Over the last few years T.I.T.S. have proven to be one of the most exciting groups in the San Francisco music scene. Four woman who bring an immediacy and intensity to their off kilter post-punk jams. Theirs are songs that make you want to dance in such a fucked up way, as you smash and destroy, sweat and bleed and exorcise all the demons from your soul...
For sure taking their cues from the early No Wave scene, their sound so perfect alongside impassioned blasts from the past by folks like The Au Pairs, Liliput, DNA, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Bush Tetras, The Raincoats and The Slits. We also love how they songs feel like such kindred spirits to what Erase Errata were exploring on their final (?) album, Nightlife. We're also reminded of a similar sensation we feel when we listen to The Ex.
While they may be getting much inspiration from the past, nothing feels nostalgic about the sounds on The Girls. In fact every song jumps out with such a present, vibrant energy that they make the listener feel totally connected to that visceral moment in time. What makes T.I.T.S. so fucking great is that they don't just borrow from post punk's past, but instead they actually infuse so much true punk spirit into their songs. Smoking hot!
This all time aQ psychedelic / drone favorite reissued for the first time on vinyl. One of our favorite groups of all time, whose rare recordings are psych-drone holy grails, we gushed extensively about the (now out of print) cd version ages ago, so for those of you who have somehow yet to discover the transcendental sonic beauty of TMT, or even if you've just been dying for this to come out on vinyl, read on�
In the AQ canon of all time essential artists, of groups who have shaped all the music that followed in their wake, somewhere very near the top spot would be Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. This sprawling seventies�psych drone unit led by Fluxus legend Takehisa Kosugi, were crafting gorgeous abstract drone drenched ambience long before most of the current crop of dronesters were even born.�
The Taj Mahal Travellers were masters of the organic, of vibration, texture, timbre, utilizing bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material, this collective created some of the�most enduring and unique psychedelic music ever recorded. Their music and performances were the physical embodiment of a philosophy, a way of life more than just simple 'playing music.'�
It's hard to imagine the Skaters or Birchville Cat Motel or the Yellow Swans or even Wolf Eyes without the Taj Mahal Travellers. Often referred to by the press as "La Monte Young on acid", in a review of another, unfortunately out of print TMT album, we described their sound as "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas performed on beaches, deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated into the sound. Feedback, time-space lag, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound."�
The music of the Taj Mahal Travellers thought is stubbornly indescribable. No words can possibly do justice to the spirits they were able to invoke, the atmosphere they were able to create, dark and dense and mysterious and ominous, but at the same time beautiful and brilliant and epic and spacious.
This double lp features nearly 100 minutes of improvised droning captured live in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971, the group run stand-up bass, tuba, trumpet, select percussion, violin, flutes, mandolin, harmonica and synthesizer, not to mention "suntool" and "electronic technique" through primitive tape loops and delay effects for an awesome ritualistic performance, predating the likes of Zoviet France and about a million others by decades!
The live sound is just as amazing as their records, which makes sense since their albums were essentially documents of live aktions.�
The first lp is a single nearly hour long low end ritual, strings buzz and reverberate, as do voices, and bits of bowed metals, all beating against each other and creating all manner of cosmic vibrations, all accompanied by simple bells, or a single plucked note repeated over and over. Near the end, the vocals are soaring, and the tones have become long buzzing streaks, with plenty of spacey echo and strange damaged FX, it's hard to hear this and not exactly where Sunburned Hand and No Neck found their inspiration, these guys were creating the same sort of primitive primeval sounds, nearly 4 decades earlier, and with so much depth and emotion. The fact that a music so minimal and abstract can be so utterly moving is testament to the Travellers' unparalleled skill.�
The second lp is much less low end rumble, and more a dizzying swirl of strange sonic events, here the horns are in full affect, sounding like a herd of alien elephants, moaning and bleating, the tones stretched out and draped across all manner of lower register rumbles and whirs. Percussion surfacing now and again like an angry rattlesnake roused from a midday nap, or a swirling cloud of tiny buzzing insects. Vocals drift in and out, shamanistic and chant like, moaning out strange melodies, mostly low and throaty but sometimes like curious feline mewling, all intertwined with the various other drawn out sounds. An incredibly intense organic ritual, purified by its intransitive nature, the improvisation guaranteeing that each performance belonged to the time and the place as much as the players. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking. Absolutely essential, and like pretty much ALL Taj Mahal Travellers records, probably more recommended than nearly any other record we've ever reviewed! REALLY!
