Another rad new band to add to the legion of SF psychedelic garage rock outfits who have been kicking our asses. And if you need a hint as to what these guys sound like it, just notice that out of place 'y' in the title of the tape. Sorta like the 'j' in Wooden Shjips yeah? While Poor Sons don't really sound THAT much like WS, they definitely would be right at home on the same bill, the core of their sound a droned out garage psych, hypnotic and buzzy, the drums shuffling and propulsive, the big difference are the vocals, there seem to be two singers, both WAY up in the mix, their vocals doused in effects, echo and distortion, to the point that when both are singing, in cool unlikely harmony, they nearly drown out the band, and when the vocals fade, and the band ramp it up, like on the second half of opener "Cool Buzz", these guys let loose and tear it up, shredding and pounding, the bass driving, the guitars shooting sparks, while the rhythm section holds everything down, that lead break is the sort of part you want to go on for minutes instead of seconds.
The rest of the tape is just as ruling, the band definitely swimming in similar waters as their scenemates in Thee Oh Sees, a sort of distorted blown out ramshackle garage pop, swaggery and snarly, fuzzy and jangly, slipping from churning sweat soaked pound to moody psychedelic shamble and back again, with plenty of falsetto ooooh's and frantic drumming, meshing moody jangle pop with droney psych and making a sound that ends up their very own. Which is pretty tough in a field as crowded as the psychedelic garage rock scene, but these guys are positioned to give The Oh Sees a run for their money. We've yet to see these guys play out, but based just on the tape, we're guessing they kill live too. WAY recommended. Anyone into Thee Oh Sees, the Fresh & Onlys, Bare Wires, Mikal Cronin, Ty Segall and Blasted Canyons can now add Poor Sons to your list of favorite local bands.
A few years back we were digging a cool 10" of orchestral pop from a San Francisco band called Lady Genius. We had wondered what happened to them and as it turns out, they are still around but have changed their name to Primary Structures.
With this full length we are once again taken by their ability to effortlessly create such bright and colorful pop songs. While they try to trick the listener into thinking its just very straightforward indie pop, the truth is their songs have really interesting arrangements and changes. We're reminded of some of our favorite records by The New Pornographers, The Dodos, and Dismemberment Plan. There are hints too of mathiness and even a touch of new romantic glam. But at its core, the sound is punchy and bright, fueled by confident vocals and crisp instrumentation.
Another record that was slated for release on Black Friday "Record Store Day" and was delayed, only finally reaching us well after the day, and one that we have VERY few copies of, and it's unclear whether we'll actually be able to get more, so this might be your only (non eBay) shot at it, if you're quick. A sprawling collaboration between black metal / guitardrone soundscapers Horseback, and abstract sort of black metal ambient alchemists Pyramids (whose mainman also runs the Handmade Birds Label), a sprawling epic spread out over SIX sides (a 7" AND an lp), which finds each band offering up their own little thing, and then putting their heads together for the bulk of the release.
The 7" comes first and features Pyramids on the A side, who after a chaotic stuttery programmed drum into, slips into a dreamy blissed out stretch of cinematic ambience, all softly swirling effects and hazy melodic drift. Horseback handle the B side and counter with a blast of black metal, a frantic blast beat beneath buzzing guitars that almost sound more like blackened gypsy folk than black metal proper, until the vokills come in, and the demonic shriek clears that all up, before changing gears half way through and transitioning into a gorgeously decayed crumbling distorted dronescape.
So when it came time to throw on the lp, we were imagining some sort of black metal / drone hybrid, or something similar, instead, the epic 4 part album length A Throne Without A King, plays out more like some lost Nurse With Wound album, heavy on the abstract soundscapery and mysterious collaged atmospheres, the processed garbled vocals, and truncated melodies, lots of drones and textures, and strange industrial filigree, it's haunting and hypnotic and very abstractly cinematic for sure, and finds a mysterious middle ground where neither band's influence is obvious.
Woozy industrial thrum drift beneath sine wave tones and fluttering high end melodies, all over fields of crackle and whir, mysterious voices doused in effects intone some ominous warning, as the listener is slowly pulled under, swallowed whole by deep drones and ethereal melodic drifts, wild squalls of white noise and grinding machinelike textures, the track most often settling into long stretches of UNsettling ambience, sounding not unlike Philip Jeck or The Caretaker, ominous and sinister, cinematic and haunting, the various textures constantly subtly shifting and transforming, as much a part of the sound as the melodies, everything floating in some epic expanse of nothingness, tethered to one another by thread like slivers of fuzz and buzz and thrum.
Vinyl and cassette only for now (although we have yet to receive the cassette), cd in January...
We actually had the debut tape from these Chicago fuzz pop garage rockers, released on the seemingly now defunct Plus Tapes label, but for some reason never managed to get it reviewed, which is a bummer, cuz this new 7" is definitely hitting the spot. You can now add another band to the roster of garage pop combos we dig, who like some of their sonic brethren and sistren, are channeling classic sixties girl group pop, even the vocals here, make, but high enough and reverby enough to have us thinking 'girl group' all along, the music is lush and melodic, fuzzy guitars and driving drums, chiming melodies, underpinned by swirling synths, the first track getting downright distorted and crunchy near the end. While the B sides is a short blast of fuzzy almost punky pound, with whirring organs, buried vox, and a super sweet chorus that must go over gangbusters live. Serious sing along potential for sure. Definitely excited to hear more!
We know you've all be waiting for us to weigh in on one of the burning issues of our time: just how terrible IS the Lou Reed / Metallica album? Is it terrible terrible, or maybe so bad it's good (but still terrible)? Or, perhaps, like The Wire, would we be all contrary and proclaim it to actually be brilliant, not terrible? Well... let's just say that actually writing a review of Lulu is difficult 'cause simply sitting through Lulu is difficult! Imagine a random rock band (Metallica) jamming on some generic stoner riffs they wrote in like 5 minutes, while Grandpa Simpson (Lou Reed) speak-sings disturbing/cryptic/asinine lyrics from the POV of an underage girl prostitute and whatnot over the top... and it's TWO freaking discs long!
Well, even opinion here at AQ is divided... just like when Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus came out. We DO like stuff that's "fucked up" after all, and certainly this is. And there's ways in which the "transgressiveness" of this might appeal to Oxbow fans, for sure (and we're Oxbow fans). But if you're a Metallica fan... well you're a glutton for punishment already anyway at this point, and this IS better than St. Anger (what isn't)? Is it possible that Lulu is Lou Reed's laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank joke on a clueless, desperate-to-be-artistic Metallica?
Maybe we should just cop out and say that Lulu stands outside of any conventional good/bad judgment. It's just...ludicrous. And not 'cause it's Lou Reed and Metallica, as a concept, per se. Actually, when we first heard about Lou Reed teaming up with Metallica, some of us thought it had potential. On paper. After all, Lou Reed had written songs for KISS before (on 1981's Music From The Elder) and look how that turned out. No, seriously, we dig that KISS album. And if Lou was good enough to write songs for KISS, he should be good enough to write songs for Metallica, heck they should have brought him in sooner. Or, another possibility, was that they would do a full-on noise album together, conducted by Reed: Metallica Machine Music, perhaps?! That could have been cool. Instead, we got this arty absurdity. Which, to be fair, does have its (unintentionally HILARIOUS) moments. For instance, "I Am The Table" (not the name of the song, but it should be, it's actually called "The View", after the TV talk show) is almost worth the price of admission, it's already a classic. Or, check out the very next song, "Pumping Blood", sample lyric from Reed: "Waggle my ass like a dark prostitute coagulating heart pumpin' blood... c'mon, James!"
Yes, he really says/sings that. Wow.
And if Reed's half-assed spoken word style, way-too-high-in-the-mix vox weren't ruinous enough, James Hetfield then sings backup throughout, in his usual heartfelt, gruff, rock dude croon. Singing stuff like the aforementioned, "I am the table!". The juxtaposition is, again, just so ridiculous. As is the entire album. We're not sure what's worse, when they try to do "songs" (like "Iced Honey") or when it's just Lars on the drums providing random backup for Reed's beat poetry.
Ok, it's not all laffs. Ferinstance, in the finale of the set, the whole second half of the epic 20 minute "Junior Dad" is just droning somber strings, and that's quite pretty, although that part doesn't appear to involve either the members of Metallica OR Lou Reed...
So, our "verdict": you should definitely hear this, a least a bit of it, for a laugh. But buy the thing? Well, we've got one copy, and expect to have it for a while. But please go ahead, buy it. We dare you. And when you're listening to it, try not to imagine this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRPzElP_eSI
Yay! It's a new one from "our favorite moody, mysteriously conceptual site-based post rockish indie gloom pop electronica act from England", as we've elaborately described 'em before. Site-based? Well, what that means is that the concept behind each of their albums is the sonic evocation of a location where something strange once happened, allegedly. These (possibly entirely spurious) sites explored on previous Reigns records include an abandoned house on a causeway, a bottomless hole in the ground, and an entire underwater village in a dammed up valley. In all cases, the Reigns duo of "operatives A & B" have conjured wonderfully dreamy, yet slightly creepy, oft instrumental imaginary soundtracks to these locales. These aren't actual "field recordings" but rather musical analogs to such, emotional field recordings if you will.
