The Ektro label does it again. Another rad reissue, this the debut album from legendary eighties NYC noise rockers Rat At Rat R, originally released in 1985 and pretty much impossible to find since. It somehow sounds right at home on Ektro, and even TWENTY SEVEN YEARS later, this stuff sounds so bad ass. Think Cop Shoot Cop, Circle X, Swans, Pussy Galore, Live Skull, Sonic Youth, these guys were born of that same scene, but their sound is definitely all their own. Gloomy and gothic, noisy and chaotic, the drumming INSANE, wild and splattery and relentless, the guitars angular and jagged, the bass thick and buzzy, the vocals a snarly dramatic croon, the band capable of switching from wild tribal noisy freakouts, to churning mathy noise rock crush, to an almost gloom pop, to seriously heavy almost metallic bombast, lots of the songs reminding us at times of the Wipers, or Comsat Angels, or other purveyors of gloomy rock, and of course all the other bands of the time these guys shared stages with (and probably drugs, or at least rehearsal spaces).
The gloomy gothy vibe definitely has a sort of death rock thing going on, reminding us also of the stuff that was going on around the same time on the other coast, the Scream club, Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, but a way heavier noiser version of that, lurching, lumbering, grinding heaviness, tribal drumming, clouds of feedback, strange percussion, tangled melodies, and actual songs, these were not just blasts of noisiness, Rat At Rat R definitely had a knack for dark brooding songcraft, the fact that they chose to render the resulting songs in wild squalls of noise rock pummel and swirly psychedelic gloomines, only made it that much cooler. Reissue contender of the year for SURE.
The Shrine to what? The gods of high energy rock n' roll action, we assume. Such a shrine, we're imagining, would consist of one or more big ass amplifiers, probably draped with an Amerikkkan flag (upside down?), ringed with empty beer cans and broken bottles. Oh, and skateboards, a bunch of skateboards. Musically, that's what we're gettin' here, the three hairy dudes in heavy, punked out power trio The Shrine mainlining such influences as Black Flag, Black Sabbath, and the MC5. They don't hold back, with opener "Zipper Tripper" defining The Shrine's style of speedy SoCal "psychedelic violence" pretty plainly from the get-go. Furthermore, as the disc spins, The Shrine soon make it obvious that their particular primitive blast is in fact a damn catchy one, yeah! They rip it up with snakey riffs and plenty of 'tude on all nine tracks here, a little over a half hour of gnarly shake appeal for stoner punks & skate metallers; this is definitely for anybody who was into another, sorta similar Tee Pee band, Annihilation Time (R.I.P.), recipients of a T-shirt shout out from The Shrine on this album's back cover band pic. Another good comparison would be to the 2nd, more SST-ish album from J. Mascis doom project Witch.
For us, what really seals the deal is that track four happens to be a cranked-up cover of "Run The Night", originally by '70s heavy psych British biker band Wicked Lady, whose reissues we just highlighted. We were like, hmmm, this sounds familiar, then figured it out. And it fits right in with the vibe of the whole album. Killer!!!
Here's a short cassette released by AQ pal Mike Donovan (Big Techno Werewolves, Nam, Sounds Of The Barbary Coast, The Ropers, Dial Records) of his current band Sic Alps whome you might recall from their split 7" with California Lightening (featuring members of Erase Errata)! As with most releases by the very DIY San Francisco fella Mr. Donovan, there is only going to be a very small homespun run of these made, so needless to say, don't snoooooze!
Pssst... we also have a small number of some other Folding cassette releases, all with hand made covers -- a short one from Death Sentence: Panda plus a compilation he compiled with artist Chris Johanson called SSSSSOSS2 and ones by Dark Yellow Swans (aka Yellow Swans) and NVH with Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny. Dust off yer cassette deck!
It's been awhile since we heard from Austin based one man band Silent Land Time Machine, not that Jon Roberts hasn't been busy. He runs his own Indian Queen imprint as well as co-running the fantastic tape label, Holodeck (from which we've reviewed releases by Thousand Foot Whale Claw, Smokey Emery and the other band Roberts does times with, the awesome kraut-psych drone outfit, Lumens). His debut, & Hope Still on Time-Lag, felt like a host of musicians in a full-on psychedelic Henry Flynt whirlwind, but all instruments were deftly played by Roberts himself. Here on this six song vinyl ep, he gives his compositions more space. With treated violin as his primary instrument, he carefully crafts beautifully layered psych-folk dirges that sound as if they were transmitted from some far-off place and time. Billows of static over looping and cascading filigrees of melody, murky percussive rhythms, and field recordings add to the songs' haunting remote quality. With harmonium and parlor piano on a song like "An Own To One's Room", it feels like some old west paean to days gone by. The long title, I Am No Longer Alone With Myself and Can Only Artificially Recall the Scary and Beautiful Feeling of Solitude, is a quote from Carl Jung, and it aptly describes not only the overall feel of the recording, but also the mysteriously romantic notion of how experience is shaped by continuous yet selective entanglements with the memories of our past. On 180g clear vinyl. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Highly Recommended!
