Yet another chapter in the 39 Clocks saga, Subnarcotic being the band's second album, originally released in 1982, and now reissued. The German duo appears to be operating at full blast here, with the liner notes in fact quoting our own review of the band's career spanning anthology Zoned, wherein we postulated 1982 as perhaps the "boys' most fertile drug period"!
The greatest thing about 39 Clocks is how blissfully - or maybe nihilistically - out of touch they are with the 1980s, and if this band had formed at any point within the last five years, they would be ruling the garage punk scene, no question. An innate understanding of rhythm is one of their greatest strengths, informing pretty much everything you hear from the slashing guitars to the buzzing organs to the heavily accented German vocals. They sound equally at home with a drum machine or a real drummer, and the shambolic approach to songcraft seems to draw as much from their krautrock predecessors as it does from the Velvet Underground, the Godz, and the harder side of the Nuggets spectrum. They know how to launch into a sleazy groove and gussy it up with dark psychedelic flourishes while rarely being anything other than really fucking catchy. Plus, they look like a couple of badasses, dark shades and Beatle Boots, rail thin with messy hair and pseudonyms indebted to LSD. The live bonus track of the song "Past Tense Hope & Instant Fears On 42nd Street" gives a perfect idea of their animalistic power onstage. Subnarcotic is another tantalizing glimpse into the world of this strange and amazing band, and we're already jonesing to hear more!
Brand new ep from this NY band, who as we mentioned in past reviews, were constantly being touted as 'the loudest band in New York', but as we also mentioned, that sort of thing rarely translates to record. Take NZ outfit Bailter Space, whose records ruled, and were definitely heavy, but didn't even begin to hint at that band's sheer power live, and their infamously ear destroying volume. These guys may very well be loud as fuck, but over the last few records, regardless of volume, they definitely seem to have been honing their songwriting chops, with each record sounding more and more focused and less an exercise in bash and pound, and more about wreathing their shoegazy jangle pop in plenty of blissed out shimmer and blurred space-y roooaaaar.
That said, the opening track here is MASSIVE, and DOES sound like maybe these guys could be the loudest band around, the bass thick and buzzy, the drums a reverby pound, the production spacious and epic, the vocals an echo drenched croon, drifting over the soaring guitar melodies, and churning rhythm, with the song exploding into some serious psychedelic sections, so blown out and in-the-red it totally sounds like it's doing damage to your speakers, or your eardrums, or both! The rest of the record dials back the crush a bit, getting a bit more moody and atmospheric, but that buzzing bass drives everything, whether it's the almost Interpol-ish sounding garage rock-y drift of "So Far Away", or the hazy washed out shuffle of the title track, or the frenetic new wave noise of "It'll Be Alright", which does match the intensity of the opener in places, until finally, the band wind down with the almost industrial sounding "Drill It Up", with it's muted guitar harmonics, THAT gorgeous noisy, buzzy bass, some galloping drum pound, more gauzy vox, all wound up into a killer blast of new wave shoegaze garage bliss.
Latest in a series of killer vinyl-only reissues from the Secret Stash label, who indeed seem to have access to a secret stash of international groove obscurities. This rare record, originally released in 1975, was the sole album from Afro Funk, a band of West Africans based in London, England. Can you guess what this one sounds like from the band name? Yes you can! Afrobeat rhythms meet electric American funk. It's chock full of percolating percussion, chirping horns, wacka-wacka guitar, and chanted funk-shaman vocals. Also, some some JB's "Blow Your Head" style synth Moog-ery, notably prominent on side two's mesmerizing 8+ minute instrumental jam "Farewell To Ibusa". Overall, the lp's got a loose languid laidback vibe, yet the playing is tight and funky throughout. Reminds us a bit of Soundway's recent reissue by the Black Truth Rhythm Band, and also would fit in with the great stuff Academy Records/Voodoo Funk digs up, like Marijata. In fact, we now remember that their track "Afro Funk" appeared, appropriately, on the comp Afro Funk Explosion some years back, alongside the likes of Blo, Manu Dibango, and, yes, Black Truth Rhythm Band. Quite a groovy gem, well worthy of reissue. Comes with mp3 download card.
Watch out for more reviews of Secret Stash stuff as we catch up on their catalog...
Record number two from this psychedelic raga-rock supergroup finds the lineup slightly altered but with very little shift in their sound. Still present of course are Cedric Bixler Zavala of the Mars Volta, Christian Eric Beaulieu of the late great Triclops! and Mike Watt (Minutemen, firehose et. al.), but gone is Rachel from dream poppers Sleepy Sun and in her place is Toshi Kasai from Big Business, but as we mentioned before, the sound still remains relatively unchanged, which is a good thing, considering how much we dug their debut. The A side title track, named for a Grateful Dead record, is all wild tumbling drums, that flit from rhythmic and motorik to chaotic and progged out, heavily strummed acoustic guitars, shimmery keyboards, the whole thing very spaced out and darkly proggy, almost like the intro to some sidelong seventies prog rock epic, but here kept well in check, minimal, tight, a little raga-like, but super mesmerizing and hypnotic.
The flipside sounds almost like a continuation of the first track, but blossoms into some soaring strummy psychedelic rock, with high, crystalline vox, over a bed of steel string strum, and more busy drumming, all blurred into something much more dreamy, with a distinctly seventies Yes vibe (which is most definitely a good thing), the vocals processed into swoonsome sheets of shimmery melody and lush layered texture, again, having the feel of being one part of a much bigger whole, that we just haven't heard yet. Fantastic. And after two singles, we're definitely hankering to hear what these guys can do with a full length.
Like everything on Valley King, super deluxe, gorgeously designed slikscreened sleeves, with original artwork from Alan Forbes. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered. And pretty much entirely sold out. We should be able to get a few more copies when this first batch sells out, but most likely not many, so as always, grab one quick...
How we love this band!! And sure, the also recently reissued Icky Mettle from 1993 might be the record by this North Carolina indie rockers that most folks hold near and dear, but we say the follow up, 1995's Vee Vee is just as good. What it may sacrifice in punk-pop urgency (which is not all that much really), and balls out debut record go-for-broke-ness, it makes up for with more well crafted songs (some of their best for sure), all without diluting the band's frenetic energy, or the strange gnarled angular riffing that defined their sound and made them instantly recognizable.
Just give a listen to "Harnessed In Slums", which was the 'hit', easily as good as anything on Icky Mettle, the sound super elastic and melty, the core jangle warped onto something woozy and super rocking and in its own way sorta psychedelic. And the next track too, "Nevermind The Enemy", with its super catchy opening riff, and backing up truck beeps, explodes into another killer slab of jangle and crunch, with guitar melodies that sound like the band's playing with slides, all slippery and sonically prismatic. Everything driven by some kick ass drumming, and singer Eric Bachmann's killer raspy vox. It's sorta hard to explain beyond the above just what it is that makes these guys so special, and their sound so unique, and how they managed to fit in with all their North Carolina brethren, while sounding nothing like any of those other bands. But here we are 17 years on, and we have to fight the urge to slip into grumpy old rock guy mode and proclaim that they just don't make bands like this anymore, but hell, why fight it, cuz they really don't. Folks who missed out on these guys the first time around, and who were maybe weaned on a less idiosyncratic indie rock will be blown away, and realize that music can be catchy and hooky, and still be freaky and fucked up and totally original.
The reissue tacks on a whole disc of bonus tracks, including a handful of different mixes, some killer lo-fi 4-track demos, not to mention some even more lo-fi boombox demos. Plus some unreleased tracks, some rare B sides (which are amazing!) and maybe coolest of all, an unreleased cover of John Coltrane's Equinox, that the band make their own, to the point that the first time through, we just thought it was one of theirs!
We've been meaning to list more releases on Medical Records, one of the coolest reissue labels going these days. The label describes themselves as "Purveyors of classic synth, cosmic disco, wave (cold/new), and future music", and in the past have brought us killer reissues from Der Plan, Deutsche Wertarbeit, and Alexander Robotnick, with tons more we've yet to review (but hopefully will soon!). But we can't think of a better way to start our Medical Records review campaign than this amazing record, 1983's Novels For The Moon, by the awesomely named Axxess, aka French multimedia artist Patrick Mimran, a record whose genesis is nearly as interesting as the record itself. But before we get to that, just know that ANYone into the current crop of psych-space-synth retro-futurists, a la Zombi, Majeure, Umberto, Gatekeeper, Dylan Ettinger, Nightsatan, Blizaro, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice and all the rest, should grab one of these right now!
So, the story goes, that Mimran was working as a top executive at Lamborghini Motors (the exotic sports car / race car company), when he made this record, and originally released it on, believe it or not, Lamborghini's own record label (which had us wondering what other Lamborghini Records releases might be lurking out there?!). His music was heavily influenced by the German krautrock of the time (Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, etc.), and he even commissioned a German engineer to build him a custom synthesizer, a much more complex version of one that the same engineer had earlier designed for Tangerine Dream! And in a further connection to Tangerine Dream, Novels For The Moons was recorded with help from TD member Christopher Franke (who was also in Agitation Free). Needless to say, sonically, this Axxess album has much in common with Tangerine Dream, but also with the creepy synth soundtracks of Goblin and John Carpenter, the sounds on the record ranging from pulsing space disco, to haunting ominous synth soundtrackery, to blissed out kosmische new age, often all of those combined.
On first listen, you'll be shocked at how much the current crop of synth wranglers sound like Axxess, an artist probably most of them have never heard, but who no doubt will be immediately obsessed with, how could they not be? The tracks mesmerizing and hypnotic, sequenced melodies, pulsing rhythms, the Kraftwerk vibe HUGE in places, thick swaths of kosmische drift, swirls of new agey shimmer, much of this sounds like mysterious B-movie soundtracks, chase scenes, credit sequences, others sound like background music from some seriously tripped out seventies nature program, all of it sounds druggy and cosmic, soaring and epic and impossibly catchy, driving and pulsating, pulsing and mesmerizing, beyond the classic synth sounds, there's plenty of other craziness going on as well, strange processed vocals, intense stereo panning, even wild monkey screeches on one track, but it's all somehow woven into the whole, which most definitely works as an album proper, but whose sound slip seamlessly from dark and ominous, to playful and goofy, to intense and driving, krautrocky and blissed out one minute, groovy and darkly psychedelic the next. So totally recommended.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES! Each one hand numbered. Pressed on 180 gram yellow vinyl, housed in a reproduction of the original jacket, with a 12"x12" printed insert with liner notes including pictures of the synth used to make the record, a history of the record and its creation, and an interview with Patrick Mimran!
Wow, do not miss The Jessamine County Book Of The Living. Matt Bauer's third full length is another deeply moving intimate work. Once again, he's gathered many of his musical friends around him for this lush bluegrass-y embrace. His nimble banjo picking and fine piano playing are now accompanied by strings, woodwinds, brass and more. Wonderful. The string quartet was recorded here in SF, the vocals of Garrett Pierce in Davis, and the rest of the production took place in Brooklyn and Lexington. And by "the rest", in part we mean some gorgeous female vocals from the likes of Jolie Holland and Mariee Sioux. Bauer's hushed voice is mournful yet comforting, and is perfectly complemented by the ladies' luminous delivery. Perhaps the album's crowning jewel is the fourth track "Blacklight Horses", a solemnly lovely Bauer and Holland duet. Just might move you to tears... actually many of Bauer's songs have that effect. Needless to say, this album is heartily recommended. Definitely for fans of Ms Holland, M. Ward and Iron & Wine.