Another issue of this UK metal monthly. On the cover, an old photo of Burzum (to accompany a new exclusive interview). Also: Shining, Iced Earth, Meshuggah, Venom, Nasum (RIP), Dragonforce, Devin Townsend, Nightwish, Animals As Leaders (in the included "Sick Sounds" guitar mag supplement) and more... all strains of metal covered it would seem. There's the usual news, reviews, and cd sampler (w/ tracks by Burzum, Wolvhammer, Sigiriya (ex-Acrimony), Vektor, and others.
We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have only THREE of these...
We reviewed a handful of releases from Italian post-industrial / dark pop combo T.A.C., all part of this batch of Small Voices releases, along with those albums proper, came this, TH25, a project of T.A.C. member Simone Balestrazzi, which the label describes as: "Hard electro-core, pure rhythmic & synthetic EBM sounds, rumoristic experiments & great filtered vocals." Not sure what 'rumoristic experiments' are, but the rest is pretty spot on. Super pulsing, pounding minimal electronics, skittery and stuttery, with darkly crooned vocals, occasionally sung/spoken, for those of us without deep roots in electronic music culture, it's difficult to make any sort of sonic cultural references, but much of this sounds to us like a more gothic/gloomy Meat Beat Manifesto, if that makes any sense, there's also some references to old Ministry, which is never a bad thing, it's that sort of industrial pound, fused to dark minor key synths, and deep vocals, creating a sort of beat heavy gloom pop if you will, the vibe in many places more new wave or cold wave, minus those step sequenced synths and pulsing beats, but the vibe is definitely dark enough, that this would probably appeal to folks into the whole new wave of dark pop and cold wave electro. We're actually digging this quite a lot!
We managed to get a tiny handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have just THREE of them...
With Enso, composer / soundscaper Luigi Turra has conjured up an organic and contemplative three-track epic, that resonates on subsequent listenings. Infused with Japanese sonic architectures and rigorous reductionist principles, this is a deeply meditative world of gently plucked instruments, and faded atmospherics, peppered with closely focused tinklings and crystalline shards adding all manner of texture to the proceedings. In some ways this sounds like a more minimal / academic Taj Mahal Travellers, the flute especially giving much of this a Japanese folk ritual vibe. There's a warm ambience, and a super intense intimate production, which helps Turra fuse a delicate substrata of drifting tones with elegantly plucked and struck instrumentation, that is never overdriven, and devoid of unessentials. Gorgeous and sublime. And super recommended. Sad we have so few...
Best appreciated in a solitary environment, these restful pieces will bring calm to an engaged listener.
We were already sold on this before we even heard it, just based on the title alone, and likely you are too! And having heard it, we're all the more into it. This latest Finders Keepers/B-Music release is not just another Bollywood - or even Lollywood, or Kollywood - compilation, not that there would be anything wrong with that. Their recent Pakistani picture house collection Life Is Dance is still in heavy rotation 'round these parts, as are others of its ilk. But Bollywood Bloodbath is even better, thanks to its specific, scary theme. Cooler 'cause these songs, as you may have guessed, are all taken from the soundtracks to Hindi horror movies! Ghost stories, killer thrillers, zombiethons, that sort of thing... but unlike American slasher flicks and Italian giallo from the same period (the '70s mostly, though this disc ranges as far back as 1949, and up to the '80s), these Indian fright films are, of course, like other Bollywood productions, elaborate musicals. So the bloodbath sounds like it's taking place at the discotheque!! It's a perfect mix of the over-the-top pop groove-a-delica of the best vintage Bollywood stuff, infused with the even weirder, wilder, and wiggier sounds demanded by the horror movie genre, like shocking screams, stabbing cacophonous chords, and impassioned female vocals pleading for mercy.
