Afterlife is pretty shameless in their reconstitution of the Emeralds sound, to be completely honest. But considering how much New Age fluff that continues to emerge out of the whole synth-wrangling scene, an album that bares its teeth is more than welcome in these parts. Okay, there's no guitars to be found in Afterlife, so it may fit closer with the John Elliott pantheon of projects, but there's a density of sound and an industrial gravity that hangs upon Afterlife's churning electronics that aligns them more specifically with the foreboding and melancholy sounds of Emeralds' classic album What Happened. Details, details.
Lazer sharpened vibrations and the sparkling percolations bring the amorphous ambience of the album's opening number "Cycles" into focus with rainy-day synthmuzik passages that persist across the first side of the album's dream-shot electronics. The second side of Celestial Habitat darkens the mood considerably, especially on the two sprawling last tracks "Paths Untouched" and "Until Eternity" whose deep growling bass tones threaten to fling the needle right off the turntable (well done on the vinyl cut, Hooker Vision!). The duo tops everything off with percolating step sequencers and plenty of deep-space arcs that peer through the Emeralds lens back towards Klaus Schulze in fine style. Limited to a mere 300 copies!
Analogue Bubblebath 4 originally appeared in 1994 under Richard D. James' acid damaged moniker AFX and marked the last in the AB series. The ep opens with a huge, rolling techno breakbeat whose machinist rigor bears similarities to James' rhythmic structure for the Aphex Twin single "On" and the Polygon Window track "Quoth", both of which were produced around the same time. In lieu of one of his mad-scientist melodies, Jame plants an overblown scream to punctuate the fourth measure of his rhythmic pulse. Back in the day, there were plenty of technohedz who weren't too keen on this track for its overt bloodcurdling vibe; although in comparison to the horror IDM excesses of Venetian Snares, Kid 606, and British Murder Boys, this hardly sounds like a transgressive number at all anymore. Solid nonetheless. James flushes out the remainder of the ep with comparatively more sensible, but deftly manufactured acid percolations over midtempo fractured breaks and plenty of bubbly ambience. Very nice to see this one back in print once again.
They got their start as a hippie commune band, with ties to Guru Guru, Tangerine Dream, and Amon Duul. Their debut, "Malesch" (Arabic for "it doesn't matter, take it easy"), is a true cosmic Krautrock classic, blending the spacey psych of Pink Floyd and fellow krautrockers Ash Ra Tempel and Popul Vuh with a flair for Eastern "exoticism". Plus, in the intertwining guitars, you'll find some hints of the American West Coast psych sound (yes, even a little Grateful Dead -- but don't let that scare you off). The album was recorded in 1972 not long after the band was sent on a tour of the Middle East by the Goethe Institute, and incorporates field recordings (decades before the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor!) from their trip: the bustle of Cairo streets, desert winds, calls to prayer, friendly airline pilots... These tapes are a key element of this record's appeal (along with their sheer talent for jamming and their synth and electronic experimentation). Oh, and some great Hammond organ sounds too. Basically, this is a fantastic album of mostly instrumental psych / drone / ethnic rock, that's generally mellow but powerful too. Whether to the Great Pyramids of Egypt (where the album cover was shot) or to inner space, "Malesch" portrays a true trip indeed. So recommended.
Third album from French post black metal instrumental kraut-psych occult rock trio Aluk Todolo, and third time Record Of The Week! We've just resigned ourselves to the fact, that every record from these guys is gonna blow our minds, and by extension, we imagine, yours as well. In the musical math that makes up many of the bands we love, the convoluted equation that resulted in Aluk Todolo is tough to beat. Featuring members of black metal horde Diamatregon (whose last two records were released on Andee's tUMULt label) and psych rock outfit Gunslingers, AT takes some elements from both of those groups, but also This Heat, Faust, Can, the Necks, Circle, Hawkwind, and Taj Mahal Travellers... They are most definitely sonic alchemists, as we've described them in every review so far, distilling all of these disparate sounds and influences into something all their own, and something that obviously pushes all our buttons.
This latest double disc takes everything we dug about them before, and somehow makes those things more, and better, given the space to stretch out, the songs become MORE epic, MORE intense, MORE tranced out, MORE heavy. There's 8 songs over 2 discs/lps and 2+ hours. Imagine a super charged Necks or Circle fused to the blaring psychedelic heaviosity of Psychic Paramount, and the furious grim buzz of some obscure black metal horde, the sounds repetitive and cyclical, hypnotic and mesmerizing, the opener here displaying their black metal roots, and just how those roots can be sculpted into something trance-y and droned out, while remaining pretty goddamn grim and blackened. Launching immediately into a fierce frenzied blast, all tremelo picking and blast beats, a churning, roiling single riff, overlaid with soaring minor key melodies, slipping easily from classic black metal blast to dense static mesmer and back again, until almost 4 minutes in when everything is swallowed up in a blast of whit noise, before the frenetic riffing tapers off, leaving just the bass and drums to churn frantically, beneath thick swirls of effects, only to gradually build back up, and during the last three minutes, unleash the sort of dense, brutal, buzzing black metal, most proper BM bands can barely pull off.
If that opening track is sort of the shot across the bow, the second track is when things get serious, slowing things down to a super distorted post-rock lope, the drums driving and the guitars thick and distorted, keening melodies, the Slint vibe looms large, before the band dial it down, and lock into a totally mesmerizing, dizzyingly dense roiling 'groove', that sounds like amped up Circle, grinding away hypnotically, peppered with occasional bursts of metallic crunch, and near black metal blowouts, always slipping right back into that mesmeric churn, the guitars impossibly distorted and fuzzed out, the bass super melodic, the sort of track you never want to end, slipping easily from progged out psychedelic buzz drenched tangle to warped noise rock minimalism and back again.
The rest of disc one finds AT dialing back the buzz and crunch, and weaving lush landscapes of woozy melody, and darkly driving hypnorock, the songs wreathed in keening feedback, moaning melodies, lush layered guitars, swaths of melodic jangle, of shimmering chiming harmonics, the sound drifting from minimal chugging dirge to loping psych rock meander, and from wild krautpsych blowout to swoonsome Slintish slither.
Disc two offers up 4 more sonic invocations, heavy on the noise rock, but dipping into super minimal minor key mesmer, low slung almost gothic sounding dirgery, the seriously Circle-like seventh track, that takes the sound of our favorite Finns, and douses it in clouds of shimmering noise, and freaked out freeform psychedelic shimmer, and finally, the record finishes off with an epic doom jam, the band pounding away malevolently, the bass distorted and blown out, shards of feedback everywhere, noisy and psychedelic and a bit chaotic, but all anchored to the unwavering rhythm section, the song gradually losing momentum, slowing way down, getting doomier and doomier and dirgier and dirgier, transformed into a slo-mo tarpit crawl, the riffing bleeding into long droned out tones, the sort of doom-noise creep that folks into Bunkur and Monarch and the like will flip over, but here it's more atmospheric, a heady doomic coda, the sound seeming to decay naturally, shedding layers along the way, until finally the drums go too, the record continuing to fade away, to drift heavenward, eventually dissolving into a cloud of feedback.
Like past Aluk Todolo releases, the sounds and songs here are so intense and hypnotic, heavy and heady, it's the rare sort of record that somehow appeals to metalheads and post rockers as much as experimentalists and avant gardists, a sound transcendent and tranced out, dense and sinister and somehow still strangely beautiful, and obviously well worth Record Of The Week honors for sure. And then some.
Fantastic three song 12" from Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi, a series of long form drones/ragas, the first a tribute to Henry Flynt, taking up all of side one, recorded live in Australia in 2009, and featuring just electric guitar and tamboura, both woven into a serious wall of sound. The tamboura unfurls a lush and lovely background shimmer, a softly undulating dronescape of thrum and rumble, over which Ambarchi lets loose his electric guitar, a wild, corroded, glitched out buzz, weirdly processed, seriously trippy, sounding almost like electronics, grinding and melodic, the sound dense and crumbling, slipping occasionally into a brittle noise drenched almost Appalachia, the whole thing noisy and caustic but that background drone somehow transforming the guitar noise into something hypnotic and tranced out.
The flipside starts off with another gorgeous bit of ur-drone, this one performed on 12 string acoustic guitar and sine wave generator, the result a dense insect like buzz, a luxurious metallic hum, hazy and hypnotic, impossibly lush and layered, the sounds in constant motion, a dizzying swirl of sound that is utterly entrancing. The final track is just electric guitar, and finds Ambarchi totally transforming the guitar into something that sounds like an electric bagpipe, reminding us of a more psychedelic Amps For Christ, the sound rumbling, and then splintering into keening feedback, weird fractured melodies, cascading out of clouds of abstract soft noise, all of this draped over a barely there distant hum, a looped shimmer that grounds the guitarnoise, and like the A side turns it into something hypnotic and mesmerizing.
Pressed at 45rpm, which sounds great, but dialed down to 33, it all sounds even more washed out and dronily murky.
The mad-scientist of electronica - Richard D James aka Aphex Twin - released I Care Because You Do in 1995; and now in 2012, that classic electronica album gets a 2lp reissue by way of the 1972 label, who also recently reissued Aphex's Selected Ambient Works Vol. Two on triple lp.
This album's single "Ventolin" stood as one of the more cantankerous tracks that RDJ had recorded to date. A harsh, tinnitus-inducing squeal permeates the sequencing of clunky rhythms and dum-dum melodies of that single thumbing its noise at everybody who took the whole Intelligent Dance Music thing way too seriously. At the time, the track was a blatant provocation, and after all these years, it still sticks out as a grotesque distortion, with the album moving somewhat like a palindrome around that track - progressing up to that nasty piece of electronics from more stately and subdued tracks before reversing course. One of the tracks that brackets "Ventolin" is the majestic "Icct Hedral" which spirals around an orchestration worked out by Phillip Glass for Aphex Twin, with James girding the cauldron of repetitive woodwinds and strings with his trademarked crunching breakbeats and phase-shifting parametric filter sweeps. The sweaty acid-breakcore track "Come On, You Slags!" is the other bookend to "Ventolin" with more introspective abstractions pooling on either side with plenty of counterpointing rhythmic complexities tossed in for good measure. It was on this record that the Aphex sense of humor - with its broad spectrum from the strange to the village idiot - first came into its own as a unique facet to Aphex Twin's vocabulary. So much of this work still sounds amazing after all these years, and it's also great to see this on vinyl again finally, too! (Even moreso since it seems the cd version has gone out of print.)