Second full length from these epic metal masters from LA. Their debut cd-r was a big hit with the metalheads around here (and we do have copies in stock), but for some reason never got around to reviewing them til now. But album number two is just as good. Fusing soaring epic true metal majesty with the lumbering bongsmoked doom of Sleep and Electric Wizard with the massive big arena riffing of Mastodon and the furious alcohol fueled metal of Motorhead and Venom. In fact, anyone who, like us, has been flipping out over the most recent record from Denver metalheads Speedwolf, might as well just add this to their cart right now, cuz this definitely pushes all the same buttons. Massive riffing, furious drumming, whiskey ravaged vokills, the songs heavy as fuck, catchy like crazy, this is the sort of classic headbanging shit they just don't seem to make anymore. Slipping easily from monstrous downtuned black doom crush, to NWOBHM style classic metal shreddery, to punked out metal pound, to Sabbathy stoner rock grooves, all somehow woven into a singular sound, one that we can NOT get enough of. For all the grim buzz and twisted damaged weirdness or filthy slo-mo sludge we obsess over, sometimes, when it comes to metal, real, true METAL is all you need.
Just check out the sprawling 3 part nearly 14 minute epic "Cast On The Black / Lamentor / Guided By The Southern Cross", that begins all melodic doom, with harmonized guitar melodies, and a churning downtuned trudge, before slipping into some clean guitar drift, a haunting bit of spaced out dirgery, that leads into a blast of metallic crunch, which unfolds as a super melodic doom, all clean guitar melodies wedded to woozy loping buzz and fierce shrieked vox, the vibe almost eighties metal, especially when the heaviness is dialed back, and it's all drums and clean guitar, soaring synths, it gets downright proggy and so epic, before slipping right back into some heaving classic doom heaviness, rife with some killer leads, and an old school style fade out. Fuck Yeah!
Just check out the samples, you'll be sold in no time!
Killer futuristic robot bird dragon warrior cover art too.
The latest from longtime aQ faves Black To Comm is a bit of a departure, a soundtrack for a Singaporean silent film (one that has been soundtracked by other artists in the past, including Oren Ambarchi among others), which was apparently recorded while Marc Richter, aka Black To Comm, was under sedation and on heavy pain killers recovering from an injury, which seemed appropriate considering the film itself was about slowness and decay, sleep and death, and while we have yet to see the film, the music on its own is quite striking. A dizzying collage of samples and electronics, singing bowls and singing saw, and some singing too, the result is heady and psychedelic, dark and droney, grim and gristly. The opening track drapes some woozy crooning over a shimmering dronescape laced with wheezing melodies, glitched out electronics and random rhythmic clatter. The follow up track is much more contemplative and spare, softly processed acoustic guitar, gently glitchy, hints of Oval and Ambarchi, swooping backwards effects, a crystalline psychedelic folk, drifting along side more of those hauntingly crooned vox, those vox getting deeper and more dramatic and weirder and weirder. The music seeming to detune alongside. From there, the soundtrack drifts dreamily, delicate piano floats serenely through soft clouds of static, over lush chordal swells, all hazy and crystalline, the vox a dark dreamy croon, a strange sort of almost Caretaker sounding ballad, before expanding into an almost Our Love Will Destroy The World sounding soft cacophony, swirling swaths of tinkling chimes and woozy loops, layered high end shimmer and lush soft focus thrum, the vocals this time drifting way down in the mix, and finally, the score finishes off with a gorgeous bit of druggy cabaret, gauzy and bleary and gently blurred into a softly churning driftscape, rife with strange animal sounds, buried rhythmic pulses, and dark delicate vocalizations, maybe our favorite track of the bunch.
Definitely a lot different than past B2C releases in some ways, especially the vocals, which for some here were a dealbreaker, but to most of us, it sounds a bit like Antony from Antony & The Johnsons singing over a strange swirl of dark electronics and abstract psychedelic loopscaping, a gorgeously haunting songsuite of dark electroballads blurred and smeared into something much more abstract and atmospheric, which we are digging quite a bit!
We're not exactly sure what these French black metal experimentalists have planned for the final part of their 777 trilogy, but if this second installment is any indication, it's bound to be pretty genius / confusing / what the fuck. At the least, it will be seriously alienating for the hordes of metalheads who already find these guys a little bit frustrating. For the rest of us, we'd be hard pressed to pick a black metal group who more perfectly pushed our buttons, while in the process forging a seriously idiosyncratic, yet impossibly still pretty blackened path.
The first in the trilogy, 777 Sect(s), didn't sound all that far removed from a proper BaN record, a dizzying assemblage of gnarled Deathspell like riffage, their own penchant for industrial churn and droned out atmospheres, all woven into some serious sprawling expanses of black beauty, woozy and druggy, warped and fantastically tripped out, haunting and heavy, and once again establishing them as BM royalty, if they weren't already. And while even the grimmest of metalheads could love that record, they might have a slightly tougher time with part two, The Desanctification, which really, is not all THAT far removed from the sound of the first, but it definitely cranks up the weirdness a notch, mostly in the form of programmed beats, which drive much of the record. Opening track "Epitome VII" (all the tracks are entitled Epitome, and numbered), could be, and maybe sort of is, classic Blut Aus Nord, a warbly minor key riff, the sound sort of woozy again, melty and lysergic, the vocals though a strange garbled backwards speaking in tongues, and the drums, a Godflesh like mechanical beat, that's more skittery than crushing, the vibe is more sort of washed out and psychedelic than black and buzzy, but we dig it, super atmospheric and cinematic, and while the track does get more atonal and more black, with some actual human drumming blast beating entering the fray, the sound remains more firmly entrenched in a sort of twisted industrial dirgery than anything else. The next "Epitome" finds the band ditching those programmed beats and returning to something murkier and gnarlier, still hewing closer to a sort of melodic doom than buzzing blackness. After a super cool bit of psychedelic memser and another dirgey doomy expanse of dark riffery and moody murky swirl, those programmed beats return, and again the sound is transformed again into something closer to Nadja than black metal, a sort of metalgaze depressive doom, there's a distinctly shoegaze vibe going on, all hazy and gauzy and darkly dreamy.
"Epitome XII" might be the weirdest of the bunch, also the coolest, not sounding black metal at all really, instead some sort of industrial nineties pop, with cool melancholic melodies, all wreathed in a glistening swirl of synth glimmer, laced with ethereal vox buried in the mix, soaring psychedelic guitars, sort of had us wishing the whole record was so weirdly swirly and spacey.
And then finally, the record closes with another sprawling stretch of downtuned atmospheric doominess, minimal and moody, with clean vox, and plenty of melodies, but all blurred and smeared into a heaving expanse of blackened dreamlike heaviness, with a surprising final 40 seconds, those programed beats returning, skittering beneath a sky full of insectoid buzz and tense high melody. A cool warped finish, and just perhaps, a hint at what's to come in part three...
Super gorgeous artwork, which looks to us like it was done by the same person that did the art for the recent Ascension cd, that one all red and metallic gold, with lots of geometric designs and bold shapes, this one blue and gold, also geometric and bold, and with snakes and stars and a very mysterious occultic vibe. Cool!
Just as we expected, and certainly hoped, the fact that the Phoenix label reissued the freaky '70s Japanese psych artifact by Karuna Khyal (their album Alomoni 1985, highlighted here a few lists ago) meant that Brast Burn and their lone album Debon from 1975 was sure to follow. And now here it its, another rare record originally released on the extremely underground Voice label, the work of a mysterious avant-psych entity that may or may not have shared more of less the same membership as Karuna Khyal. Very similar to that band's record, this one also consists of two sprawling side-long tracks, that seem designed to demonstrate that Japanese hippies can could play primal "krautrock" too. Both tracks situate fairly mellow grooves amidst droning, heavily effected weirdness, with vocal chanting, ceremonial hand percussion, acid rock guitar spew, raw flute soloing, tape manipulated field recordings, rumbling drums, buzzing electronics, Twilight Zone melodies, and other good stuff making significant appearances in the freeform stew... it's very "Eastern", quite insane, and totally enjoyable.
If you liked the Karuna Khyal, you'll like this too. Also any fan of Acid Mothers Temple, Ghost, or other modern day Japanese psych would be remiss not check this out, we'd be surprised if it wasn't to be found in Kawabata Makoto and Masaki Batoh's record collections. Furthermore, without even checking, we're pretty sure this is the sort of thing that must be on the famous Nurse With Wound "list"... ok, we looked, it's there! Of course. And speaking of lists, it's #26 on Julian Cope's Japrocksampler Top 50, by the way (the Karuna Khyal was #19).
In the usual "wallet" style Phoenix cd packaging, limited to 1000 numbered copies.
An archival live release from multi-instrumentalist Sandy Bull is a welcome occurrence any day. After the great 1969 live recording release Still Valentine's Day on the Water label from a few years back where Bull opened for John Fahey, we knew his live sets held a charged electric power that wasn't always evident on his studio records.
This set is from 1976 recorded at the Berkeley Community Theater where he opened for Leo Kottke. Like the 1969 date, Bull uses a tape machine to accompany himself for the bass parts, but also adds a Rhythm Ace drum machine (!) which gives the song a soft organic momentum. The Rhythm Ace, an early Japanese manufactured commercial drum machine has a soft percussive sound similar to most console organs of the time, and has been sought out for its natural sense of tempo and warm unobtrusive rhythms. He even demos the various settings to much delight. He opens with one of his oud improvisations, but the songs on this set have a more twangy Americana blues vibe. "Driftin", inspired by the Drifters, has a countrified slide guitar feel, while "Alligator Wrestler" is more swampy, the accompanied rhythm set through beautifully analog phasing and wah effects. He does sing on one song called "Love Is Forever", which has a wonderful charm even though he isn't that great of a singer. But it's the quality of the sound that makes this set so nice. Like the 1969 recording, he's a virtual one man band and how he sets up the pieces, the beautiful energy of his playing, the friendly banter and that warm tube amp sound makes this a satisfying morning or late evening listen.
As described by the eloquent Thomas Carnacki, Oar Of Panmuphle is the 'long-threatened' full album for Mr. Carnacki - the pseudonym of sound designer and audio wrangler Gregory Scharpen who has worked with the likes of irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound for both projects' live presentations. Not surprisingly, his sensibility of off-kilter collage-based composition is not too far from either irr. app. (ext.) or NWW; but after a couple of teasing short-program discs, it's quite nice to witness a fully formed Carnacki presenting slow-motion, carnivalesque incantations of ectoplasmic horror spiced up with a few strange interludes of comedic appropriation. Clattering machines glide into a murky cut-up of organ-grinding Victoriana muffled by plenty of reverb and shadow to begin the album, leading into a similarly saturated loop from a Screaming Jay Hawkins track, with disembodied whispers, slapstick sound effects, and mechanical howls bounding maniacally alongside the purloined rhythm. With the wind-up springs and wooden percolation of noises on "Bedtime Story For The Most Fragrant Room In The Ward," Carnacki sets a perfectly spooky mood of mechanical toys coming to life and setting forth on an evil plot to revolt against their human creators, before snapping to another lifted sound segment - this time from Jon Ronson talking about his journalistic investigations into psychic assassins. The rest of the album drifts eerily with shapeless clouds of darkened thought with flourishes that hint at a hauntological semi-musicality but always slanted toward the odd and the surreal. Fans of Andrew Liles, irr. app. (ext.), and Nurse With Wound would be well served to check this album out.
Finally on cd, both 12"s eps from these shredding Chicago old school heavy metal thrashers, the brand new one (the vinyl version which will be reviewed on next week's list) and the first one we listed way back when. We know lots of folks have been waiting for the cd version of that one anyway, and now it comes with a whole new record to boot, your prayers have been answered.
Here's our review of the first 12:
Pretty tough to resist a group called the Chicago Thrash Ensemble. So why even try? Ever since their kick ass blood splattered cassette on PlusTapes, we were pretty much totally obsessed with CTE's awesomely retro shredding classic thrash metal, and thankfully nothing has really changed on this, their first foray into vinyl, if anything the band sound better than ever, heavier, catchier, and with another passel of kick ass tunes to boot.
