Fucked up minstrel-tunes, misogynistic murder ballads, and world-weary blues played by a man who's too smart and too talented to play everything straight. Yup, it's Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls in his singer-songwriter guise of Alvarius B. Alan's poetics of cruelty and black humor are highlighted most egregiously on this eponymous album (not to be confused with another self-titled record from 1994), and if anyone is expecting the puckish tunes from Bishop's acclaimed 2011 album Baroque Primitiva with its Morricone, John Barry, and Beach Boys covers will be shocked by all of the dead whores and vulgar epithets that come a mile a minute from Bishop's venomous mouth. Bishop's arrangements typically find the man scraping and rapping his bloody knuckles across his steel-strung acoustic guitar with a violent aggression that splutters out of stolen blues progressions, always punctuating his deranged lyrics. As was the case with the Sun City Girls, Bishop's solo work teases with moments of musical ecstasy thanks to some downright brilliant songwriting that get all twisted and fucked up with those gnashed acoustic chords or subverted by a peyote visions (e.g. "he sucked all of Arabia from a herbivore's labia") or downright mean spirited lyrics (e.g. "Fucking maggot, you're in the way!")
Originally released as a double lp 1997 on Abduction, the album went out of print quickly only to fetch small ransoms on eBay. The double cd sports six bonus tracks including the Sun City Girls classic "CCC" from 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. It's pretty fucking recommended, but only if you don't mind getting sonically slapped in the face every other song.
One of five new tapes from the awesome Austin based experimental tape label, Holodeck. Largely documenting the growing and diverse Texas underground scene of synth conjurers, drone lords psych meditators, and classical folk devotionists, each tape conceived as a unique listening experience with beautifully designed minimalist packaging. We listed tapes by Lumens, Smokey Emery and Thousand Foot Whale Claw awhile back, and this time around we have another tape from Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as tapes by Survive, M. Geddes Gengra, Silent Land Time Machine, and this one from the mysteriously monikered Amasa Gana.
Like Lumens, Amasa Gana features members from other groups from this fervent scene though we're not really sure which ones. Using a mixture of electronic and acoustic folk instruments, Amasa Gana make cosmic vibrational sky ragas in slow motion dramatic arcs that evoke the feel of aerial flight or freefalling. Spiraling drones like circular breathing with bowed textures, bird calls, and a cinematically intense pastoral quality that comes close to meditative industrial music. Reminding us of Brian Eno's Apollo record yet with harder deeper edges. Limited to 100 copies!
For a while there, it seemed like everyone loved Animal Collective. And heck, we were right there with 'em in the beginning, but then for whatever reason, we sort of stopped caring so much. Pretty sure they didn't start to suck, but we definitely started paying less attention, probably in part because of the endless hype, which as is often the case, tends to make us NEVER want to hear whatever it is being hyped to high heaven. And we do fight it, or try to, and we have plenty of super popular stuff we all love, but for some reason the AC thing was different and it sort of soured us, but holy shit, this new one is KILLER. And so goddamn weird. And we mean really weird. Our first response is to be super excited that something this warped and tripped out can be so popular, the idea of some random person on the way to Bonaroo or some other festival, to see Vampire Weekend, might be jamming "Moonjock" at deafening volume in their car, fills us with no small amount of joy. Our second response is to go back and revisit the last few AC records, and do a little catching up.
Apparently this record is special, in that either it's the first record in a while with the original lineup, and maybe also the first with someone singing, or real drumming, whatever it is, it might just be what is making this so good. Check out the aforementioned "Moonjock", the opening track, that is sorta pop, but a wild strain of acid soaked whatthefuck electro noise pop, the opening actually sounds a bit like Lightning Bolt, in fact much of this record had us coming up with band math like Lightning Bolt + Phoenix = Animal Collective! Anyway, when the vocals swoop in, it gets poppier, but no less warped, the sound swirly and psychedelic, and seriously fucking catchy. We're tempted to proclaim "Moonjock" pop jam of the year, but it's at least gotta be top ten. Wild and chaotic and hooky and FUN, this is the sort of pop song that we can imagine going nuts over live, the sort of pop song that deserves some kind of pop-pit. No higher praise. When we first got this, as is often our way, we ONLY wanted to listen to this one song, over and over.
And while nothing else on the record is quite as good, plenty of em come close. "Today's Supernatural" is definitely a close second, woozy and warped and like "Moonjock" CRAZY catchy, with a twisted arrangement, and a lush tweaked sound palette, that definitely makes this whole record amazing sounding. And to be honest, the more we listen to this, and the deeper we dig into the record, the more we're digging this, ALL of it, so fuck all the hype, this is definitely a new favorite...
There's two new tapes from UK tape label the Tapeworm on this week's list; this one's from Uruguayan composer/soundscaper Gaston Arevalo, who takes traditional instruments like viola and guitar, along with all manner of abstract samples and field recordings, and somehow melts all of these sounds down into a haunting ethereal brew, the various sounds smeared into warm swirling swells, and deep lush rumbling whirs. The result a stunning series of hushed gauzy softly symphonic soundscapes, definitely reminding us of The Caretaker, or like something you might expect to hear on Type or Miasmah, that same sort of subtly ominous, blissfully bleary ambient drift, a dreamily nocturnal bit of gristly chordal thrum, rife with buried melodies, and constantly shifting layers, there's definitely a new age vibe, but that's blended with a blackened almost pop ambience, and then wreathed in starfields of crackle and hum, and washed out billows of lush shimmer, a practically perfect collection of late night, rainswept, cinematic, dreamdronedrift lullabies.
We first heard the Assembly Of Light Women's Choir on Portland-via-Rhode Island doom duo The Body's most recent record, All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood, which besides being crushingly heavy, also displayed a seriously experimental/avant bent that few doom bands share, an experimental streak that manifested itself in many of the tracks on that record featuring all manner of electronics, multiple drummers or a full women's choir, often all three. It was definitely something we had never heard before, the lush choral sound wedded to ear splitting downtuned crunch, but it sounded incredible. More recently, the choir has been touring sans The Body, and were actually meant to play an instore at aQ which unfortunately didn't work out.
So when we got this new record from the Assembly Of Light choir, we were expecting it to be just vocals, a proper choir record, but instead a good chunk of it finds the choir performing with other musicians, most notably The Body along with multiple drummers on two of the tracks.
The opener is lush and dark and dreamy, just subtle shimmery drones and plaintive piano underscoring the lush harmonies of the choir, quite beautiful, and again left us unprepared for "Transition", the second track, which begins with strings, only to immediately explode into a churning downtuned dirge, the choir drifting over this rumbling slo-mo tarpit creep, the result is very cinematic, the sort of thing you can imagine playing over cities crumbling, or planets dying, gorgeous and haunting and ominous and gorgeously doomy. The doom is peeled back part way through, leaving just the choir, before "Treelight" begins, another doomic crawl, but this one, less abject, and more hopeful, the sound epic and melodic, the choir accompanied by bellowed male vox, before slipping into a woozy slowly fading drones. And then finally, the choir goes it alone on the 3 part, 13 minute "Into The Woods", the sound lovely and liturgical, the voices lush and angelic, and as is often the case when we hear performances like this, we are utterly awed by the power of the human voice.
You just can't win with fans sometimes. You change your sound too much, and they give up on you; you don't change enough and you get accused of just making the same record over and over. It seems to be more difficult for metal bands, especially metal bands who have aspirations of pushing their sound beyond the strictures of metal. For instance, one of our favorite bands, Cave In, went from being incredible insanely ultra heavy, to sounding like Radiohead, and weirdly, back again. Finally ending up with a sound that improbably fused the two disparate sounds, which we love, but that whole series of transitions definitely cost them a lot of fans. And any metal band, who moves away from metal, is bound to lose the metalhead vote, which brings us to the latest from long time aQ faves Baroness who for a while now have been moving steadily away from the sort of post metal heaviness that defined their early sound, and who have finally arrived here, with this sprawling double cd, which is about as UNmetal as we've heard them. When we first threw this on, we were sort of put off, and joked about the Foo Fighters, Three Doors Down, and the like, basically the sort of mainstream stuff that these guys probably never gave a second thought to, even though they now actually sound a little bit like both. Even back on the Blue Record, we mention that "gone is the sludgey Southern stoner sound, and in its place an insanely catchy, super poppy prog metal, that sounds alternately like Torche with Brian May guitars, or Queens Of The Stoneage mixed with Mastodon." Which would essentially apply to this record too, although they're not nearly as heavy anymore as Mastodon OR Torche, but the QOTSA comparison is definitely apt.
But you know what, fuck it, if you approach this as a record by a metal band, you're bound to be disappointed, but if you approach it as something much more mainstream, well then it's actually pretty weird and cool, and sure, a little bit heavy.
We're on our 3rd or 4th listen, and it's definitely grown on us, but really this is absolutely not a metal record at all, in fact it's barely a heavy rock record, but it is pretty good, and some of the songs are pretty goddamn catchy, and there are moments of heaviness that totally hit the spot, but also inevitably had us missing the Baroness of old. But listen to the sound samples, and you'll pretty much immediately know where you stand. If you do dig some more mainstream sounds, which we definitely do, then like we said, this will definitely fall on the heavy/weird/psychedelic side of that stuff and will probably hit the spot.
Michael Begg offers us another magnificent piece of occluded ambience by way of his Human Greed project. As we mentioned before, Begg's name first came to our attention through Fovea Hex, a dreamy avant-folk project spearheaded by Clodagh Simonds and droned out by such heavyweights as Brian Eno, Colin Potter, and Andrew McKenzie alongside Begg. The Human Greed sound parallels Fovea Hex's arrangements with strings, guitar, piano, and field recordings blurred into arctic electronic symphonies, with Dirt On Earth being the best album we've heard so far from Human Greed. Half-remembered / half-forgotten melodies slip in and out of focus on the introductory track "An Innocent In The Aisles," floating thoughout Begg's hypnotic drone-centric composition. The following pieces adopt similar strategies but through the sharp tones from a bowed psalter that amass into dissonant swarms. Begg treats such sounds with harmonic shadows, echoes, and dopplegangers that twist the piece from being a gasping piece of minimalism and closer to the 'moon musick' of Coil's ritualized ambience. Cold rumblings, uneasy vibrations, and heavily processed bell tones intensify the proceedings of the aptly named "Invocation Of The Scottish Winter" which swells towards a grandiose crescendo of stretched and shifted drones. The pieces get longer and longer as the album unfolds, leading to the 20 minute conclusion of "Scenes From A Carefree Life" - a snowblinding piece of glistening tones, flecked with tone-bent flutterings and stratospheric droning arcs. A brilliant album that reminds us in equal parts of Andrew Chalk, Brendan Murray, and The Caretaker.
On a recent list, we reviewed the debut lp from Spacin', and over the last year or two, we raved endlessly about a band called Purling Hiss, even making on of those records our Record Of The Week. So what do those bands have in common? Well, they're both one man bands, and both of those man's play in THIS band as their 'day job'. In the Spacin' review we mentioned really needing to check out Birds Of Maya, and then BAM, this long out of print lp gets reissued on cd, and holy shit, how did we miss out on these guys. Forget all the weird psychedelic poppiness and classic rockisms of Purling Hiss and Spacin', Birds Of Maya is all sludgey crusty blown out low fidelity swaggery psychedelic space rock blooooz, equal parts Stooges, Groundhogs, Hawkwind, all of that stuff, but somehow, these guys make it sound even more mean and dirty and dangerous, locking into looped sounding churning riffage, wreathing their guitars in flanger and wah wah, the drum pounding away, but buried in the mix, the vocals yowled and yelped, but also buried in the mix.