If Richard D. James had not made the Richard D. James LP there would probably not be Matmos, there would be no Hrvatski (although the electro-acoustic complexities that KF Whitman later produced might have still spilled out), and there would have definitely been no Kid 606. This record was released on Warp back in 1996 and was the crossover album between IDM and jungle, with the purists from the latter crying foul that Aphex Twin had ruined their party, while giving the former a whole new template of rhythms to mine, deform, and mutate with lightning quick precision. Still, what set this album apart from so many of its contemporaries was the adventurousness with form and the ability to maintain an emotively complex sense of melody. Where much of the more playful forms of electronica tends to get precious and saccharine really quickly, James' rounded basslines and idyllic synth arrangements on such tracks as "Fingerbig" or "To Cure A Weakling Child" spiralled deconstructed Amen breaks around the rhythmic architecture of the tracks, giving the replicants something celebratory to dance to.
But the standout tracks on the album still are the lead single "Boy/Girl Song", with its amazingly inventive tricknology sampling plucked strings molded into an utterly captivating synthesized harmony that propel still one of the most skittery and most dynamic drum 'n' bass numbers ever produced, and then there's "Milk Man" in which a deliberately snivelling James sings for the first time, with lyrics obsessing over the mammary glands of the neighborhood milk man. Ah, David Lynch would have been so proud! This album has been a staple here at Aquarius Records since its original release back in '96, and if you've not picked it up over the years, now's your chance to get this fantastic album on vinyl! Yay!!
Aphid Palisades is the Canadian duo of Ryan Connolly and Lee Tindall, offering up an obtuse and abstracted take on lo-fi kosmische dronescaping. Soft focused guitar and synth drones float out of the introduction of the first track, whose placid nature gradually gets consumed within dub-inflected echos of electrified skitter and murky ice-floes of erratic noise. The feral slump of the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon ethos girds the second track, with a half-melodic din of languid guitar noise that would make Michael Morley proud, with the general torpor of such sounds giving way to a radiant bloom of stratospheric arches from the guitars, synths, pedals, etc. The tape's B side is a side-long sparkle of Ashra / Popul Vuh atmospherics graced with subtle melodies and pastoral, yet stoned vibes. Another nice find from Hooker Vision!
Yet another record from this Australian soundscaper / dronologist (the fourth in the last year or so), and another fantastic collection of lush minimalism and field recording flecked mesmer. It had occurred to us before, but this new one in particular has us wondering how come so few folks seem to have heard of this guy, and why doesn't he have records on Editions Mego or Touch or any number of other labels who routinely put out stuff that's not nearly as good as this.
The 12 plus opener is the track that's had us smitten recently, with its haunting almost horror movie soundtrack melodic refrain, drifting over a surprisingly active backdrop of hiss and static, of barely there ghostly voices, and constantly shifting textures, a mysterious microscopic soundworld that most definitely rewards close listening, headphones required for the full effect, and that recurring theme, it's a perfect chunk of haunting cinematic electronic ambient minimalism, that once gain positions Berber Ox as something folks into Tim Hecker, Thomas Koner, Philip Jeck, Circle, Monos, Ora and the like, should be freaking out over.
The rest of the record is not nearly so lush and melodic, instead dipping into more caustic noise, blurred sheets of Merzbowian static smoothed into thick swaths of gristly ambience, or dark, ultra minimal landscapes of swirling murk, more buried voices, blurred broadcasts, a long stretch of haunting ambient drift, that sounds like a dubbed out stripped down version of the opener, slightly more sinister, and finally, the closer, which sounds like it was assembled from the sounds of bells, but those tolling chiming tones smeared into indistinct tonal blurs, overlapping, and pulsing subtly, like some sort of slow sonic tide, which is soon joined by a dense drone, and some distant percussive thumps, the whole thing seeming to melt into a warm, washed out thrum, droney, and druggy and dolorously dreamlike.
Gorgeous stuff as always, but act fast, cuz these are LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
OK, they're called BONGRIPPER. The record is called Satan Worshipping Doom. The song titles, and there are four of them, are as follows: "Hail", "Satan", "Worship", "Doom". Both the front and back covers are adorned with eye popping Bosch-ian paintings of weird goat headed demons and naked ladies, and flames and birds, and strange plants, and lots of wrong heads on wrong bodies, and flames, and demons, and well, you get the drift.
So one guess as to what this sounds like.
Epic, monstrous, big riff slo-mo satanic sludge doom heaviness from these Midwestern miscreants. We've been fans for a while, having dug their first few hippie hating outings, Hippie Killer, and Hate Ashbury (which featured killer cover art of a big set of hedge clippers about to snip the fingers off a hand making the peace sign), but this is the first one we could get in enough numbers to review / list. Which is a shame, cuz these guys rule. But at least now, with Satan Worshipping Doom, the rest of the world can finally revel in the epic downtuned riffage and filthy crusty pummel of these doomlords. And the best part? NO VOCALS. Yep, all instrumental, so if you hate the sort of hysterical shrieking, or can't stand the howling bellow, or are annoyed by the cookie monster gurgle, well, you're in luck, cuz this is ALL RIFFS, and nothing but, sludgey, doomy, Sabbathy, a little bit of swing, a little stonery, lurching, and lumbering, staggering and stumbling, pounding and pummeling. But the band do mix it up, adding some cool minimal leads, that almost sound more like vocals than guitars, what sounds like synths here and there, even some electronics, the sound and songs super dynamic, slipping from all out assault, to swoonsome droned out dirge, to Sabbathy Swing, to full bore glacial crush, to epic ultra doom trudge, but somehow, even sans vocals, these guys manage to keep it interesting, the songs catchy as hell, heavy and hateful, doomy and moody and sometimes a little melodic, but always fucking crushing and heavy as hell.
You shouldn't even need a list, but just in case, this is totally essential for anyone who digs The Body, Cough, Thou, Electric Wizard, Bong, Sleep, Bongzilla, Cavity, Church Of Misery, Om, Dopethrone, Eternal Elysium, Los Natas, Reverend Bizarre, Ufomammut, and all that sort of stonery, Sabbathy, doomy, sludgey, riffy heaviness...
We got a handful of super limited-run shirts from SF eco-terrorist, drum and dulcimer, one man black metal band Botanist, featuring the super striking cover art from his third album, Doom In Bloom, M.S. Waldron's depiction of the demon Azalea. It features the Botanist logo on the back. Printed on American Apparel shirts, black with a white print. Limited to 100 shirts total!
We got a handful of super limited-run shirts from SF eco-terrorist, drum and dulcimer, one man black metal band Botanist, featuring the super striking cover art from his third album, Doom In Bloom, M.S. Waldron's depiction of the demon Azalea. It features the Botanist logo on the back. Printed on American Apparel shirts, black with a white print. Limited to 100 shirts total!
We got a handful of super limited-run shirts from SF eco-terrorist, drum and dulcimer, one man black metal band Botanist, featuring the super striking cover art from his third album, Doom In Bloom, M.S. Waldron's depiction of the demon Azalea. It features the Botanist logo on the back. Printed on American Apparel shirts, black with a white print. Limited to 100 shirts total!
Oh yeah. '70s Turkish FUZZ rock in effect here, big time!! Knowing how much AQ customers LOVE the psychedelic Turkish tunes of decades past, this is a no-brainer. Buy it. Now. That is, if you like Edip Akbayram and Erkin Koray and all the others we've gone gaga over as the stack of such reissues gradually grows... These guys actually have membership links to all sorts of Istanbul rock stars, from Koray to Mogollar to Cem Karaca (whose early band Kardaslar we'd love to get a reissue of...). They were a pretty important band in the scene, on an underground level anyway.
The name Bunalim apparently means either Depression or Frustration in Turkish, fitting for a band hailing from a city, Istanbul, who defining mood is melancholy (according to Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk). You can hear both the energy of frustration and the sadness of depression in their music, which consists of blistering, Iron-Butterfly-heavy hard rockers mixed up with the style of traditional Anatolian folk dances and songs. Ballsy bombast and beautiful balladry both. And we're not kidding about Iron Butterfly -- one of the tracks here is a Turkish language cover of "Get Out Of My Life, Woman", a song (originally by Allen Toussaint, actually) that appeared on Iron Butterfly's first album, Heavy. Definitely it's the IB version that inspired Bunalim's rendition! Why so much "Bunalim" with these guys? Well it wasn't easy being a long-haired, underground rocker in that conservative society in those days! Plus even in the West there was much to make the youth feel worried and oppressed.
This disc collects their rare singles tracks (they never made an album) from 1970-'72, and captures them at their most raw and garagey, loud guitar rockin'. They definitely showcase a distinct, kick-ass Middle Eastern take on the acid rock sound of the day, and really what could sound better than that??
This cd reissue includes well-informed liner notes and lots of cool vintage photos in the cd booklet. Shadoks, keep 'em coming!
German band Camera definitely belong on the Bureau B label, who have brought us quite a few killer krautrock reissues over the years (including the recent Record Of The Week by Gunter Schickert). But - this isn't a reissue! Camera are a current krautrock outfit, apparently with predilection for performing impromptu shows in public locations, and this is their debut. A 3-piece based in Berlin, Camera are modern-day upholders of the krautrock aesthetic, heavily influenced by both Neu! and Harmonia especially. And in fact, they've earned the blessing of their heroes, having played live in collaboration with Michael Rother (Neu!, Harmonia, etc.) and Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia, etc.).
This debut recording features eight tracks of live-in-the-studio, semi-improvised, mostly instrumental jams that indeed "radiate" the classic krautrock vibe. The juggernaut of a first track, "E-Go", leaps out of the gate with an intense pulsating "motorik" beat and heavy waves of distortion, churning forth like something by aQ-faves Circle or Salvatore at their most krautrocky. Shifting moods, that's followed by "Villon", much softer and prettier, like one of Can's quieter moments. Then, on "Ausland", Camera whips up another energetic motorik groove. The next track, "Lynch", is the disc's longest, and finds Camera delving into some spaced-out, kosmiche synth serenity, laced with skittering beats and sinister, wind-swept electronics. But then, after eleven minutes, Camera are back to the amped-up throb with "Utopia Is", another juggernaut (after a bit of a slow-build, that is)...
And so it goes, the rest of the disc following suit, providing more quite authentic tick-tock motorik beats and shwooshing guitar/synth soundscapes like it's 1974 all over again. Krautrock fans will for sure hear echoes of a lot of the greats: Neu!, Can, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Harmonia, Agitation Free, La Dusseldorf, etc. And anyone into other kraut-loving bands of today, like Circle, Cave, Wooden Shjips, and Hills among 'em, should check this out forthwith. Truly, for any fan of hypno-rock bliss new or old, it's hard to find fault with Camera's worshipful, enthusiastic emulation of their krautrock forebears; if anything, there's something almost a little too perfect about this, in that a krautrock band from back in the day would probably have colored outside the lines a bit more, whereas Camera kinda plays it safer, sticking close to the motorik formula. But, they do it REALLY well and we're definitely digging it!
By the way, there is a vinyl version of this (which comes with a cd too) but our supplier was out this week; we should have more of that in again before our next list, though.
