The Profound Lore label begins what we hope will be an extensive reissue campaign, focusing on some of the more obscure members of the Twilight Black Circle, a tightly knit USBM scene/collective based in Southern California, similar in sound/spirit to the legendary French Black Legions (Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, etc.), which counts bands like Dolorvotre, Volahn, Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Ashdautas, Arizmenda and others among its members. Odz Manouk, named for a character in Armenian mythology, is a one man band who like many of his Black Twilight Circle brethren, traffics in a furious, raw, almost primitive black metal, but one that takes that primitivism, and somehow manages to create something epic and massive and sonically dense. The primitivism here is not the sort of lo-fi practice space tinniness that so many legendary kvlt outfits spew, the sound here is massive, chaotic, gnarled, dense, thick, black and bristling with energy. The arrangements are twisted and droned out, repetitive riffs, blasting programmed beats that are as motorik as they are brutal, with multiple layers of guitars in constant motion, each track a weird swirling blur, the drums buried in the mix (minus the occasional strange bit of percussion that seems to surface here and there), the tracks shifting constantly from smeared frenzied white noise blowout, to old-Deathspell like churning crush, to loping Burzumic buzz, rife with plenty of surprising melody, little bits of mournful melancholia tucked within heaving slabs of buzzing blackness, a dizzying tangle of dissonance and repetition, of texture and tension, on the surface, raw and black, but closer listening reveals all manner of blackened mystery, long stretches of droney murk, atonal angular melody, weird buried clean vocal harmonies, pulsing almost electronic sounding rhythms, bleary synth shimmers, hazy washed out atmospheres, demonik vokills that growl, mewl and screech in equal measure, all woven into some seriously dense and dark and fantastically fucked up black metal savagery.
This cd reissue contains OM's 2010 demo and tacks on OM's tracks from the split with Tukaaria (whose reissue is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list)...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super swank oversized A5 book style digipak!
The latest release on Pre-Cert Home Entertainment, a mysterious label/imprint run by Finders Keepers head honcho Andy Votel and hauntological soundscapers Demdike Stare, and as you might imagine from the folks running the label, not only is the music fantastical and strange, it's also of questionable provenance, with both Votel and DS keen on whipping up wild tales, and imagining far out backgrounds for record they themselves have made. But all we have to go on at this point is what we're told, which is that this is the vinyl debut, after a series of custom books and tapes, from David Orphan, who runs something called Devon Folklore Tapes, a Smithsonian Folkways like research/cultural heritage project/label, which in this case is concerned with a witch called Hannah Henley, and this tale of her ruthless mistreatment of the locals, and their revenge via the work of a white witch. The story is spelled out on the back of the sleeve, but it's unclear exactly what part the music plays, other than perhaps an imagined soundtrack to those long ago proceedings, and it does play like that, heavy on the found sounds and field recordings, starting out almost like the story, sans narration, set to vinyl, foot steps, creaking chairs, Hannah (we assume), humming and singing to herself as she works, the clink of glasses, all manner of sounds. Gradually strange musical cues begin to surface, and eventually play a much bigger part than those ambient sounds. ominous chords, mysterious wheezing harmoniums, pulsing synths (?), woozy bass melodies, all laced with whispered voices, the resulting soundscape sinister and quite haunting.
The B side opens with some dreamy druggy psychedelic folk, softly crooned female vox (Hannah again?), simply strummed guitar, underpinned by super creepy EVP like vices and bursts of demonic hissing. The record progresses with synth flecked woozy organ gypsy folk, giving way to dirgey sea shanties, al wheezing squeezebox and wild barroom percussion, long stretches of tripped out ambience, and a final burst of chaotic buzz drenched psychedelic freakout.
Hard to say how much of this is based in reality, but it hardly matters, it's really the perfect hauntological artifact either way, full of sonic mystery and heavily supported by all sorts of intriguing (mis)information, the cover featuring a sigil based on the story and a bone supposedly used in the creation of these sounds, and while it won't necessarily be of interest to fans of Demdike Stare and the like, as this is way less electronic and beat oriented, anyone into strange sounds, outsider art, and mysterious sonic archaeology, this will definitely hit the spot.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Here's one of the 2 new releases from beloved experimental label Utech that we're listing this week, the other being by Suzuki Juzno. Now, before we heard this one, we expected it to be good, 'cause it's on Utech after all, but knowing it was by eclectic French composer Philippe Petite, we didn't know WHAT exactly to expect in terms of sounds - was it gonna be glitchy laptopped electronica? Noisy avant-rock? Droned out soundscapery? Something else? All of the above? Petit has done a lot of things over the years, running both the Pandemonium and Bip-Hop labels, most recently playing in dronesters Strings Of Consciousness... And this is perhaps the heaviest, harshest thing he's been involved with yet, and "all of the above" does just about cover it.
