooooooooomlords!
It's fitting that the year closes with a breathtaking collaboration between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamato, as 2011 was a great year for both of them individually. This past summer Fennesz released Seven Stars, his first solo recording in almost three years. Sakamato not only teamed up with Alva Noto for perhaps their best collaboration yet, Summvs, but also hit the road with his legendary old band Yellow Magic Orchestra to rave reviews.
This is not the first time these two musical visionaries have collaborated, as they released a great ep back in 2005 that left us very hungry for them to come together again. With Flumina they have created one of the most patient, subdued, and beautiful records of the year. In fact, a few of us are already rearranging our end of year best of lists to make sure we include this, as the record has already seeped so deep into our subconscious, in just the few weeks its been out. Sakamoto's fragile piano playing and Fennesz' gauzy and blurry guitar sound glide in and out of each other to create a melancholic daydream of sound. Much like some of our favorite Harold Budd records and collaborations, these tracks really do sound as if they are unraveling slowly from the heavens. We've been going to sleep with one of the discs playing and then starting our day slowly with the the alternate disc, as its such a perfect record for the space between sleeping and dreaming.
We also really love that despite the use of their laptops, the record seems so minimally processed. This isn't about forced static or manipulative feedback, but instead a powerful restraint in sound that allows each note to leave such a lasting impact. Highly recommended!
How could we resist a band called Full Toilet? Especially when the cover features a crudely drawn 'full toilet', seemingly drawn on a piss stained piece of paper. And then when the label (Sub Pop!) describes the band with descriptors like "angry young man", and "short attention span", and "volatile and erratic", and "bad personal relations", and "turbulence and anger", and "channeling ultimate unhappiness" and finally "bursts of rage". All that and 13 songs crammed onto one 7". There's also some backstory about the Full Toilet guy being some impossible to deal with mentally deranged home recording loner, but we have it on good authority that Full Toilet is in fact one of The Fastbacks, in outsider lo-fi punk mode, and it suits him. And we can only assume one of the reasons we can't stop listening to this weirdo filth, is that there is something more musical lurking underneath, but it hardly matters, cuz this stuff KILLS, heavy and noisy and chaotic, the production totally twisted and lo-fi, the drums stumbling and confusional, the vocals barked and yelped, the guitars crusty and filthy and blown out, the whole sound off kilter and weirdly dubbed out, but in its own creepy damaged way totally catchy.
It's like Christmas around here (we know, it is ACTUALLY like Christmas around here right now), whenever we get a new batch of tapes from Auris Apothecary, not only is it bound to sonically all over the map, without fail the packaging is totally stellar, often high (or low) concept, meticulously hand assembled, often involving organic matter, or broken glass, or sponges, or scrolls, or who knows what else. Needless to say, every AA release is special, and is often as much a work of sonic art, as it is a piece of music.
This is the first we've heard from the oddly monikered The Gentlemen's Butcher, who have apparently broken up, or ceased recording, as this is apparently the second in a "posthumous recreation of THE GENTLEMEN'S BUTCHER's catalog", but we're pretty into this, the sounds more along the lines of the modern re-appropriation of new age, drifting long tones, washed out hushed shimmer, lushly layered ambient minimalism, hypnotic and hushed, dreamlike and tranquil. According to the label, the purpose of the music here is "to enhance subconscious dreaming while under the influence of sleep, all without the use of pharmaceutical medication", which is pretty spot on, this is the perfect fade out drift off chill out late night blissdrift soundtrack, a gorgeous expanse of barely there thrum, and minimal melodic drift, the program repeated on both sides, so if you can set your Walkman to repeat, you could strap on those headphones and have this play all night long.
LIMITED TO 101 COPIES! Fancy full color "static-textured" glossy cardstock J-cards. Recorded onto grey tapes with tiny full color art in the clear tape windows and each tape numbered on the spine.