The title track here is basically, a single riff, and single lyric repeated mantra like, the guitars chugging away, the drums a murky pounding pulse, super tribal and trancey, the sort of single riff psych rock mesmer that could easily have stretched out for another twenty minutes, but three is more than enough to get you totally mesmerized.
Then comes the twenty minute "Porch Dude" which definitely had us thinking of Liquor Ball or Monoshock, but a bit more bluesy, and a bit less damaged, but only a bit, the sound blown out and heavy as fuck, and then something weird happens at about three minutes in, the sound begins to mutate, and get all murky and muddy, almost as if the microphone was being lowered into water, the sound woozy and warped, and muted, which is how it remains for the remainder of the track, the band unfurling some of THEE most awesome shredding psych blues we've heard in ages. The 22 minute "Heavy On Sunday" offers up more of the same, but WAY more slowed down and swaggery, the sound like Les Rallizes Denudes, but the music full on seventies blues rock, some serious bar room boogie, but oozing with crumbling distortion, and once again plenty of shred, and like the song before it, with about seven minutes left, the song transforms again, and becomes a murky more lo-fi wild psych blowout, at which point we figure these guys just sort of cram recordings together to make these epics, but it works, and the two parts definitely fit, and the resulting weirdness only makes it that much more warped and psychedelic.
The cd reissue tacks on two bonus tracks, tucked away after about 90+ empty tracks, both of which find the band joined by a harmonica player for some serious psychedelic blooze, although the second bonus track starts off with a long stretch of weird buzzing lo-fi drones, before it explodes into one final burst of psych blues pound.
What is wrong with the world today? The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, babies are coo-ing, breezes are blowing, waves are lapping, clouds are drifting happily across a bright blue sky, but all everybody wants to listen to is hateful evil grim brutal downtuned miserable soul crushing anguished slow motion funereal death drone ultra doom. Not that we're complaining, but it is curious. There's been recent renewed interest in slow motion metal masters Earth, as well as a growing obsession with self-admitted Earth worshippers Sunn 0))), the massive ambient-metal explorations of Japan's Corrupted, the stomping garage psych meets doom drone of the mighty Boris, and a constantly growing roster of similar sonic sickos: Esoteric, Khanate, Asva, Fleshpress, Dot [.], Marzuraan, Ox, Rigor Sardonicus, Sons Of Otis, UFOmammut, Skepticism, Whitehorse, Planet Aids and now Bunkur. We've been trying to track down this cd for ages, and somehow ended up listing and reviewing the Planet Aids cd, a Bunkur side project, before we had even received the Bunkur discs. Well, now they're here and you won't be sorry. This Dutch outfit traffics in massive, miserable, impossibly lugubrious doom metal. This is a single 65 minute track, drenched in reverb and crackling amp buzz, crumbling distorted guitars howled vocals, very loose and spread out, the riffs exist in huge expanses of SPACE, a blackened vacuum of buzz and echo and the occasional trailing off of a vocal growl or a slowly dissipating feedback vapor trial. The kicker here though, and the thing that makes Bunkur so weird (and cool) is the drumming, stumbling lo-fi tripped out rhythms, that drift from plodding caveman pound, to spacious barely there accents, but most surprisingly hover in some strange alternate world of dub. Yep, you heard us, DUB. The drums often demarcate wide open spaces with a strange dubbed out, instantly recognizable: BAP BAP Bap bap bap bp bp bp bp .... a single snare hit that repeats, stuttering into oblivion. Giving the whole thing a weird hellish doom-dub vibe. Like Khanate recording with Lee Perry maybe? Okay, maybe not quite as extreme as that, but the dub is definitely there, whether purposeful or not. And it's really cool. Fans of dismal doom death drone and all things slow and sick will find this absolutely essential. Packaged in super cryptic metallic grey and black packaging with extensive liner notes in a completely unreadable rune font!
We were pretty crazy about In Witch Order, the debut from this local female fronted metal combo, which was released on the venerable German label Van. This new one also came out on Van a while back, but finally it seems metalheads in the US are catching on, as it was just reissued on Prosthetic in the states, which we can only hope means this kick ass classic metal / witchy psychedelic doom trio will finally get some of the love afforded their contemporaries in the current crop of female fronted metal combos, like Jex Thoth, the Devil's Blood, Loon, Blood Ceremony, Christian Mistress, Witch Mountain, cuz really, some of us at aQ thick Castle rank at the top of that bunch, their sound not so much doom (although it is definitely doomy) as psychedelic heavy rock mixed with some classic metal, from the riffs to the killer leads, the proggy arrangements, the sound epic and majestic, groovy and druggy, melodic and plenty heavy, and while the songs kill, and there are hooks galore, brimming with unusual parts and super memorable guitar melodies, it's bassist Elizabeth Blackwell's vocals that define the sound, and she's gone one of those voices that's both melodic and sultry, but also a bit raw and raspy, on the throaty side too which gives her vox a power and heft that some of the above mentioned outfits lack, and suits Castle's sound big time.
"Ever Hunter" starts the record off with what is essentially a pop song in metal clothing, but it works, the vibe is still ominous, the guitars buzzy and a bit blackened, but it's got a crazy catchy chorus, although somehow the verses are almost catchier than the chorus, and there's a cool, mathy breakdown midsong, where it does get sort of metal, until the leads come in and instead of shredding, it adds a droned out almost sitar melody to the track, which only makes it sound even more psychedelic. "Corpse Candles" lets Blackwell shine, her vocals dreamy and divine, over more crazy catchy riffing, while "Storm Below The Mountain" lets guitarist Mat Davis take over on vocals, his voice a raspy growl, which is perfect for the teutonic chugging crush beneath, there's some killer guitar leads and a super dynamic stop/start breakdown, not to mention some sweet male/female harmonies. The title track is slithery and swaggery, and again delivers a wicked chorus, the whole thing mathy and proggy and again not so much metal as just heavy, which is how the rest of the record plays out, the band deftly weaving together all sorts of disparate elements into a kick ass collection of psychedelic heaviness that we're digging like crazy.
This long-awaited new full-length from Chan Marshall aka Cat Power prompted the following exchange of messages on Facebook between a few aQ-staffers:
Irwin: Since Tuesday when the new Cat Power came out it's been in my ears all day every day, once again she gets to the CORE of it all, the ups downs & all arounds (the bonus track "Fire" gives me chills)... Chan4eva!
Scott: Please please please review it for aQ. Too "mom-rock" for me, or as Cliff calls it, "aunt-rock":)
So, we have a difference of opinion there.... Meanwhile, Nick here appreciates the fact Chan Marshall played all the instruments on the record herself, aside from a few tracks of drumming from Jim White and guitar work by Judah Bauer. He also thinks that, like Moon Pix and most of You Are Free, Chan sounds best with limited accompaniment. So, you can be the judge, we have the digipack cd and, while they last, the super duper deluxe limited vinyl package with bonus 7" record with 2 songs not on the cd (including the aforementioned "Fire") and full album mp3 download.
The latest from local soundmaker Dan Vallor, whose last two releases we could barely keep in stock, including one that came housed in an actual tape player, and that tape player wrapped in a melted/warped vinyl record! We had long been a fan of Vallor's mysterious music, a music that eventually found him more than one home away from home on labels like Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and Ecstatic Peace!, so it's easy to imagine the sort of spaced out minimal abstract soundscaping and tripped out droneworlds Vallor has conjured up on past releases, although this new one is something else entirely.
As the title suggests, DNA on DNA is a track-for-track reimagining of DNA's legendary DNA On DNA record, and, as the cover art hints, Vallor is paying homage to those songs in the form of abstract freeform solo piano(!), with each track the same length as the original, but here, it really is just piano, and it's pretty fantastic. Not sure if DNA fans will necessarily dig this, but hell, some probably will, Vallor weaving strange, mysterious, and quite lovely landscapes of twisted melody, of lush shimmer and bombastic chordal pound, plenty of atonal free jazz freakout, it is after all meant to pay homage to one of the cornerstones of No Wave, but for every burst of dizzying minor key splatter, there are gorgeous stretches of contemplative moodiness, the sound shot through with subtle drones, swirling overtones, very minimal and spare, lots of space, the sound drifting, slipping into wild squalls, and then settling right back down again.
Included as a bonus, is a second disc called Retrospekt, which sonically falls more in line with other Clarinette releases, which makes sense since it is in fact a greatest hits of course, sampling tracks from EVERY single Clarinette release, as well as including a handful of previously unreleased songs. The sounds as you might imagine are quite varied, from experimental bursts of crunch and rumble, to beautiful sprawls of swirling shimmer, from spaced out psychedelic drift, to echo heavy distorted crumble, and from ethereal almost pop ambience, to dizzying modern minimalism a la Reich Or Riley. If you weren't a fan already, this disc will change that for sure.
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and housed in a super striking full color printed transparent plastic sleeve, adorned with some super cool (and funny) Peanuts / DNA artwork.
The latest from William Fowler Collins finds this prolific soundscaper and dronologist once again delving deep into the shadows, conjuring up a world of permanent darkness, grim and austere, a black ambience that the label compares to Eno, but only if there is some alternate universe Eno, all clad in black, and hunkered down, beneath an ominous array of machines, that look to be designed by HR Giger, and whose sounds could have been designed by Giger as well.
The five part songsuite opens with a sprawl of thick whirring grey noise, a blurred droned out gristly thrum, that is suddenly snuffed out, leaving just plaintive piano, plinking out a melancholy melody, suspended in the ether, stately and hauntingly morose.
From there the sound shifts into a black ambient drift, beginning as a minimal murmur, slowly gaining momentum, piling layer upon layer, the sound growing more caustic and clattery, building to a chaotic coda, before slipping back into a hushed blur. The third movement conjures up some seriously sinister cinematic drones, deep rumbles, like some demonic orchestra tuning up, cavernous and ominous, which gives way to the even MORE minimal and ominous fourth movement, a deep Teutonic rumbling, laced with strange bits of abstract sound, the track gradually and VERY subtly growing more melodic, before finishing in a blaze of grinding chaotic white noise.
From there on out, the record seems to be winding down, the fifth part sounding like The Caretaker, a washed out sprawl of hazy occluded melancholy, buried melodies, and slow shifting textures, a haunting bit of old timey abstract sonic mesmer, which leads to the final track, the most minimal of the bunch, a hushed bit of barely there drift, a barely audible thrum, over more murky melodies, volume cranked it's quite lovely, but definitely a strangely subdued final movement, at least until the last couple minutes (be sure to lower the volume if you had it cranked), a furiously blown out in-the-red blast of face melting howl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
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Another new tape from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one the latest from Chris Connelly, who most folks likely remember as a member of Ministry, Revolting Cocks and others, but whose post industrial trajectory as found him recast as more of a brooding singer songwriter and sonic experimentalist. Our first glimpse of Connelly's more songsmitherly alter ego came in the form of a tape on the PlusTapes label back in 2009, a gorgeous songsuite of skeletal song sketches, recorded in the woods, just guitar and vocals, over a bed of insects and abstract ambient night sounds, his voice a warm, weary and weathered croon.