Get out your crystals and light a candle... folkstress Mariee Sioux has a new release, this time on Brooklyn label Whale Watch Records. Like the more haunted folk artist Marissa Nadler, Sioux probably isn't any stranger to ghosts - though hers are the Yoni-power kind that embody the spirits of our ancestral mothers and give us strength in the face of adversity. Case in point would be the album's second track, "Ghosts in My Heart". The other seven songs on the album feature the same stirring and dreamy qualities as on her last release, 2007's Faces in the Rocks, that garnered her comparisons to the pantheon of British psych folk artists, including Vashti Bunyan. It's clear Sioux is trying to connect to something spiritual within nature - with lyrics picked up in the woods and along the streams of her Nevada City, California hometown, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, from where Joanna Newsom and Alela Diane also hail. "You taught the stones to talk," she sings in her feather-light voice on "Old Magic." There is just the right amount of arrangement to accompany Sioux's finger-picking, with gentle flourishes of piano, lap steel, cello, and flute. Also worth noting, her father, of Polish and Hungarian heritage, Gary Sobonya, plays mandolin on the recording. Nevada City is the new Laurel Canyon!
An obscure project with an obscure agenda. Small Cruel Party was the brilliant / difficult sound project of Key Ransome, who operated in and around the Incubator warehouse in Seattle from the early '90s up until he left for Paris around 2003 when he became a vegetarian chef and shed much of the contacts with his former life. But back during his most prolific periods, Small Cruel Party managed over 30 releases (including a disproportionate amount of seven inches) and contributed to nearly as many compilations. But since he left, nothing. The precipitous cessation of Small Cruel Party can appear to have all of the trappings of Maurizio Bianchi's demonstrative retirement back in the early '80s, but where Bianchi might have cracked under the existential weight of his depressive electronics, Small Cruel Party may have transcended itself out of existence. In a rare piece of text accompanying the almost Dada-ist titles of his pieces, Ransome speculated that Small Cruel Party "... focused on the inherent mysterious and beautiful quality of sound itself, with the emphasis on noninstrumental sound sources, the source itself not being readily apparent. Work generally involves manipulation of physical objects in acoustic space and a great deal of concentrated activity. Even in pieces involving dense sound at high volume the resultant effect is one of intense calm." Even as one hears the haptic sounds from rocks, sand, bells, scribblings, strange whisperings, electrical hums, sodden field recordings, and barren drones, the raw sounds are given over to a ceremonial austerity whose liturgy is completely unknowable. The work is certainly informed by minimalism, but more from a context of sculptural physicality through the barest of materials instead of the musical forms of Phill Niblock or LaMonte Young. A Small Cruel Party composition is often just two or three sonic elements, with Ransome creating subtle shifts in the orbits of those elliptical sounds or mustering an ectoplasmic glow around a formless tone that ominously lifts out of nowhere to the foreground.
Accident In Substance is a wholly impressive document, collecting a bunch of those compilation and seven-inch tracks and presenting them in chronological order based on when they were created (and not necessarily when they were released). The earliest piece "Even The Lives Of Our Grandfathers" may be the most musical with a hypnotic, Terry Riley-esque repetition on a couple of piano notes, Ransome layers such with scabrous textures and breathy whispered utterances devoid of any specific words. It's eerie, beautiful, and sublime. While Ransome eschews the melody on every other track since, that haunted, hidden sensibility strengthens throughout his body of work. Thickets of acoustic noise and thudding rumbles find strange bedfellows with a chorus of handbells on the dramatically intense track "Home Borders" all of which cascade like a grim kaleidoscope of urban refuse. Those same bells blossom into a Ligetti-like swarm of linear dissonace on the blindingly glistening track "Iron Moment." Stuttering electrical pulses murmur as distant beacons amidst the field recordings of unknown actions in dank warehouse spaces on the "Second Honor" and "Ceremonies of Memory." The sense of mystery that hangs on Small Cruel Party's recordings is really something to behold. Our own Jim Haynes claims Small Cruel Party as a huge influence on his rusted sound-art, to the point where one of the tracks on his 2009 album Sever is an homage to SCP. Accident In Substance is required listening for anybody whose been smitten by AMM, John Cage, Daniel Menche, Zoviet France, Organum, Loren Chasse, and Steve Roden. Yeah. It's that fucking good.
