A record like this is pretty much destined to be an aQ Record Of The Week. A super limited double lp, on Sublime Frequencies, featuring two whole lps of spaced out Arabic instrumental psychedelic surf rock and Eastern progressive beat, from legendary Arabic actor and musician Omar Khorshid, who is criminally unknown outside of the Middle East, especially considering his high profile, and the fact that this is some of the heaviest, buzziest, most rockingest stuff we've heard yet on Sublime Frequencies.
Born in Cairo, and widely considered to be the greatest guitarist in the Arab world, Khorshid became a ubiquitous presence in the Middle East, performing live, in televised concerts as an actor in films and on television, by the seventies he began working with a legendary Beirut composer, and his music became more and more avant and progressive, as did those who looked to him for inspiration, he helped introduce modern electronics, reverb, delay and other effects, pushing his sound way out, and creating something totally unique, and pretty fantastical.
On first listen, you can't help but be blown away. Wild tangled outer space synths, buzzy sitar like guitars, wild drumming, a strange sort of hypnotic buzzing Eastern style surf rock, which to these ears sounds like it was cooked up in a makeshift kitchen recording studio by an Arab Joe Meek. Fuzz guitar all over the place, almost like a Middle Eastern Ventures, propuslive, hypnotic, totally rocking, energetic and inspired, and seriously progressive, especially for the time.
His death was as dramatic as his life, after performing in 1977 at the Egyptian / Israeli summit at the White House, and being seated between Presidents Carter, Begin and Sadat, he was constantly harassed, enduring several assasination attempts and near constant surveillance, before being killed at age 36 in a mysterious car crash.
But his legacy lives on in his music, finally being exposed to a wider audience, a music at once original and forward thinking, exuberant, ebullient, fun and funky, wild and rocking and totally unique. Definitely one of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases. Only on vinyl for now, and while it's likely there will be a cd version (which we'll also make a Record Of The Week when the time comes), we can never be 100 percent sure, so better grab one of these quick, espeically considering we only got 40 of these and most likely won't be able to get any more! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
Do we even have to tell you this is cool? Basically this is something you should want as soon as you read the words "Guitars From Agadez" and "Sublime Frequencies" on the sleeve. Being a limited 7" single also ought to seal the deal.
Everything so far from SF in their Guitars From Agadez series (records from Group Bombino and Group Inerane) has been killer, and this introductory taste of the talents of another North African axe master, Koudede Maman, follows suit. Koudede & his band unleash some smoking, sinuous, hard edged grooves on both hypnotic sides of this single, recorded live on tour last year. Wish we'd been there, sounds like a funky good time. And we most certainly hope that SF has a full-length in the works!
Limited to 600 copies.
Repressed and BACK IN STOCK (for now...).
Super limited, lovingly presented reissue of this legendary record. Long out of print (minus the briefly available reissue on DC / Intoxica, now also out of print) and heavily sought after soundtrack to Rene Laloux's 1973 Cannes Grand Prix winning animated feature "La Planete Sauvage." If the film itself is a hallucinatory masterpiece, the soundtrack - composed by Alain Goraguer (long time arranger for Serge Gainsbourg) - is as fitting as it is brilliant. Like an LSD dosed Isaac Hayes score, the music herein is at the same time both reminiscent of classic early seventies drama soundtracks and completely surreal and strange. Lots of recurring leitmotifs recast in ever building and changing arrangements, including marimba, Theremin and bird whistles as well as the standard orchestral elements, guitars and funky organs. So great!
We love twisted underground hip hop. As does our pal Jason who runs the Ormolycka tape label, which was the original home of Death Grips' Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list). There's tons of weirdo hip hop on Ormolycka, including this tape, by Lil Ugly Mane, a Southern rapper, with a killer drawl and a ridiculous flow, who busts over looped jazziness, creepy horror movie clips, woozy off kilter slow-mo creeps, cinematic symphonic stabs and sped-up soul, this is the sort of shit that already sounds chopped and screwed, skittery, stuttery dopesmoke grooves, rife with saxophone (!), strings, clipped vox, all driven by some crunked out beats, but really it's all about LUM's flow, which is seriously bad ass, mush mouthed and WAY laid back, but surprisingly nimble, which manages to be the perfect match for the twisted music underneath!
Live performance and touring (especially internationally) does much to sharpen the chops, expand the scopes and get the creative juices flowing for most artists, and it certainly appears so in the case for one Mr. Dominic Cramp. It seems the many journeys on the road performing as keyboardist and sound shaper for Carla Bozulich's group Evangelista have spurred him - already a very prolific music maker for many years - to stretch his limbs a bit, and push the boundaries of his music-making comfort zone into some fresh but not altogether foreign territory.
Lord Tang is definitely the brethren of Cramp's other musical personas (particularly Borful Tang, but also Vulcanus 68, Qulfus et al), and those familiar and fond of his Bay Area indie label Gigante Sound will surely geek to this too, but what sets Lord Tang apart are the new influences and inspirations Cramp has drawn upon, and the incorporation of more conventional song foundations (at least comparably so when placed next to his alter egos' more loosely structured soundscapes). However, he does not remain within those confines. As always, his music is free roaming. His soundscapes creep along, build, dissipate, and shapeshift like the cloud formations referred to in the opener. At once, both dense and vaporous, the tracks may linger on a note sequence or beat pattern for a spell then moving on, occasionally returning to revisit a theme in cyclical fashion.
In previous works and incarnations, Cramp scavenged, sculpted and collaged together the structures and narratives from existing samples (field recordings, tapes, and such). In Lord Tang, the elements (most notably melodies and rhythmic passages) are much more composed from scratch, and the sounds are built, shaped and performed on instruments (we detect a gaggle of analog synths, drum machines and digital effects processors among them). That said, although his creative processes may have diverged somewhat from his usual path, the resulting tracks aren't too alienatingly different to the ear. As with many of his instrumental recordings, this one oozes, lurches and seeps its way into your ear canals. Moody with a dark whimsy. We envision a subterranean being clawing its way up to the Earth's surface to eavesdrop on the city dwellers. Curiosity piqued by their daily routines and mundane dialogues, the churning rhythms of traffic reverberating down into his dank sunless world.
By now it should be no big surprise that we here at aQ are HUGE fans of Lungfish and its offshoots. In the last few years we've seen an array of solo releases from singer Dan Higgs, and to a lesser degree from guitarist Asa Osborne who records as Zomes. And though we love all that stuff, Lungfish is one of those bands, like say, Fugazi, where the diehard fans just can't comfortably accept the "extended hiatus" thing. And yeah, as indicated by the "1999" in the title, this is in fact an archival release of songs the band recorded prior to their Necrophones album, where six of these songs showed up in re-recorded form. But why would we complain about that? While Lungfish have only ever sounded like themselves, the turn of the century found their approach becoming increasingly psychedelic and more "out of time" sounding, and these recordings, rougher fidelity-wise than their proper albums but still clear and upfront, are essential listening for anyone who considers themselves a fan. The feel here is more like a live recording and it really reinforces what an awesome band Lungfish was/is. Higgs is in fine form as always with his mindblowing lyrics and singular vocal delivery while Osborne's trademark cyclical riffing carries these songs forward into new realms. The always killer rhythm section (longtime drummer Mitchell Feldstein and, on these recordings, bassist Nathan Bell) does what only Lungfish could do, with the bass sounding particularly huge here. And goddamn does this stuff rock. But not, ya know, like Kiss or Led Zep... just in that strange Lungfish way. Whatever the future holds (we're still keeping our fingers crossed), this disc surely hits the spot and comes with an unsurprising but wholehearted recommendation.
The (obviously) cult metal Shadow Kingdom adds two more Manilla Road jewels to their crown/catalog, with the domestic reissues of both 1985's Open The Gates, and 1990's Into The Courts Of Chaos. We'd once had an import of Open The Gates, but had never reviewed Into The Courts before. Both are recommended (if you don't already have 'em) to all Manilla Road fans, and by extension, anyone with a yen for thee true epick metal.