Yep, it's pretty brilliant the way this collection combines two of our favorite soundtrack genres into one. Gotta give it up to compiler Andy Votel and his diligent research (involving hours and hours of viewing cheap old VHS tapes found at the Indian grocery store, no doubt), as he's dug up a delightful 'best of' from a hybrid cinematic genre we've yet to explore ourselves. And even if these songs were sourced from Z-grade movies, there's for sure some top talent involved on soundtrack side of things, including even the legendary RD Burman.
Although there's a modicum of ominous, atmospheric creepiness to be found in most of these cuts, moments that are mystical and mysterious, truth be told it's not all that frightening, as the spookiest stuff always gives way to urgent uptempo beats and zipp-zapping "seance fiction" synths, lively rock/disco orchestration and spirited singing, i.e. typical Bollywood bombast! If anything, rather than, say, John Carpenter or Goblin (our usual go-to's for suspense/horror soundtracks), some of what's here reminds us more of stuff from far out Spaghetti Westerns.
Since we're making this Record Of The Week, we should pause to state that if you're not already into Bollywood soundtracks, you need to check 'em out! And this, despite its specific slant, would certainly give you a good idea of what you've been missing - total WTF kitchen sink psychedelic percussive song-and-dance Eastern-inflected rock opera funked up madness.
22 tracks, 78+ minutes. Complete with cd booklet of copious, obsessive, expert liner notes from Votel. And lots of cool creepy colorful graphics of course. (In addition to this domestic cd release, there's also import vinyl available, but we're pretty much out, hoping to have some more from overseas next month, FYI.)
Drone Records is dead! Long live Drone Records! After the release of their 100th single (by the impeccable Japanese minimalist Spiracle), Drone Records will no longer be releasing 7" singles; instead, they have decided on a new format of presenting extracts from the wide range of drone-based compositions, by way of an LP with four artists each presenting about the same amount of material as could be held on a 7". As was the case for the singles, this platform makes for a great introduction to artists who we had otherwise been unaware of. Volume 1 features the Spanish sound artist Ubeboet, the Finnish occult practitioners Halo Manash, Erik Jarl in a more contemplative mood than his power electronics in IRM, and the Swiss mesmerist B-Tong.
Ubeboet's two tracks focus on orchestral source material, elongated and extended into an impressionist ambience dappled with violin trills, dilated drones of monastic chanting, and plenty of reverberant haze to go around, very much sounding like those beautiful Mirror records from about 10 years ago (e.g. Front Row Centre, Nights, etc.). Halo Manash takes up various gongs, temple bells, and Tibetan horns to the ritualist end of dark ambient incantation, recalling Coil's early masterpiece How To Destroy Angels and Lustmord's Heresy. Jarl's scabrous drones and ominous screeches were all sourced from a zither, although much of what he conjures is of noxious tonal harmonics and dissonant textures. In B-Tong's timestretched vocal drones and heavily processed echoings of water texture, we are reminded of the Hafler Trio's swarmed accumulation of voice gliding into the surrealist aqueousness of irr. app. (ext.).
Limited to 500 copies!
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...
We already listed the double cd, here's the deluxe vinyl version, in two triple-lp volumes!
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.
We already listed the double cd, here's the deluxe vinyl version, in two triple-lp volumes!
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.