Like the tape, these guys are channeling their thrash heroes, but it comes out a bit more punked up and raw, which only makes these jams rule even more, thick dense buzzing riffage, wild pounding drummage, howled vox, galloping rhythms, some seriously chugging breakdowns, all wound up into epic classic thrash destruction. Any one who has been digging aQ faves Speedwolf should definitely check these guys out, but where Speedwolf was all Motorhead and Venom, these guys are way more Slayer, Exodus and D.R.I. Or something. Either way, these guys rip, and as we mentioned in the review of the tape, any band that sounds this heavy and ruling on record, are probably insane live.
And here's our review of the new one, Monsters Of The Midwest:
Record number two from these, well, um, Chicago thrashers(!), whose debut 12" was a huge hit around here, and like that first record this 12" offers up more of the same, convincing us that these guys really are the monsters of the Midwest, their sound a seriously shredding retro thrash metallic mayhem that KILLS. Chugging churning riffage, throat shredding vocals, seriously devastating drum damage, and some killer jams. Raw and heavy and a bit punky, their songs rife with classic metal riffage, harmonized guitars, galloping rhythms, and did we mention aQ faves Speedwolf? Cuz these two bands should totally hook up for a tour, maybe with Behold! The Monolith too (also reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), now that's a tour we could get behind. If anything this new 12" finds CTE sounding way tighter, the songs even catchier, with some downright classic riffs, and the sound, holy shit, the production is massive, making the band sound even more epic and crushing. Not sure what else to say? We love these guys, and you should too.
B-Music/Finders Keepers strikes again, with another crazy, kitschy, catchy collection of South Indian movie music! This is the follow-up to their delightful Solla Solla anthology of the 1977-1983 output of "The Maestro" Ilaiyaraaja, a top composer for the Tamil-language film industry based in "Kollywood". On this album, popular singer K.S. Chithra (aka Chinna Kuyil, or "Little Nightingale") is teamed up with The Maestro, her sweet vocals accompanied by an entertaining, unrestrained array of sounds - lush orchestration, groovy rhythms, and digital sampling. That's right, on these recordings, dating from between 1986 and 1991, Ilaiyaraaja made full use of the latest available technology (sounding awesomely '80s vintage-retro to us now), so there's drum machine beats and electronic synth bleeps alongside more traditional Indian instrumentation of flutes and tablas...
Wonderful stuff, as any fan of Bollywood/Kollywood/Lollywood music should expect. Utterly charming. Chithra and Ilaiyaraaja's "plugged-in pop" is impossible not to like. Add this to your shelf alongside Solla Solla and long time fave, Vijaya Anand's Dance Raja Dance. And this being a Finders Keepers release, there's copious liner notes and compelling colorful graphics included, these folks know their stuff.
The latest limited release from the the Handmade Birds label, a new and already insanely prolific sonic imprint run by Pyramids' R. Loren, comes from long time aQ faves, Finnish outsider black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And a new record from CoO means it's time again to wonder why we even still consider these guys black metal, since it's been several years and many records since they were a proper black metal band (if they ever were at all). We are constantly baffled by groups like CoO, who are so beloved by so much of the black metal world, and we're talking the true grim hordes, yet they continue to create music that we imagine would not be pleasing AT ALL to such folk. Maybe we're selling black metallers short. Or it means the appeal is more than purely sonic. It speaks to the spirit of the sound, the black energy put into the music, which eventually must come out, even if it does as some sort of twisted Jandekian fractured folk or some minimal synth wave weirdness, at its core, the sound is dark, black, evil.
All of this talk in some ways is moot, as this latest record finds the band doing what they do, which is sort of black metal, sort of post rock, sort of whatthefuck, but it's all objective, and this music's 'blackness', or even its 'metalness', by most typically metal measures would be found wanting, but as far as we're concerned, this is exactly the sort of metallic blackness we love, murky, muddy, washed out and woozy, warped and stumbling, equal parts dark pop, fragmented folk, otherworldly creep, oh yeah and a little black buzz.
It only takes a few seconds to realize this is not at all like any black metal you've heard (unless of course you've heard lots of Circle Of Ouroborus!), the band launch into what almost sounds like Ariel Pink playing black metal, or some murky chunk of mysterious James Ferraro style lysergic pop, which just so happens to be laced with some evil vox, the riffs are blurry streaks of melody, that almost sound more like horns or keyboards (which they could be), warbly synths wheeze and sputter, the vocals alternate between gruff growl and dramatic croon, the drums distorted and stumbly, everything wreathed in a druggy haze, the sound like some alternate universe pop, or some strange mutant strain of new waves, especially when the drums switch to an almost disco beat, the blackness really only represented by the vokills, otherwise this is some gloriously warped melodic doom pop weirdness.
The B side brings things down even further, unfurling a haunting mournful bit of balladic dirgery, the sound bleary and blurry and drowsily depressive, the vocals doused in echo, those weird keyboard/horn guitars continuing to undulate and oscillate, surge an swell, creating strange ethereal melodies, which remind us of synth guitar weirdos Xynfonica / Shevalreq, the same sort of medieval majesty, but here buried in sonic murk and mire, the vocals so expressive, and strangely plaintive, the drums slipping from lazy plod to urgent pound and back again. In fact, the B side seems pretty evenly split between druggy propulsive post pop warble, and downright dreamy drift, all ephemeral and gauzy, the whole thing laced with chiming harmonics, warped melodic tangles and weirdly fluctuating production, the sound occasionally slipping into near perfect (albeit extremely damaged) pop, but more often then not, oozing and billowing, the sound seeming to melt before our ears into a warm whirling, almost liquid sound. A strangely soporific and somnolent sprawl of blurred blackness and murky melodicism, that truly is some of the weirdest, most beautifully baffling shit you will ever hear.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking artwork on a gatefold reverse board jacket, with a big booklet, featuring hand inked artwork, black and white, with gold and silver metallic detail. Gorgeous!
Along with the cd reissue of CoO's awesome Eleven Fingers album reviewed nearby on this week's list, comes this brand new, vinyl-only record from Finland's post black metal gloom pop weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus, whose sound really was barely ever actually all that black metal to begin with, but has continually been drifting further and further away, finally arriving here, at a sound that at this point is one distinctly their own, still subtly informed by black metal, but essentially pop music, a gloomy, occasionally buzzing, dour and darkly depressive pop music, but pop nonetheless. And with this record, that sound has mutated once again, taking their low fidelity a step further, and somehow wreathing it in a sonic murk, this new record impossible muffled, and muddied, womblike might be more accurate, the music is all soft focus, the sharp edges smoothed, the notes and chords, the various instruments, blurred and smeared into something more like an abstract chordal drift, the songs less songs, and more like impressions of songs. The only elements seemingly exempt are the vocals, still a haunting deep croon, and the drums, which occasionally stumble, occasionally pound, the combination is pretty stellar, and definitely bizarre, but it most certainly suits the group's dour blackened pop.
The vibe here extraordinarily woozy and warped, washed out and slurred, at times gauzy and nearly meditative, and when the band crank up the intensity, the hazy murk is dragged along as well, and instead of sounding heavy or rocking, it just sounds slightly heavier, but only really slightly. The songs tend toward the midtempo, and the dirge, but do occasionally erupt into some punky pound, but it's all behind a sheet of muffled murk, which again changes everything. The coolest moments are when the band introduce dueling vocals, clean and crooned, croaked and metallic, making for some strange harmonies, which are the perfect match for CoO's depressive blackened jangle pop, which throughout the record sounds alternately melty, detuned or oozing, often all three, a darkly and deliriously druggy songsuite that we're digging just as much as we did Eleven Fingers, which is a whole lot!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! The lps pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank textured card stock jacket, with a 7" x 7" booklet, printed on nice heavy paper, with illustrations and lyrics!
Along with the Marion Brown disc highlighted last list, and the Howard Roberts we highlighted 2 lists ago, here's another brand new & quite welcome entry in this fine series of 2-on-1 Impulse! label reissues. And one that we were especially thrilled to see, as we love love love Alice Coltrane, and these two albums of hers in particular. This twofer contains Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969), which we've reviewed on vinyl but have never had on cd before, and also another one of our all-time astral Alice C. faves, World Galaxy (1972), which we have stocked on cd before some years ago, but never reviewed, because it was only available as an expensive Japan-only import. And so if you like avant jazz, if you like cosmic music, if you like Alice Coltrane, this is an essential.
The one we hadn't previously reviewed, World Galaxy, we'll cover first. Credited on the colorfully Peter Max designed cover to "Alice Coltrane With Strings", that's what sets this one apart. Massive, sweeping strings, sometimes subject to subtle tape manipulation, that has this somehow reminding us of Super Ae by the Boredoms (or rather, the other way around)! For this record, Alice Coltrane's trademark harp (as well as her piano, electric organ, and tamboura) was joined by a 15-person string section, including violinist LeRoy Jenkins, who also solos. Other personnel: Reggie Workman on bass, Ben Riley on drums, Frank Lowe on saxophone, and Elayne Jones on tympani. And, respected Indian guru Swami Satchidananda provides a recitation on the subject of love as part of this album's final track, a heartfelt version of John Coltrane's classic "A Love Supreme". The album also begins with a tune closely associated with Alice Coltrane's late husband, "My Favorite Things". The remaining four compositions featured are Alice Coltrane originals, given the "With Strings" treatment, and all are majestic, beautiful, the album sounding like some very spiritual, avantgarde soundtrack music, with shimmering melodies carried aloft by the strings, intertwined and intercut with Eastern-sounding zing and twang and bass drone and keyboard burble, all the layers coming together with passion and power. A unique item in the Alice Coltrane discography for sure, and one of our favorites for that. (Well, her great Universal Consciousness employed strings too, but this takes it to another level.)
And then here's what we enthusiastically had to say about Huntington Ashram Monastery when we first reviewed the reissued vinyl version:
This is one of those records that was nearly impossible to track down for years, so we are beyond happy for this to finally surface. Recorded in 1969 right after her great debut, A Monastic Trio, Huntington Ashram Monastery is an album that ranks right near the top of the amazing legacy of music that Alice Coltrane left us. Playing piano and wielding her majestical (majestic + magical!) harp in a magnificent trio that featured Ron Carter on bass and the wonderful and sadly recently passed Rashied Ali on drums and percussion. So much thought, love and devotion was put into every single note that Alice Coltrane recorded, and Huntington Ashram Monastery is such utter proof of that. No wasted notes, or throwaway moments. You can't lay the needle down on these grooves and not be moved and transported to another plane of consciousness. This is truly sacred, essential and transcendent music. Beyond recommended!
So, put these two together, as they have here, and that's a disc that's not just recommended, it's pretty much required. However, be aware, a nice warm layer of surface tape hiss from the original analog source is particularly present on the Huntington Ashram Monastery half of this twofer, not that we mind.
This anarcho-punk classic, recently reissued on cd, now available again on vinyl!!
Anarcho-punk legends Crass are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.�
Their records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.�
Legendary for a reason, all the Crass records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Yes Sir, I Will was Crass' last 'official' album, and was originally presented as a single album long track, spread out over both sides (making it the longest punk rock song ever!), and unlike the overt poppiness of Christ The Album, Yes Sir is dense and tense and tangled, rife as always with samples and sonic snippets, even a haunting piano ballad, the music was furious and vitriolic, dueling male/female vocals, over crunchy angular riffing, all wound around frenetic drumming, the production raw and brittle and a little lo-fi, the entire record mostly improvised, Crass version of 'jazz', much of the lyrics culled from a poem by drummer/vocalist Penny Rimbaud, an attack on prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her handling of the Falklands War, it's a pretty intense record, sonically and lyrically, and very ambitious, especially for a 'punk' band, but by now Crass were far from the typical punk band...