On the new Widow Blades, Reigns takes as their subject the (true?) story of a woman who vanished in a blizzard back in 1978. And just judging by the typically curious and unsettling song titles here ("Green Butter", "I Will Burn For This", "Horse Murders", "Four And A Half Minutes Missing"...), clearly there is more to this tragic tale than merely it being an unhappy wintertime mishap. The listener is invited to investigate, Reigns setting the scene with placid piano, gentle drones, minimal electronics, occasional downtempo beats, and some deep voiced vocals providing the solemn narrative, all very whispery and wintry and quite lovely despite the downer subject matter. It's slow and sad quasi ambience, and once again, we'd say Tarwater makes a good comparison. As always with Reigns, very much recommended! In fact, this would be worth it just for the final epic atmospheric track alone, "The Mounds", a dramatic 19-minute tour de force of suspenseful, glitchy beat-repetition and glimmering luminous melody. It certainly makes sense that Reigns have also been employed making actual soundtracks to some BBC television shows, lately. And this could easily fit in with the Miasmah catalog, too, for fans of that label.
From the same label that brought us records by Velvet Cacoon, Clair Cassis, Nightbringer, Temple Of N.O.T., Lonesummer, Void Of Reveries and Necktarium (same TWO labels more accurately, as Starlight Temple Society sort of became Khrysanthoney), comes this strange bit of abstract blackness, the debut 2007 release from Brazilian one man band, Roba El-Khaliyeh, who weaves deep ritualistic drones, lumbering industrial black ambience, sweeping cinematic soundscapery and raw hateful black metal into a sprawling bit of otherworldly sonic mystery.
A haunting stretch of minimal rumble and shimmer, gives way to some super noisy pound and buzz, sick vokills over moaning atonal riffage, and reverb drenched Teutonic pound, swirling synths, and thick buzzing low end, rife with strange bits of percussion, and sampled voices.
The record slips into moody, melancholic piano driven sort-of-bombastic balladry (peep the bloodied keyboard on the cover), with big drums and some weirdly glammy vocals, sounding like a black metal Rufus Wainwright, sort of. The sound quickly returns to something more hushed and minimal, deep bell like tones, softly undulating stretches of layered low end, very darkly meditative, laced with some subtly corrosive streaks of twisted fragmented melody. The record culminates in the church organ led final track, a stately hymn surrounded by thick swirls of whipping wind, before the synths come in, all majestic swells, sounding not unlike last week's Record Of The Week, Fastest, like some sort of Zelda style dramatic soundtrack, before finally fading to black.
Strange stuff for sure, but we definitely dig it. The black metal element is brief, but still seems to inform the rest of the record's not nearly as black soundscaping.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Housed in a slim dvd case, with full color cover and insert, recorded on gold cd-r.
?uestlove, the drummer and band leader of The Roots has been in the news a lot lately for the musicial prank he pulled on Michelle Bachmann during her appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the show for which The Roots are the house band. But we really hope that incident doesn't overshadow what amazing musical visionaries he and his Roots crew are. They close the end of the year with a bang releasing not only this great new album, but a collaboration with legendary soul vocalist Betty Wright (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list).
Undun is a concept record of sorts based on the life of a fictional character representing the struggle and realities of inner city life. The album melds hip-hop with R&B, all fueled by such superb playing and guest spots by Bilal, Greg Porn, Dice Raw, and Big K.R.I.T. The record comes to a climax with its two closing songs, "I Remember" and "Tip The Scale" and then segues into a majestic closing suite complete with cello, violin, and viola.
In a hip-hop world dominated by bravado and flashy antics, The Roots always keep substance at the front of their game, making music in the process that transcends genre and leaves a deep and lasting impact.
NOW ON VINYL!! Deluxe double lp pressed on 150 gram wax, includes MP3 downloads of the whole comp as well...
Even though we reviewed a lot of em, we had no idea Segall had been cranking out singles at such a crazy clip, nearly 20 tracks from 2007-2010, and that's not even counting the full lengths. And if you're a faithful reader of the aQ list, you probably already know we're a huge fan of Segall's fuzzed out jangle and crunchy garage rock stomp, and it's kind of great to have em all gathered up in one place, especially considering that we somehow missed a whole bunch of these.
Just check out the opening salvo, "Where We Go", 90 seconds of fuzzy, murky jangle and pound, all murky and fuzzy, with some weird percussion and some reverby sing along vox... then there's "It", which is also pretty far out, super lo-fi, and way dynamic, with a strange stop start arrangement, and a KILLER chorus. And then "Sweets" which is of a classic garage groover, but if those three songs don't knock your socks off, well, there must be something wrong with you.
We could go track by track, but pretty much everything here kills, some highlights include "Caesar", which, starts out all strummy and jangly, with some seriously fuzzy bass, the vocals a reverbed croon, shifting into a falsetto here and there, at one point getting all tangled up in effects in a twisted distorted psychedelic freakout. There's even a super rocking PIANO SOLO! But all that stuff is just icing, on what is a killer hook, and a crazy catchy jam. And the B side from that 7", "Bullet Proof Nothing", which is a Simply Saucer cover, is a little more grimy and buzzy than "Caesar", sounding almost like the Stooges "Search And Destroy" slowed down to a garagey dirge, but again, Segall wraps that jangle and crunch around a hook most bands would kill for. There's also Segall's cover of Thee Oh Sees' "Maria Stacks", a song which might just be Andee's favorite Oh Sees jam, not just cuz it's hooky and catchy, but it also immortalizes AQ pal and amazing artist/zine-maker Maria Forde. Ty finds a way to make the song a bit more lo-fi and fucked up sounding while still holding on to the great melody that makes the original stick like it does. We also dig "Cents", which still ranks as one of our favorite Segall jams ever, but there's also "Booksmarts", which we had never heard before, but is definitely now also in the running for best Segall jam, in fact, the more we listen to this, the more contenders there seem to be. Lots of the A sides from various singles did end up on the full lengths, but some of these versions are pretty dramatically different. Segall also does a pretty killer version of the Gories' "I Think I've Had It", with some chiming jangly guitars, lo-fi drum pound, and some crazily distorted vox.
In addition to the singles, there are also a handful of demo tracks, which are gloriously low fidelity, the yelped reverbed vox super reminiscent of Thee Oh Sees, which makes sense as Segall and Thee Oh Sees have shared numerous stages and records, and all except one have never popped up anywhere before, and even in their raw form, sound as good as anything else here.
Obviously if you dig Thee Oh Sees and Mikal Cronin and Bare Wires and the rest of that Bay Area garage rock crew, you probably already own most of Segall's records proper, and need this too (trust us), but if you somehow don't, this is as good a place to start as any!
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 one might be the most extravagantly packaged of the new batch, but more on that in a second, first the music. A strange detuned psychedelic folk exploration of opium abuse and the descent into addiction from this mysterious Swede, all spidery steel string guitar buzz and muted lumbering percussion, echoey and buzzy and abstract, darkly hypnotic, a sort of late night creep, very dark and ritualistic, haunting and harrowing, the sound seem to be unravelling before your ears, the notes brittle one second, warm and languid the next, the production reverby and lo-fi, occasionally building to a bit of noisy soft chaos, only to return to woozy lumber, it some ways this reminds us of the late great Reeks And The Wrecks, with it's warped blues stumble, but there also seems to be a weirdly blackened buzz, and a depressive futility to the sounds that hints at some doom / black metal influences, maybe more in mood than in sound, but the result is pretty fantastically dark and dreamily depressive.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Housed in a super swank black spray-painted intricately folded cardboard box with metallic gold printing. Inside a printed metallic gold sticker, and a ziplock baggy affixed to the inside of the box, with a gold and black sticker, each bag containing poppy seeds, the tapes printed in gold ink. Each box hand-numbered in gold ink.
A cool and totally DIY daily planner/calendar for 2012 that's also filled with tons of awesome tips for life in San Francisco, covering everything from knowing your rights as a worker to free nights at theaters, fish to avoid, taxi cab numbers, 24 hour diners, weekly food cart meet-ups, farmers markets, knitting patterns, needle exchange places and more... all done with a total lo-fi punk rock aesthetic, plus there are loads of listings for cool events happening during the year. Rad for people who live here to have as a resource and functioning calendar/daily planner, as well as any of you out of towners who think you might be coming to SF at any point in 2012, or hell anyone who just wants a bad ass daily planner.
It also comes with a cd compilation of San Francisco bands including Full Moon Partisans, The Dont's, The Abi Yo-Yo's, and more.
As if the Sublime Frequencies label wasn't prolific enough, one of the SF head honchos, our pal Mark Gergis, has now launched his OWN similar label, Sham Palace. Which has chosen as its first release, this reissue of a classic recording from beloved Syrian singer Omar Souleyman, a single song 30 minutes long! Originally released as a cassette in Syria, this reissue finds that single sprawling Souleyman groove, an edit of which was included on Souleyman's Sublime Frequencies debut Highway To Hassake, presented in its entirety, taking up two sides of vinyl. It's a killer track recorded live in one take, to emulate the vibe of the actual performance, without the distractions of the recording studio, and like other Souleyman jams, it's a scorcher, his vocals in fine form, over a wild tangled background of stuttering, pounding programed beats, buzzing synths and incredible saz melodies (the guy who plays saz is a serious shredder!). It's difficult to imagine the band keeping up the intensity for 30 minutes, but they never flag, the sound effusive and celebratory, the sort of sound that would incite and instant dance party (believe us, we saw it happen here, hipster wallflowers could not resist!), it stands up as one of his best most certainly, which is saying something considering how great pretty much everything we've heard from him is.
That would be enough, but there's a whole second lp, with two more tracks, the first, a lengthy introduction wed to another groover, this one more laid back and swoonsome, the vibe is more late night wind down, the band still killing it, but all stretched out and languid, sultry and surprising serene, while impossibly retaining much of the usual energy. And then finishing off with an unreleased track, which returns things to their proper order, Souleyman and band kicking it up a notch and once again unfurling some incredible grooves, wild and funky, hypnotic and tranced out, totally mesmerizing and utterly irresistible.