Last gasp of the original run of the Road, pretty much. Even though we today think of 'em as monolithic epic metal forefathers, Manilla Road morphed quite a bit over their career, from their '70s space rock origins to, in the late '80s, fast n' technical stuff influenced less by Hawkwind and more by the speedy Slayer and various Bay Area thrashers... But this album, often overlooked 'cause of its 1990 release date, sees 'em bringing it all together, really. It's got quite a few classics on it all right, including one of the Road's most epick numbers ever, album ender "The Books Of Skelos", which whips up a bombastic orchestrated onslaught of brutality, Manilla Road style.
Mark Shelton's weird croon wraps itself around the various twisted tales here, but he also breaks out some rasping black/death vox here that, heck, Absu fans oughtta dig. Furthermore, fyi, the drums on this ARE programmed, but still sound cool to us, sounding more maniacal than mechanical. So they keep it cutting edge to the end, while also delving back into the depths of 1970 for a cover of Texas proto-metallers Bloodrock's spooky downer rock opus "D.O.A.", which fits right in. Glad this got reissued 'cause it gave us a chance to revisit it and realize how damn good it actually is, Manilla Road perhaps past any chance of "making it" here, but still going for it like they're metal's number one representatives on Earth, and they know it.
Another long-awaited reissue, adding another piece to the puzzle that is the legacy of obscure '80s metal legends Manilla Road. Since the late '70s, these guys have hammered out umpteen elpees of fantastic and fantastical heavy metal, treading a progressive,
EVP research is commonplace within the catalog of Firework Editions, a Swedish label run in part by the conceptual artist Leif Elggren. One of Elggren's more infamous projects is the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland which occupies a liminal political space between the boundaries of countries; but within the magisterial constitution, Elgaland-Vargaland annexes the psychic realm of dreams and even goes so far as to abolish death. With this proclamation, the kingdom offers citizenship to ghosts, spirits, and apparitions; and seeks communion with such entities through EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomenon - whereby voices of unknown origin mysteriously appear on the electronic mediums of tape, radio, and digital recorders. EVP researchers like Chicago's Michael Esposito claim these voices to originate from spirits beyond the grave; and there's quite of lot of late night entertainment coming from their spooky if questionable paranormal research. Esposito seems to hold more of a metaphysical and poetic agenda in his work, by reaching out to the sound art community as a crucible for his admittedly unnerving recordings. He's collaborated with the aforementioned Elggren, fellow Elgaland-Vargaland cohort CM von Hausswolff, John Duncan, FM Einheint, and now Francisco Meirino.
Esposito's role in this collaboration with the electro-acoustic artist Francisco Meirino is that of a taxonomist, with Meirino doing most of the heavy lifting on the album. Meirino made a series of field recordings in a former school of anatomy in his native Switzerland; and upon hearing something odd in the recordings, he passed everything onto Esposito, who in turn discovered over 30 incidents of EVP in Meirino's original recordings. Those discovered events became the inspiration and source material for Meirino's composition which blisters with static bursts of noise, caustic flares of electricity, and hissing fields of magnetic disturbances. Amidst these jarring events (which come together as a something not dissimilar to the Hafler Trio, Joe Colley, or G*Park), Meirino cycles through the EVP material in repetitive phrases. It's still not all that easy to hear what Esposito claims to be in these recordings, but the mechanoid repetitions lend to a very cold and disembodied aesthetic which couples perfectly with Meirino's splinterings of electro-acoustic sound. Esposito may have been the inspiration for the album; but it's Meirino who makes it all sound so damn good.
Another fine offering from the Hooker Vision imprint which has been championing some weird and wonderful experimental outfits from the Southeastern US. Merryl is the work of North Carolinian Will Isenogle who spins a couple of mighty fine corrosive dronescapes on this tape contextualized by film snippets from stoned UFOlogists gazing into the night sky and postulating about the alien civilizations that may be orbiting the earth. Out of the opening found text, Isenogle builds a hazily levitating drone laced with kosmische allusions; but he slowly envelops this with a crusty transmission of tape mulched noise and amplifier destruction that would make Campbelle Kneale proud. The second side reprises the shimmering, delicate dronescaping found at the beginning of the first with undulating tones and soft-focus ambient melodies of dreamtime melancholy and a gravelly texture of shortwave radio static sliding up to the foreground. Druggy, lo-fi hypnosis at its best; but be warned, Towel Crowl is limited to 100 copies and it's already sold out at the label!
The awesomely titled Love Zombies was record number two from UK post punk combo the Monochrome Set, released a handful of months later then their debut in 1980, and while the band professed that Love Zombies was meant to be more accessible than their Strange Boutique debut, it's hard to get that from the album opening title track, which sounds like it could have come right off Strange Boutique (then again, the records were recorded just months apart), but weirdly enough reminds us of a band that would come way later The Cardiacs, proggy and bombastic and cabaret-like, the music intricate and lush, the vocals crooned and dreamily dramatic, with strange bits of pop bombast and weird production, a buzzing main melody (a synth maybe), some spidery guitar leads, the word 'zombie' chanted ominously, it's hard to believe this was their idea of more accessible. And while the wild tribal drumming that was all over the debut is notably absent, and the vibe is definitely slightly less dark, everything else is still present, the songwriting, the strange arrangements, the fey vox, if anything, Love Zombies reminds us a little bit of another seminal post punk pop reissue, the Cleaners From Venus, we'd imagine most folks who dug those Cleaners reissues would like this as well, although Monochrome Set, especially on Love Zombies, are a whole lot more precious, a bit jazzier for sure, in fact, in the review of Strange Boutique we mention Murray Head and "One Night In Bangkok", which again, much of this reminds us of, but there are plenty of subtle surprises and bits of weirdness here and there, like the garbled freak out opening of "In Love, Cancer?", which sounds like it came straight off a Teenage Filmstars records, but for the most part this is just a classic slab of eighties (post punk) jangle pop.
We missed the Monochrome Set the first time around, then again we were only ten or eleven when this record, their debut full length, came out in 1980. But then a few years back, someone turned us on to these guys and we became sort of obsessed, total seminal post punk radness from the UK, catchy and weird and a little bit fey, jangly and hooky, with wild tribal drumming, Morricone-ish guitars, dramatic crooned vox. Apparently, the Monochrome Set was born from a band called the B-Sides, a group that also featured the future Adam Ant, and at least on MC's debut, it's easy to hear that both Adam Ant and the Monochrome guys shared similar influences, especially in the drumming, just give a listen to the "The Monochrome Set (I Presume)", the opening could be an Adam Ant song, big tribal drumming, pounding toms, surrounded by all sorts of jungle sounds, but where Adam Ant would take that song in a more rock direction, the 'Set add some spidery minor key melodies, and the result is almost like a sped up Tom Waits jam, the guitar very Marc Ribot-ish, it's not hard to imagine Waits' raspy growl, but instead, more guitars enter and add a little woozy groove, and then the vocals a sort of sung spoken croon that reminds us a bit of Murray Head ("One Night In Bangkok"!), then the chorus, with it's weird sing songy vocals, it's such a weird, killer song. Our favorite for sure. But the rest of the record is nearly as good. "The Lighter Side Of Dating" unfurls a string of low slung bass pulses underneath some effected guitar strum, and then the drums come in, a dizzying spray of fills, which lead right into an almost Smiths-like chorus, very twee and again dramatic. And so it goes, the record rife with coulda/shoulda been classics, some dark and churning and groovy, others lighter and poppier, with a cabaret streak a mile wide running throughout. So good!