The very first track, "Murmurs", is a collaboration with Justin Broadrick of Jesu/Godflesh/Final/etc. infamy, and that sets the super dark, distorted tone for the whole disc, which consists of 45 minutes of groaning, grinding, grainy, atmospheric instrumental industrial sludge spread over 5 tracks, made with guitars, organs, turntables, percussion, electronic processing, backwards effects, etc... In other words, delightful! That is, if your taste in abstract abrasiveness is at all like ours, partial to passages of subterranean rhythmic skitter mixed with moments of sheer Merzbowian intensity.
The centerpiece of this "Symphonia" is the 16+ minute "Fear Has Fallen", with its martial drumming buried under a sinister miasmic muzz, but the whole disc is quite noisily satisfying throughout. The black clouds of the sleeve art are highly appropriate imagery. Highly recommended!!
Initially sold exclusively on the recent European Barn Owl tour, now finally available at aQ, here's Revisitor, a dvd-r of super 8 films and original music from one half of Barn Owl, former aQ-er Jon Porras, released on his own Dolores Press imprint. It's a hazy washed out collection of haunting grainy black and white images set to a score that is quite different than what we're used to hearing from Porras, in Barn Owl or solo, especially considering that there are no guitars here, all electronics and electronic sourced sounds. Long stretches of hazy grey ambience, of industrial whir and hushed minimal thrum, tons of space surrounding abstract swirls of whipping-wind shimmer and deep sonorous echo drenched pulses, blurred metallic layers slowly unfurling in clouds of soft focus effects, a series of minimal soundscapes that slip easily from rich and lustrous and lovely, to haunting and ominous, one second a gauzy softly psychedelic smear of dreamlike chords, the next, a rumbling sinister sprawl of low end blur peppered with strange percussion and some downright doomy sonic swells. The visuals are equally stunning, strange hooded figures performing strange rituals, rolling hills and the silhouette of trees against a slate sky, a stormy coastline, the crashing surf, the lens dappled with rain drops, the sunlight glistening on water, birds flitting through thick clouds, and plenty of more abstract images as well, strange lights, plenty of shadows, textures and mysterious moving abstract shapes, random reflections, impressionistic images of candles, and instruments, hands and hidden faces, all lost in deep fields of rich black.
Originally limited to just 30 copies, now available in a slightly less limited run, housed in a printed origami style sleeve, each disc hand stamped.
The sticker on the front of this archival collection by the band Retsepti, from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, states that it's "dark punk / wave". But we had been lead to believe it was more of a garagey metal thing. And the distributor we got our copies from, happens to be those noted purveyors of soul and funk, Numero Group! So what's Retsepti (which means "Recipe" or "Prescription") actually all about? Well, some kind of darkwave post-punk is about right, with gritty guitars that can riff it up in rollicking fashion but take a backseat to nervy new wavy keyboards at other times. The vocals are coarse but dramatically expressive, melodic and emotional in a raw, rough hewn way, just like the music (though things get smoother as the disc progresses, even incorporating saxophone on one song near the end). And the vibe is definitely what you might expect, dark, desperate yet defiant, from folks making art under trying circumstances (civil war for one thing). So while they didn't turn out to be the Iron Curtain Iron Maiden we'd been mistakenly hoping for, Retsepti are still worthy of attention.
This disc contains their entire recorded output, carefully restored and remastered from their original cassette tape releases and other obscure sources. The cd's handstamped gatefold sleeve contains a 16 page booklet, with liner notes detailing the band's fascinating history, along with lyrics and vintage photos.
Lichtung is sort of a collaboration between two beloved sound artists - Steve Roden and Machinefabriek (aka Rutger Zuydervelt), as the two only share sound files on one of the tracks found on this disc. The project began as part of a group exhibition / installation between Roden, Zuydervelt, and German visual artist Sabine Burger for a gallery in Germany. Burger created the video component, Roden and Zuydervelt produced the sound aspects, visual elements from all three artists populated the walls, and the floors were covered in leaves. Got it? There was obviously some discussion as to the scope of the audio work, as both Roden and Zuydervelt created work that shared sonorous sympathies while maintaining their own individual sensibilities. Roden brings field recordings to the foreground with phasing loops gathered from contact microphone studies with found objects. These are delicate constructions of tenuously held textures, quietly burbling at the edge of perception. While Zuydervelt, on the other hand, brings elegiac drones through violin and guitar for a quiet but comparably more dramatic set of recordings than Roden. With Zuydervelt's field recordings of crumbled leaves and broken twigs, his work fluidly moves in and out of Roden's haptic inventions, making the album feel quite seamless. The one track on which the two exchanged files is an extract of a live Machinefabriek show in which Zuydervelt used Roden's field recordings and the scrabbling of metal objects as the source materials to accompany his cinematic dronescaping. A beautiful, subtle album; but really can this be called a proper collaboration? It hardly matters really, lovely stuff regardless...