Brand new collaboration from Mr. Neil Campbell, he formerly of Astral Social Club, and fellow noisemaker/soundscaper Robert Horton. Typically in the past when we would review a Robert Horton record, we would list all the silly shit he plays, we won't do that here, but rest assured he still does (weevils, boot, etc.). The two open up the proceedings with a spaced out psychedelic dancefloor number that seems to find the duo exploring similar territory as Campbell has done on recent ASC releases, a cosmic electronica, all skeletal beats and looped layers. But we may have called it too soon, as the rest of the record is sort of all over the place, from glitched out electro-folk, to wild tangles of piano, from gnarled static and keening high end, to strange noise drenched house music (as if Our Love Will Destroy The World were DJing a rave), with chugging distorted guitars, truncated samples and strange vocal snippets, all woven into something stuttery and not at all groovy (and we mean that in a good way). The B side finishes off with a gorgeous bit of dizzying trip out that sounds a bit like a sped up Appalachia, as if Philip Jeck were spinning a handful of Fahey lps at 78rpm, woozy and warped and strangely mesmerizing.
Two of the three tracks on the B side find Horton and Campbell working their way back to the dancefloor, but it's the extended opener on side 2 that might be THEE jam here, starting out with a druggy beatscape, that gets blissed out into a hazy bit of kosmische shimmer, only to have the beat drift back to the surface, pulsing away just beneath the surface, a weirdly glistening bit of layered psychedelia, draped over a churning muted rhythm, so awesome, and while it's the longest track here, it still ends way too soon.
We can't be sure if this is something we actually heard from the band, or if we're just making it up, but really either way, true or not, it does paint a pretty good picture of the sprawling druggy psychedelic jamscapes of local space psych cosmonauts Carlton Melton - and it's that CM records are basically the product of a copious intake of various substances, before holing up in their geodesic dome / recording studio, to jam epically for hours on end, days sometimes, only later sifting through the reels of tape, and hours of bong-ed out headtrip cosmic heaviness. Could be true, should be true, probably is really, cuz how could sane and sober minds produce this sort of psych-bliss space-drone nirvana!?! Regardless of its provenance, we're just glad we're privy to another chunk of CM's heady heavy psychedelia.
This new record finds previous CM special guest John McBain, of the mighty Monster Magnet, seemingly signed on as a full on Melton (even though he's still listed as a special guest), as he's on every track here, and can only imagine that he helped push CM's sound into realms heavier and spacier. And indeed, that's what's going on here. Opener "Nor' Easter" is a brooding sprawl of lumbering dirgey dreamy heaviness, all thick swirls of tripped out shimmer, softly roiling riffage, lazy loping motorik krautrock-ish beat buried in the mix, spidery melodies and woozy washed out shred, woven into the heaving swells of warm lugubrious thrum and churning soft focus space rock crush.
The title track finds the band getting all new age-y, ditching drums, riffs, pretty much everything except warm woozy swirls of shimmery melody, slow shifting layered pulses, whirling, whooshing synths and sparkling glimmering FX, maybe the prettiest thing we've heard from these guys, all dreamlike and kosmische, a little soundtracky, lush and layered, total trip out bliss out.
"Space Treader" is another slow builder, all brooding and moody, thick swaths of buzz and fuzz, a slowly developing propulsive heft, and some Queen like (!) melodies/leads that infuse the track with a gorgeously super melodic vibe, those melodies soon mirrored by synth melodies, that push this track too in a much more kosmische direction, before devolving into a murkier bit of deconstructed riffing, and droned out slow fading FX flecked drift. The record proper finishes off with "Wingspan", which sonically sounds like the title track part two, a symphony of synths, all blurred and smeared over a barely there rhythm, and a loose framework of soft psychedelic grooves, more spidery melodies, and chiming harmonics, drifting in a starfield of synth swirl and bleary jangle, woozy and wonderfully tranced out.
The cd (and the download that accompanies the vinyl) includes two bonus tracks, two of the three tracks from the recent Smoke Drip 12" (good news for you cd nerds who missed out). The first track is the sprawling 22+ minute, originally side-long epic "Adrift", and the band spend the first few minutes just sort of, well, adrift, a simple motorik drumbeat, spidery tendrils of electric guitar, some sitar-like buzz, all wreathed in a swirling cloud of synth shimmer, it's the sort of hazy zoned out psych-drone mesmer that we can't get enough of, and we like to think the original was closer to 3 or 4 hours long, this being just the best 20 minutes, a totally tranced out hypnorock groove, that's druggy and dreamy, a slo-mo swagger that sounds like Hawkwind on tranquilizers, there doesn't even need to be any sort of build or explosive blown out climax, cuz once you're lost in these sounds, you're a willing celestial traveller, drifting on CM's beams of sonic light, headed for the heart of some black sun. But the band do crank it up, the guitars growing wilder near the end, and louder, but never letting totally loose, instead just slipping right back into the same mesmeric groove, and playing us out to the very end.
And then the second, "Smoke Drip" itself, which like much of Photos, ditches drums completely for a heady sprawl of psychedelic ambience, multiple guitars, synths and manipulated tapes, are let loose in a sun dappled spray of softly tangled melodies and smoldering buzz, abstract riffage and swoonsome swells of FX drenched thrum unwind into slithering sonic tendrils and lush layered psychdrone shimmer.
Ok, this is where cd people can stop reading, cuz that's all you get. But for you vinyl folks, at least for this first pressing, while they last, the record proper comes bundled with a whole bonus 12", with two extra tracks (30+ minutes total). The first is a remix from John McBain, of CM's "The One That Got Away", which strips down CM's sound, adds some programmed percussion, and over the course of 14 minutes, transforms the original into something WAY more druggy and trippy, the first few minutes, a lazy meander through a hazy landscape of melody and slowburn psych thrum, before the sound grows a bit more ominous, the buzz cranked up, the sounds smeared and blurry, the Spacemen 3 vibe HUGE, plenty of warped effects, swooping backwards melodies, processed stuttering melodies, muted murky riffage, all wreathed in a warm sun dappled gauze, the whole thing deliriously dreamy and druggy, and sorta makes us wish McBain would remix CM's whole catalog! The bonus 12"s finishes off with a live track from CM's recent trip to Roadburn in Holland, a 16 minute blowout of heavy, churning, retro-riffing, hard rocking, shred laced, bombastic bloozy hard psych, that KILLS.
The vinyl version with the bonus 12" is most definitely EXTREMELY limited, we're getting a bunch, but odds are those will fly out of here, so be prepared to settle for the single lp version when that time comes...
The latest from one of our favorite death metal outfits, who with every record, continue to both get better (and more fast and furious) and way more twisted, stretching way out beyond the usual death metal tropes, which is no surprise to us, as frontman Travis Ryan is a longtime aQ customer and has weird and wonderfully varied tastes, which seems to be seeping into their sound more and more.
Cattle Decapitation's death metal is about as fast and brutal as it gets, as in utterly inhuman, the speed and dexterity, the intricate arrangements, the furious shredding, and the jaw dropping drumming, all blur into a face melting heaviness, that somehow manages to be melodic at the same time, slipping into serious power metal territory here and there, and some kick ass classic metalisms once in a while, but for the most part grinding away frenziedly, every song rife with insane stop/starts, and all sorts of whatthefuck moments, whether it's the aforementioned power metal melodies, or the child's choir in one song (or maybe it's just processed vox, but still), rad stretches of heavily flanged grooviness (yep!), burst of chugging downtuned ultradoom, but the way that stuff is woven into their relentless onslaught, it's sort of mind blowing. This is like prog at 300rpm, a million parts, changes every few seconds, did we mention the clean heavy metal vocals, so weird, and so cool, and there's even a whole track, a stripped down brooding psychedelic drift, that's all strummed guitars, clean vocals, swirling drones, field recordings, the vibe is almost Alice In Chains / Deftones, and we love those bands so it's super rad to hear this darkly emotive slow jam, between two extended blasts of neck snapping tech metal crush. And that vibe actually extends to the other tracks that feature Ryan's clean vox. And his impossibly guttural bellow sometimes slips into a black metal shriek, which again gives the whole sound a different vibe.
Every time we listen to this, we're reminded how goddamn good these guys are, and at this point, if you were only gonna listen to one modern death metal band, we'd have to say it should absolutely be these guys, and Monolith Of Inhumanity is definitely their best, and most ambitious record yet. And even if death metal is not normally your bag, this shit is so fucking amazing, it might just change your mind.
In 1992, Richard James issued a handful of mysterious singles under the moniker Caustic Window, all the while maintaining his vangarde reinterpretations of UR acid trax and post-rave breakcore with occasional detours into chimingly playful melodies topping eerie drones and shuffling rhythms. Given the timeframe when these tracks were created, they have a lot more in common with the first chapter of the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume One. Caustic Window has often been sited as the most abrasive of the Aphex Twin side projects; and while there are some numbers which Alec Empire clearly used as a springboard for his Digital Hardcore ethos, there's plenty of lilting electronica for the Boards Of Canada crowd. Of course, all of the original Caustic Window singles disappeared very quickly, and reappeared about 10 years ago on the self-evidently titled album Compilation. That set went out of print, which brings us to the modern day where the Rephlex has reissued this material once again so that Richard D. James' electronic brilliance can continue to tickle our ears and rattle our bones.
Full length number two from these East Coast neo-folkies and like the previous record, it displays a sound that we don't immediately associate with Sacred Bones. Urgently strummed guitars, tribal drumming, horns, bellowed dramatic male vox, angelic female vocals, the vibe pagan and witchy, in our review of the other CoY we mention Comus, the Wicker Man soundtrack, and especially Death In June, this time around we might also add Circulus, and maybe even New Model Army, whose influence we hear throughout Love Will Prevail. The sound here is much more upbeat, the arrangements strident and almost rocking at times, definitely more melodic, the new wave element too is a bit more pronounced, but for every track like the opener "Man And Man's Ruin", which is downright poppy and displays shades of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, there's a track like "Garden Of Delights", that's much more brooding and downcast, in fact "Garden Of Delights" might be THEE jam here, the vox particularly vitriolic, the strummed guitar, pounding drums and bleating horns wreathed in a cloud of swirling psychedelic noise, it's pretty intense, and definitely super weird, almost has us wishing the whole record was like this, like some sort of acid folk power electronics. Then there's the final track which is SUPER poppy, trade in the super intense acoustic guitar strumming for some crunchy distortion and you'd have a sweet slab of noise pop, but instead, the horns swoop in, the vocals get all processed and twisted up, and suddenly that poppiness gets warped into something much darker and way more mysterious. Definitely an acquired taste, but one that we seem to have acquired a while ago. And we're guessing some of you may have too.