First we've heard from aQ beloved SF gloom pop outfit Soft Moon in a while, a single sided 7" featuring the group's collaboration with John Foxx, former vocalist for Ultravox (appearing here with his band, The Maths), and what a match up. Super spaced out spare percussion, dubby and wreathed in reverb, percolating melodies, thick metallic low end thrum, very gloomy and gothy for sure, and then those instantly recognizable vox, super dramatic and passionate, nestled in amongst Soft Moon's (and The Math's) gloriously bleary eighties style gloom pop, atmospheric and haunting, but super catchy. It's only one song, but it's gotten lots of repeat play, and definitely has us wanting to hear more, and also wondering if maybe Foxx should just join Soft Moon full time. Would not be a bad thing at all.
We've loved pretty much everything these guys have put out, their sound a super catchy jangly indie rock, that at times is a dead ringer for The Strokes, but for whatever reason, we like these guys a whole lot more. The songs are more rough and ragged, and while maybe not MORE catchy, definitely catchy in a different way. And this record, from the very first listen, has pretty much set itself up to be on heavy rotation for the foreseeable future. The opener "Saratoga" is a jittery propulsive blowout, all bubbly bass, frenetic drumming, with some killer catchy riffing, and languid laid back vocals, the second track finds the band in Strokes mode again, slowing things down a bit, even adding some horns, while "They Say" sounds like it could be the single, with a propulsive almost new wave-y beat, some big crunchy guitars, and a vocal line that will stick in your head for days!
And so it goes, "Tallboy" adds some whirring organ, the sound almost classic rock, while "Bobby Brown", is dangerously funky, the band flirting with eighties pop, sounding suddenly like they should be on Captured Tracks, but then in swoops "Chinatown" another barnburner, that we imagine will inspire jittery indie rock bounce and hair swirling headbanging in equal measure. And stick around for the sprawling "Captain Ace" which sounds very nineties, in a good way, mixing in lots of tripped out effects, lots of layers and texture, more horns, strange sci-fi effects, all stretched out into a glorious slab of psychedelic indie pop space out.
LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
Another fine collection of DIY electronic pop from another minimal wave band we're getting introduced to by Dark Entries! The history of Stress began in 1981 as a musical collaboration between the editors of two fanzines -- Adventures In Reality and Damn Latin - both of which covered the darker aspects of post-punk and new wave, with interviews and features on Bauhaus, SPK, Attrition, etc. Stress kept their songs girded to the taut electronics of sequencers and drum machines with vocal melodies that expand beyond the typical monotone delivery, falling not too far from Soft Cell's earlier tapes and Attrition's less baroque leanings. They released a couple of tapes by 1982, with contributions to numerous compilations to follow, leading up to their proper album The Big Wheel in 1984, which sported the witchy chart-topping single "Elisabeth Selwyn." The band split by 1985, with a few reunion gigs popping over the next couple of decades. Conspiracy Theory compiles tracks from those two early cassettes, remastered expertly as with all of the Dark Entries recordings. Comes with a fanzine, adopting a classic punk / new wave aesthetic with all sorts of appropriated texts about Stress and a cheeky spread on all of the gear that the band used. Nice.
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 M. Geddes Gengra, Silent Land Time Machine, Amasa Gana and this one from mysterious synth quartet Survive.
Two side long tracks, the first a pulsating cavernous modular synth exploration, an extended version of a track from their self-titled debut 10" which we had a handful of but are now gone (though if we can get more we'll surely list it). That track is otherworldly, sci-fi and dark, like early Cluster, Klaus Schulze and Alpha Centauri-era Tangerine Dream.
The other side is more spacious and primordial, and begins like a still night on some toxic planet. Gaseous rumbles, eerie night whistles and percolating textural bloops, far off some humming phased mechanoid vocals building up to what sounds like it could be the foley for the final hellish scene in the movie The Black Hole. Stripped of John Barry's ominous orchestrations, what we're left with is cold robo-futurist doom, laid to rest by an extended funereal space dirge. Limited to 100 copies!
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 Survive, Amasa Gana, M. Geddes Gengra, and Silent Land Time Machine.
