We gave away a handful of these on Record Store Day, the most recent release from local SF psychedelic space rock minimalists 3 Leafs, and if you came by aQ on the Sunday after RSD, you might have caught them performing live in the shop (with a very special guest for part of the show, one year old Brix on the keyboard). But if you missed out on the free copies, and seeing 3 Leaves live, fear not, we now have copies for sale of En Super Forme, a live set recorded back in 2011 at Amnesia, right down the street from aQ. And while most 3 Leafs records are recorded live, and are thus essentially live records, much editing is involved before we get to lay our ears on it. So it's exciting to hear what these guys can manage in a live setting, no editing at ALL. And as you might not be surprised to discover, they sound much like they do on their records, if anything a bit more loose and loud. In this case definitely loud, cuz there was much talking going on in the crowd, and while the band started off quietly, the sound darkly rhythmic and peppered with field recordings, almost like an orchestra tuning up, it really only took a couple minutes for all the pieces to fall into place, the dubbed out bass, the busy skittery krautrock drumming, the thick billowing clouds of chordal shimmer, the Necks vibe we've mentioned in other reviews in full effect, spidery guitars, the sound exploding in little psychedelic squalls, while the rhythm section remains locked tight. About ten minutes in, the vocals (by Tim Cohen, also of The Fresh & Onlys, etc.) come in, a dark reverby croon, that here definitely have a bit of a Doors vibe, slipping into a falsetto before fading out.
The rest of the set unfurls similarly, the drums busy and tribal, gorgeous Eastern sounding guitar melodies drifting over sinewy basslines, and soft swirls of effects, the vocals giving the sound a definite pop vibe, but a sort of drifty psych pop vibe, in fact, the second track sounds a bit like a more blissed out Animal Collective in places, strangely enough, while the third track is very krautrocky, and very dubby too, a sort of krautdub, not funky necessarily, but certainly groovy. And finally, the band do their "Guacamole Window" from Canal Smarts, and it's the most propulsive of the bunch, reminding us at times of Tortoise, at times of This Heat, a sort of post punk psych jam, super rhythmic, and a killer closer. As always fantastic stuff. And thus highly recommended.
Welcome to the next bejeweled terrace in the hypnogogic sonic cave that is the music of Darren Cunningham, aka Actress! And holy shit, R.I.P., his third full length, is a wonderful terrace indeed! A beautiful and unique sound world in which subtly detailed, psychedelic sonic prisms drip playfully onto murky haunted fuzz-drones, other worldly squelches and squiggles interplay with analog drum machines, and science fiction melodies get tangled up with hazy, half remembered samples, creating an electronic alchemy that of which this world has never seen!
R.I.P is a musical expedition through a bizarre alien landscape. Starting off with the title track and moving into the second, titled "Ascending", you feel as though your entering some sort of strange galactic portal. The kind of "relaxation" music you might hear if you were stuck on the space station from Tarkovsky's Solaris. The soothing synths rub up against analog hiss, everything ping ponging blissfully inside the caverns of your space brain head, headphone magical to be sure. "Holy Water", the third track, starts to introduce a stronger rhythmic element, although we haven't entered the club yet. As the title suggests, everything is dripping and cascading on this one. There's a consistent hi-hat upbeat, and a load of squelchy hyper color drifting atop. Its all blippy and beautiful, clicky and ice cavern reverberated. The sounds transporting and trance inducing, rippling outward, and perfectly easing the listener in to the first beat we hear, "Marble Plexus".
This one is all hiss and dub, with a four on the floor pulse to anchor the proceedings. That warm hiss is the glue to the R.I.P. sound. In a lot of ways "Marble Plexus" is classic Actress. We hear all the echoes of ghostly rave-tones that made their former Record Of The Week Splaszh and earlier Hazyville so special. Inhabiting similar territory as Burial, albeit from a more dreamy dark Detroit kind of perspective (as opposed to UK Garage ghosts). It's not so much dance music, but more of an extraterrestrial reinterpretation of the common tropes. There's equal amounts of glistening bubble as there is dirty texture. And it organically flows along, a beautiful synth solo floating over the rhythmic miasma, adding a lovely touch of personality to the tune.
Before long we are back out on the open Martian frontier, where the cricket chirping and plucked strings of days on Earth long gone remind us of our isolation in this desolate new world. "Jardin" is a gorgeous respite, plinking and plonking electric piano melodies whirling around the mind's ear as bits of lovingly placed static provide the rub. Honestly reminding us of a more brightly hued and less earthbound approach that Circle took to cinematic soundscapery on their double cd Miljard from a few years back. An infectious sonic cloudburst, enveloping and strangely emotional.
"Shadow From Tartarus" is by far the heaviest tune of the bunch. And by heavy, we mean HEAVY!!!! This is another 4/4 adventure, but the chord progression is wrought out with a sort of droney, dare we say it "metallic" fuzz bass line. Imagine a buzzing SUNNO))) like monolithic noise underpinned by a dirty bass drum thump, laced with the kind of cosmic synth drift arpeggio sounds propagated by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter, flying upward and upward into an endless heaven of sound. A beautiful and unique combination to be sure!
Cunningham's work is always solid and original, but as is widely recognized by the blogosphere as well as the critical vanguard (blogosphere elite), R.I.P. represents his finest work to date. It is an album that is constructed as a whole work, a true piece of modern electronic music. We kind of imagine this music arriving on Earth buried deep within the remnants of a wayward meteor, clicking and pulsing from inside the cosmic rock, beckoning the discoverer to chip away until the full sonic transmission is exposed! Or better yet, R.I.P. would make the perfect time capsule of jams to be discovered by some highly intelligent, and futuristically funky race of alien space travelers, perhaps long after we're gone, if only to prove that in the year 2012, on this rock called earth, there was a dude by the name of Actress making some super groovy and hyper evolved, deeply personal yet transcendentally universal, glistening, yearning, and overall BEAUTIFUL sonic tapestries for his fellow earth dwellers (and perhaps for said Martians as well)! TIP! BEYOND RECOMMENDED, ESSENTIAL ACTRESS!!!
One of two new reissues on this week's list from Swedish dark ambient alchemist Trepaneringsritualen, who on tape is teamed up with another previously unknown to us artist, Aether. It's difficult to tell from the liner notes or the packaging, which is which, but it really doesn't matter, as these two like minded dronescapers both draw from the same poisoned sonic well, thick corrosive low end rumbles, blurred blackened synth thrum, layer upon layer of black blur and grinding muted crunch, this is definitely dronemusic, but a sort of hellish minimal variant, super dense, and dark, and heavy, the sound rife with overtones, the various textures and elements constantly shifting to reveal subtle tonal variations, the sound progressing toward something much less bleak and buzz, and more blissed out, with drifting voices hovering in epic expanses of grim shimmer and hushed hazy hum.
The flipside (again not entirely sure which side is which, or even if it's a collaboration), is much more industrial, lots of booms and crashes, what appears to be a super slo-mo doom, stretched out into a grimly psychedelic landscape of long tones, and heaving rhythmic churn, lots of percussive filigree, the sound less droney, and more sort of abstract and cinematic, driven by a skeletal, but seriously crushing rhythm, the beats miles apart, making it seem even less like a proper rhythm, and more like occasional bursts of caustic crunch, the results though are intense, and gorgeous, and super hypnotic, the sound evoking some sort of otherworldly hellscape, which manages to be both beautiful, and brutal at the same time.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!! Packaged in beautifully silkscreened gold inked three panel J-cards.
With the release of Freaks In Love, from weirdo New York noise rockers Alice Donut, we realized we had never reviewed a single Alice Donut record. Ever. Most likely because most of them predated the list, but even so, that's no excuse, considering Alice Donut are one of our favorite bands EVER. And we know, it's a little like crying wolf, constantly trumpeting bands and releases as being the best ever, but we have loved, and been borderline obsessed with these guys for almost 25 years, playing every single record to death, seeing them live every time they played in San Francisco, and since they were on Alternative Tentacles, and played here so much, for a while, we just assumed they were an SF band, which really they might as well have been, cuz they were, and are, just the right amount of freaky and heavy, noisy and catchy, and are responsible for some of our favorite jams of the eighties and nineties, and many a mixtape has included at least one AD jam, often their kick ass cover of "War Pigs" with the vocals replaced by TROMBONE!
Anyway, recently a documentary about the band came out, and is presented here along with a two disc sort of greatest hits, which for the uninitiated, might just blow your mind, some of the finest weirdo rock EVER. And not just weird, but catchy as fuck to boot. Just check out the samples below for "Egg", and "Mrs Hayes", and "Dorothy", and of course the best titled song ever: "The Son Of A Disgruntled X-Postal Worker Reflects On His Life While Getting Stoned In The Parking Lot Of A Winn Dixie Listening To Metallica". Frontman Tomas Antona has one of the weirdest, coolest voices ever, and the songs, so twisted and weirdly hooky, this stuff sounds as weird and wonderful now as it did the first time we heard it. And while this 'greatest hits' is missing some of our favorites, odds are if you end up digging this, it won't be by half measures, and you'll find yourself tracking down all the records anyway.
But the real reason for this release is the documentary, which is actually super entertaining, we even watched it with someone who knew nothing really about Alice Donut, and not only dug the movie, but ended up wanting all the records afterwards. It's a pretty standard rock doc, notable for being super fun to watch, even though there were no deaths, or drugs, or overdoses, as dramatic as it got, was people getting kicked out of the band or tours getting fucked up, but all the band members are super cute and likable, and that only makes the music that much cooler.
The packaging is super sweet too, a weird oversized digipak, with a strange fold out triple disc holder, as well as a massive full color booklet, with liner notes and lyrics, and every available surface adorned with Antona's awesomely disturbing illustrations.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
La Paix is the very first US release from Alkibar Gignor, a garage rock band from Mali, who spends much of their time touring local villages, ferrying their gear around in a donkey cart, and over the last few years, they have become one of the most beloved underground groups in Mali. The songs hear appear to be recorded live, you can hear children laughing and playing, conversations, city life in the background, which only gives the music that much more of a lively intimate feel, there are even a few points where you can hear children singing along faintly in the background, not to mention the occasional blast of feedback. But this is not garage rock how we imagine it, the sound of Alkibar Gignor is a fusion of Western influenced rock, classic African high life, folk music, in fact, the opening track is super stripped down, just acoustic guitar and vocals, gorgeous and intimate, the vocals soaring and passionate, the guitar playing lush and dexterous, but that's only really one facet of the group's sound, the next track is all warm spidery melodies, a shuffling groove, call and response vocals, and a wild solo played on an instrument that sounds like a fiddle, and ends up sounding super psychedelic. Elsewhere, the band slip easily into buzzing almost raga like jams, still rife with playful folky melodies, before returning to the hushed folkiness that opened the record, then onto something way more bombastic and wild, megaphone vocals, shouted whoops and hollers, lo-fi buzzing guitars and crunchy pounding rhythms, and then back again. The sound so spirited and energetic, intense and alive.
Housed in a thick black and white jacked, and includes a fold out poster/liner notes.
