Our pal Weasel Walter (of tUMULt recording artists Hatewave, also the Flying Luttenbachers, as well as a million other noisy projects) recently wrote about this Noh Mercy reissue on his ugEXPLODE blog (weaselwalter.blogspot.com). We knew we couldn't really do a better job reviewing it, so we just asked Weasel if we could use his write up, and he was nice enough to say yes. So, take it away, Weasel:
Archival releases springing forth headily from bygone eras somehow make me infinitely more excited than anything being released from the present morass of overkill we currently endure. At the risk of sounding like a moldy fig, there are many elements missing from much of today's music in terms of what I want to hear. Punk came during the Seventies and said "Everyone can do it!" Unfortunately, everyone did it and now one has to dig even harder and longer to find contemporary jewels in this all-encompassing, instantly accessible, post-categorized modern mess.
Noh Mercy were a female duo based in San Francisco during the late Seventies. Their music is powerfully minimal, most often stripped-down to the barest elements of voice and drums, sometimes peppered with raw keyboards or guitar. Anyone familiar with this obscure group probably knew them from a pair of iconoclastic tracks appearing on the murky, elusive Earcom 3 double seven inch compilation on UK post-punk imprint Fast Product Records. The brazenly succinct assault entitled "Caucasian Guilt" from that record featured a panache and solidity which set it apart from the more atavistic musical standard of their New York No Wave counterparts; vocalist Esmerelda's vitriol showed impressive subtlety and range matching the kinetic, precise drum tattoos of co-conspirator Tony Hotel. This was a band as truly talented as they were weird.
The 2012 archival Noh Mercy release on Superior Viaduct begins with "Caucasian Guilt" and includes the other Earcom comp track ("Revolutionary Spy"), eight never-before-heard tracks from the same July 1979 session as well as four stunning live cuts from an August 1979 concert. The studio tracks were recorded in a basement, but they are appealingly transparent and unadorned, revealing the naked focus of the duo's performances. These ten tracks are based on raw invention, not production. Modern bands should take heed of this: ideas before technology. This is why the old shit sounds so good, folks.
After four tracks of the expected drum/vocal duets (including an amusing deconstruction of the Lennon/McCartney chestnut "Girl"), the throbbing "Lines" arrives as a refreshing contrast with Esmerelda essaying coldly over outbursts of percussive slide guitar racket and sour synthesizer. The following "Bloodhound Blues" is built on a foundation of jazzy tom-tom drum figures and squishy, phased keyboard chords. It is formally traditional in many ways, allowing the passionate vocals to run rampant. Unlike many New Wave poseurs of the time, Esmerelda could really belt out a tune with serious confidence. The melodramatic vocals are impossible to miss and her performances here are intense and colorful. "Cross The Line" and "The Meek Shall Inherit The Mess" continue in the fuller sounding, keyboard drenched mode, while "The Meek . . ." incorporates odd rhythmic meters and tempo changes that reveal musical ambition pushing beyond the other tracks in the "studio" set.
Anyone buying the vinyl version will miss out hard by not getting the four killer live tracks included only on the cd version. The other day I heard a clerk at a record store tell somebody wryly that "vinyl is back." Really? What I see is mindless clones paying 30 bucks for lame back-catalog bullshit that used to be in the dollar bin for decades before this dubious "revival" began. I can't believe how much money people are paying for this shit because they've been told "vinyl is back." Whatever. Congratulations, record industry. You have found a new wave of materialistic lemmings to wallet-rape. I guess, you know, records are, uh, "bigger" or whatever, so, go for it. All I know is I get to savor the frigidly perfect cd audio with the bonus tracks in my lonely little dungeon, sans all the pops and clicks and "warmth" some of you will inflict on yourselves in the dubious name of analog purity.
"Furious" kicks off the quartet of live tracks in a deranged, stop-start construction of barely-contained lyrical outrage and keyboard noise. The oddly idealistic anti-bouncer screed "Storm The Stage" ("...And those dudes with the flashlights/Yelling 'Stay in your seat'/Knock 'em out of your way/Kick 'em with your feet/'Cuz you'll be on that stage!") bubbles along amusingly without drums, Hotel manning an aquatically phased guitar in addition to vocals and keyboards. "Wicked Sister" and "Ode To Frances Farmer" operate vaguely within the same repetitive/motorik realm as beloved period LA synth-punks The Screamers, but once again Esmerelda's impressive pipes outclass the competition on the former while the vividly catchy dissonance of the latter instrumental is compositionally distinctive on its own terms.
Noh Mercy hit the skids and went their separate ways by 1980 without releasing a proper album. This great release expands the group's reputation quite ably with careful audio mastering/restoration of the old master tapes and a beautiful layout featuring great photos, liner notes and lyrics. Anyone interested in the top tier of so-called "post-punk" bands needs to run to this release post-haste.
A friend of aQ has been travelling / living in China, and recently sent us some records by bands he discovered and dug and thought we would dig too. Pairs is a duo from Shanghai who kick out heavy hypnotic lo-fi shit rock punk pop that kills, their sound dense and noisy and jangly and chaotic, the sound rooted in classic indie rock for sure, but here delivered in a sort of shitgaze style, definitely had us thinking of Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit, the sort of band you might hear on Siltbreeze too, urgent and intense, most of the songs just one or two parts, the guitars a wild effects drenched jangle that goes from chiming and melodic to blown out and shoegazey, the drumming wild and chaotic, the vocals a howled feral yelp buried in the mix, and while most of these jams are the kind of tracks that would have a pit heaving, and inspire the same sort of sweat soaked bloody knuckled live actions as groups like The Oh Sees, amongst all this punked out energy and frantic noise pop fervor, there are hidden gems, "No Regrets" is about as perfectly poppy as these guys get, this is a lovesong indie rock mixtape jam if there ever was one, and the awesomely titled closer "My Body Is Not A Wonderland", which finds the vocalist just listing off all the things wrong with his body, over a droned out jangle and pound, the whole thing sounding like the Fall or Art Brut. In fact, the more we listen, the more all of these songs blossom from noisy kinetic energy into hook filled noise pop gems. Definitely a new favorite. And it's sort of so good we're wondering why these guys haven't been snapped up by somebody, Matador maybe, or Siltbreeze, we're guessing it's only a matter of time.
Packaged in a no-frills dvd sized cardboard sleeve printed on one side, with a glued on tracklist on the other. Comes with a dvd-r that is a hodgepodge of home movies, of various friends of the band, various places in China, what seems to be lots of other bands playing too, confusing, but surprisingly fun to watch. LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES(!), each one hand numbered. And while that may seem like a lot, not sure we can actually get more once these run out.
Spring of 2010, the stalwart San Francisco sound arts organization 23five hosted their annual Activating The Medium festival, commissioning a handful of experimentalists, noise technicians, and field recordists to present work based on the theme of Ice. While G*Park's allegorical plunge into an ice cave and Cheryl Leonard's dripping icicles with Antarctic recordings and bowed penguin bones were thoroughly compelling, Pedestrian Deposit's performance was terrifyingly amazing. PD has transformed itself over the past decade or so from a harsh noise project into one of the most accomplished electo-acoustic outfits of our time, bringing languid cello tones and buzzing harmonics to a well-versed pedal-driven electronic arsenal of rumbles, drones, and noisy grit. A duo of Shannon Kennedy (cello, electronics) and Jon Borges (noise, electronics), Pedestrian Deposit tours constantly through the noise underground; and that time on the road has served them well in terms of delivering the goods. For their 23five commission, their set began in a familiar mode to those who've witnessed Pedestrian Deposit before, Kennedy crafting hypnotic patterns through loops on her cello while Borges hinted at something far more ominous through tectonic rumblings of feedback and black noise. Upon the dissolution of this spellbinding movement balancing noise and grace, Kennedy set her cello down and climbed into a wash basin which was positioned at the front of the stage. The basin was filled with ice water which she poured over her head in slow repetitive fashion, while a microphone captured the sounds of her chattering teeth and frigid gasps as she began a process of self-induced hypothermia. For what seemed like an eternity, Borges did nothing, allowing the raw human gasps from his partner to be the only sound they presented. Eventually, a glacial semi-melodic drone worthy of a BJ Nilsen or a Deathprod recording slowly emerged beneath Kennedy's shivering for a superb coda to such an abject piece of electro-acoustic theater. Kithless features the whole performance as the A side, and even without the physical presence of Kennedy dumping ice water on her goose-pimply skin, the recording is a powerful document and certainly stands on its own. The B side "Under A Veil Of Living Light" is a worthy companion to the live document with Borges building a crunched, tactile noise crescendo out of pools of sonorous hum and rasping buzzed cello. A magnificent accomplishment!
Duane Pitre, whom we were first exposed to through collaborations with Justin Wright from Expo 70, and his 2010 solo debut Origin on the Root Strata label, is a composer who likes to work with organizing principles. For Origin, he had a sextet of bowed guitars tuned to 'just intonation' and freed from any use of effects and overdubs to create tapestries of richly layered overtones and droning frequencies.
One might think from the title that Feel Free would suggest a freedom from such organisation, but it's actually a push toward a more systematic impulse, but one that allows an infinite set of variations. Creating the centerpiece of the work through guitar and electronics and filtered through a computer, he then asks a sextet of string musicians (harp, cello, contrabass, hammered dulcimer and violin) to respond to the work. The performers are instructed to "feel free" to respond to or ignore their fellow contributors. But in creating a rule-based system rather than one based on musical notation, the piece becomes a lattice work of rhythms and textures that sounds spontaneous and unpredictable, but never careens out of control. Reminding us of the resulting compositional strategies of David Behrman's On The Other Ocean, Christian Jendreiko's God's White Noise or even Terry Riley's In C in the way that there's a harmonic congruence from a randomizing system, Feel Free is a beautifully interwoven composition with hypnotically mesmerizing results.
Finland's much lauded (by us and others) Fonal label has been best known for the Finnish forest folk, experimental indie likes of Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Kiila, and Paavoharju, among others... but recently they've branched out beyond their country's borders to release (reviewed last list) the new agey electronic improv drift of Dolphins Into The Future, and also this, by another band not from Finland, the 1st full-length (or 2nd if you count a super limited cd-r) by a blown out blooze rock duo from Deutschland who call themselves Pretty Lightning, though it's more likely thunder you'll think of when you hear 'em, not lightning.