This latest effort finds Connelly in experimental mode, finally releasing a piece he's been working on for 22 years (!!). Just piano and vocals, but don't be expecting some maudlin man-at-a-piano action, no this is something altogether more warped and wonderful. The piano parts were recorded with the tapes running super fast, and then flipped backwards. Connelly, then sang over the backwards piano, at which point the tapes were slowed back down, resulting in a dark and demonic, woozy and warped landscape of churning murky chordal thrum, and vocals that are low and bellowed, and seriously creepy. The music is lush and layered and dense and dark, sans the vocals, it would be a gorgeous bit of churning ambience, but the vocals transform it into something more ritualistic and malevolent.
On the flipside, it's the same music played backwards, so the piano sounds 'correct', albeit still slowed down, but this time the vocals are backwards, and somehow, it sounds ever MORE insane, the piano a pounding ominous landscape of oozing blackened chords, the vocals a chorus of gurgling monstrous speaking in tongues.
Fucking amazing!!
Over the years we have sold a ton of Elizabeth Cotten's two Smithsonian Folkway cd collections, Freight Train And Other North Carolina Folk Songs And Tunes, and Shake Sugaree. Now we have the Freight Train collection on vinyl in a beautiful reproduction of the original lp which was originally called Folksongs and Instrumentals With Guitar.... well, it was *originally* called Negro Folksongs and Tunes, only to be changed a year later, but we won't get into that. "Freight Train", an American folk song classic, was written when Cotten was just eleven using a unique guitar style developed by playing her brother's guitar upside down to accommodate her left handedness. Even though she was quite an adept guitar and banjo player and taught herself a healthy repertoire of songs, she was discouraged to pursue music in her early years by family and church, so her musical talents weren't discovered until much later in life - through a miraculous chance encounter with Ruth Crawford Seeger that was ultimately life-changing. Cotten came to work for the Seegers after finding their daughter lost in a department store. Once she was caught by Peggy Seeger playing Mike Seeger's guitar and while she thought she was going to get fired, the Seegers were actually amazed at her unique playing style and breadth of old folksongs and original material she had written. Mike Seeger began recording her, and released this first record in 1957, and a folk star was born at the age of 63! An uncompromising voice of 20th century Americana, it is no surprise that Elizabeth Cotten was named a National Treasure. Highest recommendation!
We reviewed the first three reissues from legendary punk rock outfit Crass a few lists back, and now here's the 4th (of 6) in the series Anarcho-punk legends Crass are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all the Crass records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Christ The Album, Crass's 4th full length, might be the group's most famous (or infamous), again not shying away from controversy, right down to the record's title, and of course the lyrical content, sonically, Christ found the band sounding as full and lush and well produced as ever. The sound was still frantic, and frenzied, blasting and thrashing and relentless, but surprisingly polished, and the band at their least 'punk', the tracks rife with killer hooks, and plenty of pop, but the record itself remained difficult, and as concerned with the message as the music, loads of samples, all the tracks beginning with a little filmstrip style beep, followed by snippets of newscasts and interviews and various other politically charged recordings before the songs kicked in.
And nowhere was this poppier sound more evident than on "Beg Your Pardon" which sounds almost like their own version of "Train In Vain" (the song infamously left off the sleeve of the Clash's London Calling, supposedly because it was WAY too poppy, although officially it was because the track was added at the last minute), which is funny, considering Crass' outspoken disdain for The Clash, but "Beg Your Pardon" is impossibly hooky, with jangly guitars, irresistible melodies, and at times does sound quite a bit like the Clash. There's also the brooding, super rhythmic "Birth Control Rock 'n' Roll", with its frantic drumming and harmony vox, and the soaring, epic, drone-y and almost proggy "Reality Whitewash", and we could go on and on...
After this, the band would release just one more record (the sprawling single song/album Yes Sir, I Will) so Christ definitely stands as the final testament to Crass's sonic journey from the raw punk of The Feeding Of The 5000, to the polished pop flecked punk found here.
Like the original vinyl reissue, the original disc is augmented by a second disc, a collection of demos and studio outtakes, called Well Forked - But Not Dead, and like the other reissues, there's a massive booklet including liner notes and lyrics, as well as a fold out poster, all housed in a super swank slipcover, which fits together with all the other reissues, the various covers combining to form a single image. Cool.
We reviewed the first five reissues from legendary punk rock outfit Crass over the last year, and now here's the sixth and final in the series, and as we mentioned in the other reviews, we're so thrilled that these anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. In case you missed the reviews of those first five, here's what we had to say about Crass the band (before we get to Ten Notes On A Summer's Day):
Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
And these records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again.
Ten Notes On A Summer's Day was the final proper Crass record, originally released in 1985, and like on past records, displayed yet another dramatic stylistic shift, this time toward something much more European and avant garde, two tracks, one an instrumental version of the other. The music loping and rhythmic, atonal and a bit abstract, jazzy at times, proggy at others, definitely not punk, at least not in the traditional sense. Blurts of synth, wild squalls of free jazz drumming, spidery melodies, all manner of vocals, choral, choir like, at times the sound is super academic, at others, warped and woozily whatthefuck. The instrumental version ditches the drums in addition to the vocals, transforming the sound into something much more swirly and shimmery and atmospheric, still angular and atonal in places, but much more blissed out and hauntingly ambient, not nearly as prickly as the vocal version.
The reissue tacks on a handful of bonus tracks, remixes and unreleased jams, the sound tending toward the experimental, collaged and chaotic, one track sounds like weird warped eighties MTV pop, albeit more tweaked, while another sounds like Current 93 style apocalyptic folk, the vocals a dead ringer for David Tibet, while the last track is a lovely bit of haunting choral music, that near the end splinters into some twisted synthy angular pop weirdness. Wow.
Like the other reissues, the packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert.
Latest full length from UK garage poppers Dignan Porch, and like Tendrils before it, Nothing Bad Will Ever happen is another fantastic collection of sunshiney, jangly, crunchy, ramshackle pop, heavy on the hooks, lots of swirling keyboards, sad boy vox, and all the usual garage pop stuff we dig, but this time around, the band seems to rock a lot more (due in part to the fact that it really IS a band this time, whereas Tendrils was a one man band type deal), just check out "Sad Shape", which starts out all minor key and jangly, stripped down and spare, but soon, a heavily effected guitar swoops in, giving the song a seriously psychedelic vibe, and then the choruses, kind of crunchy and fuzzy, the drums busy, the guitars soaring, and then for the last minute, the band go full on psych rock freakout, and it sounds amazing! The swirling synths somehow keeping it grounded and firmly rooted in garage pop territory rather than psychedelic space rock, but it's a pretty potent combo, and one that suits DP pretty well. And while those moments tend to be fleeting, some crunchy riffing here, some weirdly sci-fi effected murky psychedelia there, stretches of super distorted fuzz guitar and some seriously heavy feedback drenched dirgery, they perfectly compliment the groups impeccable popsmithery, which is in full effect here, with the group delivering some of their catchiest songs yet, and even minus that extra heft, this record would be blowing up our stereo like crazy, but that extra fuzz and crunch just seals the deal. A new favorite for sure!
We'd been hearing about this supergroup for a while, the latest project from Spoon's Britt Daniel, here teamed up with Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade and Sam Brown of the New Bomb Turks, and as we sort of expected, the sound definitely is not that far removed from Spoon, especially when Daniel sings, the first single, the super catchy "My Love Is Real" sounds like a more synthy electro-Spoon, with a serious eighties vibe. We were expecting the whole thing to be more electronic, but really, it's simply a pretty great indie rock record, with the occasional foray into something a bit more electro/electronic, the occasional blast of almost punkish crunch, plenty of synth, that aforementioned eighties vibe, fans of Spoon have lucked out and have basically gotten what sounds like a new Spoon record, and we're kind of digging this new side of Daniel, the songs here are pretty goddamn great, and super catchy, the production is pretty excellent too, with the occasional strings, lots of swirly synths, strange drum sounds, cool effects, we're definitely digging it a lot, the more we listen to if, and this is super random, but for some reason, only now are we realizing how much Daniel sounds like Marcellus Hall from Railroad Jerk, which is definitely a very good thing.
It's been a while since we've heard from NY math/post/prog metallers Dysrhythmia, but we're happy to report that very little has changed in the years since 2009's Psychic Maps (which for some reason we never got around to reviewing). Right out of the gate it's a glorious blast of heavily textured, dense and complex, super melodic metallic mathiness. Probably the closest comparison would be the late great Don Caballero, but maybe with a healthy dose of Voivod / Vektor, and of course, Dysrhythmia infuse their math metal crunch with plenty of epic post rockisms, making for a sound that satisfies our yen for both dizzying tech-metal mayhem and moodily melodic epic post-metal majesty.
The songs are lengthy and serpentine, the band insanely dexterous, unfurling ultra intricate landscapes of crunch and grind, chug and soar, buzz and shimmer, occasionally exploding into some seriously headspinning, angular / atonal / tangly avant prog freakouts, but somehow always grounded in something much more actually songlike, which is what makes this stuff so good, and keeps it from ever getting at all boring, which is always a BIG risk with purely instrumental music. Thankfully, Test Of Submission offers no time to be bored, heck, there's hardly even time to catch your breath, between songs, or even between parts, gloriously and relentlessly dense and busy and brutal, crazy catchy and super melodic, and really fucking great.
Woah, kinda blown away by this, a super nice surprise since we didn't have any expectations... or ex-plekzationz! Had never heard of Bristol's Nick Edwards before, nor his cassette-prolific alter ego Ekoplekz, nor his Gutterbreakz blog for that matter either. We just knew this was a new album from some bespectacled fella on Editions Mego, who (as we could see from the photo on the inner gatefold sleeve) employs a tabletop tangle of effect boxes and other electronic devices to make his music. Like all eMego stuff, seemed worth checking out, and it sure was.
A quick and too easy description of this might be lo-fi analog electronic synth experimentation with a heavy dose of dub... or even "Merzbow doing dub", though it's not nearly as noisy as that might suggest. But it IS quite abstract and soundscapey. These are noises, not noise. And the dub here is that rare kind we've hardly ever encountered, that's dub but definitely NOT reggae. (In contrast to, say, that rad Seekersinternational record we listed last time, a great modern day dub album whose reggae roots are quite clear... or even aQ faves Peaking Lights). Edwards loves his King Tubby, for sure, and kosmiche krautrock and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and techno too... But we can't label his music as being like any of those things exactly, even though that's all in here. Nor is it the clinical, minimal-techno sort of dub (we also like), a la Pole or Vladislav Delay. This is even less reggae than that, and way more 'natural'. It's cosmic-y without being too referential to anything, very loose and flowing and free. The rhythms, which grow organically out of the interaction of effects, are varied and not 'grided' like so much other electronic music. Each and every moment fills our ears with the sort of echoing dubby soundz we love to hear, in constant flux. But, for something that's changing so much, it still has a 'groove' to it, if not necessarily always a 'beat'... in other words, it's strangely hypnotic, its odd percolations fitting into a larger wash of sound that seems to extend out to infinity, swirling and shwooshing and reverberating into new shapes and patterns.
The album is divided into four parts of roughly equally length, the whole thing about an hour-long trip. Although recorded at four separate sessions, these 'decompositions' and 'spontaneous combustions' are woven into one extended piece, calmly chugging and looping, softly exploding with distortion over and over and over...The final track might be our favorite, with its slowly creeping-up-on you vibe. All are great, though.
Look, we LOVE the echo echo echo of dub, and have admitted previously that several of us here wouldn't be into reggae at all if it weren't for the dub variety. So the idea of dub WITHOUT the reggae is interesting and appealing and that's what Mr. Nick Edwards has accomplished here, the echoing of the electronics on this album like a field recording of a mad scientist's laboratory, done dub style. This is maybe, maybe what Sun Araw would/could sound like if he'd ditched his trip to Jamaica for an extended stay in Mego's Austrian studios instead...