We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have only TWO of these, so be quick�
Like many of the other releases we've been featuring from the now defunct Small Voices label, there seems to be very little in the way of NON academic descriptions of this stuff for lay people, folks like us who might just be interested in the sound, and don't need a lecture on sonic semiotics or whatever. So we'll skip the confusional history, and the academic jargon, what we could glean is that this is a cd reissue of tape release from 1982, called TRAX, and maybe this is the one place we should quote the label who describes TRAX thusly:
"This is the first in a series of reprint programme of the most representative titles from the TRAX catalogue, one for each letter of the name: T for Traxman, the comics series created for Frigidaire magazine by Massimo Giacon and Vittore Baroni; R for Rednight, a collective homage to the work of William S. Burroughs; A for Anthems, alternative national hymns for real and imaginary countries; X for Xtra, audio works composed at distance through a process of crossed interferences"
Not sure if that helped or not, but it's definitely interesting. This reprint comes in a huge oversized magazine style packaging, with liner notes in Italian and English, as well as tons of cool illustrations and graphics. Culled from what we can tell was some sort of zine or art project? Anyway, the first disc here is the actual 1982 tape, a compilation of noise/experimental/avant sonic art from a whole bunch of different artists and musicians from all over the world, it's a pretty fantastic listen, strange field recordings, industrial clatter, reverbed piano accompanied by strange mechancical buzz, swirly deconstructed drone pop, processed vocal loops, effects drenched sci-fi spoken word, noisy abstract avant electro-jazz, collaged porn soundtracks, strange detuned folk mash ups, primitive electronics, static drenched music box lullabies, splattery rhythmic improv, and so much more. All presented as one seamless hour long track, it's a heady, psychedelic listen for sure, definitely academic, but sonically more naive sounding, there's a distinctive joy in sound making on display, which is pretty refreshing, and for every chunk of atonal skree, there's another stretch of melodic loveliness.
The second disc, is a new recording from composer / soundscaper / audio alchemist / modern minimalist Gianluca Becuzzi, whose Memory Makes Noise disc we review elsewhere on this week's list, and whose Kinetix double disc we listed a while back. At first we were under the impression that Becuzzi's pieces was a reworking of the first disc, but on closer listening, and a closer reading of the confusing liner notes, it seems that maybe it was INSPIRED by, as sonically it's quite different, opening with a strange spoken word, delivered over a hazy industrial thrum, a fuzzy distant drone, laced with deep distant low end bellows, and like everything we've heard from Becuzzi, his pieces constantly shifting, here flitting from ominous cinematic drone punctuated by bursts of static and random clang and clatter, to warm softly whirling subterranean warble, and from strange circus like garble, to hazy, glitchy crumble, before returning to the opening spoken word drone, further testament to Becuzzi's penchant for panlindromic composition.
Recording as Locust back in the late '90s, Mark Van Hoen produced a signature post-IDM electronica that was sublime in mood but was fraught with overly complicated rhythms and portentous song cycles that weighed far too heavily on what might have developed into something on par with Biosphere or Bowery Electric. As a result, much of his output is immediately attractive but has failed to rise above the overwrought production he endlessly piled on to his sounds.
Fortunately, recently Van Hoen came upon an experimental tape piece he made at the precocious age of 13, when he was remastering some of his earlier tracks from the '90s. That archival track centered on a mashed-up banal pop song with garbled vocals and backwards recordings of church organs, creating something quite spooky and arresting. Van Hoen took the simplicity of that process to heart (but not the track itself, drat!), recording much of The Revenant Diary on a 4-track, which is pretty much unheard of in this day and age of Ableton. The results find Van Hoen at his absolute best, shorn of those implausible complexities which troubled his earlier recordings, rendering an album that should warrant plenty of comparisons to Demdike Stare as a very well executed piece of hauntological electronica.
The warbly, decaying drones from those 4-track levitate in an uneasy fashion at the beginning of the album, suffocating what was once a vigorous drill-n-bass workout into fizzling skitter amidst the shadow, grain, and hiss of "Garabndl X", leading into the hypnotic "Don't Look Back", whose looping female vocals intoning the track's title, orbit a strutting, dubbed-out, mid-tempo rhythm that wouldn't seem out of place on Tricky's Maxinquaye. "No Distance" glides two streams of reverberant ambience along a computer-mad sequencing as a meeting between Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II and Oneohtrix Point Never's Returnal. While all of this may be simple from Van Hoen's perspective, The Revenant Diary is a richly textured album that dynamically jumps from vertiginous ambient passages into throbbing, post-dubstep explorations of rhythm. Let's hope that Van Hoen keeps it this 'simple' for the next record!
Six words: Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery. (Or is that seven?) Two more: Dizzying Genius. Another two: Buy This!