As you might have guessed from the phrase "blown out blooze rock" this isn't your typical Fonal release. Well, it's plenty psychedelic and druggy, though, so that fits right in with a lot of the weird rituals recorded by Fonal's roster. But Pretty Lightning's rolling and tumblin', shambolic stoner stomp sounds a lot more traditionally '60s & '70s rock-based than the usual brand of Fonal freakery. Loud n' distorted fuzz guitars, drawling vox, lots of reverb, swampy slide, lumbering rhythms, splashing cymbals... we're thinking this will go over really well with fans of Dead Meadow!! Reminded of them right away. Also in some regards Wooden Shijips, Moon Duo, Comets On Fire, even Witch... You could also maybe imagine an uber lo-fi, Teutonic Black Keys? Or a basement-dwelling, krautrock-damaged Mount Carmel? Pretty Lightning bring in some ceremonial-sounding communal kraut vibes all right, with rattling percussion and chanted vocals on tracks like "Brother Gold Miner". There's spaced out pretty parts too, sunbaked backporch bliss, but it's all raw and droney for sure, and rife with big catchy riffs and melodic hooks, hot damn we're digging this. Funny it takes a Finnish label to bring us this modern day garagey krautrock that sounds like it's somehow also coming straight outta the Mississippi Delta.
The 1987 full length debut from these infamous noiseniks gets the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment. A white hot blast of lo-fi basement blues, slithery stomps and druggy creeps, driven by clanging clattery junkyard drums, strangled angular guitar and bellowed reverbed vox, courtesy of noneother than Mr. Jon Spencer. The songs are short, sharp, urgent, noisy and chaotic, Bob Bert, former drummer for Sonic Youth, provides the beats, the songs lurching and lumbering, a swaggery, staggery sprawl of noise rock punk blues that still sounds so fucking great. The band at this point was rounded out by Neil Hagerty, who would go on to form Royal Trux, and Julia Cafritz, who would later play in Free Kitten, and for as dysfunctional and drug addled as this foursome was, they were a seriously fearsome sonic unit, managing to capture much of that druggy dysfunction on tape, and it's magical. We were arguing about why some of us here LOVE Pussy Galore, but Royal Trux not so much, when someone joked that the key was, that in Pussy Galore they somehow got the heroin just right, just enough to send them spiralling into some sort of drug fueled manic psychedelic blooze zone, but not so far that it all fell apart. Right Now! is frantic and furious, wildly passionate and so twisted and soulful, and somehow, crazy catchy to boot. The record spends most of its time in a full on drugblues noiserock pound mode, but occasionally, slips into some slow, swoonsome dirgey bluesiness that has no right sounding as good as it does.
Obviously recommended for fans of all the post Pussy Galore bands (Royal Trux, Boss Hog, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Free Kitten, Howling Hex, etc.) but really anyone into other twisted strains of weirdo blues (Railroad Jerk, Bill Orcutt, Doo Rag, King Brothers, etc.) who have yet to discover the warped world of Pussy Galore, is in for a treat...
Brand new, ultra limited, super deluxe lp from these architects of grim drone and black ambience, after a gorgeous Drone Records 7", and two full lengths, Astral Death and Cosmic Birth, both brimming with dark waves of glacial crush and blurred abstract shimmer, comes Archaic Techniques Of Ecstacy, another fantastic exploration into dark sonic depths and empty black space.
In the past we've compared these guys to Sunroof!, SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes, and it's always worth noting that R.Y.N. includes a member of UK doomdrone heavyweights Marzuraan, but R.Y.N. are definitely their own beast, unafraid to deviate dramatically from 'their sound', or to take that sound and pull it apart only to reassemble it into something even darker and more abstract. Which is sort of what seems to be happening on Archaic Techniques Of Ecstacy, two side long tracks that creep and drift, that ooze and crawl, a haunting collection of muted clatter, and creaking industrial ambience, like a field recording of some abandoned mining colony in the middle of nowhere, the wind shifting bits of metal, the resultant clang and clatter, groan and hum strangely musical. Long streaks of buzzing whir, like an airplane passing overhead, way off in the distance, the shimmer of soft breezes, the various elements casting flickering shadows, moonlit and menacing. Eventually the sounds coalesce into something more dronelike, a raw, minimal, layered bit of lowercase rumble, but infused with all manner of smeared texture and deep subterranean hum.
The flipside is even more harrowing, a soft squall of dense tones and blackened reverberations, a whirling swirling black hole of sound, metallic buzz muted into greyed streaks, laced into and layered over an endless abyss of abject minimal whir, a roiling churning sea of slowed down chimes, or blurred vibrations, or melted tones, like a black sonic cloud eating away at the very fabric of its surroundings, a crumbling grim decay rendered in sound, fantastically haunting and totally mesmerizing.
As with all Equation stuff, the packaging is incredible, a cool 3 panel dark brown on light brown fold over jacket, with a super heavy stickered inner sleeve, as well as a handful of inserts on nice thick textured paper liner notes, woodcuts, and of course LIMITED to 233 COPIES, each one hand numbered. So nice.
First full length from these Chicago fuzzpop garage rockers, and it definitely fulfills the promise of the cassette and 7" that came before, the sound a glorious mix of brooding, organ driven drugrock, paisley underground power pop and Mikal Cronin / Ty Segall style garage pop jangle, with the sound shifting constantly between murky and droney and washed out, to glistening and dreamily majestic, fuzzy, crunchy and hooky, to pounding and propulsive, hints of new wave find their way into much of the record, reminding us of another recent aQ fave the Mind Spiders, but there's still plenty of that reverby jangle pop Phil Spector wall-of-sound haze that defined those earlier releases, and a definite tendency towards tranced out psychedelic memser that positions much of the record alongside the sound of fellow psych-rockers like Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips, the Spyrals and the like. Which of course also means there's some obvious Spacemen 3 worship going on (just check out the woozy dreamy druggy drift of "Disconnection") as well as nods to the Velvets ("Prairie Puppies"), and of course the current crop of similarly minded locals (Thee Oh Sees, etc.), but even with all those sonic comparisons, Radar Eyes definitely make the sound their own, thick low slung basslines, wild gouts of psych guitar tangle, churning rhythmic crunch, shimmering fuzzed out jangle, dreamy vox, big hooks, and be sure and stick around for the record closer, "Side Of The Road", where the band go full on cold/new/dark wave, all pulsing synths and buzzing basslines, programmed rhythms and deep crooned vocals, ominous and haunting and darkly sinister, sounding suddenly like something you might expect to hear on Sacred Bones or Captured Tracks...
A while back we reviewed a mysterious cd-r from a band called Utsuro Bune, the disc was a head caving slab of single-guitar un-overdubbed black psychedelia, a massive glacial doomdrone, but one that bristled with a unique psychedelic energy, positioning itself closer to say Keiji Haino rather than SUNNO))), or as we described it in the review, some strange hybrid of the two. Well it seems that the man behind UB, Matt Kattman, has ditched the UB monicker, and started a new project, this one, The Rainbow Body, still with a similarly drone-y bent, but this time ditching the heaving heaviness for something more spaced out and kosmische, an eight part song suite that finds Kattman's guitar drifting through clouds of blissed out shimmer, encountering the occasional burst of gristled static, and conjuring up the same sort of galactic drift as aQ faves Expo 70, but The Rainbow Body takes that sound even further out, more ghostly and spectral, most of the tracks floating ethereally, the sound so dreamy and tripped out and softly psychedelic, that on first listen we thought it might have all been synth based, the guitars looped and wreathed in effects and transformed into streaks and smears, blurred expanses of chordal shimmer and disembodied melody. But there's more going on there that just drift and shimmer, Kattman laces the tracks with mysterious pulsations, strange tonal shifts, buried rhythms, woozily tangled loops, occasionally slipping into ominous sci-fi drones, but just as often blossoming into prismatic new age glimmer, and while there are some more sinister moments, where the sound grows moody and mildly malevolent, it's all part of the Rainbow Body's cinematic scope, Metatron's Cube playing out like some strange celestial soundtrack, the score to some mysterious planetarium show, it's the sound of a million stars time lapsed into a sky full of fireworks like streaks, a mesmerizing display of cosmic sonic drift and spaced out dreamdrone mesmer.
Packaged in a sweet full color J-card, with a download coupon for a digital version of the whole tape.
Soundway Records strikes again with another groovy reissue, this one from Ghana. (Actually there's two killer new Soundway titles of African extraction that just came out, the other one, by Edzayawa, we plan on reviewing next time.) You might know Rob already from the title track of this record, which appeared on Soundway's great Ghana Soundz compilation a few years back. Apparently they got a lot of requests for a full Rob reissue from folks entranced by "Make It Fast, Make It Slow", so here it is, yay! And it's full of more awesome Afro-funk tunes besides that one from the comp.
This was Rob's 2nd album, originally released in 1977, rare and collectable ever since, this being its first reissue outside of Ghana. Soundway calls the one-named Rob "enigmatic" and says that this record offers up a "stranger, slower" form of Afro-funk than is the norm, and we'd agree. Make It Fast, Make It Slow tends towards the latter half of that title commandment, and is possessed of a unique, odd feel, having a spiritual vibe to it, with Rob providing the sort of spaced out gospel funk preaching on songs like "I've Got To See You Again, Lord" and "He Shall Live In You" that reminds us of some soulful early Parliament/Funkadelic stuff along those lines. His slightly gruff voice is compelling, and stands in nice contrast to the sweet, soft backing chorus. And though while this is not "just" dance music, this IS super funky, with irresistible rhythms and magnificent horns that both groove and warble. When Rob sings "Loose Up Yourself" on the opening track, you will!
Of the many great Afro-funk reissues we've seen lately, this one is a definite standout, up there with Danger by the Lijadu Sisters, ferinstance. Packaged with the usual Soundway care (the cd in mini-lp style sleeve), and the vinyl version comes with download code.