Gold Panda's Lucky Shiner records was a unanimous store fave, and was probably one of thee best electronic records released last year. And unlike much of the dark droney electronic stuff we dig so much, Lucky Shiner was all playful and sunshiney, a dizzying deftly assembled sample heavy bliss out that slipped from propulsive and energetic to playful and funky, often in the same song, so it should come as no surprise that Gold Panda's mix for the esteemed DJ Kicks series follows a similarly playful path, opening up with a new GP track, the awesomely titled "An Iceberg Hurled Northward Through Clouds", which sounds like it could have come right off of Lucky Shiner, all stuttery beats and dreamy loops, truncated vocal samples and woozy sunshiney melodies, a little wistful, but warm and pretty much perfect, which leads right into the rest of the mix, featuring a handful of groups we love, but a whole bunch that were new to us, which is the ideal sort of mix, and it is a great mix, dancey and dreamy with a super laid back flow, more for sort of chilling out and wandering with headphones on than for the dancefloor. Some of our favorites: Closer Musik weaves a lush bit of house-y shuffle that's warm and washed out and super melodic, Jan Jelinek channels some Superfly funk through his fractured minimal filter and turns it into something more Raster-Noton, Matthewdavid unleashes some dense blissed out dubsteppy slo-mo kaleidoscopic funk, and Giuseppe Ielasi unfurls a thick warm crumblingly distorted swirl of Pop Ambient drift, there's more, but you get the drift. One of our favorite DJ Kicks for sure so far, and if you liked Lucky Shiner as much as us, then this one will probably hit the spot too!
We had never heard Canadian electro-soul experimentalist Grimes before, but had heard a lot about her, and we have to say, her sound definitely lives up to the hype, her voice spectral and girlish, a sweet high croon one second, a Kate Bush like wail the next, the vocals wrapped in ethereal atmospheric swirls and pulsing electro synths, skittery IDM rhythms, all subtly glitched out, laced with haunting pianos, everything hazy and reverby, a little witch house-y, but for all it's weirdness and experimentalism, it's also seriously poppy, and about as commercial as stuff like this can get without switching teams, like in some alternate universe, this would be all over the radio, and should be. Folks who dig Zola Jesus, Glass Candy, Salem, oOoOO, Cosmetics and the like will dig big time.
D'eon, whose Palinopsia 12" we reviewed a while back, drags things back squarely into some outsider soul / weirdo electronics netherworld, with a gorgeous, hazy softly psychedelic intro, all swooshy new age synths, and spidery barely there guitar, cascading melodies, swoonsome underwater bass, and a melodic refrain that had this sounding almost like a re-interpretation of the Twin Peaks theme, but laced with a skeletal rhythm created by glitchy cell phone interference, that immediately recognizable stuttery static...
But after that, it's back to the fractured fucked up retro soul D'eon does so well, super washed out, kaleidoscopic eighties flashback grooves, Terrence Trent D'Arby like soulful vox, draped over smears of synth shimmer, and warbly loops, an avant IDM soul that seems to gradually blossom into even more crunchy glitched out rhythms, almost jungly at one point, but never shedding its gloriously dated eighties haze. The closer, with its electronic bass, and electro handclaps, definitely sounds like some lost eighties VHS soundtrack, bouncy, soulful, groovy, and fracturedly funky.
This rare orchestral psych-folk gem finally sees the light of day, complete with bonus tracks, alternate mixes and a Christmas-themed single just in time for the holidays! Heaven & Earth were a female duo, so named for the harmonious elemental quality of their voices, one earthy, the other airy. Refuge is the lone record they made for Dick Schorry's Chicago-based Ovation Records imprint in 1973, and it's got his spacey percussive production all over it, especially in key Chicago session players, Bobby Christian on percussion and Phil Upchurch on guitar (Rotary Connection, Dorothy Ashby, Soulful Strings). The folk-funk opener "Jenny" has been on many DJ playlists including Andy Votel and was recently featured on Trish Keenan of Broadcast's final tour mixtape that was making the rounds after her untimely demise. But the whole album proper is stunning, showcasing a wistful and mystical autumnal vibe that connects the airy pop folk of Linda Perhacs, The Poppy Family, and Wendy & Bonnie to the next wave of singer-songwriters and rock groups like The Roches and Heart.
We'll be playing this tons to warm us through the long cold winter. The cd features the album proper with 15 bonus and unreleased tracks pretty much containing their entire recorded output including their perhaps ill-advised attempt at heavy motorcycle rock,"Hawg For You Baby"! Also comes with two booklets of photos and liner notes and remembrances from each member. Quite beautiful and recommended!