A mighty fine collection of improvisorial acoustic guitar solos from Bruce Anderson of MX-80 fame. That said, Anderson's solo guitar work is miles away from the sharp, incessant cacophony of the mutant-punk of MX-80 from back in the day. It's more of a Loren Mazzacane Connors feel, but played on an acoustic guitar with classical tunings. Or perhaps as our regular customer Monte opined, "sounds like Derek Bailey, if he learned to play melodically." Yeah, that's it! Anyway, with the quiet, rather ascetic nature of these recordings, we're guessing that the reference in the title is to Robert Bresson, the new wave French film director. The dulcet plucks and slow deliberate pacing of Anderson's work would certainly make for a complementary soundtrack to any number of Bresson's films even with their noted lack of musical accompaniments. Lovely stuff, and limited to just 75 copies.
We first discovered Russian pianist / composer Anton Batagov via his breathtaking triple cd release The Wheel Of The Law, a record EVERYone here loved, and one that we sold tons of and realized in retrospect, really should have been a Record Of The Week. Much of what made that record special was how rooted in Batagov's Buddhism the music was, a mesmerizingly hypnotic arrangement for organ, glockenspiel, xylophone, piano and percussion, it conjured up a tranquility and otherworldliness that we found quite moving, the various movements offering up gorgeously rhythmic and almost looped sounding figures, the sort of composition that we presume is how he ended up being described by some reviewer as "Reich on vodka". And while he is most definitely influenced by Reich and Riley and Glass, his sound is definitely something unique, we find ourselves sometimes reminded of another aQ favorite, Lubomyr Melnyk, the two have a similar flair for lyrical melodies and lush arrangements, although where Melnyk fills all the space with flurries of notes, Batagov is as much about the spaces between the notes as the notes themselves. Batagov is also quite the collaborator, often teaming up with rock musicians and other non classical performers, and has produced all manner of releases from straight up classical to soundtracks. Needless to say, we are obviously big fans.
So in the process of trying to track down more Wheel Of The Law cd sets, we discovered another Batagov record that we found equally amazing, from back in 2001, another composition based on Buddhism, which is obvious from the title, Music For The 35 Buddhas and like Wheel, it's another fantastic and dreamlike composition, mixing Batagov's lovely piano playing with vibraphone, Javanese gongs and antique cymbals. There's definitely a gamelan vibe, but in a whole different setting, the interplay between vibraphone and piano, deft and effortless, producing a dreamily cinematic sprawl of notes floating weightless in space, a sort of tranquil soundscape, that seems perfect for meditation, contemplation or even just relaxation. The tones ring out, the extended decay as much a part of the composition as the initial notes, making the whole thing sound very fluid and organic and full of a hopeful energy. Delicate and divine. And even at 40 minutes, way too short, the sort of piece that we imagine playing on forever.
The second piece is a bit darker, and is more overtly linked to the record's theme. Batagov unfurling darkly melodic figures, gamelan like melodies draped over the top, deep resonant tones, and tinkling chimes, over which two different voices deliver prayer-like incantations to each of the 35 buddhas by name, the music brooding and minimal, but utterly entrancing, and with the voices, it only becomes that more powerful. This is probably the most listened to record in the store recently, and it's easy to see why, Batagov achieves the seemingly impossible, creating a piece of music that is both tranquil and soothing, but one that still manages to be active, and engages the listener in active listening, if they so desire, the main melody/refrain is the sort of melody, that will stick in your head, and will surface constantly, which in a way seems like the perfect accompaniment to the Buddhist teachings that accompany it, a sonic mantra, that can be revisited throughout the day, to help the listener remain lost in the music, and perhaps help achieve a degree of inner peace, even when, or maybe especially when, the outside world seems to be at utterly at odds with such a state.
When we first heard a track from this album a few months ago, our immediate reaction was A) wow, we really had better find a way to get it for the store and B) if and when we do, it'll probably have to be a Record Of The Week. And that was just from hearing ONE song. Fortunately, we did manage to get some of these imports, and the rest of the record only confirmed and amplified our first impression. Record Of The Week it is! (Actually, some of us here, like Andee, were already Bebey fans from way back, but for others of us, gosh, what an introduction...)
As you know, we've certainly seen a bunch of great groovy African reissues lately (in fact, there's a couple others elsewhere on this week's list). But this collection of the late Cameroonian composer & writer Francis Bebey's music is rather unique, to say the least. And it's got something in common with another cool item we're reviewing this week, the vintage "electronic soul" compilation Personal Space. As the title indicates, the focus here is on the especially electronic side of his discography, from the era when multi-instrumentalist Bebey experimented with the latest gear - tape recorders, keyboards, drum machines - to record his own music at home in Paris, making for delightfully dancey, avant-garde Afropop.
The track we had heard was the first one here, "New Track", an over 8 minute long number that starts off with tinkling thumb piano before blaring synth stabs, burbling keys, and ticking drum machine rhythms kick in... pretty soon, the song has become dense with loops and layers, repeating vocals about bananas and potatoes and politics creating a kind of cheerfully confusing mantra. It's as fresh and charming and mesmeric and groovy today as it was when Bebey recorded it in back in '82.
Though this would pretty much be worth it just for that memorable song alone, the rest of this 14-track collection is full of further futuristic Afrofunk highlights. Meaning, more blurting synthesized horns, head bopping basslines, thumping electronic beats augmented by hand percussion, and laidback vocals - some spoken, some sung, in various languages (Duala, French and English). Bebey's talent on classical guitar is also evident. It's quite an amazing mix altogether; 'makossa' music from Cameroon meets "Blow Your Head" style Moog outbursts (as on the woozy instrumental track "Super Jingle", with its skronky synth shiver set amidst hypnotic percussive pulsations). Sometimes the mood gets emotive in other ways, Bebey bringing the beats down and singing sadly in a soft, ragged voice... Here we will go out on a limb, and make a wild hypothetical rock crit "cross between this and that" equation, of Konono No.1 + Arthur Russell, whattya think?
Basically, this is as cool as anything you could imagine something called "African Electronic Music 1975-1982" might possibly sound like! And maybe even cooler than that.
Packaged with liner notes in both English and French.
Of all the modern Appalachia-ists, James Blackshaw is definitely one of our favorites, playing solo guitar, he is most definitely a master, but he seems to have long abandoned that sort of playing in favor of something much more lush and composed, with each record seeming to push the sound, and Blackshaw's skills as a composer even further, this most recent one is no different, which once again finds him augmenting his guitar with grand piano, vibraphone and a Hammond B3 organ, and joined for this record by vocalist Genevieve Beaulieu.
The opening three track songsuite doesn't veer to far from Blackshaw records past, intricately finger picked nylon string guitar, nested in soft chordal swells and laced with delicate vibraphone melodies, sounding classical one second, old time Appalachian folk the next, and brooding chamber music the next. His playing so fluid and graceful, the sound lush and vibrant. It's not until the fourth track, where Blackshaw is joined by Beaulieu, that the sound changes dramatically. That track, mostly piano, sounding like some old ballad, Beaulieu's voice rich and throaty and quite unique, but it definitely suits the sound, reminding us of scene from some old movie where the female lead is perched on a piano belting out a torch song, as the male lead observes from the shadows, the sound minor key, haunting and darkly melodic.
The second half of the record, at least the two songs following that torch song, find Blackshaw back in Appalachia mode, and as always, his playing is stunning, impossibly intricate and liltingly melodic, his Appalachia infused with a bit of classic guitar it sounds like, and the result is stunning. And finally, the record finishes off with a gorgeous mostly solo piano piece, that sounds very cinematic, like some indie film soundtrack, wistful, melancholy, bittersweet, culminating in a super dramatic coda, the vibraphone adding a second melody, haunting and quite lovely.
One of the tracks from Boris's recent J-Pop infused opus New Album gets the 12" remix treatment, making for a Boris release that's even further removed from their Melvins-y heavy rock roots.
The A side features ALTZ's "Fall In Love Mix", the B side's got Hatchback's "Pacific Wind Mix". Hatchback we're less familiar with, but ALTZ is interesting, we know 'em from their Boredoms remix on Super Roots 10 - and also the isophonic boogie woogie of the Altz Meets Roland P. Young album that EM put out a while back.
We just have a handful of these imports, and they come in black sleeves, nothin' fancy. For super big Boris fans and DJs only, we assume.
Latest solo outing from one half of SF dronedoom duo Barn Owl, coming right on the heels of another solo record, that one from the OTHER half of Barn Owl, Jon Porras, a former aQ-er, whose Black Mesa we dug quite a bit. It would be tempting to try some rock nerd math, and imagine that Black Mesa plus Night Dust might simply BE Barn Owl, but strangely enough, the sounds Porras and Caminiti conjure up on their own, while not really deviating sonically too much from the soundworld they've created with their group, do end up being markedly different. And in many case more experimental and abstract than the twang flecked smolder and drift the two conjure up together. Caminiti's new one might be the strangest (and perhaps coolest) of the bunch, although that strangeness definitely creeps up on you, as the opener, "Near Dark" does sound like it could have been plucked right off a Barn owl record, all billowy clouds of warm softly roiling guitar thrum, shot through with streaks of high end melody, and a warm washed out haze, but even hear, Caminiti pushes the sounds, and the sound itself, pegging the needles, and moving WAY into the red, with sound buzzing and distorting in a way that gives the song a strange outsider psych vibe. But it's on the next track "Returning Spirits" where things get really good. A haunting sprawl of ethereal shimmer, peppered with deep pulsations, and dubbed out percussion, the guitars unfurling little tangles of melody, which get super distorted, a gorgeously muted blown out space-psych (those sounds could be synths, hard to tell, but both Porras and Caminiti, have been experimenting with synths, in Barn Owl, and on their own), but those little soft squalls are gorgeous, and haunting, the vibe super cinematic, dark and otherwordly. Then Caminiti lets loose with a glimmering starfield of super high glistening harmonics, that sound almost like chimes, all over a slow building swell of lush chordal thrum, just might be our favorite Caminiti track yet. But don't want to speak too soon. The rest of the record definitely continues to explore less familiar territory, the pulsing glitchy synths that underpin the warm guitar whorls on "A Memory Or A Mirage", the dense, crumbling, super distorted organ like wall of sound, that churns its way through "Star Circle", the brief blast of wild Neil Young like guitars draped over a woozy tranquil low end drift on "Moon Is The Hunter", the almost Nadja like doomgaze of "Last Blue Moments", the haunting blackened kosmische of "Slow Fade Of Stars", that sounds like Loren Mazzacane Connors playing in some massive cave, wreathed in thick, warm reverb, delicate and skeletal, drowsy and dreamlike, and finally, the two part closer "First Light", which stretches out incendiary guitars into keening dronescapes, again laced with glimmering harmonics, and deep mesmerizing tones, before drifting off into the ether with a final few minutes of spare, soft focus drone-psych blues, wreathed in clouds of whir and hiss, a haunting lo-fi soft noise coda.
Gorgeous full color gatefold sleeves with super striking original art by Caminiti. Includes a download coupon.