Record number two from these witchy Atlanta heavies, part of, whether they like it or not, the new female fronted heavy rock movement, that includes loads of aQ faves like The Devil's Blood, Loon, Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, Castle, Christian Mistress, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Cauchemar, and, well you get the drift. And as much as we love all those bands, and we do, Royal Thunder definitely stand out, for one thing, being not nearly as metal as most of those outfits, instead trafficking in something much more hard rocking, their sound riffy and heavy as fuck, but with a vibe that feels more Southern/classic/stoner rock than metal or doom. And as we mentioned in our review of the last Royal Thunder record, there seems to be a serious eighties metal vibe going on as well. A thumbnail this band plus this band description might be Lynyrd Skynrd plus Neurosis, although we tend to lean toward something more along the lines of Janis Joplin fronting Baroness. Cuz their sound definitely owes much to their Southern countrymen and women (Baroness, Kylesa, etc.), but also because vocalist Miny Parsonz has one of those voices that KILLS, throaty and sultry, witchy and powerful as fuck, the sort of voice that in a different generation might have made her a genuine big time mainstream rockstar. She can croon seductively, of wail like nobody's business, and the music is the perfect match, melodic and dynamic, riffy and groovy, heavy but also plenty psychedelic, and of course catchy like crazy, cuz these songs are less about headbanging or flailing wildly in a pit, and more about drinking beer in the parking lot and driving through town in your beat up old Trans Am, top down, parking behind the Winn Dixie, hanging out, getting stoned and blasting these jams at full volume. They have that sort of classic timeless heavy rock sound that is definitely rare, not just in this new breed of female fronted metal outfits, but in music in general.
For some reason our favorite track from the first record, gets a reworking here, the band slowing it down even further, adding some mournful fiddle (or maybe it's cello), the song much more polished and even more perfect than the original, the main groove, just that much more slithery and swaggery, Parsonz vocals fierce, everything louder and more distorted and heavier and just all around more intense. But really, all the songs here kill, and some of us are tempted to proclaim Royal Thunder top of the witchy heavy rock heap at this point, and we're thinking some of you just might agree.
Listen on: Deezer
Yet another slab of gorgeous echo drenched psych folk / noise pop from this local treasure, Mike Donovan unfurls another mini songsuite, beginning with some softly distorted, reverb soaked falsetto vox draped over simple stripped down steel string strum, like some lost sixties folk gem newly discovered, a hazy artifact from some lost time, the second track though is more rocking, loose and wild drumming, angular fuzz guitar, snarly and swaggery, with some killer psychedelic crunch, and a serious T-Rex vibe, before things get noisier, some lilting folkiness doused in distortion and feedback, underpinned by whirring organ, like some classic sixties pop nugget mostly obscured by clouds of noise and fuzz, before finally finishing things off with a loping dirge folk pound, driven by the death rattle of a creeping loose-stringed guitar, distant echoey drumming, druggy and swaggery and plenty spaced out and psychedelic!
A few lists back we raved about a recently released 7" from a now defunct local band called the Sopors, who seemingly disappeared without a trace, they were part of the same scene that brought us pop heroes the Ovens, and post Sopors, some of the same members went on to play in Violent Change, whose debut tape we reviewed a while back too. And as much as we love that Sopors 7", and we really do, it barely scratches the surface of what an amazing and bizarre band the Sopors really were. This lp, most of the copies of which reside in boxes and beneath beds and in closets, is the sort of dizzyingly ramshackle and inadvertently brilliant record that inspires extreme music nerdery and slavish fanaticism, and we're not ashamed to admit that we're pretty goddamn obsessed with these guys, and it breaks out heart that they never got their due. Listening to this record now, we're compelled to proclaim these guys our favorite local band, it's catchy as fuck, but totally damaged and off kilter, it seems to us, that the people who lose their shit for Sic Alps and other sonically similar groups, should feel similarly about these guys. Of all the bands who channel that twisted post punk sound, a la Swell Maps, the Fall, Television Personalities, early Pavement, we really haven't heard anyone do it better than these guys, the fact that every song sounds like its on the verge of collapse only makes it that much better. Pop hooks galore, crazy catchy melodies, but all wreathed in angular guitar crunch, blown out lo-fi buzz, the drums so low in the mix they're often inaudible, the whole recording brittle and lo-fi, and tinny and in-the-red, but somehow, all of that stuff becomes a part of the Sopors' sound, a sound which is gloriously fucked up and just about the catchiest shit we've heard in ages.
Some of the tracks here sound like lost eighties Yellow Pills style post punk power pop B sides, while others sound like some obscure British angular punk rock, and still others sound like bedroom 4-track indie pop, others almost sound like classic punk rock a la 999 or Stiff Little Fingers, all clanging crashing chords and gruff vox, but EVERY song here is impossibly catchy, some are so catchy it's impossible to believe they're not covers. Not sure what else to say, we're kind of obsessed with these guys, and have been listening to little else.