Previously a vinyl-only reissue, now also available on cd -- the crazy French-Canadian sound of 1968! Collectors (like Jello Biafra) have apparently been salivating over this bizarre record for years. A wild psychedelic big-band instrumental soundtrack
Super funky, awesome Afrobeat full of psychedelic fuzz guitar and female empowerment here, folks! Identical twin sisters Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu (second cousins to Fela Kuti), were among the few ladies who managed to make it big in the otherwise male-dominated Nigerian music scene back in the '70s. It's no surprise they did, 'cause besides their good looks, they also had singing talent, positive energy, and an ear for a badass groove! All of which is evident here, on Knitting Factory's welcome reissue of their first album, originally released in 1976 via Decca's Afrodisia imprint.
Danger is aptly named, in the sense that even the most rhythmically challenged among us will be in danger of dancing when this electrifying, hypnotic record is playing. Also, the Sisters didn't shy away from socio-political themes in their music, overt and otherwise.
There's six killer jams here, including one rocksteady reggae number, all guaranteed to bring some sunshine into your life. The last one on side two, the 7+ minute "Lord Have Mercy" slows things down a bit, and weaves in some soothing surf sound effects, to make for a seriously soulful finale for the record.
Although we recommend this to EVERYBODY, it's definitely for anyone who liked Academy's Lagos Disco Inferno comp, and Soundway's The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970's Nigeria (The Lijadu Sisters' "Life's Gone Down Low" from this album appeared there too), along with bands like Blo and Tirogo that we've had full reissues of before. And happily, this is but the first in a series of four Lijadu Sisters reissues circa 1976-1979 coming from Knitting Factory!
Wuz all set and excited to write a review of the eagerly anticipated (by Allan here in particular) new album by technical sci-fi thrash wunderkinds Vektor, entitled Outer Isolation, which just came out last week. Unfortunately, our suppliers dropped the ball and we couldn't get enough to list this time, but hopefully will next time - remember the name! However, totally making up for that, guess what suddenly shows up early, giving us our technical math metal mega fix? The long awaited debut full-length album from Loincloth! And by "long-awaited", we mean since 2003!!! Yep, it's been years and years since Loincloth debuted with a two-song 7" on Southern Lord, so we weren't really expecting this full-length to ever materialize, yet here it is. And we're as stoked now, as we were when that 7" came out. Why were we so stoked? 'Cuz, if you didn't know, Loincloth was formed by members of both ex-Earache tech-doomsters Confessor (drummer Steve Shelton, bassist Cary Rowells) -AND- brilliant math rock pioneers Breadwinner (guitarist Pen Rollings, also ex-Honor Role, ex-Butterglove)!
Now, Richmond, VA's Breadwinner, were only one of thee most significant bands of the '90s, for some of us anyway. According to Encyclopedia Metallum (where were were sorta surprised to find an entry for 'em), they coined the term "math rock". Dunno if that's true, but it could be. Meanwhile, Confessor, from Raleigh, NC, they're the band that The Fucking Champs ritualistically listened to a tape of in the van before every show they ever played...
And yes, Loincloth basically does sound like a hybrid of Breadwinner and Confessor. It's an all-instrumental, massively heavy prog-doom riff fest for sure. This album packs sixteen mind-jarring tracks into a little over 39 minutes, each one a chunky, chuggy, see-sawing, stop-start, on-off attack of wicked sick sludge tech. You wouldn't even know that Pen Rollings ISN'T in the band anymore (though he's thanked for "contributions" so perhaps he penned some of these riffs?). On the original 7", Pen was in one channel, with 2nd guitarist Tannon Penland in the other, now it's all Penland's show, and he takes care of the six string biznez just fine by himself.
You DO kinda have to have iron balls of steel to name your album Iron Balls Of Steel, but they pull it off, of course. Plus they're having some fun with macho manly metal tropes too, in the manner of their band name. But this ain't jokey when it comes to the music. Gloomy, grim, grindy, this is like the music of a more ordinary death or doom band that's been fractured and fragmented, pasted back together with post-rock glue... or just falling down the stairs, but with exquisite precision. We're talking jazz chops. As for vocals, who needs 'em? They'd only get in the way here. And if the interplay of the guitar riffs and intricate drumming weren't enough, there's also some quirky production shenanigans keep things interesting... Loincloth, with or without Pen Rollings, are still an underground instru-metal sensation, for fans of Confessor, Breadwinner, Gorguts, Electro Quarterstaff, Stinking Lizaveta, etc.