Cardinal, the duo of Eric Matthews and Richard Davies (of legendary NZ outfit the Moles), only released one record, a self titled album that came out in 1994, and while commercially it didn't make that much of a splash, it become THEE modern orchestral pop record that pretty much set the bar, a collection of songs that owed as much to the classics as it did to the indie rock of the time, dark brooding pop gems driven by strings and horns and gorgeous unlikely vocal harmonies, "You've Lost Me There" from that record still ranks as one of the greatest pop songs ever. And while both Matthews and Davies continued to make records, and some good ones at that, none of those ever approached the sublime majesty of that one record. Which is maybe why the two have reconvened almost two decades later and revived their old partnership. For those of us who spent the nineties obsessed with that record (which is most of us at aQ), and heck, let's be honest, most of the 2000's as well, the prospect of a new Cardinal record had us quivering in anticipation.
And on first listen, opening track "Northern Soul" brings us right back. Lush and lovely, haunting and dreamily jangly, acoustic guitars, chiming major key chords, those strange harmonies that so defined that first record, and Cardinal in general are still present, whether it's weird little falsettos, or that deep throaty croon mixed way in the background, it's really what gives Cardinal it's otherworldly energy. But the music here, remains fantastically rich and evocative, the trumpet, the big strummed acoustic guitar, those vocals. And while a record as good as their debut was probably too much to hope for, the record still holds up pretty well. Replacing the timelessness of their debut with a slightly more modern sheen, and with a much broader sonic palette, expanding beyond symphonic pop, giving some proper indie rock a go here and there, but for the most part, this is a pretty great second chapter in Cardinal's two decades long two album career, and it's one of those records, that definitely blossoms with repeated listens, where the initial thrill of a new Cardinal record, no matter how it sounds, is eventually replaced with a a pure and honest appreciation for this disc of catchy, off kilter, symphonic pop. The fact that it sounds like Cardinal only makes it that much better. Like that first record, WAY recommended pop fans of all stripes, but especially folks who dig the timeless pop sounds of the Zombies, the Beach Boys, (Early) Bee Gees, and more modern practitioners like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Elephant 6 stable, Jellyfish, Belle And Sebastian, Sparklehorse and the like..
One of two new super limited 7"s from Trensmat on this week's list, the other, a brand new one from psychedelic apace rock legends The Telescopes, and this one, from dreampsych combo Cheval Sombre, their second for Trensmat, and another glorious slab of sun dappled psych drift, all washed out shimmer and lazily strummed acoustic guitars, mumbled soporific voices and hazy sitar like melodies, a dreamy druggy take on the Spacemen 3 / Galaxie 500 school of slowcore dream pop, the A side is a mantra like dirge, soft focus and hushed, the acoustic guitar and vocals, wreathed in a gorgeous cloud of FX, from dense buzz, to strange sci-fi skitter, beginning very balladic, before gradually blossoming into a prismatic burst of glimmering psychedelic swirl. The B side is a Stones cover, "As Tears Go By", the sound similar to the A side, with the group adding some organ warble and some Beach Boys style orchestral percussion, and wrapping the guitars in woozy effects, the hushed croon hovering on a bed of blurred bleary dreampop, the Stones classic transformed into a perfect slab of psych pop bliss out.
Super limited, with Trensmat releases we generally only get one shot, and once the batch we get runs out, that's it, which means, of course, you should grab one of these before they're all gone for good. Includes a download code as well.
Although of course we like to say that EVERY day is Record Store Day, officially Record Store Day 2012 was a couple weeks ago - but that doesn't mean we're entirely done with the special limited edition RSD stuff. That's right, thankfully, we managed to get more copies of this, the album from one of our faves, Circle, that came out, on vinyl only via Hydra Head, for Record Store Day. (Hard to believe they had any left, but just maybe Circle is a little more popular with our customers than at other record stores?). So, yay, now we can list it!
Manner is Circle's latest studio album, and it's a doozy. Naturally. Like the last one of theirs we listed, Rautatie, there's a distinctly '70s prog vibe to some of the proceedings, and in fact they do a cover here (their first ever cover, on an album?), of Brian Eno's "Here Come The Warm Jets", which comes across as very suitably "circular" in its pulsations here.
Fans of Circle know that the band's output is as as diverse it is prolific, and it would be far too simplistic to say that there's two basic types of Circle albums. But, maybe there are, at the extremes. There's the pensively moody & atmospheric (Miljard, Infektio, Hissi), and the metallicized & rockin' (Sunrise, Katapult, Tulikoira). Of course, most of their records somehow display both tendencies at once. Manner leans towards the latter, there's definitely some heavy duty hard rock action going on here, stuff that could even have fit in on alter-ego Pharaoh Overlord's stadium rock Out Of Darkness album, like the triumphant, full on prog/metal opus "Blue King" that precedes the Eno cover on the first side. A lot of this has that epic intensity, also familiar from Rautatie.
Frontman Mika Ratto's wiggy operatic croon is in full effect, on album opener "Lintu Joe", soaring up n' out nonsensically over dramatic crashing guitar chords, restrained rhythms, uneasy synth squiggle, and in general, weird Yes-like proggery. As an introduction to Circle for the masses of Hydra Head fanboys & fangirls who perhaps have never heard these freaky Finns before (this is Circle's first album for HH), it's a bit of a bold move, but heck why not jump in at the deep end?
Like we said, this is vinyl only, but four of the six songs here also appear in more recklessly thrashed live concert renditions on Circle's recent Serpent cd, which we had in stock very briefly at about the same time we originally got Manner. Eventually we'll get more of those back in.
Of note, the die cut cover art, which looks amazing. Limited to 1000 copies in three different colors. We had the "red eye" colored vinyl for Record Store Day, but aren't sure what color the additional copies we got are, probably black.
Some 10 years ago, there was Joe Colley hulking over a four-track on the floor of 964 Natoma - a performance space in San Francisco that hosted the monthly Field Effects series by Aaron Ximm (aka Quiet American). Ximm populated the very large loft in that converted autobody shop into one of the best places to experience live music, by encouraging the audience to sprawl out on futons, couches, bean bags, and pillows in order to better zone-out and focus on the sounds at hand. While much of the work that Ximm would curate focused on sound ecology and phonography, he would bring in some more intense acts such as R.H.Y. Yau & Scott Arford's legendary Infrasound, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and Joe Colley. At the time of this performance in 2002, Colley was just starting to record under his own name after a stint using the far more abject moniker Crawl Unit. As the explosive and negating power of his earlier noise constructions matured into complex, more conceptual pieces, Colley began to develop into something akin to the Bruce Naumann of sound art - with repetitive, occasionally self-destructive actions that investigated psychological, behavioral, and cultural codes.
"Lonely Microphone" is a reconstruction from the original tape-piece that Colley presented at 964 Natoma; and our memory of the night doesn't recall much more than the view of the lumbering Colley crouched over his gear and the impact of his signature jolts of sonic juxtaposition. Here, Colley masterfully puts together an album that looks to the woolly electronic scrabblings of David Tudor, the expressive environmental collage work of Eric La Casa, and the dead-line feeds of CM von Hausswolff. Ugly buzzes from gutted consumer electronics, terse piezo chirps, blasts of wind-shearing noise, monstrous din from some infernal machine belching beneath the San Francisco urbane crust, and plenty of watery field recordings threatening to short out Colley's haphazardly constructed microphones and hand-soldered circuits. That sense of threat is a constant in Colley's work, the threat of disaster, the threat that nothing will be resolved, the threat of another dead end, the threat that 'no' might be the only answer. "Lonely Microphone" is one of the more subtle presentations of Colley's work, and more self-contained than the post-structuralist ellipsis of his opus "Disasters Of Self." Recommended as with pretty much everything he's ever done.
We're not sure which is more exciting, the first new music from legendary UK seventies acid folk legends Comus in FORTY YEARS, or a lost track, from back in the day, a song from the never released (or recorded) follow up to the godlike First Utterance, a song never heard by anyone outside of the band before NOW. Thankfully, this new record from this aQ revered combo gives us both, three brand new songs, and one, that aforementioned legendary lost recording. Our very own Andee actually wrote some of the liner notes for this release (alongside some by Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth), specifically talking about that long lost track, so we figured we might as well just reprint that part here (more on the new tracks afterwards):
"For those of us who consider Comus' debut album First Utterance the pinnacle of psychedelic seventies demonic acid folk (and we are quite suspicious of anyone who doesn't), the prospect of a lost second record is nearly too much to even imagine. And the idea that such a record was written, and performed, yet never recorded, is nearly heartbreaking. While subsequent recordings from the band veered into much poppier and more commercial territory, the Comus faithful continued to believe in the existence of an elusive song suite, forever convinced that there had to have been more, an untapped reservoir of dark sonic energy, the unleashing of which was held at bay by unscrupulous record label executives and their profit driven machinations, or even more ominously, those songs were in fact actually recorded and hidden away in some sort of dusty vault. And while the truth may be less sensational and conspiratorial than we perhaps imagined, the Comus faithful have indeed finally been rewarded, with this, a sprawling almost classical sounding psychedelic folk epic, unearthed after nearly 40 years, a fragment of the never completed follow up to First Utterance, the Malgard Suite, which offers a glimpse of what might have been, a fork in time's path untaken, an alternate timeline in which the band continued along that selfsame dark path, the sinister sound of First Utterance expanded upon, less immediately maniacal and harrowing, more expansive and lush, the vocals intricate and intertwined over swirling strings, and delicate crystalline guitars, fluttering flutes and the moaning melodies of the bassoon (played by Lindsay Cooper, who would go on to join art rockers Henry Cow post Comus). And while there's plenty going on here that foreshadows the sound of Henry Cow, there is also a darkly classical vibe, with much of the Malgard Suite sounding a bit like a more diabolical Prokofiev. Those elements are woven deftly into that classic Comus sound, frenzied and fraught with drama one second, soaring and majestic the next, always lush and lovely and dreamily psychedelic. And even in this, which is quite possibly the only existing recording of the Malgard Suite, a rough raw live performance captured on a handheld cassette player, it's impossible to deny the power and emotion in the music, a lyrical sonic fever dream, delivered in this mysterious missive from another time, lost for decades and resurfacing only now, and convincing us, the Comus faithful, that it was worth the wait."
So yeah, Comus fanatics will pretty much need this for just that track. There's also a spoken word intro from band leader Roger Wooten, describing the providence of that track, when and how it was recorded, and how it came to be rediscovered. And it's well worth the price of admission on its own. Which brings us to the new material, and while we have to admit we were a little wary of new songs, especially after FORTY years, our fears were definitely unfounded, cuz for the most part, these new songs sound like they could have come straight from the First Utterance sessions. Sure, some things are different, the vocals are maybe not quite as frenzied and maniacal, but they still sound pretty incredible, and the female backup vox still sound as harrowing and haunting as before. And the music, still so lush and layered and dense, and yeah, a bit demonic, incredible guitar playing, intricate finger picking, wild hand drumming, mournful violin, fluttering flute, the songs drifting into the same sort of dark psychedelic jam territory as those old classics, the lyrics appropriately morbid, the production lush and lovely, the sax being perhaps the only real difference, adding a different dimension to the sound, but it still sounds like Comus, classic Comus at that, and no one sounds like Comus, now or then, and we have to say, these new tracks were worth the wait as well!