Yup, for something we had no prior expectations about, it didn't take long before we were hooked!
This latest cosmic missive of astral axe exploration and celestial synth trippery finds Expo 70 once again in one man band mode (after a handful of releases as a duo). For this improvised sonic excursion, it's once again just Expo 70 mainman Justin Wright, manning the controls (which in this case, means guitar, analog drum machine and synthesizers), and weaving thick droned out heaviness alongside more abstract shimmer. The opening track "mark Of The Rising Mantis", begins with a swirl of bleeps and bloops, a constant cascade of glittering electronics, hazy and spacey, when all of a sudden, the guitar comes swooping in, distorted and crumbling, the vibe thick and SUNN-like, we were prepared for some serious epic dirgery, but instead, it fades out after a few cycles, only to drift directly into "Luminous Traveler", which much more serene and meditative, a muted starfield of percolating melodies, a slow build to something much more seventies new age krautrock sounding, spidery guitars wound around thick cinematic synth swirls, a gauzy droned out alien raga that builds and builds before fading back into the ether, the sound thick and heavily layered (the tracks here created from multiple improvs), dense and dark and ominously dreamy, like other Expo jams, the soundtrack to drifting into the blackness of space.
After a brief bit of washed out abstract outer space ambience, chugging guitars floating in a field of flute like melodies and woozy electronic pulsars, a deepening drone, growing ever more dense, the record shifts gears a bit, with "Backmasking Deeper Than Darkness", which starts out as another bleary bit of guitarsynth drift, only to quickly gain momentum, the sound coalescing into an old school style soundtracky synth soundtracky synthscape, pulsing melodies suddenly bolstered by the appearance of the drum machine, a murky throb, that gives the track a sinister motorik momentum, that plays out like the score to some chase through the stars. Those drum machines move to the fore on the final track, the evocatively titled "Pulsing Rings Of Ice", which like the previous tracks, definitely have us imagining some strange alien world, in this case, an abandoned ice planet, where the listener is stranded alone, or ALMOST alone. Ominous and brooding, the skeletal almost-rhythm anchoring the billowing clouds of warm chordal thrum in the first few minutes, builds to a tranced out krautdrone pulse, a skittery stripped down beat that drives this sprawl of future-synth tension, super cinematic, the final chase through the icy caves beneath the surface, flickering shadows, and a terrifyingly unknowable future.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!! These are very likely the only copies we'll be able to get. Pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl, and includes a download code!!
We made the last record from this Australian drum and organ duo Record Of The Week back in 2010, a glorious concoction equal parts simple stripped down krautrock rhythms, swirling psychedelic organ mantras and ethereal vocal incantations. That Fabulous Diamonds album was a bit like some psychedelic zoner pop melted down into something much more primal and abstract, a sound at once alien and mysterious, but that somehow retained ghostly vestiges of the pop songs that somehow spawned it, the sound slipping woozily from looped lunar hypnorock to mesmerizingly motorik minimalism and back again.
This new record takes the same sound, and reimagines it as something even MORE abstract, even MORE psychedelic and sprawling, each song a single idea, looped and layered and strung into a dizzying stretch of tranced out rhythmic mesmer, the vocals this time around seemingly more of an afterthought, with several songs foregoing vocals entirely. The first half of the record seems to inhabit a sonic orbit slightly closer to conventional pop, but only slightly. Opener "Inverted Vamp" unfurls a warm, murky rhythmic churn, as if it were simply the intro to some dark retro psych pop jam, but instead, the sound loops, cyclical and repetitive, in fact, for the first two minutes, the band lock tight into a tranced out slo-mo groove that as far as we're concerned could have continued that way for the entirety of the record, and it STILL would have been Record Of The Week. Instead, the vocals drift in, all dreamy and hazy, a plink plonk melody drifts beneath the undulating layers of buzz and whir, the whole thing sounding like a Stereolab or Broadcast record produced by King Tubby, and perhaps also spinning at the wrong speed. Woozy and washed out and so gloriously blissed out and hypnotic.
"John Song" is another drum driven chunk of dirgey murk-pop, that again, sans vox, sounds like some sort of slowcore This Heat, but it's the vocals that transform the sound into something much more distinctive, in this case drifting in and out, alongside some strange dubbed out synths, in fact, the dub vibe looms large throughout. Where Peaking Lights take dub and make it all dreamy and sunshiney, Fabulous Diamonds, drag dub into the dark, wrap it in shadows, and douse it in soft focus noise, letting it careen lazily in a field of warm swirling thrum.
About midway through, the record begins to remind us of African Head Charge, or even Muslimgauze, that same sort of rhythmic tranceout, still heavily dubby, but dark and drifty and spacey and all about the texture, and atmosphere, and of course the rhythms. "Lothario" becomes a total AHC style groover as the track coalesces into something darkly driving, and laced with warm whirring ominously minor key synths, it's probably our second favorite track here.
After a few more shorter tracks, again heavier on the vocals, the sound drifts back toward that mysterious murky pop that defined the first few tracks, but even at its poppiest, the sound constantly shifts and transforms, slipping easily into something distinctly unpop, looped and layered, pulsing and pulsating. The sound laced with Reich/Riley like organ arrangements, swirls of fragmented melodies, those divine vocals, and of course the unwavering rhythms.
Closer "Downhill" though is definitely our favorite, and it feels like the whole record was working up to this nearly 11 minute slow burner, beginning with a super spare skeletal tribal beat, beneath pulsing synth squelch, it's nearly 4 minutes (4 gloriously mesmerizing minutes!) before the sound shifts noticeably, a second organ part gradually surfacing, the sound growing more and more dense, then a third, laying down a sinister bassline, and finally, the sound slips into a creepy cinematic swirl, worthy of Carpenter or Goblin for sure, and fans of all that retro synth soundtrackery, this track will knock you on your ass, somehow growing more and more melodic, and more and more intense, a sprawling swirling psychedelic kosmische blissout of the highest order. So great! (Vinyl version upcoming, by the way.)
Here in America, the name Garfield makes us think of an assassinated 19th century President, and a cartoon cat - and not necessarily in that order. Some might also recall that Garfield is Henry Rollins' real last name. But fans of the tongue-in-cheek musical genre from Finland known as the "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal", spawned by several Circle side-projects, should know another Garfield - Garfield Steel, the distinctive, drawling lead singer of NWOFHM standard bearers Steel Mammoth. And now here we have Garfield Steel's solo debut! Like his work in Steel Mammoth, this both is and isn't exactly metal; a (parodic?) sort-of-metal is part of it for sure but there's a lot more going on. Weird, synth-laden indie pop boogie would also describe it, a bit.
Several "synthesizerists" are listed in this album's credits, and boy do they synthesizerize. Also quite often the electronic drums and/or drum machines are locked in overdrive - the track "Memory Rhythm" gets almost Digital Hardcore with its noisy, speedy distortion/destruction. But this onslaught of eccentric electro-metal & lo-fi synth punk is very poppy too, head noddingly so, mellowing out at times as well. Along with all the electronics, Garfield Steel's hoarse melodic crooning is of course also a big part of the sound, delivering (just as he does in Steel Mammoth) some truly ridiculous lyrics to go with great, silly song titles such as "Nuclear Retard" and "Skullfist Emperor".
Fans of Steel Mammoth's over the top absurdity and catchy riffing and occasional detours into dreaminess will be right at home here, in other words, even if the sonic palette of GS's solo effort is a little bit different. And it becomes evident that the NWOFHM 'thing' is as much Garfield's doing, as it is Circle's...
Oh, and fyi, NWOFHM fans, Jussi from Circle also has a new, VERY metal band called Arkhamin Kirjasto. Their debut cd Torches Ablaze just came out on his Ektro label, we have just a few in stock right now...
The last Gatekeeper record, Giza, fell firmly in the camp of Carpenter / Goblin retro soundtrack revivalists, but even on that record, the sound tended toward a minimal electro, mixing skittery beats and warped samples into the ominous synthscapes and, as we described the sound then, Gatekeeper's "electro kraut futurist kosmische sci-fi new wave". But on Exo, things have changed quite a bit, with the techno/electro component taking center stage, and all the atmospheric and cinematic elements woven into the backdrop, whether that be groaning stabs of ominous low end, or deep rumbling drones, or clouds of synth swirl, or chopped and looped vocal snippets or weird fragmented melodies, those sounds definitely make an excellent bed for Gatekeeper's techno skitter and shuffling stutterstep rhythms, whether it's the house-pound of "Exolift", or the or the spaced out squelch of "Bog", or the woozy druggy shuffle of "Vengier", this record is all about the beat, and these are some seriously twisted beats, that while being plenty modern, weirdly remind us of stuff like Techno Animal, or all those old Pathological comps, there's definitely an isolationist vibe to the proceedings, even at its most pounding and propulsive, something sinister lurks just below the surface, and it's all those surrounding sounds that give this the weird moodiness, and ominous atmosphere that seems to be the sonic thread that ties Exo, however loosely, to Giza before it.
Most of the record is definitely designed for the dancefloor, albeit one that's twisted and tweaked, but check out the final one-two coda, the swirling buzzing dronescape of "Re-Gen", and the closer "Encarta", which is the only track here that sounds like it could have come from Giza, with its dramatic operatic vocals, its pulsating arpeggiated synths, all anchored to a throbbing house music pound, and wreathed in swirls of creeped out atmosphere and strange bits of percussion.
Housed in a super striking futuristic full color gatefold jacket.
One of five new tapes from the awesome Austin based experimental tape label, Holodeck. Largely documenting the growing and diverse Texas underground scene of synth conjurers, drone lords, psych meditators, and classical folk devotionalists, each tape conceived as a unique listening experience with beautifully designed minimalist packaging. We listed tapes by Lumens, Smokey Emery and Thousand Foot Whale Claw awhile back, and this time around we have another tape from Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as tapes by Silent Land Time Machine, Amasa Gana, Survive, and this one from former Pocahaunted and Robedoor member, M. Geddes Gengra, who was also an accomplice with Sun Araw on the last Frkwys collaboration with The Congos.
No drones here or dramatic psych build-ups, just some of the most playful and bubbly modular synth explorations we've heard from a modern day practitioner. "Ball Trick" is more second generation of electronic composers Moog synth experimentation, reminding us at times of Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel or F.C. Judd. A bouncing syncopation and synth squiggles create a helium like atmosphere that gradually turns thicker and more rhythmic, like dance music made from air compressors and balloon textures. "Air Solo" has a more "industrial" soundtrack vibe, and by that we mean like Raymond Scott's commissioned interludes for IBM commercials, which have a hopeful techno futurist feeling, yet one that is not pastiche, but draws from a perhaps naive sincerity that music can be transformatively positive. "Beyond The Curtain", which comprises the entirety of the B side has a drunk machine vibe, like a happy-go lucky android who's had one too many, and runs amok with good intentions, but can barely keep itself upright. Interweaving percolating rhythms turn woozy, some rushing, some slowing, in a topsy turvy tailspin, winding themselves into the ground, moving forward as their edges grind down and garner a smooth roughness. Continuing to dance with busted eyes and blunted extremities yet at some point remarkably gaining balance and maintaining an intense diamond-edged focus like minimalist proto-techno in a Venutian atmosphere sucking up the helium and getting deadly high, endlessly waiting for the inevitable short circuit. Limited to 100 copies. Incredible stuff!