Now on vinyl!! This recording of steel pan (drum) music was reissued by one of our our favorite reissue labels, Japan's eccentric EM Records, as a cd+dvd back in 2008. Now it's on vinyl, minus the dvd portion obviously. And with a slightly different tracklist than the cd version. But what we said before still goes...
This is the third in EM's steel pan series (after the Modern Sound Quintet and the Rudy Smith Quartet). Those first two were in a jazz-funk vein, whereas Steel An' Skin is a reggae affair, as you might guess from this disc's title. Reggae and dub and "soca-disco". This hybrid Afro-Caribbean outfit, a merger of musicians specializing in Pan-African percussion as well as the rhythms of the West Indies, and featuring ex-members of the 20th Century Steel Band, was based out of London, England in the '70s. While we particularly liked the jazz-funk grooves of the Modern Sound Quintet, we're also taken by the delightful, sunny appeal of Steel An' Skin's upbeat vibes. While addressing some serious issues ("Fire In Soweto", "Acid Rain") this still has a primarily happy disposition, with soulful vocals and a relaxed atmosphere.
Of course, our favorite track here is "Afro Punk Reggae (Dub)" since indeed it's the dubbiest, and that's what we at AQ tend to go for in our reggae. Never heard steel drums echo-effected like that before! It would also be the track we'd play for peeps who love those "Disco Not Disco" comps.
Before we had actually heard Andy Stott, we had a procession of folks come into the store and tell us how incredible his stuff was, and how we should definitely get whatever we could, and yet, with every 12" release, they disappeared before we could get any copies at all, and before we knew it they were gone. We did manage to hear bits and pieces, enough that when we discovered that two of the records were being reissued together as a double cd, we could barely wait, and once it arrived, well, pretty much everyone here has been playing it nonstop. UK producer Stott seems to have taken the minimal downtempo soul of Burial as a jumping off point, taking that same sound and slowing it down even further, adding more grit and grime, creating a sound now twice removed from the dancefloor, a soporific, somnolent techno that fuses murky dirgey slo-mo soul with abstract house music creep, conjuring up a music that is both haunting and sinister, mesmeric and minimal, an array of looped melodies, melded to skeletal thumps and heartbeat like pulses, fragmented samples woven into the mix mostly to provide texture and melody, but for the most part all of the various elements are recruited to either become rhythms themselves, or to be blurred and smeared into a grim washed out backdrop, over which the rhythms slither and skitter. The dub element is huge, but it's a muted sublimated dub, only really showing itself, when a voice escapes the gravitational pull of Stott's black hole dub, the swirl of effects dragging it right back down into the murk, quickly disappearing into the inky blackness, leaving just the churn and lurch, and it's that balance, a delicate one to be sure, that makes Stott's sound so special. Too much rhythmic murk, and it's monochromatic and dull, too much melody, and sonic filigree and suddenly it's not nearly so dark and mysterious. Stott deftly negotiates the middle ground, dragging the more melodic elements into the dark and repurposing them, using them to infuse his sonic black energy with life. The bonus tracks on Passed Me By, are much more active, the pulsing house-y "Stitch House" sounds like Stott covering The Field, still all fuzzy and washed out and Pop Ambient, but much more rhythmic, and less murky, while "Love Nothing" lets the rhythms come front and center, skittering and shuffling over a rubbery low end melody, and swirling synthy chordal swells, not to mention a deep dramatic croon. It almost sounds like a sketch for a future song that would find the various elements dipped in pitch, slowed down and blackened.
The second disc does dial back the murk a bit, instead focusing on the rhythmic component, wrapping everything in a Pop Ambient haze, but letting the beats break free of the whir and thrum, opener "Submission" is all hazy swirls, the only rhythm a sort of echo drenched dubbed out ripple, very dreamlike and abstract, before slipping into "Posers" which at first sounds very much like something off Passed Me By sampled water gurgles beneath a muted techno thump, but soon, fog horn like melodies drift in, and the beat blossoms into something much more active, a shuffling crunch anchored to a house-like pulse, processed vocals drifting over the top, the vibe groovy, but still washed out and druggily abstract. Which is how the first half of We Stay Together plays out, but then about half way through, the sounds begins to veer back toward the murk, "Cherry Eye" being a fantastic bit of muddied minimalism, even at its most propulsive, it's still a muted creep, as is "Cracked", although it does crank the beat a bit, conjuring up a sort of slow motion shimmy, that remains looped and mesmerizingly motorik.
The bonus tracks on We Stay Together, in some ways mirror those on Passed Me By, in that they actually sound more like their opposite, "Work Gate" is super minimal and sketch-like, a little dubby and darkly Portishead-y, while "We Stay Together (Part Two)" begins life as a hushed blur, but gradually blossoms into another Field like chunk of looped techno mesmer.
Released on the same label that gave us all the Demdike Stare records, which should give you an idea that while this might technically be techno, it's some murky dubbed out hauntology that transcends any sort of genre classification. A brand new unanimous store fave, and definite contender for Record Of the Year!
Packed in a super striking oversized gatefold sleeve, with a different cover for each album depending on which way you're holding it, both stunning black and white photos culled from the pages of National Geographic.
Best band name ever? Definitely a contender. Never really thought that the Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley had anything like this in him, but this album is pretty damn good regardless! Almost living up to the ridiculous moniker! Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners was Shelley's oddball synth-wave project that began even before the Buzzcocks broke up in 1981. Back then, he took up the habit of inviting any number of unmentioned 'guests' over to his studio to jam with anything and everything in the studio; and these Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners recordings came from the many tapes that he had made by these means from 1980-1984. Who those 'guests' in Shelley's studio might have been is anybody's guess. Our guess though? Maybe Eric Random, maybe Francis Cookson, maybe Sally Timms from The Mekons. Regardless, the resultant recordings are an electronic-heavy art-punk with plenty of weirdo synth meanderings, Keith Levene sounding guitar splinterings, dub-inflected basslines, and scatterbrained effects. None of the punk-pop hooks from the Buzzcocks are found here, even when guitars, bass, and drums enter the picture; it's pretty much all about the studio as instrument with lots of effects swarming about the drum machine rhythms and bare-bones post-punk grooves. One could think of The Storm Bugs, Crawling Chaos, The Psyclones, or Jeff & Jane Hudson. Vinyl-only, and sorry, there's no download card with this LP.
First released way back in 2001, SUNNO)))'s 00Void was later re-released on Japanese label Daymare, which included a bonus disc, on which Nurse With Wound remixed and re-envisioned the record, and transformed it into something haunting and surprisingly lovely. That bonus disc was recently reissued on vinyl (with some slight alterations, apparently), and now Southern Lord has re-released 00Void along with, while limited supplies last, that Japanese bonus disc. So if you have the Daymare version, you don't need this, but if you missed out on this before, grab one before they're gone.
First our review of 00Void:
00Void is in fact, SUNNO)))'s first proper album, the preceding Grimmrobe Demos, being just that, demos, but sonically, it picks up right where Grimmrobe left off, huge undulating slow motion riffscapes, epic, majestic, glacial, ominous and black hole heavy. Although it hardly seems necessary at this point, for those who have managed to somehow avoid SUNNO)))'s sonic influence, SUNNO))) began life as the world's first, best, only, (and last?) EARTH tribute band, emulating and bowing before the glacial "power ambient drone" metal of Earth, creating a little cult of the dronedoomdirge faithful, long before the hipster set caught on, but this record, as much as Grimmrobe before it made a case for SUNNO))) as their own entity, sure they owed every aspect of their sound to the band they were birthed to honor (still do really), but they managed to subtly imbue that same sound with their own influences and experience, creating something even more slow and low if that were even possible, setting yet another standard for heaviness.
So on 00Void, SUNNO))) indulge in pure unfettered doom, loosed from any sort of rhythmic constrictions, unmoored from traditional song structures, letting riffs and tones and pure vibrations emanate from their wall of speakers, like some monstrous black tuning fork, almost more a physical sensation than an aural one, but those movements of blackdrone infused with a musicality that blossoms slowly the deeper you allow yourself to sink. Suffocating, pummeling, crushing, oozing, but also soothing and beautiful. Maybe one of our favorite SUNNO))) records for sure. And if the pure grim heaviness of the three originals wasn't enough, 00Void also includes a cover (or, an interpretation, anyway) of a Melvins tune! Another band who were dabbling in slow motion heaviness long before it was cool...
And here's our review of the bonus disc, Nurse With Wound's take on 00Void:
A fantastic disc of haunting drones and abstract soundscaping, constructed using the glacial doom of SUNNO))) as the building blocks, which is surprising considering how shimmery and serene much of this is.
The opening track is one long slow billow of sound, gentle clouds of muted metallic reverberations, deep resonant chiming tones, soft smeared bass notes, all blurred into a creeping drift, that is more Chalk or Coleclough than SUNNO))). The second track is evenmore abstract, isolating, or adding voices, peppering the dreamy drone with strange metallic clang, moaning horn like bleats, sprays of hiss and buzz, all over a warbly wandering bassline, the vocals driving the song at points, a nasally croon entangled in the tracks gauzy gurgle, the bass getting thicker and thicker, coated in grit and grime and hiss, the vocals effected and almost demonic, breaking glass, weird industrial clatter, and lots and lots of hisssssssss.