In a way, it'd be way easier to review this if it was the debut album from some new, unknown band. Then we could just talk about how it's a dark, heavy album of often speedy stoner metal with cavernous, killer riffs and a seemingly old school hardcore punk edge to it, that SLAYS. There, we said it, and really, 'nuff said.
But, 'cause it's in fact the new album from the reunited three-piece lineup of seminal '80s punk/metal act Corrosion Of Conformity, the same lineup responsible for the CoC's all time crossover classic Animosity from 1985 (Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, and Reed Mullin), it comes with a lot of baggage. Some folks, punk rock CoC purists, probably won't even listen to it, having given up on the band years ago after they "went commercial" in the '90s. And even fans of '80s CoC willing to give this a go, won't find an Animosity part II here anyway. Which could understandably have been the expectation, one subject to unavoidable disappointment. Others, into the band's latter day Southern stoner rawk thing, might not understand why they're doing an album without longtime frontman Pepper Keenan (he of Down fame, as well). So yeah, lots of baggage, that really we don't want to delve into much more here, 'cause what we're saying is, give this a chance on its own terms, it's actually damn good. This boldly self-titled album is its own beast, a blend of the old and the new really. And the trio for sure seem energized by this return (somewhat) to their roots. They sound like they MEAN it.
While Animosity it ain't, they did prove on tour not long ago that they still could rip it up on the old Animosity-era material live (causing many 40-year old fans to risk injury in the moshpit, boy that was a bit scary). And for sure some of the tracks here are written that way, like the feedback laden "Leeches" and the speedy chugger "Rat City", both barely over 2 minutes in length. But there's a lot more to this album than putting the punk back into CoC... they also bring the metal. So, it's more like if some of their (better) later stuff was done with Animosity-era attitude, by those same dudes. Certainly CoC's "Southern Sabbath" tendencies are on display on tracks like "The Doom" (natch). We know they were/are fans of Trouble, you can hear that here... Also (though it almost seems weird to say), some Melvins too.
And what about the vocals? At first, we too thought, hmm, if they're gonna have longtime bassist and former frontman Mike Dean sing again, wouldn't the idea be for him to growl and yowl like he did back in the day? Instead, he's much more melodic here than we remember (but still, sounds a heckuva lot more punk than Pepper). Dean snarls and spits, but also SINGS. And sounds pretty cool doing so, we think! Love his slightly gargled, high pitched, fists-clenched croon on the rippin' "Your Tomorrow" for instance. (Reed also takes the mic on a few tracks, too.)
So, for what it's worth to fellow CoC fans/followers, in our opinion this is definitely their best album since Deliverance, at least. And the most metal they've been since Blind. And the most punk since Technocracy.
But, we don't want only those folks who already knew what the initials CoC stand for to buy this! Anyone who hates bourgeois society but likes skateboards and Sabbath ought to check this out. Likewise if you're just into badass metallic doomed out rockin'. Like we said, it slays.
Oh, the Seldon Hunt version of the CoC skull that adorns the cover is pretty cool, by the way!
(We've got the digipack cd edition with 2 bonus tracks while they last, or the import vinyl version w/ bonus 7"...)
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Feeding Of The 5000 was the group's incendiary debut, originally released in 1978, and almost didn't come out, as the pressing plant refused to carry it due to the lyrical content of the opening song, an intense spoken word rallying cry against religion, against God, filled with violent images and foul language, all over a field of buzzing feedback. They replaced the song with silence, in protest, and then and there decided to start their own label, which then re-released the record the way it was initially envisioned. And even now, 30+ years later, FOT5K is a fierce, frantic chunk of pure punk rock, wild chaotic angular guitars, wild scowling urgent vox, caffeinated drumming, samples and snippets of spoken word, all wound up into something frenzied and frenetic, heavy on the hooks, whether intentional or not, these songs manage to be angry and caustic and intense, but still catchy as hell, the lyrical vitriol reflected in the relentless punk rock energy, just a glorious collection on intense, emotional, swaggery, ramshackle, energetic, sweat soaked, pop flecked, PUNK, that has definitely remained as fresh, and as lyrically relevant as it was all the way back in 1978. Which speaks well of Crass, but not so well for the state of the world...
Included as bonus tracks are various live sessions and studio demos, some of which show another side of Crass, sounding almost like some sort of busking skiffle band, all shuffly and Billy Bragg-ish(!). The packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which judging from the design is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert, a fold out poster with the distinctive Crass artwork, a poster on one side, collages,and the lyrics as they were originally printed on the other.
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Penis Envy was record number three, released in 1981, and was a serious shift for the band, and easily their most polished and accomplished, but the changes were big, first, all the vocals are female this time around, and in keeping with this new more feminine vibe (or more likely it was all a single concept), the lyrical focus of Penis Envy, as is suggested by the title, is sexuality, specifically how it relates to women: feminism, marriage, sexual repression...
And the music, wow, the opening track sets the stage, a little flurry of synthy weirdness, the sound strangely proggy, it quickly launches into a super hooky minor key angular punk pop workout, the riffs woozy, the guitar sound crunchy, the drums powerful, the bass thick and low slung, and the vocals incredible, powerful and emotional, passionate and BAD ASS, spitting out some seriously intense lyrics, a wickedly sarcastic tale of feminine subjugation.
And so it goes, the whole record a fantastically and fully realized groove heavy punk rock blowout, that seems to sonically foreshadow the various post punk bands that would eventually cite Crass as an influence, lots of tension and release, horns, even harmoniums, plenty of drones, and intricate arrangements, bizarre vocal harmonies, super distorted buzz, some almost funkiness, some proto-electronica, that dub vibe in fell effect, choral voices, swooping backwards sounds, super strange, but really kick ass production, hard to believe this record is 30 years old, especially considering how many bands are making sounds just like this now, and probably don't realize, Crass were doing it decades ago, and doing it better.
One of the best stories about Penis Envy, is when the band somehow conned teenage girl's romance magazine to include Crass track on a giveaway flexi disc, credited to Creative Recording And Sound Services (yep, Crass), sonically on the surface, it was a sweetly innocuous pop song, but it was Crass after all so the subtext is much more damning, and needless to say, when the hoax was revealed there was a bit of an uproar. That track is included here, as is a collaged soundscape combining the original track with responses to the hoax, as well as an archival track and a rare 2003 remix.
The packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which judging from the design is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert, a fold out 6 panel foldout with that distinctive Crass artwork, the original blow up doll album cover, collages and graffiti and lyrics...
Originally released for this year's Record Store Day, this seminal slab of SF punk is now available to the world at large, the first in what will hopefully be an ongoing reissue campaign of all the singles from these legendary punks. This 7" was originally released in 1976, and while some younger folks might not remember Crime, they probably remember the A side, "Hot Wire My Heart", as it was covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!!
Digitally remastered from the original master tapes, housed in an exact reproduction of the original sleeve, pressed on crazy tri-colored red, white and blue vinyl, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
So cool! And cold wavey. A wonderfully produced piece of vinyl to replace those crappy downloads which have been bouncing around the internet for the past five or six years. Dark Day was the project spearheaded by R.L. Crutchfield, who first worked with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori in the earliest incarnation of the seminal No Wave band DNA in the mid '70s. By 1979, Crutchfield was striking out on his own as Dark Day; and at first, this band was an intentional reversal of roles within the trad-rock band with two women playing guitars and drums and a man behind the keyboards. The ladies for that incarnation were Nancy Arlen of Mars and Nina Canal of Ut; and they managed a few gigs and one hell of a great single - "Hands In The Dark" - which appeared many years later on a Soul Jazz No Wave compilation and has been covered spectacularly by the Chromatics. Canal and Arlen weren't terribly interested in continuing in the project, leaving Crutchfield to find likeminded folks with whom to work. The second (and last) Dark Day record was recorded in 1982, with Crutchfield going into the studio with a bunch of cheap electronics and toy synthesizers with Bill Sack to flesh out the accompaniments on similar instruments. Their interlocking arpeggiations are punctuated with blooping electronics that are equal parts Trio and Kraftwerk with an underlying dread to the spiralling songs that detoured from Kraftwerk's utopian vision of man-machine hybrids and down a paranoid vision of man being at the mercy of his machines, no matter how innocent their intent. Dark Day's songs are insistent and catchy despite their utterly simple structures. "Metal Benders" and "Danger / Dance" are probably the closest thing to being 'hits' on the album as weird / anti-romantic variations of Young Marble Giants with whip crack rhythms and spectral pre-X-Files electronic whistling melodies. Coming out of the NYC No Wave scene helped craft Dark Day into a something other than neo-Romantic post-punk outfit with electronics. This was a wholly unique band, who never got the attention that many of their contemporaries. Kudos to Dark Entries once again on a splendid reissue!
Synth punk at its best! Here is the long overdue reissue of Dark Day's homage to the Luis Bunuel film of the same name. Dark Day was the project spearheaded by R.L. Crutchfield who first worked with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori in the earliest incarnation of the seminal No Wave band DNA in the mid '70s. By 1979, Crutchfield was striking out on his own as Dark Day; and at first, this band was an intentional reversal of roles within the trad-rock band with two women playing guitars and drums and a man behind the keyboards. The ladies for that incarnation were Nancy Arlen of Mars and Nina Canal of Ut; and they managed a few gigs and one hell of a great single - "Hands In The Dark" - which appeared many years later on a Soul Jazz No Wave compilation and has been covered spectacularly by the Chromatics. Canal and Arlen weren't terribly interested in continuing in the project, leaving Crutchfield to find likeminded folks to work with.
On Exterminating Angel (originally released in 1980 on the Lust/Unlust imprint Infidelity), Crutchfield recruited Phil Kline and Barry Friar to flesh out the Dark Day sound. At the time, Kline was an emerging composer who had worked with Glenn Branca and at least here, he styles himself after Mark Ribot or Arto Lindsay with his expressive shards and bends of guitar melody; and Friar follows the tom-heavy patter that Nancy Arlen brought to Dark Day on the "Hands In The Dark" single. But Dark Day is truly Crutchfield's vision, with his heavily syncopated synth chords, elliptical repetitions, and spiral staircase ascensions in lieu of the traditional verse-chorus song. Crutchfield preferred to keep a very restrictive use of synth tones and filters, all the while crafting a very claustrophobic, horror-laden atmosphere. The inventiveness of his minimalist melodies and twisted lullaby-like structures are all the more impressive, perhaps only matched by Young Marble Giants or Suicide. Motorik yet stumbling, Dark Day's songs are stark and bold in their poetry about freaks, suffocating anxiety, and the toxic life of contemporary society circa 1980. "Trapped" was a strange song to be the single for the album, as it's an epic, spiralling number with those ominous synths and siren-like blurts from a distant saxophone. Many of the other songs on the album were short and condensed, jabbing the grimly simple melodies deep into the ear-canal and then moving on. Like "Trapped" the album's finale - "No, Never, Nothing" - is another lengthy track, appropriating a Moroder like disco-syncopation to a sinister, nihilistic collage of texts taken from a children's book about raising unusual pets such as squirrels and chimpanzees. The more the song spins through it's punchy chords the creepier it becomes.