If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands, or have been loving that Violent Change tape, or love the Ovens, but wish they were more noisy and off kilter and twisted and fucked up, or just want to hear what we would make our record of the year, if it actually come out this year, then dig it! WAY WAY WAY recommended.
One of two new releases from the Time Released Sound label this week. This one from a woman who calls herself Strie, and who is rumored to have been a big name in European classical music, only to shun the spotlight and head for the countryside to live in isolation. True or not, it makes for a good story, and listening to Strie, it's certainly easy to imagine these haunting sounds being born of a European classical tradition. Haunting and cinematic, brooding and expansive, dark soaring strings, fluttering woodwinds, delicate piano, ethereal female vocals, all laced with strange bits of industrial clatter, little bits of mysterious glitch, the sounds here are moving and emotional and timeless, soundtracky for sure, but not just filmic, these tracks have a depth and dark energy, that seem to connect with the human spirit, a sonic representation of lost loves and forgotten memories, mournful strings, garbled electronics, only give these sounds a modern vibe that further their timelessness, and position them as modern sound, while at the same time retaining the traditions and the music that came before, the label mentions Gorecki and Arvo Part, which we definitely here as well, fans of groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor too will love this. Epic, mysterious and majestic, maybe our favorite release on Time Released Sound so far!
As with all the TRS releases, there are two different versions, the normal less limited (and less expensive) version, which comes in a handsome digipak, and the super special, ultra fancy and pricey DELUXE version, limited to just 100 copies, which in this case, takes that digipak, and houses it in a black double envelope, hand stamped, inside, two vellum sleeves, in one the digipak, the sleeve hand stamped, in the other a set of three 4"x6" prints, as well as a 4"x6" unassembled jigsaw puzzle. The limited version is already sold out at the label and OUT OF PRINT. We have about 5 copies of it and then it's gone for good.
One of two new releases from the Time Released Sound label this week. This one from a woman who calls herself Strie, and who is rumored to have been a big name in European classical music, only to shun the spotlight and head for the countryside to live in isolation. True or not, it makes for a good story, and listening to Strie, it's certainly easy to imagine these haunting sounds being born of a European classical tradition. Haunting and cinematic, brooding and expansive, dark soaring strings, fluttering woodwinds, delicate piano, ethereal female vocals, all laced with strange bits of industrial clatter, little bits of mysterious glitch, the sounds here are moving and emotional and timeless, soundtracky for sure, but not just filmic, these tracks have a depth and dark energy, that seem to connect with the human spirit, a sonic representation of lost loves and forgotten memories, mournful strings, garbled electronics, only give these sounds a modern vibe that further their timelessness, and position them as modern sound, while at the same time retaining the traditions and the music that came before, the label mentions Gorecki and Arvo Part, which we definitely here as well, fans of groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor too will love this. Epic, mysterious and majestic, maybe our favorite release on Time Released Sound so far!
As with all the TRS releases, there are two different versions, the normal less limited (and less expensive) version, which comes in a handsome digipak, and the super special, ultra fancy and pricey DELUXE version, limited to just 100 copies, which in this case, takes that digipak, and houses it in a black double envelope, hand stamped, inside, two vellum sleeves, in one the digipak, the sleeve hand stamped, in the other a set of three 4"x6" prints, as well as a 4"x6" unassembled jigsaw puzzle. The limited version is already sold out at the label and OUT OF PRINT. We have about 5 copies of it and then it's gone for good.
Two new Utech's this list, and that's something to be stoked about, 'cause the label rarely disappoints, if ever. This one's from Japanese guitarist Suzuki Junzo, who's played in Tokyo flashbacking psych rock bands like Overhang Party, Miminokoto, and Astral Travelling Unity, though here he's solo, just him and his guitar and the black void. Yes, it can be bleak and ominous... but pretty, calm, mesmeric, too. There's four long tracks, beginning with the 20-minute title track, inspired by bluesman Lonnie Johnson's "Blue Ghost Blues"... though again, this isn't blues. Something far darker. For the first half, it could be a folky James Blackshaw on luudes kind of thing... then it enters eerie ambient suspense soundtrack territory... before around the 12 minute mark when Junzo puts the pedal to the metal and his amp begins to howl and fry Keiji Haino style. For reals, for Rallizes. Track two, "Beyond The Yellow Clouds", is 11 minutes of dark shimmering drone bliss, segueing smoothly into the disc's shortest (8:33) but most badass track, its title a tribute to the Pink Fairies, "Shivering Larry's Last Freakout", totally monomaniacal, distortodelic, repetitive riffarma that comes across like one of Tetuzi Akiyama's brilliant/dumb "Don't Forget To Boogie" cuts mixed maybe with some NWOFHM (Circle) stuff, frantic primitive minimalist ZZ Haino in a wind tunnel action - damn! Then as a comedown, chillout, final piece, there's 13 more minutes of ghostly guitar grind, a la Ulaan Khol or Li Jianhong, "Studies For Three Broken Canes Of Dr. Dream", that lives up to its fantastic title, whatever that means. We like, but we'll be queuing up ol' Shivering Larry again in a second, that's the jam!