The final track, another gorgeously minimal drone, the sound of SUNNO))) smeared and blurred and muted into a hushed thrum, soft subtle layers shifting and blending, warm and rich and textured but simple and spare, near the end, voices and radio static surface, but still barely audible, another whispered layer beneath a sea of tranquil hushed whir. Pretty dang cool, even if it's fairly far removed from the sound of the original, but then again, that's sort of the mark of a good remix as far as we're concerned.
As with most things Southern Lord, extremely limited, each one numbered, and most likely not available for long.
Spokes is the debut full length from aQ customer Jeremy Young and is a fantastic collection of impressionistic dronemusic and miniature guitar compositions, blurred into a sprawling sonic drift, it's a "conceptual tone-cycle" which incorporates text from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs Du Mal (1857), and features a handful of aQ faves reading Baudelaire, Aki Ondo, Liam Singer, and others, and while we're often a bit put off by 'spoken word' records, Spokes is something else entirely, the brief bits of spoken word are in fact very brief, and are often deftly woven into the sounds surrounding them, in fact the 12 minute opener, features a spoken word intro, but then proceeds to unfurl a fantastically mesmerizing stretch of abstract minimalism, from droning upper register tones, to hushed dreamlike shimmer, from hazy almost pop ambience, to a folky soft focus psychedelia, not to mention a long stretch of what sounds like field recordings and tape experiments, and some cool electronic glitchery, all held together by a drone that seems to run throughout.
Elsewhere, the spoken word bits are laid upon soft billows of glistening shimmer, wreathed in gauzy streaks of warm thrum, or set amidst field recordings of rushing water and all manner of wildlife, but surrounding those brief bits are still more lush stretches of sound, Barn Owl like atmospheric twang, strange bits of sci-fi electronics wrapped in lush undulating Niblock like tones and overtones, cinematic soundscapes laced with melancholy melodies drifting through clouds of static and hum, it's all quite hushed and lovely and dreamily haunting reminding us of Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, and other explores of similarly hushed ambient beauty and abstract dreamlike songsmithery. So nice.
Packaged in a minimal, super striking 4 panel digipak, and wrapped in recycled hemp twin with a manilla tag.
Bet you never thought you'd see Charles Manson on a Slumberland record. At least he's been made up with some blue eye shadow and some pink lipstick, and the record is pressed on pink vinyl. It's record number two from SF punk pop combo Terry Malts, who definitely find inspiration from classic punk combos like the Undertones and the Buzzcocks, but who make that sound their own, cranking up the echo and the reverb, adding some seriously muscly drumming, anchoring some fuzzed out guitar buzz and some thick low slung basslines, all shot through with little melodies, the band doing a fine job of balancing pop dreaminess with fierce punkiness. The A side would be a hit for sure if punk rock had 'hits', while the B side takes their sound and makes it even more distorted and murky, wreathing everything in swirls of feedback, finishing things off with a crazy catchy short sharp blast of pro-atheist punkiness.
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.
Thee Open Sex is apparently, according to the label, "a psychedelic supergroup of mammoth proportions" from the label's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. We sense a bit of tongue in cheekiness there, but this is most definitely a primo slab of droned out mysterious psychedelia, with long tones layered into thick undulating drones, buzzing synths, plenty of buzz and hum, some bowed metal, a slow ominous build, buried melodies drifting in viscous swells of rumble and whir, laced with saxophone blurts, and eventually driven by pounding tribal percussion, the sound super druggy and gauzy and abstract, but with a strange internal propulsion, that adds tension and intensity, this is the sort of stuff that would most definitely appeal to fans of Avarus and No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the same sort of abstract sonic ritualism, totally mesmerizing, and per the above description, the sort of thing most aQ-ers, especially the psych-kraut-space-drone inclined, will flip over. Includes members of aQ faves Dylan Ettinger, Circuit De Yeux along with a bunch of other Indiana psych rockers.
LIMITED TO 150 HAND STAMPED COPIES. The tapes are housed in anti-static ziplock bags stamped on the front with some strange pink symbol, and stickered on the back, inside a thick printed cardstock insert, the tapes featuring hand-printed paper labels, each stickered bag numbered/stamped in red.
Phaserprone returns with more of their bunker mentality for obscurant synth-punk noise and rhythms, here authored by Brooklyn's Thought Broadcast (although now living in SF), who had at least one release on the uber-hip Gel label. Phaserprone champions this release as a surefire trajectory out of the "rarified TB discography," which seems to be wholly enigmatic from what we can discern; not surprisingly, this is our first exposure to the project. Thought Broadcast offers up 4 short monosynth and rhythm box trax whose dark-minded minimalism splatter with the power-electronics vibe of the pre-Brighter Death Now project Lille Roger or some of Cabaret Voltaire's more zombified efforts circa 1978 and with a little bit of Dome thrown in for good measure through TB's effects scrambling vocals, blorping synth sequencing, and monotonous mechanoid plod exhumed from a tarpit of tape murk. Cut at 45, so you know we're also loving this at the wrong speed! Elegantly packaged with Phaserprone's heavily embossed letterpress artwork. Limited to just 175 copies!
We've long been fans of Dale Flattum, as have you we're guessing, his musical resume is pretty impressive, even just considering it features late great SF noise rockers Steel Pole Bathtub, but then there's his various other groups, as well as solo and semi-solo projects, Milk Cult, Agent Nova, CC Nova, Novex as well as his most recent band The Nein, and that's just musically, all that time he's been creating some of the coolest visual art too. Art you've no doubt been exposed to, whether you realized it or not. Posters, flyers, record covers; his style raw and primitive, very DIY, black and white, photocopied clip art, all created under the alias Tooth. And much of his finest graphic art is collected here in this massive book, and holy cow is this a feast for the eyes, some of it's surreal, some super simple and striking, collages, original illustrations, purloined and recontextualized images, and our favorite, his illustrations made from super simple geometric shapes, deftly cut and arranged into figures and characters, a few images here that will immediately make you realize all the different places you've been exposed to Tooth's visual propaganda. We've been poring over this book, and every time we crack it open we see something new, or discover some hidden details, the art managing to be totally visually arresting, sometimes ridiculously simple, but always with more going in that immediately meets the eye, the magic of Tooth we presume. Most record nerds like us will definitely dig this stuff, as much of it you've scene, and the stuff you haven't will push the same buttons as the stuff you already know and love. Heck, there's even a flyer Tooth made for aQ when we hosted a Milk Cult / Agent Nova instore way back in 1997! And as if that weren't enough (and it is, believe us!) the book also comes with a cd compilation, featuring tracks from Flattum's various musical projects, all of the above mentioned outfits, from the sample laced, surprisingly poppy noise rock of Steel Pole Bath Tub (8 tracks!), to the quirky home brewed pop of Novex, all acoustic guitars, programmed beats, crooned vox and random crackle and hiss, the weird cinematic lo-fi experiments of CC Nova, the dreamy sunshiney fuzz pop of Novex, the glitch electro gloom pop of Agent Nova, and finally the electronic laced weirdo pop of The Nein, reminds us how great pretty much all of Flattum's bands were, and has us definitely wanting to hear more of The Nein.
Needless to say, WAY recommended, visually AND sonically, a retro flashback for old folks like us, but a good way for a new generation to hear and see what they may have missed, and realize, that all this stuff looks and sounds as good as it ever did!
For whatever reason, we never paid much attention to Part Chimp, you think with a monkey related name like that we'd be all over those guys, and listening to this split now, we're sort of kicking ourselves, a cool monkey name AND they shred, laying down some seriously blown out heaviness, a sort of stoner rock sludge, the guitars thick and oozy, the riffs Sabbathy and slow, laced with shredding psychedelic leads, the drums bombastic, everything woven into a serious head caving chunk of head bangable downtuned metallic riff rock, that is TOTALLY hitting the spot. To the point that we might just have to go track down all of these guys records. Cuz both tracks here kill, one a Hawkwind cover, that sounds like the original dipped in filth and supercharged. Note to self: Part Chimp RULE!
Ok, now that we've got that out of the way, we can say, that it almost didn't matter WHO was on the other side of this split, and not just cuz they'd be going up against Torche, but also cuz they'd be going up against Torche doing ALL GUIDED BY VOICES COVERS!! And yeah, it's just as great as it sounds, they tackle "Exit Flagger", "Postal Blowfish" and "Unleashed! The Large Hearted Boy", all of which could totally be Torche songs proper. Usually when some super heavy band covers a pop song, we think to ourselves, "why isn't there just a band who actually sound like that, who are crazy heavy, but write killer pop hooks", but in this case, we know the answer, there IS, and that band is Torche. The GBV songs were mini masterpieces to begin with, so when wedded to pounding drums and huge distorted guitars, they turn into pretty much totally perfect pop metal bliss, and we can honestly say, we've listened to these three songs over and over nearly nonstop since we got this in. Maybe Torche will cover Bee Thousand in its entirety. We can dream.
Probably crazy limited, and features super cool space ape sci-fi cover art!
To dedicated readers of the New Arrival list, there can be no doubt that goth and industrial sounds from the eighties are back in a huge way. But rather than riding the nostalgia train, most of the groups we love who are mining this sound and putting their own spin on it, adding unique elements to distinguish a sense of honest and progressive devotion from a mere genre exercise. Case in point is this debut tape from Austin-based heavy gloomers, Troller. Coming out of the same fervent scene that was birthed from the ashes of Silver Pines: Pure X, Survive, Sleep Over, and Thousand Foot Whale Claw (for a good overview of this scene, check out the Brain Club Vol. #000001 LP compilation), Troller mine classic death rock, but slow it down with a heavy shoe-gazing doominess. You can tell the female singer has a voice as big as Zola Jesus, or Siouxie, but what we like most about it is that she restrains her delivery from overwrought passion up front in the mix, instead letting it moulder at times in a dour misanthropic mire with the chilly synths and the booming plod of the drum machine patterns. In between each proper song is an untitled instrumental that shows the band's knack for sculpting dark ambient soundscapes that are alien, pensive and luridly bleak.
