Nova Scotian Arms is the solo project of Grant Evans, who runs the psychoactively inclined Hooker Vision label with his wife Rachel Evans, better known as Motion Sickness of Time Travel. Her ephemeral electronica laced with moonshine hallucinations and rural psychedelia made quite an impression in these parts with her first two albums on Digitalis; and there's definitely some overlap with Grant's debut lp Cult Spectrum as they appear to be sharing the same synths, set to druggy swoosh and sodden ambient amorphousness. But where Rachel crafts narcoleptic vocal melodies amidst her hypnotic, post-Kosmische synth patterns, Grant follows more the organic, accretive processes that aren't that far from Emeralds' early dronecentric work and the polyglot explorations of Brian Pyle (e.g. Starving Weirdos, Ensemble Economique, and especially RV Paintings). Amidst the Popul Vuh style elongated ambient phrasing of "Overcast Strumming (1st Delay)," Grant conjures hissing whispers and distantly tapped percussion hung with thick coats of reverb and echo, creating a somber elegance of faded memories furthering their decay through layers of dust and cobwebs. On the sixteen minute long "Emulsion," spooky wisps of synthesized smoke spiral into a darkly shimmering ambient wash undercut by the sound of Grant rasping his knuckles against an acoustic guitar, whose forceful riffs ooze out of the decomposing mass of decade-long growth from kudzu and Spanish moss. In all this spectral ambient decay, Nova Scotian Arms comes across not too far from the Twinsistermoon / Natural Snow Buildings camp or like a thoroughly deconstructed Steven R. Smith album. Druggy bliss-out dronemuzik, for sure!
Groovy, baby! Are you a filmmaker making a movie about sex kittens on the moon? A crime drama with rocket ships and ray guns? A documentary about swinging space aliens building the pyramids? Or just daydreaming about such subjects? Well, have we (and Omni) got the totally fab, pre-fab soundtrack for you!! Swank futuric funky jazz loungey freakbeat electronic grooves perfect for any kitschy exploito-flick you could imagine, pounded out by a band led by composer Peter Thomas, whom perhaps you know already as the man responsible for scoring Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol), a classic German '60s sci-fi TV show. His "in-kraut" stylings on many, many other soundtracks have earned him a cult following.
This exuberant disc consists of prime Peter Thomas stuff, material recorded in 1970, released as an obscure library music lp in 1975, and never before released on cd, until now! Remastered, from the original master tapes, and expanded with 4 rare bonus tracks, this features 16 tracks in total, most about 2-3 minutes in length, each categorized variously as either "Beat", "Electric Beat", "Strong Beat", "Rock Beat", or "Fast Beat", for what it's worth. They've ALL got bombastic beats, along with brassy horns, sizzling synths, fluttering flutes, and occasional wordless vocals... Any TV commercial or film project that was wild enough to made use of this library music would sound pretty hip, considering that the players in the Orchestra Peter Thomas included close associates and/or members of krautrockers Amon Duul II and Brainticket... Oh, and on lead guitar, Vampyros Lesbos co-composer Siggi Schwab!
Definitely another awesome Omni find. Packaged with informative, photo-illustrated liner notes, where you can read about PT's one of a kind "Tho-Wi-Phon" synthesizer, among other interesting things.
Latest sonic missive from Mr. Campbell Kneale, he formerly of Birchville Cat Motel, now of the much wordier Our Love Will Destroy The World. Released on Kneale's own Don't Fuck With Magic label, Limbless Soldiers Flight offers up another epic half hour plus of Kneale's dizzying kitchen sink composition, assuming Kneale's kitchen sink comes equipped with electric sitars, and malfunctioning distortion pedals, and twisted tape loops, and various mixers and soundmakers and well, you get the picture. We've seen OLWDTW and not only do we have no idea how he makes this stuff, we have no idea what that stuff is he uses to make it. It hardly matter, cuz like all the best sounds, their provenance, while entertaining, and often baffling, are trumped by the pure physical (and spiritual) pleasure of the sounds themselves, letting the music wash over you, and carry you off. And Kneale has proven himself most adept at conjuring up those sorts of sounds, which he does again here, although much of Limbless Soldiers Flight is surprisingly subdued, percussive and rhythmic, almost like the track was constructed from a malfunctioning cd player spinning cracked Muslimgauze discs, that same sort of almost-ethnic sounding rhythmic base, tribal and skittery, looped and hypnotic, those rhythmic tangles are then doused in long streaks of high end skree and percolating sci-fi FX, the whole first ten minutes is super meditative and while certainly a wee bit noisy, more a soft noise. But soon enough the surrounding sounds are cranked up, and the percussion becomes more chaotic, the sound dense and chaotic and noisy, and if we're not mistaken, some fractured metal riffing seems to surface here and there, albeit heavily effected and quickly all twisted up, the sound seems to gradually fracture and blur, the various sounds bleeding into one another, and an underpinning rhythmic stutter / electronic skitter, battling for control, eventually taking over completely with a few minutes remaining, transformed into a strange droned out symphony of cicada like buzz, blown out synth thrum, keening distant high end, and buried percussive skitter, the last minute or two a fantastic and fantastically thick electronic synth drone/dirge/buzz that could/should have gone on for another half hour.
Awesome stuff as always. And as always, super limited, we're the only place in the US selling these, and while we got a BUNCH, if past OLWDTW's are any indication, they won't be around for long.
Reissued on hella expensive vinyl. What we said 'bout it some years ago, originally, and we doubt anyone's opinions have changed much over the years...
You are hereby forewarned that five AQ staffers totally hate this record, while two others like it a lot. AQ fistfight!
We'd heard a lot from various customers recently about this female rapper with a disc on German indie-electronica label Kitty-Yo, so we finally had to order some in, and it's proved to be very controversial indeed.
Here's what the thumbs-downers have to say:
Yuck! Someone take that groovebox away from her, and wash her pottymouth out with soap. This is... really stupid and bad. Sheer aural annoyance. I could go on, but don't want to waste the space. File under: Chicks On Speed (no, actually it's worse than that).
And here's the other side of the coin:
Sure, Peaches is shallow ear candy, but we all need sugar sometime. With songtitles like "Fuck the Pain Away" and "Lovertits," Peaches far surpasses Li'l Kim in raunchiness, and her cool vocal delivery is equal parts coked-out ice-queen, white girl trying out hip hop a la Debbie Harry, and fierce punk yowler on the level of PJ Harvey and Kathleen Hanna. The music is super simple freeze-dried disco / wannabe electro / digital hardcore complete with stark drum programming and disembodied armies of handclaps. The whole package is slightly tongue in cheek - Peaches has got the Sandra Bernhard-style parody / pathetic reality thing down cold. Those who would spend their money on Chicks on Speed should really check this out instead. Peaches delivers.