Chinaberry is the companion cassette for the eponymous Motion Sickness Of Time Travel album released earlier in 2012 on Spectrum Spools and self-released through Rachel Evans' ever impressive Hooker Vision cassette imprint. Like that album, this too is a fantastic amalgam of deconstructed ethereal pop where she conjures sprawling scores for vaporous electronica and psychedelic ambience. The overall vibe of this cassette is one of stoned phosphorescence, as if she's mapped out an imagined soundtrack to flares of swamp gas that flicker in the Southeastern summer nights amidst the heat lightning and fireflies. She reprises the sustained church organ chords and swooshing cosmic drones that run through her solo work as Motion Sickness Of Time Travel and with her husband Grant Evans as Quiet evenings; and she steers these oozing, darkly pastoral atmospheres into more structured forms with sparkling arpeggios, glowing sequential synth lines, and Evans' thoroughly washed-out voice hovering wordlessly and languidly in the mix. This tape got a slightly bigger pressing than most Hooker Vision releases, with 200 of 'em printed up; but like all of the tapes we've picked up, Chinaberry is already out or print!
The Sister, Marissa Nadler's second self-released lp, is a vehicle for her amazing voice. The instrumentation and melodies are kept quite minimal, at least on the surface. Sometimes on songs like "Christine", once the chorus has time to build, the song crescendoes into soft layers of swirling synths and swelling cymbal washes. These always take second chair to Nadler's effortless vocal melodies, the fingerpicked guitar her primary companion throughout the record. The Sister has a subdued quality to it, never rising too high or sinking too low, and although these are beautiful songs executed with skill, there's not a stand-out number that especially stands apart from the rest. Her last, self-titled record had the synth-driven "Wedding" and the poppy Mazzy Star-esque "The Sun Always Reminds Me of You" which made that really good record great. The Sister is a record that longtime fans of Marissa Nadler's magic will enjoy, but newcomers might find Little Hells or her previous self-titled record more memorable. Still, this is an excellent record for sleepy Sunday mornings and dreamy summer nights.
Listen on: Deezer
PHAK YEAH!! It's been, like, ten years since this local groop, the 'South East Asian' alter ego of sonic subversives Mono Pause, put out their debut album, which became quite a bit of a hit here at aQ. Now at long last they've recorded a follow-up full-length, featuring the anthemic track "Fucking USA" which appeared on a 7" single some years back, along with ten more brand new cuts of their exuberant ethno-rock exotica.
Among several AQ pals, Neung Phak's ranks include Mark Gergis (of Porest), who is the man responsible for a lot of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases (and who now runs the likeminded Sham Palace label too). So you know that this band's take on various forms of traditional pop musics from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and elsewhere is well researched, steeped in firsthand knowledge probably gleaned on a backpacking / cassette-tape-digging trip overseas...
Neung Phak should definitely appeal to fans of Dengue Fever, trafficking in the same sort of groovy vintage Cambodian Rocks style psych pop, but with more of a twisted, fucked up edge to it, in the tradition of the late great Sun City Girls - whose Abduction label put this out, and whose Alan Bishop makes a cameo appearance.
"Fucking USA", which they would have us believe was recorded in Pyongyang, is probably the most punk rockish thing on here, but the whole album is exceedingly energetic and effervescent. And full of surprises - like the distorted electronic noise and free jazz freakouts that erupt in the middle of foreign-language funk vamp "Sa-Ha".
Make no mistake, though, even with the sometimes crazed vocals and distorted acid rock guitars, many of these tracks are dancefloor fillers, for sure! Their wild East-West hybrid may have its faux-ethnic elements, but they don't fake the funk. It's like the music Funkadelic would have made if drafted and sent to Vietnam in the '70s, then gone AWOL and playing in some dive bar with local musicians.
Meanwhile, the disc's closer, "Sad Chatri", is a seven-minute psychedelic slow burner, its grooves more for nodding out than getting down. Damn good, as is this whole album, highly recommended!
By the way, this was also released on limited vinyl as well, a couple months ago, but that lp version went out of print too darn fast for us to list - though we may just have 1 copy left if you act quick...
Debut 7" from these Canadian noise rock garage punks, whose sounds is in fact just that, a killer mix of old school punk rock, noise rock, and punk metal a la early Maiden, Motorhead, or for something more modern, maybe Speedwolf. But where Speedwolf fall squarely in the metal camp, Ohmwar are way more PUNK. These five songs kill though, wild riffing, with shredding leads here and there, fierce and furious drumming, the vocals a feral yowl, the songs pretty straight ahead, but with plenty of surprises, like the super melodic breakdown in "We Must Fly", or the opening of "Land Of Laughs" which is a dead ringer for old Iron Maiden, as is the closer "Eisentsten" with the bassline driving the whole song, and the main riff the bastard son of Maiden's "Prowler". And as much as we love punk rock, it's the more metallic moments here that seal the deal. But for anyone who digs punky metallic heaviness, this will definitely get your blood pumping, or your head banging, or whatever, just buy it.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
We've been wanting to list something from this flute and percussion duo for ages now, but we've been unable to get enough copies of any of their releases to list until now. From the same label that released the recent 2lp reissue of Gate's The Dew Line, which we made Record Of The Week, comes this, an older release from the oddly monikered Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, originally released on tape in a limited run of just 50 copies (on Rayon Recs), now available again as a limited lp (with a bonus track), and like the other recordings we've heard from these guys, it's amazing what they can whip up with just a flute and percussion. Somewhere between modern minimalism and free jazz and abstract ambience, these guys lay down a strange landscape of creaks and groans and rumbles, sounding a bit like an acoustic Wolf Eyes, with some moaning drones and abstract shakers and random bits of hand percussion, while the flute unfurls a fluttery bit of folkiness, that sounds like Spiritual Jazz via gypsy folk, the percussion becomes gradually more rhythmic, as the drones in the background seem to coalesce, and the flute becomes weirdly processed, as clouds of cymbal shimmer add some high end skree to the mix, the sound slipping into a weird avant No neck sort of territory. One minute it's hushed and contemplative, and sounds like it could be some lost recording on the ESP label, the next it's clattery and softly cacophonous and sounds like it could be some weird strain of Finnish Forest Folk, and the next it's some sort of cosmic free jazz psychedelia all long layered tones and sputtering percussion, and still the next it sounds like some weird hybrid of lo-fi electronica and the Dead C at their poppiest. So weird and wonderful. Start here, but then try to track down whatever you can from these two. Everything we've heard is great!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
For its first ever archival release, the Root Strata label delves into Bay Area composer Maggi Payne's computerized music experiments from 1984-87. Composed for a unique dance/video project collaboration with experimental video maker Ed Tannebaum for a series of performances called Technological Feets. For these performances, the movements of three dancers live on stage are captured on camera and processed in real time on a screen above them. The dancers can view the processing on video monitors in front of them and thus react to their own movements. The music is then a mixture of live performed responses over prerecorded tracks. You can check one of the videos here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98fvPSNJHpw
Payne, who is a dancer herself (as well as flautist, who performed on David Behrman's "On The Other Ocean" from 1977), imbues her music with a fresh rhythmic energy that makes these pieces instantly engaging. The terrific opener, "Flights of Fancy" is full of dynamic uplift but countered by a brooding undercurrent of minor key melancholia that for us outshines many current synth practitioners, the way it inches quite close to pop music. Titles like "Gamelan" and "Shimmer", give pretty clear clues to their direction, but the title piece, "Ahh-Ahh (Ver 2.1)" sourced from many forms of white noise, flute and snare drum, where, according to the liner notes, "spatial location and modulation are of primary concerns in this piece", is all subtle layered shifts of audio spectrum effects that is a tranced out disorientating delight. Root Strata has done a great service in getting this little known composer some much deserved wider attention. Payne who is currently the Co-Director of Contemporary Music at Mills College probably has had a hand in inspiring scores of young musicians and composers, we're sure among them the likes of Mariell V. Jakobsons and Gregg Kowalsky as well as Roger Tellier-Craig (Le Revelateur) and Sabrina Ratte who had a hand in getting this release to see the light of day. We can't recommend this enough!