To check it out: http://troller.bandcamp.com/releases
The band dropped these off while on tour, so we have about ten. We probably can get more, but be prepared to wait for a restock until the band return home.
The latest from these Detroit lo-fi noisepop garage rockers finds the band continuing to shed much of their overt weirdness, and settling into a sound that's much more classic eighties punk rock, or pop punk, the sort of sound that makes Tyvek sound more like some lost band we discovered on one of those Hyped2Death comps, which is not a bad thing at all.
Urgent and jangly, punky and frantic, the vox sung/spoken and WAY up in the mix, definitely reminding us of Mark E. Smith of the Fall, in fact some of this actually sounds like old Fall, snarly and snotty, swaggery and sinewy, three chord bash and trash infused with cool subtle melodic leads, loads of hooks, but wed to something much more raw and fuzzy than we would have expected from these guys in the past. Even the production sounds genuinely old school, brittle and tinny, and in-the-red, very four track, old punk 7"s vibe for sure, but thankfully these guys have not lost their knack for weirdo pop, and that stuff definitely still finds its way into their sound.
Huh, what, wow!? A fourth album from AQ fave Steven R. Smith's AQ fave epic free-psych-drone Ulaan Khol project! After the "Ceremony" trilogy of I, II, and III released on cd by Soft Abuse circa 2008-2010, the 2nd volume of which we even made a Record Of The Week, we thought that's all we'd be getting outta Ulaan Khol. It was a trilogy after all. But lo and behold, Soft Abuse now brings us a new album, this time cassette only, that once again sees S.R.S. exploring the spacey outer limits of droned-out guitar psych in his Ulaan Khol guise. The six smouldering tracks here, with titles like "And I Dreamt the Sky Was a Great Ocean of Blood" and "Watching From the Cave of My Skull" are quite lovely, actually, with lots of "the dark blissy drift, the slow burning drifts, the blurred desert-y shimmer" we heard on the second half of UK's III.
Uber-limited to just 200 copies. Comes with a digital download for those times when you don't have your Walkman handy.
Here's the second volume in Planet Mu's Bangs & Works series of compilations focusing on Jukin' and footwork and the infuriatingly genius music that serves as the soundtrack to those new strains of dance battling. As we mentioned in the first volume, this stuff is maddeningly repetitive, so much so that when we play it in the store, it's usually another employee that ends up taking it off, but somehow, it always gets played, cuz most of us can't get enough.
The sound is loosely hip hop, but imagine hip hop if the initial loop was just repeated endlessly, the melody constantly recycling, all over a jittery skittery rhythm, while some snippet, sung, spoken or sampled, is also repeated, it's mesmerizing and trancelike, and its easy to just get lost and zone out completely, that is if you're not one of the people pulling their hair out.
But odds are if you're anything like (some of) us, this might just hit the spot, super minimal, hyper cyclical, circular electronica, that is dubby and housey, skittery and stuttery, groovy and funky, and yeah, crazily OCD. Check out the opener RP, Boo's "Heavy Heat", which takes the loop from Pharoahe Monch's "Simon Says"(which was sampled from Akira Ifukube's "Godzilla's Resurrection"), clips it and loops it and sets it on endless repeat. Under that loop there's a skeletal skitter, there's a weird samples bit of soundtrack, a soul vocal loop, and a couple other vocal snippets, but it's that awesomely maddening main loop that will get lodged in your brain FOREVER. Check out the sample, all it will take is a minute or two to figure out if it's your cup of maniacally repetitive tea or not. It's most definitely ours!!
Not sure what it was, but for whatever reason, some of us had never gotten that into Bossa Nova. Sure there were the standards, the popular tunes that everyone heard, but it never struck a chord, or maybe just at the time, and maybe it was precisely because it was the popular tunes, the accessible jams that made it into the ears of someone who at the time, was more of a jazz dabbler. But Soul Jazz has been killing it lately, with THREE different Bossa Nova comps, which have totally swayed the non believers, converted the haters, and even impressed the folks who were already big fans. First there was Bossa Nova And The Rise Of Brazilian Music In The 1960's, which was reviewed on a past list and you can check out elsewhere on the aQ list, then there was Bossa Nova And The Story Of Elenco Records, Brazil (which we haven't reviewed yet, but hopefully will soon!), and now there's Bossa Jazz: The Birth Of Hard Bossa, Samba Jazz And The Evolution Of Brazilian Fusion 1962-73, which might just be the best of the bunch. We've been listening to this like crazy non stop since we first got it in, and it continues to blow us away. It's still bossa nova, but it's darker, and more intense, mostly instrumental, hard to explain exactly what it is, but the sound, the soul, the vibe, it's just totally doing it for us.
Apparently instrumental music, played by the more popular bands of the bossa nova movement, became known as hard bossa or samba jazz, and as the sixties wound down, there was a huge exodus of Brazilian musicians heading to the US, and many Brazilian based musicians who began to collaborate with US groups, and thus was born Brazilian fusion, and this compilation basically follows that shift, and traces its development musically. But it's the sound, the music, the feel, this comp in some ways feels like a Brazilian version of Ethiopiques 4, our favorite volume in that stellar series, but that one is all instrumental, and in many ways that lets the music do the talking, the emotion oozes from the instruments, and the same is true here, there are some vocal performances, which are incredible, but mostly it's these jazz masters let loose, the drums are wild, there are multiple drum solos, the bass, the piano, the bands are just incredible, and the sounds they conjure up are stunning. And even some more well known names, Sergio Mendes, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Airto Moreira, Baden Powell, all offer up darker more progressive fusion-y sounds, and it's just fantastic, much of this collection sounds very cinematic, and like the other Soul Jazz bossa nova comps, not a single track we had ever heard before, but pretty much every single one we LOVE. So much so that this comp has sent us on a serious bossa nova kick that shows no sign of letting up. Which is always the sign of a good comp.
Like all Soul Jazz compilations, there's a big booklet with extensive liner notes with lots of photos, the cd version housed in a cool miniature hardcover book.
Patrick McGinley has been broadcasting his exemplary Framework Radio series since 2002, showcasing the wild and wooly uses of field recordings in composition with the occasional Finnish freak-folk tune (laced with bird song, of course!). He began Framework through the seminal London-based Resonance FM, gradually expanding his scope with stations licensing the series around the globe. In support of these productions, McGinley started a small cd-r imprint whose releases would only be available to the donors supporting Framework; but he's made one very kind exception to this, appointing aQuarius as his sole retail outlet. The first collection McGinley offered was a 4-disc set of exclusive tracks with some heavy hitters amongst the lot including Chris Watson, Phill Niblock, and Giancarlo Toniutti with plenty of AQ-favorites dotted in the nearly five hours worth of music.
Here, McGinley begins what looks to be a quarterly cd-r series of exclusive material whose compositions feature field recordings in some way, shape, or form. At least for Issue #1, McGinley has picked an array of artists not featured on that aforementioned 4-disc set.
Here, the artists include Marc Behrens, Ernst Karel, Gill Arno, Sebastiane Hegarty, Mark Peter Wright, Mecha/Orga, Paulo Raposo, Lee Patterson, and Joe Stevens. The swarming, buzzing drone of Sebastiane Hegarty's track is a magnificent piece of field recording, originating from a couple of contact microphones attached to a taut wire vibrated by stiff English winds. Eerie and beautiful in its harmonic humming as an Aeolian harp. The Marc Behrens track reworks the chaotic urban soundscape of Hong Kong into a complex musique concrete piece looking back to those early collages by Jim O'Rourke. The enveloping thrum of Mark Peter Wright's very impressive "Around And Within" originated from a network of decommissioned drain pipes that resonate with a thick, vibrating set of frequencies captured with open air microphones along with the drips from melting snow. Very nice. Lee Patterson's hydrophone recordings capture the rich chorus beneath the surface of various fish and water-borne insects, with a skittering almost electrified-sounding bed of staccato chatter and sferic arcs. Paolo Raposo also uses hydrophones, although he coaxes ringing tones and drones from those recordings in this brightened piece of minimalist shimmer. A brilliant collection through and through.
Yes, the price is steep for a cd-r, but the offset folio packaging is quite nice and proceeds from this disc go to support Resonance FM!
Short form review: Ridiculously awesome.
We mean, kind of a no-brainer here, you know you want this - the sequel to B-Music's indeed wonderful The Sound Of Wonder comp has arrived, and of course it's awesome. As the subtitle Plugged-In Sounds of Wonder at the Pakistani Picture House suggests, it's another 16 tracks of vintage "Lollywood" soundtrack gems, exotic pop produced by the Lahore film industry circa the '60s and '70s, taken from the vaults of EMI Pakistan; a spicy blend of impassioned vocals, fuzz guitars, analog synths, spacey effects, lush orchestration, and ethnic hand percussion, music that's just a bit rawer and if possible zanier than its Bollywood counterpart, though not too dissimilar...
Life Is Dance sure starts off with a bang, a Great Googly Moogly of a track called "Zambo Zambo" boasting crazy gruff vocals that will have you staring at your stereo. That one goes on for nearly nine minutes, really a wild ride full of curious, catchy sonic juxtapositions. And somehow this album's compilers keep up the "Urdu-groove" awesomeness from there on in. Many of the big names Lollywood history appear here, among 'em Sohail Rana and Nahid Akhtar.