PS Kinda hoped they'd include the songs from the out of print 7" and Swami comp, but they didn't, oh well.
Witchy doomy heaviness from Rhode Island, home of ultra avant doom heavies The Body, electro rockers Six Finger Satellite, spastic hyper noiserock duo Lightning Bolt, and hardcore legends Dropdead, among others, but female fronted doom rockers Loon have way more in common with the current crop of heavies like Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Sub Rosa, Blood Ceremony, Cauchemar, Christian Mistress and Purple Rhinestone Eagle, and fans of any of those bands will definitely dig Loon's stonery psychedelic grooves, and pop flecked Sabbathy doominess, but Loon definitely have their own take on that sounds, beyond the doom aspect, which is really pretty minimal, sure it IS doomy, but it's way more groovy, there's also a serious slowcore vibe going on, a downer pop woven into the group's more metallic heaviness, which ends up reminding us of a way heavier more traditionally metal True Widow, which is totally NOT a bad thing. And then there's the vocals, which are amazing, slipping from demonic screech, to sweet melodious croon, powerful and intense, and often reminding us of country chanteuse Neko Case surprisingly enough. So if you can imagine Neko Case singing for a Sabbathy doomy downer pop stoner metal combo, well then, you might have an idea of what Loon has going on. And while the vocals might be the best we of the bunch, in terms of actually singing, the songs are pretty fantastic too, spacey and psychedelic, groovy and heavy, a little bit proggy, super hooky, with just enough pop, the guitar sound buzzy and crunchy, the drums powerful, the whole sound hooky and heavy, doomy and sort of dreamy at the same time.
After a gorgeous hazy bit of psychedelic acoustic guitar, the record finishes with the nearly 10 minute "Grackel" which is the perfect Loon track, mixing all the various elements, the Neko Case like vocals (sounding surprisingly twangy here!), the shrieked demonic howls, the groovy Sabbathy riffage, the super melodic poppiness, the dirgey slowcore, all culminating in a woozy washed out feedback drenched spacey psychedelic outro, that could have (and probably SHOULD have) gone on for ANOTHER 10 minutes. Definitely a new favorite. Anyone into ANY of the above mentioned bands should for sure check this out.
The packaging is incredible too. The vinyl is black and green swirled, and is housed in an elaborate silkscreened fold out cover, green and metallic gold, a skeletal soldier wreathed in flowers, beneath the groups's tendril-y root-like logo, includes several inserts and a download code!
Released as the second disc in a double cd set with the Light In The Attic reissue of Satan Is Real, the Handpicked Songs 1955-1962 collection is now available on its own as a separate lp.
The Louvin brothers have long been respected artists among contemporary folk and Americana artists, so Light in The Attic has curated an album of influential Louvin Brothers songs recorded between 1955 and 1962 selected (not covered!) by modern day artists like Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, M. Ward, The Black Angels, Beck, Kris Kristofferson, Devendra Banhart, Will Oldham, and others. Showcasing the fact the Louvin Brothers singing and songwriting talents far surpassed the novelty of their most famous album cover.
Now reissued on vinyl by LITA...
Really, where would aQ be without Satan? He sure has helped us promote and sell thousands of metal records. But this classic old school country gospel record with its iconic cover, has done so much more to promote the reality of Satan than any metal record we can think of. Long an example of notable novelty or "bad" record covers, it may come as a surprise to those who have never actually heard it, that it's quite a beautiful commingling of gorgeous vintage country harmonies, and sad tragic southern gothic narratives. Like our favorite Porter Wagoner songs, these are tales of life's darker turns and the unending battle between forces of good and evil. Yet, The Brothers here don't take a judgmental tone, but rather, one of caution and gentle honey-toned persuasion towards salvation.
Hails!