Full length number three from this fucked up Finn, a one man band called Dodkvlt, who we'd never heard until now, but holy shit is this stuff amazing. It's Finnish, so of course we were expecting it to be weird, and it does not disappoint, the first track, the sprawling 12 minute "Dark Void Architect" definitely lays all of Dodkvlt's warped experimental black metal cards on the table. After a sweeping orchestral opening, the song launches into a dense blast of frenzied blackness, churning and furious, only to then splinter into something much more minimal, all drums and acoustic guitars, over swoonsome moaning drones and what might be cellos, before chugging guitars transform the sound into some classic metal riffing, and some black metal demonik croaks, not to mention, some surprisingly melodic guitar harmonies, which return throughout, giving the sound a definitely proggy/classic metal vibe at times, a weird mix with the serious grim black buzz, but precisely what makes it so weird/good. Then after a wild bit of progged out blackness, the song explodes into something super mathed out and super melodic, before the piano comes in, and the song becomes a weird piano / bass driven dirge with weird bellowed vox and rubbery basslines (which will resurface later). The song ends with the symphonic elements from the opening resurfacing.
The rest of the record is equally twisted, balancing classic blasting black metal, with weirdo vox, super strange arrangements, unlikely sounds, from weird tripped out, heavily flanged psychedelic freakouts, to shuffling, almost funky balladic breakdowns, and from soaring string laden slow builds, to almost flamenco sounding interludes, but none of this weirdness would mean a thing, if they weren't balanced by some serious heaviness, and the thing is, the heavy parts here are fucking fierce, brutal blasting blackness, but when those parts get all tangled up with the twisted WTF elements (especially the weirdly funky bass), it only makes it that much better.
This isn't all that new (it came out last year, 2011) but we just heard it, as soon as we did, we knew we wanted to review it. It's the third full-length album from this Vienna-based band, who play what sounds like techno music LIVE, with all-analog 'rock' instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums - no computers, no sampling, no synthesis, no loops, no overdubs. Elektro Guzzi are probably not the only artists to think of doing this, but they're the first we've heard, and they do it really, really well! It's kind of amazing - listening to this, if you didn't know they were a live group of humans playing 'real' instruments, in a kind of reverse engineering of electronic dance music, you probably wouldn't ever guess. Their music is as rigid and repetitive as any techno made by machine� and yet, you might detect that there's something special about 'em, something more vital than most techno, an extra depth to the sound that could never come out of a laptop. Must be incredible to see/hear in person, 'cause it's so mesmerizing on disc. They play with all the discipline and precision of aQ faves The Necks, but in a different, though equally hypnotic, idiom. And, setting them further apart from more everyday techno, these ten tracks can often eventually build into blowouts wherein the rhythmic elements become dense enough to have rather more of a textural impact. Very impressive, everyone here agrees, including our resident techno DJ Matt. Now we'll have to get their other earlier albums too...
Perhaps you've already come across the cover of this album, it's one of those classic kitschy covers, two innocent looking teens, in cheesy white jumpsuits, unzipped in the front, with huge collars, one of the guys wielding a guitar, both looking pretty earnest and heartfelt. The record's called Dreamin' Wild, which is printed in bubbly red letters. We had seen this pop up on best/worst album covers lists forever, and like most everyone else, we had a chuckle and forgot all about it. But then we started hearing about this song called "Baby", most notably covered by weirdo outsider pop nerd Ariel Pink (the 12" of which we just got in today!), originally recorded by a couple kids named Donnie & Joe Emerson, and holy shit, we suddenly made the connection. We assumed the original version of "Baby" must suck, and Ariel Pink just took a crappy cheesy old song and weirded it up and made it warped and catchy, but instead, it turns out, the original just might be THEE coolest jam we'd heard in ages. Then we learned that Light In The Attic was gonna give this lost gem a proper reissue and we were pretty excited, even before we learned about the record's crazy backstory.
Apparently Donnie and Joe were raised in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Washington state, lived and worked on a farm, when their dad, after making them promise to focus on writing and recording original material, took a second mortgage out on the farm and built his sons a recording studio filled with amazing equipment, spending more than $100K! But that's not all, he also built them a THREE HUNDRED SEAT venue, complete with stage, ticket booth AND snack bar. As you might imagine, those 300 seats were never filled, and while the boys toiled diligently on their original music, even being featured in a local news special, all culminating in their dad paying to release the original version of this record, a selfless act that ended up causing the family to lose a significant amount of their farm when the record failed to sell. And thus, very little was heard from these boys, until now.
And while these days pretty much any old unknown record can be dug up and presented as some sort of lost treasure, very few deserve the accolades bestowed upon them, and even fewer fulfill the promise of crazy album covers and over the top backstories like Dreamin' Wild.
Really, just check out "Baby", somewhere between the sweet soulful shimmer of Shuggie Otis and the dreamy reverby pop of Roy Orbison, it's lush and lovely, the sort of mix tape killer that had we heard it before would definitely have featured prominently in past courtships. And while we're tempted to say, that it's worth the price of admission for that track alone, there's so much more to dig here, the wah guitar disco funk groove of "Feels Like The Sun", the classic rocking bass heavy buzz of "Good Time", the old school soulful smolder of "Give Me The Chance", the psychedelic yacht rock balladry of "My Heart" which manages to sound fantastically droney and druggy and dreamy, and makes it obvious just what had Ariel Pink so smitten. The record is rife with reverbed psychedelic guitars, lush vocal harmonies, ingenious arrangements, and some KILLER tunes, all cooked up by two teens in a basement studio on a farm in the middle of nowhere. So awesome!
Includes a massive booklet with extensive liner notes and tons of pix. And check out this mini-documentary on Donnie and Joe: http://vimeo.com/39424998#at=0
FYI vinyl lovers, this is on lp too, we've got a few but not enough to list, our supplier just happened to be out this week, but we should get some more soon!
Can't really tell you much about Etat Brut, other than the limited information provided by Sub Rosa. EB were an obscure industrial duo from Belgium operating between 1978 and 1983, with connections to the transgressive collective Club Moral and the Cabs-inspired Pseudo Code. Supposedly, both of the individuals in Etat Brut were named Phillipe and went on to become science teachers after leaving all of this junk, noise, and squalid rhythm behind. But that's all the information we could dig up, which is a bit disappointing, as we'd love to know more about these guys, we imagine Club Moral must have published something about the group in their Force Mental zine. Anyway, for those keen on the more brutal / guttural / abject side of industrial culture (e.g. TG's Second Annual Report, Factrix' Sheintot, or SPK's Leichenshrei), this is a very compelling document of primitive sound-demolition with an equally primitive approach to deconstructing music into its rawest elements - noise, rhythm, screams, more noise, and plenty of aggro / provocateur antics. The post-punk monochord basslines and drum machine anti-groove of "Homme Nus" is a compellingly bleak track of Frankensteinian proportions, where "Crash" conveys a dehumanized atmosphere through grim blorping electronics, musique concrete techniques, and cut-up dialogue that could very well allude to JG Ballard if only we understood French. Crumbling tape machinations, rhythms looped from shortwave radio beacons, fucked-up noise, and guttural vocalizations fill in the blanks, very prescient of what Atelecine is attempting to recreate nowadays and holding up very well against the better known projects we listed earlier.
The cd comes with two bonus tracks not found on the vinyl, btw.
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.)
Reissued on (180 gram) vinyl now too!
"Funky Junction are an exciting new group that has the pulse of today". All lovers of '70s classic rock & proto-metal, pay attention. This one's a bit of a curiosity, all right, but one that we'd been *very* curious about� Finally reissued, this obscure footnote to rock history: an album of Irish legends-to-be THIN LIZZY playing a bunch of DEEP PURPLE covers! Originally released on lp in 1973 by a budget label called Stereo Gold Award, this was what you'd call an 'exploitation' album, where a producer would get together a group of studio session musicians to try and capitalize on the success of a currently popular band, by putting out their own versions of said band's hits. In this case, it was none other than the young, not yet famous Thin Lizzy trio, who were recruited to record these Deep Purple tunes under a rather goofy pseudonym, 'round about the same time they made their Shades Of A Blue Orphanage album. But since Lizzy's husky-voiced frontman, bassist Phil Lynott, couldn't be expected to wail like Ian Gillan, they brought in the singer from another Dublin band, Elmer Fudd (that's the name of the band, not the singer!) who does a quite capable Gillian impression. Elmer Fudd's keyboardist also appears here, taking on the Jon Lord role. But for our purposes, the treat is getting to hear original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell and drummer Brian Downey rip it up in the roles of, respectively, Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Paice.
They romp through these burly Deep Purple hits: "Fireball", "Black Night", "Strange Kind Of Woman", "Hush" (itself a Joe South cover DP did), and "Speed King". But there's also a handful of originals on here too, mostly instrumental psych jams full of wild soloing - in fact, "Dan" is primarily a Hendrixian guitar solo. Good stuff. They were probably all improvised in the studio, though one's based on "The House Of The Rising Sun".
For fans of Deep Purple & Thin Lizzy, obviously, and also those into the likes of Hell Preachers, Inc., The Purple Fox, and other such exploito-artifacts. Pretty neat. Of course, we'd have liked to hear what Phil would have sounded like singing these songs, but it's understandable why he didn't. If only they knew then what we know now.
Funny, they really don't make exploitation albums like this anymore - or, well, maybe today's equivalent are all those string quartet covers albums, like the String Quartet Tribute To Radiohead, The String Quartet Tribute to Bjork, The String Quartet Tribute To Slayer, The String Quartet Tribute To Tool, and A Baroque Tribute To Rush (and by the way, some of those are kinda cool!).
Now, if only someone would reissue the German-language covers of The Sweet that the Scorpions once did�
Happy days for fans of Fushitsusha! Japanese guitarist and vocalist Keiji Haino's legendary "out-rock" unit is back in action, after a long hiatus. First, a few months back, in the spring, there was the unexpected appearance of a new Fushitsusha cd, Hikari To Nazukeyo, with Mitsuru Nasuno on bass and Ikuro Takahashi on drums. And now, already, before the fall, a follow up, from the same lineup, on the same label! (And that's not to mention the several other excellent Fushitsusha-like improv trio releases that Haino's done recently with drummer Oren Ambarchi and either Jim O'Rourke or Stephen O'Malley on bass.) Yep, happy days indeed. This new disc from Fushitsusha, Mabushii Itazura Na Inori, pretty much takes up where the previous one left off. It even looks quite similar, the digipack cover's color scheme a darker, bluer blue mottled with metallic silver. Beautiful. And again, it consists of several relatively short tracks, by Fushitsusha standards, six of them in 55 minutes.