With their latest record, these long time faves, psychedelic psych-kraut space-dub husband and wife duo Peaking Lights, continue in their trajectory, away from the warped drugginess and abstract noisiness that defined their early records towards something WAY more blissed out and laid back, still druggy most certainly, but less 'bad trip' druggy and more woozily wasted on some lost sun dappled tropical isle under a warm deep blue summer sky.
Like their previous record 936, which was a HUGE hit around here, Lucifer gradually unfurls as a another heady sprawl of blissy dubby psychedelia that relies heavily on looped, cyclical rhythms, cascading layers, and bleary blurry loops. The opening intro is the perfect introduction, a soft cacophony of what sounds like murky muddy marimbas and steel drums and xylophones all tangled up into a glorious swirl. But "Beautiful Son" starts off the record proper, with doleful piano under a skyful of strange glitchy electronics, and reverby swirls and swoops, bloops and trills, all beneath some lush angelic female vox, the result sounding like a more tropical, dubby and abstract take on Stereolab, droney, pulsating and percolating, a little bit sci-fi, but the sort of seventies version of sci-fi, that retro futurism filtered through sixties dub pop.
"Live Love" lays down another backdrop of loops and cascading rhythms, this time driven by what sounds like a Casio on 'calypso' setting, reminding us a bit of James Ferraro, but with the 'dub' cranked, most notably, the woozy bassline, and the vocals dubbed into soft echo drenched swirls.
"Cosmic Tides" is the first full on dub, the duo offering up their own electro-dub version of the classics, the beat, heavily reverbed, the organ, the upstroke guitar, but this is Peaking Lights, not King Tubby, so soon, the song splinters into some dreamy space pop, and over the course of the song drifts dreamily between the two.
And so it goes for the record of the record, the sound veering from reggae like grooves, to warped lo-fi reverby slo-mo eighties pop-dub that sounds like Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" slowed way down, and finally a hazy ambient coda, all dreamlike piano wreathed in reverb, strange backwards swoops and squiggles, all smeared into a strange bit of haunting psychedelia, which had us hankering for more of that sort of thing along with all the dubby dreaminess next time around.
Cool La Dusseldorf homage cover art. LP is limited to 2000 copies and includes poster and a digital download!
Another great archival electronic music release, Heliograms was recorded between 1976 and 1980 and it's one of the earliest examples of digital synthesis. Composed of four long tracks, Heliograms seems like a connective tissue from the prog-minded kraut of Klaus Schulze to the deep digital new age of David Parsons. Piche, a French-Canadian composer and video artist was among the first to employ emerging digital technologies to electroacoustic compositions. The resulting sound is one of deep cylindrical dronescapes and propulsive momentum that is at times either elementally heavy or blissfully airy. Side two is the airier side and the track "Rouge" has a percussive element that reminds us of Harald Grosskopf or Ashra, before settling into the drifting peacefulness of the title track. There, the cavernous dronescapes of the first side, open up to piano and harp-like textures that seem to levitate the tone of the record to a higher plane. Fantastic!
Our pal Jason's Ormolycka label puts out some of the coolest weirdest shit, all of it super limited, most so much so that we rarely get enough to list, in the past we've had the tape version of the Liturgy record (which featured a remix by our very own Andee!), as well as the Death Grips Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list), and now this week we have a whole bunch of releases, finally in amounts enough to list, one of which is this tape, from Denver witch house / electro pop outfit Pictureplane, whose sound drags the woozy lo-fi drag of witch house into total bumpin' electro pop territory, big beats, fuzzed out synths, sexy vox, skittery rhythms, warped loops, soulful and synthy, funky and poppy, super summer jams for late night dancefloor bliss outs.
We reviewed the debut 7" from these San Diego garage pop surf punks a while back, and recommended them to fans of Waaves, Drums and Best Coast, and on this most recent single, not too much has changed. They may have dialed back the surfiness a bit, but otherwise, there's still plenty of jangle and crunch, the A side a short sharp burst of off kilter noise pop, super hooky, with a crazy sing song-y vocal line, laced with squalls of psych guitars, while the B side has an old school classic girl group vibe, sounding a bit like Phil Spector produced era Ramones, tribal drums, murky riffage, snarly vox, crazy catchy harmonies and a wicked main hook. Good stuff, and still dying for a full length�
LIMITED TO 475 COPIES!!
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from the oddly monikered Pleq / Spheruleus, a duo whose music sounds right at home on TRS, a mix of delicate haunting abstract folk drift, and minimal avant electronics, woven into a brooding sort of ambience, laced with swoonsome melodies, moaning strings, dark minor key melodies, all wreathed in fields of crackle and buzz, static and hiss, sort of like Rachel's remixed by Philip Jeck. There's a definite chamber music vibe for sure, but a modern minimal classical vibe as well, minus the various bits of cackle and the electronic filigree, this would be some simply haunting string music, but fused to the strange otherworldly ambience, it becomes almost like the hauntological mesmer of the Caretaker, the same sort of mysterious faded memory melodies, and old Victrola production, the strings adding a bit of timelessness, and the soft noise patina making that these timeless sounds feel like they were at least first conjured up in a very different and distant time. Imagine the funereal violin music we once carried set amidst a staticky field of Tim Hecker like shimmer, sprawling into a Godspeed like majesty, but instead of building to an explosive climax, the sounds ooze and drift, a haunting melancholia under a grey clouded sky, the soundtrack to rainswept vistas and wide open expanses, one can almost imagine sitting in a tiny cabin, perched at the end of the world, looking out into the great nothingness that seems to extend forever, this music the soundtrack to such a lonely pursuit. Lovely.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
We got a whole bunch of tapes from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, one of our favorite tape labels going, and certainly one of the coolest and weirdest, with an insanely varied roster that evades any sort of easy classification. There was the tape version of the Liturgy record (which featured a remix by our very own Andee!), as well as the Death Grips Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list), which speaks to the label's obsession with fucked up weirdo hip hop, as does this one, by a 'band' called Pushups, written with a little infinity symbol before the bandname, but it's a seriously cracked slab of super distorted radio style hip-pop, more of a mix really, a dizzying mashup of soul, hip hop, pop, electro, a relentless barrage of booty shaking grooves, the sound super blown out and in-the-red, as if it was being blasted from a booming system with blown speakers. There's a serious footwork vibe too, with loops repeated over and over and over, stuttering samples, maddeningly mesmerizing, some of it totally bumping, some of it cheesy and fun, all of it ruling and while it may be Sommer Jammz for 2007, they'll sound pretty good this Sommer too!
Super limited one sided collaborative lp from avant metal weirdos Pyramids and blackened noisesmiths Wraiths, featuring Clay Ruby from Burial Hex on piano. It's a sprawling 25 minute side long single track, that starts out all dreamy and drifty with female vox over pounding reverb heavy piano, before the song kicks in proper, big chiming distorted guitars, and martial drumming, which instead of launching into blasting blackness, devolves into some strange glitched out droniness, all crumbling distortion, and crooned almost chant-like vox, and that piano from the opening few seconds. The sound is almost liturgical, certainly ritualistic, and for the next 10 minutes, the track drifts woozily, those female vocals return, the piano drives the haunting ambience, a funereal dirge of sorts, that finally explodes again at about the 15 minute mark, the drums, the bombastic crashing chords, but again, the song quickly devolves, this time into a blurred blackened squall of smeared noise and crumbling heaviness, obviously the work of Wraiths, who pull the song apart into a roiling tangle of grinding heaviness and blurred blacknoise, the whole thing laced with weird effect-ed guitars and the occasional stray melody, before, settling into a weird outro, all distant feedback, blasts of feedback, strange electronics, minimal percussion, and that haunting female voice, intoning some strange incantation, as the noise gradually dissipates leaving only emptiness...