We were terribly remiss in not ever reviewing this band's previous album and first proper full-length, Black Future, 'cause it was one of the very best metal releases of 2009. Unfortunately, we discovered it a bit after the fact. But we are gonna try to make up for that by heralding the release of this Arizona based band's new one, Outer Isolation, also mindbogglingly awesome. Though it's hard to review, 'cause listening to it we're either stupefied by the mental strafing we receive via their hyperspeed metallic acrobatics, or possessed to headbanging mania by their catchy quantum riff logic, neither state conducive to sitting at a keyboard and calmly typing out our thoughts...
Actually, this came out in December - and thus instantly found a spot in Allan's 2011 top ten - but our suppliers miscalculated the demand for this and under-ordered, so were weren't able to get more until now, direct from the label.
What's the deal? The thrash of the past meets dramatic advanced metal math, kinda like a tripped out Absu taken on a futuristic journey into the stark outer reaches of space. The vokills are a crazed dog whistle shriek, or nasty black metal rasp. The guitars rip out utter absurd flight of the bumblebee shred, and sometimes moody moments of lovely, classical melody. Their are many moving parts in Vektor's technically complex song structures.
Unlike a lot of their peers in the still burgeoning "retro-thrash" genre, youngsters Vektor aren't just all about simply being as nostalgically, generically retro-thrash as they can be, instead they're about utilizing their considerable talents to make cool music, following their own alien vision. Sure, they pay some homage to their '80s forebears - their logo looks like it was designed by Away from Voivod - and you could certainly compare 'em to such great '80s proggy tech-thrash acts as Coroner, Watchtower, Obliveon, and yep, Voivod. But, it's more than that, this is its own impressive forward-thinking thing. We highly recommend getting lost in space with Vektor.
FYI, a vinyl version, with different cover art, is forthcoming at some point later this year says the label. Also, you will find the Black Future cd elsewhere on our website, sans review, and it's quite recommended too, obviously. (And If you already have it, then you know what to expect on Outer Isolation!)
FUCK YEAH.
The mighty Void, OG hardcore godfathers, legendary outsiders, and one of the most frenzied sounding bands... EVER... finally see their long unreleased material given an official home under the most sensible imprint: Dischord. It's certainly about time, not only because these songs have been known of and bootlegged for ages, but also because the world seems, in the last few years, to be in the midst of something resembling a hardcore "revival", despite the fact that this type of music has never gone away and always flourished in the depths of the underground. Case in point, THIS album. Void, though from Maryland, were part of the storied and uber-influential DC scene of the early '80s, a small but tight knit community of likeminded angry young men (mostly) who would play a prominent role in defining the course of independent music as an identity that carries on to this day. Still, pigeonholing Void as merely a "DC HarDCore" band doesn't do much to inform virgin ears what to brace themselves for. Their sound was darker, noisier, and more extreme than most other bands operating in the early '80s, and these guys, to this day, sound unlike anyone else - they're untouchable - and their legend and rabid fanbase continue to grow and grow. Indeed, the evil sounds of Void will be most thrilling to new listeners while old fans will find plenty of reasons to rejoice upon seeing the Dischord logo on the back of a new archival album from one of the label's most beloved bands.
The material here, a whopping 34 songs, spans the entirety of Void's brief but fruitful (at least in terms of actual recorded output) career, and contains the legendary demo session recorded at Hit and Run Studios in November '81, two sessions done at Inner Ear Studios the following month and in June '82 (the bulk of which, not contained here, ended up as the band's contribution to the monumental Faith/Void split), and a couple of live songs, including what the Ian MacKaye penned liners presume to be the last song the band ever played. All the classics turn up, sometimes more than once - "War Hero", "Condensed Flesh", "Time To Die", "My Rules", and so on. The fidelity here - raw and upfront - is perfectly suited to the mean sounding hurricane of noise Void whips up, while between song banter reveals a band that appears to be having one hell of a good time making their magic. And suffice to say, they still hold their own within the hardcore genre as one of the most unique, original, and crazed bands, even 30 years later.
Along with Dischord's also recently reissued edition of Faith's Subject To Change (which includes that band's first demo - we promise to list this one soon), it's sort of like Christmas 2.0 here at aQ, at least in terms of classic hardcore punk. What else do you need to hear other than the record itself?
FYI, the vinyl version happens to be out of stock, hoping we'll get more...