As always with B-Music/Finders Keepers stuff, impeccably researched, lovingly presented, with informative liner notes and evocative graphics...
Holy cow! Matador Records has turned 21!! Hard to believe that it's been over 2 decades, and that what was once a tiny little indie label has turned into one of, if not THEE biggest independent labels in the world. But it's not all that surprising when you look at the records Matador has released, and the bands who call (or called) Matador home, just off the top of our heads: Pavement, Guided By Voices, Interpol, Yo La Tengo, Bardo Pond, Chavez, Belle And Sebastian, Matmos, Arab Strap, Cat Power, New Pornographers, Fucked Up, Sonic Youth, Ted Leo... We could go on, but you get the drift, in fact, if you're reading this, odds are you own a whole bunch of those records, and your house is probably overflowing with Matador jams.
So to celebrate the big TWO-ONE, Matador had a huge party in Las Vegas, with tons of awesome bands playing, and released this incredible 6cd box set (or 2lp, not so incredible, more on that at the end of the review, vinyl folks might as well skip the next bit as it only applies to the cd version). Six discs, a massive sprawling greatest hits collection, spanning the label's entire history, chronologically. The first disc is maybe the most exciting, as it features tons of the lesser known Matador outfits: Dust Devils, Toiling Midgets, Bailter Space, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Come, Bettie Serveert, Chain Gang, Circle X, H.P. Zinker as well as Unsane, Superchunk, Railroad Jerk (one of Andee's favorite bands EVER), Teenage Fanclub and more. The next few discs feature all of the bands mentioned in the first paragraph, as well as Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pizzicato Five, 18th Dye, Guitar Wolf, San Francisco Seals, Helium, Boards Of Canada, Spoon, Pole, Mogwai, Cornelius, Dizzee Rascal, Dead Meadow, Mission Of Burma, Early Man, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Shearwater, Jennifer O'Connor, Stephen Malkmus, Lavender Diamond, Kurt Vile, Times New Viking, Jay Reatard, Harlem, Ted Leo, Magic Kids, Perfume Genius, Cold Cave and more more more! As if that weren't enough, there's a sixth disc featuring all unreleased recordings from Matador's 10th anniversary show back in 1999, live tracks from Pavement, Come, Bardo Pond, Cat Power and Mogwai!
Those all come in a super swank box, with an 80 page book, packed with liner notes, a history of the label, photos, emails and other goodies, and finally, 36 custom Matador poker chips (in keeping with their Las Vegas celebration, we presume).
Phew! Basically the raddest Matador mixtape EVER.
Vinyl folks are not so luck, the lp version is a more stripped down greatest hits double lp, featuring a handful of jams from Matador and Matador sublabel True Panther Sounds from Fucked Up, Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile, Yo La Tengo, Kurt Vile, Jay Reatard, Times New Viking, Ted Leo, Cold Cave, Girls, Interpol, Cat Power, Delorean and a few more. Still a pretty excellent mix/collection, but in this case, seems like probably the cd version is the way to go, $43 for 6 discs, poker chips and a swank box is not bad at all...
How could anyone not be obsessed with this? We originally thought the title was just a catchy turn of phrase whipped up by MISSISSIPPI RECORDS, who originally put this out on cassette, but as we did some digging, we discovered that the title was in fact literal, this is indeed a collection of songs found on cellphone memory cards in the Saharan desert. It's not nearly as strange as it sounds once you realize that in Africa, much like in the US, people use cellphones for everything, including of course collecting and trading music, often swapping songs person to person via bluetooth. So here is a sort of best of, a collection of tracks which were super popular in the African mp3/cellphone network, but have essentially never been released commercially or really heard at all outside of these mp3 traders until now.
Obviously, anyone who's a fan of Sublime Frequencies, or Mississippi records is gonna go nuts for this stuff. The sound, besides reflecting a sort of African underground, also chronicles a new era of personal music production, with many of these tracks recorded in people's homes, on computers, using commercial software, synths, autotune and other things previously unavailable outside a proper studio. The sound is super varied: many tracks are classic sounding African music, with some of that desert blues vibe found on a lot of Sublime Frequencies releases, call and response vocals, warm buzzing melodies, simple skeletal rhythms, very hypnotic and mesmerizing, while others are far out takes on commercial pop, or Afro-hiphop, or African electro, all seemingly underpinned by classic African rhythms, but with way more modern elements woven in, some with super autotuned vocals, creating a strange soulful autotuned afro-pop hybrid that is pretty amazing, the record continues to slip back and forth from those classic sounds, to more modern takes on African music, some lush and layered, others super lo-fi, some obviously loose street jams (occasionally peppered with weird recording/cellphone storage/transfer glitches, which only adds to the sound), others are obviously meticulously composed and arranged, and those crazy autotuned vox continue to pop up throughout (obviously very popular with the mp3/cellphone music traders), and are definitely the strangest element.
And according to the label, since the original cassette release, most of the previously mysterious artists (the original tape featured very little in the way of artists and titles) have been tracked down and now get a majority of the royalties.
So totally recommended!
Over the last few years, thanks to the enthusiastic efforts of a bunch of excellent globally-focused "research & reissue" labels, the typical AQ customer, as a dedicated sonic adventurer in the pursuit of cool music, has likely amassed quite a collection of vintage international pop, often on the psychedelic side of things, lots of great stuff previously obscure to Western ears. We've been introduced to surf rock from Thailand, funk from India, fuzz rock from Africa, film music from Pakistan, etc., etc. One of our faves has to be B-Music's Pomegranates comp of Persian grooves from the pre-revolutionary era, the '60s and '70s. Now here's a double cd/triple lp collection on Vampisoul deeply mining the same territory. And chances are, you'll recognize some of the names on here, like Googoosh and Kourosh Yaghmaei, from various other reissues/anthologies that have come out recently.
There's 28 tracks/treats dusted off from a scene that "flourished during the 1960s and 1970s before vanishing into exile or oblivion." Sadly, it was the same story elsewhere in the world too - political repression clamping down (with varying degrees of terminal harshness) on the era's vibrant pop music scenes in such far flung locales as Cambodia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and, under consideration here, Iran.
The Shah might have sucked, but as the liner notes here put it, after the Ayatollah took over, "'having fun' was banned entirely"! And what fun this is, the songs selected here chock full of impassioned crooning, lush swirling orchestration, bombastic dance beats, slinky grooves, some doleful acoustic balladry, and of course much in the way of ornate ethnic Eastern motifs... It's like an infectious Iranian blend of 50's exotica, '60s easy listening, '70s disco... with some strong hints of freakier, more psychedelic youth sounds like funk and rock. And most of it would make a great soundtrack if the Love Boat ever took Persian Gulf cruise.
Artists include: Abbas Mehrpouya, Fereidoon Farrokhzad, Neli, Habib, Hamid Shabkhiz, Simin Ghanem, Dariush, Ahmad Zahir (who is from Afghanistan, but presumably had his records released in Iran), Aref, Leila Forouhar, Giti, Hassan Khayatbashi, Googoosh, Shohreh, Afshin Maghaddam, and Kourosh Yaghmaei. The thick cd booklet (or lp sleeve) contains plenty of interesting notes on each of 'em, each artist/track boasting an informative blurb, lyric translations, and full-color photo. There's a comedian with an operatic voice (and unfortunate Hitler mustache), an openly gay poet/TV host/political scientist (assassinated in exile, presumably by agents of the Revolutionary regime), and many attractive songbirds with celebrated hairstyles....
Originally reissued some years ago as a double cd, this killer collection of Indian psychedelic garage rock, has now been split into two different compilations, delineated by date, one disc for 1970, the other for 1971, but odds are you're probably gonna want both of them anyway. If not, either one is a great place to start. Some of you may remember the Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 compilation we made our Record of The Week a while back, a few of those tracks were taken from these comps, but for the most part, most of this stuff is exclusive.
While Simla Beat may sound like some cool record nerd classification for Indian psych from that era, Simla was in fact a cigarette company, who recognized that besides smoking, the kids also really dug rock and roll, specifically the sort of Western influenced sounds that were bringing surf and garage rock to India, so they founded a battle of the bands, complete with an awards show with the prizes presented by Bollywood stars, and the winning songs would get released, and hence we had these Simla Beat compilations. There were rumors, that since none of these tracks feature sitar or tabla or any distinct Indian instrumentation, that they were in fact hoaxes, and that none of these bands were in fact Indian, which was obviously proven to be false, and while there may not be sitar or tabla, there is a distinctly Eastern vibe to these tracks, and the sound, as well as the various productions, definitely takes the more Western version of surf rock and garage rock and makes it into something new and exciting.
Both discs contain some killer jams, and we could easily go through both track by track, but we'll just pick out a few highlights, and there are samples below too, which you should check out, pretty hard to resist we think. Simla Beat 70 starts off with "Voice From the Inner Soul" by the Confusions, which is so good, and catchy, it sounds like it must be a cover, but as far as we can tell it's an original, crunchy guitars, fuzzy organs, a groovy stomp with a KILLER chorus. Then there's the Dinosaurs, who offer up another original that sounds super familiar but is not a cover, the vocals raspy and scratchy, wound around some skittery drumming, and some fuzzy guitars, and another wicked hook. You probably remember X'lents' "Psychedelia" with its "Secret Agent Man" opening riff and some seriously kick ass psychedelic garage rock. The Dinosaurs also cover Creedence Clearwater Revivals's "Sinister Purpose" and make it their own, even more raw and fuzzed out than the original.