The five minute plus opening cut is a moody, bass-heavy intro to the darkness of this disc, featuring haunting vocals from Haino that are far more gentle than his usual yelps can be� it reminds us a bit of the final track on the Nazoranai disc he did with Ambarchi and O'Malley. This one gets into a fantastic, deep, droning, monk-like moan-zone (with perhaps overdubs involved??) that makes what comes next seem even more striking and extreme - the second track on the disc being an eleven minute session of stark skronk. The rhythm section traffics in tumbling, disjointed skitter, underpinned by thumping thudding bass. Haino hovers close to the mic, unburdening his soul in sudden brief outbursts, accompanied by his scrabbling, stab-in-the-heart electric guitar-shards� it builds and builds with subtlety; initially the jarring blurts and blasts of distortion slice into and out of near silence, but eventually the elements come closer and closer together in a dense web of claustrophobic, controlled chaos. 'Tis tangled, tweaked, terror-inducing. Whew! And that's just track two, there's plenty more in store on the rest of the disc, following the same sort of hallucinatory, counter-intuitive "free rock" (that's more free, than rock) style, one that's seemingly all about attack and decay. Some of this is Fushitsusha at their most Starfuckers-ish, so abstract and intense and precise, all encompassing, indescribable, and a little bit insane. And it's emotionally effecting via the sheer sonics alone, without any Japanese-to-English translation of Haino's whisper-to-a-scream lyrics.
Once again, we won't overdo it with the exposition, 'cause you probably know if you want this (like, if you already own Hikari To Nazkeyo). The uninitiated, we won't expect to get into the unique avantgarde wonders of Haino & Fushitsusha via a $29 import disc - not when there's some other, more affordable entry points, just ask us. But fans, we've got what you want...
We really weren't too sure what to expect from this, the former drummer from Pennsylvania heavies Pearls & Brass gone country, which is nothing new really, plenty of rockers we dig have made solo records that were essentially country records, and it's not all that surprising that some dark introspective twang might lurk beneath much of the music we love. But what is new, is that this is not a 'dude with a guitar' country record, instead, it's more like 'a dude with a laptop, a drum machine and a sampler' country record! The twang here is often just implied, with the music a murky, swirling, layered loopscape of softly stuttering samples, but there's plenty of slippery lap steel, acoustic guitar and piano, all wreathed in electronic halos, drifting through lush expanses of softly reverbed electro-shimmer, the songs tethered to loping looped rhythms and shuffling programmed beats, the sounds washed out and shimmery, reminding us more of Magnetic Fields, Gibson's deep dramatic croon not all that far removed from Stephen Merritt's, in fact opener, "Bad Guys" definitely sounds like a countrified Magnetic Fields. "In The Beginning" adds some soulful vox, and Gibson ends up sounding more like Antony or Arthur Russell, and a looped vocal sample acts as background vox, a method used throughout the record, like on "Tiffany Lou" with what might just be a Jolie Holland vocal sample gets slowed down and looped, hip hop style into a murky chopped and screwed chorus.
Gibson often gets compared to James Blake, his approach to country similar to the Blake's take on soul music, but we might also mention Dirty Beaches' Elvis worshipping electro-rockabilly, which seems a much more apt reference, as Gibson's vocals definitely hew closer to the King a lot of the time, especially on tracks like "Lookin' Back on '99", which sounds like Elvis crooning along to a modernized version of some eighties TV theme, all hiss drenched chase scene propulsion, tense and cinematic. We also hear the influence of folks like John Maus and Ariel Pink, Gibson's sonic innovation similarly idiosyncratic, check out the title track, which closes the record which initially sounds like Portishead via Barry Adamson, but when the vocals come in becomes something more like James Ferraro collaborating with Ariel Pink on a theme for the next James Bond movie! Strange, dark, haunting stuff, a woozy, dreamily druggy late night electro-twang gem. Most definitely recommended for fans of Scott Walker, Arthur Russell, Magnetic Fields, James Blake, Dirty Beaches, Ariel Pink, & John Maus.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!
It took some of us a while to come around, but we eventually ended up digging Grizzly Bear's debut, Veckatimest, quite a bit - orchestral pop equal parts Van Dyke Parks and Elliott Smith, lush and lovely, impossibly catchy, dreamily dramatic. So we were definitely prepared to dig this new one, but we weren't necessarily prepared for THIS. Give the opening track a listen (the first sound sample below), and be as baffled by us by GB's new sound, and we mean baffled in a good way, a really good way, in place of their sweetly twee Pitchfork-y pop, is something downright PROGGY, dark and driving, they sound like some obscure Italian prog from the seventies, we hear a little Yes too, some Comus even, everything minor key and darkly tinged, intensely strummed acoustic guitars, the vocals reminding us of Terry Reid, the dense mix rife with blooping percolating synths, driven by bombastic drumming, the sounds stereo panned, swooping from speaker to speaker, there's even some seriously hard rocking fuzz drenched psych guitar, it's total modern retro trip out psychedelic prog. We're curious how fans of the last record will feel about this, but we can definitely tell you we're LOVING it. Sort of the way Malachai reimagined seventies proto metal and fuzzy psych rock, the sound here, at least in places, is equal parts obscure prog and acid folk, a bit modernized for sure, but that opener, wow.
Nothing else on the record is so overtly retro prog, but that vibe does ooze into the rest of the record, giving the whole thing a definite retro feel, the production, the arrangements, the songs, plenty of tripped out experimentation, dark drones, GB's dreamy pop does of course shine through in places, but for the most part, the feel is a bit more haunting and melancholic, and yeah, folky / proggy / sixties / seventies sounding, with some of the songs dipping into early Peter Gabriel and Genesis territory (just check out "What's Wrong"), and others unfurling as almost classic rock sounding ballads, but darkly psychedelic and dramatically brooding (check out the closer "Sun In Your Eyes"), which makes for a cool / strange balance for the overt pop that surfaces throughout. Awesome!
Rambunctious 2nd full-length here from these Pasadena, CA heshers, now on Metal Blade, whose rippin' retro rockin' sure as heck still worships Thin Lizzy and also, to a lesser extent, Motorhead. The twin guitar harmonies, the rollicking riffage, the gravely whiskey soaked vocals - yeah it's all about those two '70s proto-metal, partly punky gods, especially Lizzy. Though their influences don't stop there, of course� they do a decent NWOBHM gallop, and channel KISS catchiness and psychedelic Priest too; but not much after, say, 1980 makes it into the mix! And Gypsyhawk do it all damn well, kicking ass here with triumphant fervor, building on the promise of their debut which we also dug a lot. They've got the sound, and the songs, sheer good times for anyone who likes some '70s inspired, high energy hooky heaviness - though, we wonder if the closing cover of Rick Derringer's "Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo" isn't taking things a bit far�? Naw, they're just having fun, as will you. (Did the original version of that song have somebody yell "Smoke weed!" right before the lead break? Well if not, Gypsyhawk has rectified that oversight.)
Put this on, and sure you're probably gonna wanna follow it with some Lizzy, but not before you give the Gypsyhawk another few (or many!) spins. And it just begs for the volume to be cranked to ten or eleven. What else can we say? Really recommended for those who wanna rock! Especially fans of Thin Lizzy, Bible Of The Devil, Slough Feg, and heck that other AQ fave 'Hawk band, Freedom Hawk.
A while back we reviewed a mysterious lp that had just showed up in the mail one day. It was sort of tough not to notice, a plain black sleeve with an upside down cross, crafted from old twigs, affixed to the front. As we mentioned in that review, of Clint Heidorn's Atwater, we were expecting some super grim kvlt black metal, but instead were treated to some dark, haunting dronefolk, a gorgeous collection of minimal guitar ambience and field recording flecked abstract Appalachia.
So we were super excited to get this new release from Heidorn, an extremely limited tape, available in three formats, two of which we have, more on the third in a second, but first the music. The title is mostly a handful of numbers, obviously a latitude and longitude, the location of what we assume is the oak tree that the piece here is about, a tree near where Heidorn grew up, an anomaly in his suburban existence, and one that came to be symbolic of many things, most importantly of what the future might have held for a young Heidorn, but now, also as a place to return to, with Heidorn musically musing on having his ashes spread there, a return of sorts to a simpler time, to the beginning.
The sounds are appropriately wistful and melancholy, stately and darkly dreamy, somber acoustic guitar and fluttering woodwinds over a drifting drone, lots of reverb, hushed and minimal, a bit twangy, but also a little abstract, the sound intimate and loose, as if the musicians were set up right in front of you, just sort of improvising, unfurling a dark tapestry of thrum and skitter, of muted sputter and washed out shimmer, the sounds do eventually coalesce into something much more song-like, a washed out dreamily doomy dirge, driven by a simple pulse, female vocals joining the instruments for a gorgeously languid ebb and flow, a sweetly psychedelic coda, that then gives way to a hushed, haunting outro. So lovely.
The flipside of the tape contains a field recording captured at the titular oak tree, and is a strangely moving sonic analogue to Heidorn and Co.'s piece, the sounds of a neighborhood, of lives, of Heidorn's past, and perhaps future.
The packaging it equally lovely. There's a standard cassette version, limited to 154 copies, housed in a silkscreened cardboard case. There's a deluxe version, the cassette in a canvas bag, that bag along with six photographs, housed in a hand stained and silkscreened wooden box, along with oak leaves, that one limited to just 92 copies, of which we have very few. And finally, there IS a third version, and it's a doozy, which requires the listener to download a map, and dig up one of four copies, located near the Salton Sea, beside a 19th century cemetery outside Onyx, in the Los Padres National Forest and behind the abandoned cages of the old LA Zoo. For more info on those, go here: http://clintheidorn.blogspot.com.
The return of our favorite horror obsessed Finnish deathmetal doomlords, whose latest is another epic collection of sludgey blackened doom, filthy crusty riffage, echo drenched demonic cookie monster vokills, all woven into plodding psychedelic heaviness, with a classic, epic doom vibe, that definitely reminds us of the mighty Cathedral. And when we say death metal we're not talking the 'Tion's (as in Suffocation, Incantation, etc.), we're talking death OBSESSED metal, a death metal that's slowed way down to a doomy crawl, a creepy, downtuned chugging churn that sounds like classic death metal spinning at 16rpm, and few do it better (to our ears at least) than Hooded Menace, and while these guys are totally capable of thrashing and rocking out, they do spend the majority of their time stumbling zombie like, through fields of murky riffage and neanderthal drum pound. This is not knuckle dragging caveman doom though, these guys craft some serious SONGS, and lace these songs with killer melodies, mournful leads, just check out the end of the title track, total epic and emotional, but these guys are Finnish, and are called Hooded Menace, so a few seconds later, there's a cheesy clip from some old horror movie, before stumbling into the next stretch of grim death doom heaviness.