Pressed on clear vinyl and housed in a gorgeous vellum sleeve with super striking artwork from tattoo artist Simon Erl. LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!
Folks who lived in San Francisco in the nineties may remember the band rRope, but odds are probably no one anywhere else does. A fairly obscure, but super awesome band who was part of a seriously ruling scene. Bakamono, Nitre Pit (pre-Deerhoof), Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Caroliner, Henry's Dress, A Minor Forest, Fibulator, Lowercase, Trackstar, Hickey, so many great shows happening all the time, touring bands, loads of cool clubs and weird places to play, and so many bands that seemed destined for bigger and better things. One of which was most definitely rRope, a quartet who built their own amps and fused jagged Sonic Youth like noisiness to blissed out My Bloody Valentine like shoegaze, their songs a barrage of intricate tangled progged out post punk rhythms wrapped around chiming jangly melodies and dense chaotic drumming. Crazy catchy hooks doused in wild squalls of noise rock freakouts, glitched out experimental ambience coalesce into loping post rock mesmer. And some truly unique expressive vocals, that added a whole 'nother art rock dimension to the proceedings. The band never shied away from weird sonic experimentation either, whether it was twang flecked Tortoise-y grooves or free form avant rock meander, Jon Wayne styled garbled cowpunk or woozy math rock weirdness, often in the same song (check out "Pocket Song"), noisy blissed out drone-punk or spaced out desert-y drift, their entire sound would change from record to record, even from song to song, but there was definitely a distinctive, if ineffable something that held it all together, but just barely. One of those amazing bands that sounded impossibly tight and constantly on the verge of collapse at the same time.
This sprawling triple lp collects everything the band ever recorded, including albums, 7"s, demos, and live tracks, specifically a set from 1998, right before the band broke up, opening for Sonic Youth at the Fillmore, a performance that reportedly has SY inviting them to tour the US, a tour that would sadly never happen, as the band would hang it up not long afterwards.
A totally mind blowing nostalgia trip for those of who were there, and an insanely exciting discovery for everyone else who wasn't�
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
This rare album (only 500 copies of the LP were originally issued in 1974) is now finally reissued on cd! "Blau" (Blue) is the second solo effort from legendary krautrock electronics pioneer Conrad Schnitzler, following his amazing debut "Rot" (Red) and his
Here's an unexpected set of reissues: vinyl versions of two classic krautrock albums by electronica pioneer Conrad Schnitzler. They're legit, done from master tapes we're told.
"Rot" (Red) was Con's amazing 1973 solo debut. Intense science-fictional bleep-drone, with ironic titles like (side one) "Meditation" and even "Krautrock" (side two). It's totally dark (but a little silly too). The Plate Lunch cd reissue of this we used to stock is now out of print, so that makes this new LP version even more essential. Of course, this vinyl reissue is pressed on red wax, in a red sleeve.
NOW ALSO ON VINYL!
The history behind this particular Conrad Schnitzler track is a little vague. Supposedly, Zug is also known as the "Red Cassette" which the German electronic pioneer self-released in 1973 (some say 1974). M=Minimal recently reissued a collection of Zug remixes, a couple of which had already appeared on vinyl before; but now the excellent remixes from Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer get now appear on vinyl. Schnitzler's history has been well mapped here at aQuarius, so we'll merely mention his inspired involvement in Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Villalobos & Loderbauer recently wowed us with their abstract recontextualization of ECM chamber jazz. On the first remix here they adopt more of a motorik / minimalist techno vibe that fits with the taut rhythms that Schniztler embedded into that old tape; and the second spins Schnitzler's dystopian synth drones into a clattering decentered piece more reminiscent of the New Zealand outsider Omit (who really would make for a stellar artist for M=Minimal to reissue!). Download card included!
Shit And Shine sure have come a long way from the multiple-drummer-ed Neanderthal noise rock rock pummel that was their M.O. for years. Recent recordings and performances have run the gamut from warped noise drenched dubstep to pounding psych rock laced with balloon squeak solos, so every live show and ever new record is a total unknown, and even once you get into a new record, every track ends up being a warped surprise. But really we wouldn't have it any other way. This new lp Jream Baby Jream pretty much continues right where the sprawling Le Grand Larance Prix triple lp left off, a handful of warped jams that end up going in whatever fucked up direction the $&$ guys want them too. Which requires a quick run through of all the songs...
The A side starts off the 10+ minute "Dinner With My Girlfriend" which couples alien vocoder-ed and auto-tuned vox to some dirgey, blown out super distorted beats, the whole track sounds like it's at the wrong speed, the sounds filthy and crumbling, swirling FX and all manner of weirdness going on beneath the surface, a stunted electro-drug groove that should have some dancefloor bumping, just not one where normal folks congregate. "Mermuda Triangle" is a blast of electronic weirdness, pitch shifted buzzes and constantly shifting layered drones, all over stuttery beats and weird ominously spoken vox, the whole thing laced with weird eighties melodies, which makes the track sound like Faxed Head covering some obscure eighties pop song. The A side closes with the title track, which is the weirdest of the bunch, mostly for being the least weird. It's a straight slow jam rock tune, all stripped down guitar and shuffling rhythm, the weirdest part being the mush mouthed vox, but otherwise it sounds like some warped slow jam high school dance ballad, playing in a gym in bumfuck, nowhere.
The B side starts off with "Woodpecker", a short blast of heavy No U-Turn style dubstep / jungle, all stripped down and pounding, but plenty fractured and fucked up, noisy and rife with all manner of glitches and squelches, before leading into the 10 minute "Rodeo Girls", a woozy, psychedelic slab of looped weirdly distorted kraut-funk, the sound shifting constantly, getting blown out, murky and muddy one second, brittle and crunchy the next, strange melodies surfacing throughout, all the while the main loop remains maniacally mesmerizing.
And finally, "Youth Led Worship" is a dark minimal coda, all murky and pulsing, a dirgey droned out drift, with haunting processed vox, and a field of deep moaning buzz, a blurred blackened sprawl of hushed sinister creep. Weird as fuck, of course, but bafflingly brilliant too.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES! On either green or orange vinyl! Already sold out at the label and out of print. These are the last copies we'll be able to get!!!
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from Sinneplakken, a quartet who have crafted a gorgeous bit of electronic flecked ambient minimalism that is thematically focused on the history of the Frisian Islands (!), which comes in the form of a few spoken word passages which feature Frisian poetry (!), however, the music itself is quite compelling, rhythmic and spare, but somehow lush and lovely as well, deep pulsations, chiming bell like melodies, muted strummed guitars, spidery minor key melodies, lush swells, swirls of electronic shimmer, blurred effects and random bits of percussion, field recordings, delicate pianos, streaks of static, subtle bits of barely there drumming, wheezing organs, sitar-like buzz, and stretched out almost raga-like drones, soft squalls of psychedelic guitar buzz, shards of feedback, all woven into a strange series of soundscapes, that slip from barely there haunting abstract minimal folk drift, to almost post rock slow build smolder. Quite cool.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
Finally! Season two of Solid Dudes Kitchen, which for those of you who missed out on season one, is exactly what the title promises, a couple dudes, solid dudes obviously, in a kitchen. It's a cooking show. Sort of. But it's a cooking show that's more like hanging out with your tattooed metal obsessed pals, one of whom just happens to be a pretty serious chef, the other more of a wiseass and designated taster. They're both pretty funny, tell stupid jokes, make obscure rock references, drink heavily, and then cook and eat some seriously awesome looking food. But that's only part of it, they're also master graphic designers, and the production values are through the roof, even more than the first season, with each show featuring a wholly original credit sequence, opening AND closing, that is some of the most eye popping and visually pleasing graphics we've seen ever, whether it's the wooden fish in the opening to the sushi episode, or the backwards pouring cocktails that spell out the titles in one of the hangover episodes (can't remember if it's 'Hang' or 'Over').