Holland's Roadburn festival has become THEE ultimate heavy rock music festival, be it doom, sludge, psychedelia, space rock, whatever, the fest consistently offering the sorts of lineups most of us could only dream about, super hyped new bands, legendary older bands, total unknowns, next big things, nobody curates festivals like these guys, and it definitely shows, every year, selling out sooner, and luring folks from all over the world to fly over to take it all in (heck, our own Allan even went a couple years ago!). Roadburn also decided a while back to chronicle some of these performances and release them, so the rest of us sorry suckers unable to make the journey could get a little taste of what it is we've been missing.
Which brings us to this, a document of last year's Roadburn, in particular, a performance by aQ faves, Brooklyn heavy psych rockers White Hills, who definitely KILL it, with one of the heaviest sets we've heard from them. In fact, the disc opens with the band in full on heavy riff mode, almost like someone just pushed record mid-set, our imaginations have us picturing opening 8+ minute blast "Three Quarters" just the last chunk of an hours-long mega blown out super psych jam. Regardless, the band churn and roil, the riffs distorted and in-the-red, the drums wild and chaotic, of course everything wreathed in thick swirls of effects, the vox gruff and bellowed, definitely giving the sound some serious rock heft. "Under Skin Or By Name", sees the band slipping back into some more meditative drifty krautpsych territory, but within a few minutes the band have exploded again, with wild endless leads, lumbering motorik grooves, total drugged out heavy psych bliss of the highest order.
And so it goes, the band never letting up, the songs sprawling, slipping from Stooges-y stomp, to Hawkwind like druggy drift, to hazy psychedelic shimmer, to near Monster Magnet like metallic chug, the bass groovy and melodic, those drums pounding fiercely, courtesy of occasional WH skinsman Lee Hinshaw, bassist Ego Sensation even offers up some vocals on one track which gives it a cool sort of True Widow vibe, the band unfurling epic expanses of druggy FX heavy drift woven into more crushing space-metal riffery, finally finishing off with a killer version of the title track from their most recent full length "Hp-1", which if anything takes the original and makes it even more epic and heavy and gloriously spaced out.
Sweet packaging too, full color six panel digipak with some killer psychedelic live shots of the band in action at Roadburn.
Field recordists Douglas Quin and Cheryl Leonard have gone to great lengths to capture their Arctic and Antarctic field recordings, spending countless frigid days with frozen fingers trying to hold tightly to hydrophones dangling amidst the ice floes and slushy waters. It's no wonder those two present their work in such an unadulterated fashion when the work came at such cost and at such peril. But Jana Winderen is far more creative in her approach to field recordings, only too happy to transform a watery burble she captured in some obscure fjord in her native Norway into a thickened isolationist dronescape dappled with elemental textures, creating something sonorously as frightening, cold, or desolate as the sound sources would imply. As with the work of BJ Nilsen or Jonathan Coleclough, none of Winderen's field recordings are too precious to be manipulated, compacted, augmented, or simply fucked with. The two sides of Debris were both extracted from a couple of her sound installations, the longer of which is entitled "Drying Out In The Sun", based on recordings made at / near / beneath the surface of the ocean, which plunge into the nether regions of the deep-sea trenches and alluvial plains, amassed into pressurized low-frequency drones. "Scuttling Around The Shallows" returns to her fascination with shrimp which she first displayed on her Tapeworm cassette The Noisiest Guys On The Planet, with erratic snaps, clicks, and crunches made by those small crustaceans amidst deep-ocean ambience. The fourth in Touch's ongoing 'white label' series of super limited vinyl productions.
This record has been floating around in various forms, all insanely limited, and as the title suggests, it was initially a cassette, then a cd-r, then a download, and is only now finally available as a slightly less limited lp, still titled Black Cassette of course, and regardless of format, it's a serious slab of mathy doomy electronics laced sludge, a bit of an odd one for The Flenser, who traffic mostly in metal of the blacker variety, but Wreck And Reference have a sound that is most definitely blackened, and in some ways just as grim and kult and bleak as most black metal. The sound is a wild almost industrial sounding chaotic lurching heavy sludge, with clean vox, thick blown out bass, tons of effects and loads of swirling electronics, a heaping dose of pop liberally applied too, with much of the record playing out like a sort of slowcore indie rock.