The 1971 installment is just as great, starting off with The Fentones' "Simla Beat Theme" which is total surf rock bliss, a littler off kilter, with some killer guitar playing, which gives way to the Nomads' "Nothing Is The Same" which begins with a dark swirling cloud of heavily effected guitar buzz, before slipping into a woozy surfy groove, then there's Hipnotic Eye's "Killing Floor, which is a dead ringer for the imaginary band the Sacred Cows from Get Smart (YouTube it!), and then there's Velvette Fogg's droned out organ heavy nearly 8 minute groover "I'm So Glad", and so it goes, like the 1970 volume, killer jam after killer jam!
Again, not sure why they split em up, cuz it's tough not to want both, but even if you choose just one, each has much to offer, although if you're music nerd obsessives like we are (and we're figuring you are), you might as well just grab 'em both...
Originally reissued some years ago as a double cd, this killer collection of Indian psychedelic garage rock, has now been split into two different compilations, delineated by date, one disc for 1970, the other for 1971, but odds are you're probably gonna want both of them anyway. If not, either one is a great place to start. Some of you may remember the Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 compilation we made our Record of The Week a while back, a few of those tracks were taken from these comps, but for the most part, most of this stuff is exclusive.
While Simla Beat may sound like some cool record nerd classification for Indian psych from that era, Simla was in fact a cigarette company, who recognized that besides smoking, the kids also really dug rock and roll, specifically the sort of Western influenced sounds that were bringing surf and garage rock to India, so they founded a battle of the bands, complete with an awards show with the prizes presented by Bollywood stars, and the winning songs would get released, and hence we had these Simla Beat compilations. There were rumors, that since none of these tracks feature sitar or tabla or any distinct Indian instrumentation, that they were in fact hoaxes, and that none of these bands were in fact Indian, which was obviously proven to be false, and while there may not be sitar or tabla, there is a distinctly Eastern vibe to these tracks, and the sound, as well as the various productions, definitely takes the more Western version of surf rock and garage rock and makes it into something new and exciting.
Both discs contain some killer jams, and we could easily go through both track by track, but we'll just pick out a few highlights, and there are samples below too, which you should check out, pretty hard to resist we think. Simla Beat 70 starts off with "Voice From the Inner Soul" by the Confusions, which is so good, and catchy, it sounds like it must be a cover, but as far as we can tell it's an original, crunchy guitars, fuzzy organs, a groovy stomp with a KILLER chorus. Then there's the Dinosaurs, who offer up another original that sounds super familiar but is not a cover, the vocals raspy and scratchy, wound around some skittery drumming, and some fuzzy guitars, and another wicked hook. You probably remember X'lents' "Psychedelia" with its "Secret Agent Man" opening riff and some seriously kick ass psychedelic garage rock. The Dinosaurs also cover Creedence Clearwater Revivals's "Sinister Purpose" and make it their own, even more raw and fuzzed out than the original.
The 1971 installment is just as great, starting off with The Fentones' "Simla Beat Theme" which is total surf rock bliss, a littler off kilter, with some killer guitar playing, which gives way to the Nomads' "Nothing Is The Same" which begins with a dark swirling cloud of heavily effected guitar buzz, before slipping into a woozy surfy groove, then there's Hipnotic Eye's "Killing Floor, which is a dead ringer for the imaginary band the Sacred Cows from Get Smart (YouTube it!), and then there's Velvette Fogg's droned out organ heavy nearly 8 minute groover "I'm So Glad", and so it goes, like the 1970 volume, killer jam after killer jam!
Again, not sure why they split em up, cuz it's tough not to want both, but even if you choose just one, each has much to offer, although if you're music nerd obsessives like we are (and we're figuring you are), you might as well just grab 'em both...
It's tempting with records like this to just paraphrase the extensive liner notes, which in this case go into crazy details about, as the title suggests, the history of cumbia, and how that history has played out via the advent of the commercial phonograph, not to mention the introduction of new instruments, new genres, and the spread of the sound from its birthplace on the Caribbean coast to more central cities. Which would make sense, cuz to be honest, we knew very little about cumbia, at least in terms of its history and development, but at the same time, a quick Google search, and you'll have a wealth of different sources to learn more about cumbia and its history, and as interesting as that is (and it is, VERY), it's really for us all about the music, and the music here, two and a half hours of it, is so fantastic, and the idea that while sure, folks into Latin music and who already dig cumbia, will of course love this, it's the sort of comp that's perfect to expose this music to a whole new audience, one that might not have any experience with stuff like this at all, and who like us, might just be totally blown away by these sounds, energetic and passionate, melodic and moody, rhythmic and celebratory, the bands so tight, the musicians incredible, the songs very propulsive and percussion driven, the older tracks all about the accordion (more on that in the liner notes), with amazingly funky and soulful horn sections, melding cumbia to a fuller big band jazz sound, the songs groove and shimmy, pound and swing, the vocals too, so dramatic and emotional, all combined to create an incredible and expansive collection of music, which while at one time was a music mostly for the lower classes, eventually became a music for all the peoples of Columbia, and a point of great pride.
This collection was curated by Will Holland, who you may know as Quantic, whose awesome Addis To Axum: Music, Words & Arrangements Of Ethiopia record we reviewed way back in 2010, and who spent years in Columbia, learning the accordion, starting a band, and setting up a record studio, immersing himself in the culture to dig up the recorded history of Columbia and cumbia, via a treasure trove of rare 78's and 45's. We've been listening to this like crazy, and have found ourselves going a little cumbia crazy. Beautifully packaged, includes a massive 40 page booklet with tons of liner notes, and lots of amazing photos and images of old record sleeves.
Attention Buddha Machine obsessives, here's another sonic artifact / fetishistic release from Buddha Machine masterminds FM3 to collect and obsess over, and yeah, it is still Buddha Machine related. In fact it's another collection of Buddha Machine derived soundscapes, with FM3 removing the loops from the machine, and passing them around to various contemporary Chinese musicians to remix, rework, reinterpret and re-envision, there are a few names we recognize, like Li Jianhong, but so many that we don't, all offering their own interpretations, and the sonic breadth is fairly stunning.
From haunting folky drifts, to groovy Chinese pop, to gorgeous rhythmic percussive workouts, to crackly Philip Jeck like dronescapes, from haunting field recording flecked, reinterpreted traditional Chinese music, to hushed swirling ambience, from actual recordings of a Buddha Machine being played in a remote village, replete with the sounds of insects and wildlife, to minimal abstract dronemusic, from electronic flecked folk pop, to looped rhythmic post industrial electronic skitter, from mysterious spoken word to strange soundtracky sci-fi ambience, and from traditional sounding fluttery flute to super commercial electro pop, and that's just a sampling. It's a pretty amazing listen, varied to be sure, but it all works pretty well together as a whole, and in many cases, especially for the Buddha Machine obsessed, it becomes a game of spot the Buddha Machine loop, not always an easy feat in many cases.
And then there's the packaging. Totally over the top, and in many ways, subtly beholden to the machine that inspired it. First, everything is houses in a printed metallic oversized gold bag, normally used to hold oolong tea, sealed of course, it has to be torn to get inside, but fear not, there's another bag inside, however, that one is sealed too, so to reuse it, you'll have to tear open that one too. Along with the spare bag, there's the disc itself, which is mounted to a heavy textured board, printed front and back with Chinese characters, with a hole punched out of one corner, in which is mounted a metal coin, bearing an imprint of the Buddha Machine, and the coins were apparently cast in metal from the same factory that makes designer buckles, rings and necklaces, the label pointing out that "Your coin could have been a Gucci!", there's a little sticker, featuring more Chinese characters, and then there are a handful of members only "VIP" cards, which look like blank credit cards, and which are apparently ubiquitous in status-conscious modern China, each on a different color, the colors of the original Buddha Machines of course.
LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES.
Jean-Claude Vannier is best known for his amazing work as an arranger and producer for some of French pop's greatest stars like Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Francoise Hardy, and Brigitte Fontaine. We also got a taste of his singular, warped and mind melting musical vision when Finders Keepers unearthed his fucked up masterpiece from 1972, L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches.
Now they've dug deep into his vaults for this short but sweet (under half an hour) collection of rare, unreleased archival recordings from 1968-1973, that demonstrate what a master of mood and sound Vannier is. With tracks that range from tribal and trance inducing ("L'ours Paresseux 1969") to the perfect soundtrack for an absurdist cartoon ("Claquez Klaxons") to a chant filled show stopper that sounds like an Ella Jenkins record doused in acid ("Le Ballet Des Accouchesuses"). You can imagine how folks in the Stones Throw crew, or the late J Dilla, would be drooling over the chance to sample so many of these tracks. Vannier's music is like an amazing crossbreed of David Axelrod, Raymond Scott, and Joe Meek, but with such a pronounced French sensibility.
We had never heard of these experimental German black metallers before, and even though this, their double disc debut comes from the same label that brought us recent records from Echtra and Fyrnask (you can read about both elsewhere on the site), unlike those bands, the sound of VFDU harkens back to the sort of nineties Moonfog sound, when bands were first beginning to push past the traditional tropes of true grim black metal, getting weirder and proggier and way more experimental, strands of post rock and other distinctly non-black metal musics woven into the band's blast and buzz, and in the case of FVDU pretty much taking over entirely. Cuz the music of VFDU is definitely all of those things. A dizzying and twisted progged out epic, the tracks long and multi-parted, the band flitting from twisted post rock lope, to grinding black blast, and from doomic creep to gnarled Deathspell-ish avant blackness. Just check out the first song, "Filterlose Trunkenheit", right out of the gate, it sounds more nineties noise rock than black metal, although the weird lurching pound and skree is underpinned by a furious blast beat, and soon explodes into a woozy cloud of swirling psychedelia, before lurching into some mathy blackness, only to immediately switch gears again, and get all clean guitar and almost fusiony and proggy, and then back again. and this is all within the first minute. As the song progresses, the sound expands, the band seemingly setting themselves no boundaries, and when they do settle into some more 'traditional' blackness, the band add in some weird yelped/shrieked vokills which seem like they would sound more at home on an Urfaust record, which of course suits their constantly shifting, totally off kilter sound.