This is the second full length from this German black metal horde, and like most black metal records, opens with an intro (or 'Prolog' here), but this intro had us immediately mesmerized, sounding like some strange organ driven seventies soundtrack, all Goblin-y and Carpenter-ish, creaking guitar strings simulating rusty old hinges, while the organ metes out a creepy ominous funereal dirge, all underpinned by an ominous low end fog horn like drone, we secretly found ourselves hoping the band weren't actually black metal, that despite the illegible logo and the grim black and white artwork and the corpse painted band members (who do look seriously bad ass to be fair), they were in fact ambient soundtrackers or experimental soundscapers, but our disappointment when discovering that they were indeed a black metal band, lasted about ten seconds, before we were totally won over, and sucked into their buzzing, howling, frosty maelstrom of grimbuzz and blackblast, a creepy almost atmospheric doomed out beginning, gives way to a furious frenetic black blowout, that again surprisingly switches gears and infuses their buzzing blackness with some classic metal style riffery, some weirdly hooky melody, and some killer almost punkish riffing, all of this delivered with a fury and intensity that is exactly why we love true grim black metal. There's nothing super experimental about this stuff, or more accurately fucked up or weird. There is definitely an experimental bent, but it's subtly woven into the fabric of these gloriously black missives, the opener alone is a dizzying epic, that flits from doomy churn, to pounding classic metal, to soaring majestic blackness, to gnarled grinding buzz, the guitars thick and caustic, the drumming an avalanche of blasts and pounds, and the vocals, a demonic rasp, that all adds up to some seriously classic modern blackness. The record finishes off with an outro that mirrors the Goblin/Carpenter aspirations of the intro, all operatic and mysterious, with a strange spoken word over circusy organs and soaring strings, clouds of ethereal angelic vox, perfectly bookending the black buzz that lies in between.
Debut ep from this Dutch atmospheric depressive black metal horde, named for an infamous forest in Japan infamous for its suicides, and like the recent double disc from long time aQ faves Happy Days, Sea Of Trees traffic in the same sort of lilting, sorrowful super melodic blackness, that sonically owes more to post rock and jangle pop really than black metal, the only real elements making this black metal, the buzz, although plenty of pop is rife with buzz, and the vocals, which are of the shrieking, hysterical, almost operatic bent, and it's those vocals, that may just relegate this to black metal fans. Which is a shame, cuz the music is gorgeous, lush acoustic guitars, swoonsome sad melodies, the arrangements simple, but hypnotic and heavy, the opening track slipping from folky and acoustic, to dirgey and doomy, to soaring and sorrowfully majestic, the guitars (of which there are THREE), unfurling melancholic laments over blurred crumbling distorted dirges, and then BAM, the band will explode into some serious buzzing, blasting black metal buzz, but even then, the sound remains impossibly melodic and miserable minor key, and then before too long, it shifts right back into a more midtempo pound, before finishing off in a squall of buzzy, shoegaze blackened pop. The vocals mostly shriek, but occasionally get super dramatic and crazily over the top, which somehow suits the sound. Fans of Lifelover, Happy Days of course, Urfaust and other similarly pop minded weirdo black metal outfits will dig big time.
After a brief classical acoustic guitar interlude, the second proper track stumbles into action, a blurred, blackened dirge, much less poppy and melodic than the opener, but with plenty of classic metal-isms hidden among the shrieking dirgery, and when the track shifts gears a minute in, it does end up aligning itself closer to the dour poppiness of the opener, but here, the sound is distinctly darker and doomier, the guitars still epic and majestic, the classic metal vibe all but taking over in places, a whole record of tracks like this would have the true metal-heads worshipping at the altar of Sea Of Trees, but for now, we can revel in this brief bit of black pop / dirge doom / post-rock / black metal weirdness.
Awesome packaging too, the disc itself a 3" embedded in a proper 5" cd sized plastic disc, the screen printing over the disc proper, but also designs printed on the clear portion of the disc. Quite striking!
Been waiting for this one for a while! Kinda mysterious, really. Certain sources say that this supposedly came out in 2010, but it never seemed to materialize at any of our suppliers. Last year, a vinyl version was released (and we might still have like one copy left) and so we thought the cd was immediately impending too, and kept waiting for it, and waiting... finally, it's actually available!! And worth the wait, 'cause we LOVE the ripping instru-metal stoner rock heaviness that Philadelphia's Serpent Throne brings, as displayed on earlier albums The Battle Of Old Crow and fake '70s biker flick soundtrack Ride Satan Ride.
White Summer - Black Winter is again a tour-de-force of '70s sounding, twin guitar, heavy riff rockin' psychmetal, sans vocals. For being an instrumental band, they manage to make their songs SONGS, y'know, not just jams, though they DO go off, too. Total chugging doomed out glory, adorned with resounding, heartbreaking harmonies, with titles like "March Of The Druids", "Riff Forest", "Pagan Eclipse", and (the remarkably mellow) "Mushroom Cloud". Damn good, somewhere twixt The Fucking Champs, and Earthless (but like we said, less jammy), and real deal '70s stuff a la Wishbone Ash, early Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, and Poobah.
A few years back, we wrote A LOT about The Battle Of Old Crow, hopefully that enticed you to pick it up then, and you're as eager for this new one as we are. Or, if you're new to Serpent Throne, this one oughtta make you a fan, if you dig folks playing the heck out of their guitars, at Black Sabbath inspired levels of heaviness and riff-mastery (and why wouldn't you??). Folks into fellow Phillies Stinking Lizaveta should also like 'em, Zebulon Pike fans too. Recommended.
Another gorgeous discovery courtesy of Japanese reissue label EM, this one from Algerian composer / pianist Mustapha Skandrani, who recorded this record in 1965 in Paris, and raised quite a few eyebrows (in fact, nvoked much scorn and derision) by choosing to perform a handful of traditional Algerian vocal pieces (istikhbars) transcribed for piano, the most European of instruments (hence the derision). But purists of the time be damned, the results are stunning, these solo piano pieces are so lovely, haunting and stately, melodic and lyrical, with Skandrani presenting two versions of each piece, first the modal istikhbar, and then a subtly more fluid and loosely expressive improvisation based on that istikhbar, directly following it, a pattern that continues for the duration of the record, which definitely displays the two seemingly disparate influences, European and Andalusian, interacting and complimenting each other, these variations and interpretations not at all divisive, as the naysayers would have had listeners believe, but instead a bridging of musics and cultures, the liner notes mention this sounding a bit like Glenn Gould, Skandrani's Istikhbars & Improvisations like a modal Goldberg Variations, although we also hear echoes of G.I. Gurdjieff, an Eastern tinged moodiness and sinuous fluidity that also brings to mind Ethiopian pianist Tsegue-Maryam Guebro of Ethiopiques Vol. 21 fame.
So beautiful, and so recommended.
Like all EM releases, gorgeous packaging, with extensive liners notes in both Japanese and English.
New full length of twisted, groovy, outsider Neanderthal dance rock post punk whatthefuckery from these Minneapolis knuckle dragging, dancefloor deviants, whose sound is a splatter of synth squelch and analog blurt over dubbed out Load-rock style grooviness. Think Butthole Surfers or Chrome, but via Foetus or ESG or something equally preposterous, someone here thought it sounded like a mash up of some obscure Nirvana Bleach demo and the soundtrack to Cafe Flesh (!), although the closest noise rock analogue would obviously be Six Finger Satellite.
Kryptonym Bodliak is all sci-fi eighties retro club music and raw post punk funkiness, roughed up a bit around the edges and flecked with subtle noise rockisms, the least subtle of which are the vocals, super fucked up and heavily processed, alternately barked and howled, moaned and garbled, apparently the result of a contact mic-ed gasmask, transforming the vocals into a stuttering, mush-mouthed speaking-in-tongues sort of alien Make-Up style testifyin', all draped over lo-fi drum grooves, skronky sax, junkyard percussion, primitive keyboards, and thick slithery basslines. The band definitely seem capable of pulling off some true old school style post punk funk, but they're obvious noiseniks at heart, so that stuff is wreathed in plenty of cacophony and crunch, the results surprisingly rad, and the sort of stuff that must get a crowd of sweaty punks to shake their rumps, which is never a bad thing.
When Man With Potential, the latest solo record from Pete Swanson, one half of late great floorcore noise outfit Yellow Swans, first came out late last year, it sold out so fast, we never got a chance to list it, in fact we got so few copies we sold out before most of US even got to hear it, so we weren't really sure what the hubbub was all about, other than it involved 'beats'. Thankfully, it's been repressed. And thankfully, Man With Potential is nothing nearly as simple as a noise record with beats, although it is quite noisy, and is definitely the most rhythmic thing we've heard from Swanson. Opener Misery Beat unfurls a dizzying swirl of creaks and squeaks, bloops and bleeps, into a dizzying churn, the beat hear more implied, a pulsing chunk of crumbling low end dragged along in the loop, but then about three minutes in, the proper beat does in fact drop, a pounding four on the floor house music thud, pulsating beneath the glimmering field of high end skitter and dubbed out bleepage. But let's not forget that Swanson was born of the noise scene, so the track gradually builds momentum, picking up all manner of sonic detritus on the way, heaving swells of super distorted chordal crunch, keening shards of blunted noise, that chittering high end also getting louder and more distorted, until finally, the track sounds like some crazed hybrid of an electronically simulated runaway train, and the noisiest rave ever. It's pretty fantastic stuff, managing to be hypnotic and repetitive, but staying totally engaging and mesmerizing throughout. Follow up "Remote View" follows a similar pattern, this one a bit more dubbed out and woozy, the melodies more stately and melancholic, still wreathed in the same crunch and keen, the sound gristly and corrosive, but weirdly dreamy and drifty as well, sounding almost like a slightly house-ier Portishead by way of Merzbow. Elsewhere, the beat is sometimes sublimated, relegated to a heartbeat like pulse beneath thick sheets of blown out, in-the-red melodic buzz, and carefully sculpted prismatic noise, and still elsewhere, Swanson channels old school gabber through a thick haze of Our Love Will Destroy The World like soft cacophony, and still elsewhere crafts some straight up electro-pop club music, but buries it beneath an avalanche of glorious noise, strangely melodic and lush, almost shoegazey, but an awesome sort of buzz drenched blissiness. And then there's the title track, which might be the noisiest of the bunch, and sounds a bit like several record playing at once, a head spinning collision of Astral Social Club at their beat heaviest, and Our Love Will Destroy The World (again) at his loopiest, but together, it's a wild chunk of swirling psychedelic noisiness that is again surprisingly listenable, eventually blossoming into a wash of blissed out noise drenched dreaminess.
This lp comes with a bonus cd, which is NOT a digital version of Man With Potential, but is instead a whole 'nother record called Man With Garbage, which seem to be culled from the same sessions, as they display a similarly noisy beatiness, although it definitely leans more toward the noise side of the equation, the sound a bit more lo-fi and raw, but even at its noisiest, strap on the headphones and dunk your head in that roiling torrent of sound, and you'll discover all manner of muted melody fractured poppiness and swirling dreamy hooks. "Returns" is a heaving big beat almost Nadja-worthy doomic churn, while the two part, 25 minute "Challenger" is less about beats, and more about texture and timbre, flitting from full on face melting white noise, to stuttering staticky melody flecked crunch and crumble, to blurred blown out psych-noise dreaminess.