Exterminating Angel is the high-point of Crutchfield's recorded works, and stands also as one of lost gems of the No Wave era. This should have been released long ago, so we have to commend Dark Entries once again for their reissue campaign.
Death And Vanilla are a Swedish haunted-pop duo who have found themselves caught in the vortex of retro-futurism circa 1969. On the one hand, they've got a good grip on the baroque psychedelia of the United States Of America, Free Design, and even some of the more woolly tracks that Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg produced; and on the other, they're keen on the whole library music phenomenon augmenting their songs with plenty of sparkling synths, crackling radiophonic samples, EVP recordings (yup, that is Raymond Cass, we hear!), and tripped-out-to-space production tricks that would be right out of the Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire playbooks. There's even a track on this album called "Library Goblin"! If you might think all of this seems like the same strategy that Broadcast employed on their highly acclaimed collaborations with The Focus Group back in 2009-2010, you'd be pretty spot on. Even the unnamed female vocalist for Death And Vanilla sounds an awful lot like Broadcast's Trish Keenan, with her breathy delivery and unexpected melodies which soar above the monochromatic lullaby of many of the songs. As sacrosanct as it may seem, Death And Vanilla may be better songwriters than Broadcast; their cinematic pop gem "Cul-De-Sac" should be in the running for poptune of 2012 for sure with its complex interweave of harpsichord, vibraphone, fuzzed guitar, strutting basslines, and shuffling rhythms all driven by the vocal harmonies, which transitions rather deftly into the far more experimental avant-pop number "Sombambulists" which drifts aptly towards a dreamy headspace of loping basslines and percolating synths all bathed in sound-dissolving reverb. The filmic references also abound on tracks like "The Unseeing Eye" and the aforementioned "Library Goblin" as sublimely revisionist '60s pop numbers with bubbly vibraphones and seductive vocals amidst electronic filigree and charming synth blorp, before disintegrating into an otherworldly interlude of ethereal radio noise and cosmic vibrations. As such, it's a pretty irresistible album for any fan of Broadcast, Ghost Box, and Stereolab. The lp has already gone through a couple of pressings, but hopefully, we'll be able to keep this one in stock for a while. It's totally worth it!
Originally released on vinyl for this year's Record Store Day, the Money Store is record number two from this weirdo outsider punk/noise/electro/hip hop trio from across the bay, whose debut, the twisted noise drenched Ex-Military was a huge hit around here, and The Money Store seems poised to follow suit. Although in some ways, this new record is a lot less weird, and a lot more polished, and while it's still fierce and fucked up, it's definitely not as outwardly angry, less a sonic brick in the face, and more like a carefully plotted and meticulously executed throat slitting, which we would imagine is a comparison these guys would dig.
As with Ex-Military, Zach Hill from Hella is one of the guys behind the production, and while there may be live drumming, it definitely sounds like he spent more time programming beats, the sound more electro than anything, and even moreso that Ex-Military, the sound much more fully realized, more lush and layered, opener "Get Got" has a loop and a beat that sounds like it could've gone in an entirely different direction, and been sort of weird pop radio hit, but with Stefan Burnett's twisted flow and frenetic delivery, it helps transform the songs' shoegazey electro-jitter into something more jittery and dizzying, like some malfunctioning double dutch jam. "The Fever" hews closer to the first record, the flow more of a belligerent bellow, the beat a stuttery skitter, but again, the production is super slick and makes the song a bit more palatable, without taking away from the ferocity, which is definitely a delicate line to toe.
The whole record is killer, every track here, all weirdo loops, twisted flow, sick beats, massive production, this is the sort of shit you imagine being blasted from a booming system in the car of THEE scariest dude in the hood, fucked up and fierce, but also groovy and funky, a little bit loopy and twisted, especially when they do the whole sped up soul sample thing, which here just makes things sound weirder then ever.
Lots of this record remind us of one of our favorite weirdo outsider hip hop records EVER, Too Bad But True, by Fever, released on DHR way back in 1998, the same sort of disregard for standard song structure, typical rapping, lots of distortion and murk, fractured beats, twisted loops, almost like both groups decided to reinvent the genre from the ground up, and just inadvertently touched on the various elements that DEFINE the genre in most cases, but here those bits and bobs just got all fucked up and came out the other side practically unrecognizable, and got all tangled up into an already head spinning, bafflingly brilliant sound. Hip hop record of the year? Quite possibly, but word is there's gonna be ANOTHER Death Grips later this year, so we might have to reserve judgment until then!
This issue's got Paradise Lost on the cover ("metal's most underrated band"). Also inside: Torche, High On Fire, Unsane, Suffocation, Prong, UFOmammut, Occultation, Royal Thunder, Nachtmystium, and for their monthly album hall of fame honors, the story behind the making of Pantera's seminal Vulgar Display Of Power... Along with the usual reviews, news, ads, snark, etc.
We may have unfairly pegged local guitarist Matt Baldwin. His records are big time faves around here, gorgeous mesmerizing guitarscapes, from raga infused psychedelic folk to Fripp / Rother style cosmic guitar explorations, we sell them like crazy, and they get played all the time in the store as well, so when it cam time to review a recent release on Baldwin's Psychic Arts label, we were all prepared for some blissed out guitarscapery, but instead, we got Cryptic Cross, a twisted lo-fi weirdo metal band from the East Bay, whose sound was murky and buzzy and psychedelic and sort of insane, and really about as far as you can get from Baldwin's solo records. So we were determined not to make the same mistake with this most recent Psychic Arts release, from the strangely named Dragontime, another group from Oakland, the cd featuring some cool psychedelic Rainbow Brite style paste on cover art, that definitely points to something a bit on the weird side.
And it's that artwork that maybe gives the biggest clue to what's going on here, cuz it's as far removed from the warped metal of Cryptic Cross as it is from Matt Baldwin's records. The opening track is all pulsing rhythms and synth swirls, kind of new agey, a little bit like video game music, a bit of swirly kosmische shimmer, quite cool actually, but definitely not what we were expecting, a sort of prismatic glistening rainbowscape. The second tracks adds ethereal female vox, and it's transformed into a soundtrack to some low budget fantasy film, a little 4AD, a little swoonsome shoegaze dreampop. After that the record continues to mutate and shift, from fuzzy, warbly organ minimalism, to an almost jazzy sounding lo-fi synth heavy tropical ballad, and from strange alien Asian video game folk music, all processed vox and dreamy melodies, to a murky, softly buzz shimmerscape, and from skeletal sun dappled folk pop, to droned out ominous cinematic synthscapery.
Definitely far out, and seriously super cool too, a little like a female Fastest, conjuring up her own sort of 8-bit shoegaze soundworld, that we can't seem to stop listening to...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered!
We don't always get everything that stoner rock specialists Small Stone put out, but the stuff that we do, is always really good. Case in point, this new disc from a trio we'd never heard of before, Dwellers. We're guessing there's some sort of Lovecraftian connotation to their name, though the ropy intestines / psychedelic tentacles in the portrait painting of the band on the cover are presumably referencing the album title too, but not in a gross way. Anyway, Dwellers are a heavy duty stoner metal band from Salt Lake City, with some grunge going on, the vocals in particular definitely giving it a bit of that old school Seattle vibe.
Actually, after getting this Dwellers in, and digging it, we realized that while we hadn't known who they were, we HAD reviewed, and really liked, an album by the singer/guitarist's previous band, Iota, also on Small Stone. These lines from our review of Iota's Tales pretty much also apply to Dwellers' debut: "A mixture of trippy Hawkwindiness and more aggressive blues based hard rockin', sorta like (early) Soundgarden or Skin Yard meets the heavier, more spaced out sounds of Sons Of Otis or UFOmammut. One reason we mention Soundgarden and Skin Yard is 'cause of the grungy melodic vocals, which bear a certain resemblance to that of those bands, but otherwise this is HEAVIER and SPACIER than any Seattle grunge for sure."
So, sweet. Dwellers definitely continue to a large degree in that Iota tradition, these six tracks being damn heavy, fuzzed-out, and graced with the gruff, drawling, grunge-worthy vox of Iota's Joey Toscano (the rhythm section here having their own pedigree, being from the band Subrosa). Maybe in comparison to Iota there's something a little bit earthier, and even bluesier, to these jams, which while they can get lengthy (up to ten minutes), don't orbit quite as far out in space as some of Iota's more extended, alien assaults. Instead, there's a greater focus on, say, Southern-fried slide guitar in service of Dwellers' gritty rockin'. There's slowburn builds ("Old Honey") and catchy groovers ("Lightening Ritual"), Good Morning Harakiri sometimes stompin', and sometimes spaced out, with lots of loping riffage and raspy holler. Maybe imagine a much more succinct Earthless, gone grunge? Dead Meadow channelling some Alice In Chains? CoC circa Blind, playing the blues?? Ah, we're not quite getting it right. But anyway, if you're into the stoner rock stuff and want a good dose (of something a bit different, but still familiar), give this a listen! Recommended.
By the way, we like how this album, despite being on cd, is obviously sequenced with a Side One / Side Two concept in mind, the tracklist on the back cover making this obvious with a gap between tracks 3 and 4.
Another batch of WAY too limited cassette releases from Twonicorn, whose releases seem to go out of print in the blink of an eye. This time we managed to get even more copies, in fact we took most of the copies from each pressing, but considering the fact that the pressing usually run between 40 and 100 copies, you know these won't last long either way.
Earthen Sea, what a killer name, however, the tape's title, Seeking Enlightenment 12 Oz. At A Time, had us expecting some sort of lo-fi, damaged and drunken sludgerock slugfest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Earthen Sea craft delicately developing drones, that begin life as a droney ultra minimal krautrock / postrock hybrid, with lots of swirling low end, pulsing melodies, propulsive barely there rhythms, a murky kraut jam like listening to Neu! practice six floors below you in an -almost- soundproof rehearsal room. Those various elements eventually begin to come apart, and blur together, becoming a thick tangled swirl of low end grind and throbbing, rumbling thrum, shot through with subtle sonic colors and glistening melodic sparkles. Nice.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES. We got 25 and we will not be able to get any more.
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A gorgeous new batch of hazy transcendental keyboard dronemusic from this SF based one man band, once a member of Mi Ami and Black Eyes, although you'd never know it from these two sprawling minimalist explorations.
Unlike the propulsive almost krautrock-ish murk of his first tape, Waves is more a sort of barely moving, lush layered lysergic new age, the sort of keyboard kosmische that folks into Emeralds and Expo 70 should go nuts for. The melodies are subtle, the movements muted, the various tones and overtones float and hover and wash into one another like, well, waves. There's definitely a Niblock vibe too, but filtered through a more modern lo-fi space drone floorcore aesthetic. The A side for all its spaciness and dreaminess is also thick, and in its own way heavy the sounds raw, and a little abrasive, it's mesmerizing and ambient, but also intense.