Depths is the latest blast of grim melodic blackness from this Aussie black metal horde, and the first we've reviewed on the list. This came highly recommended by weirdo black metaller the Botanist, and for fans of dense blasting buzz infused with plenty of moodiness and melody, you'd be hard pressed to do better than these guys. Just check out the opening track, pretty much everything we love about black metal, the sound is dense and murky, the guitars are thick and buzzy, the drums pounding and furious, the vocals an anguished how buried in the mix, the arrangement constantly shifting, from the opening salvo, a face melting black blast, to the more midtempo majesty of the middle stretch, replete with soaring epic guitar melodies, to an abstract, clean guitar spacey interlude, an back again, PS infuse their furious blackness with a surprising amount of emotion, giving the impression that with the drums and guitars stripped away, this might sound like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky, that same sort of brooding, slow building intensity, which sound even cooler here, wedded to thick black guitars, and churning buzzing heaviness.
The band do introduce some cool twists, surprising almost clean vocals, draped over some ultra melodic almost Katatonia sounding riffage at one point, and chugging pop flecked almost Khold style grooves here and there, but those elements are definitely not the focal point, there guys are all about blast and buzz, howl and crush, the sound is epic and massive and heavy and BLACK, a glancing listen, and you might think this was just a wall of furious buzz, but closer listening reveals all sorts of texture and melody, but without taking away from the power or ferocity, it's almost as if all that melody, and all that sonic moodiness, was unintended, a natural byproduct of this sort of buzz and blast, but it's too well crafted, and too much an integral part of PS's sound, which manages to totally transcend the typical grim buzz of most black metal, offering up something much more epic and melodic, and ultimately way more sonically rewarding.
Not sure what it is about these NY noise rockers, but the album name is pretty right on, cuz this is some awesomely horrifying, paranoid, synth soaked, rhythmic, heavy, dark weirdness. Record opener "Burn The Worm" starts with the line "Two dogs fucking" and it's ON from there on out. The vibe is dark and swaggery, grungy and crusty, swampy and bluesy, psychedelic and post punky, you can totally imagine these guys being on AmRep or being from Australia, there are hints of Cop Shoot Cop, and Lubricated Goat, even Pussy Galore, but these guys take those influences and jam them into something brand new, low slung and fuzz drenched, a little bit gothy and gloomy, a little bit angular and new wave, but loose and chaotic and fucked up, rife with surprising hooks, and killer melodies, industrial junkyard percussion, thick slithery bass, and huge bursts of white noise crunch. At times these guys sound like they could be one of those third string Sub Pop bands we were totally obsessed with, that sort of druggy, almost glammy, swampy blues sound, but with hints of new wave, fused to a lurching lumbering noise rock and all tangled up with some sweaty bloody garage punk pound. All that and songs too. Not hard to imagine these guys born from the same fertile sonic soil that gave us past Record Of The Weekers The Men, similarly noisy and heavy, but infinitely more twisted and gloriously fucked up.
Techno is a genre of self-quotation and unrepentant appropriation, always looking in the rearview mirror at what just happened to predict what will be the hot-shit trend on the dancefloor tomorrow. So to be able to trace an entire strain within techno's taxonomy to a specific record is quite rare. The 1996 album Biokinetics by Porter Ricks is one such record, setting the stage for pretty much every electronic artist who would flock to the banner of Chain Reaction through a stylized hypnotic, narcotizing techno haunted with deep atmospherics, dub murkiness, and subaquatic allusions. Porter Ricks was the duo of Andy Mellwig and Thomas Koner, who pursued "techno as a nautical sound experience." By the time the first Porter Ricks single emerged in '96, Koner had already developed his signature isolationist approach to slow-motion sound-design blustering with arctic metaphors through the dronemuzik classics of Nunatak Gongamur (1990) and Permafrost (1993). So when Koner began exploring techno with Mellwig, the approach to techno was less about 64-bar measures and more about constructing an evolving atmosphere girded to quintessentially German techno engineering that could be taken for a sonic portrait of tidal flows, map coordinates, sonar blips, and the vastness of the deep blue sea.
Biokinetics opens with the magnificent "Port Gentil" whose steady techno pulse coalesces through overlapping patterns from muffled pulsations of white noise and distant locomotive rhythms, later topped by a radiant metallic drone. The somatic oscillations of "Biokinetics 1" hardly makes for a techno track at all despite the insistent rhythms, but the eerie heartpulse dub of "Biokinetics 2" takes an isolationist reproach to everything adding its own desolate pulse and some subterranean reverb. Granulated hiss and slippery drone shimmer blossom through the final tracks "Nautical Nuba" and "Nautical Zone" that look forward to what Wolfgang Voigt would produce on his seminal Gas albums Zauberberg and Konigsforst. It sounded awesome in 1996, and it sounds awesome today.
The vinyl is limited to 700 copies!
While the rest of the world has been reveling in the resurgence of the cassette tape, some folks have been taking it a step further, and going full VHS! Video Horror Show is a label who releases VHS tapes, which feature not only music, but also appropriately enough accompanying psychedelic visuals. Past releases have included the electro goth witch house of Masacara, and the droned out abstract psychedelic black metal of Suffer The Shards Of The Lost Cult Of Silence, which was in fact members of Woe and Absu, and now comes Psychic Teens, which weirdly enough might sonically fall right in between. Described by the band as "the time you saw your creepy metalhead brother at 80's night" which isn't really that far off. Imagine a sound that was equal parts dirgey psychedelic metal, and broody deep vocal-ed goth, and you'd have the Psychic Teens, and we have to say, it's a pretty bad ass sound. Especially if you're tired of all the wimpy twee eighties throwbacks, this is more like a metalized Sisters Of Mercy or Kommunity FK or Fields Of The Nephilim, with some thick squalls of blown out shoegaze psychedelia mixed in for good measure. The sound is dark and gloomy, a little poppy, a lot heavy, the guitars thick and crunchy, the vocals deep and dramatic and wreathed in echo, this is the sort of eighties throwback we can get behind for sure. And these three songs have definitely whetted our appetite big time!
The accompanying video is appropriately VHS looking, mostly live footage of the band, but super grainy and gristly, with plenty of old school interference, the pic flickering and flipping, as if it was being viewed on an old TV with a busted horizontal hold, a playback of an old videotape that had been in a box under the stairs for the last twenty years. Awesome.