Utech wins again with this one - grab a copy and put on your shades and enjoy. Limited to 300 copies only. And as usual with Utech stuff, packaged in a nice oversized sleeve. The artwork's mostly black, the only image, a half-seen Junzo holding his ghostly guitar. He's NOT wearing shades, which seems strange.
Swans are one of the few bands whose live recordings should be paid attention to; and in their lengthy career, a smattering of semi-authorized bootlegs and Gira-sanctioned live recordings trickled in and out of print, including the epic Feel Good Now 2lp documenting their Eastern European tour for Children Of God, the Swans Are Dead recordings from the final tour with Jarboe on board, and the charmingly titled album Public Castration Is A Good Idea. After the Swans Are Dead album was released, Michael Gira called it quits for a while; but his thirst for heavy pummelling percussion and discordant slabs of guitar noise proved greater than his desire to write beautifully plaintive country numbers. Swans reformed in 2011 with a magnificent fury evidenced on the album My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky; and Gira issued the marching orders shortly thereafter for Swans to head out on the road, a crew that included his original guitarist Normal Westberg. The tour was as relentless as Swans' music, with Gira and company crossing the globe in support of the album.
To support the record to follow My Father Will Guide Me, Gira issued a limited edition set of live recordings from that tour exclusively through the Young God Records website. That edition sold out so quickly that he issued a second pressing in a handsome double digipack with a much greater distribution. While the recording quality is exceptional, what's truly impressive is the brutal precision that Gira directs his band to pursue through the entire Swans catalogue. On this recording, there's also a great distribution of older material alongside most all of the cuts from My Father Will Guide Me. The highlights include the surging drone-rock groove of "Apostate" with Gira barking above his natural baritone and the Nietzchean commands that Gira bellows during the doom-thud of "Sex God Sex." The prettiest and most restrained number is "Your Property" originally written back in 1984 for the seminal album Cop, which would never be mistaken for being pretty or restrained. The difference in listening to Gira now as opposed to Gira some 15 years ago is that he had a huge chip on his shoulder needing to prove to the world that he was worth something. Now, he's fully confident in his abilities and in the choices he's made for his artistic career. He knows that Swans are awe-inspiring and terrifyingly great. So should you.
We first heard from Tropical Trash on a split cassette with No Copper (we have a few copies left if you want one!), their track was definitely cool, but also listening to this 7" now a bit misleading, but it seems that perhaps that track was intended for the split, as it was super heavy and noisy and abstract, fusing jazzy avant noise with tripped out experimental abstraction. Which is definitely a bit different that what's to be found here, although not completely removed. TT seem to traffic in a sort of chugging churning noise rock, at least on the A side, thick angular riffs, tribal drumming, weird mathy arrangements, strange sing songy vocals, buzzing distorted melodies that mirror the vox, rife with some surprising poppiness, a distinctly indie rock vibe going on for sure. Loose and ramshackle, with the song occasionally devolving into a seemingly random free noise splatter before lurching right back into action.
The B side offers up a handful of shorter songs and finds TT cranking up the volume a bit, definitely heavier and punkier, sounding in places like a supercharged Polvo or Pitchblende, weird chords, still more mathiness, but still plenty of melody and catchiness as well as the occasional punky blow out and some cool tripped out droniness. Features members of Siltbreeze outfit Sapat.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Pressed on white vinyl! In handscreened covers with photo copied inserts.
The Profound Lore label begins what we hope will be an extensive reissue campaign, focusing on some of the more obscure members of the Twilight Black Circle, a tightly knit USBM scene/collective based in Southern California, similar in sound/spirit to the legendary French Black Legions (Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, etc.), which counts bands like Dolorvotre, Volahn, Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Ashdautas, Arizmenda and others among its members.
Tukaaria, which is an Yaqui word meaning 'the night', is another one man band, whose sound, like many of his Twilight Black Circle brethren, is raw and repetitive, but unlike the lush layered chaos of Odz Manouk, whose reissue can be found elsewhere on this week's list, Tukaaria is definitely more on the primitive and old school side, churning murky riffage, and furious stumbling blasts, but this primitivism is tempered with a seriously experimental bent, that manifests in strange and subtle ways, introducing plenty of warped weirdness, and providing a bizarre production/arrangement that make the sound something altogether different than your run of the mill black metal.
Repetition is a big part of Tukaaria's sound, with the sound constantly locking into long stretches of looped black mesmer, whether it's blurred churning riffage, or slippery tangled melodies, it's all driven by urgent, on-the-verge-of-collapse drumming, the vocals a buried in the mix demonic rasp, those drums flat and weirdly produced, set amidst a landscape of echo drenched droned out riffage, muddy, and blurry, and hazy, and woozily washed out, the vibe almost psychedelic, definitely mesmerizing, total tranced out black buzz bliss, with the sound occasionally splintering into something more melodic, more textured and spaced out, but seemingly always returning to something heady and heavy and hypnotic, a murky and mesmerizing.