The B side however is WAY more ethereal and ephemeral, those same waves of sound are now more monochromatic, pulsing in slow motion, woozy swells of muddy melody that mask a barely there propulsion, the track seems to fade and crumble, before finally switching gears as a distant melodic hum, the backdrop to a mysterious set of field recordings, a warm whirring bed for a soft swirling clouds of Philip Jeck like click and hiss. Nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! We have less than a dozen, and once these are gone then that's it...
As promised last list, when we reviewed Rob's Make It Fast, Make It Slow, here's the other killer African '70s reissue that the folks at the Soundway label just blessed us with, the 1973 Projection One album from Ghana's Edzayawa band, their sole release. Once again, this proves that the international groove scene of yesteryear just won't quit. Deep digging labels like Soundway are getting nowhere near to the bottom of the barrel, if albums like this are any indication. Edzaywa is top flight stuff, funky and kinda freaky, with tight percussive grooves in complex patterns arranged into what amount to mostly-instrumental, dark & intense "Afro-prog" workouts. There's often someone jamming away on the organ, also outbursts of some slightly surfy guitar twang, occasional emphatic vocals (usually in an African dialect), and even an interlude or two of crazy whistling flute (?). But it's the staggering rhythms, ticking away steadily, speeding up, slowing down, sometimes with echoing, almost dubbed out production, that will keep you in thrall. Hot stuff. Finding just one awesome obscure album like this would be an accomplishment for most reissue labels, for Soundway it apparently ain't no thing.
By the way, there's a vinyl version too, but it's currently on backorder....
A stellar follow-up to 2010's The Absent Coast on Root Strata, Already Gone from this local San Francisco drone duo, Maxwell Croy and James Devane, aka EN, finds theses two with an even more focused and nuanced dynamic sensibility. Of course that sensibility centers around Croy's classically trained koto playing, which plays a large part in EN's overall sound, but here that element is really given ample room to stretch out and breathe. Instead of being merely one component in a layering process of cascading shifting dronescapes, the high relief sound of the texture of strings, the slow growing lyrical motifs and the solemn resonant pauses between phrases set up the pieces as they bloom into delicate shimmers and then oceanic swells of drifting unsettled moods. Pushing the momentum along on the first track, "Lodi" is the loping bass pulse of Trevor Montgomery (The Drift, Date Palms, Tarantel), that has us surfing waves of sound before settling into a swirling miasma of crystalline tones and airy phases. Taking us to the final track, "Elysia", the longest track at 20 minutes is set up by a long introduction of gorgeous and breathtakingly spacious koto playing that like falling leaves in gusts of winds unfurl into bellows of sky high cloud drones, gathering and darkening in fields of rich pulsating grey thunderous tones and then watercolor washes of blissful ambiance, the storm cleared and fading away, set to awaken in some far-off place. Beautiful!
This is the first we've heard from this Ohio psychedelic prog rock combo, whose sound the label compares to King Crimson and Pink Floyd, and which we're pleased to report is really not all that far off the mark, although the group take that classic prog sound and filter it through a much more modern sound, adding some serious guitar crunch, instrumental heft and some dense tripped out production. But that said, at its core, this stuff sounds pretty classic seventies prog, with soaring strings and epic synths, serious, properly sung vocals, dizzying solos, incredible harmonies, intricate arrangements, and of course loooooong songs.
Just check out the record opener, which takes up all of side A, a nearly twenty minute four part song suite called "Center Of The Sun", that channels Magma and ELP as much as it does Mugstar and White Hills. In fact the abundant progisms should definitely not keep all you space rock and psych rock freeks from digging into this stuff, cuz it most certainly IS both space-y and psychedelic, but instead of the usual endless jamming, these guys fuse killer jams, to actual songs, sprawling EPIC songs, "Center Of The Sun" being the best example, the band slipping easily from old school proto-metal sounding crunch, to dizzying mathy space-prog workouts, some cool classic rock bits, some shredding lead guitar, and some full on heart-of-the-sun space-psych freakouts, tempered with woozy washed out folk flecked drifts, and all somehow deftly woven into a seriously rad modern prog rock epic.
The three shorter tracks on the B side are equally heavy, and proggy, and intricate, killer riffing, busy drumming, weird arrangements, some soaring synths, lots of mathed out rhythms, gorgeous lush textures, and still more killer guitar jams, not to mention FX galore, definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of the current crop of psychedelic space rock, and folks like us, who find little to love in modern prog. And while you don't have to love prog to dig these guys, it definitely doesn't hurt.
Includes a download code! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
We got a big ol' batch of tapes from the Land Of Decay label, run by none other than Andre Foisy, one half (or maybe now it's one third) of aQ beloved doomdronedirge outfit Locrian, the tapes include new jams from ITHI, Number None, Wraiths (all reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and this, the latest solo release from the man himself. And while we were all prepared to say something about how this doesn't veer very far from the sound of Locrian, all it took was about ten seconds to realize it really does. Sure it's still droney and broody and dark and mysterious, but instead of the bleak minimalism and heaving low end thrum of Locrian, Foisy has conjured up two gorgeously heady slabs of folky looped string raga, mandolins and violins unfurl woozy layered loops, constantly shifting, hazy and fuzzy, definitely sounding like snippets of some lost Comus song blurred into a roiling bit of dense folk swirl, while the whole thing is wreathed in a thick churning fog of guitar buzz and rumble, a blackened halo of feedback and thrum, gorgeous stuff for sure.
The second track offers up another variation, a mesmerizing skeletal guitar loop, which is soon joined by droned out violins, sounding a bit like Tony Conrad, all underpinned by deep rumbling guitar swells, streaks of controlled feedback, the sound growing more and more dense, and dreamily blown out, clouds of FX drift in, some tabla like rhythms, the song exploding in slo-mo into a sort of Skullflower/Sunroof! style bliss out, but with a strange sense of raga folk at its core.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Once again, hot on the heels of reissues by Edzayawa and Rob, international groove digging label Soundway come up with a winner! And since this Nigerian band is named The Funkees, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect already, right? Of course, if a band from around here, now, called themselves The Funkees, they would probably be terrible if they played funk - and probably still terrible if the name were ironic and they played, like, acoustic indie rock or floorcore dronemusic. But a band from Africa, back in the '70s, called The Funkees, reissued by Soundway? Yep, they're good. Good and funky. Good enough to become East Nigeria's number one band, and their region's closest competitors to Lagos-based big city contemporaries like BLO. And good enough to move to London, and score a record deal.
This "best of" anthology includes the tracks from all of The Funkees' early Nigerian singles, plus crucial selections from the two albums that they recorded in while England. 18 tracks total, packed with irresistibly groovy rhythms, energetic arrangements, jamming organ, and fuzz guitar excess. Heck there's actually even a song here titled "Acid Rock"! They also do an Afrofunk cover version of "Slipping Into Darkness" by War. Hell yeah, it's "Dancing Time" all right...
Packaged with full liner notes that include an interview with original member Sonny Akpan.
A while back we reviewed the reissue of General Surgery's Necrology, which we joked was our favorite Carcass record, that Carcass never made, but it was only sort of a joke, cuz as nuts as the aQ metalheads are about Carcass, at least one of us (ok, it's Andee) likes Necrology as much as ANY of the Carcass records. Partially, because, as we mentioned in that review, as those Swedes attempted to make their very own Carcass record, they managed to create something that was both a ridiculous homage/rip off, and at the same time a slightly more twisted version of what they were shooting for, which in some weird way made Necrology sort of a more fucked up Carcass, which is not a bad thing at all. For all you Carcass loving metalheads who haven't checked out Necrology, do yourself a favor. For those of you, like us, who've already worn out your copy of Necrology, maybe more than once, this one is for you, a massive collection of B sides and compilation tracks, demos and unreleased jams and various songs from long out of print splits, not to mention a Carcass cover from a Carcass tribute, the ultimate irony, or is it? Regardless, this is some gut grinding metallic mayhem, total gorge grind bliss, utter Carcass worship, grinding metallic heaviness that kills.
Latest sprawling dronedoom epic from this aQ favorite one man band. For whatever reason, we always forget to mention that the Gog guy once did time in some other aQ fave heavies Unruh and Wellington, but for the last little while has been trafficking in something much more minimal and abstract, that would be Gog, whose sound is a constantly mutating black sonic cloud. While already a strange beast, Gog seems to have gotten even stranger here. Four sides, all spinning at 45 (although they sound even murkier and sludgier at 33!), the first of which begins with a long stretch of grinding metallic industrial blackness, like the hum of machinery magnified into a glorious drone-y din, occasionally coalescing into something resembling SUNNO))) like riffage, before ultimately fading out in a blur of muted shimmer. The B side introduces some spaced out jazzy drumming, a strangely out of pace shuffling rhythm, draped over a fog of blackened whir, the vibe very Necks-like in its spacey almost looped sounding mesmer, rife with swoonsome melodies, and a final movement that's all washed out lo-fi drift and click splattered low end churn.
The second record begins as a thick, caustic industrial dirgescape, again flecked with some jazzy rhythms, that continually shift, and at one point transform into what sounds like looped fills beneath sheets of whirring buzz, only to explode into a corrosive finale, all keening high end skree. And finally, the D side unfurls a blurred bit of gauzy ambience, the loveliest of the bunch, at least briefly, a very Tim Hecker-ish feel, that quick grows more corrosive and caustic, the drums come shuffling in, the sound growing more rhythmic, tribal and dense, laced with samples, the whole thing subtly dubbed out and heavily effected, making it a sort of tripped out psychedelic coda. So cool.
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES!! Pressed on white vinyl, and comes with a 33"x22" poster!
Leyfdu Ljosinu translates from the Icelandic to "Allow The Light" and is a stunningly beautiful piece from the post-classical composer Hildur Gudnadottir, who recorded this in one-shot with no edits or overdubs with just cello, voice, and electronics. The liner notes and the press release make a big deal about the single take of this recording, but with how adept so many doom / drone / shoegaze / black noise musicians are a creating loops on the fly through computer or pedal or whatever, this shouldn't be the first thing to commend Gudnadottir on. What she should be praised for is her command over ALL of her instruments and how well she emotes a beautiful desolation through those instruments. At first, Gudnadottir sings a plaintive, wordless melody which she captures in a loop, as she abstracts that loop by stretching it and dunking it in reverb, she adds more vocal tones and melodies - more and more of which begins to blur into an ethereal cauldron of roiling sound somewhere between the elegant hypnosis of William Basinski and Grouper's elegiac hymnal deconstruction. After some 15 minutes, the cello makes a slow introduction, seamlessly overtaking the voice as the prominent instrument. Again, Gudnadottir filters the sounds of her cello through all of her effects, furthering the descent of her sounds to the very bottom of the ocean. By the conclusion of the piece, she eschews the reverb for a frantic, nervous dervish across the strings of her cello abruptly coming to a perfect conclusion.