The production is massive, the sound crushing, there are melodies galore, there's even some Sabbathy swing to some of these tracks, and a definite psychedelic vibe, and the band do an awesome job of not just using movie samples as intros, like on "Evoken Vulgarity", a doomy chugfest that has a breakdown partway through, where the band slows down to a crawl, a swaggery slithery dirge, wrapped around a seriously creepy sample, which leads right into a killer psychedelic blowout, with some seriously shredding lead guitar. And then there's the outro, which could be a proper horror movie soundtrack, lacing harmonized guitars over another mysterious sample. The whole record finds the band deftly weaving horror movie ambience, and moody mood music into their hellish hookydeathdoomcrush, and the results are pretty fantastic.
(Note, it's also on cd of course, we're just low on 'em right now, but we should have more next week...)
We won't go into too much detail about this, as it's limited to just 200 copies, we got about 15, and can NOT get any more once they're gone, so if you want one, stop reading now and ADD TO CART! But if you're feeling daring, and are curious for a little more into, read on to find out more about this limited tape.
Two of the names will no doubt be familiar to most readers of the aQ list, blackened drone outfit Horseback, whose sound recently has shifted more toward a rhythmic post rock a la Skull Defekts, and of course, the unpronounceable Njiqahdda, whose twisted strain of (un) black metal we've been big fans of for a while now. Also included are Venowl and Cara Neir, both new to us, more on them in a second. Up first though are Horseback, whose sound continues to evolve, moving further away from the murky drone and black buzz of their early records, and sounds like it could have come right off of their Half Blood record. Rhythmic and hypnotic, bass and drum locked into a sort of hypnorock groove, laced with fluttering flutes, weird electronics, swirling shimmering melodies, when the guitar comes in, it's sort of washed out and droney, giving the track an almost Earth-like vive, the overall sound is like a super cyclical krautrock styled minimalism, with an epic second half, replete with those shrieked black metal vox. Great stuff, and definitely worth the price of admission all on its own. Njiqahdda fill up the rest of the A side with an epic multipart jam, that slips easily from softly psychedelic and melodic, all clean guitars and shimmering ambience, to churning intricate mathmetal, to doomic sludgey heaviness, to wildly convoluted progged out blackness and back again, with some cool (and surprising) clean vocals, the sound majestic and heavy as hell, and seriously epic.
Venowl start things off on the B side, offering up a stumbling super lo-fi doom/sludge sprawl, creeping and woozy, laced with anguished vocals (that slip into that weird sort of oinking pig vox, which here are terrifying), chaotic and in-the-red, total rehearsal space sound, but it suits their crusty creep, the drumming impossibly damaged and totally off kilter, the whole thing sounding on the verge of constant collapse, so super fractured and fucked up, like a sludge metal version of Dead Reptile Shrine, or Circle Of Ouroborus, which is definitely a good thing. Finally, Cara Neir finish things off with three short-ish tracks of blasting black metal, the sound appropriately brittle and buzzy, but weirdly melodic, the fast picked guitar unfurling some surprising catchiness throughout, at least on the first track, the other two tracks are much more grim, and dense and mathy, the sound gradually revealing itself as not your typical black metal, with all sorts of weird shit going on within their black buzz. Awesome stuff.
Again, this is LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! and we only have a handful, so act fast if you want one.
Been meaning to review this for a while now, the debut full length from Hubble, aka Ben Greenberg (Z's, Pygmy Shrews), who over these three longform pieces conjures up his own tranced out modern minimalism, which according to the label is "equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fired psychedelia", which really is a fair description.
The first track here "Nude Ghost", begins as a swirling tangle of guitar melodies, a warped take on Reich / Riley minimalist mesmer, and very quickly, the layered melodies grow more and more dense, the tangles more, well, tangled, the runs of notes faster, until it's a flurry of swirling notes, almost like a guitar version of Lubomyr Melnyk, the same sort of dizzying shimmer, and while we'd be perfectly happy to listen to this head spinning swirl for ten minutes, Greenberg, adds a bit of subtle percussion, and lets the loops shift and slow down, growing more melodic, and strangely more melancholy as well, and as the buried rhythm becomes more prominent, other elements begin to surface, swirls of high end shimmer, more abstract bits of percussion, all manner of drones, but instead of being a huge mess, those other sounds are employed subtly and judiciously, and the track remains utterly mesmerizing, even with the addition of what sounds like synth squelches, the whole thing manages to grow busier, and more dense, but continues to pulse hypnotically.
The second track, the 20+ minute "Glass Napkin", begins with a stretch of droned out shimmer, as some riffing begins to surface, soon the shimmer is gone completely, and we're left with this distorted looped riffage, which sort of reminds us of a more academic abstract Blackwolfgoat, the sound growing more metallic and a bit more shreddy, the sound shifting between muted riffage, and wild tangled boogie and back again, sounding a bit like a modern minimal classical piece composed for Mick Barr and Tetuzi Akiyama. And finally, the record finishes off with the sort of title track "Hubble's Hubble" which drapes looped guitar noodle over a hissy staticky drone, the sound darkening as the track progresses, the static in the background becoming a moaning low end, before nearing the record's end, the notes start to fly fast and furious again, coalescing into a celestial swirl that sounds like some sort of manic looped kosmische bliss out. So good!
Mysterious outsider songsmith (and former recluse) Jandek returns with Maze Of The Phantom, a new studio recording representing yet another reinvention in a career filled with surprises and no easy answers. It appears that the sheer energy accumulated during the past few years of fairly steady performances had a role in the creation of this double disc, which one can only imagine was captured live without overdubs. From the almost painful solitary nature of early solo Jandek records to the wild adventures of the first group recordings to the wide range of moods conjured on the live discs, the material here is some of the most harmonious and traditionally melodic material Jandek has yet produced, bringing to mind everything from Alice Coltrane to Harry Partch to Albert Ayler, as well as Jandek's recent Where Do You Go From Here.
This album is comprised of six lengthy untitled pieces and two rehearsals that feel right at home here. The songs feature harp, cello, flute, organ, some sparse percussion, and most notably, wordless female vocals that add a beautiful and mysterious element that makes it hard to imagine these songs being from any specific time or place. The traditional Jandek elements of discordant guitar and scattered, manic drumming are nowhere to be found within the musical dialogue, where the players all appear to be operating on the same cosmic vibration. The shimmering harp runs and warm flute seem to meld together as simple percussion creates more of a mood than any sort of particular rhythm. Occasional stabs of organ punctuate things here and there as the jazz influenced vocals give things an exotic feel that make Maze a nice companion piece to Om's recent Advaitic Songs. This one is sure to please longtime Jandek devotees and is no doubt beautiful enough to win over some new fans we would guess. A wonderful surprise and one of the most intriguing things we've heard in a while.
Mari Kalkun is a contemporary Estonian folk singer, who has taken up the task of resurrecting the early 20th century folk songs from her homeland, with many of her lyrics reworked from works by Estonian poets dating back to the 1920s. Kalkun was the artist who introduced us to the haunting singing quartet Utsiotso, a group that shares a similar influence and inspiration, in those selfsame early Estonian folk music traditions. That said, there's quite a lot we don't know about Estonian folk music; but from what she mentions about her own songwriting, Kalkun follows one particular strain - vaibakloppimine. This is a stripped down style for voice, minimal accompaniment, and a distinctive lack of drums, which presumably are prominent or at least present in other Estonian folk musics. In order to even attempt such a style, one has to have decent pipes; and Kalkun certainly has a beautiful voice, one that would bring to mind the empathic delivery of Chan Marshall. But with her minimalist arrangements for guitar, zither, or piano, the most obvious reference to us is Sibylle Baier. That should certainly register as high praise from aQuarius!
"Hommukuvalge" is a downright beautiful number gliding around the simple vocal and guitar melodies that evokes the carefree daydreaminess of a wander through a sun-flecked forest collecting mushrooms and blueberries (quite the common weekend excursion for Estonians!) Kalkun puts the words of Estonian poet Raimond Kolk to music on "Tuulo Kaen" with a blossoming accordion drone, fragile clusters of piano notes, and her full-throated, harmonious voice taking a rather dramatic turn at the chorus. Elsewhere she adopts lyrics from Tove Jansson's Moomin stories, which were allegorical children's books with fantastical creatures akin to a Scandinavian Dr. Seuss. This song "Koduvana Puhendus" eschews the bittersweetness of the rest of the album, with its Germanic oompa rhythm cast in soft focus and Kalkun's cascading trills that sound a lot like John Jacob Niles. All sung in Estonian, mind you; but Kalkun's ability to emote transcends languages, and she's crafted quite a gem of an album.
That's a great name for this blustery dronemuzak project from Denver, Colorado. As much as we would like for the band to operate as the ambient technicians for some mountain-man cult of doomspeakers and nay-sayers akin to Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal And Triumphant, the name was spawned as a drunken joke that belies the introspective atmospherics and smoke-n-mirror melancholy which oozes from their bank of pedals. A contemplative drone wafts from the collective's floorcore alchemy for guitars that blossoms into a dissonant crescendo of wintery noise sounding like a lo-fi version of Tim Hecker or Lawrence English. As the noise deflates back to a subtle ambient smear, one of the Pact wrangles with the mechanisms of a tape deck alongside some pixel-shifted noises that would make one think of Oval's skipping cd constructions given over to the Starving Weirdo's kitchen sink approach to stoned transcendence. On the second half the the 64 minute tape (thank you for not just settling for 15 or 20 minutes!), the Pact eschews the guitars for a freak-folk amalgam of bells and Finnish-inspired clatter that morphs into a balefully cinematic conclusion to the tape with deeply resonant loops that speaks to the expansive land in which these gentlemen live, as some sort of cracked, lugubrious reinterpretation of Arthur Honegger's early 20th Century symphonic ode to railroads and trains in Pacific 231. Another great find from Hooker Vision. Limited to 100 copies.
This long time AQ fave is NOW ON VINYL!! When this soundtrack first came out on compact disc, we made it a Record Of The Week, that was years and years ago, the cd is long out of print, so not only will fans of this great record who would like it on vinyl be happy, but we bet there's folks who haven't encountered it before who will be blown away. So very recommended.
Here's what we wrote about it back in 2004 when we made the Blast First Petite cd reissue a Record Of The Week, for the first time:
We weren't really sure what to expect with this one. A lost soundtrack from 1971 (a magic year for music, just ask Allan - though it turns out the music was recorded in 1969, also not a bad year) to a movie none of us had ever heard of, directed by and starring Peter Fonda. Could go either way. But the second we threw it on, we knew this was IT! A dark and languorous abstract country psych folk gem. Seriously. Hearing this for the first time, you'd be forgiven for guessing it was Scott Tuma, Souled American, Califone, Golden Hotel, Thuja, Woven Hand or some totally obscure cd-r on some little tiny label from some mysterious band of psychedelic country folk minstrels. Slow and mournful, delicate and dreamy, acoustic guitars, farfisa organs, harmonicas and an echoplex. Spare and skeletal, mini epics of melancholic twang. Imagine if Sergio Leone had Ennio Morricone assemble a band cobbled together from members of the Jewelled Antler Collective, the No Neck Blues Band and Souled American to score one of his Westerns. Definitely recommended if you dig any of the folks mentioned above (including Morricone). And if like most of us, you've been digging all sorts of those obscure so-called "new weird America" outfits, maybe it's about time we all dug into some "OLD weird America."