For their Thrill Jockey debut, the duo of Matt Carlson and Jonathan Sielaff make surprisingly rich long form electronic music using basic monophonic instrumentation of bass clarinet and analog modular synthesizers. We have been big fans of their Root Strata releases, especially their last long player, Light Cones, which took their dynamic interplay into all sorts of unexpected territory. But we couldn't help but wonder where they could go from there. Fortunately, upon first listen of Occupied With The Unspoken, we realized we didn't need to worry at all. Over the course of four tracks, the duo created extended recordings and carefully edited them into succinct passages focusing on melodic compositional interplay over free-form improvisation, allowing more ideas to come into play. This results in a more fully realized vison of cosmic uplift than in previous recordings. In fact, this may just be our favorite release from these guys so far!
It took us a while to finally get fully into these Swedish stoner doom turned true metal heavies, but about three records in, this Spiritual Beggars related horde ditched their tired stoner metal for something much more classic sounding, a doom flecked, NWOBHM influenced heavy metal, and while the scene was and is overflowing with retro metal revivalists, something about these guys definitely did it for us. And still does in a big way. And once again, on this newest record, their sixth, they continue to hone their classic metal sound, so much so, that listening to the first track, "Starlight Slaughter", you could be forgiven for thinking it was actually some obscure old eighties metal jam, the modern production the only thing giving it way. The opening sounds like early (good) Def Leppard, and once the vocals come in, it's pure Judas Priest, with a killer chorus, chugging classic metal riffing, shredding leads - it's hard to not love, the metalheads around here can't get enough of this stuff. Think Priest, Maiden, old Scorpions, Rainbow, Tokyo Blade, even some cheesier stuff (that we love) like TNT, Loudness and the like. Epic and majestic, heavy and catchy, fans of power metal, and modern true metal outfits like Slough Feg, Twisted Tower Dire, Hammers Of Misfortune, Gates Of Slumber and the like should definitely check these guys / this record out. One of those albums that, once we finish writing our reviews for this week's list, will be pretty much ALL we're gonna listen to!
Includes 3 bonus demo tracks. And fyi, this is available on vinyl too, but it's heck of expensive, ask us if you'd like us to order it for ya...
The latest release from Bill Orcutt's Palilalia label is a sprawling double lp collection of mostly unreleased tracks from his old band, legendary Miami noise rock duo (or sometimes trio, sometimes more) Harry Pussy. Whose bizarre, and somewhat sonically unrepresentative, vocal driven computer drone album Let's Build A Pussy was recently released on Editions Mego. But fear not faithful noise rock fanatics, One Plus One is no high concept low brow art piece (or is it?), this is some serious raw, heavy, blown out, chaotic and crushing freeform noise rock bliss out audial punishment from HP, in their duo form: Orcutt on guitar, Adris Hoyos on drums and vocals. Recorded between 1992-1994, all sounds captured on a beat up old Walkman, some of the tracks here popped up on some early (and insanely limited) releases, like the Vigilance cassette on Chocolate Monk, as well as a couple singles (both untitled, one with the lady holding a frog, the other with the stereos and speakers lined up in a field), but over 40 minutes of these jams (apparently culled from HOURS of material) are previously released, and so odds are those tape and singles tracks are new to most folks.
So yeah, it's noisy, and chaotic, and lo-fi, heavy and punky and free form, but with some serious riffing and some surprising beauty. Some of the tracks are swaggery and Stooges-y, eventually morphing into driving drum pound wreathed in squalls of detuned guitar damage freakout. Elsewhere clouds of caustic guitarnoise, crumble and grind over wild free form drum splatter, everything woozy and atonal and angular, but more often that one might expect, slipping into some surprisingly melodic passages, and at a few points, when the band slows it way down, and strips away some of the noise, it almost sounds like some twang flecked fusion of Pavement and Barn Owl, albeit seriously fractured and fucked up. The sound can be almost downright anthemic at times, but at others, a melting woozy morass of sound, with Hoyos' vocals mostly buried in the mix, beneath Orcutt's non stop axe destroying barrage, but when her vocal do come to the fore, they are TERRIFYING. Like hysterical horror movie scream queen by way of Yoko Ono, flitting from ear piercing impossibly high shriek, to weirdly guttural speaking in tongues, feral yelp to bleated bellow, fierce and freaked out and fucking amazing. Especially on one track, where it's just drums and vocals, over a bed of Orcutt's amp buzz. Total avant garde noise rock minimalist genius!
Peppered throughout are also some seriously mesmerizing long form jams that channel the spirit (and sound to a degree) of the Dead C, transforming the otherwise caustic crunch and feedback drenched skree into thick lush billows of blissed out, borderline dreamy noise.
Gorgeously packaged, pressed on heavy black vinyl, and housed in a super thick, black and white, deluxe gatefold jacket. And we're guessing, as with most stuff on Palilalia, probably pretty limited!
We'd been trying to review this record for the past several weeks, but our distributors continued to sell out before we could get our hands on enough copies to list. Most avid readers of the aQ list know how much we love weirdo power poppers Home Blitz, not only did we make their O.ut O.f P.hase album a Record Of The Week, but we also had them play our very first showcase at South By Southwest. This new ep is essentially more of the same, another collection of Yellow Pills style power pop, rough around the edges, scrappy and kinetic, hook heavy, jangly and crunchy, the sound definitely defined by frontman Daniel DiMaggio's super distinctive vox, sort of drawly and a little bit precious, but perfectly suited to the groups jangle and strum, DiMaggio's vox sometimes paired with guitarist Theresa Smith's dreamy vocals, making for some divine harmonies. And the guitar parts (which we discussed at great length in that past ROTW review) are amazing, slippery and a bit proggy, somehow deftly integrated into the group's seemingly simple stripped down sound, the little guitar filigrees subtle, but so effective. There's some keyboard too, here and there, and a moment here and there when the band indulge their experimental bent, but those moments are typically bookended by some glorious jangle and crunch. Just check out the title track here, which is the title track for a reason. SO catchy, we've listened to it about ten times so far today. And really it only just barely edges out the rest of the tracks here in the catchiness department, the sound slipping easily from loping fuzzy pop, to caffeinated jangle, to buzzy garage crunch
The rest of the record pretty much follows suit, "Dark Summer" starts out all woozy and washed out and dreamy, before bursting into another frantic blast of power pop crunch, with some sweet harmonies and a killer chorus, while "Rolling With The Moody Girls", is swaggery and a little bit glammy, with super lo-fi Casio keyboard adding melody and texture, while the band pogos through some old school jangle pop. "Blind Nova" sounds a little like DiMaggio's other band Car Commercials, a much more difficult proposition, but catchy in its own way, and it's only two minutes, which leads directly into "Secret Wave", which is another slab of classic seventies style pop, such a dead ringer, right down to the production, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was plucked form some obscure power pop comp. Barring, of course, the weird blast of staticky noise that makes up the last few seconds...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
So imagine you're a longhaired Japanese hippy freak in the mid-'70s. You've been grooving to the cosmic sounds coming out of Germany on import LPs for the past few years, as well as digging the homegrown stuff too. Taj Mahal Travellers, Foodbrain, Speed Glue & Shinki, Magical Power Mako, yeah. But now you're looking for something even MORE potent. And primitive. And peculiar. Thankfully, on a visit to the Tokyo equivalent of Aquarius Records, you discover this release by a tiny Osaka based record label called Voice. And you, the jaded Japanese hippy, once again your mind is blown!
And thankfully for those of us not lucky enough to be born Japanese hippies in the '70s, this mind-blowingness has now been reissued on cd by Phoenix, joining that label's reissue roster of other crucial Japanese '70s prog/psych like Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and The Far East Family Band's Nipponjin (reviewed here last list). This one, if you're curious, earned the 19th spot on the Top 50 list found in Julian Cope's book Japrocksampler.
It's record by a mysterious outfit known as Karuna Khyal, entitled Alomoni 1985. We're not sure why it's called that, in fact, we're not sure of much about this, not even the year it was first released ('75? '76?), except that it's freakin' far out and totally amazing. And that they're probably the same folks who recorded another awesome album under the name Brast Burn, that we assume Phoenix will also get around to reissuing (they'd both been previously put out on cd some years ago by Paradigm Disc, that's how come we're familiar with them, but those reissues are long gone).
It consists of two side-long tracks, each around 24 minutes of hard to describe insanity. The first one starts off like some sort of krautrock meets Native American pow-wow, stoned vocal chant accompanied by harmonica blowing and slide guitar, flowing into a more murky zone of Can-like groove, with relaxed, rhythmic percolations from hand percussion, caressed by free improv piping. Then about half-way through the track, it takes a plunge into proto-isolationist drones and distortion, with backwards tape manipulations and echoing FX... later still, the throbbing, nodding pulse is adorned by more mumbled Beefheartian blues babble. By the end of the track, it's a looping phantasmagoria of voice, electronics, harmonica, like a backporch Philip Jeck jam! Ok?
Then track two begins. Even further out, in a black void... a beat starts... steady... then it quickens, slows, stops and starts again amidst a sinister swooshing swirl of disembodied voices and electronic detritus. Wow. Weird. Bad trip territory! It builds and builds, with kazoo-like sounds buzzing and blapping over a repetitive martial rhythm violently strummed or drummed on some sort of distended, elastic instrument, a bass heavy chunk-chunk-chunk drilling deep like a trepanist's tool, through your skull into your soon to be free brain. Eventually it morphs into twisted harmonica-blowing jam, hypnotic and disturbed, voices hooting and mewling and laughing and mantrically chanting... The second half of this track is total bedlam, but still utterly hypnotic.
Good grief! We have to assume the Boredoms are familiar with this record. And doubtless Kawabata Makoto would give his left arm, or even his beard, to get his Acid Mothers Temple to sound this far out.
Limited edition of 1000 copies, in a cardstock "wallet" sleeve like the label's other releases.
That pesky 'dimensional bleedthrough' thing has happened once again, with the buzzing, super-teched out sounds of whatever weird astral plane wherein Krallice dwell making it all the way to our humble ears here on Earth, causing much headbanging and more mindboggling. Yes, indeed it's the fourth album of epick black metal shreddness from this NYC unit, which features the inhuman guitar chops of both Mick Barr (Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilim, Oldest, Crom-Tech, etc.) and Colin Marston (Dysrhythmia, Behold�The Arctopus, Infidel?/Castro!, etc.).
Once again, if you want blasting majesty and grim complexity� you got it!! Just press play and give yourself up to the numbing force of these intense exercises in extremity, an hour's worth of Krallice's controlling chaos.
All we can say is, for this precise (and it is precise) style of black metal - music that's as difficult to play as most black metal logos are to read - at this point Krallice have nothing left to prove. And very little competition.
We've currently got the digipack cd version, self-released by the band this time rather than on Profound Lore like the three previous (on account of how PL's release schedule was a bit backed up), with the double vinyl version on Gilead Media on the way to us next week.
When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop.
For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts Krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut infused space rock bliss.