Too bad we hadn't reviewed this reissue before we did our "beard" themed in-between list a few weeks back, 'cause just check out the two dudes sitting crosslegged on the cover! Awesome beards (and long hair). Would have fit in on that beard list perfectly. However, if we ever do a rad '70s Middle Eastern psych-folk-rock themed list, we'll at least be able to include Derdiyoklar Ikilisi on that, for sure.
Derdiyoklar Ikilisi were a "Andalou Pop" duo based in Germany, who played their hip-swaying music for the festivities at weddings and circumcision feasts (yikes) held by the large Turkish immigrant community there. This record of theirs dates from 1979, but the title of Disko Folk doesn't mean that it's a actually a "disco" album (though that would be cool too, Turkish disco, Mogollar meets Moroder?). No, Disko Folk is meant more generally to indicate the presence of electric, Western instruments, and/or of the ornate Turkish folk motifs used in a pop music context. They really sound a lot like old AQ faves Mogollar, one of our favorites from the Istanbul psych scene back in the early '70s, but with more swirling, sweeping synthesizer! 3 Hur-el is another close comparison. Which means, this is pretty darn cool. Get this, and it's electro-saz fueled dance party time, the wedding or circumcision is optional! There's also mellower but equally impassioned numbers here (including a gorgeously dark and drifty one called "Eminem") that would be better suited for slow dancing. Lyrically, apparently these are protest songs, about issues of concern to the immigrant Turkish population in Germany.
And actually it's not the hairstyles on the cover that amaze us the most, it's the crazy 3-necked string instrument emblazoned with their band name that they're both holding between them like some totem. What is that thing? We guess with just two guys in the band, that's a pretty useful instrument to have.
The vinyl and compact disc editions are both limited to 500 copies each. The cd booklet contains liner notes, lp version comes with insert too.
If there's any artists that really deserves some sort of epic retrospective that digs deeeeep into the archives, it's Bo Diddley. All too often he's celebrated for his unique charisma, but it's sometimes forgotten how many great records he actually made. Originally released in 1970, The Black Gladiator shows a much more psychedelic rock/blues side to Diddley's sound. The songs pack such a punch, and there's so much energy and conviction that you can almost feel Diddley's sweat oozing from every note. The lyrics cut to the core, perfect for the music, so raw, dirty, and full of attitude. Like a way more fucked up Booker T. & The MG's or Meters, or maybe Hendrix and Black Merda doing a tutorial for Lux from the Cramps. We're even reminded of that amazing weird blip in Chubby Checker's career that was documented on the mind blowing Chubby Checker Goes Psychedelic album.
There's no doubt that many future garage psych/blues masterminds were influenced by these sounds. You can pretty much hear the origins of folks like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Make Up, Dub Narcotic Sound System, The Gories, White Stripes and we even clocked a moment that The Beastie Boys sampled. And we're pretty sure that our favorite current garage rock artists like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees either already treasure this album or would freak out if they were finally hearing it for the first time.
The first in a four part lp reissue series compiling the early eighties singles from legendary (and surprisingly unknown and sadly underappreciated) NZ musician singer/songwriter Bill Direen, who in a perfect world would be held in the same regard as his countrymen Alistair Galbraith, Chris Knox, Peter Jeffries and the rest. The tracks here, originally released as a 7" limited to just 100 copies, are some primo eighties NZ underground post punk / garage pop, all 4-track Velvets jangle and Wire-y angular post punk, crunchy and droney and hypnotic, driven by minimal drum pound and economic arrangements, the songs here exude a brooding mesmer, even at their most kinetic, fusing classic seventies power pop to indie rock jangle and lo-fi psychedelia, pretty fantastic stuff, and well worthy of a wider audience. Sadly, these reissues, for as sonically pleasing and long overdue as they are, will very well price out a lot of folks, as it's 4 songs, 8 minutes, at 45 rpm, essentially a 7" cut deep and loud for maximum fidelity, which we totally dig, but realize that buying all four volumes will get you about 30 minutes of music for nearly $90. We'd say it's worth it, but here's hoping someone will take all these newly remastered singles and cram em all onto an affordable cd. Until then though, this is reservedly recommended!
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!
It's been seven years since we last heard from Down Under trio the Dirty Three, who back in the day, were definitely an huge aQ fave and consistent big seller. The first couple D3 records will definitely rank in the aQ pantheon of all time classics. But to be honest we had sort of forgotten about these guys - it's been seven years since their last album. In fact we didn't even realize they were still a band, but all it took was a few minutes of opening track "Furnace Skies" to remind us of what we'd been missing. The band laying down a gorgeous droned out, almost jazzy skitterscape, mournful violin, buzzing organ, spidery skeletal melodies, all over a bed of dense super busy drumming, we had always remembered the drumming in the Dirty Three being super simple and stripped down, but here it drives the track, positioning the song as something we'd expect to hear from fellow Aussies the Necks, heady and psychedelic, circular and cyclical, another one of those jams that we find ourselves listening to over and over before finally making it to the rest of the record. And while the rest of the record isn't nearly so dense and dark and rhythmic, it is quite haunting, and beautiful and cinematic, and the busy drumming which surfaces throughout really makes the sound something special. The rest of the record does in many places hew closer to the Dirty Three of old, which is no bad thing at all, but it's the darker, denser, heavier, busier jams that we're digging the most, the record offering the perfect balance between hushed and lovely, dark and dense, with some of the best tracks merging the two. Really great! (Vinyl version exists as well, unfortunately we ran out before the list, hopefully we'll have more for next time.)
Sometimes it's easy to see an aQ Record Of The Week staring you in the face before even hearing a note. Case in point, this here album. All the indicators were immediately present: it was put out by Omni, whose masterful grasp of obscure country music is equaled only by their masterful grasp of obscure electronic awesomeness; a vague but intriguing album cover with the words "Song Of The Second Moon: The Sonic Vibrations Of Tom Dissevelt / Kid Baltan"; and, a quick glance at the back cover with song titles like "Moon Maid", "Sonik Re-Entry", "Twilight Ozone", and "Night Train Blues", recorded between 1957-1961. So yeah, we were pretty much sold, but as we read on it was clear that this would be even more rad than we could have hoped for. Before getting started on this album itself, it helps to start with some historical background, so here goes:
Holland's Phillips Research Laboratories ("Natuurkundig Laboratorium") was founded in 1914 with the goal of furthering technological innovation. To make a long story short, they did just that, having invented the first artificial reverberation, modern loudspeaker design, early attempts at surround sound, the cassette tape, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, among many other things. All very nice and essential to the way music effects our lives, for sure. But damn if the creation of this album isn't the coolest thing on that long list of achievements, leading us to wonder how exactly something this amazing could have remained such a mystery - not a soul among us was even aware of its existence, despite being great enough for Stanley Kubrick to consider using it as the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey - ironic, as 2001 was the year Natuurkundig Laboratorium would go kaput. Perhaps not surprisingly given the way things often go Songs Of The Second Moon was a commercial failure, but we are thankful to have it presented here with the "rare" stereo mix, along with some outtakes and alternate versions.
The men responsible for this album, Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaijmakers - aka Kid Baltan - were employed by the Natuurkundig Laboratorium to research acoustics, but eventually ventured into more exotic waters with some of the earliest synthesizer experiments. Using tone generators in addition to traditional instruments like a grand piano, the time consuming process of capturing and creating these strange and wondrous sounds was carried out over a period of about 3 years, during which time the composers experimented with tape loops (often for rhythmic purposes), delays, and filters to create something that went beyond just sound experimentation. Dissevelt himself had come to the job as a highly respected musician and arranger with an interest in Stockhausen's twelve-tone and serial compositions, while Raaijmakers is recognized as a pioneer in the field of electronic and tape based music. The greatest thing about the album is just how musical it is, with songcraft never taking a back seat to the all encompassing technological aspects of the project. Soundwise, things are on par with the majesty of Delia Derbyshire and other pioneers of BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, and anyone keeping up with recent reissues from Daphne Oram, F.C. Judd, and Bruce Haack (whose Electric Lucifer masterpiece was also rescued by Omni) will find plenty to obsess over. The 1950s idea of "The Future" is exactly what this sounds like, with adventurous electronic tones for the Cold War era. As such, there are the hints of the paranoia, tension, and fear that tend to accompany widespread technological innovation and a standoff between two trigger happy superpowers, with plenty of nightmarish melodies, electronic pulsing, and harrowing white noise. Of course, there are also moments that sound happy, fun, and quirky, like strange disembodied jazz music with heavy drones. This stuff could have (and probably did) inspire the electronic pop of Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley. The results are cinematic and elegant, while standing well on their own for a unique listening experience that STILL sounds light years ahead of us.
Kudos to Omni for introducing this lost classic to an unsuspecting but eternally grateful public. Record Of The Week indeed.
Two records from weirdo "post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal" one man band Disunicorps on this week's list, elsewhere you'll find the new record, Synonymy, and then there's this one, not precisely a remix record, more of an alternate version. When we were ordering the new record, Mr. Disunicorps, informed us that he also had a version of the first record "run through a crappy cassette deck and slowed way down", and if you're anything like us (and we're guessing you probably are), then you had the same reaction, YES PLEASE!
So here is Re:Try, the above mentioned cassette deck-ed slowed down version of Try, which we raved about way back when, and probably best for folks who never heard the original, to just describe that one first a bit, and then how it sounds in this reworked version.
Try was a gnarled chunk of churning frantic machinelike riffing and programmed blasting, croaked vocal rumbles, the guitars super distorted and crumbling, a pretty fierce blast of programmed black buzz, bubblegum at times for sure, minus the harsh vokills, it occasionally sounds like some sort of electro pop, or a less damaged Fastest (former aQ Record Of The Week!) even, major key melodies, bouncy jaunty rhythms, almost video game music at moments, but the vocals, and the weird echoey reverby production transform things into, well, into post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal, offering different shades of dirgey heaviness that sounds like a horror movie soundtrack, programmed loping rhythms that sound like some machine post rock, some seriously grinding blackness, goofy blackened fuzz pop that almost sounds like a black metal Dickies and fuzzy, washed out almost blissy 8-bit sounding new wave drift.
Sounds pretty amazing, cuz it is! Or was! Now all of those sounds have been rerouted through some old tape deck, and in the process, slowed down a bit, so essentially, the above still describes the sounds on Re:Try, the main difference is really that it all sounds a bit heavier and doomier and dirgier, the sound more raw and low fidelity, as a test, just check out the Del Shannon cover here, which sounds more like some sinister electro doom, the little main lilting melody somehow super creepy, the dirgey death metal vibe more prominent, everything sludgier and murkier, and for folks like us whole like everything better slowed down, maybe even better!
Not sure HOW essential this is if you own the other one, but odds are some of you are strange like us, and even the idea of this slower, tape deck-ier version had you flipping out a little, and thus, this is for you, and if you somehow missed Try the first time around, this might just hit the spot (oh yeah, and we do have a small handful of copies left of Try if you want one.
A while back, we raved about a crazy cd by a one man band called Disunicorps, his cd-r just showing up in the mail one day, with this simple one sentence description: "post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal", needless to say, we were totally sold, and the record more than lived up to that too-good-to-be-true description. And to seal the deal, there was THEE most amazing cover of Del Shannon's "Runaway" (we still have copies of that first disc, as well as a new disc, which features the original run through a crappy old cassette player and slowed waaay down, that one is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). But it wasn't just the cover, that whole record was a blast, a series of twisted buzzing pop flecked electro pop digi-metal jams, heavy and hooky, an impossible fusion of black metal buzz and hooky fuzz pop and glitchy electronics. We played that to death, and were super psyched to discover there was in fact a brand new Disunicorps record!