This cd reissue of Raw To The Rapine includes the 2011 full length of the same name, and tacks on the Tukaaria tracks from a 2011 split with Odz Manouk and his 2010 split with Volahn.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super swank oversized A5 book style digipak!
Long overdue reissue of this legendary post punk classic, originally released in 1981, with No Songs Tomorrow, this UK outfit perfectly captured the climate of the time, a sense of hopelessness and loss of faith in humanity, here represented by a songsuite of dark, brooding new wave pop, just give a listen to the title track, which almost sounds more like Laughing Stock era Talk Talk, skeletal programmed rhythms, swirling synths, plaintive emotional vocals, spidery minor key guitars, a fantastically bleak lament, a punkwave dirge that manages to be both dark and moody, haunting and atmospheric. And so goes the rest of the record, unlike the 7" we reviewed a while back, which found the band in a more punkfunk mode, the songs here tend toward the dour, a sort of post punk slowcore in a way, "Portrait (extended)" takes minor key guitars, adds some jangle, some chiming harmonics, a low slung bassline, the song rife with tension and emotion, the vocals gradually growing more intense and emotional as the music continues to ratchet up the miserablist vibe.
In a weird way, much of No Songs Tomorrow plays like some protest folk record, just with a slightly different sonic palette. Only slightly, as many of the tracks are rooted in acoustic guitars and vocals, the group adding squalls of electric guitar or haunting hollow beats, or swirls of softly effected guitar buzz. The second half of the record does get a bit more propulsive and punky, like on "Sleep Don't Talk", which definitely has a bit of a frantic electro synth pop vibe, with lots of weird buzz and processed vox, or on "Commitment", which transforms the sound into a weird jazz flecked post industrial soundscape, peppered with sax bleats and sampled voices, not to mention throbbing bass and crunchy guitar squalls, or the awesomely tripped out closer "Four Minute Warning", with its soaring synths, and weird crooned female vox and strange bits of industrial clatter.
A dark post punk gem that sounds as good today as it did 30 years ago! The reissue includes three bonus tracks as well.
The new issue of Ugly Things, celebrating as always "wild sounds from past dimensions" is here, hooray! Ok, we haven't been getting this magazine since the beginning, but if we had, up to 33 of the best days of our lives would have been when the new issue of Ugly Things landed in our mailbox. If you're like us, and love psych, garage, punk and other gunk from the heyday of back in the day, then you'll agree, this is a need-to-read periodical.
In this ish: Arthur Lee's Love (with a big interview with lead guitarist Johnny Echols), Ed Sanders of The Fugs, Hungarian psych/prog treasure Illes, Holland's trippy Group 1850, proto-punks the Electric Eels (or, the electric eels, as they preferred the lower case, please), The Syndicate, The Poets, Wildwood, Barrence Whitfield, The Leopards, and much more. There's a piece on the origins of the term 'Freakbeat', along with features on Freakbeat's finest, Wimple Winch and The Craig. There's an article about forgotten '70s glam rock gems too. And Cyril Jordan from the Flaming Groovies starts a new column of reminisces, wherein among other things he tells the story about the time in '74 when he and his bandmates encountered Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, who took them to his house to hear his arrangement of "Johnny B. Goode" in C Minor!
And, amidst all this obscurity, there's also an essay about the merits of Led Zeppelin ("The Most Bonkers Band That Ever Was"), from the perspective of someone who first heard 'em back when their debut album came out, and who has an amusing way of putting things as well, like: "as for Bonzo - only another drummer can judge his technical proficiency, and the rest of us - in our teeming millions - would rather stick a pill up a cat's arse on a fork than listen to one drummer's opinion of another."
Plus of course, TONS of reviews of reissues, and books and dvds and some new records too. 176 glorious pages in all. Yowzah!
You're not imagining things, that skull in the rearview mirror is looking at you. Expo 70 sideman Matt Hill, aka Umberto, is back... eerie as ever! Following his recent, limited, and now out of print one-sided 12" entitled Final Exit on Italian label Black Moss, comes this strikingly-sleeved 45rpm 12" via UK label The Great Pop Supplement, also quite limited (500 copies only), vinylizing a cassette put out by Solid Melts in an even scarcer edition a year ago. Welcome To The Chillzone consists of two tracks of equal 10:03 durations, really one piece split over two sides, both quietly brooding and creepy, side A slowly unfolding, building up to the somewhat more intense but still restrained side B... which ends, though, as side A begins, the whole composition looping like the original tape. Umberto's sinister sonics are indeed chilling here, full of blissful yet shivery synthwork, like hushed melodic whispers drifting above an ominous hallucinatory hum... eventually there's sequenced rhythmic pulsations, but gentle, this 12" as compelling and effective as any suspense film soundtrack we can think of. As with Final Exit, 'tis more ambient and icy than the deathly disco of Umberto's more electro beat-driven earlier efforts, so next to Goblin and John Carpenter among the giallo-obsessed Umberto's influences, have been added the zoned out cinematic synths of Tangerine Dream, perhaps.