Heaven's End was Loop's debut, released in 1987, just a year after Spacemen 3's first record (and apparently Spacemen 3 were always quite annoyed by constantly being compared to Loop), and inadvertent or not, it's the Loop record that is the most Spacemen sounding. Lo-fi, raw and gritty. The opener "Soundhead" is surprisingly rocking, with lots of wah guitar, propulsive drumming, ethereal vocals, the song that would define the sound of Loop, but it's the second track where the record really gets going, slipping into a slow motion Stooges groove, a lurching looped riff, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums a simple pound, a main refrain that's catchy as fuck, the whole thing constantly repeated over and over and over and over, totally blissed out and trancelike. The following track slips even further out, the guitars super sharp and buzz drenched, the tempo a lugubrious crawl, the drums total barebones, swirling spaced out effects, the guitar billowing out into soft focus buzzscapes over which the rest of the instrumentation seems to hover weightless. The title track is a simple garage-y pound, with the cymbals and the guitars looped backwards (hinting at some Teenage Filmstars to come maybe?), the guitar stuttering creating incidental rhythms, very druggy and mesmeric. And so it goes, each song, a simple motif, locked in and set on repeat, the core remaining near static, looped into infinity, while all around that groove various guitars and effects and voices swirl and whirl and spin and stretch and shimmer divinely. Easily one of our all time favorite records for sure.
This deluxe reissue not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring alternate mixes of two of the album tracks, as well as a killer cover of Suicide's "Rocket USA", with a cool programmed drum beat, tripped out psychedelic guitars, and hushed almost crooned vocals, and the three tracks from the Peel Sessions, included a seriously stretched out version of "Straight To Your Heart". SO AWESOME!!!
SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!
Finally reissued, the first two albums from Minnesota slowcore pioneers Low, whose records were a template for a million slow bands to follow, and yet whose sound, especially on these first two records, sounds utterly unlike anyone else. Hushed and hazy and dolorously brooding, the guitars slipping from muffled murky chug to lazy washed out jangle to crystalline chime, the drums a skeletal shuffle, the bass drowsily driving in the background, sounding almost like some abstract take on those dour Joy Division basslines, the perfect backdrop for the haunting and heavenly boy / girl harmonies, all of those elements blended into into a gorgeous stately dreampop that's blurry and bleary, gauzy and psychedelic, droned out and minimal, darkly propulsive and narcotically hypnotic.
I Could Live In Hope was the group's 1994 debut produced by Shimmy Disc / Noise New Jersey head honcho Kramer, who added his own production haze, which perfectly suited the group's mesmerizingly somnambulent minimalism, the arrangements spare, displaying a delicate sonic economy, but somehow, the sum so much more than its parts, strangely epic and majestic, and even the most hushed minimal drifts imbued with impossibly catchy hooks. It's like the perfect pop record just slowed way down and stretched way out. Check out "Lazy", the record's 'hit' if hits could be dark claustrophobic doom pop dirges, or the sprawling blissed out "Lullaby", that almost even 'rocks' part way through, like an ultra minimal Godspeed, all slow build sonic drama, or the smokey, shimmery "Down". Still all these years later, I Could Live In Hope would have to rank up there as one of THEE essential releases of the nineties.
But then really so would the next year's follow up, Long Division, which once again matched the band up with Kramer, and the result was essentially an extension of I Could Live In Hope. Although, if anything, Long Division found the band, ditching some of the gauzy atmosphere of that first record, their sound suddenly super clear and crystalline, and somehow all the more haunting for it. Opening track "Violence" is still dark and minimal, but more like some minimal torch song ballad, all sun dappled and dreamy. In fact, much of the record has a sort of sun dappled vibe. If I Could Live In Hope was all overcast skies and rainswept streets, Long Division finds the clouds party, just a bit, to reveal streaks of blue sky, and letting just a few stray sunbeams through, which Low somehow transform into perfect slo-mo pop. "Below & Above" is a gorgeous lullaby, "Shame" is a twang flecked soft focus dirge, "Throw Out The Line" is all tarpit jangle and lush harmonies, and so it goes, every song here, so easy to get utterly lost in, the whole record, the perfect light to I Could Live In Hope's dark, but with both blurring the line in between.
These reissues tack on a handful of bonus tracks, B-sides and demos, which unless you already have their A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief triple cd odds and ends collection, you probably haven't heard. Long Division includes their version of the Bee Gees' "I Started A Joke", and it sounds like it was written specifically for them...
One of the most emotionally devastating and beautiful records of all time. We couldn't be more happy that this classic album by Low has finally been reissued on vinyl. It's an album really made to be listened to in the solitary refuge of your bedroom, so hopefully your turntable is in there. Produced by Shimmy Disc mastermind Kramer, and released in 1995, this will always be the way we hear the sound of Low when we close our eyes and think of all the times their music has been the soundtrack during times of heartache, confusion, and despair. The pinnacle and defining moment of slowcore, every single song on Long Division slowly creeps its way into your subconscious. No other bands could use such a minimalist approach and achieve such a heavy & haunting aura. Songs like "Violence", "Caroline", "Shame", and "Alone", are not only some of the best Low songs ever recorded, but they are simply some of the most emotionally impacting songs of the last two decades.�
Long Division is not a record you put on in the background or when you're just hanging out with friends, this is a record you listen to during moments of introspection, of soul searching, loneliness and sorrow yet they're also infused with a sense of hope. Music doesn't get more emotionally intense or elegant then this. A perfect album!
Here's a brand new official cd reissue of the 1980 debut from Manilla Road, the epitome of obscure, epick, eccentrick metal! The band that San Francisco metal faves The Lord Weird Slough Feg can't avoid being compared to all the time (not because Manilla Road were actually an influence, they weren't, but because both bands, as traditionally metal as they are, can be so gosh darn weird). And this here is doubtless among the weirdest of the whole screw-loose Manilla Road discography.
Though the production (and the cover art) is oh so low-budget and lo-fi, the band's imagination certainly wasn't limited. These guys were into Rush, Hawkwind, Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Motorhead - and dosing on LSD and reading pulp fantasy fiction. And, in these early days, they were bound by no "traditional" metal blueprints (or, for that matter, commercial considerations). Heck Iron Maiden wasn't even an influence until at least their second album, 1982's bluntly-titled Metal (which we expect Shadow Kingdom to reissue eventually as well). So Manilla Road were free to blend psych and prog and hard rock and whatever else into what they considered to be "epic space-metal".
And then there's the love 'em or hate 'em vocals of guitarist Mark "The Shark" Shelton - growling, soaring, dramatic and outlandish, ranging all over these songs, whether they be riffy and rockin', or epic and theatrical. And his guitar does the same. Quirky, pioneering, pure underground metal (or, proto-metal) indeed. About as underground as it gets. Now most folks aren't gonna like this, we'll admit right now, but a select few will - and if you're already like Manilla Road, or the aforementioned Slough Feg, or Cirith Ungol or Brocas Helm, or are perhaps just into retro, ridiculous, unashamed rock n' roll, that might be you. There's just an infectious zeal to these proceedings that I for one can't deny.
This record includes one of Manilla Road's most hot rockin' tracks, "Street Jammer", a song that's been covered by both Slough Feg (on their Hardworlder album), and lo-fi black metal horde Wormsblood (on their In The Stars cd-r).
A few years back, there was a glut of bands doing that whole dance punk new wave thing, which we happened to dig a LOT: the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, but these guys were always our favorite, their debut full length A Certain Trigger remains one of our favorite records, even to this day, and their song "Apply Some Pressure" might very well just be the best song that whole scene produced. Check out the video on YouTube, it's pretty great as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZrZ83tdW_k
We've dug every record since, and each one definitely had a handful of killer jams, although none was quite as good as A Certain Trigger. It had been a while since the last full length, and the vocalist released a sort of lackluster solo record in the meantime, so we were pretty much figuring they were done and gone, but then all of a sudden this new full length showed up, and it's actually super great, in fact, we're liking it more than the last few already. The title track could easily have come right off of A Certain Trigger, as could a bunch of these songs, which is positioning this as maybe our favorite since the debut, catchy and super rocking, a perfect balance of driving super rocking new wave and more brooding jangle pop jams, hooks galore, crunchy fuzzy guitars, just listen to the samples, you'll know right away if this is your cup of new wave dance punk, but between this and the Grand Magus, we're finding it hard to listen to anything else. (Well, Andee in particular might be the one listening to both back to back on heavy rotation...)
One of TWO new rad reissues on this week's New Arrivals list on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label: the other one, a long overdue reissues of the debut lp from legendary eighties NY noise rockers Rat At Rat R, and this one, a collection of everything ever recorded (we think) from this SUPER obscure DC hardcore outfit, who shared some connection (and at least one member) with the late great No Trend. We consider ourselves at least a little bit punk savvy, and we had never heard of these guys. They did get a mention in the American Hardcore book but beyond that they were pretty much a mystery. This cd gathers up their 1983 demo (from which came their sole single) and a handful of unreleased tracks, all recorded by Government Issue's Tom Lyle, and while we were expecting just straight forward blasts of harDCore, which would have been just fine, this is WAY weirder and cooler, and it's easy to see why Jussi dug it enough to release it.
Sure there's plenty of blasting pounding punk rock, but that's only a small part of MFC's sound, they spend much of their time unfurling weird droned out atonal guitars, dense tribal drumming, thick buzzing bass, the vibe almost more gloomy and gothy than punk rock, check out "He And She", which almost sounds like it was accidentally plucked from the Rat At Rat R reissue, the same sort of gloomy noise rock weirdness. Or "Pennies From Hell", which is sort of funky, but still noisy and angular, rife with jagged guitars and a weird heavily effected warbly bassline, or "Penny Dub" which is exactly what it sounds like, an instrumental version of "Pennies From Hell" with the occasional bit of vocal chopped up and delayed and sent careening into the ether. Some of the tracks are dirgey and crusty and slither ominously, others seem to be typical punk blasts, but start out with weird dubbed out drums, and then have strange sing songy vocals, while still other tracks sprawl into dub-punk space jams, and even at its most punk, inevitably the band twist it all up into something seriously and gloriously fucked up.
WAY recommended, includes a fold out poster style insert with extensive liner notes.
Something of a musical chameleon, Andrew Lagowski has popped up in a bunch unlikely places since the mid-'80s. He worked with Brian Lustmord on a couple of his seminal records (including the dark ambient classic Heresy and the brutalist industrial project Terror Against Terror), and shortly thereafter produced some thumping techno singles for the Warp-lookalike label GPR, only to produce an incredible series of paranoiac electro-acoustic work on Touch under his moniker SETI in the late '90s. Nagamatzu represents Lagowski's earliest recordings, dating back to 1986, and these sound nothing like anything that he's done since. This was his minimal wave / post-punk project, working with bassist Stephen Jarvis. Drum machines, claustrophobic electronics, horror-movie / newsreel samples, and a few droning licks on the guitar all work through these instrumental pieces, with most every track driven by Jarvis' low-slung melodies that come directly out of the Peter Hook and Simon Gallup schools of goth-inflected basslines. Not surprising, "Sacred Islands Of The Mad" comes across as an incredible collection of what could have been lost Joy Division or Cure demos minus the vocals. Every track is met with dour moods and melodies grafted onto comparatively uptempo rhythm tracks. There was an mp3 rip of the cassette posted by Mutantsounds a couple years back, and the remastering job that George Horn did on the recordings is a huge improvement on those pretty crappy sounding files. Yup, Dark Entries has delivered another kick-ass album from the farthest regions of '80s dark/minimal/cold wave.
Killer reissue from Detroit via Ohio hardcore legends the Necros, who might be most famous outside of punk rock circles for counting among its membership, bassist Corey Rusk, who would go on to run the legendary Touch And Go label, and Barry Henssler who would go on to front Big Chief. But really, all you need to know was that these guys destroyed. Heavy and furiously fast, the songs feral blasts of thrashing chaotic punk rock energy, infused with plenty of melody and hooks galore, fans of classic punk rock from Die Kreuzen to Minor Threat, the Meatmen to White Flag, Black Flag to Negative Approach, Articles Of Faith to the Crucifucks, who have somehow not heard the Necros before now, holy shit are you gonna flip. And this lp is as good a place to start as any, the A side is the entirety of their 1981 self titled single, often referred to as I.Q.32, nine songs in about as many minutes, and the flipside is a whole live show from the same year!