This one begins all warped slowed down vocals tangled up with think swirling tendrils of woozy synth, a garbled psychedelic into, that leads right into the opening jam, a synth heavy metallic churn, circusy melodies, over programmed pounds, processed vox, and once again hooks galore, there's definitely a classic/power metal vibe in the progged out synths and majestic melodies, but it's all tangled up and blackened, blurred and warped, which is pretty much how the whole record plays out, weirdly woozily melodic, chugging mathy metallics infused with playful poppy hooks, the songs lurching from blasting metal to bouncy electro pop buzz to washed out lo-fi electronic death metal, usually some dizzying simultaneous hybrid of all of those sounds, fantastically confusional, heavy as fuck, but also wildly goofy and super fun, the sort of thing, that gets crazy attention every time we play it in the store. And fear not, this is not some joke metal thing, there's plenty of classic riffing and real metal going on, it's just that all of THAT stuff is all tangled up with all of that OTHER, less metal stuff. The result is pretty fantastic though, twisted and kaleidoscopic, definitely psychedelic, with a pretty high whatthefuck quotient, which is always a good thing. Everyone who bought the first one, should probably just buy this one too, and if you missed out on Disunicorps the first time around, give this one a listen, odds are you'll flip out like we did, and most likely end up wanting both!
LIMITED TO 15 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered!
This long out of print lp, now available on cd, thanks to our pals at Fonal Records in Finland. Here's our review from when we first reviewed the vinyl way back in the beginning of 2011...
Hard to believe, but this is the very first release from Dolphins Into The Future that we've managed to get enough of to review and list. That's after about a bajillion cd-r's and tapes and limited lps...
Dolphins Into The Future operate in the same orbit as James Ferraro and Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Explorers and High Wolf, and all the other similarly sonic minded floorcore combos, crafting druggy lysergic soundscapes made up of primitive synths, and analog loops, tape manipulation and malfunctioning samplers, and while each of those bands definitely has their own method, and methodology, Dolphins mainman (and only man) Lieven Martens seems to take his moniker seriously, not only incorporating the sounds of dolphins and the surf and seagulls, but also creating a sound that evokes undersea life, as much as we can imagine it. On the surface, it's a synthy new agey drift, all warm whirling soft focus melodies, steel drum like tones, washed out synth swirl, tranquil melodies and dreamlike drift, like an updated slightly more avant version of those old meditation tapes you might find in a new age bookstore, which, we would imagine is precisely what Martens and his sonic compatriots are going for. That said, for every bit of super simple new age shimmer, there's a bit of crumbing, weirdly looped crunch, or warped woozy almost Oval like swoon, all the sounds, on this record at least, held together by the sound of life on the shore, or on the deck of a boat, these slowly unfurling new age-scapes, are lush and laid back, minimal and mysteriously lovely, and the perfect soundtrack to bright sun, blue water and not a care in the world...
We almost weren't able to review this one at all, as the first pressing sold out in a heartbeat in the UK. Thankfully the lovely folks at The Tapeworm label, made a whole second special pressing just for all of us over on this side of the Atlantic, a special "obsidian mirror" edition, in which the cover and the tape are white on black, instead of the more recognizable black on white of most Tapeworm releases. But what's all the hubbub about then? Well, in case you hadn't figured it out, Drcarlsonalbion is in fact Dylan Carlson, he of twang flecked desert drifters and former sludgelords Earth, who on this, his first proper solo release, explores his occult interests in capturing the sounds on the A side at the Waterloo station and along the Thames river, both apparently sites "of personal occult experience", the sounds themselves though are lovely, a gorgeous gristly drone, blurred sheets of static, and deep moaning tones, softly undulating, sort of like a crackling electrical field slowed waaaaay down. Carlson's added some guitars and vocals, but blended those seamlessly into the smeared ambience. The vibe is very Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, hazy and gauzy, washed out and dreamy, darkly meditative and hauntingly abstract, really in fact quite beautiful.
The flipside is guitar, vocals and mellotron, the lyrics according to the liner notes, are Enochian versions of those found on the A side! Those vocals are delivered like some strange sermon, the words nearly lost in the gorgeous swirling maelstrom of distorted guitars and swirling feedback, it's like some ancient ritual, some Druidic rite performed on some ancient stone plinth, on a windswept mountain top, one that just so happened to feature mounds of amplifiers and rows of distortion pedals. Meditative and psychedelic, blackened and blissed out. Sort of like old earth blurred into something more like Sunroof!, with Carlson the mysterious wild eyed shaman, his cloaked visage nearly obscure in the cloud of buzz and thrum and whir and howl. Awesome.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! These are the last and only ones we'll be able to get. Cover art by Savage Pencil.
The last record from these long time aQ faves, Ukrainian black metal horde Drudkh, was a polarizing record for sure, one that found the band injecting their sound with much more melody, and a distinct poppiness, pushing them in surprisingly black pop direction, the new sound more akin to something we might have expected from Lifelover or Hypothermia. Plenty of jangle, and again poppy melodies all over the place. Sure there was plenty of buzz and blast, but that poppiness also seemed to supplant the band's folky side was well, which was another big change to contend with. And while some of us still dug the new sound, we had made peace and were ready to bid farewell to the Drudkh of old. But their latest, Eternal Turn Of The Wheel, finds the band once again in classic form, gone is the overt poppiness of Handful of Stars, and in it's place, the soaring majestic blackness of old, the thick crunchy riffage, the howled vokills, the bursts of frenzied blasting buzz, the stretches of haunting folkiness, but most importantly, the mood and atmosphere that only Drudkh can conjure up. The sound shifting easily from dirgey almost doomy crush, to loping folk flecked blackness, to full on blasting black crush, still plenty of melody for sure, but the sort we were more accustomed too, minor key and melancholic, folky and blackened, the sound at times downright pretty, at others mournful and moody, at others fierce and furious and malevolently majestic. Folks who jumped ship with Handful Of Stars, it's time to climb back on board, cuz Eternal Turn Of The Wheel is another classic Drudkh record for sure...
We could easily imagine the odd school children in the film The Wicker Man as being the tailor-made audience/participants for this 1969 educational record from the BBC Drama Workshop, the educational arm of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. These recordings were designed for creative movement and improvisation exercises for young school children, though it would be surprising to see a record for kids quite like this today.
With poetry written and recited by Robert Duncan and electronic music by David Cain, this is one of those Arcadian British recordings that are so often referenced audibly and visually by the hauntological Ghost Box label and the filmstrip nostalgia of Boards of Canada. Duncan's classically-trained oration evokes a romantic yet visceral natural imagery of slightly sinister undertones, while Cain's score is both alien and lilting, its robotic sing-song melodies sometimes wistful yet bracingly warped. For this recording a piece was done for each month and each season with the final track an instrumental culmination of all the musical themes simply called "The Year". Though we can see children of the time easily getting into the odd melodies to convey visual pantomimes of leaves and wind, we can only assume that some of the spoken imagery must have gone over their heads. "Falling leaves like Severed Hands", in "October" for instance; or descriptions of nightfall where the night is characterized as a predator and the day "as a fallow deer is bled"; or the lurid connotations of the poem, "March" where Duncan speaks of the Earth as a woman, and in a series of harvest ritual descriptions, to be woken, washed, dressed and then taken????
But what is admirable about the educational side of this recording is that it doesn't talk down to children or Disney-fy nature with anthropomorphic happy/sad emotions, but rather it emphasizes a more complex set of emotional tropes to act out like awakening, longing, fearfulness, loneliness, and indifference that points to a more mature and frank attitude toward the cycle of nature and the passing of time. Though we're not sure what kids today would make of its strange antiquated quaintness, for adults its perhaps a nostalgic trip back to a bygone era where there was government funded organizations that were allowed to produce such cool shit for kids, or at the very least plenty of cool interlude fodder here for DJs and mixtapes.
One of a handful of new Latitudes releases (Sylvester Anfang II, Wino & Connie Ochs), this three track, 22 minute ep from The Entrance Band, might be the best thing we've heard from these guys (and gal) yet, opener "New Orleans", is a 12 minute heavy psych gem, a thick low slung bass groove, and ethereal vocals, over chugging guitars, and wild loose drumming, and dense squalls of rad effects heavy shredding, totally drugged out, droney, dreamy psychedelic bliss. The 'verses' woozy and slithery, the melodies spidery, the guitars droney and shimmery, slipping into a stretch of muted chuggery before exploding into some epic, soaring, wah wah guitar driven space-psych shred, the rare sort of jammed out heaviness that we could listen to forever. The track a constant push and pull before the slightly more brooding verses and the heart-of-the-sun psych-jam blowouts. And as the track progresses, it only gets heavier and more psychedelic, the groove growing more distinctive and driving, with the rest of the band pulling back here and there, letting the guitar weave lush layered drifts of blown out soaring high end psych shimmer. To be totally honest, we listened to the opening track about 10 times before we made it any further into the record. So we'd say well worth the price of admission for that one alone.
But don't stop there. "Requiem For Juicy" opens with a tangled swirl of woozy guitars, which gradually blur into a sort of raga, before the bass comes in, and the band launch into a dense, brooding, drone driven psych-dirge that's both swampy and soaring, hazy and hypnotic, the guitar going nuts again, pushing the track into total White Hills / Heads territory. And then finally, the band tackle blues classic "Last Kind Words", kicking off with a killer classic blues riff, and unfurling a woozy sprawl of druggy bluesy swagger, the sound landing somewhere between Woven Hand and The White Stripes, which is not a bad place to end up.
Like all Latitudes releases, the cd is packaged in the distinctive white and brown interlocking origami style sleeve, the lp in a luxurious die cut jacket, both with a red foil stamp on the front, and with a printed full color insert. Each format, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. And each one hand numbered.
The return of these aQ beloved Italian sonic oddballs, and it seems they just continue to get more and more odd with every release. After their first record showed up mysteriously at aQ a few years back, we became pretty obsessed, their sound a twisted DIY punk rock / dronefolk / math rock weirdness, that creeped and slithered more than it rocked (although it occasionally did that too), but whatever FM were doing, it always seemed strangely rickety, and on the verge of collapse, haunting dirges, weirdly twisted industrial plods, the guitars gnarled and angular, the rhythms junkyard crunch and clatter, the melodies wheezing and woozy, the vocals hazy and druggy and lost in the mix, and if anything, this new one seems to be the culmination of that twisted sound, simultaneously pushing it even further, but also honing it into something impossibly tight, while still appearing shambling and darkly chaotic. The opening track almost sounds like some lost seventies folk outfit filtered through some more modern freakfolk combo, the vocals a lovely mellifluous croon, over tangled detuned melodies, wheezing chordal whirs, little squalls of angular crunch, all stretched out and blurred into some sort of hazy psychedelic sonic ritual, it's not hard to imagine these guys cover Comus, or even this as some sort of seance with the group channeling Comus' frenzied demonic acid folk, but here transformed into something a bit darker and woozier. The second track employs the same palette, and uses it to create a Swans like lumber, all super distorted crumbling crunch, and keening high end melody, so gorgeously creepy and darkly ominous, harrowing and haunting in equal measure, way too short at 2+ minutes, we definitely found ourselves wanting it to never end. But then the next track explodes with some strange pulsating processed riffing, sounding almost metallic, even a little black metal, but smeared and warbly, transforming into something more buzzing and almost jazzy, maybe like a more frenzied Necks, but over the top, the group layer strident boy / girl vocals, the result fierce and feral, but pulsing, pulsating and totally mesmerizing.