Nicely packaged in a cool old school style VHS case, with printed grey on white covers, and recorded onto a white VHS tape, includes a download coupon as well!
LIMITED TO 75 COPIES!!
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...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
So, sure, "experimental/improv/psych" bands based outta Brooklyn are probably a dime a dozen these days, so what makes the debut from this new Thrill Jockey signing worthy of glorious Record Of The Week status here at aQ? Well, for one thing, Thrill Jockey have had a pretty good track record in that area lately, with aQ fave bands like White Hills and Barn Owl, and fans of either ought to check out Rhyton. At least, we had to give it a listen, and when we did, WOW! Totally tripped out and hypnotic, stonery psych explorations embraced our ears - and we think gently tingled any mystic sixth or seventh senses we may possess. Their jamming has a fuzzed-out edge, and a definite exotic, Eastern vibe, buzzing with electric saz for one thing... as if they're not from Brooklyn, they're from Brooklynistan!
The mesmeric music of Rhyton is a mind-melting mind-meld involving three well-matched musicians, a supergroop of sorts, the trio consisting of D. Charles Speer from the No Neck Blues Band, Jimmy SeiTang of Psychic Ills, and Spencer Herbst from some bands we confess we've not heard of before. Speer is on the strings, playing electric saz, electric mandolin, and baritone guitar. SeiTang is on bass and tape delay. Herbst is on drums and percussion (and videocassettes, we read somewhere?). A good set up for playing something that's rock, but not.
Over the course of the five, mostly long, mainly instrumental tracks here, Rhyton easily convinced us to make this Record Of The Week, or maybe hypnotized us into doing so! We just couldn't say no to their repetitive, reverby bath of shuddering soundwaves, sub-bass pulsations, meandering raga-like "split stereo, dual amped" leads, and loads of oscillators, loops, n' effects.
Relatively mellow opening track "Stone Colored" eases us in, giving us a sense of, if not where Rhyton is going, at least how they're gonna get there. And, as the cliche says, the journey is the destination. That's before the 12+ minute "Pontian Grave" heavies things up even more, and the raw side of Rhyton's experimentation is revealed. And so it goes, Rhyton getting into outre modes of instrumental psychedelic possession, centerpiece "Teke" being the perhaps the most druggily dubbed-out of the album's varied transmissions...and then, on the fantastic final cut, "Shank Raids", we REALLY hear the Middle Eastern influence come to the fore. It's not just the electric saz they've been making use of, on this one the rhythms n' melodies sound straight out of the Turkish psych songbook, stately and spacey, but also gnarly, warped and distortion-damaged, almost what it would be like to Greg Ginn's Gone, or Black Flag circa The Process Of Weeding Out, attempting a Mogollar or 3 Hur-el cover, yeah! There's a whiff of Sun City Girls to this as well.
Eastern aspects aside (or not), Rhyton's unique vibrations are on roughly the same wavelength as those of such outfits as Carlton Melton, Davis Redford Triad, White Hills, Titan, Bardo Pond, etc., and thus this should appeal to quite a few of you. So we say, get it! And get it quick, as the compact disc edition, packaged in a slim handmade sleeve (abstract art glued on front, hand-stamped text on back), is ultra limited to only 200 hand-numbered copies!! We got a bunch, but that bunch is probably all we'll get. Meanwhile, the similarly-appointed vinyl version is just a bit less limited, 500 copies made, and it comes with a postcard insert and free download code.
Fans of modern reverb girl group garage rock no doubt no the name Frankie Rose, having drummed for the Vivian Girls, the Dum Dum Girls AND Crystal Stilts. We dug her debut solo record from a while back, which was exactly what you might have expected with that pedigree, but here on this new single we get a taste of Rose's new sound and it's actually pretty different. Still fuzzy and dreamy and a little bit girl group sounding, but it's way more polished and produced, a lot more eighties, plenty of jangle, and a distinctly new wave vibe for sure, but it definitely suits her, and the song is a gem, hooky and and catchy like crazy. Definitely has us excited to hear the new full length. The flipside is a remix, and recasts the song as an eighties dancefloor groover, with a soaring lush and layered M83 sounding chorus, which somehow suits the song almost as well as the regular arrangement!
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Finally, another dark missive from this 'alien black metal duo', long time aQ faves Servile Sect, whose ritualist spacepsych dronescapes crackle with black energy, occasionally erupting into full on metallic blackness, but just as often slowly drifting and expanding into sprawling stretches of blurred low end mesmer, laced with chant like vocals and buried bits of melody, mutant otherworldly landscapes of hushed ominous drift and muted psychedelic black ragas.
On past records, the black metal element seemed almost like an afterthought, the records way heavier on the drone and drift, but on Realms Of The Queen, right out of the gate, a blasting lo-fi drum machine rhythm sets the scene, while thick sheets of coruscating guitars and harsh shrieked vokills are laid over the top, but even then, the sound is not so much fierce and grim and sort of hazy and blackly psychedelic, like a black metal blurred into some sort of trancelike black raga, the guitars lush and layered, everything cloaked in a gauze of murky muted swirl.
But soon after, the band dial back the buzz, leaving just the black, a crunchy, distorted almost Wolf Eyesian industrial dirgescape, all mechanical creaks and staticky hiss, but underneath, a mournful piano picks out a barely there lament, a swell of black buzz rises up from the murk, sheets of hiss, like super distorted vocals drift in, the result a haunting funereal industrial doom, that again is not so much heavy and crushing, and moody and atmospheric.
The rest of the record follows a similar pattern, creating lush ritualistic landscapes of distant buzzing drones, SUNNO)))-like avalanches of crumbling distortion, hazy crystalline streaks of almost new age sounding drift, synthy soundtracky tranceouts that sound a little like Zombi or Majeure being played at 16rpm and being broadcast from speakers submerged in brackish water at the bottom of some giant cavern, there are even occasional vocals, deep dramatic croons, way down in the mix, adding a gorgeous dark pop element to certain tracks.
Thick corrosive dins collide with shoegaze-y fuzz, murky avant blackness drifts into hushed minimal shimmer, gnarled black riffage gets tangled up into epic swirling blacknoise squalls, Sunroof!-like ur-drones settle into droned out blackness, culminating in the epic closer, "Universe And Self, Sender And Receiver", which sounds like a prettier fuzzier Wold, noisy and dense and black as pitch, but shot through with subtle melody, with rich layered textures, shifting constantly, a blurred murk that finally explodes into a surprisingly lush and lustrous dreampsych shoegaze softblack blowout that sounds almost like some sort of black metal dreampop, fuzzy and washed out, but still frenetic and fierce. So fucking incredible.
