Graham Bowers is a name that you may have heard floating around in the mid '90s, perhaps by way of some choice reviews in The Wire. While the nature of those recordings escapes us, he claims an eclectic heritage of avant-garde practices that might gravitate towards the Chris Cutler side of progressive composition. In the smattering of interviews we've read, he comes off like a perpetual outsider with no interest in participating in any particular 'scene' of experimental music. Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) met Bowers while both participated in a 2011 sound-art festival in Wales; the two then embarked on an ambitious collaborative project resulting in this unnerving, post-classical album attempting to articulate the inner workings of a human brain that had suffered a stroke and that has only a little over hour before death.
The dominant 'voice' within Rupture is a cacophonous collage built upon orchestral samples, fixated mostly on bombastic horns and kettledrum crashes. While the origins of the sampling is unclear, Bowers and Stapleton make little attempt to obfuscate the sampled technology, with the symphonic samples played through the keyboard, discordant and portentous. Amidst these orchestral blurts, quintessential slashes and enigmatic drones indicate Stapleton's signature sound design, with warbling ballroom vocals from Victrola recordings, amplified heartbeats, and unanswered telephones ringing. The album's entire mood is one of panic that steadily fades to black, and hardly qualifies as easy listening.
Debut blast of doom-ed orthodox blackness from this SF horde, a furious, and epic squall of frenzied guitars and furiously blasting drums, of demonic vokills, soaring melodies and grim ambience. This is another one of those records that ditches all of the experimentalism and avant-this and post-that of much of the metal we dig, and still pushes all of our buttons, offering up something true and pure, something beholden to the classics for sure, but with a sound that takes those varied influences and melds them into something pretty fantastic, moody and emotive, passionate and majestic, the sort of creeping blackened doom and depressive black buzz that we never get sick off, the songs slipping easily from frantic and furious, to lumbering and anguished, usually in the same song. Plaintive mournful melodies, draped over doomic dirges, drift right into explosive blasts of black buzz, inexorably linking the two. The fact that these guys are equally adept at both, only helps seal the deal. The sound too is a big part of it, managing to sound both raw and primitive, lush and expansive, infusing the brittle buzz of black metal with some serious doomic heft, and shading that melancholic doom with swaths of dark black miserablism. And beyond that, these guys can actually write a song, with many of the melodies here, the sort that end up stuck in your head for days. All of the songs here are pretty great, but the closer, the epic 12+ minute "By His Unflinching Hand", might be the best of the bunch, certainly the most unique, ditching much of the blackness in exchange for something moodier and more epic, the song lopes and meanders, the guitars unfurling darkly, the melodies mournful and melancholy, strip away the vocals and you'd be in serious Neurosis / Isis / Godspeed territory, a smoldering slowbuild epic of the highest order, one that creeps and lumbers, offers up some blackened skitter, before a cool super dynamic, stop/start passage, that we wish would have gone on WAY longer, and which leads into the haunting coda, all whipping winds and acoustic guitar, bleak and somber and the perfect finish to a pretty fantastic record.
Available on vinyl for the very first time, the debut full length from these aQ beloved psych poppers, pressed on blue vinyl AND with a bonus 7" featuring two previously unreleased tracks! We've raved on and on about the various Papercuts records released since, but this was our very first taste of the Papercuts' sweet, dreamy lo-fi indie chamber pop. Singer/songwriter/engineer/band member, Jason Quever conjures up some lovely songs here. Anyone who enjoys The Shins' Beach Boys style retro-pop and other similarly heartfelt jangle and drift, will definitely dig the Papercuts' Mockingbird, big time! Recommended.
Our only exposure to the man known as Richard Papiercuts so far, was as the frontman for NY lo-fi art punks the Chinese Restaurants, whose single from a while back on S.S. was a huge favorite around here, a sort of angular swampy punk rock, with dramatic vox (and some bizarre Obama samples), crusty and gothic, slithery and swaggery, crusty and pounding, the sort of thing we predicted might appeal to fans of Sacred Bones and Captured Tracks releases, but which definitely tended toward the darker and dirgier, so we were pretty psyched on this, and expected more of the same, or at least something similar. And while the vibe is definitely similar, the sound itself ditches most of the punk and crunch for a collection of dark ballads, still dirgey and sinister, the opener is a pretty abject slab of bluesdirge stumble, all bleated sax, atonal guitars, chaotic drums, and howled anguished vocals, the sound dizzying and depressive, a sort of druggy late night dirgejazz sludge. But then the follow up track changes gears again completely, with a sort of classic rock guitar part, with a strange electronic pulse, and a much more dramatically crooned vocal, a little over the top, but RP definitely pulls it off, a little camp, a little drama, but sonically, it's pretty mesmerizing. The follow up is similarly broody and dark, but returns to the noisier sound of the opener, the guitars crunchy and distorted, the feel much more swaggery and woozy. The A side of the aforementioned Chinese Restaurants single gets a reworking too, here "River Of Shit" retains much of its punky crunch, sans the Obama samples, with a pounded piano, a fuzzy squelchy synth, and WAY more over the top vox, which makes it sound even more demented. And here the awesome absurdity of the lyrics finally becomes apparent, and how the phrasing is just totally twisted, the whole thing like a warped take on classic singer/songwriter tropes, all drugged out and deconstructed, and utterly transformed into something way WAY cooler.