Awesome campfire indie folk from this new (at least to us) San Francisco band. Stripped down, raw and warm songs that are as intimate as they are intoxicating. Their sound brings to mind a lot of our favorite tender records that were coming out of the Pacific Northwest in the late '90s by folks like Rose Melberg, Kaia, Sarah Dougher, and Lois, as well as displaying hints of a darker disposition, sort of like a more twee Cat Power or Edith Frost.
We've got a feeling their future releases will be more fleshed out and include more instrumentation, but we are really digging how stripped down this sounds, allowing the beautiful vocals and sincere songs to stand on their own.
The tape comes with a digital download as well.
Single number two from these Oakland punk poppers, and while their first 7"s was beholden to the Replacements and the Velvet Underground, this one is definitely more on the punk side of the equation, three chords, pounding drums, rollicking and a little ramshackle, BUT, then thee's the vocals, which change everything. The vocals are not shouted or grunted or howled, instead they're delivered in a dramatic sung-spoken croon, reminding us a little of Morrisey, but a lot of the the singer from the Smoking Popes (who always reminded us of Morrissey anyway), and the effects is pretty instantaneous, turning furious punk energy into something a bit more twee poppy, even the second track, which is more furiously punky, is pushed popward by the vox, the lyrics too, goofy and silly and fun, the second track is called "Chased By Anderson Cooper" after all.
Minus those vocals, we can't imagine this being in Slumberland, but with them, it makes perfect sense. Oh did we mention this is a flexi disc? Well, it is, one sided, two songs on the one side, still housed in a proper 7" sleeve and jacket.
Latest full length from this long running German black death horde, and even more than their previous outing, Doom Of The Occult is a sprawling, ambitious epic, that takes the sound of classic death metal (Autopsy, Incantation, Hellhammer, etc.) and fuses it to the gnarled blackness of newer bands like Deathspell and Katharsis, and creating a stunning songsuite of mid paced blackened death metal, that is black enough to appeal to the true grim hordes for sure, the riffing thick and twisted, the drumming intricate and powerful, the vocals a reverbed demonic bellow, verging on gurgling DM growl, perfectly matching the tenor and energy of the music.
At first glance, there seem to be an insane number of tracks, but the band has woven multiple interludes and sonic experiments into this record, and that's on top of various intro and outros, all the various non metal pieces super varied sonically, ranging from droned out ambience to hauntingly Middle Eastern sounding arrangements of choirs and synths, but it's the metal obviously that's the focal point here, and it's the sort of black death we can't get enough of, thick and cacophonous, doomier and mid paced, the sound churning and roiling more than thrashing and blasting, the sound surprisingly melodic, those melodies often very Eastern sounding, giving much of NC's sound a mystical exotic vibe, not to mention that they don't shy away from infusing their metal with chanted crooned vox, or swirling synths, the result is a surprisingly melodic, blackened death that is coming dangerously close to being one of our new favorite metal records.
We've been meaning to review something by this Canadian atmospheric/ambient black metal horde for ages, but there records have been surprisingly difficult to get in numbers enough to review and list. But finally we got enough of this one, not brand new, but a reissue of an ep from 2009, with a single from the same year tacked on, four tracks, 42:23 in all, of some of the best, tranced out black ambience and buzzing blackness we've heard. Check out the first track, the slow building "Loudon" which sounds like an even blacker more lush Locrian, beginning with a recording of some preacher, condemning a witch to burn at the stake, all over a deep rumbling whir, the sound blossoming into a thick lush drone, all woozy warped tolling bells, swirling synths, mysterious reverbed percussion, and finally a guitar, the slowly erupts into a caustic roiling buzz, a thick crumbling distorted swell over a hunting Jeck like loop, which gives way to near silence, and recordings of what sounds like running water, beneath an acoustic guitar, the vibe sort of Comus-y, but even more harrowing and haunting, finally finishing off with another strange sample, which leads directly into the epic "Rituel Incantatoir Du Grimoire Du Sorcier", which erupts immediately into a fierce frenzied black buzz, the drums so fast they sound almost like a drone, the guitars blurred and frantic, the arrangement cyclical, weirdly looped with a little stutter, making the song swing hypnotically, and then the song explodes into an almost-waltz, epic and majestic and melodic, the blazing double kick returning, now accompanying the waltz like main riff, the sound seeming to grow ever grander, only to bliss out part way through, the guitars smeared into a lush layered sprawl, over which another mysterious sampled voice surfaces, and then it's back to the loping buzz, finishing off in a squall of synth soaked black doom churn.