And the band give themselves plenty of room to work, two discs, sixteen songs, nearly two hours, the tracks epic and complex, with the band exploring pretty much every sonic variation they can conjure up, the sound shifting constantly often settling into long droned out psychedelic blasts, but just as often into blissed out ambience, peppering the proceedings with shorter blasts of experimental synthscapery, tripped out electronics, hushed haunting drones, in fact almost the whole of the second disc ditches the metal completely, building a strange sonic world of collaged soundscapes, fracture rhythms, programmed beats, bizarre processed voices, with many of the track slipping into industrial pound or weird electro skitter. It's pretty far out stuff, and when combined with the more buzzing blackness and experimental heaviness of the first disc, it makes for a seriously twisted listen.
Gorgeously packaged, in an beautifully designed and laid out A5 hardcover book, packed with lyrics, and disturbing images and photos. The first hundred copies actually came with a "jar of rat preparation", sadly, these come without. SUPER LIMITED!! We get these direct from China strangely enough, so when we run out, it might take us a little while to get more.
Along with the Carlton Melton / Mugstar split 7" reviewed elsewhere on this week's list comes another new 7" from the fine folks at Trensmat, this one another split, but this one from two bands we had never heard of before, the first, Whirling Hall Of Knives, already had us kicking ourselves, their track a gorgeous droned out chunk of brooding slow building psychedelia, layered tones, looped rhythmic fragments, all manner of buzz and swirl and thrum, pulsing and throbbing, hypnotic and mesmerizingly sinister, until suddenly a beat surfaces right in the midst of all this swirling hypno-psych noisiness, a sort of squelchy acid-y groove, that transforms the sound something else entirely, a sort of spacey electro kraut-drone groove, that seems to dissipate as quickly as it was conjured, leaving just a bit of washed out drone-drift shimmer to finish things off.
A NZ band called Tlaotlon counter with their own sort of abstract psychedelia, less dense and ominous, a little more looped and rhythmic, right out of the gate the sounds swirl and beats stutter and pulse, reminding us a bit of a more electronic, slightly less noisy Our Love Will Destroy The World. As the track progresses, it becomes more Goblin/Carpenter soundtracky and synthy, woven into the band's psychedelic swirl, heady and dreamy and really great. We'll definitely be after more from both of these outfits.
And as with all Trensmat 7"s, there's a link on the sleeve to a download, which in this case includes a 30 minute tripped out live video from WHOK, as well as two extra tracks from Tlaotlon. SUPER LIMITED as always, already sold out at the label, so these are the last ones we'll ever get.
The issue of The Wire that everybody's waiting for: their annual Rewind issue. A look back at 2011 from this leading magazine of "Adventures In Sound And Music". The top 50 Records Of The Year as picked by the editiors (#1: James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual). Sure to cause consternation. Not for the Ferraro pick (although maybe that too), but for the fact that Lou Reed/Metallica wound up in the top ten. WTF??
There's various musicians reflections on the year that was, essays by David Keenan, Mark Fisher, and Philip Clark pertaining to some of the trends we saw, etc.
Besides the 2011 Rewind, this issue also has the usual Wire features: reviews, news, articles, interviews: this time 'round with Kouhei Matsunaga, Gonjasufi, ex-Skaters dudes Spencer Clark/James Ferraro, and more!
Latest blast of twisted noise drenched otherworldly blackness from Moosejaw, Saskatchewan's Wold, fronted by mysterious sonic alchemist Fortress Crookedjaw, this mysterious duo offer up another slab of baffling brutality, that seems now more than ever to be almost completely loosed from the bounds of traditional metal, hell, any sort of metal at all, instead sounding like some sort of industrial / noise / power electronics blow out, the sound buzzing and hissing, looped churning squalls of white noise and grey thrum, the vokills an inhuman croak/whine, having just reviewed Sore Throat, and elsewhere on this list Anal Cunt, we'd posit that Wold's sonic orbit exists more in the realm of noise, it's not really until the third track here, "Free Goat Of Leviticus", the the sound takes on a shape even remotely resembling metal, and it remains REMOTE, the blasting and buzzing blown out completely, the sounds blurred and smeared into crumbling crusty murky swells, blistering blasts of buzz and hiss and rumble, even the vocals a garbled transmission from the depths, all wound into a churning caustic chaos.
"Inner Ire" offers a little bit of a respite, dialing back some of the distortion, letting a murky pulse surface, even some barely-there melody here and there, but over the top, is laid a Faxed Head worthy melted tape on the dashboard blast of damaged metallic noise. "Dragon Owl Didacticism" too hints at the metal that must lurk below the surface, but considering the surface is a roiling black cauldron of howl and garble, grind and shriek, all muddied and muted and twisted into dizzying blacknoise streaks, that metal remains just that, a hint.
The last four tracks though, change everything, sounding almost like a different record tacked on as a bonus, the almost cold wave sounding "Dry Love", with it's programmed beat, cold machinelike groove, buzzing clinical angular melodies and strange detached vox, or the new wave blacknoise of "Working Tools For Paris", with a bloopy electro beat buried beneath a swaggery snarly whining vocal and some hazy melodies, and when the super distorted vox drop out, what remains sounds almost like it could be some coldwave rarity unearthed. "Free Eyes" is crusty punk via black metal filth filtered through warped power electronics, with the main 'groove' downright mesmerizing, and then finally, the nearly 11 minute title track, seems to channel aQ beloved Will Over Matter, with another stretch of super distorted blackened murky electro-noize, replete with haunting spoken word vox, and another bloopy beat, one that becomes more and more blown out over the course of the track, until the whole thing is a thick undulating sprawl of rhythmic hypno-noise bliss.
As always, utterly confusing and totally whatthefuck, and as always, we can't stop listening. Baffling brilliant outsider electro-noise black metal genius for sure.
Similar to how Jack White of the White Stripes helped introduce the amazing voice of Loretta Lynn to a new generation with her album Van Lear Rose, The Roots have given legendary soul vocalist Betty Wright a much deserved late career moment in the spotlight with this new collaboration.
Wright started cutting records as a teen in the late '60s, and in fact one of her earliest recordings, as a pre-teen, was found a few years ago by the Numero Group, and was included on the Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label collection. Her best known albums and period are from the early '70s, I Love The Way You Love, and Hard To Stop are bona fide soul/funk classics. She's kept pretty active throughout her long career, showing up on records by Angie Scott and Erykah Badu in recent years, but not releasing a solo album in over a decade. The pairing of Wright and The Roots could not have been more perfect. While later albums by many great soul singers tend toward the overproduced, glossy, and generic, The Roots lay down a foundation on all the tracks here that are rooted in a warm, organic deep soul vibe. Allowing Wright's voice to sound as powerful and as soulfully wise as ever. Guest spots by Snoop Dogg and Lil Wayne, serve not as a lame attempt to seem hip or relevant, but instead you can tell those guys have mad respect for her, in fact Lil Wayne had her on one of HIS tracks a couple years ago.
The songs here travel from impassioned burners to slow jams, and with The Roots in the driver's seat they always make the smoothest of transitions, and they have definitely helped Wright find her voice in a way that hasn't been displayed in way too long.
It's been a busy 2011 for Brontez and The Younger Lovers. They released an awesome full length earlier in the year released on an Austrian label, that sadly we were never able to get enough of to list (but we're told we will be getting a cassette version soon). They made another awesome and endearing music video with aQ pal Gary Fembot, and Brontez's modern dance company performed at museums in the bay area and beyond. On the flipside, they also had a terrible incident happen to them in the summer when Brontez and bandmate Adele Castellon were gay bashed outside of an Oakland club, resulting in five broken bones in Castellon's face (who ironically is heterosexual).
But we're super glad they haven't let someone else's ignorance and stupidity bring them down as the band seems to be hitting a new stride as of late. These three new songs are some of their best yet. "Boy From Senegal" features some pretty infectious lalala's by Matthew Melton of The Bare Wires, who also recorded these jams. That track has been stuck in our head for weeks with its Oh Sees like mixture of intensity and poppiness. The other two tracks keep the energy high and the power-pop garage punk sound delivered with raw perfection.
The 7" comes with a digital download, and with some UN-intentional punk spirit the labels on each side are wrong so the A side is really the B side.
Zomby's latest full length, Dedication, which came out earlier in the year proved once again that he's no flash in the pan electronic act. The album showed a a new side of his music making, including an emotional depth and a more subdued quality we hadn't seen so much before. But we still love when he raves and bangs, and it really seems he has found his way to a perfect balance. This new 12" has both bangers and tracks that travel to the darker side of the dance floor. What keeps setting Zomby apart from many of his peers is not only that he had the balls to make such a strong shift in his signature sound, but that he really has come into his own as someone who defies any one electronic genre, and instead has the ability to make music that can get under your skin in so many different ways. We wouldn't be surprised if Thom Yorke is paying close attention to this new Zomby release as we could really see the next Radiohead or Yorke solo outing being heavily influenced by these sounds. With Aphex Twin missing in action for several years, it feels like maybe Zomby is the go to man for innovative electronic sounds that raise the bar, for the next decade. So fucking good!