Since we reviewed the last Thousand Foot Whale Claw tape, Lost In Those Dunes as well as their vinyl debut, Dope Moons Volume One, we've become huge fans of the group's long form exploratory psych excursions. Time Brothers is an artifact of the group's beginnings comprised of two 20+ minute tracks that are extended demo versions of songs from both the previous tape and the vinyl lp plus the shorter unreleased titular track from the Lost in Those Dunes sessions.These primodial demos showcase the more ambient side of this space-rock group. Employing psych waves of oceanic bliss that conjure up images of tranquil beaches on far-off planets, brewing acid guitars, synth washes and circular bass rhythms create elongated textures and build-ups that restrain themselves from full-on freak-outs and remain in an elongated holding pattern of raga-ish devotion. Limited to 100 copies!
The bruised Mika Vainio that was photographed on the smoldering 2011 solo album Life (... It Eats You Up) has mellowed out from the caterwauling guitar destruction and amphetamine-driven electronic noise to produce a reductionist album of electro-acoustics in Fe3O4. With the major exception in the aforementioned Life (... It Eats You Up), Vainio's solo work under his given name aligns neatly with the decentered abstraction that Touch has always been known for (e.g. John Duncan, BJ Nilsen, Thomas Koner, The Hafler Trio, etc.), with the blistered post-techno rhythms of Pan Sonic being deflated into a solitary muffled thump or a Geiger counter click punctuating his nocturnal experiments with power-drone stasis, power-grid hums, and slumped silence. Vainio draws inspiration here from the vast allegorical properties of iron. The directionality of a pre-GPS compass, the ability to store data through ferric oxide on magnetic tape, and the corrosion of steel all speak through Vainio's spacious compositions with often sublime, subtle results. "Magnetia" opens with the slashing acoustic rasp from a bowed cymbal akin to the classic Organum sound that collapses under the weight of a linear rumbling frequency. Ghostly utterances of searing noise slide out subdued space-time ambience on "Magnetotactic" and "Magnetism" as almost heavily dubbed versions of his previous album. The album's finale - "Elvis's TV Room" - eschews the magnetic metaphors even as it follows suit with the other tracks of eerie calm, blustery noise, and minimalist gestures.
On the cover(s): Sade and Flying Lotus. Inside, also: Dam-Funk, Betty Wright, Cody Chesnutt, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Gary Bartz, and, uh, Lenny Kravitz. Among other peeps. All colorfully illustrated in the usual Wax Poetics fashion, with vintage photos and album covers and all that.
Oh, and there's a cool piece about the NYC roller disco boogie scene in the '70s!
Yet another collection of breezy, jangly eighties style dream pop from these aQ faves, the sound not too far removed from their last few records, the most noticeable difference this time around being the production, which is even more impossibly lush and expansive, the sound here is gorgeous, still hazy, and dreamily shoegazey, but the sound clear and clean, the songs laced with soaring strings and chiming guitars, the drums tribal and propulsive, the vocals wistful and way down in the mix, drifting on a bed of softly swirling shimmer. The songs too are fantastic. Where most bands doing the retro thing basically get the sound right and don't seem to worry too much about the actual song writing, or if they do, they just can't seem to pull it off. But Wild Nothing manage to both write songs reminiscent of those classic eighties jams, but craft killer hooks to boot, not to mention super addictive melodies. That, combined with the sound, make them top of the retro pop heap. Just check out the first track "Shadow", with its warm acoustic guitar strum, its woozy super melodic basslines, the main riff which will stick in your head like crazy, and the utterly divine string arrangements, it's a retro dream pop gem. But don't stop there. Dig deeper, there's a lot more to discover, strange little bits of fuzzy synth, weirdly proggy arrangements, more amazing strings, swirling vocal harmonies, all woven into WN's lush jangle pop tapestry, pretty much every song on Nocturne a swirly, shoegazy new wave pop gem.
This month's cover star: Flying Lotus, doing something weird with his eyes. Also, among other interestin' things: Laurie Spiegel, Pelt, John Butcher, a scene report from Hanoi, and a wonderful 'Epiphanies' essay from William Basinski about an encounter with David Bowie in the '80s. And of course reviews, reviews, reviews... Plus, this issue comes with one of those Wire Tapper cd samplers glued to the front.
When we reviewed the most recent 7" from sunshiney lo-fi twang-flecked indie pop combo Woods, we finished with saying how we couldn't wait for the full length, and thankfully, we only had to wait a matter of weeks, and we are not at all disappointed. The A side from that single shows up here of course, so it might be worth revisiting that review, since in a way it's essentially an overview of this whole record. Anyway, here's what we had to say about the track "Cali In A Cup":
"Maybe the catchiest most perfectly poppy jam we've heard from Woods yet, driven by reverbed harmonica and dreamy falsetto vox, the whole song is fantastic, and it's got one of those choruses that will stick in your head forEVER."