We'd been hearing about this new San Francisco band The She's for a while now, friends who have seen them live have been totally raving to us about 'em. We can see why now, as this is full on bright colored, punchy pop bliss!
While we are in the crisp and cold time of winter right now, these songs are bringing us the hope of warmth and sunshine that springtime and summer will surely bring. Such an awesome feeling when the first time you ever hear a band you immediately feel the same way you did when you heard bands that have become all-time favorites. Think of some awesome version of Best Coast stripping away the lo-fi vibes and going on a road trip in a red convertible with the first Weezer album and The Breeders' Last Splash, and you start to get an idea of what kind of pop perfection The She's have created with this debut.
While lots of other new bands have been great at tapping into a sound or era with their aesthetic, The She's are a refreshing reminder of how great it is to hear a new band that believes in SONGS. Pretty much every song on here is filled with such inciting hooks and melodies. We have a strong feeling that The She's could be the next San Francisco band who could make it kinda big, this is awesome!
So many cd-r's come our way on what seems like a daily basis, but it isn't often that one of them immediately stops us in our tracks on first listen. These seven tracks by Aaron Sheppard have done just that. Haunting psychedelic solo guitar that manages to be both meditative, spacey, and focused all at the same time. We had no idea who Sheppard was when this first showed up, but his playing won us over immediately. Like Roy Montgomery and James Blackshaw conjuring up a soundtrack for a dazed afternoon, Leverage also has moments that make us think of vintage Robert Fripp, the beauty of Heldon's second album Allez Teia, as well as the recent mind blowing output of Matt Baldwin that we've raved about in the last year. Alternating between more grounded finger-picking tracks to more melting and stretched out sounds, this is by far one of the most engaging and rewarding solo guitar records we've heard in so long.
We actually want to go and on about how much this record has been moving us, but the cd-r is limited to 50 copies, so we should probably stop talking now and give you the chance to grab one of these before they are gone for good...
Hot of the heels of our Bollywood Bloodbath Record Of The Week from last list, we're happy to have another blast of banging Bollywood greatness for you.�Arjuna Sayyed (aka DJ Smokestack) has proven to be not only one of the most knowledgable and deep digging DJ's in the Bay Area, but pretty much anywhere in the world as far as we're concerned. Some of us were lucky to snag the first volume in his Shitala series so we already knew how damn good his mixes were. Filled with some of the most insane '70s & '80s Bollywood jams, and mixed with such a flawless touch, this mix highlights all those amazing sitar freakouts, tabla jams, dynamic vocals, funk filled beats and everything that make this era of Bollywood music so endlessly enthralling...
Clocking in at about an hour, Shitala 2 is a testament to the greatness and forward thinking musical minds that were at the helm of the sounds of Bollywood during this classic era. Call it Indian funk, or disco, or whacked out pop, whatever it is, we call it killer! Smokestack's mix has crazy broad appeal, sure hardcore Bollywood heads will flip, but also hip-hop lovers, funk diggers, dance floor DJ's, and probably YOU. DJ Smokestack not only honors the legacy of Bollywood, but uses his knowledge and talent to infuse new life and energy and share the results with so many who may otherwise might�never encounter and engage with the originals. Highly recommended!
Originally made as a tour only cd-r in 2011, the four tracks on Lives document the live sound of one of our favorite tape-drone artists as of late, Smokey Emery. Recorded on cassette and digital camera in warehouse spaces in San Francisco and Austin between 2006 and 2010, these long-form tracks take pieces made with multiple tape recorders plus the abundant room ambiance and filter them through a murky drift of concrete industrial drones, machinic whirs, woozy snippets of orchestrated music and murmured vocals. Subtle gauzy shifts in tones hint at underlying ghostly melodies, giving a glowing aura to the chill. Like a more shoe-gazing Indignant Senility, these live tracks tantalize in their blissfully gloomy gloam. Limited!
We managed to miss this one when it was released a while back in 2005, but we figured we weren't the only ones to let this import cd slip through the cracks. The Bedsit Tapes is the officially released collection of the early demos, escapades, and excursions from the megawatt new wave pop stars Soft Cell. These DIY recordings date back to 1978 when David Ball was attending Leeds Polytechnic, where he made full use of a makeshift recording studio consisting of a couple of reel-to-reel tape decks and a mixing board. Upon wiring up a Korg synth and primitive drum machine, Ball started to make "weird little tunes," one of which caught the ear of fellow student Marc Almond who asked if he could use one of those songs for his performance art shows. The two began refining those electronic blorps and bleeps into arty synth-pop numbers, snarling with contemporary punk energy and technological primitivism. Almond already had developed a charismatic persona, which he jubilantly expressed upon the wide vistas of grandiose theatricality, from the crooning balladeering of "L.O.V.E. Feeling" to the switchblade slashes on the uber-ironic "Bleak Is My Favorite Cliche" to the ominous bark of "Occupational Hazard" and onto the fucked-up delirium of their frenzied cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Yeah, you heard us right: Soft Cell covered Sabbath!
Given the stripped down arrangements and trial-by-fire approach to the technology at hand, Soft Cell certainly benefited from Almond's larger than life persona. Such is what gave the 'pop' elements of Throbbing Gristle and Reproduction era Human League their iconic status, and it certainly set the stage for the anthemic '80s hits that Soft Cell would produce later on. While many ordinary Soft Cell fans might be put off by the roughness of these tracks, it's precisely that fucked atonality, that avant-punk electricity, that giddy nervousness, those warbled, sci-fi effects and those ominous drones which make us totally dig this collection. Anyone into the whole "Messthetics" scene, and/or the current revival of retro new wave electronica old and new, should also dig.
The story goes that The Sound *should* have been huge - as big as any number of successful post-punk outfits like The Cure or The Fall or Echo & The Bunnymen - but for reasons seem to baffle most everybody, they didn't find that success. Frontman Adrian Borland cut his teeth in the 1976 punk frenzy in a project called the Outsiders; but grew dissatisfied with the amphetamine trad-rock that punk was becoming. The Sound formed around Borland's increasingly complicated songwriting, following a similar art-punk route that Howard DeVoto took after leaving The Buzzcocks to start the equally adventurous Magazine.