The first track was all it took to convince us, a jagged lumbering chunk of dirge pop, with crumbling super distorted guitars, pounding drums, crooned clean vocals, a killer main hook, everything wreathed in buzz and glitch, rife with long stretches of droned out shimmer, and rumbling detuned buzz, and wild squalls of psychedelic feedback, the drums growing more and more chaotic, eventually the guitars following suit, stuttering, all clipped stops and starts before grinding to a halt. So ruling. The following track is more of a moody brooder, a bass driven chunk of slowcore, with clean vocals delivered way back from the microphone, giving the proceedings a definite nineties math rock vibe, think Shellac or Slint, and when the band does finally kick in, the guitars crunch, the drums pound, this time everything is beneath thick sheets of heavily effected synths, making everything deliriously spacey and dreamy. The rest of the tracks offer more of the same, a variation on doom we've never heard before, a Torche like approach to metal, definitely heavily influenced by indie rock, pop and post punk, sung/spoken vox over tribal drumming and grinding muddied riffage, big drumming over muted buzz and what sounds like haunting piano, not to mention deep dramatic crooning, a strangely blurred blast transformed into something much poppier and prettier, long stretches of shimmery spaciness and still more surprisingly poppy vox, and finally, a killer chunk of slow building post rock epicness that sounds a bit like a doomier, more post punky take on Godspeed. A pretty weird, and pretty awesome band, and definitely one of the coolest things The Flenser has put out, which is definitely saying a lot.
The long defunct yet still impossibly prolific duo Yellow Swans continue to exist in some sonic afterworld, like a noise rock Tupac, with a seemingly endless cache of recordings, surfacing from beyond the grave, or in YS's case, from beyond the brief life span of their group. We're not complaining, as we've mentioned in past reviews, of all the floorcore combos, the Yellow Swans were one of our favorites, and having thrown in the towel, now years ago, doesn't seem to have effected the quality of their out put, cuz their side of this split lp is a doozy. Starting of as a haunting blackened drone, al echoey effects and manipulated tapes (or turntables), hushed delicate drifts and woozy layered shimmer, that is gradually consumed by some Merzbowian distorted black noise crunch, the sound transformed into a feedback drenched industrial howl, all buried vox and grinding buzz, sounding more like Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, a seriously caustic and crushing slab of blackened electronics and dronoise blur.
Oakeater take up the second side with their ritualistic black drone ambience, the opening track a churning SUNNO)))-like rumble, softly roiling and oozing, like some sort of black sonic puddle, which gives way to something much more dreamy, a delicate pastoral bit of hushed thrum and spaced out cinematic drift, there's a constant lurking sinister vibe throughout that seems to infuse the otherwise sun dappled shimmer with something rotten and black. The side finishes off with another chunk of ominous dark drift, thick undulating streaks of black blur, wrapped around melting melodies, the whole thing like a field recording of a pallet of drone records melting in the sun, the mic stuck directly in the viscous liquid sound.
Like all Black Horizons releases, super swank packaging, striking metallic silver ink on black matte jacket, pressed on thick black vinyl, and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Punk rockers Fucked Up were ultimately essentially a pop band, so it's no surprise that the various FU offshoots tend WAY toward the pop end of the sonic spectrum, as is the case with Young Governor, aka Ben Cook, who also plays in the Bitters (reviewed on a past aQ list), and who in Young Governor, lets his pop flag fly, big time, channelling classic Yellow Pills style power pop, think the Raspberries, Cheap Trick, Dwight Twilley Band, big jangly chords, soaring keening vox, huge hooks, big choruses, the production lo-fi and blown out, everything in-the-red, definitely reminds us of the retro-pop of Matthew Melton / Bare Wires, or like a way more lo-fi punk rock Tinted Windows. The B side slows things down a bit and dials back the crunch a little, adding sax and piano and getting almost ballady at points, but for the most part, all the tracks here sound like the could have been transported from the mid seventies, or dug up on some obscure power pop comp, which is most definitely a very good thing!