Pressed on swirled grey vinyl. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
One of the more eccentric acts to emerge from the Belgian EMB scene in the late '80s, The Neon Judgement developed a stylized sound of electronics melded to an Americana swagger with patinas of country-fried twang working into leather-clad industrialisms. At times, Neon Judgement were brilliant in this approach, other times it was a contrived dud. Yet, this sound was one that was developed over time, as their earliest recordings took on the more of synth punk idioms that were held by contemporaries in Cabaret Voltaire, Absolute Body Control, Siglo XX, Suicide, and even bits of Gary Numan. This LP contains all the tracks from the two cassettes that Neon Judgement released in 1981-1982 (TV Treated and Suffering), and it makes perfect sense that the exceptional ears at Dark Entries would seek out the finest moments from Neon Judgement's beginnings. At this time, the band was considerably more raw, with jagged guitar riffs coupled to the overdriven synth chords and jabbing arppegiations. It sounds like Neon Judgement had been listening to that first Suicide record, and wanted to try to figure out how to reinterpret the zombified rockabilly through electronics as well, without resorting to a pure homage. The minimalist spiralling of Neon Judgement's electronics holds some of Suicide's simplicity, although Neon Judgement's rock sensibility is purely showcased through the guitar and not the songwriting, which is much more tuned (at least here) to the European approaches of coldwave detachment. A couple of the tracks (e.g. "Factory Walk" and "TV Treated") had made appearances on later albums with more polish on the production, but there's something better suited to the stilted gait and agitated guitar pluckings on "Factory Walk" that make these recordings more expressive. As with all Dark Entries titles, limited to 500 copies.
Finally, the first proper NON cd-r release from the warped and wonderful Net Shaker, who in the span of one song, remind us again exactly why we love them so much, and demonstrate a knack for fucked up songcraft that enables them to conjure up these bleak minimal abstract dirges, that manage to be simultaneously difficult and damaged, haunting and hypnotic, and somehow, weirdly catchy to boot.
Fans of past NS releases will feel immediately at home, the song oozing from the speakers, a murky, moodily rhythmic creep, lugubrious and soporific, a slithery tarpit lumber, the music smeary and bleary, like listening through ears full of sand, but then the vocals, strangely clean and crooned, the result something like a pop song slowed down, and melted down into a black sonic blur. Minimal and muddy and abstractly doomy, the vocals gradually growing more garbled, drifting over rumbles and drones, a softly swirling sea of hum and thrum, all wedded to that omnipresent slo-mo shuffle. Awesome.
The B side is a new track from Swedish sisters the Ectoplasm Girls, whose track sounds like it could have come from their awesome (but sadly out of print) TxN lp on Ideal, and ends up being the perfect match from Net Shaker, super psychedelic and freaked out, but still minimal and abstract, an almost industrial churn beneath clouds of heavily delayed vocals, a dense dubbed out squall of tangled yelps and croons, all heavily effected, the whole thing laced with weird atonal synth melodies, and like the Net Shaker track, the whole thing anchored by a warped and woozy rhythmic stumble.
The latest from local label Time Released Sound, and another fantastic discovery, this one a collaboration between Russian trio Night Shift and Olli Aarni, who is a member of a Finnish combo we have yet to hear called Ous Mal. Together, they've created a dizzying plunderphonic soundscape, weaving together field recordings, old Russian folk songs, popular song snippets, damaged electronics, all manner of effects into something that manages to be hauntingly atmospheric, but also quite musical as well. The opening track is one of the catchiest sampledelic soundscapes we've heard in a while, backwards melodies and warped pop songs woozily drift from speaker to speaker, surfacing and fading like sonic swells, wreathed in mysterious found sounds, and fractured melodies, very reminiscent sonically of Philip Jeck, we actually had trouble moving past the first track, it's so good, but once we did, there was more to discover, the record quite possible some sort of linked sonic narrative, the vibe definitely cinematic, atmospheric, lush textures, and an incredible amount of sonic minutiae, headphones are definitely the way to go. Music box melodies blur into the chirping of crickets, voices appear and disappear, samples fragment and fade, bleeding into one another, the sounds coalescing into lush sprawls of warm shimmer and epic expanses of near symphonic soft noise, before fading into intimate musical glimpses of some other universe, or some other time, each song a seemingly self contained sonic travelogue, or an alternate universe, rendered in sound. Really fantastic stuff.
The deluxe version is limited to 100 copies, and as as with all the TRS deluxe versions it is indeed quite deluxe, this one a super striking pop-up faux-rigami mini book, the pages of the pop up made from 100 year old hand written ledger paper, and bound in antique hardcover book covers, which are then housed in hand made / hand stamped black slipcases. The standard version is also limited, to 150 copies, and comes housed in a full color digipak.
The latest from local label Time Released Sound, and another fantastic discovery, this one a collaboration between Russian trio Night Shift and Olli Aarni, who is a member of a Finnish combo we have yet to hear called Ous Mal. Together, they've created a dizzying plunderphonic soundscape, weaving together field recordings, old Russian folk songs, popular song snippets, damaged electronics, all manner of effects into something that manages to be hauntingly atmospheric, but also quite musical as well. The opening track is one of the catchiest sampledelic soundscapes we've heard in a while, backwards melodies and warped pop songs woozily drift from speaker to speaker, surfacing and fading like sonic swells, wreathed in mysterious found sounds, and fractured melodies, very reminiscent sonically of Philip Jeck, we actually had trouble moving past the first track, it's so good, but once we did, there was more to discover, the record quite possible some sort of linked sonic narrative, the vibe definitely cinematic, atmospheric, lush textures, and an incredible amount of sonic minutiae, headphones are definitely the way to go. Music box melodies blur into the chirping of crickets, voices appear and disappear, samples fragment and fade, bleeding into one another, the sounds coalescing into lush sprawls of warm shimmer and epic expanses of near symphonic soft noise, before fading into intimate musical glimpses of some other universe, or some other time, each song a seemingly self contained sonic travelogue, or an alternate universe, rendered in sound. Really fantastic stuff.
The deluxe version is limited to 100 copies, and as as with all the TRS deluxe versions it is indeed quite deluxe, this one a super striking pop-up faux-rigami mini book, the pages of the pop up made from 100 year old hand written ledger paper, and bound in antique hardcover book covers, which are then housed in hand made / hand stamped black slipcases. The standard version is also limited, to 150 copies, and comes housed in a full color digipak.
The return of this Dutch black metal horde, full length number three, and their M.O. remains fully intact, a grinding, churning gnarled blackness that sonically fits in the twisted black pantheon of groups like Deathspell Omega, S.V.E.S.T., Ascension, Hell Militia, Ondskapt, and the like. And while Nihill has a definite doooooooom component, you'd never know it from the opening track, the ten minute "Vuur: The Deathwind Of Resurrection", which after a brief bit of noisiness explodes into a roiling blast of furious buzz, only switching it up in the shape of a more classic metal gallop, quickly returning to the frantic blast of the first few minutes, the multiple guitars creating a dense black wall of sound, that is SO buzzy it almost blurs into a full on drone, but listen close, and there's all sorts of crazy tangled melodies and slithery slippery riffage going on beneath the surface, dizzyingly furious and utterly relentless.
The second track "Spiral: The Tail Eater" finds the band slowing down the tempo, but shedding NONE of the buzz, in fact if anything, it's somehow buzzier, the sound so thick and corrosively distorted, it again makes the sound even more tranced out and hypnotic. "Orbron: Returning To The Primal Matter" is another one that's impossible dense and chaotic, suffocatingly intense, buzz drenched blackness that seems to swallow all other sound whole. After a tripped out stretch of ambience, the final track finds the band infusing their psychedelic blackbuzz fury with some 'classic' black metalisms, some chugging riffage, some swirling melodies, the sound still buzzy and blown out, but also murky and mesmerizing, a mildly more melodic coda to a record that borders of total blackhole / black buzz collapse. So fucking killer.
Not sure what else to say really at this point about John Dwyer and Thee Oh Sees crew. We've loved pretty much everything they've put out, we've made at least one an aQ Record Of The Week, heck, Andee even put out the very first Thee Oh Sees record (back when it was just Dwyer and was a whole 'nother beast simply called OCS), but as with every record, Putrifiers II has much to recommend it, and has a lot of cool stuff going on, that definitely makes it super distinctive, and as seems to be the case, with every new record, we find ourselves proclaiming it our favorite, and looks like that trend is going to continue, cuz Putrifiers II is so great. All it should take is a minute or two of opener "Wax Face", with its spidery snake charmer melody that leads directly into some seriously fuzzed out garage rock pound, super melodic, with swoonsome falsetto vox, woozy basslines, and of course hooks galore. The song gets all droney, and psychedelic, with some killer leads, and a killer stretch midsong where the vocals harmonize with the guitar, we're tempted to say it's the raddest jam yet, but that would be foolish with nine more songs to go! (That's right, this is a ten song "ep", more like a full-length really.)
The one thing that Putrefiers does display, is a definite sixties pop vibe, from the fuzzy almost Elephant Six sound of "Hang A Picture", to some of the other tracks that take the Beach Boys and run them through an old beat up distortion pedal and douse them liberally with sweat and blood, taking the hooky dreaminess and harnessing it to some serious psych fuzz bliss. The whole record is brimming with amazing songs and sounds, "So Nice" is a gorgeous bit of buzz drenched balladry, with some swirling strings and weird processed vox, "Cloud #1" is some super abstract minimal drone music, that reminds us of Amps For Christ, "Flood's New Light" is total girl group worship, while the title track is a gorgeously catchy reverb heavy garage pop dirge that is WAY catchier than it has any right to be.
The final four songs definitely make up a sort of orchestral garage pop suite, the woozy shimmery ballroom vibe of "Will We Be Scared", the fuzzed out chug and churn of "Lupine Dominus", which has verses that would be right at home in a much dreamier, less tripped out and psychedelic pop song, "Goodnight Baby" is another string driven bit of jangly power pop, and finally, "Wicked Park" is lush and lovely baroque popsmithery, that sounds like it could be a cover of The Zombies, or even some old Bee Gees B side.
Another killer record from Dwyer and Co., and yeah, currently our favorite Thee Oh Sees record. At least until next time... The cd comes in a digipack, while the vinyl version comes in a cool die-cut jacket, and includes an mp3 download.
Yay! The two albums on this two-fer cd have been out of print and unavailable for too long, considering that they're two of our faves in the realm of prog rock craziness, the first two from Italian '70s proggers Osanna. Nice to have 'em back in one handy, inexpensive-for-an-import package (though, the no-frills graphic design of the digipak leaves something to be desired, wish they would have included full-sized album art, for one thing).
"Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band", is how we boldly described Osanna in our review of another Italian prog rock fave, Il Balletto Di Bronzo. Ok, even limiting our discussion to the realm of Italian prog, it would be difficult to claim that Osanna are objectively better than the also amazing likes of Il Balleto, Le Orme, Area, New Trolls, Franco Battiato, Goblin, I Teoremi, RDM, Museo Rosenbach, etc. But, Osanna do somehow combine the key elements of what we like about those bands and prog in general into these three crazy, colorful records, and thus deserve our hype. Ripping flute and sax solos, heavy psych guitar, powerful vocal choruses, hard rockin' prog drumming, weird musical changes and juxtapositions, electronic synth experimentation... Catchy, fun, fucked up prog from five nutty Italians, who want to rock out as much as be arty and display their adept musicianship.