Partisan Gallery is a too little known gem in the local San Francisco arts scene despite having killer shows by Liz Harris (Grouper), Emily Prince, Lindsay White, Nate Boyce, and Sean McFarland, among many others. Located in proprietor Chris Fallon's Guerrero Street apartment, the exhibits he puts together take on the feel of social gatherings while at the same time allowing an artist to push more experimental ideas that wouldn't feel as interesting in a regular commercial space. The exhibitions often feature exciting musical performances or a specially created limited edition multiple.
Despite a limited zine Fallon created a couple of years back, this new magazine is the first in what is planned to be a quarterly publishing venture, and the first issue is quite stunning. Modelling the format on vintage artist-produced publications from the seventies like Aspen or Heresies, Partisan Vol. 1 features visual and written contributions from Margaret Tedesco, Devendra Banhart, Will Rogan, Marcella Faustini, Jennifer Locke, Renee Van Trier, Rob Spector of Bronze and Muscle Drum, Tauba Auerbach, and even a cameo by Andy Warhol.
Comes with a cd-r of music from Arp, Glasser, Water Borders, Van Rivers (Henrik Von Sivers of Fever Ray and Glasser), The Best Bits (Andy Cabic of Vetiver Thom Monahan and Zach Cowie), Lloyd Center Mall Trick Or Treat Band (Keegan McHargue), The Same (Jamie Reeder of Helado Negro and Tarantula), Words, Wav Dwgs and Muscle Drum, among others.
Beautifully printed in a tall 17" x 11" format in mostly black and white but with a middle section in full color. If you want to get a vibe of what's really happening art wise in San Francisco, this is a key introduction! Limited to 500 copies!
We've dug pretty much everything we've heard from this Wisconsin husband and wife duo, the lp on Night People, the split with Wet Hair, those records found the group unfurling thick slabs of murky dronepop, twisted psychedelic dub, blurred hypnotic riff heavy space drone, psychedelic space boogie, all wound into a roiling sonic stew, seriously warped and druggy and occasionally blown out and noisy, but on this new record, they've ditched much of the heaviness, a lot of the noisiness, and toned down much of the murky psychedelia and instead crafted something much poppier and dreamier. The first track is a bit misleading with this in mind, as it's a lysergic bit of distorted dubbed out riffage, with some programmed beats, buried under chiming melodies and a heaving bass buzz, kaleidoscopic and hazy and with the potential to explode into something much heavier and noisier, but instead it gives way to "All The Sun That Shines" which sort of lives up to its title, a dubby reggae flecked bit of woozy skitter, programmed beats, swirling effects, loads of reverb and delay, and hazy ethereal female vox, some spidery Morricone-esque guitar twang, and an almost calypso groove are woven into the proceedings too, the result though is indeed hazy and sunshiney and gloriously washed out.
"Amazing And Wonderful" is up next, and while featuring a similarly murky Skaters-esque rhythm, it ditches the dubbiness, and sets a sort of abstract post punk into a much more dreampoppy realm, all tinkling chimes, descending melodies, multi tracked vox, all wrapped in a gauzy patina of swirling reverby whir. "Bird Of Paradise Dub Version" is another abstract swirl of druggy space pop, the 'dub version' aspect embodied by the delayed drums and the softly swirling clouds of blurred effects and heavy heavy echo. And so it goes, the rest of the record unwinds similarly, an ever shifting collection of murky, lo-fi programmed-beat driven dub pop, muddy, and murky and warbly, plenty of buzzing low end, shimmery effects, hushed dreamlike vox, a little bit of synthy new wave here and there, some stripped down low slung trip hop every once in a while, and even some fragmented off kilter synth pop strangeness, but overall, way less damaged then their past outings, and more akin to a group like Pigeons, that same sort of downtempo electronic pop, albeit with a much more murky, warped and experimental bent. Which as far as we're concerned translates into really really cool!
The latest release from aQ beloved label Time Released Sound, whose releases are as much art as music, an insane amount of time and energy put into the packaging for every release. This one comes from an artist called Plinth, whose strange and wondrous music is created using a collection of calliopes and Victorian music boxes, antique sound makers and wheezing creaking mechanisms from way back when. Sadly, we were unable to carry any of the super deluxe version, which in fact came in a fancy box with an actual music box, inside, those were $100 and super limited and sold out in a heartbeat. But as TRS sometimes does, they released the record in a more affordable version, so for those of us unable to plunk down $100 for a cd-r could still enjoy this dulcet sounds.
And dulcet they are, haunting and mysterious, chiming melodies are laid over the whir of strange machines, it's almost like the soundtrack to some strange mechanical workshop, a steam punk wonderland, where all the sounds are created via gears, and automatons, a Rube Goldberg like world of contraptions that create melodies, unfurling whirring textures, and the clicking and creaking of clockwork music boxes, the sound of the machines as much a part of the recordings as the music the machines are making. Dreamy and otherworldly, every song here like some old timey lullaby, broadcast via wireless from another dimensions, the sound of faded memories and lost childhoods, soundtracks to dreams and visions of what once was, bells and chimes, tinkling melodies, all wreathed in static and crackle, as if captured directly off the Victrola, or straight out of the music box, recorded onto a wax cylinder and played back by candlelight in the parlor. So lovely.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
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!
This is the first we've heard from these Boston indie rockers, who find themselves on uber hip taste-making label Mexican Summer, which is definitely a good fit, although the more we listen, the more it almost sounds like something that could/should have been on Sacred Bones or Woodsist, it's a sort of jangly, dreamy, folky, psychedelic pop, the sound stripped down but still lovely and lush, the female vox wreathed in reverb and doused in some subtly but strange effects, and while on the surface, these songs sound pretty straight ahead, there's lots of weird stuff going on just below the surface, twisted melodies, all manner of swirling tripped out FX, the opening track starts off all simple and sunshiney jangle, but as it progresses, it seems to get dubbier and trippier and way more spaced out.