The final track of the ep is all ambient, a haunting liturgical drift, all chanted voices blurred into woozy drones, delicate piano melodies, subtly manipulated sounds, almost like tape experiments, hazy and washed out and totally mesmerizingly hypnotic. Which leads directly into the single track, the even more epic 18+ minute "Thanatonaut", which spends its first 5 minutes droning ominously, swirling winds, the sound of workers toiling in the dungeons, then finally, the guitars come in, massive and heavy and huge, unfurling creeping chugging doom, an ominous creep, with more swirling synths, and some impossibly gurgly demonic vokills, the song a sonic death march, subtly psychedelic, wreathed in ambient shimmer and atmospheric swirl, a gorgeously abject slab of blackened doom, which trudges resolutely to the very end. So fucking great. While very little of this release is in fact black metal, black energy oozes from every note, and will no doubt convince the uninitiated, that Neige Et Noirceur could very well be their new favorite band.
Now, two of your favorite records by Thee Oh Sees, combined on a single cassette, designed to look like one of those old school record club tapes. Pretty cool how Burger is doing this series of Oh Sees cassette tape 2-fers.
Thee Hounds Of Foggy Notion:
Originally a cd/dvd live record, this "best of" features some of our favorite tracks from some of our favorite records, beginning at the point when the band changed their name from OCS to its many incarnations of "Ohsees", "The Oh sees", or "Thee Ohsees", and the record titles went from numbers to quasi-absurdist phrases. Those who may shy away from live albums over fidelity issues should not fret here, as Dwyer and his cohorts are seasoned and energetic live players and hi-fidelity has never been a major concern on their studio records anyway; so there's really not a discernible distinction between live and studio sound quality. In fact, this may be just as good as a starting point into the band as any one of their studio records, which just keep getting better and better. Got to love a band that can move so effortlessly from southern garage to one of the best Shirley Collins interpretations ("Highland Wife's Lament") we've heard in awhile.
Dog Poison:
John Dwyer, one of the most prolific performers in recent memory, returns with yet another new record by his band Thee Oh Sees. And by "his band" we are not discounting the contributions of the other members because on Dog Poison, all the instruments are played by J.P.D. all by himself! Percussion, guitars, vocals, keyboards, even a flute on a few of the tracks. Though definitely more fuzzed out and raucous than Help, the last Oh Sees full-length, Dog Poison draws on similar veins of '60s pop and proto-punk, sculpting songs only one of which is over three minutes (and that just barely). Way more loud and rocking than other releases that were all Dwyer, it makes sense that Dog Poison is ostensibly by "Thee Oh Sees" rather than "OCS" or some other variation on that theme. It's like the old OCS is emulating what has become Thee new Oh Sees.
Those of you who think you might miss the boy/girl vocals of other Oh Sees releases, do not despair. There are multiple vocal layers on almost all of the tracks, most using "regular" singing and falsetto that echoes the perfect combination John and Brigid have found on other recordings. Sometimes, as on "The Sun Goes All Around", the lead falsetto vocals are backed up by (believe it) even higher falsetto backing vocals. Clocking in at just under 25 minutes, these 10 songs will have you on the dance floor in no time.
This week the Kismet label brings us two rare sitar infused flower power psychsploitation oddities: The far-out mindwarping "children's" record for the hippie acid kids, Kali Bahlu Takes The Forest Children On A Journey of Cosmic Remembrance from 1967 (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this 1971 sitar and electronics groover from Holland's Okko!
Just like the title suggests, this is Dutch musician, Okko Bekker composing original tunes and performing covers for Sitar and Electronics. Taking a less druggy and more groovy and jazzier tact than the Kahli Bahlu record, Bekker covers the Beatles and channels Hendrix, following the likes of Big Jim Sullivan (Lord Jim), Bill Plummer, and Gabor Szabo into pop sitar territory. This is probably a bit more heavy and far out than the others, but it still definitely falls more under the category of lounge exotica than into any head-expanding territory of its own. Though it come close on "Pointed Sails on Ganges" the most Eastern of any of the tracks offered here, and the one that most sounds like the cover looks. Still pretty damn groovy!