We imagine this pressing is probably limited too, so grab one before they're gone. Again!
Yet another fantastic collection of tranced out shamanistic kraut-psych from these aQ faves, the first pressing sold out in a heartbeat, and disappeared before we managed to get even a single copy. This is the second pressing, limited to just 250 copies, and while we did get a bunch, odds are we're gonna sell out quick...
Like the Latitudes record that we listed recently, Perzische Tapijten again finds these Flemish psychedelic alchemists unfurling lush expanses of raga-like shimmer, and darkly propulsive krautrock infused droney druggy mesmer, this time with a bit more of an Eastern influence. The tracks smolder and drift, the opener sends snake charmer melodies slithering through clouds of swirling effects, the vibe sun dappled and dreamy, which darkens considerably in the following track, which churns ominously, the riffage dark and minor key, the drums more plodding and menacing, some serious German Oak dirgery going on, a grim chunk of wah wah-ed bunker psych that is WAY too brief at less than 4 minutes. The rest of the record unwinds drowsily slipping between the two, droning ominously, chugging and churning, then blossoming into warm swirling swells of heady psychedelic shimmer, and drifting back again. Some of the tracks veer into even stranger territory, like "Assassijn", which anchors its sound on what sounds like one of those cheesy Casio keyboard presets, the band burying the looped skitter beneath moaning horns, fluttering synths, swirling FX, and mesmerizingly minimal drumming, but then it's right back into it with "Etherik" a gorgeous slab of Eastern psychedelic raga, busy rhythms float atop low slung sinewy basslines, while a sitar-like guitar buzzes hypnotically above. Finally, the record finishes with a darkly drone bit of softly chaotic psychedelia, sounding like something you might hear on a Sublime Frequencies comp, the sound lo-fi and a bit murky, the guitars blurring into lush smears of chordal thrum, the drums shuffling beneath, totally tranced out, and utter drone-psych bliss. Obviously totally recommended. And also recommended, that you snap one of these up before they're gone for good...
From the always amazing Equation Records, who in the past have brought us incredible records from groups like Fear Falls Burning, Bass Communion, Nadja, Landing, organum, R.Y.N., Troum, Ultrabunny, Apse and more, comes this comprehensive collection of everything ever record by late Eighties UK new wavers Taming The Outback.
Never heard of these guys? Nor had we, but listening to this now, it's a little surprising they didn't make a bigger splash, the label describes them sounding like Killing Joke and Echo & The Bunnymen, which is not that far off.
The sound is dark and jangly, the guitars reverbed and chiming, the bass thick and gloomy, and the vocals, a super anguished dramatic delivery that's a dead ringer for Ian McCulloch, and a perfect match for the group's angular downer pop. We also hear plenty of old U2, back before they became stadium rock whores, that sort of brooding urgency they once trafficked in, and that seems to be the thing with TTO, their sound is dark, and a little bit sinister, a gloomy vibe that makes their sound that much more compelling, especially now, with so many bands looking back to that era to cop their sound, but ultimately unable to conjure up the same sort of passion and pathos. And while this isn't some earth shaking lost treasure discovery, it is pretty damn great, and for anyone into Eighties post punk, or who digs the current crop of retro Eighties rockers, but would rather hear the real thing, then this will definitely hit the spot. And where on first listen we were thinking this was just okay, repeated and frequent listening has found this to be a definite grower, and definitely revealed Taming The Outback as something special indeed.
The normal cd version comes in a gorgeous oversized Stoughton mini lp sleeve style gatefold jacket, with a big booklet, jammed with liner notes, pictures, interviews, articles and more. LIMITED TO 385 COPIES. The super deluxe version includes the same fancy cd version, but also an original copy of the band's only 7", a miniature reproduction of the Alive & Kicking fanzine, a sticker, a two sided mini poster, 4 badges and a special card insert designed by Organum's David Jackman, all housed in a super swank embossed box. LIMITED TO 75 COPIES!!
Death metal dork David Vincent of Morbid Angel (tagline: "No one can conquer me!") is on the cover, and you know that interview is going to be hilarious. Also: Corrosion Of Conformity, Baroness, Autopsy, Saint Vitus, Goatwhore, Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, Terrorizer (the band), Voivod, Asphyx, Dyscarnate, Swallow The Sun, Sigh, Chimp Spanner (?), and more. Bagged with free sampler cd, featuring tracks by some of those acts, and others.
A while back, we reviewed a cd by an SF outfit called Burial Tree, who trafficked in a sort of dusky deserty twang (a la Earth, Barn Owl) fused to a heaving churning mathy postmetal crush (Neurosis, Isis, etc.), well it seems when BT mainman / aQ pal Monte is not doing Burial Tree, he spends his time meticulously crafting a whole different world of sound, under the monicker Time Spent. Four sprawling tracks of haunting rhythmic ambience, sounding at times like Brian Eno jamming with Muslimgauze, especially on the opening track, which unfurls gradually in softly shimmering swells, buried melodies, everything panned and woozily drifting from speaker to speaker, with simple spare percussion surfacing a few minutes in, and transforming the vibe into an almost sort of spaced out dub, we hear hints of African Head Charge too, but Time Spent is much darker, more sonically sinister, the opening track very cinematic evocative of late nights, and cities lit by moonlight, a world in shadow. The second track, the comparatively tranquil/meditative "LaurenClaire", takes the same synth shimmer, but spread it out into soft ethereal billows, more major key, softly sun dappled, a hushed new agey drift, that also finds itself melded to a rhythm, which instead of adding propulsion, seems to add a delicate framework, turning the middle portion of the song into a sort of downtempo shuffle, before drifting into an ether of blurred thrum and field recordings.
"Memories Drift & Fade", begins with a stretch of grey noise static wreathed in sci-fi swirls, before the track blossoms into something blissed out and kosmische, the guitar figures drenched in echo and floating on streaks of spacey shimmer and soft focus cosmic hum, the track, gradually growing less abstract and more guitar driven, the second half sounding like Expo 70 at their most Eno, softly tangled guitar melodies, over swells of prog like synth, all hazy and dreamily druggy, too short even at nearly ten minutes. And finally, the record finishes off with the relatively brief "Warm Chatter", which sounds a bit like one of the more experimental Teenage Filmstars jams, garbled found sounds and random voices, buried beneath a warm liquid swirl of melodic murk and glacial chordal creep, totally hypnotic and mesmerizing, and again, way to brief. Fantastic stuff, and recommended for fans of spaced out kosmische drift, Eno-like new age ambience, and dark, dreamlike dronemusic.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
While we found 2010's Falling Down A Mountain slightly underwhelming, we've quickly fallen under the spell of UK mope rockers Tindersticks' new one, the spoken word driven opening track "Chocolate" playing out like a much more lush (and less sexually deviant) take on Arab Strab, the music so lovely, shuffling drums, tinkling chimes, twang flecked softly psychedelic guitars, a little bit slowcore, a little big Godspeed slow build epic, a dark orchestral late night sprawl of horns and warm sonic swirls, lead vocalist Stuart Staples in story telling mode, it's actually quite compelling, and hauntingly lovely. The rest of the record returns to the Tindersticks sound of old, smoldering and sensual, the instrumentation spare, but the arrangements lush and almost symphonic in places, but nearly skeletal in others, Staples' distinctive croon sounding as good as ever, the music gorgeous and lush as always, but some of our complaints about the last record still ring true, the band trying out different sounds and vibes, none of which suit them as much as the dour dreary doomy pop miserablism that defined their early records, the horns too are a bit much in places too, as are the female background vocals, but folks who dug the last record will like this one too, and longtime fans will of course be pleased, but that first track is definitely a stunner, and might be worth the price of admission on its own...
Another mysterious blast of weirdo Aussie blackness, this one from the awesomely named duo Total Fvcking Darkness, who based on the name and the art and the record title, we would have assumed were gonna spit out some classic Scandinavia beholden buzzing blasting grimness like many of their aQ beloved countrymen, but instead this boy/girl duo kick out some seriously lo-fi blackened doom dirge drone-gaze jams, that sound a bit like blackened new wave via depressive black metal, minus the rasping demonic vokills, this stuff would sound right at home on Siltbreeze, stumbling skeletal drumming, beneath heaving swells of crumbling distortion, and mournful minor key melodies. And hell, on some of the tracks, the vocals are crooned anyway, and then TFD end up sounding like some sort of mysterious lost death rock combo, which is most definitely not a bad thing. Super low fidelity, raw and primitive, and its crooniest and most melodic, this definitely settles somewhere close to Finnish post black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus, that same sort of dour black-wave gloominess. But TFD are definitely a meaner and much grimmer proposition, their sound much more feral and fucked up, and while the band do occasionally get seriously black and blasting and buzzy, even then they still manage to sound less black metal and more sort of like some wildly chaotic blackened gloom punks, the songs all rife with samples too, they're a twisted proposition for sure, and tough to pin down, but we find ourselves digging this quite a bit, and listening to it pretty much nonstop, and we're guessing if you're like us and dig gloomy blackened noisiness, and buzzing lo-fi minimalism, and fucked up doom-gaze dirgery, then Total Fvcking Darkness could be your new favorite band.
Packaged with a full color J-card, and 4 inserts, with different images on one side (including a band photo), while all four can be combined to complete the lyric sheet on the other side.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This was another discovery after digging around through boxes in the back room of aQ, a little stash of tapes from this mysterious band called Trap Of The Trap. They were accompanied by a letter, saying that the band was done, and that the sender of the tapes was embarking on some sort of journey, and they just wanted to find homes for the remaining tapes. Well, somehow it took years for us to finally listen to these, but when we did, holy shit, we totally flipped. Andee played them on his radio show, and we set about trying to track down the band with the intention of getting more, or maybe even re-releasing these ourselves. As it is, we have about 6 copies of each tape, and regardless of future repressing/reissuing possibilities, these are the only copies left of the tape versions, which are all hand screened, and hand drawn, each one numbered, they're super DIY and look amazing, so if you're a tape nerd, you might want to grab one or both of these quick before they're gone, cuz this shit is AMAZING. And like all the coolest stuff, pretty hard to describe. They list a whole mess of instruments, pedals, guitars, monosynth, keyboards, turntables, drum machine, video camera (!), voices, accordion, harmonica, and more, all recorded onto a 3-track (the fourth track was busted), and all woven into a crazy collection of twisted sonic vignettes.