Indeed! And listening to that track again now, it sounds just as good as it did when we first threw on the single. The funny thing is, the record starts out with a much different vibe, the title track is a sort of ominous chunk of Neil Young-ish psychedelia, all minor keys, wah wah guitars, very seventies, but the thing about Woods is, they manage to make it sound crazy catchy ANYway, with a chorus to die for, and one that is surprisingly melodic considering how dark the rest of the song is. But it works, and it's a weird, but cool, transition from that, to "Cali In A Cup".
And while much of the record tends toward the sunshiney jangle, there is plenty of darkness, and a surprisingly heavy psych streak, not to mention a knack for some seriously perfect pop, plus band don't shy away from experimentation, "Cascade" is a tripped out instrumental, all burbling FX and thick chugging bass, beneath spidery guitars, and swirls of noise, "Find Them Empty" is some heavy organ driven psych rock that fans of groups like Spyrals and Wooden Shjips will freak out over, "Lily" is a sweet slab of orchestral baroque pop, and closer "Something Surreal" is some seriously dreamy sixties style psychedelic pop. Maybe the best Woods record yet, which is saying a lot considering how much we dug the other ones!
Obscure French synth-pop duo of Doc Pilot and Zouka Dzaza, aka X Ray Pop, are rescued from the lost cassette / 7" single graveyard of the mid-eighties and finally have their early recorded output see the light of day, via Dark Entries, and what a treat! Like Nini Raviolette or Deux, this is our favorite kind of French minimal wave, with seductively blase female vocals and eccentric upbeat songs. Made with a economic setup of synths and drum machines, the songs are nevertheless super catchy and hook-laden, like a stripped down Les Rita Mitsouko or as an early reviewer from the mini-zine included with this lp compares them to a French Mo-dettes. Very cool! The first side consists of their early 7" singles released between 1984 and 1986 and begins perhaps with our favorite track, opener "La Machine A Rever". The B side is the 1984 demos originally released on cassette. Here they even do a stripped down version of Serge Gainsbourg and Bridgette Bardot's "Contakt". While it may not trump the original, it still beats the Wooden Shjips version. But seriously, fans of the cooler French minimal wave or even Stereolab, Stereo Total, or Pizzicato 5 will dig this thoroughly!
The latest offering from the Pre-Cert Entertainment label (Anworth Kirk, N. Racker, David Orphan, Slant Azymuth) comes from the man himself, Andy Votel, Finders Keepers / B-Music head honcho and one of the folks behind Pre-Cert Entertainment as well (along with the Demdike Stare guys). As Xian Orphic, Votel has crafted what might be our favorite release on the label so far, a record that plays like some lost seventies soundtrack, and while inevitably there are nods to Goblin and Carpenter and Howarth, we're hearing more Fred Myrow, especially on the first track, which is a dead ringer for Myrow's insanely awesome soundtrack for Phantasm, all thick squelchy synths, an impossibly catchy icy minor key melodic main theme, all wreathed in swirls of abstract ambience, there's a little bit of a cinematic kosmische going on, droney tranced out mesmer, lush and melodic, yet somehow ominous and strangely propulsive. It would be worth it for that track alone. But the record slips easily into something even more haunting, a washed out sprawl of layered and looped shimmer, laced with field recordings and strange FX, this track too reminiscent of some seventies soundtrack mood music.
The flipside changes gears a bit, with some tripped out tropical sounding soundscapery, over skittery rhythms, and peppered with dense sonic swirls, and shot through with more ominous melodies. The vibe is a little bit Morricone actually, albeit reimagined as something more synthy and sinister. The second track dips into some Zombi / Majeure territory, which is inevitable making these sorts of retro soundtrack sounds, but Votel transforms the sound into something even MORE old school, channeling a sort of seventies new age krautrock bliss, all before slipping into the final track, swirly and super abstract, all deep celestial thrum, chordal shimmer and gristled gauzy ambience.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
A killer new two song blast from these SF shoegazers, and both sides kill. The A side sounds like it could have been plucked off one of their records proper, equal parts Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, thick blown out riffs, blurred into billows of soft noise, simple, driving krautrocky rhythms, thick driving basslines, ethereal angelic vox, super droned out and totally hypnotic, heavily reverbed and gloriously washed out and woozy.
The B side might be even better, ditching the more standard elements of 'song' and instead weaving a super thick, dense, atmospheric sprawl of heavily layered guitardrone, channeling the mighty Spacemen 3, or minimal early krautrock, but here, cranked up and doused in distortion, hypnotic and hazy, pulsing and churning, a constantly shifting miasma of buzz and thrum, super heady and heavy and very psychedelic. So great. Definitely has us hankering for a new full length.