Much has been made of Jakob Olausson being a beet farmer, heck even in our review of his last record, our whole review revolves around that somewhat salient fact, and while that is indeed an odd personal fact, it shouldn't distract attention from his formidable musical talent, record number two finds this Swedish outsider psychedelic folk troubadour crafting a fantastic record of hazy, washed out, psych folk that while remaining as idiosyncratic as his debut, has managed to up the production, and add a little polish, but it's all relative, the sound is still elegantly raw and warmly home brewed, the guitars rich and lustrous, Olausson weaving a lush backdrop for his smoldering psychedelic leads and his rough raspy croon, which reminds us quite a bit of aQ pal Cayce Lindner (R.I.P.) and his group Flying Canyon, the same sort of achingly plaintive countrified folk, a sort of acoustic slowcore, that creeps and drifts, everything wreathed in tape hiss, and swaddled in billows of echo and delay, the sound minimal, and stripped down, but at the same time, still impossibly lush, the various tracks obviously recorded at different times and on different equipment, some are loud and lustrous, others are more lo-fi and brittle, but all of them are hushed and dreamy and darkly divine.
This all time aQ favorite, originally a cute little 3" cd, was recently resurrected and pressed onto vinyl for this year's Black Friday "Record Store Day", but as is the way with those things, got delayed and delayed, and only just recently showed up here. Needless to say, if you don't already own this, or have been dying for it on vinyl, this may be your only chance. And for those of you who like us, dream about the day OMG return to rule, this just might tide you over until then. Here's our (slightly revised) review from when we first listed it way back in 2004:
Our favorite primate-obsessed doom metal drone outfit finally return! Old Man Gloom are back with a three inch ep (now 12" lp) to hold us over until their next epic. The centerpiece is the two part "Christmas Eve". The first part is all dreamy drone-y acoustic guitar strum and mournful electric guitar melodies over an ominous rumble that becomes a thick sheet of amps-gone-wild before dissolving into misty ambience again. Part two starts off just like part one but is quickly transformed into a hyper distorted, black hole dirge, with earth crushing downtuned guitars and chanted vocals sounding not unlike Alice In Chains slowed down and run through a bank of distortion pedals (which is definitely a good thing). The rest of the tracks are random bits of OMG ephemera: a thirty second blast of shrieking downtuned metallic grind, two tracks entitled Masami's Music Box I and II, presumably Masami Akita aka Merzbow contributing two thirty second bursts of uncharacteristically sweet melody and ambient hum, and a bonus track, a Mr. Big cover that is so stupid that it's funny (sort of), but has such an amazing ending (why hasn't anyone done this before, but more importantly, how the fuck did they do it) that it would be unfair for us to deprive you of discovering it for yourself. Just don't complain to us when you finally hear it. There is nothing wrong. It's just the OMG Simian Alien Defense League fucking with your mind! Resistance is futile!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. In heavy swank cardstock sleeves, printed in yellow and blue, with all new artwork!
We listed the standard version of this heavy slab of stoner doom riffage from SF heavies Orchid back in April, and while that version is still available, we managed to get just TWO copies of the super fancy deluxe version, which comes in a super swank oversized faux leather sort of hardcover book, like some ancient necromantic tome or something. Same music as far as we can tell, but all with even fancier packaging. Here's what we had to say about the record when we first listed it:
Once again, not to be confused with the old sceamo band THE Orchid, but yes very much to be confused with BLACK SABBATH, that's their schtick as it were, this Bay Area based doom metal act now offering up their debut full-length album after a four-song ep that we considered almost a guilty pleasure because of how much Orchid sounded utterly, EXACTLY like Black Sabbath. That's what they do, and they do it damn well. There's been other bands who emulate the Sabs, of course, that's the whole "doom metal" genre really, but Orchid sound more like Sabbath than even, say, Iron Man, sHeavy, or Sleep on Sleep's Holy Mountain!