Reverse Mermaid, which is the first one we listened to, starts out with a hazy bit of Philip Jeck like looped swirl, all dreamy and drifty and woozy, which leads directly into "All Cages Open", which is the track that sealed the deal, a strange sort of minimal krautpsych, crafted from primitive rhythms, layered loops, groovy and mesmerizing, everything in a haze of crackle and static, we've probably listened to that track about 20 times. The rest of the tape is just as cool, slipping from Machinefabriek like melodic minimalism, to spaced out dreamfolk shimmer, and from garbled collaged psychedelia to weird outsider kosmische electronic drift, and lots of other strange stops in between.
Poppin' Street Jams, plays out more like fragments, and sketches, there's churning metallic crumbling crunch, there's hazy swirling cinematic post rock minimalism, blissed out gauzy psychedelic drones, primitive outsider electro, blown out melodic crumble, and again, especially on this record, a ton of other twisted fragments and fractured sonic experiments.
Here's hoping this stuff will resurface in some other form down the line, but for now, your tape deck is essentially worthless without one of these crammed in it. Our favorite new (very old) chunk of musical mystery for sure...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This was another discovery after digging around through boxes in the back room of aQ, a little stash of tapes from this mysterious band called Trap Of The Trap. They were accompanied by a letter, saying that the band was done, and that the sender of the tapes was embarking on some sort of journey, and they just wanted to find homes for the remaining tapes. Well, somehow it took years for us to finally listen to these, but when we did, holy shit, we totally flipped. Andee played them on his radio show, and we set about trying to track down the band with the intention of getting more, or maybe even re-releasing these ourselves. As it is, we have about 6 copies of each tape, and regardless of future repressing/reissuing possibilities, these are the only copies left of the tape versions, which are all hand screened, and hand drawn, each one numbered, they're super DIY and look amazing, so if you're a tape nerd, you might want to grab one or both of these quick before they're gone, cuz this shit is AMAZING. And like all the coolest stuff, pretty hard to describe. They list a whole mess of instruments, pedals, guitars, monosynth, keyboards, turntables, drum machine, video camera (!), voices, accordion, harmonica, and more, all recorded onto a 3-track (the fourth track was busted), and all woven into a crazy collection of twisted sonic vignettes.
Reverse Mermaid, which is the first one we listened to, starts out with a hazy bit of Philip Jeck like looped swirl, all dreamy and drifty and woozy, which leads directly into "All Cages Open", which is the track that sealed the deal, a strange sort of minimal krautpsych, crafted from primitive rhythms, layered loops, groovy and mesmerizing, everything in a haze of crackle and static, we've probably listened to that track about 20 times. The rest of the tape is just as cool, slipping from Machinefabriek like melodic minimalism, to spaced out dreamfolk shimmer, and from garbled collaged psychedelia to weird outsider kosmische electronic drift, and lots of other strange stops in between.
Poppin' Street Jams, plays out more like fragments, and sketches, there's churning metallic crumbling crunch, there's hazy swirling cinematic post rock minimalism, blissed out gauzy psychedelic drones, primitive outsider electro, blown out melodic crumble, and again, especially on this record, a ton of other twisted fragments and fractured sonic experiments.
Here's hoping this stuff will resurface in some other form down the line, but for now, your tape deck is essentially worthless without one of these crammed in it. Our favorite new (very old) chunk of musical mystery for sure...
Eald-Ge-Streon reveals a much different Troum than we're used to. This German duo, long time favorites of folks around here (ever since their pre-Troum outfit Maeror Tri) has always delivered gorgeous guitar driven drone music, dark and haunting and hypnotic, which makes sense since Troum also operate the quite excellent Drone label, which specializes in, yep, you guessed it, drones.
Eald-Ge-Streon is a strange record in that it's a sort of odds and ends collection, various recordings begun years ago, left unfinished, or reimagined for various live performances, many finally finished here for the first time, and while the sound is still essentially dronemusic, it's much less guitar driven, much more ethereal and shoegazey, reminding us of Jesu and Nadja and Lovesliescrushing more than the usual suspects. Which is not a bad thing at all.
Epic, majestic, fuzzy, dreamy, washed out, the first track sounds almost pop ambient, thick gauzy swaths of sound drifting, layers upon layers, totally mesmerizing, ethereal, ephemeral, quite beautiful. The second track takes a looped machinelike rhythm, and builds a doom bliss dirge around it, a sort of post industrial shoegaze, that ends up sounding like some recently unearthed gem, except they never really made music like this. "Eolet" is deep drones, but infused with lots of melody, the sound cinematic, soundtracky, dreamy and pretty, not at all gritty or underground, which again is not at all a bad thing.
The rest of the record slips from motorik rhythm driven doom bliss, to soft billowing dreamlike ambience, to tangled blown out almost new wave sounding post industrial crush, to the 16+ minute closer "Crescere", an epic bit of muted drift, that slowly builds to a blackened heaving slab of pulsing pop ambience, laced with gorgeous psychedelic backwards guitar flutter, processed percussion, distant almost new age melodies, all building to an epic, super emotional climax of metallic buzz and sweet swirling shimmer. Fantastic. Comes housed in a super deluxe gatefold digipak designed by Stephen O'Malley with photos by Seldon Hunt.
And while they last, the compact disc version of Eald-Ge-Streon comes with a bonus disc, featuring a brand new 33 minute track, another gorgeously epic chunk of dronemusic, the first nearly ten minutes, a hushed barely there whisper, before the sound thickens, and dark wisps become haunting melodies, the soft buzz grows more rough and dense, transformed into an extended stretch of crumbling distorted low end drift, before the surprisingly melodic, washed out dreamy outro.
It's hard to believe it's been more than 20 years since we first heard NYC noise rockers Unsane, but maybe even harder to believe that their sound, even after 25+ releases, remains relatively unchanged. Wreck offers up another collection of blood splattered, knuckle dragging heaviosity, that sounds just as good as the first time we heard them, via their crushing Sub Pop single, and their still tough to beat self titled debut full length. The math remains the same for the most part, the drums a muscled pummel, the guitars distorted and HEAVY, the bass holding it all together, and Chris Spencer's vox a feral wail. The songs mostly one or two parts, chugging and churning and pounding hypnotically. An exercise in metallic minimalism, a sort of hypno-noiserock. The one change we do notice, is a lot more melody going on, and Spencer's vox a bit softer, and also more melodic. While opener "Rat" is a dead ringer for the Unsane of old, the second track "Decay" ends up sounding almost like Mudhoney, Spencer's vox definitely drifting into Mark Arm territory, with the song offering up some surprisingly melodic broody moodiness. But it suits them. And it's been a while since we've listened to the last few records (we STILL listen to those first few) so those changes may have been creeping up gradually, but they definitely seem more prominent on Wreck. Fear not, Unsane has most definitely NOT gotten soft, the record for the most part is heavy on the headbanging noise rock crush, and any extra melody only makes it go down a little bit easier, but even so, there's plenty of jagged heaviness and head caving noisiness to get stuck in your craw, and do a lot of bloody damage in the process. And be sure and stick around for the closer "Ha Ha Ha", which features Spencer's demonic cackle as the chorus, mirroring Dan Higgs' much less malevolent laughing song, and beyond that, it might be the heaviest, and best of the bunch.
While we haven't had the the opportunity to list very many of his works, we have listed a few, and it should be obvious from those reverent reviews that some folks here at aQ are big, big fans of Harold Budd's special brand of ambient artistry. Just take a look at our write up of Budd's most recent opus, In The Mist: "Forget about the Pop Ambient series, and other modern dreamy music makers, when it comes to simply stunning, calming and beautiful sounds it just doesn't get better than Harold Budd." But of course, we ARE also huge fans of the Kompakt label's ongoing Pop Ambient compilation series (and by saying we, that probably includes you). So, that's why this new release (on a label distributed by Kompakt) is so perfect and makes for a great Record Of The Week, as it brings together a host of current electronic/ambient/lowercase artists, including AQ faves like Biosphere, Xela, and Deaf Center, all paying tribute to Budd. But, it really wouldn't matter at all if you've never heard any Harold Budd before, we'd recommend this as much as any Pop Ambient comp, and that's a big recommendation indeed. Lost In The Humming Air (that title referring perhaps to one of Budd's own inspirations, the telephone wires humming in the wind out in the Mojave Desert where he lived) has become our current go-to disc for our falling-to-sleep-music needs, and as always we mean that in a good way.
Budd, originally an avant garde academic composer back in the '60s who went on to ambient/new age glory in the '70s and beyond, collaborating with Brian Eno and others, certainly does have lots of devoted fans, who love his recordings of atmospheric, usually piano-based bliss... Many of those fans are musicians too, for whom the music of Budd is a touchstone, and who got the good idea of doing this disc, with profits being donated to Budd's favorite charity.
The thirteen recordings here aren't necessarily specific interpretations of Budd's own music, but are pieces inspired and informed (perhaps even moreso than usual for these artists) by Budd's aesthetic, making references to his work, from opening cut "Plateaux" by Deaf Center, with its drifting deep dark bass drones and exquisite, sparse piano... all the way through to the end of the disc, Brock Van Wey's collaboration with his mother, pianist, Criss Van Wey on the elegiac "My Father, My Friend". Along the way, there's plenty of glimmering drones and muted melodies, and even a gently pulsating "Harold Dubb" from Mokira.
Besides the names already mentioned, you'll find the following on here: Loscil, Martin Fuhs, Marsen Jules, Andrew Thomas, Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, Rafael Anton Irisarri, and Porn Sword Tobacco.
We won't try to describe this track-by-track, suffice to say that each artist present reveals their own appreciation of Budd's special sort of ambience, and all share a soft, shimmering, swelling magic, so the listener will indeed be Lost In The Humming Air the whole way through...