This time around the dudes attend a wild backyard Jalapeno festival, they apprentice with a sushi chef (who's hilarious), they drink a LOT and learn all sorts of crazy cocktails, they cook up the perfect hangover food, they prepare the meal that they would pick if they had to pick one meal for the rest of their lives and more more more!
Oh and did we mention the guitarist from the Dillinger Escape Plan returns as a sort of black metal greek chorus, with a wig, a legion of skeleton warriors, and a guitar that shoots rainbows. It's all pretty silly, but it's kind of a blast. It might be hard to make any of the recipes since they don't really do much instructing, but it's more about the vibe, if it looks good, you can fucking figure out how to make it yourself (so they might instruct!). Unruly and rude, and funny as fuck. The DVD includes a bunch of extra goodies, commentaries, trailers and other stuff. And we were actually inspired to make our own version of the O.M.F.T.R.O.Y.L (one meal for the rest of your life), which was some sort of heart stopping Monte Cristo.
MMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Urgh...
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from Sonmi451, a Belgian soundscaper named Bernard Zwijzen, whose last release on TRS, Star Atlas, we dug quite a bit. Four Peaks, while thematically well removed from the celestial focus of Star Atlas, still sonically evokes much of the same imagery, but now, instead of looking out at an expanse of stars and planets, we're looking out at a mountain range, from our perch atop some lofty peak, the majesty of the earth laid out before us, these sounds, a collection of electronic ambience and shimmery dronemusic, help evoke the strange otherworldliness of such a setting, and surprisingly it's not that different than Star Atlas, the isolation of outer space certainly analogous to the isolation of some mysterious snow capped mountain, the sounds here surprisingly varied, we imagine to capture the sprits of the four peaks for which each track is named, from the gurgling glistening glitchfolk shimmer of "Eiger", to the strange swirling ambient collage of "Grossglockner" with its mysterious tangle of sampled voices, to the hazy almost new agey drift of "Matterhorn", with its woozy Oval like muted malfunctioning electronics, to the hushed dreamlike melodies of "Tre Cime De Lavaredo", a gorgeous languid coda, that might be the prettiest of the bunch.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
Finally available on vinyl! After a tape and a couple 7"s, comes the much anticipated debut full length from this new crew of SF psych rockers, who by now should be quite familiar to fans of other Bay Area psychedelic space rock and garage rock, cuz if you dig Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Sleepy Sun, Carlton Melton and all the rest, as well as Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees and the like these guys should be right there in your space/psych pantheon. And while the spacier of those other bands tend toward the more droned out and krautrocky, these guys are much more classically rocking, melding a love of Spacemen 3 and other dronier drug rock with the classics, the Velvets, the Doors, even the Stooges, their songs simple and trancelike, plenty of jangle and simpler stripped down drum stomp, the vocals wreathed in reverb, and nestled in the mix, the guitars alternately chugging and crunchy, chiming and melodic, transforming simple pop songs into something more mesmerizingly hypnotic. Even album opener, Lonely Eye on the surface is simple and spare, but over the course of its nearly 5 minutes, it gets to the point where it could go on forever, and we'd sit there glassy eyed and blissed out.
Some of the other tracks are more garagey, like "Disguise", which should totally have Oh Sees fans flipping their lids, although the sound here hews much closer to old garage classics like the Fuzztones or the Lyres, which is most definitely not a bad thing. In fact if anything, much of this new record definitely leans toward that more stripped down garage rock sound, with fuzzy guitar, wandering basslines and fuzzy organs, but here and there, like on "Calling Out Your Name" the band unleash a riff that KILLS, in the case of "COYN", it's a dead ringer for the Stooges, one that the band could have ridden hard, but instead of getting all swaggery, the band sort of blisses out, applying multiple layers of guitars and upping the psych quotient considerably, not to mention some cool rhythmic weirdness, which lurks throughout the record, and reveals itself on repeated and closer listens.
And so it goes, the whole record, a killer collection of super hooky, spaced out psychedelic garage pop gems, the sort of sound we can't get enough of, and the sort of sound that should definitely position these guys alongside other garage/space/psych rock luminaries, and again if you dig Crystal Stilts, Thee Oh Sees, Wooden Shjips, or any of the other above mentioned bands, and have not checked these guys out, do yourself a favor...
A pitch perfect summer single from indie rock heroes Superchunk. The A side is a brand new original, that embodies everything we love about Superchunk, fuzzy, jangly hooky, even hand claps (!), a perfect blast of summery indie pop crunch, with a killer chorus, a classic jam that once again demonstrates Superchunk have somehow only gotten better with age.
And the flipside keeps the summer theme going, with a cover of Bananarama's "Cruel Summer", which is transformed into a dark, crunchy, chuggy jam, surprisingly fuzzed out and a little punked up, sounding like it could easily be a Superchunk original. Which as longtime fans know, is what makes Superchunk covers so good. Comes with a digital download which includes a bonus track, an acoustic version of the A side...
LIMITED TO 1300 COPIES, each one hand numbered. Pressed on white vinyl.
Latest black sonic ritual from this SF trio (formerly duo), and like the last record, Larvae, which came out on Handmade Birds, Behind The Throne continues the group's evolution away from the blacknoise that defined their earlier sound. As we mentioned in our review of Larvae, the band seemed to spend a surprising amount of their time lately not blasting or buzzing, instead, conjuring up some surprisingly lovely ambience, and that's true here too, although the ambience here is less shimmery and abstract, and more like some sort of blackened dronescapery, thick swaths of guitar buzz, and dense swells of processed vocals, creating something that's both haunting and hypnotic, dense and intense, it's not really until about 7 minutes into the first track (which fills up the whole first side of the vinyl), that the band finally do unleash some black metal, but when they do, it's a dense blurred buzz, so blurred and blown out it almost sounds more droney and washed out than grim and heavy, but the crazy thing is, the band haven't even started, as a couple minutes later, they somehow explode again, the sound splintering into a weird almost industrial sounding black chug, a grinding, howling maelstrom of black buzz and churning psychedelia, that quickly fades out leaving just a long stretch of crumbling noise, distant vocals, tolling bells, and crackling staticky ambience.
The second track / B side is another sprawling epic, this time bookended by some creepy industrial ambience, what sounds like jangling chains, plenty of rumbles and creaking high end, all smeared into a blackened ur-drone, soon guitars drift in, but not riffs, more like black chordal clouds, that hover darkly, before finally coalescing into proper riffs, but like the first track, the riffs are so distorted and blown out, the 'black metal' here is more of a blackdrone blur, that even with headphones reveals very little of what's going on in Sutekh's roiling black soundworld, the guitars murky and muddy one second, harsh and caustic the next, the vocals a buried bellow, and if there are drums, they're buried so low they just add to the general cacophony. The track churns and chugs, and at one point sounds almost like a sonic approximation of a locomotive, clattery and industrial, but still wreathed in a swirling blackbuzz fog, before the blackness dissipates, leaving just the strange ritualistic ambience that opened the track.
Super swank packaging, full color photos of some sort of altar ritual, candles and chalices and knives, all wreathed in shadow, with all the texted printed in a clear reflective spot varnish.