And by the way, now we HAVE seen the movie (it was re-released on dvd in 2006 or so) and it's GREAT! Not a feel-good hit though, or a typical Western shoot 'em up, at all. The soundtrack is perfect, for this beautiful film.
180 gram vinyl pressing, limited to 1000 hand-numbered copies.
Another new, EXTREMELY limited missive from soundscaper / noisemaker Thaniel Ion Lee, who here, over the course of 34 minutes, unfurls a gorgeous glimmering expanse of minimal drift, a smoldering landscape of slow shifting layers, of muted feedback, and hushed thrum. A softly swirling sprawl of deep resonant tones, and washed out chordal shimmer. The vibe is ethereal and dreamlike, almost Caretaker-ish at times, but way more minimal and abstract, lush tones and overtones drift through fields of disembodied shimmer, that at times sound like an orchestra string section, locked into a weird time loop, while at others, like smears of indistinct melodies bleeding over from another dimension, hearing only glimpses of the whole, the fragments all woven into a strangely otherworldly drone, rife with all manner of subtle sonic colorations, hushed and haunting and so lovely.
LIMITED TO ONLY 25 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered and with a unique hand painted cover.
Putain de merde!! '70s French noisy garage punk rock insanity here, courtesy of France's Born Bad label who know their shit (they brought us some early '60s French rock insanity not too long ago from Les Blousons Noirs, remember). We've been wanting to review this for a while too, finally got a few imports in on both cd and vinyl. It's an offical compilation of most what remains of the recorded legacy of these cult '77 era punks, named after psychiatrist and drug addiction treatment specialist Claude Olivenstein. They were worthy contemporaries of the great Metal Urbain, sounding totally killed by death. The 13 tracks here range from their killer singles to even rawer and wigger demos to live material, some of it previously unissued, rescued from dusty old cassette tapes and so forth. Like their countrymen and early '70s forefathers Rotomagus, they never made a full-length album - or rather, this is it, 30+ years later!
Savage, slashing stuff, the vocals en francias delivered with a snotty sneer, the rhythms chugging and cooking like rock 'n' roll should, guitar jangle mixing it up with some wild lashings of noisy fuzz and distortion. Crazy. Like certain other obscure '70s French faves we can think of (Angelface, Soggy) there's plenty of Stooges-y shake appeal here. Also, if Metal Urbain was in fact the French answer to the Sex Pistols, these guys were ready to back 'em up in a pinch. They also have a cute little doo-wop thing going too with the ironically sunshiney "La Nuit Tragique", while the groovy twang of "Olivenstein Je T'ai Dans Les Veines" (performed here live) reminds us of both Radio Birdman and The Stranglers. Oui oui, recommended! (Compact disc version comes enhanced with a QuickTime video of Les Olivensteins performing "Euthanasie" on TV.)
Longtime readers of the aQ list will no doubt remember our undying love for some thing / group / person called Lesser. If not have a look at the website and revel in our Lesser love. Heck, our own Andee even sports a Lesser tattoo. Briefly signed to Matador, and an auxiliary member of Matmos, Jay Lesser is responsible for some of our favorite weirdo electronica EVER, and yet, has always been about the most reluctant artist we can think of. Seemingly driven since day one to stop making music, yet, with every new thing we heard, we marveled at the amazing shit he could conjure up, whether it was wildly twisted drum and bass, or pure what the fuck experimentalism, few could rival his warped vision, and it's still a travesty that the world at large didn't embrace him the way we did. We like to think it was because it shit was just too weird, too next level, an opinion which seems to be furthered by this unexpected return.
While we assumed that Lesser was done, apparently, he got super interested in building his own synths, and this is the result, a pretty stellar chunk of heady, rhythmic electronic experimentalism that sounds so good, we're again wondering why the fuck Lesser isn't still making music on a regular basis, and why this is self-released, this would fit perfectly on Spectrum Spools or Ideologic Organ or Root Strata or Digitalis, and if any of the folks who run those labels are reading this, buy one of these and put out a fancy pants vinyl version.
Two sidelong sprawls that manage to be impossible varied, but somehow hold together as single epic pieces, beginning as a dizzyingly dubbed out field of percolations, the track soon mutates into, a thick chunk of crunchy beat heavy stutter, underpinned by woozy swooping low end, the sounds all crumbly and raw. Before too long the sound shifts again into a sort of super raw electro, all wild sonic squiggles and a beat constructed from squelches and static, the beats gradually fading into a murky minimalism, before blossoming into a strange sort of glimmering field of bleeps and bloops.
The second track/side starts off all minimal pulsations and dense chordal swells, laced with strangely soundtracky sonic filigree, before the beat drops and it becomes a strange sort of cinematic electro shuffle. Elsewhere, the sound grows serene, and becomes a dreamily melodic drift, all tinkling melodies and chiming tones, but wreathed in constantly swirling spaced out psychedelic synth squiggles, that soon gives way to some minimal squelch, before the track bursts into some seriously Perrey And Kingsley worthy bleep blorp playfulness, but edges with a slightly sinister undertone, before finally winding it up with a brief blast of primitive academic synth.
Christoph Heemann (of HNAS , Mirror, and many other storied tape music/drone outfits), finds himself in yet another collaboration, this time with none other than aQ faves, Chicago's blackened doom drone duo Locrian, and the results are fruitful to say the least. Albeit a bleak and black fruit, that the shiny and happy amongst you might be hesitant to taste. But then, there's much to enjoy, even for the less adventurous, in the moody drifting darkness conjured up here.
We see Locrian dialing back the harshness in favor of a more hushed and dreary post apocalyptic soundscapery. Opener "Hecatomb" starts with a creepily stark, almost Nitschian drone, complete with what sound like a cacophony of burbling horns, with disassociated fragments of 12 string guitar floating atop a heady haze of drifting textures. Part way through a lush drift of beautiful piano harmonies intermingle with a pulsating tom tom, while scraping doom-laden electronics lie buried beneath the surface, creating a haunting whirlpool of mesmeric aphotic bliss. The proceedings take a much grimmer turn with "Loathe The Light". As the title suggests, this is a dark one. Wonderfully depressive skeletal guitars outline the overall feeling of doomed helplessness. Scraping cymbals swell and clang and hiss, tortured blacked screams reverberate inside some long forgotten cavern. The mood is tense and forlorn and beautiful. "Edgeless City" has more of a lost in the cold depths of space vibe. Writhing guitar textures seep out across a barren moonscape, buzzing and dubbed out, it builds subtly into a spacious brooding stasis. A throbbing grumbling underpins the whole thing, a moody desolate soundtrack for impending end times. The last cut "The Drowned Forest" is a deep and murky miasma of death time vocal crooning and cold twisting drone harmonics, completely enveloping and angelic, like a much bleaker depressive Tim Hecker, the track as a whole developing into a churning lush hypnotizing swirl of glacial black drone. A stunning collaboration brought to us by the always ruling Handmade Birds imprint. RECOMMENDED!
Fyi, there's a cd version too, we have a handful, waiting to get more though...
Here's the third in the ongoing reissue campaign of the early works from Minnesota slowcore pioneers Low, 1996's The Curtain Hits The Cast. The first two records, the Kramer produced I Could Live In Hope and Long Division, recently reviewed here, introduced the band as purveyors of a gorgeous strand of minimal slowed down indie rock, glacial and meditative, haunting and hushed, and while certainly a sound other groups had explored, no one had reimagined it so completely, and made it so totally their own, to the point, where it's practically impossible at this point to hear a Low song and not immediately know it's Low. The instrumentation spare and sparse, simple shuffling rhythms, muted murky basslines, disembodied minor key jangle, all blurred and smeared into hazy, woozy, soporific drifts, over which gorgeous boy/girl harmonies unfurl dreamily, slipping from slo-mo dream-pop to something at times almost liturgical.
While those first two records most definitely benefitted from Kramer's blurred gauzy percussion, on Curtain, the band seem to have peeled away much of the fuzz and shimmer, revealing something delicate and crystalline underneath. The songs here creeping ominously one second, drifting lazily the next, the vocals much more intricate, with long drawn out harmonies, that often blur into hazy vocal drones, thee's even a hint of twang here and there, as if Low were purveyors of some lost folk music, all flickering shadows, and soft swirls of melody. Meditative and mesmerizing, in a perfect world this is the music kids would slow dance to, and the music that would play over the heartbreaking denouements of obscure art films, moving and emotional, and heartbreakingly beautiful slow motion indie rock balladry that still knows no equal.
This reissue includes two tracks which were originally only available on the original vinyl, and the cd version (sorry vinyl folks) also tacks on a WHOLE EXTRA DISC with five bonus tracks: B sides, alternate versions and more.
San Francisco-based artist and sound-scapist, Marc Manning delivers a new tape of beautiful feedback-drenched gloom rock dirges. Using what sounds like processed keyboards and guitars, the 5 pieces here range in duration from just under a minute to the side-long blackened interplanetary transmission, "Jupiter". And it covers just as much sonic terrain from weary sonambulent passages to narcoleptic synth-rock with buried vocals to galactic wails of noisy buzzing distortion. Heavy on the shoegaze vibe, but resulting in something much doomier, the pieces on this new tape also carry a quality of bleak prettiness, in that given the right volume we can be lulled to a lucid dreaming state of restless bliss through its dark majestic sojourn of sound. Limited to 50 copies, each one a red tape in a soft plastic case with a pasted unique handdrawn cover.
Jazzman strikes again, with another rad reissue of outsider jazz genius, this one in the form of Owen Marshall's 1975 album The Naked Truth (also the name of his band), a dizzyingly eclectic and totally far out psychedelic jazz freakout, equal parts droned out FX heavy experiments, lush spiritual jazz, twisted exotica and totally abstract psych-jazz weirdness, those various elements in constant flux, so even the prettiest parts are slightly twisted, and the most warped passages still somehow manage to be strangely lovely. Beyond the usual instrumentation, the record also features 'Hose-A-Phone', 'Tube-Phone', 'Boonet' and 'Ply-Tar', all instruments of Marshall's invention, all created, according to Marshall to "tap the very depths of his creative resources... to make music fun to play, and entertaining to listen to". And we'd have to say he succeeded big time.