BACK IN STOCK!!! Originally released in 1985 as a set of 2 EPs on LAYLAH and reissued "wrongly" by Mute / Grey Area in 1992, Seven Hours Sleep marks yet another in the ongoing reissue campaign by Korm Plastics of work by The Hafler Trio. Seven Hours Sleep also happens to mark the last contributions from former Cabaret Voltaire member Chris Watson, although Andrew MacKenzie (the other founder of the 'trio') was still claiming that The Hafler Trio involved such fictional characters as Dr. Edward Moolenbeek and Robert Spridgeon. In recent years, MacKenzie has focused his activities upon the essentialization of the power of the human voice, as he has extracted intensely brilliant tonal fragments from the voices of Jonsi Birgisson, David Tibet, and Blixa Bargeld, stretching them into some of the most deliriously beautiful and acoustically powerful minimalism the world has ever witnessed. Well over two decades ago, the human voice was still central to MacKenzie's work in The Hafler Trio although in a slightly different context. Instead of focusing upon the essence of the human voice as a gnostic spark for enlightenment through sound, MacKenzie was far more interested in how perception and communication were intertwined, and how it was possible to create paranoiac atmospheres through the obfuscation of language's syntax. Within Seven Hours Sleep, MacKenzie rewires utterances, screams and megaphone broadcasts into a decentered collage of mediated fragments, rupturing flickering drones and unsettling field recordings. MacKenzie has demonstrated his power to confuse and delight through his complex laboratory of sound, mythology, and context; Seven Hours Sleep is no different. Sorry, no mp3 samples can be made available of the Hafler Trio's work.
Longtime SF locals probably remember The Court And Spark, on of our favorite local bands back in the day, their debut album released originally on Andee's tUMULt label, they played shows with Souled American when they were in town way back when, the band slogged away, making amazing record after amazing record, only to have the sort of success they so richly deserved escape them again and again. And thus like bands often do, they called it a day, with the core of the Court And Spark, M.C. Taylor and Scott Hirsch, continuing on as Hiss Golden Messenger, a group that traded in the traditional country influences of their previous outfit for some stranger influences, the Grateful Dead, seventies FM radio, classic rock, and of course that classic Laurel Canyon country pop, all woven into a sound, that while reminiscent of the Court And Spark was something all together smoother, and while we dug this new group, it wasn't really until this new one that we really GOT it. Not entirely sure what it is about Poor Moon, but everything seems to have fallen perfectly into place. Those same influences loom large, but there definitely seems to be a return to a more classic country vibe, the opener sounds like it could have been plucked straight off a Court And Spark record, the only difference some whirring organ, some horns, but Taylor's voice sounds as great as ever, and the song is crazy catchy, rife with swoonsome strings, it's definitely a stunner. "Call Him Daylight" is another winner, a swaggery twang flecked groove, laced with slithery melodies, and even some handclaps, but goddamn if we can't stop listening to it. The rest of the record unfurls similarly, the sound slipping from slide guitar laced country rock, to brooding country folk ballads, campfire bluegrass back porch hoedowns, super warm, melodic country tinged classic rock groovers, all of the tracks here fantastic, not a bum note in the bunch, the sound too, lush and expansive and so gorgeous, mandolin, clavinet, electric piano, violin, viola, fiddle, saxophone, banjo, Rhodes piano, all woven into probably the coolest country rock record we've heard in forever.
Housed in a swank oversized old school tip on mini lp style gatefold sleeve.
We've long been fans of this outsider alien Appalachia folk troubadour, we've made at least one of his records an aQ Record Of The Week, and raved about most of the others, so when we recently were offered some new releases from the Kraak label, one of the titles we were most excited about was this vinyl collection, which gathers up a handful of tracks from various out of print cassettes, most of which were so limited we were never able to get them.
And like the records proper, the sounds here while rooted in a sort of psychedelic folk, definitely veer in all sorts of directions, sonically quite disparate at times, but somehow strangely cohesive. The random samplings here seem to have been assembled in a way that at least simulates a record proper, but even then, the sounds are still tripped out and fantastically erratic.
Angular electric guitars wrap themselves around a reverbed croon, moody funereal dirges laced with muted percussion give way to dark buzzing drones, which in turn give way to a chiming dronefolk shimmer, weirdly twisted and detuned, wreathed in buzz. Elsewhere lush forest folk transforms into a swampy sort of abstract blues, with crooned vox and a woozy warped production. Jangle meets strum, falsetto vox drift over tinkling vibes-like melodies, shuffling jazzy rhythms blossom into something more rocking and psychedelic. A brief bit of moaning buzzy dronemusic, a la Angus Maclise or Tony Conrad introduces a barrage of wild squiggly melodies draped over a woozy strum, wrapped in swirls of feedback and blurred into a raga like trip out and finally, the record finishes off with an ultra minimal, barely there Jandekian creep, some serious outsider folk, with haunting falsetto vocals drifting over hushed tendrils of melodies and lots of mysterious near silence.
Cool stuff, essential for fans, maybe not the best place to start for newbies, but if you have any/all of the other records and dig them as much as we do, this stuff too will hit the spot.
20 minutes of drowned sound and convulsive twitches from the audio madman M.S. Waldron, known here as irr. app. (ext.). Much of his work deals in particularly odd mutations of deranged thought and philosophical ramblings, transforming those ideas into tumbling collages of mangled field recordings, discomforting drone, and broken song. On past records, there had been invocations of psychic surgery gone wrong, there had been ruminations on the intellect of dust, there are the impossible covers of Organum material, and there was a trilogy expanding on the circular logic of Wilhelm Reich. Not surprising that soundcycle has somehow expanded even further with the addition of a fourth member. Here, Waldron delves into what he describes as 'avian technology'; and we don't think he's arranging symphonies for Bower Birds and their artisanal collections of bottlecaps and beetle shells; nor does this even seem to feature much in the way of recognizable bird song (although Waldron has been known to recite the onomatopoeic descriptions of bird songs in field guides in Kurt Schwitters Ursonate style). No, this seems far more chimerical in nature, with the monstrous results something akin to the baby in Eraserhead, making disturbing utterances amidst clattering wheezes from antique machines, ur-drones of a darkened psychedelic fashion, and a despondent atmosphere. Given his ongoing contributions to Nurse With Wound, Neognath In Machina isn't too far from Stapleton's wild universe of post-Surrealist sound; but Waldron's genetic re-engineering of sound, flesh, and feather is sublimely its own. Limited to 75 copies.
We raved about the first Ithi record, which came out on Utech a while back, a duo featuring Luke from sci-fi spacemetal dronelords Servile Sect, and Joshua Convey, whose Utech release was also a huge favorite around here. The two have returned with another fantastically tripped out slab of mesmerizing murk, thick corrosive synths, pulsing barebones programmed rhythms, guitars blurred into thick heaving swells, the vocals a buried croon, the result sounding like some sort of SUPER heavy lost cold wave classic. There's definitely a Suicide vibe for sure, a sort of grim swagger, but wedded to an almost Nadja/Jesu worthy wall of sound dronedoomdirge. We could listen to the opening track forever, a twisted cold wave krautrock spacedrone dirge that is as blackened and ominous as it is hypnotic and head nodding, with the rest of the record following suit, in many cases getting even more abstract and blown out, long stretches of blurred guitar drones, sprawled out over ribcage rattling bass pulses, the whole thing heaving and creeping and pulsing ominously. And in other cases, approaching the sort of crumbling slo-mo noise pop of Dead C offshoot Gate, but replacing the noise rock guitar and stumbling drum damage with sci-fi synths and alien drum programming. SO great!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Kadet Kuhne is a San Francisco based media-artist, who often pulls the worlds of experimental video and avant-garde electronics closer together through her seamless audio-visual explorations of digitized fragments and mulched sonic detritus. Matter Of Mind is her first full album in nearly 8 years, although she certainly had plenty of performances, screenings, installations, and collaborations during that time. That said, this album does follow neatly with the previous record Thin Air in its ghostly abstraction of softened glitches, polished surfaces, and rounded tones not to far from the orbits of Jan Jelinek or Oval, with melodic fragments emerging sporadically through the time-stretched filigree and pixelated gaseousness. On "Ruminant," Kadet brings to the foreground the unprocessed sounds of a clarinet (courtesy of Giselle Eastman) amidst the digital smoke and mirror sound design of refracted noir, sounding like an updated version of the Vangelis soundtrack for Blade Runner. Her track "Encoded" responds to a process that Lucky Dragons used on John Coltrane's A Love Supreme to turn it into a visual score; here, she transformed the Coltrane classic into binary data and reassembled the audio signal output into a thoroughly abstracted corollary. Obviously, some of the original has been reintroduced with a subtle groove from a deconstructed bassline and a skittering rhythmic sample emerges amidst the digitally scrubbed and mulched-to-graynoise data. Her most refined work to date!
Hey, we like surprises, especially pleasant ones like this. The return of longtime aQ faves Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, the project of Belgian musician Stef Heeren, is indeed a bit of a darkwave departure from his previous work, but still totally welcome, once we got our heads around it. Perhaps the purple-and-black cover graphics should have been a clue to something new, 'cause all earlier Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat covers were black-and-white.
KTAOABC's previous four albums, while each varied to some degree (the introduction of drums, and heavier drones, on 2008's The Nebulous Dreams being a bold move back then), all hewed to the same basic sound/concept: foreboding experimental apocalyptic doom folk, that caused us to draw strong comparisons to the likes of Current 93 (especially Current 93!), Comus, Richard Youngs, Swans, and even Woven Hand. KTAOBAC's witchy rituals were dark and ghostly, a mix of sparse pagan folk and deathly industrial drone, with vocals intoned like David Tibet.
But, with Weltuntergangsstimmung, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat has really taken a new tack. If we thought drums were a change, how about drum machines? The sinister old KTAOABC sound is present, but transformed. It sounds like Heeren has been listening to a lot of early '80s minimal new wave music (perhaps there's influence here from Belgium's own Snowy Red and The Neon Judgement?), and has now made a very song-based album with electronic instruments that, if it were an authentic release from the era, would fit in nicely on a reissue label like Dark Entries. Or indeed, we wouldn't have been surprised had this come out on Wierd, alongside the likes of Xeno & Oaklander.
His vocals here are reminding us less of C93's Tibet, and more of another favorite folk shaman, Daniel Higgs. But imagine Daniel Higgs making a gothic coldwave record!! Clicking-ticking drum machine beats and electronic handclaps underpin reverb heavy electric guitar lines and washes of analog synth, over which Heeren croons his lyrics of sadness and surrender, baring his soul in a catchy new gloom-pop context. (There's also a bass player, and some female backing vox.)
We're loving it, even though now KTAOBAC sounds more like Bauhaus or The Cure, than Comus. But, while quite different, this is rapidly becoming one of our favorite KTAOABC albums yet, we can't stop playing it. And, we all can be happy that Heeren at least didn't see any need to change the delightful name of his band.
FYI, there's a vinyl version of this too, on OnderStroom Records, that we hope to get in sometime soon as well.