The vocalist's version of Ozzy, though, is maybe more of a malevolent one, he comes off like Ozzy with a grimacing, evil edge. Riff wise, it's Iommi all the way. Really, every moment here sounds like it's been lifted of an old Sabbath lp, but rearranged/rewritten into Orchid's all "new" Sabbath songs. They can't complain about us saying that, that's obviously their intention, to recreate the Sabbath vibe circa 1970-73 as closely as they can, becoming Earthly vessels of sheer Sabbathiness, originality be damned. "Black Funeral" here for instance, seems to channel Sabbath's "Hand Of Doom"... but without quite (quite) crossing the line into outright plagiarism. Pretty much all the other songs on Capricorn can also be mapped to their vintage Sabbath templates, it's almost like you're listening to an alternate universe Sabbath album that never existed.
All right, so we've established that it would be impossible to write a review of Orchid's album without referencing Black Sabbath. What else is there to say? The musicianship is excellent, the production heavy and '70s sounding, with psychedelic synth embellishment and other droning eerie atmospheres (see "Planet Caravan", we mean "Albatross") - and of course catchy riffage that rocks mightily when the band is going full-bore, as on "Eyes Behind The Wall" and "Down Into The Earth" among others. There's absolutely no duds among the nine songs here, we're digging 'em all, and we think all fans of heavy retro occult metal like Blood Ceremony and Witchcraft will likely enjoy these too... as well as, of course, Sabbath fans, especially if you've worn out your actual Sabbath records and want a fresh dose.
Ho ho ho! Just in time for the holidays, the diggers at Academy/Voodoo Funk have unearthed and reissued this rare 7" slab of Christmas cheer, Afrofunk style. Pee Pee Dynamite (what a name!) was an artist from the happenin' mid-'70s music scene in Ghana, and this single was produced by Kwado Donkoh, known to those in the know for his work with the Uhuru Dance Band and the Agoro Records label.
If you pay attention, sure the singer is talking 'bout Christmas and New Years, but unlike a lot of seasonally themed recordings we've heard, this really could be played anytime, the seriously groovy funk shuffle happenin' on the A-side will keep the party goin' right through New Years Eve and long into January... Meanwhile the slower, soulful B-side, truly lives up to the name "The SOUL of Christmas". A neat stocking stuffer for the funk lover in your life. Limited edition as well.
As we've mentioned before, our tastes in dubstep tend to run toward the dark and minimal, and often the big beated and even bigger bass-ed, but we also dig the super abstract and skeletal, the minimal and moody, whether it's the expansive lush dubbed out atmospheres of Clubroot and Swarms, or the super stripped down skitter and drift of the Skull Disco crew, so it makes perfect sense that Skull Disco's Shackleton, would team up with Pinch, who happens to be one of the more minimal dubsteppers in the Planet Mu stable, and it makes perfect sense that the two of them would come up with this, a gorgeous, super minimal, abstract and ambient collection of skitterscapes and swoonsome dubs, as much about space and texture as loops and beats, which is precisely what makes this collection so striking, the space, the sound between the sounds, no bombast or overkill here, this is hushed and delicate, deliberate and meticulously crafted, from the record's opener, the strangely lush "Cracks In The Pleasuredome", which is a sort of sci-fi skitter, infused with some pop ambience and wedded to some murky slo-mo soul, to the soft focus stutter of "Torn & Submerged", that seems to be all beat, tribal, subtly groovy, the beats flying solo for most of the track, bookended by melodies, some swirly haze in the beginning, some murky swirling shimmer at the end, there's the brooding slow burn of "Burning Blood", that unfurls minimal tribal percussion beneath a thick washed of ominous drones, or "Levitation", that gets about as close to proper dub as these guys can manage, while still keeping the sound abstract and near ambient, less driving and propulsive, more textural and moody, there's even a haunting choir like vocal draped over the second half, and finally, there's the 14+ minute "Monks On The Run", which begins with chimes and bells, over warbly low end swoops, and progresses to be the darkest and most beat heavy and traditionally dubsteppy of the bunch, of course the track does spend nearly two minutes drifting along almost silently, before emerging in a squall of rumbles and hiss, thrum and whir, before the beat comes back in, the song growing poppier and poppier, but simultaneously more warped and woozy, until it seems to melt into silence. Gorgeous stuff, definitely not for the big beat dubstep crowd, but for some gorgeously chill, late night, dreamy dubstep drift, this is about as good as it gets.