Now this is a weird one. Not that we would expect anything less than totally twisted and whtthefuck from Smolken, he of Dead Raven Choir and Wolfmangler, both of whom offer up their very last tracks EVER, in the form of covers of tracks by eighties Swedish dance pop outfit Army Of Lovers. Told you! Weird. And somehow, Smolken recruited some other aQ faves to also try their hand at reinterpreting some AoL tracks: Gnaw Their Tongues, Persistence In Mourning, Josh Lay. A pretty serious lineup for sure, for something that at first blush seems as unserious as it gets, but all it takes is a few seconds of Dead Raven Choir's version of "Crucified" to convince us that maybe this is way more serious than we thought. A grinding, super distorted, lumbering sprawl of buzzing, shrieked black folk cacophony, that manages to retain enough of the original's poppiness to make it weirdly 'catchy', but that onslaught is countered by Josh Lay, whose version of "Requiem" is a gorgeously murky crawl, all muted pulsations, a sort of heroin-house vibe, slowed down voices and plenty of buzz and drone blurred into a swirling blackened morass, the vocals delivered in a demonic croak, twisted, but weirdly moody and mesmerizing. The side is finished off with Gnaw Their Tongues, who transform Army Of Lovers into an epic symphony of black buzz and gargled demonic vokills, of blasting beats and frantic black riffing, it's GTT at its most traditionally black metal, which is odd considering the circumstances, and the murky blasting buzz is laced with all manner of cool melodic flourishes and dense layered textures, although all that subtlety is ground into one massive heaving wall of frenzied black fury.
The B side begins with Persistence Of Mourning, who open up with a squalls of electronics and sci-fi buzz, and weird samples, eventually smothering that in a sprawling oozing black doom, thick glacial riffage, pounding Teutonic rhythms, the sounds all blurred and smeared into a woozy downtuned creep, haunting and heavy, and in its own abject way, darkly dreamy, and then finally, Wolfmangler finishes everything off with what is Wolfmangler's final track EVER, in which Army Of Lovers becomes a cello driven doom folk crawl, grinding low end tones, moaning mournful melodies, urgently whispered vocals, a haunting hellish chamber doom that slithers and groans, and unwinds woozily before finally fading to black.
INSANE packaging, the tape wrapped in a black rubber glove, the rubber wrapped tape bundled with a thick full color printed insert, all wrapped inside of a full color O-card, and then everything housed in a eye popping full color outer sleeve, almost like the limited cassette version of a Russian nesting doll! LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!!
Folks who've visited aQuarius in person no doubt have noticed the little mini arcade going on, we have Tron, Joust, Ghosts & Goblins and Rastan, and if we had more room, you can bet there'd be more. And along with out love of classic arcade games, comes with a nostalgia and extreme appreciation for the video game music that soundtracked so much our our childhood. Glorious symphonies in 8-bit sound, from goofy and playful bloops and bleeps to haunting and ominous buzzing soundscapes (we'd posit that Rastan has some of the best music EVER, and not just video game music), even removed from the context of the game, those songs and sounds displayed an amazing creativity, doing so much with so little, this impossibly limited sonic palette birthing an impossibly kaleidoscopic array of sounds. We've reviewed a handful of 8-bit recordings in the past, there being a bit of a resurgence in chip-tunes, folks making new music out of modded chips from vintage video games, heck we've even gone so far as ONE-bit sounds, becoming a bit obsessed with the compositions of one bit composer Tristan Perich. But this new collection holds a special place in our hearts, as some of us here at aQ, long before everyone had a personal computer in their house (and in their phone!), were the proud owners of what was once cutting edge personal computing technology, the Commodore 64! Complete with CASSETTE TAPE DRIVE!! It seems laughable now, but the C64 definitely inspired a cult of nerds, one that remains strangely obsessed to this day. Which brings us to SID Chip Sounds, which is in fact, a collection of music from classic Commodore 64 games, and for the 8-bit and C64 obsessed out there, this is totally essential, a handful of classics, and a bunch of weird games we'd never heard of, but all the sounds so fun and cool, the sounds driving and hypnotic, goofy and even psychedelic, and so weirdly prescient of the current fascination with lo-fi sounds and experimental electronics. In fact much of this could totally pass for some modern cd-r releasing bedroom electronics tinkerer. But that said, so much of this stuff is just so masterfully composed and created, again, conjuring up lush landscapes and intricately melodic passages, from an incredibly limited palette. Dig deep into this comp, and you'll hear tracks that sound like video game krautrock, spaced out 8-bit cosmic disco, and some swirly new agey ambience, even one that sorta sounds like Deep Purple, but all delivered via a fantastically antiquated lo-bit delivery system, and with a sound that manages to be nostalgic, but in its own weird way sort of timeless! Composers include Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, and more, doing themes for such games as Last Ninja, Gauntlet 3, Glider Rider, Commando, and Arkanoid, among others.
It seems like of all the Sublime Frequencies releases, all of which are incredible, many so incredible we felt compelled to make them aQ Records Of The Week, none has been as hotly anticipated as this one, ever since word of this release first surfaced, we would constantly get requests and inquiries, folks DYING to get their hands on a copy, and we'd be lying if we said we weren't pretty excited ourselves. So finally, here it is, Saigon Rock & Soul, a collection of fuzzy psychedelic Western influenced Vietnamese garage rock and pop, from the late sixties to the early seventies, heavily influenced by Western music of the time of course, but still somehow so totally and uniquely Southeast Asian.
And like most of these collections, the sounds vary greatly, from super distorted acid drenched psychedelia, to fuzz guitar funk, to wild ramshackle garage rock, to dark smoky soul ballads and pretty much every stop in between.
The history of this music, and the story of its creation, is as amazing as the music itself, as all of these tracks were recorded while the Vietnam war raged, recorded in makeshift studios, sometimes in US Army, camps, released as super limited 45's and tapes, the sounds constantly evolving as local musicians were exposed to the music American G.I.'s would bring over with them, from the surf rock of the Ventures and the Shadows, to stuff like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Santana, Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, hence the heaviness of some of these tracks, with bands emulating that super distorted guitar tone and that druggy sixties psychedelic vibe.
And some of this stuff really is heavy, the record opens with CBC Band's "Tinh Tuyet Voi", which explodes out of the gate with some seriously fuzzed out caustic guitar riffing, and then there's the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus, that almost sounds like the record is skipping, totally psychedelic and mesmerizing, wild drumming, lysergic leads - here's hoping Sublime Frequencies has a CBC Band reissue in the works!
The rest of the tracks, while maybe not quite as heavy, are still super fuzzy and rocking and groovy, from wild horn drenched exotica, to organ driven garage rock grooves, to funky psychedelic soul, horns all over the place, wild psych guitar leads, super distorted fuzz basslines, pounded piano, loose chaotic drumming, lots of distortion and reverb, even some sampled birdsong (!), the vocals wailed and howled and growled, some of the tracks getting all dark and soulful and smoky, no doubt a nod to the Motown sound, also a huge influence on Vietnamese music of the time, but for the most part, the sound of Saigon at the time was fuzzy and buzzy, wild and rambunctious, rocking and totally psychedelic. Fantastic stuff, and while many of the groups featured here are some of the most popular artists in Vietnam at the time, most of them have remained pretty much entirely unheard by Western ears, until now.
SUPER LIMITED of course, vinyl-only, and it's pressed on nice heavy vinyl, and housed in a thick full color gatefold sleeve, with extensive liner notes on the music, the musicians, and the era, as well as some amazing photos.
By now, the term 'minimal wave' has become synonymous with a particular thread of somewhat dystopian and certainly DIY electronic pop whose origins land somewhere between 1978 and 1984. Back then, all of this music was probably lumped under the new wave or post-punk or maybe even industrial category; but thanks to Veronica Vasicka's label, a new taxonomy has stuck, and more than a handful of archivist labels following suit, including the exceptionally well curated Dark Entries alongside Vasicka's Minimal Wave.
Here, we have the second co-release between Minimal Wave and Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw, collecting very rare tracks from very obscure 'minimal wave' acts mostly from that aforementioned time period. The only artist on this compilation with something of cultural cache would be Felix Kubin, whose contribution here is a cover of the jittery Germanic punk number "Japan Japan" by Abwarts, turning the frenzied pogo guitars and drums into Devo-esque electronic squeak and double-timed drum machination. Of course, Kubin adds his signature blankly-serious silliness to the reworking which dated back even to this track from 1985. Lesser known acts include Subject (with Belgian electronic maverick Alain Neffe providing the backing track to the impressively infectious guitar riff and motorik chug), Ruins (not to be confused with the Japanese group, this Italian act takes after the mid-'80s Factory Records dark discotheque productions a la Section 25) and Das Ding (a Dutch project of buzzing synth workouts who we only discovered through a full album reissued by Minimal Wave). Other total obscurities include the crooning melodrama of Class Info, the terse arpeggio of Hard Corps, and the contemporary production of Geneva Jacuzzi making a cheap electro-tango that harks back to the chimerical publications from 99 Records. It all makes for another fine piece of archival curation from Minimal Wave!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
It's practically raining Mississippi Records around here these days, no complaints, though sometimes it can be difficult for us to focus on which ones we want to review first! Not too difficult in this case though, as What Remains Of Eden, released in conjunction with Mississippi's Canary imprint and the Change label, focuses on Middle Eastern recordings made in the late 1920s all the way up to the early 1950s, which we are always curious to hear more of, as these sounds are still so incomprehensibly beautiful and exotic to our ears. This album is a great companion piece to Tompkins Square's massive To What Strange Place: The Music Of The Ottoman-American Diaspora 3cd set, though unlike those recordings which were made by immigrants living in New York, the records represented here were imported to America by labels who in the midst of the Great Depression found this method more profitable than having to actually pay musicians working in America. The notes bring up this unique aspect of the compilation, as these songs weren't culled from records found in the Middle East but instead from records sold mainly to Christian and Jewish minorities in the U.S., thereby representing specific market tastes.
The music within came from the regions making up present-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, and the Ottoman roots are unmistakable. The deep spiritual nature of this region, home of the historical Garden of Eden, is reflected in each song, and anyone who has enjoyed previous Mississippi / Canary outings like the String Of Pearls compilation, Marika Papagika's The Further The Flame, The Worse It Burns and recent ROTW honoree Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, will find much to love. As always, highly recommended.
If you love old school punk, indie pop, garage rawk, fun, AND you need help keeping track of your days/months/years (at least from May 2012 through to December 2014), then this is for you. Huh?! Please stick with us, it'll all make sense soon....