Normally, this is where we'd say something like, "and so it goes", or "the rest of the record plays out similarly", but it just doesn't. After a brief bit of doom flecked witchy dirge-folk, the band offer up what might be our favorite track, a dark intense industrial epic, all soaring strings, and martial percussion, with crooned male vox, yowled female vox, it almost sounds like some modern opera composed by Der Blutharsch or Death In June, which halfway through collapses into a glorious sprawl of swirling, shimmering, buzzing layered dronemusic, that again ends way too soon. The band touch on dark doom-ed balladry, twisted, bizarrely produced circus-y post industrial stomp, blackened dronescaping, and some strange gnarled detuned dream pop before it's over, proving impossibly adept at pretty much every bizarre thing they try, and at combining any seemingly incompatible sounds they fancy. So great, and once again, we find ourselves wondering how Father Murphy continue to fly so far beneath the radar. We imagine they won't remain there for long...
As much as we're perpetually on the prowl for new sounds, sometimes it's the old sounds that move us the most. And it's a good time for revisiting old sounds for sure. So many classic records getting reissued, whether it's the gnarled indie rock of Archers of Loaf, all the Sebadoh records, the seminal math/post rock of Bitch Magnet, the forthcoming reissues from slowcore legends Codeine, there's no shortage of old bands who definitely deserve another listen, and there's most definitely a whole new generation ripe to discover all these bands for the first time. Which brings us to feedtime, a band whose influence amongst OTHER bands can't be underestimated, but in terms of commercial success and enduring popularity, well there's definitely a disparity, one that will hopefully be addressed with this comprehensive reissue of all four record from these Aussie minimal thud rockers, whose sound, who, listening to these records again now, influenced so many of the bands we've flipped over since, right off the bat we're hearing Wire (a band they're often compared too, although they claim at the time to have never heard), we hear the Melvins, Killdozer, Flipper, their countrymen Kingsnakeroost and Lubricated Goat, we hear Nirvana, the Ramones (albeit at a much lower RPM), Mudhoney, really, it's hard not to hear generations of bands who explored a similarly minimal take on punk rock or post punk or even pub rock, cuz really, feedtime were essentially a pub rock band gone wrong (or right), their sound in many cases like a classic rock or blues rock, slowed down and stripped down and dirtied up, their sound as much about mesmer and repetition and trance as melody or hooks, maybe even more so.
Their first record, originally self released, is fantastically home brewed, lo-fi, but still noisy and heavy, and their kick ass cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "I Wonder What's The Matter With Papa's Little Angel Child" is most definitely THEE jam, a revved up blues dirge workout that kills, and the slide guitar (which shows up throughout the group's discography) prominently on display, and like it did the first time we heard it, it'll have you wondering why all bands don't have slide guitar. Their second record Shovel, found a marked improvement in production, but other than that the sound remained pretty similar, the songs mostly one or two parts, the band tight as fuck, but still somehow sounding loose and alive, and that slide guitar, subtly employed but adding a little something extra, the sound noisy, the vocals a guttural bark, the Killdozer vibe is huge, and we begin to hear Halo Of Flies and other AmRep bands, and this is the record where you can hear for the first time, that feedtime is all about THE BASS, driving everything, percussive and melodic, driving and dense and thick and sinewy, it gives the songs heft and a low end energy, there's also female vox, it's pretty crazy stuff, that definitely sounds incredible even all these years later.
The third disc in the set is Cooper S, their cover record, on which they cover the Beach Boys, Lee Hazlewood, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, The Stooges, Slade, the Easybeats, Animals, a traditional or two, they even make a song out of an e.e. cummings poem (maybe cuz they both start their names with lower case letters), but in the hands of feedtime, the originals are totally reimagined, and in many cases, barring the lyrics are transformed into something unrecognizable, the band stripping away tempo changes and various other superfluous elements and instead making the songs their own, maniacally minimal and dirgey and hypnotic, they even mix in some trumpet, and other sonic sweetness, but there's just something so magical about their sound and what they were able to make out of so little, and in the case of the cover, what they were able to do to classics, making them their own kind of classics, which again, in many cases, sound to these ears better than the originals, "Paint It Black" is the perfect example, the band slowing it way down, the result sounds almost more like a dirge rock Devo, the sound oozy and slithery and so much blacker than the original.
The final disc in the set, was the final record for the band, Suction, and while in some ways it was tighter and more polished, it was also another disc of heady, churning noise rock minimalism, and in some ways it even manages to sound a bit more lo-fi, the slide guitar in full effect, making the whole record woozy and wonderfully warped, there's also harmonica, and some of their best / our favorite jams, "Pumping A Line" sound almost like it could be a Circle track, a sort of churning looped metallic hypnorock, or "Confused Blues" which is some serious Killdozer style pigfuck slithery blues, or the weirdly poppy, almost Velvets sounding "Ever Again" complete with slippery slide and moaning horns, fuck this stuff is so great. We never really stopped digging these guys, but having all of it together, it's a pretty intense and fantastically intensive listening experience, and one that definitely paints feedtime as a band not only ahead of their time, but a band who lots of folks owe their whole goddamn sound to.
The reissues tack on all kinds of extras, compilation tracks, B sides, and the records (and cds) come in a big box, with each album in a sleeve reproducing the original album cover, and with a big booklet crammed with pictures, liner notes, as well as the notes that accompanied the various original releases.
Solo record number two from Ernest Gibson, a name you might be familiar with as a long time reader of the aQ list, especially if your idea of easy listening is gnarled lo-fi murk, or creeping dirgey minimalism, or abstract blackened drift, cuz that's precisely the sort of stuff Gibson and his group Net Shaker traffic in. A sort of Starfuckers style anti-rock minimalism, that wreaths skeletal barely there rhythms in shrouds of whirring thrum, and conjures up ghostly expanses of Hecker / Jeck like atmospheres, infusing those sounds with a sort of spectral ghost pop drag, warbled vocals and swirling constantly morphing textures. We may be describing Net Shaker, or Gibson's solo material, the rotten apple doesn't fall far from the gnarled, withered tree after all.
And while Gibson's first solo record did in fact sound like it could have been a Net Shaker record proper, Sail Thru Izapa takes all of those same sounds and reworks them into something much lovelier, and strangely delicate, creating a sort of slowcore murk pop, bass pulses drift in expanses of blurred static, fluttering flute like melodies surface and then fade out, vocals, laconic and laid back, intone hauntingly over bleak blurs, rife with warped tolling bells, in some weird way much of this sounds like Kode9 or Burial, but way more tweaked, and glacial and drugged out, the vocals a deathbed croon one second, a monk like chant the next, the music being dragged along in its muddy wake, woozy tendrils of sound, pocked with bits of buzz and glitch and hum. Occasionally, the pace is picked up a bit, the drums more propulsive, those beats wreathed in malfunctioning electronics, the vocals yelped, a curiously ramshackle shuffling anti-rock loose-groove stumble, but even then, everything is painted in greys and blacks, the tape speed constantly shifting, as if the batteries were dying, or the motor was gradually wearing out. And as we mentioned in the review of Gibson's other record, this stuff is really hard to describe, because it is so unlike anything else we've heard. A feverdream in sound, imagine some nightmarish psychological low budget art film, this could very well be the score, nightmarish, brooding, mysterious, otherworldly, mesmerizing and terrifying in equal measure, a totally entrancing soundworld that creates a gorgeous series of movements in murk, a slo-mo beat driven drift, the sort of shit that must be spinning eternally, by some black robed DJ on the empty dancefloor at the edge of the world, where time has no meaning, and sound, these sounds, ease you into the endless blackness below.
One of the finest examples of bossa nova music, this record from 1973 was made just as its cultural influence was waning. But what makes this record special is its minimal qualities. It's just guitar, voice and some occasional soft drumming (by Sonny Carr), yet the performance is exceptional! Joao Gilberto is a legendary bossa nova star, right up there with Antonio Carlos Jobim, who wrote most of the genre's biggest hits. It was Gilberto's version of Jobim's "Girl From Ipanema" with Stan Getz that made bossa nova an international sensation in the mid-sixties (though Gilberto's fame may have been eclipsed in America by his wife, Astrid, who became an overnight star from that song).
But Aguas De Marco, as this self-titled album is usually referred to, shows that one doesn't need a lot of window dressing to make a big impact. Gilberto's smooth melancholy vocals and complexly rhythmic but gently wistful guitar playing instantly takes us to far off luxurious tropical locales. Yet this isn't just background resort music, Gilberto brings a vital but downplayed longing to his performance that feels like remembrances of a time now past, giving it an unrequited quality that makes this record more endearing with each listen. Bossa Nova at its best!
We've long been fans of Japanese dubstepper Goth-Trad, aka Takeaki Maruyama, who has been responsible for some of our favorite 12"s ("Back To Chill" still gets regular spins), and who most remarkably is much more than a DJ or laptop jockey, instead playing samplers, keyboards and designing and building his own instruments, creating a sound that while essentially dubstep, incorporates all manner of other electronic musics, jungle, dub, house, techno, and we were expecting to dig this new full length for sure, but were totally unprepared for the killer opening track "Man In The Maze", the first half of which is total haunting soundtrack, all pizzicato strings, soaring swoonsome strings, dark looped piano melodies, woozy basslines, the sort of sound that has you wondering why nobody has tapped this guy to score their movie, so moving and emotional and darkly evocative, for a minute we had fantasies that maybe for this record he ditched the beats all together and created some imaginary soundtrack, but fear not, the beats come in gradually, subtle typewriter chitter, simple pulse, a strange layered sort of handclap, and then finally, the beat drops, skittery and stuttery, mirrored by another pizzicato string melody, the groove woozy and warped and totally incredible, another track we had to listen to about 20 times before we could bring ourselves to move on.
And while the rest of the record is not nearly so cinematic, the tracks are pretty moody and atmospheric, definitely dubbed out, minimal and fantastically abstract, less overtly dubstep than past outings, more a sort of stripped down late night techno, all skeletal and spare, but when the dubstep does drop, like on "Air Breaker", it's fantastically noisy, squelchy and seriously tripped out. The rest of the record is all over the place darkly funky one second, moody and murky the next, skittery and glitchy the next. The other jam here has to be "Mirage", which mixes playful bubbly synths with woozy warbly melodies, glitchy beats and thick layered buzz, laced with bursts of eighties synth swirl and fuzzy low end blurt, somehow super funky, but also weirdly psychedelic. Easily one of our new favorite electronica / dubstep / techno records for sure!
The return of perhaps our favorite depressive black metal band, with what might be their best record yet. A sprawling double disc, fourteen songs, ninety minutes, the perfect balance of lilting melodic jangle and abject pounding buzz drenched blackness. The band consummate masters of balancing the two, but goddamn if this isn't simultaneously their prettiest and poppiest, AND heaviest and most brutal record so far. Just check out the album opener, "Happy Days", the perfect band theme song if we've ever heard one, starting out all muted jangled and stripped down rhythm, a second guitar offering up a gorgeous glistening melody, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was some new lo-fi bliss pop outfit, until the sound explodes into something much more fierce, but the magic of Happy Days, is that the melody and jangle of that opening bit is carried right over into the heavy part, the drums pounding, the guitars buzzing, and that glistening second guitar melody, a gorgeously distorted melancholy sort-of-lead that winds its way through the whole track. And that's exactly what makes this stuff so good, that no matter how harsh and heavy the sound is, it's infused with a haunted melancholia, and the buzz and pound is underpinned by wistful melodies, or a minor key refrain that gives the buzz some emotional resonance, this is after all depressive, dark, hopeless music, and Happy Days perfectly capture those feelings and transform them into sound.
Almost every track here is a strange fusion of grim raspy blackness, and super melodic melancholia, minus the raspy vokills, mush of this could pass for some sort of gloom pop, and even with the vocals, the production is such, that they're way less harsh than on past records, to the point that the vocals even seem to be marginally more melodic at times. To be fair, there are a few moments of fierce blackened fury, mostly sans melody, like on "No Solution", a blown out barnburner for sure, the guitars brittle and in-the-red and woozily warped, the vocals a hellish bellow, with some cool doomy chugging, but for the most part grim and harsh and harrowing, but even tracks that seem similar like "Forever Asleep (Dead)" will out of nowhere unleash some killer melody, and the whole song is transformed. So great. Fans will not be disappointed, and folks who have been a bit black metal phobic, this could very well be the sort of record that lures you over to the dark side...