Which is basically a good description of Quilt's sound, a classic pop sound, equal parts psychedelic folk and seventies folk, we hear hints of Pentangle and Incredible String band, not to mention sixties SF style psych rock woven into the band's dreamy jangle and fuzzy blissed out shuffle.
A few of the tracks do get downright rocking, reminding us of the current crop of garage rockers, like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, etc (albeit with a subtle sort of hippie / Godspell vibe) but most of the record is spent somewhere else much more jangly and folky and fuzzy, washed out and sun dappled. Be sure and stick around for the closer, a killer chunk of freak folk Appalachian stomp.
Whereas other Bay Area garage rockers draw more from the psychedelia of the Beach Boys and Syd Barrett, The Royal Baths seem determined to infuse their musical brand with less jangle and more post-punk. Maybe it's the recent influence of their move to New York, maybe the Baths just like it dark, but there's a lot more swamp and stomp on their second full length lp, Better Luck Next Life, like all they've been listening to is The Birthday Party and The Black Keys and the Velvets. It's not really breaking any new musical ground, but that's okay; it's how all the various parts are put together that matters. The bass and drums pound out a bluesy rhythm while the guitars swirl jaggedly above. The vocals guide the songs into shape with warbly whisperings. At times, when Jigmae Baer and Jeremy Cox's voices harmonize and the guitar sails through some brief clear skies, Better Luck verges on the downright pretty. There's just enough dissonance, though, to keep the mood bleak, and that prettiness never lasts more than a chorus or two. Mostly mid-tempo, the Baths mix things up by slowing down and drawing blood rather than offering the listener run of the mill garage-pop candy. This is not a record that makes you want to dance. This is a record that makes you want to high, and then get lost in these dark, dark sounds...
New record from shoegaze electronic maestro Schnauss, here joined by Mark Peters from the band Engineers. While we wait near impatiently for Schnauss's next proper full length in a couple of months, we're happy to spend time in the moody atmospheres of this latest collaborative effort. Underrated Silence takes the familiar synth washes we've come to expect with Schnauss, and tempers them with Peters' Robyn Guthrie-style guitar treatments. The mood is frosty, but beautifully dreamy, taking in the crisp vibrancy of a clear winter's day (which sadly we didn't have much of this year). While not necessarily typical of Schnauss's more pop-oriented recordings, Underrated Silence plays out as more cinematic and mysterious with more experimental edges in sound, and is a welcome addition to his too short discography. Recommended!
When we recently posted our top ten lists for 2011, some folks might have noticed Andee's top spot was a record we had never actually reviewed or listed, but it wasn't for lack of trying. It was actually released way back in 2010, but we didn't even hear about it until 2011, and then it took until 2012 for us to actually get enough copies in to review. Lots of aQ folks probably recognize Schreifels' name, whether it's as the frontman for nineties post punk combo Quicksand, or more recently in Rival School, but even before Quicksand Schreifels played in legendary NY hardcore outfits Youth Of Today and Gorilla Biscuits! But don't be expecting anything remotely hardcore or punk rock (although there are nods to those days, more on that in a second), the sound here is much more classic indie pop jangle, which is really the direction Schreifels had been moving in anyway since the end of Quicksand, with Rival Schools, World's Fastest Car and now solo.
An open Letter To The Scene is crazy catchy, jangly indie pop, and from the very first play, we found ourselves spinning it constantly, over and over on a daily basis, much to the displeasure of the less pop inclined, but it's that sort of irresistible collection of songs, and again, as with every subsequent record, we can't understand why mainstream success continues to elude Schreifels, the songs here are so much catchier and hookier and more original than 90 percent of the indie rock we hear, but it's probably that whole original thing that throws people off, but for the rest of us, who like our pop smart, and quirky, catchy, crunchy and fuzzy, and jangly, well, this record is pretty tough to beat. We're tempted to go through the record song by song, but we'd probably end up just gushing crazily about how every song is SO CATCHY and SO GREAT, but hell, every song here IS so catchy and great, from dark strummy almost-ballads, to big jangly power pop, from intimate bedroom pop to fuzzy poppy classic indie rock, all driven by Schreifels' distinctive vocals, a little bit gruff but super warm and melodic, the sound rife with strange cool lush arrangements, and subtly trippy production, and then there the abovementioned nods to his punk rock past.
First there's a killer cover of Agnostic Front's "Society Suckers", which works surprisingly well as an acoustic guitar and bongo driven chunk of strum and jangle, there's also a new version of "Don't Gotta Prove It", originally recorded by another one of Schreifels' early outfits, the melodic hardcore group CIV, here transformed into a killer slab of distorto guitar and organ driven fuzz pop stomp, and that's not to mention liberal lyrical references to various bands and hardcore musicians and reappropriations from classic hardcore songs (one pointed out in the lyrics borrowed from Warzone!), but they're so subtle and work so well with the music and the lyrical content, that you might not even notice it at first (if at all), it's just part and parcel of Schreifels' twisted indie pop sound, which is a sound we somehow STILL haven't tired of, even after literally listening to this record almost daily for the last year. The only thing that might get us to stop, is the supposed impending release of a brand new record. But until then, we'll keep digging this one. And we're betting the popfans that read the aQ list will too.