From The Lions Mouth was The Sound's second album, released originally in 1981; and it displays a big leap toward a more theatrical atmosphere and away from the jittery two-step punk-pop of their debut. By this record, frontman Adrian Borland developed a voice that falls somewhere between a couple of Ians - Ian McCulloch's Scott Walker croon in Echo & The Bunnymen and Ian Astbury's snakebit yelp then of Southern Death Cult. From The Lions Mouth also benefits from the lush, layered production of Hugh Jones. The Sound maps out much longer, tracks that soar, billow, and collapse with more aplomb than The Chameleons, Comsat Angels, or Cripsy Ambulance, exemplified by the album's final number "New Dark Age." It makes for an epic, sprawling album that does raise a lot of questions as to why The Sound didn't propel themselves onto MTV and beyond like so many of their contemporaries.
The story goes that The Sound *should* have been huge - as big as any number of successful post-punk outfits like The Cure or The Fall or Echo & The Bunnymen - but for reasons seem to baffle most everybody, they didn't find that success. Frontman Adrian Borland cut his teeth in the 1976 punk frenzy in a project called the Outsiders; but grew dissatisfied with the amphetamine trad-rock that punk was becoming. The Sound formed around Borland's increasingly complicated songwriting, following a similar art-punk route that Howard DeVoto took after leaving The Buzzcocks to start the equally adventurous Magazine. Jeopardy was the first album for The Sound, whose complex pop-punk was built around Borland's nervously chiming guitars and engaging hooks that paralleled those from The Cure's mod-pop debut Three Imaginary Boys, the theatrical bellowings of Juilan Cope's The Teardrop Explodes, and of course Magazine. This album was recorded roughly, supposedly for less than 800 British pounds; and the urgency (or panic) of getting everything to tape quickly works well with these songs. The Sound embellish a number of their new wave / punk tunes with glammy synthesizer melodies that harken back to Roxy Music and an occasional sax blurt for good measure; but it's Borland who passionately drives this band, one that should have been heard back then... and right now.
ATTENTION CIRCLE OBSESSIVES! And Finnish underground rock freaks, heck we might as well include Hydra Head nerds and Isis nuts, this one is for all of you. Well, seventeen of you at least. That's as many copies as we could get of the debut single from this new band featuring Jussi from Finnish hypnorockers Circle (among others) as well as Aaron Turner from Isis / Hydra Head Records, as well as one of the guys from Steel Mammoth. And considering that pedigree it sounds pretty much like you'd imagine. Or at least how you wished it would sound. Cranium splitting heaviness for sure. Pounding drums, kick ass riffs, massive HEAVY production, some seriously crusty punk blowouts woven into more metallic chug and crunch, peppered with wild squiggly metal shred freakouts, and bizarre echo drenched vocals, that make this sound very Circle-like indeed. Epic and melodic, a little like Turbonegro gone NWOFHM (that's New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal btw). A killer teaser for the upcoming full length.
The flipside finds the A side reworked by none other than noise maestro Daniel Menche, who takes all the punk and metal and blurs it and stretches it into smeared gristly walls of pulsing drone-noise, the various elements still present, but looped and layered and all tangled up into thick undulating sheets of white noise drenched rhythmic chaos, droned out and mesmerizing, the vocals in particular transformed into a haunting keening high end tone, woven into a hazy grey soft focus blurpunk drift. Super rad! And again SUPER LIMITED, not sure how many were pressed, but we got SEVENTEEN of them, and that's all we'll ever get, so get yourself one before they're gone!
Finally! After a tape and a couple 7"s, comes the much anticipated debut full length from this new crew of SF psych rockers, who by now should be quite familiar to fans of other Bay Area psychedelic space rock and garage rock, cuz if you dig Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Sleepy Sun, Carlton Melton and all the rest, as well as Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees and the like these guys should be right there in your space/psych pantheon. And while the spacier of those other bands tend toward the more droned out and krautrocky, these guys are much more classically rocking, melding a love of Spacemen 3 and other dronier drug rock with the classics, the Velvets, the Doors, even the Stooges, their songs simple and trancelike, plenty of jangle and simpler stripped down drum stomp, the vocals wreathed in reverb, and nestled in the mix, the guitars alternately chugging and crunchy, chiming and melodic, transforming simple pop songs into something more mesmerizingly hypnotic. Even album opener, Lonely Eye on the surface is simple and spare, but over the course of its nearly 5 minutes, it gets to the point where it could go on forever, and we'd sit there glassy eyed and blissed out.
Some of the other tracks are more garagey, like "Disguise", which should totally have Oh Sees fans flipping their lids, although the sound here hews much closer to old garage classics like the Fuzztones or the Lyres, which is most definitely not a bad thing. In fact if anything, much of this new record definitely leans toward that more stripped down garage rock sound, with fuzzy guitar, wandering basslines and fuzzy organs, but here and there, like on "Calling Out Your Name" the band unleash a riff that KILLS, in the case of "COYN", it's a dead ringer for the Stooges, one that the band could have ridden hard, but instead of getting all swaggery, the band sort of blisses out, applying multiple layers of guitars and upping the psych quotient considerably, not to mention some cool rhythmic weirdness, which lurks throughout the record, and reveals itself on repeated and closer listens.
And so it goes, the whole record, a killer collection of super hooky, spaced out psychedelic garage pop gems, the sort of sound we can't get enough of, and the sort of sound that should definitely position these guys alongside other garage/space/psych rock luminaries, and again if you dig Crystal Stilts, Thee Oh Sees, Wooden Shjips, or any of the other above mentioned bands, and have not checked these guys out, do yourself a favor...
For now, only on cd-r, but with possible vinyl version to come.
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
Two electrifying live sets from 1967 by the great Hungarian born jazz guitarist mark this latest "two-fer" reissue from Impulse. Mostly taken from a live set at Boston's Jazz Workshop plus three tracks from that year's Monterey Jazz Festival, this is a great introduction to the spellbinding work of one of the finest guitarists in jazz. Often weaving intricate gypsy-folk inspired guitar lines within Western and Latin pop standards and exotic originals, Gabor Szabo brought a mystical and sometimes psychedelic feel to modern jazz. His band during this time was also top notch, featuring guitarist Jimmy Stewart, bassist Louis Kabok, either Marty Morrell or Bill Goodwin on drums and percussionist Hal Gordon. While the pop standards ("The Beat Goes On", "People", "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, plus the Brazilian tunes, "Little Boat" and "Corcovado") are still pretty good, the real strength of the material is in the originals, especially the ambient "Space", the 12 minute work out, "Los Matodoros" and one of our favorite tracks ever, the beguiling and mysterious "Mizrab". Szabo recorded several amazing albums in the sixties and seventies for Impulse, Blue Thumb, CTi and Skye, including the great Jazz Raga, that we reviewed recently, having been reissued by Light In The Attic. This latest in Impulse's reissue series, which has also included lesser known records by Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, and Alice Coltrane, stands out among our favorites for sure!