This is the first we'd heard from Taragana Pyjarama, aka Danish producer Nick Eriksen, but all it took was a quick listen and we were smitten. This is the sort of blissed out loop heavy electronic dreaminess we can never seem to get enough of. Right off the bat it reminded us of The Field, but even more washed out and woozy, the opening track is pretty much the perfect chunk of sun dappled pop ambient dreaminess, all swirling synths and swoonsome melodies, dense layers and lush melodic tangles, pulsing and pulsating and shimmering, a cascading kaleidoscopic stretch of electronic dreampop loveliness that almost kept us from making it to the rest of the record. The second track is more of the same, this time harnessing those same sounds into something subtly more propulsive, a dreamy pulsating new age synthscape, that just gets more and more lush and gloriously blissed out, we were almost convinced that maybe the whole record was this pure soft focus shimmery sweetness, but it is on Kompakt after all, so there are beats, but even the beat driven tracks are dreamy and playful. "Lo Ng" is s tripped down minimal house track, of woozy bloops and bleeps, that blossoms into a hazy tropical cinematic groove, before slipping into a stripped down electro pulse. "All Those Weird Things" almost sounds like Animal Collective if they were on Kompakt, the same sort of lush, psychedelic pop vibe, but here wedded to a garbled stuttery underwater beat. "Pinned (Part 1)" has a beat at its core, but it's nearly swallowed whole by the woozy warped synths, and the title track, is a gorgeous abstract skitter, that sounds like it was collaged from chiming bells and and samples scrapes and rattles, like some sort of abstract field recorded Muslimgauze, the track eventually becoming a gorgeous stretch of meditative bell like tones, and so it goes. From blooping bleeping synth heavy house-pop, to playful electro skitter, to bleary blissed out synth-drone ambience, easily our new favorite electronic record, and way recommended for fans of The Field, Gui Boratto, Actress, and other outside-the-box electronic alchemists...
Brand new split 7" from East Bay pop punks Terry Malts, whose two songs here are just as good as anything on their recent full length, two new blasts of fuzzy poppy punkiness, all crunchy fuzzy guitars, woozy basslines, hooks galore, some rad guitar freakouts and of course those vocals that continues to remind us of Morrissey, or maybe more accurately Morrisey-worshipping punks the Smoking Popes. Both tracks here kill, although the second might be our fave, the vocals taking on a distinctly echo drenched eighties vibe that perfectly suits TM's punky garage pop.
Terry Malts share the split with a group called Dead Angle, who we'd never heard before, but who remind us a bit of Veronica Falls, which is a very good thing. Fuzzed guitar jangle, dreamy female vox, a bit lo-fi, with some seriously dirgey breakdowns rife with feedback, and of course hooks a plenty. The second track is all wiry riffs and kinetic rhythms, sounding more post punk than garage pop, but both tracks have us definitely wanting to hear more!
Holy shit! Skullflower / Matthew Bower / Broken Flag / early industrial music nerds rejoice! A long overdue reissue of the debut release from Matthew Bower of Skullflower's solo project Total, originally released on cassette way back in 1986 on the Broken Flag label, and now available on cd for the first time EVER. And it's a monster. Amongst fans of this kind of stuff (which we most certainly are, and we imagine many of you are too), this ranks up there as holy grail sort of stuff, and many folks' favorite Bower recordings ever. And it's easy to see why. Even after all this time, the stuff on Hard + Low, still sounds totally fresh, and way ahead of its time. With new bands today conjuring up similarly mysterious murk, with no idea that Bower was doing the same thing, and doing it better more than two decades early.
Sonically, this is a tough one to pin down, the record begins with a live track, which is essentially a squall of blown out white noise guitar skree, through which can barely be discerned the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy In The UK", but soon even that disappears beneath a barrage of feedback and industrial clatter, it's the sort of noisiness that would have the listener battening down the hatches preparing for the onslaught that must no doubt be coming. But instead, the rest of the record, while still plenty pummeling and brutal, shows a surprising amount of restraint, whether it's the weird pulsating dirge folk noisescape of "Transfigured Night", which transforms skronking horns into bagpipe like bellows, all over corrosive drones and strange detuned guitar strum, sounding not unlike an industrial free jazz version of Amps For Christ, or "Charnel House Revisited", which is a woozy Philip Jeck like turntablescape, all warped loops and crackly records spinning over a strange stuttery beat. Or there's "You'll Get Yours Yet", which sounds like some lost cold wave gem, the guitars stretched out into droning buzz, laced with plenty of strange sonic streaks and tangled melodies, over which a darkly dramatic vocal bellows and growls, a sort of ominous drumless doom and gloom drone-noise creep.
The record's centerpiece is the nearly 14 minute "The Sound Of Music", which is essentially solo piano, super lo-fi, and with tons of echo and reverb, wreathed in subtle swaths of haunting buzz, the whole track rife with weird bits of static and tape hiss, and more detuned guitar buzz. Surprisingly lovely, but at the same time, still slightly sinister. There's a studio version of the opening live track too, which is GORGEOUS, driven by what sounds like organs, but must be processed guitars, tranced out and droney, drifting on a bed of static and hiss and gristly buzz, all manner of strange industrial filigree in the background, but weirdly tranquil, and dreamily mesmerizing, easily one of the prettiest 'noise' jams EVER. And finally, the record finishes off with "Terminator", another tripped out psychedelic samplescape, all looped and cyclical, an early industrial Jeck, unfurling a softly noisy, layered loops, and wrapping them in warm swirls of blunted noise and blurred gauzy thrum. Wow. Absolutely essential.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
The name Ryan Unks might not be immediately familiar to you, but anyone into dark and heavy drones out sounds, who are long time readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with Unks's work, even if they don't realize it. Long ago Unks was a member of political grindlords Creation Is Crucifixion, but more recently, he was the man behind the black sonic malevolence that was the Human Quena Orchestra, but for this, his most recent solo record, Unks offers up something completely different, a gorgeous collection of home brewed new age drift, crystalline electronics, and mesmerizingly hypnotic loops, droned out and cyclical. A series of chiming melodies, of pulsating and percolating textures, spare and skeletal in places, lush and densely layered in others, with a few of the tracks rife with warm whirs and muted sine wave tones, smeared into soft swells of blissed out soft-noise dream-psych ambience. The sort of thing that fans of Root Strata and Type and Spectrum Spools might dig!!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Gorgeously packaged in an oversized plastic clamshell case, with a printed transparent cover and printed six panel insert, all overlapping and layered and quite striking!
We instantly fell in love with the first volume of this series which introduced us to many new-to-us obscure mystical jazz artists that have since become some of our all-time favorites: Lloyd Miller, P.E. Hewitt, and Mor Thiam to name a few. While that installment focussed on American based African Heritage communities that rose up after the civil rights era, this latest installment takes us to Europe and focuses on a more progressive form of deep jazz throughout Scandinavia, Spain, Germany, England, as well as Eastern European countries. This time around, we're a bit more familiar with some of the names, though there are plenty of folks new to us. Of course there is British jazzman Michael Garrick who recently passed away prior to this release. The reissue of Garrick's Moonscape on Trunk records from a few years back was one of our favorite jazz reissues, so it's nice there is an awesome previously unreleased track here. Finnish Jazz pianist Heikki Sarmonto who also had a reissue on Porter records offers up a deep tribute to Coltrane and Duke Ellington that is akin to going to church, albeit, a church in Finland. A lot of tracks including Raphael's "Archangelo" have a more reverent orchestral / choral vibe than the tracks on the first volume did, and most are not quite as overtly groovy either. Yet this fits in with the post-Coltrane developments in Jazz in Europe at the time, with artists mining new forms and directions and not merely trying to ape American jazz idioms. That's not to say there aren't any groovers here, Dutch group Hans Dulfer and Ritmo Natural bring the Latin-tinged hotness to the core with "Candy Clouds part 2". This is some seriously deep dope!
Killer collab between Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, JK Flesh, etc.) and Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Hototogisu, Sunroof!, etc.) along with Samantha Davis who plays with Bower in Voltigeurs, who team up for some seriously old school blackened industrial noise dirge bliss. aQ pal Matt described it as sounding like Skullflower's Birthdeath / Form Destroyer / IIIrd Gatekeeper records "but maybe just a little prettier", which is definitely not that far off the mark. Four long tracks, thick clouds of caustic guitar swirl, blurred riff-noise, and churning chordal thrum, shot through with buried melodies, streaks of feedback, all anchored by a primitive plodding drum machine rhythm. That's the first track at least, best listened to through headphones, which like a lot of recent Bower projects, reveals a whole other world of sonic subtleties beneath the roiling surface, and here it's dreamily keening melodies, some woozy downtuned chugs, and some dense layered noisiness that ends up sounding more trancelike and hypnotic that harsh or brutal.