Another glossy and colorful issue of Shindig!, exclamation point and all. This British music magazine is a must for anyone into the vintage sounds of yesteryear (popsyke, folk-rock, heavy prog, R&B, etc. etc.), as we've said before it's kinda like a combo of Ugly Things and Mojo magazines. On the cover this time 'round, Mott The Hoople. Also this ish, features on The Twilights, The Critters, The Committee, Jamul, Memphis soul label XL/Sounds, and much much more. Including an essay on that staple of dinosaur rock, the drum solo!! And an interview with our pal Vincent who runs the great reissues label Lion Productions. And the usual gamut of reviews.
Latest sprawling rhythmic whatthefuck epic from these Texas-by-way-of-the-UK-by-way-of-Texas-again multiple drummer-ed weirdos, and it's maybe their most ambitious and most over the top yet, which is saying a lot, considering pretty much everything these guys do pretty goddamn over the top. But this triple lp takes their sound in a whole different direction. We might have imagined them going even noiser, more drum heavy, but no, instead, $&$ offer up six sidelong jams, looped out and tranced out, that tend toward the super minimal, the mesmerizingly rhythmic, ultra repetitive and hypnotic, but not in the usual bombastic heavy $&$ way, no these are like alternative universe minimal dancefloor chillout jams. Or something. Probably best to just go through em one at a time...
Side A, "Flirtations At A Cocktail Party", pretty much sets the template, looped tribal drumming, a revving engine, loping low slung bassline, all blurred and looped into a sort of abstract rhythmic mesmer, laced with strange robotic vox, like some sort of alien lo-fi electro, the track gradually growing more and more blown out, finally becoming extra melodic and dense right near the end. That's the most typically Shit & Shine track of the bunch, cuz the next one, "Frankies Theme" dials everything back, loopy and minimal, with muted melodies, a sort of circular slow motion groove, motorik and locked in, while around it sounds swirl and shimmer, distant melodic swells ebb and flow, it's sidelong but it's the sort of thing that sounds like it could have gone on forever.
The second lp starts with "Switching 2 Nite Mode", which lives up to its title by swiping the main part of the Rolling Stones' "Emotional Rescue" and looping it into a jumbled psychedelic freakout, adding swirls of processed vox (even some sliced and diced Jagger falsetto), dubbed out production, some deep ominous vocals all slowed down, before the song transforms into a slo-mo creep, all weirdly muted and creepily sexy. The flipside, "Frenchys Automotive", is another super minimal loop-jam, a main melody repeated rhythmically, pulsing hypnotically, the vibe almost kosmische, but more sort of murky and mesmerizing, that main figure looped and looped, while all around it, random sounds swirl and shimmer druggily.
The final lp starts off with "How To Rattle A White Tailed Buck", which unfurls a brittle looped melody, peppered with occasional rib cage rattling boomin' system low end bass thumps, the whole thing sort of blurpy and lumbering, a stuttery groove that shuffles through clouds of staticky hiss, which finally leads to the final side / track, "Klipp", which is most definitely the most high fidelity of the bunch, super heavy, repetitive, Circle like hypno-rock, but a bit more minimal, the main guitar riff and shuffling rhythm totally in sync, while all around it sounds swirl and decay, shards of melodies and and crumbling FX, processed vocals and constantly shifting layers wreathe the hypno-rock in a buzzy, blurry, noisy gauze.
Packaged in a 6 panel hand screened triple gatefold jacket, pressed on white vinyl, and LIMITED TO 184 COPIES!!!
Latest single from Mike Donovan, aka local avant psychedelic garage pop one man band Sic Alps, and it might just be the weirdest one yet. The A side is a pretty pop song pulled apart and deconstructed and wedded to all sorts of blown out beats and experimental 4-trackery, super percussive and abstract, almost funky at points, with acoustic guitar strum, and sweet falsetto croon peppered with bursts of distorto drumming, and some wild production, this twisted arrangement hiding what seems to be a sweet hooky jangle pop gem, but it's hard to tell at times, with the sound flitting from strummy and sweet, to bombastic and chaotic, to angular and abstract. It's a pretty potent combination though.
The flipside almost sounds like an alternate version of the A side, or maybe a 'dub', the same fuzzy dream pop, all urgent strum and sweet croon, this time pocked with clouds of radio interference and more of those big booming distorted drums, but it's still not enough chaos and skree to disguise the perfect pop and its center. Nice!
Record number two from this unlikely black metal offshoot. Which makes sense when you realize that the black metal band that Soror Dolorosa frontman Andy Julia calls home, as drummer, is none other than the twisted French 'faerical blasting punk' outfit Nuit Noire. But even that band's outsider barely black metal status couldn't have prepared us for Soror Dolorosa, which is only black in that it's the color of the clothes, and the black eyeliner these guys don, as they unfurl some fantastically retro gloom/goth/death rock, that as we mentioned in our review of their first album, sounds SO genuinely gothic, that we're guessing even some gothrock veterans could be fooled into thinking these guys were from back in the day. We mentioned groups like Christian Death, Specimen, The March Violets, the Virgin Prunes, we'd probably add the Abecedarians, and Kommunity FK, and heck why not Bauhaus and Joy Division and even Interpol. Cuz for all the retro eighties worship and gloom pop revivalism, NOBODY does it as good as these guys, right down to the bass tone, to the deep crooned dramatic vocals, the meandering spacious compositions, loping and low slung, spidery guitar melodies, simple propulsive drumming, lush reverby production, and gorgeous songs, not heavy, not weird, just dark and dreamy and dramatic, channeling classic cold wave and goth rock bands of the past, creating their own contemporary death rock sound that owes as much to the Cure as it does to the more subterranean goth rock of old.