They had us at Taco Leg. These Aussie garage rockers lay down a sort of swaggery low slung garage punk, that's super simple, skeletal and stripped down, there's some serious Stooges worship going on, but it sounds like the guitar player is not playing ANY chords, just single notes, which gives the sound a really weird vibe, but we dig it, that combined with the caveman drum plod makes this another one of those records we would have expected to discover via Brian Turner's show on WFMU. Total outsider garage punk thudrock that kills.
Apparently at some point on their most recent US tour, someone told the band they sounded like punk rockers Fang, so after figuring out who the Fuck fang was, they decided to cover a Fang song, and deliver a pretty kick ass version of Fang's "The Money Will Roll Right In", all dirgey and blown out, and it sounds like maybe the guitarist decided to play chords, or at the very least, stomped on a distortion pedal, it's dirgey and swampy and punky and is pretty much a perfect Taco Leg cover.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
One of three new releases from Jerusalem based Total Rust label, who specialize in the slow and heavy, the sludgey and dirgey, so it makes sense that these Spaniards would find a home there, even more so when you consider that Tort features members of another Total Rust band, the late great Lords Of Bukkake. Like LoB before them, Tort kick out some seriously crusty, filthy jams, a sort of dirgey sludgey stoner doom? The Sleep vibe is huge, the massive riffing, the sort of slowed down Sabbathy groove, but there's also a serious old school crusty metal vibe a la Hellhammer, and guess what, the label agrees, but goes even further describing these guys as "Hellhammer meets Sleep meets Godflesh meets Black Sabbath meets Voivod meets Saint Vitus meets Bolt Thrower meets Eyehategod", which as far as descriptions goes is pretty high praise, and definitely a tall order, and while no band could possibly live up to that, these guys definitely come close. Ther perfect mix of stoner swing and downtuned dirge, the guitars insanely thick and caustic, the bass a blown out rumble, the drums crushing, the vocals might be the best part, super harsh and intense, a fierce and inhuman demonic rasp that transforms the sound into something way more sick and sinister. These guys also traffic in some serious tranced out heaviness, locking into grooves that could go on endlessly and we would be totally in their thrall, churning, roiling epic heaviness, that slips easily from lumbering crush to thrashing blast and back again. This is one of those records that we find ourselves listening to WAY more often than we thought we would, and with every listen, we dig it more and more, and find ourselves with some of these riffs, seriously lodged in our head which is most definitely a rare occurrence.
Definitely recommended for metalheads who like their metal slow and low, sludgey and sick, primitive and atmospheric, dirgey and HEAVY.
The latest chunk of seventies/eighties faux giallo soundtrack John Carpenter / Goblin worship from longtime aQ faves Umberto comes in the form of this EXTREMELY limited one-sided silk-screened 12". Umberto, aka Matt Hill, who is one half of psychedelic spacekraut explorers Expo 70, offers up another glorious slab of brooding cinematic ambience, this one a lot more ambient that past outings. More on that in a second. Final Exit is packaged in a super striking fold over sleeve, which features the image of one unlucky man's final exit, laying on a bed, suffocated with a plastic bag over his head, the sleeve also bears the legend: "This record is intended to accompany the last moments of your suffering." It also features a seal, adorned with a flower, and the words "good life / good death". The record itself is one sided, the flipside featuring another image of that same man, this time eyes opened and bulging! Morbid for sure. And the music follows suit. Sort of. In some ways it almost sounds more like a slightly more sinister and soundtracky Expo 70, with warm swoonsome synth swirls, a sort of darkly new age-y drift, moody and broody, with lush swells that sound almost choral, the vibe is definitely majestic and cinematic, but is also minimal and restrained. A few minutes in, percolating synth melodies surface amidst the dark swirls, and then a simple heartbeat like pulse, motorik and minimally propulsive, near the end the sound changes tone and timbre becoming much more gristly and distorted the hum and thrum transformed into a crumbling buzz, ominous and sinister, the whole sound hazy and gauzy, and gradually fading to black.
The record sounds great at both 33 and 45rpm, but we tend to like things slower, so at 33 it definitely sounds much creepier and gloomier.
LIMITED TO JUST 150 COPIES!!! Each one is hand numbered. When we run out, we will NOT be able to get more, so if you want one, act fast.
Word of warning: These come in those super brittle plastic picture disc sleeves that, to be blunt, kinda suck, so every single one of the sleeves is slightly damaged, whether it's cracked on the corner, or with a seam split, it's the nature of those sleeves, and of having them shipped from overseas too (which also resulted in some some bent corners and so forth), so if you're super anal, or a nit picky collector, you have been warned, everyone else, you should be fine, they're all housed in a second polybag anyway, and the records themselves are in perfect condition (and look amazing!), so grab one before they're gone!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Yep, Mississippi Records strikes again with another perfectly assembled compilation. Or more appropriately, they strike with a perfect cherry picked compilation of yet ANOTHER perfectly assembled compilation, as the eleven songs here represent highlights taken from Tompkins Square's massive 3cd set Fire In My Bones released back in 2007. So, in the event that you own that album already, you might not need this too, unless the vinyl format compells... But everyone else is advised to jump on board and embrace the gospel. Particularily if you'd rather have the 4 hours of that Fire In My Bones comp distilled down to two essential sides of vinyl.