The inimitable Nardwuar The Human Serviette returns to the recorded realm, once more with his buddy Andrew W.K. in tow, along with a crowd of other musical pals. A lifelong championer of music's unsung heroes (mostly those with Canadian roots), a feverish pursuer of interviews with entertainment figures large and small, and a tireless digger-upper of the most obscure trivia morsels about said interview subjects, Nardwuar's latest musical offering is just as obsessive. It's a compilation which featured his own band The Evaporators (whose line-up currently stars bassist Stephen Hamm formerly of the infamous mid-'80s Vancouver punk band Slow and the New Pornographers' John Collins on lead guitar), Mr. W.K., Franz Ferdinand, Kate Nash, Sage Francis, The Cribs, Fuad & The Feztones (aka the latest Montreal outfit by Bobby Beaton and John Davis of the mighty Gruesomes with The Stills' Dave Hamelin and Liam O'Neil), and more. The baker's dozen selection is a split between originals by The Evaporators; the assorted UK, US and Canadian guests covering Canadian indie tunes originally by Pointed Sticks, Cub (Cup's first band!), The Dishrags, and rockabilly truck driver (!) Doug Rutledge; and yes, a brief interview clip (because it just wouldn't be a Nardwuar release without one, would it?). The Evaps sound beefier and better than ever. Although their songwriting still has a true unpolished garage rawk heart, the higher-fi production on this record suit them well. They sound huge compared to past releases, which is particularly appropriate on a couple of their songs here - namely, the title track (which, by the way, is not a cover of the Bing Crosby song of the same name) and the fists-in-the-air-smile-on-your-face anthemics of "I Hate Being Late When I'm Early". By now you might've caught wind of the latter, a wild'n'woolly duet with Andrew W.K. (especially if you attended SXSW last month where they played four shows, one with W.K. guesting on organ). It's a full-blown bombastic power pop song with totally silly lyrics (would you expect anything else from W.K. and Nardwuar?) and Sweet-esque vocals in the chorus that you can't help but sing along to. All in all, Busy Doing Nothing is a frantically paced gleeful collection of tunes sure to get you primed and ready for summertime.
But wait, there's still more fun packed into this release because Nardwuar The Serviette is a generous soul who always loves to dish out bonus gifts even if it isn't Christmas time or your birthday. Included with the vinyl is a 40-page calendar (yup, you heard right, forty, this ain't an ordinary twelve month deal!) filled with vintage black and white punk rock photos (from waaay back in the day circa '70s and early '80s!) by veteran punk rock photographer Bev Davies. There are shots of The Cramps, PiL, The Cure, New Order, The Minutemen, Joan Jett, Girlschool, The Adolescents, Pointed Sticks, Iggy Pop, The Slits, Gun Club, U2, extras on the movie set of "Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains", and James Brown. Wha'?! Yeah, that last one might seem a bit incongruous, but then again, he might've been more punk than any of the others, eh?
A super rad colored vinyl co-release by Nardwuar and Mint Records with handlettering completely designed and drawn by Cup!
Originally released as an ultra limited cassette in 2001, Vatican Shadow is the alter ego of Dominick Fernow, the man who runs the Hospital Productions label, performs and records as Prurient and who is a sometime member of Cold Cave, but who in Vatican Shadow, traffics in a warped lo-fi new wave, the sort of thing you'd expect to hear in the back room of some weird goth club in the eighties, or on a dubbed tape you found in the backseat of your goth friend's car. The sounds is a swirl of shitty Burzumic synths, and looped programmed soft beats, all in a haze of low fidelity tape hiss and atmospheric murk, it's washed out and dreamy, druggy and woozily hypnotic, opener "Chopper Crash Marines' Names Released" (the first of many titles that point to a distinctive and very specific theme), is the sort of warped crumbling primitive new wave loopage that we could listen to forever, and the song really does lock into a loop and just churns away, wrapping the above sounds around a low slung Joy Division-y bass line, and then trancing out completely. A fantastic chunk of hypno-wave mesmer, that pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record. Each track a warbly looped melody driven by a crunchy, crumbly drum loop, while all around those sounds, Fernow wraps various streaks of hum and thrum, hiss and whir, brief bits of melody here and there soft melodic swells once in a while, but it's always subtle, the songs more about that hypnotic looped drone-wave at their core. But within that strictly defined sound, Fernow does manage to transform his looped hypno-wave into various permutations, whether it's crunchy and caustic and industrial, or Depeche Mode like new wave pop, or ominous droned out crunch, or lumbering spectral witch house drag, or tripped out almost Muslimgauze shuffles, of blown out super distorted new wave shoegaze pop, each track and every permutation retains Vatican Shadow's raison d'etre, which seems to be creating these insulated hypnotic retro rhythmic wave-scapes, and in doing so, inspiring a drugged out musical trance. Totally mesmerizing.
Veronica Falls' debut full length from a few months back became a runaway hit around aQ, and for some of us it still gets played constantly. So we were super excited to discover this brand new 7", which really just takes up right where the album left off, the A side a fuzzy chunk of propulsive dream pop, all hazy vox over spidery guitar jangle, a little bit of boy/girl vocal interplay, a little buzz and crunch, but all the edges smoothed away leaving a lush billowing cloud of perfect pop, the song soars and shimmers and is catchy as all get out. And as you might imagine the B side is no slouch either, a more subdued, almost ballad, organs whir, simple skeletal drums drift beneath a warm whirl of soft focus pop, the boy / girl vox again gorgeously dreamy and softly reverbed, the result a dreamily meditative dark pop gem, that has us already hankering for the next full length!
Debut release from this new SF band, born from late great punk pop weirdos the Sopors, who basically went mostly unheard outside of their little scene (which also included pop tUMULt pop heroes the Ovens!). And while we're doing our best to track down copies of the Sopors lp to review, we've got this new record from Violent Change, at the time of this tape essentially a solo record by Sopors mainman Matt Bleyle, although since, the band has been expanded to an actual group that includes Tony from the Ovens. And all of these mentions of the Ovens is not for nothing, cuz Violent Change definitely has the same sort of pop vibe as the Ovens, but where the Ovens take the Beatles and Weezer and the Champs, Violent Change are a much more twisted and lo-fi proposition, an obvious comparison is definitely Guided By Voices, in fact, we'd imagine fans of GBV would flip for these guys, who kick out perfect pop jams at the drop of a hat, but don't shy away from getting more punky, or twisting a perfectly good pop song into a gloomy chunk of deeply crooned post punk dirgery. That said, the bulk of this tape is some of THEE catchiest lo-fi pop you're bound to hear EVER, with excursion into blasting punk rock, noisy freakouts, and at least one track that is a dead ringer for the Ovens, but the whole thing all fuzzy, and ramshackle and gloriously lo-fi, and punky and catchy and probably the most listened to tape in the shop!!
As long time readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, we definitely have a thing for Finnish music, and Finnish music of all stripes, be it freaky forest folk, churning metallic hypnorock, twisted outsider cabaret, or progged out whatthefuck weirdness, but not all Finnish music is so flat out twisted, there's plenty of other amazing stuff going on, a lot of which we're not always hip to. Which is why we can thank local label Friendly Fire for introducing us to Ethiopian-Finnish folk singer Mirel Wagner, who conjures up a darkly haunting soundworld of bleak murder balladry, and grim blackened doom folk, her voice gorgeous and mysterious, childlike at times, but definitely with a chilling world weariness, perfectly accompanied by Wagner's spare skeletal acoustic guitar, the sound alternatingly clear and crystalline, murky and deeply reverbed, but always lush and lovely, hypnotic and tranced out, the vibe bleak and brooding, the soundtrack for shadowy late nights, for vast expanses of wind swept emptiness, the sort of mysterious songsmithery you might expect to discover next to a campfire, in some post apocalyptic otherworld, a dusty cloaked figure, hunched over the fire, face obscured by shadows, fingers deftly moving along the neck of a battered old guitar, the music drifting heavenward, through clouds of fireflies bleeding into fields of glimmering stars, Wagner's music like some end of the world lullaby. So gorgeous.
Ok, pink vinyl all gone, but we do have a few of the white vinyl left, listed last week...
The latest full length from these East Coast psychedelic space rockers and long time aQ faves find the band at their most rocking, trading in some of their soaring heart-of-the-sun blissed out psych jams for something a bit more Stooges-y, launching right into it with "Pads Of Light" which is definitely their most overtly hard rocking, channeling Loop and Spacemen 3 as much as Hawkwind, the pounding riff heavy churn still wreathed in swaths of celestial effects and underpinned by multiple layers of guitars, the song a seemingly simple three chord pound, but the production is massive, and the song offers up super melodic refrains, some gorgeously melodic basslines, and a second half that's all wild cosmic shred, soaring melodies, soft squalls of psych guitar tangle and more swooshing effects, on past records it might have stretched out for 10 more minutes, but here the band wind it down after just four. But fear not, the follow up "Robot Stomp" is a sprawling 12 minutes, a slow burn smoldering chug through clouds of shimmer and buried voices, some serious mesmerizing hypno-psych krautdrone mesmer, we kept expecting he song to explode into another part, but the band stay locked tight, letting the groove unwind slowly and druggily, the surrounding sounds getting more and more active, swirls of effects, warped woozy melodies, bombarded by squelches and glitches and lazer like bleeps and bloops, not to mention soaring string like synths, super dramatic and tense and intense, which leads directly into another rocker, the relatively brief "You Dream You See", which swaggers and slithers, the guitars thick and warm, the drums dense and tribal, laced with blasts of psych guitar freakout, finally, slipping into some abstract spaced out psychedelic drift for the last half of the song, another part that could easily have stretched out for two or three times as long.
"Song Of Everything" manages to merge the two sides of the band perfectly, the droned out psychedelic hypnorock, and the urgent riff heavy hard rock, the band slipping seamlessly between the two, before collapsing into a weird sort of abstract outer space drift, laced with spidery tendrils of melody, shards of wah wah, processed vox, spoken, and slowed down, super trippy and far out, before finally exploding into a final minute of chugging, churning psychedelic hard rock riffing.
And finally, the record closes with the awesomely titled "I Write A Thousand Letters Pulp On Bone", a hazy, woozy, dreamily druggy single part, repeated over and over, the listener sucked in and sent spinning into the ether, a cool super dynamic drum part, soaring swells of shimmery synth, while all around guitar and effects whirl and swirl and drift, definitely the sort of thing we could listen to forever, and the perfect finish, a sort of chill out, come down droned out psychedelic coda, that does get heavier and heavier, but also seems to get further and further out, and takes us willingly with it. Needless to say, absolutely recommended. And while we're tempted to say this might be the best White Hills yet, let's just say it's another fantastic record from a band whose given us pretty much nothing but fantastic records.
And, needless to say with a White Hills release, the vinyl is on the limited side of things, and going fast (pink vinyl gone)..
After a whole mess of crazy limited cd-r releases, this is only the 2nd proper, actual cd release from these East Coast blown out garage psych space rockers. Avid readers of the list will no doubt by now, be hip to these guys, their wall of guitar, Hawkwind meets the Stooges meets Monster Magnet meets the Heads is tough to beat, every song drenched in wild outer space FX, the drums pounding beneath an avalanche of psychedelic guitar, the vocals, shadows flitting across the molten surface of these tracks, barely audible just another layer of dense fuzz.