As we said, limited edition of 500 copies, already sold out at the label!! We got a couple dozen, but when they're gone, they're gone, we won't be able to get any more...
Originally released especially for this year's Record Store Day, we managed to get about eight extra copies for folks who may have missed out. Sadly these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get. which is really too bad, cuz this comp is a doozy. A look at the lineup is really all it should take: Alvarius B, Lee Ranaldo, Six Organs Of Admittance, Sir Richard Bishop, Danny Paul Grody, David Daniell, Steve Gunn and William Tyler. The theme seems to be different approaches to the guitar, whether it be the raw field recorded blues of Alvarius B, complete with all manner of street noise in the background, children's voices, passing cars, or the woozy acid psych folk of Six Organs, all the sounds blurred and bleary, the vocals strangely processed, a whirling, swirling druggy drift, or the dense tangles of old School Appalachia offered up by Steve Gunn. Danny Grody delivers a brief bit of harmonic rich ethereal guitardrone that's quite lovely, and far too short, while David Daniell, an ultra minimalist in his group St. Augustin, here weaves something much more lush and lustrous, a heady sprawl of layered steel strings and rich warm guitar buzz. Lee Ranaldo also delves into his own version of Appalachia, peppering it with some very Sonic Youth-y chords, creating a strangely beautiful bit of twisted acoustic blues, even vocalizing a bit near the end. Sir Richard Bishop's track sounds very African or Ethiopian, almost like he's covering Group Doueh or Group Inerane, lyrical and lovely, and finally, William Tyler, who we'd not heard of before, gives us some seriously gorgeous steel string Appalachia of his own, his playing incredible, the arrangement lush and intricate and sweetly melodic, rife with buzz and drone, deftly woven into what might be one of the best tracks here.
Beautifully packaged in an oversized fold together matchbook style jacket, comes with a download coupon, and again, already out of print, these are the very last copies, so it might be a good idea (as always) to list alternates if you order it...
This is the first we've heard from the awesomely monikered Video Nasties, aka Montreal video artist Rob Feulner, whose sound is a mix of lo-fi psychedelic dub and noise drenched no-fi new wave synth damage. The opening starts out straight up dub, all upstroke guitar and swirling atmospheric shimmer, but soon, a buzzing warbling synth enters the mix, and the sound grows more woozy and washed out, druggy and darkly dreamy, the various effects cranked to 11, that dubbed out beginning soon submerged beneath a wild squall of echo and reverb and wild squiggles and blasts of high end skree, before gradually transforming into a more sort of spaced out droney drift, all scrabbling melodies and blurred chordal drift, before transforming again, into a heady bit of kosmische almost Reich-like carnivalesque home brewed synth wave minimalism.
The flipside explodes right out of the gate with a blast of ear piercing feedback, which gives way to some feedback drenched super distorted chords, sounding like an old Casio run through a million distortion pedals, a lilting synth-noise lullaby, driven by a weird industrial rhythm consisting of just short sharp blasts of white noise, the rest of the side shifting from strange distorted bloops and bleeps, to smeared layered textures, and finally another long stretch of pulsing cosmic synthscapery, that sounds like a lo-fi little brother to folks like Zombi or Majeure.
LIMITED TO JUST 25 COPIES!!! Each one housed in a gorgeous screen printed wooden box, along with a full color insert and a pin.
For those of you who didn't get enough warped garage rock / lo-fi noise pop on the recent sprawling two part collection from this local one man band, snap up one of these quick before they're gone. Originally intended to be a Record Store Day Release, these only showed up a few days ago, but fans of WF won't be disappointed, three more songs, that sound like they could have been plucked from the same 80 songs that the above mentioned collection was culled from. Fuzzy and jangly, a serious sixties pop vibe, with dreamy harmony vox, lots of fuzz and echo and reverb, hooks galore, the second track a bit more druggy hippie folk, while the sidelong title track is a pitch perfect blast of super catchy retro pop radness, just a bit warped, all the songs here held together by weird bloopy basslines, and some super distorted wild way-up-in-the-mix leads, not to mention some seriously tripped out vocals. Another gem from this SF outfit who should definitely have a place of honor on your shelf alongside The Oh Sees and the Sic Alps and the Bare Wires and Blasted Canyons and all the rest...
Glory be, talk about a reissue! So, we were pretty excited a couple years ago when Germany's Shadoks (or Normal, or Q.D.K. Media, or whatever they're called) did legit reissues of two amazing albums of '70s African garage psych action by Zambia's Witch (not to be confused with the present-day Witch that's got J. Mascis on drums, they're cool too, but couldn't ever be as cool as this), their 1973 debut Introduction, and 1975's Lazy Bones!! (yes, the two exclamation points are part of that record's title). But now, the Now-Again label has put those two albums together with a ton more stuff, everything ever recorded by this '70s "ZamRock" group, in one super deluxe package consisting of four cds, or six lps!! (The vinyl version being naturally more expensive, but just be glad you didn't buy the two limited lp editions Shadoks put out, which woulda cost more). Again, it's all officially licensed from the sole surviving band member.