The tracks here are of the variety that will make non-believers feel like they are missing out. It is important to note that Fire In My Bones was subtitled "Raw + Rare + Other-Worldly African-American Gospel". Raw and other-worldly being perhaps the best descriptions for the sounds within. Naturally, the enormity of Fire In My Bones might be too much for some folks to handle, so Last Time Around gets a warm welcome here at aQuarius. These songs cover pretty wide sonic ground. You have tracks like opener "Get Back Satan" by Rev. Roger L. Worthy & His Sister Bonnie, where the siblings accompany each other vocally with a beautiful tremeloed electric guitar, reminding us of some of the material on Sonic Boom's recent Spacelines compilation. Isaiah Owens' "You Without Sin Cast The First Stone" offers up a nice contrast with slashing electric guitar that sounds slightly (not too much) and awesomely out of tune, while the vocals go from Son House styled growls to a wailing falsetto. Elsewhere we have Bishop McDaniel, whose "Rock Daniels" is a stomping rocker with a sound that manages to outsleaze many of today's garage rock hopefuls. The gang gospel vocals, of course, take things to levels of heavenly bliss that you just can't reach unless you BELIEVE. Awesome. Kicking off side B, Isaac Haney & The Ebenezer Baptist Church Choir's "At A Time Like This (Part One) is a slow organ led number that serves a beautiful comedown to Bishop Daniel's fire and brimstone. The legendary Precious Bryant makes an appearance here with "The Saints", her amazing clear vocals and cool country strummed guitar making this a standout among the standouts. The album closes with Theotis Taylor's rendition of "Swing Low", where plinky pianos and awesome crooned vocals appear to overpower and distort the microphones for that in-the-red sound that we all LOVE.
Mississippi-heads have no doubt already hit the "add to cart" button, and while this pristine collection is great for anyone even slightly interested in gospel music, the performances here are so passionate, energetic, and cool that they will likely win over people who had no idea what real gospel music sounds like. As always, this one gets our highest recommendation.
It's that time again, Kompakt's yearly installment in their Pop Ambient series, a release we ALWAYS look forward to and one that typically immediately becomes out new favorite sleeping / chillout / late night listen, and this one looks to be no different. In that respect at least. One way it IS different this time around is the opening track. More on that in a second. For folks new to Pop Ambience, it's basically like minimal electronica with the beats stripped way, leaving just lush expanses of whoosh and shimmer, blurred melodies and abstract ambience. It's also become a sort of go to descriptor for that sound we love so much, the sort of hazy, gauzy, washed out soundscaping of folks like Tim Hecker and the Caretaker and the like, with these comps offering up new tracks by old faves, and every time at least one or two new discoveries. The big discovery this time around for us, and the one responsible for the above mentioned opening track, goes by the name of Mohn, and delivers what might be the darkest, heaviest Pop Ambient track yet, a thick hazy landscape of blurred, crumbling greys and blacks, lots of space, abstractly rhythmic, almost doomy, dense gristly swells, that remain warmly melodic, but still hauntingly ominous. It's a gorgeous cinematic creep, super dynamic, and darkly moody, growing more spare and skeletal near the end, we've been listening to just this track over and over, and while it's the first we've really heard from Mohn, we're definitely dying to hear more.
The comp returns to more familiar ground with some more familiar names after that, Superpitcher, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, Marsen Jules, Simon Scott, and while the rest of the tracks here are much prettier, and way less dark, and more traditionally pop ambient, they still retain a bit of that ominous undercurrent, usually in the form of more melancholic melodies, with lush shimmers drifting amidst sonic shadows, repeated motifs adding just a teeny bit of cinematic tension. Superpitcher's lush and lovely "Jackson" might be one of the most gorgeous things we've heard from him, all processed voices and looped pianos, repetitive and cyclical and totally mesmerizing. Another new name Morek offers up a bit of dark and gristly buzz, wreathed of course in lustrous swirls of haze and shimmer, while Triola weaves a dreamlike expanse of swoonsome drift, and almost post rock sounding brood. Voigt's track here sounds like a lost soundtrack for some acid drenched Tim Burton film, like the tape is warping and undulating before your very ears, transforming beauty into something a bit darker and shadowy, while Jules adds what might be the only actual beats here, but in the form of reverbed and blurred skitters, the whole thing super dense, dubbed out and dreamy. Simon Scott weaves a sprawling bit of string laden soundtracky drift, evoking images of rainswept streets and dark mysterious cities, until the new-to-us Loops Of Your Heart finishes things off with a wistful bit of gauzy guitarscaping, all sweetly tangled melodies, and subtly processed atmospheres, everything wreathed in a streaks of sonic gristle and some soft focus cosmic swirl. So lovely.
This new compilation from legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun, their first proper greatest hits collection, has been getting played like crazy in the store, and it makes sense, just check out the line up, a dizzying collection of some of the greatest jangle pop and noise rock and everything in between that New Zealand has had to offer over the last THIRTY years: tracks from The Clean, The Verlaines, The Chills, The Bats, Straightjacket Fits, Chris Knox, The Dead C, The Gordons, Bailter Space, The Pin Group, Tall Dwarfs, Snapper, the 3Ds, and so many more. From the early days of the label, to now, the label having recently been re-activated/re-invigorated. Nothing here is super rare, no lost B sides or unreleased gems, so folks well versed in NZ rock, with a record collection to prove it, might not have a need for this, UNLESS you were after pretty much the ultimate kick ass NZ underground rock Flying Nun mixtape, cuz then outside of compiling your own, you'd be hard pressed to do better than this. And for folks who might have missed out on Flying Nun the first time around, this collection is overflowing with new discoveries, and so many potential new favorite bands. All sides of the label is represented, most notably, that distinctive jangle pop side, which went on ti influence pretty much every indie rock outfit since. Whether it's The Clean's impossibly catchy keyboard driven lo-fi classic "Tally Ho!" (from which this comp takes its name), or the dreamy jangle of the Chills' "Heavenly Pop Hit", which couldn't have been more appropriately titled. There's the jangly bass driven sweet harmonied girl pop of Look Blue Go Purple, that sounds like it could easily be a new retro pop 7" on Slumberland, the dreamy strum and jangle of the Bats, the quirkly lo-fi home brewed weirdo pop of The Tall Dwarfs, and then there's "Outer Space" by the 3D's which sounds like the best song the Pixies never recorded, but then there's the other side of the label, the darker, heavier more experimental side, represented here by the Dead C (of course) with a sub 2 minute blast of murky, tape manipulated, noise drenched weirdness, and the Gordons, with their dirgey, almost doomy swagger, and seriously fierce guitar crunch, Bailter Space, arguable one of the loudest bands ever, their track here dreamy and darkly shoegazey, there's the scuzzy garage rock blues of Solid Gold Hell, the Joy Division-y new wave of The Pin Group, and let's not forget about Snapper, who are like some weird sci-fi space rock, garage pop hybrid, with hooks galore, and that's totally just a taste. Like all the best comps, Tally Ho! is perfect as it is, a killer mixtape, but also, a launching of point for avid listeners to track down records by all these bands and become as obsessed now with this stuff as some of us have been for years!