We first discovered Kohn, aka Jurgen DeBlonde, via his contribution to the Western Vinyl 'Portrait' series, in which each artist was to pick an individual, write songs about said individual, and provide a drawing for the cover. Kohn picked Bruce Willis, so we could hardly resist when we saw this weird record in the racks with this scrawled portrait of BW on the cover. We were then pleasantly surprised to discover that there was more to the record that the concept/cover, and in fact, it was a gorgeous disc of glitched out folkiness and droney melodic abstractions, trippy loops and blurred collaged soundscapes, it was so good that we went searching for every release we could find.
And not soon after, this showed up, the latest from Kohn, an lp on Kraak and one that finds him exploring the concept, as the title suggests, of random patterns, recorded with just an organ, and with minimal edits, improvised variations on simple random patterns, designed to be listened to, again according to the liner notes, while doing something else, reading, meditating, driving, and it does sound perfect for that. Obviously influenced by Reich, Riley, Glass and the like, this is moody hypnotic, almost new age sounding kosmische mesmer, four long tracks, that over the course of each, gradually shift and transform, from murky looped churn, to glistening melodic shimmer, and from lush chordal thrum, to percolating sci-fi arpeggiations, that sound very cosmic and soundtracky, the sort of stuff that should definitely appeal to everyone into the current crop of retro futurism, Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Blizaro, etc, although this is definitely more minimal, and in places definitely has a Zomes vibe, a similar sort of spaced out zoner vibe, perfect drift off, zone out, late night soundtrack for sure.
Housed in a super swank four color silkscreened fold over jacket, with a printed insert with liner notes detailing the motives behind the music, and Kohn's ideas and intentions in creating these random patterns.
The Austrian post-industrial provocateur Michael DeWitt attained notoriety in the mid-'80s for his project Zero Kama whose sole album was sourced entirely from human bones and skulls, with plenty of smoke and mirror production techniques to arrive at a Crowleyian sound parallel to the likes of early Current 93, Coil, and Psychic TV. Beyond the one album as Zero Kama, DeWitt released another obscure recording in 1982 under the moniker Korpses Katatonik. This cassette - sometimes referred to as Sensitive Liberated Autistiks, sometimes as Subklinikal Leukotomy Aphrenia Spasmophilik Lyssophobo Asphyxia Sinister Lethal Anorex - delved into parallel concerns of societal pathologies and death-obsessed transgressions through very dark electronics. It's very much in step with the classic industrial productions of SPK (when is anybody going to reissue those records again?) and the pre-Brighter Death Now project Lille Roger, with blackened squalls of grim noise belched through slow-grinding rhythms and an ominous proclamation that "we're all fucked." Such doomspeak from Industrial Culture was commonplace, but DeWitt's Korpses Katatonik said it with just as much brutalist force and conviction as SPK, TG, and Cabaret Voltaire at their most zombified. All of the tracks from that cassette and a compilation track make up the entire body of work for Korpses Katatonik, which have been remastered and repackaged for this anthology. The template for much of what Wolf Eyes did later is found here. Terrifyingly great.
What more do you need to know, than this is two of our favorite heavy bands, doing killer (and WAY unlikely) covers, on by Low, and one by Soundgarden? OK, how about the fact that this was a super limited installment of a subscription only series, really the only way to get your hands on one of these was to subscribe, unless, the guys in KWC offered us a little handful of their copies, the LAST copies in fact, so you should know what that means by now, grab one before they disappear.
KWC tackles Low's "July", and besides cranking up the guitars, and adding some downtuned crunch, stay pretty true to the original, and wisely got a guest vocalist, Lisa Papineau, who we had never heard of before, but who has sung for Air, M83, Farflung and others, but who is the perfect fit, here vocals emotional and powerful, darkly tinged, one of those rare, practically perfect covers, where the cover manages to be as good as the original, different enough to be interesting, but faithful enough to make not singing along impossible.
Thou take on Soundgarden's "4th Of July", and like KWC, stay sort of faithful to the original, and like with the KWC track, via the vocals. In place of Thou's usual throat shredding shrieks, the band unveil some seriously powerful crooning, a kick ass voice that definitely has us wondering what these guys would be capable of if they chose to go in that direction. But fear not, not only is the main riff an oozing, downtuned creep, but after that first verse, the more recognizable Thou vocals come in, but instead of replacing the clean vox, they team up, for a really bizarre duet, and some twisted not-quite harmonies, the song itself, unfurling as a lumbering, surprisingly still super melodic, dirge doom monster.
Rare that we dig both sides of a split this much, but both these tracks totally KILL. And again, super limited, we have about 15 copies, these are the last ones we'll be able to get. Not sure you can even still sign up for the subscription series, so probably better to get one now, before you're kicking yourself later. Insanely gorgeous cover art / design as well!
As the title no doubt led you to believe, this is in fact the fifth release in the ongoing collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), and like IV before it, V was realized as a stand alone record, unlike the first three releases, which were all conceived and composed to accompany art installations. And again, like IV, the sound does not seem to be dramatically effected by this shift, although there does in fact seem to be a bit of a shift from IV to V, with V seeming, to our ears at least, to be a bit more academic, with an ear toward twentieth century classic and modern minimalism, further evidence which may be found in the two tracks here "Phill 1" and "Phill 2", which we presume are an homage to the master dronelord Phill Niblock, but of course done in their own inimitable style, with "Phill 1" opening up a thick gaseous dronescape, that is pocked with glitch and skitter, woven into the fabric of the tracks woozy undulations, and softly moaning choral shimmer. Where on past records much of the sound was barely there, and required close listening, "Phill 1" is much more immediately rewarding, lush and lustrous, thick and warm, and layered, the sort of minimalism that would probably still appeal to fans of O'Malley's SUNNO))) project. The track is definitely active, with plenty going on beneath the surface, and in the spaces surrounding the drone, be they thick slabs of blurred buzz, shards of computer glitch, and all manner of sonic detritus.
"Phill 2" finds O'Malley and Rehberg teaming up with the Prague Philharmonic, where they are joined by Johann Johannsson, who helps with the orchestration, the track transformed into something haunting and symphonic, yet still dark and droney, the sound even more rich, and somewhat cacophonous, a glorious noisy ur-drone, that definitely casts the orchestra as something much more chaotic and abstract that they are perhaps used to, the results are stunning.
In between these tracks, O'Malley and Rehberg do explore more minimal soundscapes, "Study A" features long tones, deep buzzes and sine wave like high end shimmers, stretched out into near static layered mesmer, allowing the two tones two subtly interact, and create all manner of overtones, gradually building in intensity, and at times sounding down right cinematic and psychedelic. "Tony" is another thick minimal dronescape, this one focused around a distorted stretch of slow shifting buzz, surrounded by warm melodic tones, and strange echo drenched percussion, the main drone ever shifting, creating a gorgeous slow motion melody, the background sounds lush and lustrous, maybe the prettiest thing we've heard from KTL yet. And finally, the record finishes off with the 20+ minute "Last Spring: A Prequel", which introduces text, a haunting spoken word, draped over a hissy shimmer, the breath urgent in the microphone, the vibe dark and claustrophobic, the music itself more like old KTL, ultra minimal, high end hiss, minimal static hum, bits of glitch laced throughout, the track all about the dramatically delivered vocals, which grow more and more agitated, more heavily effected, the music subtly following suit, like some strange abstract play, with some of the creepiest sound design ever, courtesy of KTL.
Housed in a super striking 6 panel digipak, with original artwork by Mark Fell. Meanwhile the vinyl comes in an equally colorful gatefold sleeve.
We were pretty into Dust On Common, the last record from these Brooklyn cold wave retro revivalists, but we're digging this new one even more. While much of the sound remains the same, some things have definitely changed, For some reason, we were utterly mesmerized by the opening track, "Animal Smear", which found the group sounding more post punk than cold wave, adding a sort of frenetic energy and dark propulsion to the icy detachment that defined much of the last record. The skittery skeletal drums and dubbed out production only adding even more of a dark psych vibe to the proceedings. One of those tracks, that we must admit, we probably listened to ten times before we made it any deeper into the record. But once we did, the rest of the record stacked up pretty well, sounding like it could have just as easily come out on Wierd as on Sacred Bones, finding common ground in the sonic vocabulary of Xeno & Oaklander and Cold Cave, but with a certain ineffable something that made this stuff resonate. The opening track is a killer of course, but so is the follow up "Housefire At Zumi's", a strange swoonsome synthy instrumental, all minor key, but slightly off kilter, lush swells beneath strange angular melodies, the beat stuttery and weirdly motorik. "Kaiyo Maru" too, weds dark synth drones, and chordal swirls to some dense programmed drumming, and some reverby vocals, and weaves all that into a gorgeous slab of dark electro pop, that manages to sound simultaneously modern, and like it was plucked right out of the eighties, and we hadn't even gotten to the weirdly angular chorus. The title track might be our second favorite jam here, sounding like a retro cold wave version of the Editors, deep crooned vocals, minor key, a little bit ballady, with some strange clattery percussion, and a main melody that is doleful and dour and totally mesmerizing. The rest of the record flits from pounding IDM, to playful electro-pop, from murky cold wave balladry to haunting skitter laced industrial, finishing off with some dreamy synth shoegaze that almost sounds like M83. Fantastic stuff, and another new favorite for sure!
The avalanche of reissues from this legendary Japanese psych outfit continues unabated, with yet another multiple disc box, this one of note, as it's perhaps the most sought after studio recordings from this group, recorded during a brief period in the early eighties when the band included guitarist Fujio Yamaguchi, whose playing meshed perfectly with Les Rallizes mastermind Takeshi Mizutani, resulting in some of the group's dreamiest, and most high fidelity recordings. By now, all but the most stalwart and utterly obsessed Japanese psych nerds are probably burnt out and broke from trying to keep up with all these jams, so with these boxsets, we often find ourselves prefacing our reviews with the warning that they're probably for collectors only, but with Mars Studio, this might be a good place to start, it's definitely the least lo-fi, which for some of us is not necessarily a good thing, it does mean, that the songs are definitely the focus here. The liner notes point out that these are all live takes, as the songs were never properly finished or mixed, and that many of these were captured on a single microphone in the mixing booth, which is why on some tracks you can hear conversations between the musicians and the engineers. But it's all part of the magical mystery of Les Rallizes, and while there are a handful of feedback drenched jams, and a few heavy numbers, the bulk of the tracks from the 3 months the group spent in the Mars Studio tend toward the darkly psychedelic, and in many cases display a distinctly Velvets-y vibe, all low slung and groovy, the guitar solos much more measured and melodic, and ultimately quite gorgeous. And like on other Les Rallizes collections, their are multiple takes of the same songs, often with the different versions virtually unrecognizable, again, another part of the group's mystery. Fans of the noisier fucked up side of Les Rallizes might be a bit thrown off, although there is some of that here to dig, like the 24 minute "Guitar Jam" on disc 3, but folks into a more laid back psychedelia, will definitely be in Japanese psych heaven. The fourth disc is a legendary 1980 live show originally released as Double Heads September, and is a pretty good document of the band at the time, although really, since the studio tracks are also essentially live, it fits pretty perfectly with the first three discs.
Even after all these reissues though, we love this stuff, and can't seem to get enough.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered, each disc housed in a full color sleeve, all the sleeves housed in a full color box.