So how does this record stack up to the rest? We mentioned that the last release, the tour only Abstractions And Mutations, was the band's fiercest yet, but Heads On Fire might have us reassessing. Cuz this has to be exactly what it would sound like if your head was indeed on fire.
The opener is a heavy as fuck space rock romp, right out of the gate, a wall of buzzing wah wah guitar is loosed, and all you can do is hang on for the ride, it's like Spacemen 3 on speed, that same sort of billowy tripped out warm guitar buzz, but souped WAY up, supercharged, a blinding supernova of freaked out garage rock psychedelia. But the track right after that is way riffier, a serious Stooges-y stomp, plenty of guitar crunch and psychedelic squalls, but the vocals are more present, a sort of Wyndorf style lord mother fucker drawl, wrapped in reverb and draped over the jagged riffing and pounding drums.
Then there's "Don't Be Afraid", which begins with whipping wind and distant foghorns, ominous and mysterious, a phone being dialed, ringing and ringing, the band gradually coming in, a slow lope, simple tribal drums, a laid back guitar line, soft fuzzy swells of sound in the background, a lugubrious slow build, the vocals howled and spacey, reverbed and dripping with delay, the guitar getting gradually more and more jagged and distorted, until everything drops out, just wind, and muted electronics, muffled FX, the bass line creeping along steadily, bits of melody drifting by, the vocals come back in and BAM the band takes off, the guitar spitting flames, the drums falling down a mineshaft, a huge tangle of psychedelic space rock chaos, and then nothing, a weird, barely there, 5 minute outro, bits of guitar, creaking and buzzing, more wind, and finally silence.
And in case that last 30 minutes, and those last 5 in particular, had you forgetting just where you were, the band shuts things down with 4+ minutes of furious fuzz and pummeling pound, thick and corrosive, and so distorted the riffs seem to melt into each other, the vocals sung from the bottom of a well, a bit of start stop dynamics, replete with creepy giggling children, and then the perfect send off, a sky full of psychedelic fireworks, multicolored streaks of white hot guitar, a blinding ear full of sonic pyrotechnics like staring straight into the sun.
This is another one of those cases, where we were sort of obsessed before we even heard a note of music. They're called Wizard Rifle, which is simultaneously the raddest and stupidest band name ever, they claim to play 'scrap metal', they have songs with titles like "Tears Won't Soften Steel" and "Leathery Gentlemen", they even have a song named for legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, and then there's the band photo, which has one guy dressed like and old timey dandy in a rocking chair holding a rifle, while the other guy is wearing zebra print spandex, is wearing hand made wings, is painted all over and is brandishing a scythe, that band photo could have gone either way actually, but when combined with all the other stuff, we had a feeling...
And holy shit, sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover, and these Portland scrap metallers totally destroy, taking their cues from groups like Karp, that sort of relentlessly pounding metallic churn, and Lightning Bolt, that sort of frenzied hyper prog bombast, in fact, in some ways, that's the perfect equation to describe these guys, Karp plus Lightning Bolt. BUT, and this is critical, they take those two sounds, and totally make them their own, they're definitely as frantic and mathed out as Lightning Bolt, and maniacally metallic as Karp, but they've created something even more poppy and proggy, and totally wild and fucking over the top fun. One of those rare bands that sound like they just might be one of the funnest bands to see EVER. We'd happily base that on the first track along, the 6+ minute hyper-pop-prog-metal workout that is "Tears Won't Soften Steel", which begins with a little flurry of hazy guitar, which is then joined by some furious drum pound, all wreathed ins swirling bleeps and bloops, the guitar offering up shards of angular riffage, soaring and squiggly, before finally launching into some seriously Karp-ed out krunch, but here wedded to some crooned Torche-like pop song vox, a weird combination that kills, the Karp-ness at times is uncanny, but then the band will explode into crazy mathiness, or some weird sing along start-stops, or some doomy metallic chug and churn, and then some awesome harmonized guitars that make this sound like the heaviest pop record of all time, the sort of part that sends you diving for the rewind button the second it finishes, thankfully, the band hammer away at that part, soaring and melodic and so catchy, before the final super rocking sing along finish.
And while the opener might be our favorite, the rest of the record is fast catching up, "Frazetta" has the coolest heaviest opening, before locking into some swirling dizzying pop infused metallic mayhem, there are samples too, and the band seem to flit from part to part at the drop of a dime, so tight, so heavy, and yeah, so totally fun. From there on out, the band dip their toes into some brooding minimal shimmer, only to see it splinter into a slithery sludge pop groove, with some haunting harmonized vocals, while elsewhere they take frantic frenzied blasts of metal and pepper them with progged out breakdowns, and wrap them in surprisingly poppy vox, and finally, they finish things off with "Leathery Gentlemen" which in some ways sounds basically like a culmination of everything that came before, grinding metallic crush, blasting sludge pop bliss, soaring harmonized vox, wild dueling guitars, mathed out progginess, and a surprise bit of swirling psychedelic backwards guitar flecked drift, only to explode into a blastbeat driven stretch of soaring metal majesty, that might be the most furious part of the whole record, only to devolve in the last minute into a warped woozy, increasingly dizzying noise pop freakout.
The apocalypse has come to mean 'the end of the world' but its original Greek definition is that of 'revelation,' albeit a really fucking heavy revelation of how the world is going to end. The differences between the pop-cultural definition and the biblical definition are somewhat semantic, but it's apt to mention in regards to Chelsea Wolfe's second record which situates the title in the context of the Greek alphabet. It's pretty clear that the revelations that Chelsea Wolfe spills across her brilliant doom-folk album don't aspire to the allegories and mystical visions pronounced by David Tibet, rather she seems to be clamoring about the conditions leading up to the end of the world. With demonic possession, toxic wastelands, and haunted sexuality being so prevalent in her ghastly world view, it's no wonder she's bellowing that the end is near.
Wolfe's first record - The Grime And The Glow - was a home-recorded affair, whose tape murk added to the choking-on-smog atmosphere of the dour songs. The sparse arrangements aggressively strummed on acoustic guitar shot all of the attention back on Wolfe's beguiling voice which takes cues from PJ Harvey, but way darker and witchier. The songs did liken themselves to the early apocalyptic folk aesthetics of Sol Invictus and Current 93; and that's still the case for Apokalypsis, although she has fleshed out her sound with a full band, capable of delivering minimalist Goth ballads, swamp-rock menace, and harrowing bursts of distortion to match the mood of her songs. Wolfe twists the fairytail beginning of "Tracks (Tall Bodies)" into gritty depressive dirges, reflective of the goth sound of her native LA some two decades ago (e.g. Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, etc.). She also reprises two songs from The Grime And The Glow, including the infernal barnburner "Demons" and the antebellum blues number "Moses" which retains its minor-key mope and slavehouse misery. The stalking-in-the snow pace of "Pale On Pale" lurches at a pace even slower than that of True Widow, with Wolfe's mournful voice lifting above the churning, blackened guitars. There's a grit and a severity to Chelsea Wolfe that makes her a very compelling figure in contemporary music, almost like a musical reincarnation of The Process Church in neo-goth form. Very highly recommended.
Yeah, she covered a Burzum song before releasing this album, but there's a hell of lot more to Chelsea Wolfe than copping a few moves from Mr. Vikernes. This Los Angeles minstrel has quipped she writes "spiritual realm funeral songs," and that's a pretty apt description given the acoustic guitar dourness, doom-laden atmospheres, grimy production values, and witchy goth-folk vocals that come together as the perfect hybridization of Zola Jesus and PJ Harvey. Her arrangements are pretty stripped down with little more than acoustic and / or electric guitar occasionally fleshed out with a rhythm section. She puts an outsider folk spin on her songwriting, as if she were penning acoustic black metal songs channeled through the freak-folk mysticism of Topanga Canyon. This also has a lot of similarities to the apocalyptic folk stylings of Death In June / Sol Invictus / Current 93 circa 1992 although Chelsea Wolfe is far less precious with the song and is not afraid to let some blood spill as she violently scrapes her knuckles on the guitar strings. In so many ways, what she does is so much better than what Douglas P and Tony Wakeford could conjure through their cryptic folk songs. The haunting "Cousins Of The Antichrist" is one track that effortlessly exceeds the songwriting achievements of those aforementioned British esoteric musicians, with the urgency of the violent strum on her acoustic guitar stuck in minor chords buttressing the soaring vocals.
Similarly, "Deep Talks" works its blown out 4-track recording of her grab-every-string-on-the-guitar-and-pull method of playing along with her wordless vocal delivery that's as impressionistic as Grouper, but with Grouper's narcolepsy replaced by night terrors. "Moses" (a track which interestingly follows "Cousins Of The Antichrist") plays on stomping Southern spirituals but turned ashen and turgid in pace and demeanor. And the album's closing number "Widow" is a bleak, half-whispered song mired in morose atmospheres and just the right amount of narcotic smoke and exhumed-from-a-swamp 4 track production values, sounding a lot like the criminally underappreciated Corpses As Bedmates (whose sole album was reissued under an entirely different band name - Venus Handcuffs, probably worsening things for the band, but we digress). The short of it is that Chelsea Wolfe's The Grime And The Glow is fucking great and marks another killer release in the growing catalogue of witchy releases by Pendu Sound, following an lp from Sasha Grey's Atelecine and a single from witch house maven Mater Suspiria Vision. Highly Recommended!
Come the Thaw is the brand new 2nd album from San Francisco's female fronted gothic downer doom trio Worm Ouroboros, which now features Aesop Dekker (Agalloch, Ludicra, Hickey) on drums, as well as bassist/guitarist/cover artist Lorraine Rath (The Gault, Amber Asylum) and guitarist/vocalist Jessica Way (World Eater). We really liked WO's self-titled 2010 debut, also on cult metal label Profound Lore, and are finding that this new one is just as dreamy and depressive, pretty and portentous as before, another slow-moving slab of their "4AD doom" stylings, with ethereal female vocals once again gently hovering over sparse, serene, sorta post-rock soundscapes. The metal factor is actually LESS evident than on their debut; while a few parts do get momentarily heavy with the guitars, it's mostly rather restrained in that regard, or at least seems to be, Worm Ouroboros channelling the likes of Dead Can Dance even more than before. Which is, really, quite nice. And somber, and hushed, and blissful...