"Ourobous" is more of the same, only with the treble dialed way back, and the low end cranked as high as it'll go, a murky muddy dirge, with a more forceful, double kick driven beat, the dueling guitars sparring in jagged tangles over a swirl of blackened buzz and crunch, until the drums drop out, and the song is transformed into a weirdly mesmerizing ur-drone, one guitar rumbling and whirring while the other unfurls almost black metal sounding riffs, that soar skyward like some black metalized Sunroof! "Naga" pushes the robotic rhythm to the fore, letting the guitars (and this time a very audible bass) grind away, plenty of skree and howl, the bass providing some serious heft, the rhythm section seriously pulverizing, wreathed in a cloud of wild psychedelic guitar freakout.
"The Exit Door Leads In" is the longest of the bunch, at 12+ minutes, and is the perfect mix of Godflesh industrial dirge, and Skullflower blackened skree, with all sorts of riffs and melodies and rhythms seeming to gradually come into focus only to dissipate back into the endless psych-noise squall. This final track also seems to have a driving melodic component, that makes it feel the most songlike, sort of gloomy and haunting, like if you stripped away all the guitar noise, you'd be left with some sort of gloomy gothic almost cold wave sounding dirge, but add the guitars, and the noise, and it becomes a dense, darkly driving noise rock space-psych jam that could go on forever and ever, and is the sort of thing that might even appeal to super adventurous fans of outfits like White Hills, The Heads, Carlton Melton and other psychedelic space rockers.
Needless to say, fans of Skullflower, Godflesh and and various like minded, Broken Flag beholden, industrial psychedelic noise outfits, will dig this A LOT!! Limited to 500 copies.
Latest release from Vatican Shadow, aka Dom Fernow, aka Prurient, as well as being the man behind the Hospital record label and store (R.I.P) and a member of cold wavers Cold Cave. VS his Fernow's retro electro goth project, and this 12" is the first release on Bed Of Nails (Fernow's new post-Hospital label), and is presented in the style of an old school eighties 12" single, the A side features two versions of the title track, the first total old school electro goth groove, equal parts early industrial, dark wave, and goth dance pop, the second version gets significantly darker, more droney and driving, stripped down a bit but wreathed in a haze of crumbling noise and brittle buzz.
The B side begins all swirly synth and ominous chordal swells, before the beat finally surfaces, another gothic electro groove that wouldn't have been at all out of place on some cobweb draped dancefloor at the monthly goth night at your local nightclub, sandwiched between Sisters Of Mercy and Fields Of The Nephillim, while the final track ditches the beat completely and offers up a trippy gloomy sprawl of gothic synthscapery. Cool stuff for sure, especially if you were a high school goth, or still have a soft spot for that sort of thing!
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!
Some folks may know Lisa McGee from Barn Owl side project, Higuma, or her vocal work on Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Love Is A Stream, or perhaps even Portraits, the zen-minded supergroup of Bay Area improvisationalists. Truth is, McGee has been a muse behind a lot of great recordings in that circle so it's really nice to see her finally in the spotlight via her debut solo effort, Vestals. In some way McGee is channeling Rachel Brook from early nineties Bristol bands, Flying Saucer Attack and Movietone, in her ethereal noise-pop laden songs replete shimmering electric guitar, and featuring Trevor Montgomery's bass and partner Evan Caminiti's bowed guitarscapes. The atmosphere of desolate spaciousness and the smoldering shoegazed distortion that ripple through the Higuma recordings are certainly present; but in Vestals, McGee pushes the song-writing to the forefront with chiming hypno-drone-rock bliss akin to Roy Montgomery channelling the Velvets, which thrums and drones most prominently on the album's lengthy mantra "Of Ripples." But she can also shift into quite the chanteuse, as on the crushed-velvet noise-pop of "Forever Falling" and "In Waking Dreams" where McGee's voice carries the songs to stratospheric crescendos through a hook-laden bliss. A gorgeous debut that limited to a mere 300 copies!
Looks good, smells good, it's the new issue of Wax Poetics, all about the groovy shit new & old: El-P, Kurtis Blow, Nas, The Roots, Killer Mike, Shabazz Palaces, Oddisee, Robert Glasper, Coke La Rock, and more. Get schooled!
It's about time Arcata, California produced a spacey psych band, don't ya think? It is, after all, the home of drop-out hippies and farmers of Mary J. Wanna. Happily, we report that Humboldt County's sons are just as tripped out on distortion and fuzz as the new wave of other space-rock outfits - Lumerians, White Hills, Sweden's just plain 'ol Hills, and a whole host of other bands whose names may or may not contain the word "owl." But judging by the album art, White Manna don't want to travel space so much as explore the dense redwood forests of their homeland. What has this quartet found in the thick of those gentle giants? 1. Massive volume, on levels akin to that of a Who concert. 2. Crazy wah-wah sounds and spiraling guitar solos, like you just took a hit off a four-footer for the first time since 10th grade. 3. Vocals shouted from the depths of a tunnel.
Best of all, White Manna distinguish themselves with their ability to hang a song on the nail of a bluesy hook. Further, they forego slow build-ups - the addition of saxophone on the opening of "Don't Gun Us Down" is about as much of a prelude as you're going to get here - and tend to cut to the chase pretty quickly on each of this strong EP's five tracks. It's almost as if they want you to actually dance to their particular brand of neo-psychedelia, unlike Holy Mountain label-mates Wooden Shjips, whom we enjoy equally but differently. Track 2, "Keep Your Lantern Burning," blares with a Stooges three-chord dissonance. The last two tracks, "Don't Gun Us Down," and "Sweet Jesus," seriously boogie. The latter boldly ends with a variation of the "Mr. Mojo Rising" mantra until it breaks free into the most sprawling freak out of the whole set. We thank White Manna for ushering us behind the redwood curtain and can't wait to see what they do next.
This burly bearded electronic wizard releases yet another jawdropping dose of "real time music for hybrid digital-analogue modular synthesizer" that Whitman posits as the companion piece to the recently released Editions Mego album Generator. His set-up presumably is similar to what was found in the Generator album in attempting to coax and wrangle strains of errata from his highly complex networks of re-engineered synth circuits through overlapping digital algorithms and systems. Whitman also pegs this as the 'free jazz' counterpoint to the 'minimalist' strains of Generator. That seems just about right. There are plenty of dance / anti-dance notions within the electronic patterns and subsequent deconstructions that come out of Whitman's polydactyl blorping, with grooves evolving out of sequential firings of scattershot electronic bleeps only to trip over themselves and stumble into a tangle of fizzing tone, radiant atom smashing, discombobulated delirium, and plate reverb bath simulation. The sporadic sequential bursts from a machine sourced drum kick and some electronic source that could be thought of mimetically as a flapping bassline (yup, think a cyborg version of Jaco Pastorius) and the free jazz references start to seem not too far of a stretch. It's a manic, frenzied, and totally uncompromising album from a very skilled electronic artist going fucking nuts. Oh, we played this at the wrong speed too the first time, and it sounds pretty wicked at 33rpm. Two albums for the price of one, eh? ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
It's the "Bass" issue of The Wire, well at least it's got a special section with David Toop, Dave Tompkins, Will Montgomery, and Joe Muggs discussing various aspects of "Low End Theory", accompanied by a selection of 75 different, significant bass heavy albums reviewed by various Wire writers.
Also: Fushitsusha, Duane Pitre, Zeitkratzer's Reinhold Friedl (doing the Invisible Jukebox), Istanbul band Replikas, and more, including a Blondie-related essay from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier. Plus the usual reviews and news and so forth. Oh, and there's a Wire Tapper cd sampler glued to the cover, with a diverse array of tracks from various artists, most of which we haven't even heard of before.