Unlike their first record, which seemed to retain much of the urgency and raw energy of the black metal scene that birthed them, this latest album is simultaneously more polished and more restrained, less crunch, and buzz, and more shimmer and jangle, the verses unwinding and meandery, the choruses epic and majestic, but still restrained and minimal. And the songs too might be even catchier, but subtly so. There's no overt immediate hit like "Beau Suicide" from the first record, but instead, ALL of the tracks here blossom on repeated listens into the sort of songs that get played to death, and make it on to that break up mix tape, dour and dark, and miserably blissed out.
The song "Soror Dolorosa" almost cribs the exact bass line from the Abecedarians' biggest hit, but here, the band instead stretch it out, and pile on layer after layer, keening guitar melodies, a dark melancholy croon, clouds of cymbal shimmer, until the song slips into a woozy bit of softly tribal drift, all warm guitar whirl, before launching into a darkly propulsive gloom rock churn. Our favorite track though might be closer "Broken Wings", which almost sounds like the best Katatonia song ever, but slowed way down, with all the distortion stripped away, the dramatic vocals so powerful and moving, the guitars thick and textural, all the while a thick driving bass line pulsing beneath the surface, a dark, doomy goth pop dirge that plays out like some miserablist slowdance moperock, cinematic in it's own way, evoking wandering in the pouring rain, watching the city lights blink off one at a time, of heartbreak, of loss and even death, a gorgeously lush yet emotionally bleak ballad, that is the perfect finish for this modern gloompop/gothrock classic.
The Starving Weirdos have long been a conundrum, but it's one that we love to entertain. Their unanswerable riddles are due to the scattered references that flow nearly unfiltered through an insatiable hunger for any and every cultural product churned out over the past century (and probably beyond). To engage in conversation with the Weirdos is to connect the dots between the six or seven strands of thought running through their psychically fused brains: How did the Dallas Mavericks do in the game last night? What did you think about that Serge Gainsbourg movie? Have you heard the new tape from Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier? She makes sick jams! Fuck! Check out that orange-crowned warbler that just flew out of the marsh! That shouldn't be here now. Global warming, man, it's gonna fuck us up... and the conversation circles back to Dirk Nowitzki. Yet, somehow it all makes sense as an organic recognition of the impact of cultural overload on individual consciousness. Just go with the flow, dude.
Musically, that's what you get with the Starving Weirdos. Their creativity is birthed in the hazed environs of Humboldt County through the psychedelic jam session; but they are not interested in repeating what their stoned, hippy brethren did 40 years ago. No, they hack into astral jazz, ambient smeared electronica, sixth-generation takes on PiL excursions of dub-punk, and a twinkling quest for their own path to transcendence - stoned, spiritual, or otherwise. Drum programming and synth emulators have crept to the forefront of the SW sound, with the trippy effects, swirling guitars, and opium-den vibes never far behind. It's certainly an unintended reference, but Land Lines harkens back to the ritual-ambient project O Yuki Conjugate from the mid-'90s. An obscure reference, yeah, but SW have stumbled through the droned-out excursions of Taj Mahal Travellers and an arboreal shimmer of Organum (via the satellite project RV Paintings), so to hear something else in the Weirdos is to be expected. This will certainly rank as one of our favorite SW records, for sure.
Newly Reissued on Vinyl!
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
A Trip To Marineville was their debut record from 1979. Reissue comes with a download card plus bonus 7" that accompanied the original release!
Newly Reissued on vinyl!
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
Jane From Occupied Europe was their second and final record from 1980. The band split soon after with Sudden forming the Jacobites and Soundtracks going on to join Crime And The City Solution. Download card included!
And another issue of this venerable UK metal monthly. Lamb Of God (meh) is on the cover, but also in this ish you'll find St. Vitus, Burzum, Watain, Behemoth, Tesseract, Down, Paradise Lost, Rammstein, year-end poll results, and some 2012 scouting reports... also, comes with free cd sampler, with tracks from Noctum, RAM, Crippled Black Phoenix, and more...
The return of one of our favorite one man weirdo (post) black metal outfits, Lonesummer, who hails from Philly and who teams up here with another aQ fave, another one man band, Trist, from the Czech Republic (not to be confused with the German Trist!), both of whom offer their own twisted take on black metal.
Trist is up first with a single 20+ minute epic, a slow depressive blackened dirge, all fuzzed out and dreamily buzzy, rife with melancholy melody, barely any vocals, and when they do surface, they're buried WAY down in the mix, the drums simple and buried in the mix, the guitars thick, the distortion crumbling, it's the sort of black metal for people who might not like black metal, since it's usually the vocals that drive people away, but even more, the sound here is washed out and shoegazey, we hear Sonic Youth and Bailter Space and My Bloody Valentine way more than Immortal or Darkthrone. Darkly mesmerizing, and dreamily hypnotic, even at 20 minutes odds are you'll find yourself setting your player for repeat.
Lonesummer is up next, and we never know what to expect, after all our favorite Lonesummer jam found LS mixing some old African record with his black buzz, but here, we're presented with what we've come to dig about LS, a mix of indie jangle, folky strum, and heavily melodic black buzz, the vocals here shrieky and hysterical, definitely of the Bethlehem variety, cranking up the weirdo factor for sure, cuz otherwise the music is darkly melodic, with some strange off kilter rhythms and soaring guitars. The second track is even poppier, sounding almost like Dinosaur Jr. or something, SUPER melodic, fuzzy and dreamily distorted, the vocals just pushing it over the top, and back into black metal land. And that's pretty much how the rest of the tracks play out, a sort of black buzz infused, fuzz guitar, indie rock, albeit on the blacker and buzzier side, with those vocals wild and shrieked, culminating in kick ass closer "Mundane Dreams About Flash Floods", which is the perfect mix of clean guitar strum, churning blackened heaviness, melodic jangle, vokill shriek, and even some almost mathy noise rockiness. Hard to describe, but then the best stuff usually is.