The wonders of Italian prog have been revealed to us in a gradual process of discovery - finding a used cd with a cool cover, or reading somewhere about another strange band, or getting a recommendation from a friend or customer. Neither of us grew up in Italy, or had a geeky older brother to hand down his PFM and Goblin lps. In the case of Osanna, Andee's the one who came across 'em first, while travelling in Japan, actually. Rather randomly, the guy from the Boredoms-meets-St. Vitus doom/trance band Solar Anus (released on Andee's tUMULt label) gave Andee a tape of Osanna to take home, promising him he'd like it. Well, Solar Anus dude knew whereof he spoke! Soon we were on-line, trying to track down the LPs, or cd reissues. Not long thereafter, Andee and Allan both possessed the complete works of Osanna. Ever since we've been super psyched to share our Osanna-excitement with you, our prog-lovin' customers... Actually we hope that self-proclaimed "prog" dedication is not necessary for enjoyment of Osanna, as we think that these discs are good and weird and silly enough for aQ-customers into whatever sort of musical extremity (experimental, krautrock, psych, metal, classic rock) to dig.
Osanna's 1971 (!!!) debut L'Uomo may be the most song-oriented of their albums, their Crimson and Tull influences easy to spot. They sound a bit like a proggier, Italian version of Mexican contemporaries Dug Dugs, if that's of any help - equally into weird psychedelic effects, hard rock, and pop. A couple of the poppier songs are sung in English, and those might result in a few uncomfortable moments of "what am I listening to here?" panic. But the sheer exuberance and fuzzed out riffing of L'Uomo as a whole can't be argued with!
Then, the second Osanna album, from '72, was a soundtrack to a film called Milano Calibro 9. Working in collaboration with arranger Luis Bacalov, who is also known for his work with the New Trolls' symphonic efforts, this album incorporates strings, piano, and classical motifs. And, as befits a film soundtrack, many moods are touched upon... We don't know what the movie was all about, but it must have featured a fair amount of action, and trippy scenes. Osanna come up with super bombastic themes, high-energy instrumental freak-outs, suspenseful bits of jazziness, pretty vocal interludes, bleepy-bloopy synth fx, heavy electronic organ riff-drone, and the most heavy metal flute soloing you've ever heard. Totally kick ass. Osanna, you rock. Goblin was never this heavy.
The entire musical aesthetic of the storied Flying Nun label can be traced back to the first two singles. On the exuberant and triumphantly cheerful side, you've got The Clean's "Tally Ho!" with its uptempo jangle and sloppily melodic power pop chords; but on the other side, there was the gloomy drone-rock of The Pin Group who actually released the very first Flying Nun single "Ambivalence" back in 1981. According to the liner notes by The Dead C's Bruce Russell, the late '70s and early '80s spawned quite a lot of bands in New Zealand trying to cop the Velvet Underground's gritty rock minimalism, including The Pin Group, a trio featuring Roy Montgomery (yes, THAT Roy Montgomery!), Ross Humphries (who later played in Bailter Space and The Terminals), and Peter Stapleton (who seemed to be the only guy in New Zealand with a drum kit, as he played with everybody). "Ambivalence" certainly had a black-leather minimalism filtered through the Velvets, but with strangled basslines and dour vocals from Montgomery, The Pin Group also shared more than a few passing glances at Joy Division. By the time The Pin Group got to their second single "Coat," (released later in 1981) the Velvets jangle had been engulfed in a black-hole of nervous gloom that hints at Montgomery's drone-rock impressionism from the early '90s onward. That single sported a clever Andy Warhol ripoff by replacing the Velvet Underground banana with a pop-art sequence of Kiwis, but the B side to that single, "Jim", situates the band at their bleakest, with a puritanically dark punk sermon that foreshadowed the emotionally draining dynamics of Slint by about a decade.
Ambivalence marks the second anthology of The Pin Group's short but hugely influential career which lasted less than 12 months. Everything from the first anthology (an eponymous cd released on Siltbreeze back in 1997) is reprised on the vinyl of Ambivalence, including the two covers - the smartly chosen "Hurricane Fighter Plane" and the unwise "Low Rider." Don't let the latter spoil the majesty of the rest of the album, which also features a bonus cd of a live show from July 1981 with a couple of tracks that had been unreleased elsewhere. Recommended? You bet your ass!
Oh, wow. Finally found a reasonably-priced cd reissue of this freaky, far out '70s artifact, that we first heard of being raved about by The Seth Man on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website a while back. We're talking about the "M. Frog" half of this twofer disc (we'll get to the Roger Powell part, in a bit). Originally released in 1973, it's a rockin' psych-prog opus laden with copious EMS Synthi-A workouts and an anarchic spirit of anything-goes fun. This record was the vibrant solo debut from a Frenchman named Jean Yves Labat (aka M. Frog), who at the time was the keyboard player for Todd Rundgren's Utopia - that being the American pop producer's proggier-than-thou outfit, Rundgren's answer to English bands like Yes and Genesis, as you may know. So Labat was quite the keyboard wiz, and also a bit of a weirdo, almost becoming a Benedictine monk, before he gave that up for a life of progressive rock excess. The M. Frog album draws upon his schooling in avant-garde composition - the colorful cover art is actually a part of a graphic score done in Labat's own unique color-coded notation for synthesizer operation. But it's very much hippie, heavy rock n' roll entertainment too.
This album's opener and presumable alternate-universe hit single sold us right away - "We Are Crazy" lives up to its title, coming across like krautrock goofs Guru Guru jamming with Perrey-Kingsley, or Jean-Pierre Massiera endeavoring to outdo the Osmonds' "Crazy Horses"! The song is built upon catchy riffage with a TON of crazy synth action, and brilliant/dumb non-sequitur lyrics (about how they're crazy and stupid and lazy and if you understand you'll win a washing machine or a date with the Queen) that really drive the "We Are Crazy" point home. It's also reprised later in the album in an instrumental version (even more synth!!) and in both cases exemplifies Jean Yves Labat's statement of purpose: "I want the music to pop out. It's funny music. It's alive. It is for the living."
The next track takes the volume but not the weirdness down a few notches, the moodier "Champegarpaen" being a kinda krautrocky percolating groove, adorned not just with synth but with sawing violin, Munchkin voices, Gregorian chant, musique concrete effects, and cowbell...
Speaking of krautrock, some of this reminds us of Faust, in that it's more comic, than cosmic! Really each and every track here pretty wild, a manic mix of heavy rock jams, plenty of synth zips and zaps, and 'novelty' tunage replete with funny voices. There's some calmer, spacey moments too, as on album-ender "Relax Goliath" (such relaxation is needed by then). And Todd Rungren himself contributes a few fuzzed-out & synth-processed guitar solos here and there; not to be outshined, however, by Jean Yves' own indulgences in crazy complex keyboard solo sections too.
They really don't make 'em like this anymore, and M. Frog must be the ultimate at whatever it is, exactly. A worthy reissue we're so glad to have, done quite nicely with lengthy informative liner notes in the thick cd booklet, which also includes more full-color examples of Labat's unusual & eye-catching musical notation.
AND, that's not all, there's actually a whole 'nother album on this disc, by a totally different guy. That's right, the aforementioned Roger Powell, with his album Air Pocket. The rationale for putting these two together on the same cd is that Powell was, in a later lineup, also the keyboard player for Todd Rundgren's Utopia. Also both albums came out on the Bearsville label. But other than that, and total synth overload, they don't have too much else in common. Powell's brand of prog was less nutty, more cheesy, let's say� but not without its charms. Air Pocket, which actually comes first on this disc, non-chronologically for some reason, definitely has got a lot of '80s glossiness to it, with drum machines and plenty of synthesizer wank - enough that it was voted 1980 Album Of The Year by the readers of Keyboard Magazine. The record starts off pretty cool, the spacey "Lunar Plexus" sounding like the lighter side of something along the lines of John Carpenter, definitely the sort of thing today's fans of Zombi/Majeure will probably like. Then, the futuristic disco new wave pop of "Landmark" adds vocals, it's dated but kinda nifty in a way� the singing in particular kinda reminds us of XTC, for a moment anyway, maybe just 'cause Powell is English.
Air Pocket gets a little freakier on "Emergency Splashdown", with klaxon alarm sounds, urgent rhythms, processed vox� More blissfully ambient-sounding electronics are represented by the brief "Morning Chorus", with guitar by Todd Rundgren. And then, as the second side of the original lp really gets underway, Roger Powell demonstrates his true prog/fantasy allegiances on a series of instrumentals, with titles like "March Of The Dragonslayers" and "Sands Of Arrakis". Which range from bright and chimey TV theme song tuneishness to more moody swirling ambience. Overall, Roger Powell's Air Pocket is a lightly proggy, soft, synth-laden yacht rock record that's kitschy fun, and not un-catchy.
A bonus track by Powell is also included here, from a single he did in 1978, a slightly sinister synth version of surf classic "Pipeline", with a pounding bass beat. Good times! We probably dig that cover more than the actual Air Pocket album, in fact.
But anyway, we already said the real reason to get this disc is for the M. Frog half, otherwise unavailable on its own, while you can count whichever Roger Powell tracks you like as fun, free bonuses and forget the rest.
Record number two from this psychedelic super group, and like we mentioned in our review of their debut, just knowing the players will get most people to flip out and buy it, sounds unheard. Those players being Sir Richard Bishop of the late great Sun City Girls, Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance and drummer extraordinaire Chris Corsano. And like that first one, this is another fantastic batch of instrumental improv psychedelia. The opening track has a main guitar part that immediately pushed all our Sun City Girls buttons, a little bit Eastern, a little exotic, the dueling guitars (no bass) unfurling intricate tangled melodies, while Corsano plays the most straight forwardly 'rock' on anything we've heard yet, but it sounds perfect, the song erupting into a wild squall of psychedelic freakout before slipping right back into it. Odds are most folks will only need to hear a minute or two of that first track and will be sold. But if for some crazy reason, that's not the case, there's seven more reasons to grab this. "The Vault" lets Corsano slip back into wild free jazz splatter, which Chansy and Bishop mirror perfectly with sweet melodic billows of soaring textural buzz, which only makes it that much more powerful, when the band slip into a softly psychedelic deserty lope, sounding like Earth or Barn Owl if they ROCKED.
"Silver Nile" is the centerpiece here, at nearly 12 minutes, which spends its first few minutes drifting through an abstract field of spare notes and subtle percussion, the sounds droned out and almost raga like, the players gradually coalescing into another twang flecked meander, with an almost Morricone vibe, and they make it to almost nine minutes without deviating from their dark dolorous sonic brood, only finish off with a strangely Middle Eastern sounding coda, still droney and a little bit raga-y but much more jaunty and upbeat.
From there on out, it's looped and loping minimal hypnorock (sounding a bit like Circle) laced with some seriously shredding wah guitar freakouts, on more Middle Eastern style Sun City Girls sounding jams, peppered with blasts of droned out psychedelic free jazz freakouts, one bluesy hoedown, one killer stretch of math rock mesmer, and finally, a blast of churning, chugging, mathy, spaced out psychrock radness that ends WAY too soon after only three minutes. Whatever you think of these guys on their own, together, that have a seriously special chemistry, and while the label jokingly boasts that will be 'the instrumental album of the year', we'd have to say, they're probably not that far off!