This record just showed up in the mail one day, and before we even listened to it, we were totally blown away, a black lp, hand stained, with an upside down cross made out of branches attached to the front, with a sticker bearing a very black metal looking logo, that simply said Atwater. We were obviously expecting some super grim, cult black metal, but instead were treated to some gorgeous blackened dronefolk, haunting and hushed, mysterious and quite lovely. After a brief intro of dense billowing drones, beneath field recordings of a train, and the occasional birdcall, the sound shifts to a dark, droney, drifty, super minimal folk, simple melodies plucked out on a guitar, over a subtle swirl of creaks and groans, of moaning strings and streaks of feedback, not to mention subtle bits of percussion, a dark, brooding, haunting loveliness that is black metal only in spirit, the sound reminding us more of Earth, Barn Owl, Ulaan Khol, Godspeed and the like, the recording super intimate and intense, every sound in the room picked up by the mix, feet shuffling, fingers sliding on frets, the buzz of the snare drum, but it all is perfectly woven into Atwater's mournful dreamlike isolationist Appalachia, the subtle strum, and spare fingerpicking, occasionally wreathed in tendrils of distorted electric guitar, the sound shifting dreamily from twang flecked slowcore, to glacial bluegrass shimmer, from spare skeletal ghostfolk to washed out droneguitar thrum, the guitar is the focal point throughout, spending much of the record hovering in black expanses and unfurling dark skeletal melodies, but the recording, the ambience, all play a huge part, as do the strings, the very occasional drumming, there's even saxophone at one point, everything woven into an ominously gorgeous songsuite of ghostly mesmer and dolorous drift.
LIMITED TO 148 COPIES!!! Each one hand stained, numbered and silkscreened, with an upside down cross made from branches affixed to the front, includes a thick printed cardstock insert, with a color photo on one side, liner notes on the other. Also includes a download coupon. WARNING: these are very fragile, and there's a good chance that the branches/cross may come loose during shipping, if that happens, it can be easily reaffixed with a hot glue gun.
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It's practically been raining super limited Daniel Higgs releases around here lately, first there were two different cassettes over the last few weeks, and now this live cd-r, recorded in Greece back in 2011, and released in an edition of 200 copies. And as always it's impossible to predict what exactly we're in for with a new Higgs record. Could be banjo, could be jaw harp, could be a strange spoken word sermon, could be some strange mix of all three. But for this particular performance, it's shruti box and vocals, a 34 minute excerpt from a sprawling two hour performance, the shruti box wheezing, unfurling a lush chordal whir, soon Higgs invites the audience to lay down, he introduces himself, and then proceeds to weave a magical sonic spell, his vocals soaring dramatically, chanting one second a wild trilling almost operatic howl the next, all over that droned out shimmery backdrop. The sound so mesmerizing and hypnotic, trancelike and very much like a psychedelic sonic sermon. As we've mentioned in the past, it's not hard to imagine Higgs as some sort of mysterious cult leader, and these recordings some strange series of rituals where the knowledge of the ancients is passed down to willing supplicants. So moving, emotional, and passionate, and yet another mysterious missive from our favorite modern day sonic shaman. Obviously, way recommended, but get one quick, cuz it's LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered. We got about 25 and most likely will not be able to get more. Housed in nice thick textured paper sleeves, with super striking Higgs-as-skull artwork.
More minimal wave weirdness from the archives of Alain Neffe, who was responsible for the huge archive of Insane Music tapes which were released back in '80s with all sorts of death disco rhythms, caterwauling electronics, and Cronenberg allusions to sex, death, and the demise of modern culture. Earlier in 2012, we discovered Neffe's recordings as Cortex, with cooing French female vocals and cosmically baroque electronic ambience. Given how much we (and quite a number of you as well!) were smitten by the sidereal radiophonic explorations of Cortex, which we went so far as to make a Record Of The Week, we've found yet another of Neffe's early projects - Human Flesh. Throughout the '80s, this was pretty much a solo project of his, although the entire Insane Music catalogue finds Neffe working with a small cadre of vocalists and electronic tinkerers. Pseudo Code was another of Neffe's projects, featuring Guy-Marc Hinant (who later founded Sub Rosa Records) and Xavier S; and this trio was quite active recording and performing from 1979 to about 1983.
One day in 1982, Neffe had set up the studio for a session of Pseudo Code recordings, waiting for Guy-Marc and Xavier to show up. Instead, a friend from a distant Belgian town arrived at the studio unannounced. This fellow was named Guy de Bievre, and the two decided to use the all of the settings on the synths, sequencers, and drum machines originally for the Pseudo Code sessions to create something for Neffe's Human Flesh project. The Pseudo Code sound was much more dialed into the Cabaret Voltaire ethos of electronics with minimalist sequencing and plodding rhythms that inspired dread and horror. Neffe and Bievre add expressivist blooping electronics, scattered guitar distortion, and some punk-poet barking to the rhythmic sequences, that could almost be a Richard Pinhas & Chris Carter duet from that same period, if such as thing could be imagined. A single track of snaking electronic rhythms, splattered with cold melodies, haunted blurting noises, and those occasional vocals that all come together as a fine piece of industrial mesmerism. Limited to 300 copies!
Faux-Finnish, droning freak-folk from a Japanese sound artist and a Swiss chanteuse!
Juppala Kaapio is comprised of Hitoshi & Carole Kojo, whose lysergically bright-eyed concoctions draw from plenty of arcane and archaic folkloric traditions, and emerge as a beguiling, playful form of abstracted psychedelia. We've mentioned before that the name of the project is in fact Finnish, translating as Juppala Dwarf. What, who, or where Juppala is, we don't really know; but the aesthetic which the couple evoke is definitely akin to those adventurous Finns responsible for Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Islaja, and Kuupuu. Bells, flutes, hand percussion, cheap synths, violins, melodicas, vocal chants, and whatnot all go into the buzzing, wheezing thickets of sound that make up Juppala Kaapio's Animalia Corolla. With all of these instruments, the two create dense layerings of glistening textures and radiant drones that slip and slide around quite a bit, but always seem grounded in a fundamental harmonic tone that the two have plucked from the celestial spheres above. It's easy to situate these not only near those Finns, but also Taj Mahal Travellers at their most celebratory, LaMonte Young at his trippiest, and Fursaxa at her most narcotized. Really beautiful transcendent, modern-day ritualism!
We have here the art edition of Animalia Corolla, packaged in a neatly stitched felt sleeve and a screen-printed o-card to house the cd itself. This version is in an edition of ONLY 88 copies. We'll probably not be able to restock this, but we should have the regular version shortly.
Gorgeously packaged, gorgeous dronemusik!
Hitoshi Kojo is a Japanese sound artist and drone-centric expressionist who has recorded in the past under the moniker Spiracle and performs in the jubilantly psychedelic but still quite droned-out project Juupala Kaapio. Omnimoment is a collection of edits from Kojo's sound installations and site-specific work dating from 2006 - 2009, all of which extract and manipulate elemental forces of wind, fire, water, metal, wood, sand, etc. into blossoming thrums of sublime minimalism which run parallel to the works of Andrew Chalk, Loren Chasse, and John Grzinich. "Shiranui" was originally conceived at the MoKS residency program in Estonia, sourced mostly from the blades of an abandoned Soviet turbine left inexplicably out in the countryside. Kojo extracts pensive, metallic overtones from those blades that sound more like an ancient gong than some hulking industrial machine; and he amasses those sounds into semi-melodic phrases and ritualized acoustic dronings that Organum mastered in the mid-'80s. "Sea Migration" is an excerpt from an installation involving a feedback system and a bunch PVC pipes that hung from the top window of Germanic castle, looking sort of like a weird plastic octopus playing the part of Rapunzel. Those pipes captured the sound of the wind and the various frequencies of that feedback system creating a tactile, generative composition of pure tones and haptic events not too far from those far more composed works from Andrew Chalk's once prolific project Ora. The last three tracks demonstrate Kojo's ongoing strategies involving found objects through a process which he calls 'molecular communication' where extended vibrations and dense beds of accreted drone broadcast outward from Kojo's scraped metals, clinked glass, and rubbed sand. There's definitely some type of alchemy at work in Kojo's sound design, with mysterious energies transforming the commonplace into something sublime, otherworldly, or divine.
This is the limited art-edition of Omnimoment, which comes in a thick cardstock folio with a 24-page book and die-cut artwork. Certainly on par with what Faraway Press has done in their packaging department! Limited to just 88 copies! We most likely won't be able to restock the limited version, but will have the standard version soon.
Audio.NL was an offshoot of the stalwart avant-garde label Korm Plastics, which released an impressive catalogue of adventurously minimalistic techno from 1998 - 2007 from the likes of Taylor Deupree, Motor, Goem, Tomas Jirku, and Komet. The label was at the forefront of the blossoming 'clicks + cuts' aesthetic of jittery electronica built almost one electron at a time; and that reputation was solidified through the two singles that Komet produced for the label. Komet, of course, is the work of Frank Bretschneider, one of the principals behind the seminal label Raster-Noton. While he's probably not as well known as his partner Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto), Bretschneider has a similar knack for injecting the blip and bleep with as much of a slippery grooviness as one could muster from sine-tone pulses and phase patterns. This cd compiles all of the material that Bretschneider produced for Audio.NL, including those two singles and a compilation track. Everything has been out of print for years, so to have it all in one place makes a considerable amount of sense. On these 9 tracks, Bretschneider laces subtle glitchiness upon his reductive techno rhythms - little more than a drum machine high-hat and kick gliding at a metronomic pace. That digital errata is bent and twisted through delay patterns, flanging metallic gleams, EQ-fluctuation, and time suspension tricks, giving each of the tracks an unmistakable, if muted slinkiness that keeps the tracks from becoming dehumanized. Sterile, this may be; but Bretschneider makes all of the surgical tools dance on the operating table.
For their return to Merge Records, The Magnetic Fields have made their first release featuring synthesizers in over 10 years. After a slew of "concept" records (i, Realism, Distortion), it seems that Stephin Merritt has made a conscious effort to go back to his Holiday or Charm of the Highway Strip roots, and the results are somewhat mixed. There's plenty of punning and playfulness in his lyrics, a few harpsichords and hand claps. The songs (at least the first few) are extraordinarily catchy and well put together, and oh so clever, but despite the return to form, there's something lacking from the record that makes it as a whole a bit disappointing. Not disappointing necessarily for dedicated fans, perhaps, and Stephin Merritt has PLENTY of those. It just feels a bit like Merritt & Co. set out to make a record because they felt that they needed to, rather than because they actually had anything new to say. Love at the Bottom of the Sea is not their finest work, but it's the most true to form disc they've put forth in a decade. Also noteworthy is the appearance of San Francisco's own Randy Walker (aka Carletta Sue Kay) on backup vocals on a few tracks!
It may have taken us a while to catch on to the twisted garage rock genius that is Dan Melchior, but over the last little while, we've been digging everything we've heard, and while this record is not a proper album, so much as a cobbled together collection of experiments and sketches, it somehow holds together as some kind of strange Guided By Voices style chunk of micro-jams, albeit here, many of them consist of nothing but looped and layered voices or field recorded acoustic guitar. But all the tracks here, no matter how abstract or seemingly tossed off are pretty damn cool, whether it's the aforementioned vocal experiments, or sweet lo-fi piano ballads with strange foot-step percussion and a backdrop of running water, or stripped down bedroom folk with strange hummed harmonies, or dirgey distorted almost-Appalachia, warm swirls of acoustic guitars, minimal strums over mysterious field recordings or garbled into wild noisy tape experiments. And amidst all these fragments, do lurk a handful of gorgeous gems, both sides end in said fashion, the A side with a dense brooding, slow build dirge, the B side with a haunting bit of pretty reverbed piano over a swirl of strange stuttering electronics. Cool stuff.