Achtung! Remember a little while ago we were digging a various artists collection entitled Funky Frauleins? Which showcased the swinging female pop stars of Germany (East and West) circa 1968-1978, a super delightful go-go disco dance party platter auf Deutsch all right. Now, here's the sequel - or rather, the prequel, 'cause while Funky Frauleins contained a lot of '70s kitsch, this one goes back to the mid '60s, "when pop culture entered the innocent world of German popular chart music", giving this its "Beat meets Schlager!" tagline. 19 tracks dating from 1964-'68, by an assortment of artists that haven't been part of our education previously, including Brigitt, Joy and the Hit Kids, Marion, Inga, Dorthe, Conny Froboess, Pitty und ihre Beatchicks, and a dozen more.
They do dreamy orchestral pop, teenybop anthems, garagey groove, popsyke, and soul. There's a few German-language covers of familiar hits, including a wonderful interpretation of The Hollies' "Bus Stop", done here as "Er sah mich im Regen" by Monique and the Lions. Meanwhile the Jacob Sisters' "Was hab ich dir getan" you'll recognize as a Teutonic take on "Stop In the Name Of Love" by the Supremes!
Super fun stuff, that's been getting a lot of play here at AQ ever since it showed up. In the compilations competition, this one proves that while France had their "ye-ye girls", and Spain their "chicas", Germany's "beat frauleins" were also pretty darn groovy. But, being German, even at their most hip shaking, these ladies can still somehow sound kinda stern, which only adds to our enjoyment...
For all you Mississippi Records obsessives, Sublime Frequencies nuts, and just diggers of old timey 78's and world music (which we'd like to think covers a whole lot of folks who read the aQ list), comes this, the first release from record store turned label Hinter Records, and it's a good one, if a bit obscure, but then that only makes it that much more interesting. Don't Trust Your Neighbors is a collection of "Early Albanian Traditional Songs & Improvisations" from the twenties and thirties, and is overflowing with amazing songs, sounds and performances, the vibe is definitely similar to some of the Greek music compilations we've carried, which makes sense since they're neighbors, but we hear plenty of influences from Turkey, and Romania too, the vibe to our ears is definitely a sort of gypsy folk, but the sound is often surprisingly raga-like, hypnotic and droney, for every proper song here, there's a gorgeous sprawling drone-y jam, that evokes the same sort of hypnotic mesmer that most modern space/psych outfits spend their whole careers chasing.
There's extensive liner notes, presented as a beautiful 4 panel heavy cardstock insert, that details the quest for the records that make up this collection, as well as plenty on the history of Albania and the artists here, which is super interesting, but even removed from the historical background, the music here is so powerful, and so intense, dramatic and tense, quite dark much of the time, emotional and hypnotic, there are dances, and ballads, traditional folks songs, the vocals so passionate and powerful, but the strangely mesmerizing music and the way the music and the vocals seem to blur and intertwine, it must be the improvisation angle that really gives this the strange energy we find so appealing, but throughout strings buzz, and melodies unfurl into sprawling drones, the raga feel is huge, and makes this so much more than just a historical document. Instead this plays out like a collection of lives and loves, of memories and mysterious, all translated into glorious sound, evoking a sort of muted majesty and a powerful personal energy that imbues these songs with a humanity and intensity that is utterly mesmerizing.
Packaged in beautiful full color covers - with art by Robert Crumb! - with the aforementioned heavy cardstock printed insert, which includes liner notes and lots of amazing photos.
Yes you read that right. $1.98 list price for this Matador and True Pather label vinyl sampler. Previewing upcoming 2012 releases, there's tracks by The Young, Ceremony, Lee Ranaldo, Perfume Genius, and Tanlines (or maybe theirs is totally exclusive?). Plus, it's got previously released 2011 hits from: Girls, Kurt Vile, Esben & The Witch, and Cold Cave (though theirs is a remix/remaster). And Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks contribute an unreleased cut from the Mirror Traffic sessions.
First things first, recommended. Yes, you heard us right!
Ok, like everyone else, after catching an appalling earful of the... errr, flaccid lead-off single trumpeting the return of THE Van Halen WITH David Lee Roth, we were totally gun shy and almost ready to toss the new album in the dumper unseen and unheard, especially after so much drama and so many false starts and empty promises (read: bottles) over the last twenty seven years (!), BUT to honor old allegiances to the genius pre-1985 Van Halen (i.e. before Roth left), we just had to give the new disc a fair spin. So, we did, albeit somewhat gingerly. Needless to say, we skipped right past the lame opening track (the abovementioned "Tattoo"), and kicked things off with "She's The Woman" (a reworked version of a 1976 demo), and... HOLY SHIT... it... really... sounds... and... grooves... like... THEM (circa VHII, Fair Warning, Women And Children First, 1984). Once we recovered from the shock, the goosebumps and glee took over! That song slays like '79 all over again! Really should have been the first single...