So, the first Shadoks cd reish we listed was Lazy Bones!!, which got an all-caps BADASS citation from us. Here's our review: It's got tons of rhythmic umph, and makin'-more-with-less third world charm. Again, it's the western garage psych template with African extras. Some tracks are heavy duty crunchers, such as the curiously named "Tooth Factory" (which sounds like Japan's Speed, Glue, and Shinki, we think), some more spaced and mellow, like "Strange Dream", and still others are loose limbed groovy jams, like the title track. And, you'd better believe there's plenty of fuzz throughout, you'll get your daily dose and then some. Wah wah guitars roam wild, The Witch managing to be wonderfully melodic, funky, and downright distorted across these ten tracks, providing everything we desire from the electric ZamRock phenomenon (similar too, to bands from Nigeria like Blo and Ofege). With English being the official language of Zambia, that's what the vocals are in, sorta nasal and accented and lovely in a gritty way. Kinda hard to know what else to say except, recommended!
Then, not long after, when Introduction was also reissued, we said it to be such a damn delight, living up to the high hopes we had for it. "Zam Rock" at its best - not that we've ever heard any Zam Rock we didn't like, so far the reissues have been uniformly rad! As with Lazy Bones!!, the fuzzed out wah wah'd guitars run rampant, the rhythms are infectious, the organ playing unrestrained, the English language lyrics charming (song titles include "Feeling High", "Like A Chicken" and "See Your Mama"... how could this record NOT be good?). Need we go on? If Lazy Bones!! rocked your world, this should be enough of an introduction to Introduction! While '75's Lazy Bones!! is a bit heavier, any fan will dig this too.
Ok, that's those two. But there's more, that's why you'll want this set, even if you've got those. Now-Again has added two discs (or 8 more lp sides) of material, to cover Witch's complete works from 1972-77. Not just those two albums we've already had, but FIVE albums: Introduction, In The Past, Lazy Bones!!, Lukombo Vibes, and Including Janet. Plus a whole bunch of rare 7" tracks too! All restored/remastered from the original master tapes.
And while we thought maybe their later material, would get more "disco" or something, well, no, for the most part The Witch stayed heavy... and groovy too of course. On 1976's Lukombo Vibes, for instance, tracks like "Devil's Flight" and "Blood Donor" live up to anything on Lazy Bones!!. There's more traditional Zambian folk influence perhaps, more Zam going on in their Rock. In any case, it's for stuff any Witch fan will be happy to hear.
And all this is beautifully packaged with a giant booklet of rare vintage photos and informative text, including an interview with bandleader "Jagari" Chanda, expanding upon the liner notes that Egon from Now-Again / Stones Throw had done for the previous Shadoks releases, which he'd been instrumental in making happen in the first place.
Kudos to Now-Again for giving the Witch discography this deluxe treatment, we're thankful indeed.
Bow down doom hounds, the third full-length opus of spaced out sludge trudge from these British heavies is here! In most respects, exactly as expected, slow and low and psychedelic. But, they've changed up one (big) thing. Get this: in our review of their previous disc, The Shadow Over Atlantis, we suggested that the many fans of their labelmates Jex Thoth might dig the The Wounded Kings too, due to similar sonics and aligned atmospherics. Well, now that's even more the case, as on this album suddenly the Kings have a female singer, a la Jex Thoth! Not sure why they made this move (the popularity of Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Blood Ceremony, et. al. in the "New Wave Of Female Fronted Occult Metal" trend couldn't possibly be the reason, could it?) but it was a good one, really. Not that we didn't like their original singer (former bassist George Birch, now out of the band) but we're really digging new singer Sharie Neyland's haunting, yet commanding, presence on this platter. Also, it makes perfect sense, considering that The Wounded Kings already had the spooky-proggy organ sound of Italian horror movie scores as a big influence upon their sound. Female vox fit in quite well with that vibe, and, as those other aforementioned bands also have demonstrated, sound good in conjunction with dirgey, lumbering, Sabbath-derived riffage.
And they're not just "female vox" anyway, there's an eccentric personality here. With her wavery, witchy, fairly low for a female voice, Neyland sounds something like a weird hybrid of Jex Thoth and Manilla Road's Mark "The Shark" Shelton... really! Now that's cult. Take that voice and let it range o'er epic effected hypnotic heaviness along the lines of early Cathedral or Electric Wizard (with a dash of Blizaro), and you've got In The Chapel Of The Black Hand.
So. Not just another Wounded Kings album (though that would have been fine too) but one that stands apart, if not above. Phantasmagorically recommended.