LIMITED TO 450 COPIES!!!
We made the last record by The Men, Leave Home, our Record Of The Week, a kick ass collision of old school noise rock, hazy psychedelia, and super distorted Sonic Youth beholden shoegaze noisepop. And while that all still most definitely describes this latest record, the one difference we're noticing this time around is some serious poppiness. Not that the other record wasn't poppy, but the poppiness was often obscured by squalls of chaotic noise, or stretched out into droned out heaviness, or wreathed in cacophony, but here, it's fully on display, as if they were in fact a POP band, who just also happened to be noisy and psychedelic and fucked up and heavy. Every song here is shot through with hooks galore, irresistible melodies, pure pop centers no matter what sort of wildness surrounds it. And it suits them. As much as we played that other record to death, this one is fast catching up. Imagine a sort of Stooges-y stomp fused to something a bit more pop-punk, all dipped in distortion and sent careening into a sweaty wildly pogo-ing pit. Opener "Turn It Around" flits easily from garagey punker out crunch to soaring hook heavy indie pop jangle, and even throws in some wild psychedelic leads, not to mention some wild killer drumming. "Animal" takes that poppiness and wraps it in fuzzed out riffage, punkish pound and howled feral vox. And like Leave Home before it, the band definitely don't shy away from mixing it up. "Country Song" is all twangy and reverby and yeah, a little bit country, but a sort of sun baked psych country, all rife with slide guitar, and woozy interwoven melodies. Then there "Oscillation", which might be our favorite. Starting out all minimal and stripped down, motorik and krautrocky, super melodic, driving and catchy as hell, a tangle of melodies and guitars all somehow sculpted into a super crazy catchy chunk of washed out psychedelic indie rock bliss, it's not even until 5 minutes in before the vocals first come in, a weirdly dramatic deep croon, the music building to a serious frenzy, the sort of song you can almost imagine as a set closer, so rocking and weird and catchy and infectious.
"Please Don't Go Away" is total jangle flecked noise pop, with plenty of vocal oooh' and aaah's, not to mention some old-Flaming Lips worthy psychedelic guitar freakouts, in fact, early Flaming Lips is definitely a good comparison, if not for the songs, certainly the sound, that same sort of on the verge of total chaos, fusing loose druggy psych, with total classic hook filled pop. The title track is total seventies style classic power pop, just roughed up a little, and drenched in a bit of extra distortion. There are still moments of full on blown out speaker shredding noise rock freakouts, "Cube" is a two and a half minute sweat soaked bloody knuckled blowout, but then that leads right into "Presence" which is a slide guitar, swampy, bluesy dirge, that sounds more like Naked On The Vague or Crystal Stilts, until near the end when the song seems to splinter into a psych pop freakout all wild shredding leads, layered vox and octopoidal drumming. "Ex-Dreams" finishes things off with some new wave flecked noise pop crunch, another song that could also be one of our favorites, but then really, the more we listen to this record, the more we think that about pretty much all of the songs. Which is most definitely a good sign. And really the more and more we dig this, the more we think this could easily have been a Record Of The Week too, which obviously means this is WAY recommended!
Latest full length from this local cello driven indie rock outfit, and their most lush and accomplished outing yet, produced by Bay Area psychedelic guru Greg Ashley, the band have crafted a strangely catchy collection of driving, string laden indie rock, inspired by heartbreak, as all worthwhile rock records are, opening with a hauntingly cinematic intro, all soaring melodic swells, buzzing cello, wild psychedelic guitar, plink plonk piano, which leads directly into a heady slab of pounding fuzzed out jangle, that then splinters and transforms into something downright proggy, crooned vocals over busy swirling piano melodies and woozy cello, before the guitars swoop back in, the song seesawing back and forth between crunchy jangle and tense moody brood. The following track drapes softly distorted vocals over loping bass, spidery melodies and fuzz guitar, adding some cool slide, and wild little tangles of psych guitar, and that ever present cello, definitely giving the sound its own unique vibe.
The rest of the record unfurls darkly and dramatically, shifting constantly from sound to sound, each sound (and song) seemingly representative of a step in the grieving process, Merch mainman Joe Medina translating that grieving process into sound, minor key miserablist downer pop blurs into stripped down bluesy rock, fuzzed out indie rock blossoms into bombastic almost progginess, twang flecked drifts sprawl into propulsive hypnotic minimalism which in turn transforms into shimmery acoustic folk and back again, the sound rife with hints of Sparklehorse, Giant Sand, TV On The Radio, and other purveyors of dark indie pop and fuzzy psychedelic garage rock.
Special colored vinyl version just for aQ (marbled grey swirl), also includes a poster, and a download coupon for the whole record!
Finally a Grouper related release that we can actually list and not fear that it will go out of print in two minutes (knock on wood!!).
Mirroring is the collaborative duo of Liz Harris (Grouper) and Jesy Fortino (Tiny Vipers), and this crushworthy duo deliver all the dark and smoldering sonic goods that one would expect from such a dream team. At first listen, one might assume this to be a split release rather than a collaboraton, as the opening track, "Fell Sound" begins in distinct Grouper territory with a muddy slow motion haze and Harris's barely there singing low in the mix. The next song, "Silent From Above" has a more dark folk vibe with acoustic guitar and Fortino's more emotive voice making itself present. But as things progress, the distinctive aspects of each player begin to meld, shift and play off of each other. Harris is given room to come out of her shell a bit more, and Fortino shows more restraint. After awhile, it becomes unclear just who is doing what, but the sound itself is darkly lyrical and contemplative and beautifully mesmerizing.
Hmm, now what did we say above about it going out of print? 'Cause there's an lp version of this too, but we were shorted, hopefully we'll get more next week...
Latest from this long running minimal techno outfit, aka sonic alchemist Robert Henke, and another fantastic excursion into a murky world of mysterious sound, minimal skeletal beats and crunchy, staticky ambience, dubby and this time around, surprisingly big-beat heavy. Long gone are the days of Monolake's 'heroin house' murk, the later releases by Henke displaying a lush sound palette, even at their darkest and moodiest, the sounds themselves are still glistening and prismatic, but Henke never shies away from employing sonic detritus as well, whether that means bursts of static, or sheets of crumbling distortion or clouds of white noise hiss. The title track gives us a glimpse of Monolake's new sound, which is seriously propulsive and downright funky, almost a little jungly, with a distinctive techstep vibe, but wreathed in crackle and crunch, making it sound a little Digital Hardcore as well, but Henke keeps things tight and controlled, so it never veers totally into any of those other realms, it remains mostly tightly coiled and minimal, but Henke also adds some creepy whispered vocodered vocals which add a whole other element.
The rest of the record is not nearly so block rocking (although a few tracks do come close), definitely hewing closer to Henke's more minimal roots, but within that sound, Henke definitely mixes it up, creating some serious headphone ear candy, a lush minimal liquid skitter one second, the beats seemingly made from the sound of marbles or various items rolling on a hard surface, some severe ultra pristine Raster Noton style click and crunch the next, although in both cases Henke definitely adds his own unique twist. There's one track where things get downright housey, complete with buried female vocals and weirdly reverbed handclaps, while elsewhere the sound does occasionally shift into strange buzz drenched metal percussed skitter grooves, or blisses out into gauzey, hazy almost Caretaker sounding ambience, or blossoms into warm whirling almost proggy synthscapes, or oozes into a hushed almost static black ambient rumble. Pretty fantastic stuff, but then, we've sort of come to expect that from Henke's Monolake.
We rarely get hate mail, but when we do, it's usually pretty good. And our positive review of Morbid Angel's most recent record, Illud Divinum Insanus, elicited some of the best hate mail ever. We were accused, among other things, of being poseurs, of being the whole problem with San Francisco, and why no one wants to live here, and of liking that Morbid Angel record ironically (all somehow connected). We'd like to believe none of that is true, especially the part about our ironic love of that Morbid Angel album. As long time readers of the aQ list must certainly know by now, we tend to love lots of ridiculous, crazy, stupid, demented shit, and if anything qualified as all of those, it was Illud Divinum Insanus. Have a look at that review if you missed it the first time, and you can see what all the hubbub was about. Sure that record had some classic death metal, but it also had some weird nineties style industrialisms, and some (sort of) rapping. Even the folks here that hated that record, were perversely obsessed with it. And the folks who loved it were also perversely obsessed with it, and even THOSE folks found at least one of the tracks nearly impossible to like. So really, it came as no surprise that the whole record was due for a double disc remix, with all the tracks redone, remixed, reimagined and reworked by all manner of industrial / techno musicians / producers. And again, the haters were appalled, but strangely intrigued, and the rest of us, well, we were pushing it for Record Of The Week, cuz really, this is some Judgement Night style shit, a maybe bad idea pushed about as far as it could go, and in the process, becoming something strangely cool, and surprisingly listenable (for some of us, at least).
So yeah, the vestiges of the originals are nearly wiped completely away on most of these tracks, and what's left is usually just a riff, or only the vocals, the originals totally transformed into pounding gabber, or martial industrial, or creepy electronica, or glitched out weirdness, the sound definitely heavily nineties, hard to avoid when the core of the sound is electronica/industrial crossed with metal guitars, the Ministry vibe looms large, but somehow, these songs work better as nineties industrial metal jams than death metal, especially the more problematic tracks like "Too Extreme". No matter what, or how much, we write, most haters will not be swayed, which is totally fine, but for folks into the WAY weirder/demented side of metal, or who dig nineties industrial metal, or even folks just into the whole traffic accident can't look away vibe of this ridiculous release, this is pretty fucking cool/weird. And if it wasn't actually a Morbid Angel record, and was instead just some super fucked up comp of metal industrial, we imagine lots of folks might be a little obsessed. Cuz lots of this is really fucking cool.
Igorrr (1/2 of aQ faves Whourkr) turn their track into a dizzying chopped up, head spinning collage of stuttering guitars and processed riffs, the sound blenderized and junglized and blasted into a squall of fractured melodies and skittery beats, a track then sounds like it could have come off the Igorrr record proper. The Laibach remix is incredible, adding harpsichord, flutes, swooping backwards guitars, and the vox from the original into a dizzying psychedelic Teutonic pound that KILLS. cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy takes his track and adds a tolling bell, chanted vox, squiggly sci-fi effects, and transforms it into a weirdly cinematic string laden dirge. Tek-One adds thick rib cage rattling bass warble for a bad ass death metaldubstep mash-up, DJ Ruffneck goes full on gabber, pounding and relentless, laced with shards of guitar solos from the original, Black Lung takes the original and blurs it into a murky smear, and spreads that out beneath a heavy house music churn, while Mondkopf buries the original in squelches and low end buzz, turning it into a lurching low end creep, Scott Brown turns his track into full on HI-NRG rave, which is hilarious, but kind of awesome, Fixhead offers up another crazy head spinning heavy dubstep workout, we could go on and on, but they're all pretty great, and weird, and while some are dumb and fun, others are dark and fucked up and fierce, others still tripped out and confusional. Folks who hated the original, and who were offended by our UN-ironic love of that record (we're not poseurs dude - we're TOO EXTREME!!) will most definitely want to steer WELL clear of this monstrosity, but for everyone else, we have to say, we've been listening to this like crazy, nonstop, and that shows no sign of changing any time soon, which always the real measure of a record. In fact, folks who hated Illud Divinum Insanus for being a mockery of a Morbid Angel album, might be able to like this, since it's not even pretending to be death metal.
Includes a download coupon for even MORE remixes, not included on the discs proper.