Yeah, we know at this point you're probably thinking "what are they thinking?!" Still a bit skeptical, right? Sure, the relationships seem to be business-calculated. Sure a bunch of the songs are based on old demos, and many songs are fundamentally riffin' on archetypes of their various early styles, for instance, the terrific "Stay Frosty" = "Ice Cream Man", but over the majority of this record this all actually works in the favor of the band, and these tunes ultimately reveal themselves to be more than mere sonic nostalgia (and actually the band's practice of reworking old material is nothing new, it was their modus operandi after the first couple years of existence).
But try to block out all the hype, preconceptions, and "Tattoo". Forget the embarrassing, drunken EVH YouTube clips. Don't scoff and dismiss before you've given it a listen... or two or three. If you like/love vintage Van Halen, you will be surprised and happy and super stoked to hear that everyone has risen to the challenge. The playing is technically and musically brilliant, and as entertaining and fun as old VH. They're still the mad geniuses expertly disguising themselves as airheads. Meticulously composed, deceptively complex, yet totally on the verge of careening out of control. Eddie in particular sounds absolutely revivified. There's some spine tingling EVH guitar playing going on here. The bongo-Bonzo intricate drumming is unmistakably Alex Van Halen, with his signature snare and cymbal sounds. David Lee Roth's vocal range ain't what it used to be, but it's still plenty there, with authentic deliveries of his usual characterizations, delivered Tarzan-like (we'll forgive/turn a blind eye to his shout-out to Facebook). And what about Wolfgang Van Halen's bass playing? Totally fat. Very solid, and full of Michael Anthony-esque beefy vrroooms and BASS counterpoints. Wolfgang's sound is a little tighter than MA's, and he is really fantastically locked in here. The whole band is really quite on fire and up-to-snuff with their best vintage material throughout A Different Kind Of Truth. Most importantly - because VH were known to record their albums very quickly and quite live - the band sounds rejuvenated without sounding reliant on modern technology (unlike most other reunited rock bands and their love affair with the rhythm grid). The faithful vintage vibe is at many times remarkably fast, heavy and crammed full of mesmerizing riffery from all involved (check out "China Town", "Bullethead", "Outta Space", "Honeybabysweetiedoll", "As Is", and "Big River"). A welcome return to form, as VH was largely devoid of any sense of wild danger or threat of pyrotechnic-wizard combustion during the non-DLR years. Well, it's clear that something has sparked, and the friction makes for some magical chemistry and hard rock firepower channelled through all four players. Really, the only obvious element (and it is a considerable one) that could make this an old VH fan's complete dream come true would be the return of Michael Anthony, but we doubt that'll ever happen since it seems obvious that Wolfie's been groomed to be the VH bassist since he was a tot. He rips on this record though, and his backing vocals are quite satisfactorily in the ballpark of the MA model. And the band IS called Van Halen.
So, there you have it. A major portion of A Different Kind Of Truth fucking smokes! We can only guess that the "Tattoo" single debacle was an ill-timed April fool's joke and/or a poor decision by them. But these guys ain't no dummies, so maybe it was all part of a reverse-psychology master plan - that is, to first deliver what everyone naturally expected from the even-up-til-recently-EVH-trainwreck, and then hot on its heels deliver what everyone hoped for, yet doubted they could ever actually have (i.e. pretty much the rest of the album). Heavy rock comeback of the year! (At least until the Black Sabbath record? Assuming they have Bill Ward. Cuz while we may have been convinced to abide a Michael Anthony-less VH, a Bill Ward-less Sabbath reunion is utterly unacceptable)!
A list or two back we reviewed the debut record on Kranky from Christina Vantzou, a gorgeously drifty and dreamy collection of washed out soundscapery, that had us all smitten, which made perfect sense once you realized she was also a member of Stars Of The Lid offshoot The Dead Texan, contributing both vocals AND visuals. That Dead Texan record was hugely popular around here, and Vantzou's record explored similar territory, but definitely with it's own subtle twist. Laying lush strings over ethereal chamber music, weaving delicate tinkling piano into lush majestic chordal swells, the vibe new agey and tranquil for sure, but also soundtracky, and dreamily dramatic, and so here, on this newly released companion, Vantzou presents that record again, this time accompanied by her visuals, which are and striking and sweetly surreal as the sounds themselves. From gorgeous shots of forests and rolling hills, overlaid with some sort of black sigil that seems to be burning into the film, to strange almost old school video game looking 8 bit interference, and from flickering old films colorized and druggily warped, to gorgeous abstract swirls an stripes of soft focus color, bleary and smeared and utterly dreamlike, often melding two or more of those techniques into even more striking hybrids. And thankfully, unlike most groups who think that any cool old films or abstract visuals will make their unexciting band a bit more exciting to watch, Vantzou's films seem impossibly linked to the sounds, as if that record we reviewed was actually a score, and now we're finally seeing/hearing everything as she originally intended. And the sound themselves, reimagined WITH visuals, conveys the sense that these are some mysterious set of old nature films, or archival footage from another world, definitely another time, dusty old filmstrips dug out of an old trunk, the images warm and familiar, but just slightly warped, as if they were glimpses into another world.
And while the visuals are quite varied for sure, to systematically describe each one would definitely ruin some of the joy of discovery that comes with viewing this for the first time, needless to say, they are all interconnected, woven into one grand sweeping, ever-shifting visual feast, replete with old filmstrip style chapter (song) titles, which only make it feel even more like some recently rediscovered, long lost archival footage, from another time, and perhaps another world.