Opening the latest Vulcanus 68 release is the haunting "Monochrome Canon I" which possesses a lost in space sense of lonely melancholia. This tone resurfaces in the second and third passages of the canon which are evenly spaced amidst the seven other tracks. Evoking the indistinguishable shift from dream to nightmare, these are the kind of beautiful and foreboding soundtracks you'd expect to hear in some 1970s post apocalyptic near future sci-fi movie in which insect communities slowly amass to engulf a human civilization (a la 1974's "Phase IV"). Putting their characteristically woozy pitch/speed manipulated samples, analog synth buzzing drones and shimmering resonance to fine use, these Bay Area audio sculptors transport your ears through zones of claustrophobia and expanse, imbuing each of their soundscapes with rich dynamics, texture, subtle movement... and yes, plenty of contour and colour. A terrific addition to your Gigante Sound library!
Pictured on the cover of this month's Wire, as if rising out of the Bay, is hip hop eccentric Lil B, aka the Based God! Also this ish: This Heat's Charles Hayward (taking the Invisible Jukebox test), Ital, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Indian wedding brass bands, and much much more, including the usual massive chunk o' reviews.
Latest issue of this long running aQ beloved music mag, and you'll definitely notice some differences this time around, the first thing obviously, is the format, the old more typically magazine sized format has now been transformed into a perfect 8" by 8" square sized mag, all the more perfect for change #2, replacing the cd compilation that accompanied past issues with a 7" vinyl single! The first Yeti single especially of note cuz it includes a brand new, exclusive Grouper track! And we now how Grouper fans are, so no need to read any further if you're just here for the single. But in addition to the Grouper track (a Dead Moon cover!!!), there's also unheard songs from Mississippi Fred McDowell (two unreleased 1959 Alan Lomax recordings as well as a track from the Tiki Men (a Duane Eddy cover!), and also included is a 100 minute free downloadable mix, more in line with the old Yeti comps, and loaded with cool stuff (including the tracks from the 7"). And heck we haven't even gotten to the magazine itself yet!
Inside you'll find the usual eclectic mix of music, art and photography, including photos from the Alan Lomax Archives from his 1959 'Southern Journey', memories of the eighties New York hardcore scene from poet Margarita Shalina, Jamaican gospel 7" labels, an essay on surf rockers the Tiki Men, African sign painter Thiam Bellou, an interview with author Susan Bernofsky, photos of abandoned forts in Russia by Nina Dudoladova, a collection of Neal Cassady ephemera (!), along with tons of other cool stuff including drawings, short stories, and the usual selection of ads all crammed together in the back, for other cool stuff you're probably also gonna want!
AQ fave, garage rock outsider singer/guitarist Michael Yonkers is baaaaack, with another whomping, stomping blast of his uniquely eccentric heavy duty distortodelic grunge, again in the company of relative youngsters, The Blind Shake, a quite suitable backing band for Yonkers at his most electric and energetic. Yonkers himself, as you probably know, is, like, in his 60s. And his magnum opus, Microminiature Love (so recommended!!! plz read our review if you haven't) dates from over 40 years ago. But you'd think it was just yesterday, the way the man kicks out the jams here. No surprise, he's wowed us on several other records in recent years, with The Blind Shake and Plastic Crimewave and GR and solo. So now, wow again. With his homemade geetar howl landing square on your skull, and his elder Iggyish yodel singing strong o'er it all, Yonkers RULES and so does this record, raw and direct, the Blind Shake shakin' it up with gusto behind him, the whole thing a throbbing good time, catchy and noisy and gnarly and blown out, with pounding drums and whooshing wind tunnel guitars n' effects... these songs n' sonics are the stuff that freeks for such bands as The Heads, High Rise, White Hills, and The Stooges should dig. Best punk-psych outing on our list this week fer sure, and would probably qualify as such almost any other week as well!
Includes a killer, updated take on their signature tune, the title track from a few albums back, "Carbohydrate Hydrocarbons", here called "Carbo Hydro".
Founding member of Wolf Eyes, Nate Young, offers a stark, acid flashback of the bleakest moments of industrial cassette culture circa 1985 on Stay Asleep. His nightmarish, atonal melodies have been stripped bare of brutalist, rabid noise; but the primitive approach to structure is right out of the Wolf Eyes playbook with the woozy melodies and rhythms always hitting on the first beat of the lethargic pace. Young's engineering is one that takes Cabaret Voltaire's desiccation of sound to a zombified extreme. So much so, it seems that Young might be going for clubtrax for zombies. Step one, lurch two. "Brains!" Step one, lurch two. For all of the creepy-crawly plodding of this album, there are occasionally weird moments where the clunked atonality of it all is just plain goofy. Not exactly what's been expected from Nate Young, but a pretty compelling record nonetheless. Oh yeah, it's cut at 45 RPM; so if you want to this really fucking slow, make sure to drop it down to 33, where it takes on the funereal crawl of a ridiculously Spartan electro-doom number, if such a thing exists.
Originally released as a super limited cassette, this collection of abstract kosmische improvs from aQ faves Zomes, aka Asa Osborne, he of the mighty Lungfish, and later, the stripped down but equally mighty Pupils, has now been reissued on vinyl, taking the original two improvisations from the tape, and adding a third, and pushing the sound of Zomes even further into the abstract ether. On other 'proper' Zomes records, the sound was an immediately entrancing fragmented loop music, single melodic figures, repeated and layered into trancelike shortform miniature ragas, shamanistic and subdued, which is most definitely still the case on these three extended sonic explorations, which find Osborne continuing on that same sonic path, but expanding that sound significantly, or rather the scope of his sound, the source is still minimal, warm layered synths, but here, those layers are stretched into slowly undulating sidelong swells, like Riley or Reich, or like more modern synthscapers like Expo 70, Osborne, unfurls lush melodies, letting them drift and shimmer, melodies surfacing and then fading out, before a new set of melodies take their place, dreamlike and softly psychedelic, sun dappled and gorgeously gauzy, this is total krautdrone new age bliss, utterly lovely and serene and tranquil and divine.
The two tracks here from the tape are transcendent and transport the listener to some hazy otherworld, everything blurred and muted and washed out and soft focus. As is the extra track here, but it weds that same sort of ethereal shimmer to something grittier and buzzier, creating a sort of washed out raga buzz that combines the more low fidelity audio alchemy of the other Zomes records with a more abstract improvised heart-of-the-sun cosmic/celestial soulgazing/soundscaping. Fans of the current crop of krautsynth new age drifters will be in heaven, just imagine a prettier, dronier, more ethereal and minimal Expo 70, and you'll get an idea of what sort of spaced out cosmic drift these improvisations offer. So totally lovely.