Included is a bonus disc, which finds the whole record remixed / reimagined / reinterpreted by a handful of folks, many of whom should be familiar to long time readers of the aQ list: Koen Holtkamp, Loscil, White Rainbow, Ernest Gibson (from aQ faves Net Shaker), Rober Lippock, Ben Vida, Dustin O'Halloran, Isan, and Montgomery Knott. The new versions range from the washed out ethereal shimmer of Koen Holtkamp, to the hazy pulsing atmospherics of Loscil, and from the murky, post industrial blur of Ernest Gibson, to the rhythmic kosmische synthwave of White Rainbow, and obviously a handful of other sonic stops in between. And as if that weren't already enough, also included on the bonus disc is a brand new song from the Dead Texan, which could very well have come from Vantzou's record as well, a lush, soft focus landscape of thick, softly undulating strings, swirling chordal layers, some delicate piano, and what could be disembodied vox, all laced with strange, heavily reverbed samples, as well as clouds of softly swirling hiss and muted static, all blurred into a gorgeous bit of melancholic cinematic ambience, which most definitely has us hankering for the new Dead Texan record as well...
El Tren Fantasma was Chris Watson's amazing, imagined excursion across Mexico released in 2011, tracing a now-defunct passenger rail line which ran from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Veracruz on the Atlantic Coast. Watson had the opportunity to make this journey while working as a sound recordist for the BBC for their Great Railway Journeys, and the resulting album was constructed using those field recordings. Unlike so much of Watson's previous field recording albums, El Tren Fantasma sported a quite a bit of processing and production work, transforming the rhythmic chug of the train into an electronica backbeat. The two mixes on this single further those propulsive aspects, especially on the album's highlight "El Divisidaro," where Watson captures a series of loops of the train - with the bellowing horn pitched back and forth into a sustained symphonic tone and the clatter of the train's engine becoming an ersatz rhythm track, which in turn gets tricked out with some Martin Hannett styled, phasing delay work. It's easy to get lost in the majesty of this track, much like the expressive electronica that Wolfgang Voigt produced on Konigsforst as Gas, expanded through glassine tones and deeper rhythms. "Veracruz" is certainly a bricolage, but pulls back on the rhythmic interlocking considerably, with chunks of locomotive noise surging against the backdrop of the harmonic train horns. Fantastic!
While the term Pop Ambient was coined by the good people at Kompakt to describe their own particular strain of electronica, it aptly defines Windy & Carl. The husband & wife duo emerged out of Michigan's space-rock scene in the mid '90s, producing a steady stream of singles and albums, as endless variations on weightless guitar drones, soft-focus basslines, and mumbled lyrics buried in piles of reverb. They eventually shifted the space-rock model of lift-off through vibrant drug-fuelled propulsion to the freefloating orbits of perpetually shimmering tones. In their bright shimmer and glistening ambience, they even push beyond the shoegaze mope into a blissed-out, pop narcotic almost wholly devoid of the pop song itself. But wisps of the song are there, and as the title of this album alludes to, those glints of pop will always be there even if the melodic hook has been reduced to a sustained, gentle wash. As such, We Will Always Be is as magical, gaseous, and beautifully familiar as every Windy & Carl album that came before hand. Yup, it's pretty much inevitable to get lost in these tracks as they are so enveloping and soothing.
We've always been huge fans of the prolific, idiosyncratic Scottish experimental folk troubadour Richard Youngs, and endeavor to review all of his many releases, though there's a few we've missed. Couldn't miss this though. First, due to the fact that it's on the reliable Root Strata label, and also, 'cause some have called this Richard Youngs' "metal" album. Hmm. We wouldn't go that far, no (though we of course would love to hear such an album from Mr. Youngs!).
But, the idiosyncratic Scottish experimental folk troubadour does allow his distinctive voice here to wander melodically, in his usual questing, fragile fashion, o'er a backing soundscape that DOES have its unexpectedly heavy elements... composed of churning industrial loops, distorted guitar chords (coming closest to an actual, plodding doom metal riff on "We Are The Messengers"), and dense, skittering, sped-up rhythmics that actually remind us a lot more of jungle, a la DJ Zinc, or Ed Rush or Dillinja or something, than metal, though we suppose there's folks who might think compressed "death metal drumming" when they hear it. Those parts sound something like Speedranch producing a Richard Youngs record, maybe. Yet, these seven songs, even with all their dark and difficult textures, still resemble true hymns and prayers, Richard Youngs blessing us always with his gorgeous, glowing vision.
While writing this review, we realized that we've never yet made a Richard Youngs album a Record Of The Week. How can that be??! Looking back, there's quite a few that shoulda been. And we were tempted to so designate this one, but worried that as it's a bit "edgier" than some of the Youngs albums (with placid piano, or acoustic strum, or even delicate electronic drone) that we've recommended in the past, it might not be the perfect one to pick... but then again, nothing wrong with edgy. Nor is this nearly as noisy as some of RY's more extreme early experiments, 'specially his collabs with Simon Wickham-Smith, either. We're just talking repetitive claustrophobic loops, clangorous but mesmeric factory ambience, and atonal electric guitar - the track "Forever Hills Of Everyday" in particular has got some out there guitar soloing that could be off a very warped late '70s/early '80s King Crimson effort... So while not "metal" this is at least "rock". Indeed, "The Healing Of Everyone", at the end of side two, is a throbbing fuzz epic over 11 minutes long, making for a grand finale indeed, a dose of psychedelic drone space rock hypnosis worthy of any of our faves in that realm. Moon Duo fans should dig it. So, yes, a good one. Highly recommended. And LIMITED TO JUST 500 COPIES, vinyl-only!