The record opens with the far out psychedelic meditation of "Electric Flower", an abstract drift of squiggly electronics, keening high end tones, squeaking horns, and tripped out heavily effected vocals, all accompanied by more straight forward jazz horns, both meditative and totally far out. "Nana's Sleeping" gets a bit more dreamy and jazzy, just piano and saxophone, everything wreathed in reverb, the sound ethereal and drifty, which leads into the murky flute flecked funk of "Peanut Butter Ice Cream Man", groovy and dreamy, the sound weirdly blown out, giving it a strange abstract vibe. "Planet Funk" is a killer slab of jazz funk, sort of cinematic, like a lost cut from some amazing blaxploitation movie, while "Paper Man" introduces the "Tube-O-Phone", which plays the main melody, and sounds a bit like a dog's squeeze toy.
The rest of the record tends toward the spiritual jazz side of Marshall's sound, lush and lovely, at least until the closer "Ancient Astronauts", which bookends the record along with opener "Electric Flower", tripped out drifts of long tones, rumbling drones, strange abstract sounds, more of Marshall's invented instruments, super hypnotic, like some lost seventies psychedelic Eastern ur-drone. Fantastic!
The reissue tacks on a couple of bonus tracks, from a couple super rare 7"s, and sound like they could have been included on the record proper. "Grunt Uh-Uh-Uh" is a dark, brooding slow jam, slithery and sultry, the sound murky and washed out, the vibe dreamy and late night, and even though it's just a bonus track, it's one of our favorites on this reissue. And then there's "Evolove" which is all funky flute, Marshall's vocal grunts, the passionate groans of a female partner (?) and again has a serious jazz funk blaxploitation vibe. Killer stuff. Includes the a reproduction of the original sleeve notes, and includes all new liner notes as well.
Sutro Park continues to reissue some of the most vital blues sounds ever recorded with this amazing split featuring legends Fred McDowell and Furry Lewis. Anyone paying attention to the aQ site these last few years will have already seen and hopefully heard something from these two masters. The material here was recorded in the late 1960s after some of the original bluesmen began receiving belated and enthusiastic praise from new generations during the folk revival. Each set features intimate performances captured in the comfort of McDowell's and Lewis' homes in Como, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee respectively. Despite being in their 60s, both men crank out the classic, hardhitting blues they built their reputations on. Presented in a classy replica sleeve from the Biograph original, this one comes highly recommended as always.
The latest from aQ beloved psychedelic space rockers Mugstar is not a proper new album, but is instead a soundtrack to a film called Ad Marginem, Mugstar providing a brooding and moody score, their usual space-prog heaviness dialed back a bit, the group weaving lush landscapes of tribal drumming, and low slung riffage, a perfect match for the film, shot mostly in black and white, with dramatic burst of abstract color in the beginning, and at certain points throughout, Mugstar spend much of the record/film locked into a sort of hypnorock mesmer, that most fans of Circle will find immediately appealing, a single riff, looped and layered and repeated, while the group wreathes that main groove in subtle sonic colorations, the vibe is definitely post rock, or very minimal psych rock, the guitar slipping from jangle to muted chug, the drums driving and propulsive, but the whole thing tense and dramatic, a very slow build, swirling organs drifting in and out, Slint like minor key melodies, quite effective and intense, it's not until near the end of the first side, and obviously at an appropriate place in the film, that the band lets loose, exploding into a stretch of rollicking psych rock, laced with soaring leads, pounding drums, the sound fierce and heavy, before slipping right back into the more pensive sonic brooding.
The B side follows a similar pattern, spending most of its time in loping cyclical dirge mode, still minor key and moody, this time, near the films end, slipping into a long stretch of slow, hushed, near ambience, a drifty bit of psychedelic shimmer, brooding and ominous, until finally, the drums slowly creep in, the guitars build to a roar, the sound explodes into something more heavy and hypnotic, super intense and dramatic, a sort of space psych Godspeed moment, a noisy super intense sonic coda, as the film fades to black.
The film might be something you watch only once or twice, but like the best scores/soundtracks, Mugstar's music for Ad Marginem, even separated from the visuals, still sounds amazing, and essentially plays like a Mugstar record proper, albeit a slightly more mellow one, but fantastic nonetheless!
This NYC metal band, making their debut on Earache, have a name & logo that seems more appropriate for a bunch of tree-hugging pagan black metallers than what they are, in fact - throwback '80s style NWOBHM inspired earthdogs. And heck yeah, we like that brand of metal! Particularly in the USA, bands like Christian Mistress, Saviours, Dawnbringer, Hour Of 13, High Spirits and DarkBlack are bringing it back; add Natur to the pack. Unpretentious, but not entirely unambitious true heavy metal for the denim and leather, chips and beer crowd. Heavy and galloping with 'decent enough' clean (but not too clean) vocals; the guy's no Bruce Dickinson but he puts it across okay. We do hear some Hetfield in his yowl. While not especially original, they're quite competent, and there's a lot on this disc for old school lovin' metalheads to enjoy, such as the fact that they're doomily heavier sound-wise than almost all 'actual' NWOBHM bands back in the day. And they lean a little bit proggy in parts ("Spider Baby" even hints at Goblin, a bit, with some eerie keys).
The album is (for us) a grower, it took us a couple spins to really get hooked, maybe 'cause their songs are a bit more nuanced and sophisticated than we realized at first. But now we're off the fence and happily headbanging the way Natur intended!
If there was ever a band to masterfully manipulate the whole 'insanely limited release' thing, it's French duo Natural Snow Buildings, whose early releases were so limited, it's a wonder anyone even got to hear them, case in point, 2008's Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches, which was released as a triple cd-r in a run of just TWENTY TWO copies!! Over the last few years, many of those old NSB records have been getting reissued in much more reasonable editions, and while that sort of hype can often backfire, especially when way more people have heard OF your band, than actually heard it, every NSB release we get simple confirms what a remarkable duo they actually are, and what a shame it is that it's taken this long for more people to actually hear them.
It wouldn't be an NSB review without the 'limited release' rant, but now that we've got that out of the way, we can luxuriate in this fantastic collection of lush layered folkdrone psychedelia and ritualistic psychedelia soundscapery. Coercion is in fact the group's first proper domestic release, and thus might be the first many folks hear, and we have to say, you couldn't ask for a better introduction. Three discs, nearly three hours, six tracks, the shortest clocking in at 17:59, the longest at 57:47, which is exactly how NSB are meant to be experienced, their tracks epic, sprawling, lush and organic freeform explorations, guitars and percussion, woodwinds, bells and chimes, lovely vocals, all woven into something mesmerizingly transcendent.
There's definitely a sonic link, intentional or otherwise, to the Finnish forest folk we hold so dear, fans of groups like Avarus, Anaksimandros, Uton, Kemialliset Ystavat and the rest, will definitely discover kindred sonic spirits here, the foresty campfire vibe looms large, but NSB aren't afraid to take that muted minimalism, and let it blossom into something massive, gloriously lush and layered ur-drone tranceouts of the highest order, taking elements of Flying Saucer Attack, Astral Social Club and classic kosmische krautrock, and tangling it all together into something sublime and divine. While some tracks, like the record opener, "Kadja Bosou", are rhythmic and trancey, others, like the title track, are much noisier affairs, dense squalls of chaotic sound, reminiscent of Birchville Cat Motel or Our Love Will Destroy The World, but often foregoing the rhythmic component for something freer and more abstract, keening high end melodies, shards of heavily effected guitar howl, over a softly roiling backdrop of shimmer and thrum, the sound slipping easily from drifting loose and free to something more directed, tethered to a simple pulse, or some minimal percussion, but even then, the rhythms seem less an anchor, as a pulse, a loose demarcation, guiding the wild psychedelic swirls overhead.
Theirs is definitely a sound that's difficult to describe, especially on a record as vast and varied as Coercion, but somehow, each epic track, as different sonically as some of them are, manage to all sound like NSB, whether it's crumbing and noisy and atonal, or lush and layered and lovely, or driving and hypnotic and strangely propulsive, NSB imbue their sound with some ineffable sonic thread that runs not just through these songs, but through all of their songs.
This record (or perhaps more accurately, THESE recordS are) is an epic journey, one that requires patience, and perhaps headphones, to really get the full effect, the thought of a single three hour session might seem daunting, but these are the sorts of songs that suck you in, that are so easy to get lost in, truly psychedelic, and at times it's difficult not to fall into some sort of trance listening to this stuff, it's gorgeously zoned out, darkly melodic at times, almost purely textural at others, but always utterly mesmerizing, and some of the most unique and moving modern music you're likely to hear.
This is not actually brand new, it's from last year, but we've been doing our best to track down enough copies to list for ages now, and were finally able to get some direct from NEKRASOV HQ. And holy shit was it worth the wait. Nekrasov, the one man Aussie blacknoize wrecking crew who have long terrorized aQ with epic blasts of furious blackness, teamed up with Canadian black metal misanthropes Humiliation, for a seriously malformed chunk of audial evil. And while it's a split, it's also a partial collaboration, each band contributing three tracks, one of which has been augmented and fucked with by the other.
The proceedings begin with Nekrasov unfurling drifting clouds of muted murk, which give way to a barrage of blurred riffage, then blown out tumbling blast beats, all gnarled and blurred, weirdly pretty and washed out, Humiliation adding various sounds to the already dense racket. For the next two tracks, Nekrasov goes it alone, first the epic (and epically titled) "From Where I Sit The Sky Was Full Of Wrath And Ill Will", a sprawling 11 minutes of tangled spidery guitar melody, creeping droned out drift, hushed industrial ambience, ominous orchestral swells, harsh howled vokills, a brief blast of black metal crush, and then a tripped out squall of twisted effects drenched blackened noise. Finally, things finish off with a a super abstract final jam, all lumbering machine like lurch, rumbles and creaks, clatter and processed grinds and buzzes, eventually smoothing out into a deep subterranean sounding low end thrum.
The first Humiliation track begins as a haunting whirl of strange processed winds and voices, almost like some sort of EVP style field recording. Soon the voices become more pronounced, wreathed in effects, the ambience peppered with disembodied riffs, bits of chug, soaring bits of minor key melody, all suspended in a field of hiss and whir and buzz, eventually exploding into some seriously filthy and damaged black doom, harsh vokills, lo-fi drum damage, thick black chugs, a strange bit of Khanate-meets-Abruptum-meets-Burzum-meets-Wolf Eyes, a spaced out bit of grimness, eventually fading into a soft swirl of music box like melody and distant rumble, before exploding into the follow up, another chunk of lumbering hateful black stumble, which over the course of the next 8 minutes drifts from abject industrial pound, to tripped out Gnaw Their Tongues style almost orchestral minimal doom, to clattery creepy soundtracky ambience, to Swans like Teutonic pound, to almost dreamy otherworldly drift.
The final track, begins like another slab of industrial flecked doomic plod and crush, wreathed in a corrosive halo of crumbling distortion and malfunctioning effects, before the riffing drops out completely, leaving a roiling expanse of fractured feedback, strange samples, grinding scrape and howl, all wrapped in wildly explosive layers of blown out buzz.
More necessary Nekrasov, and something serious to whet your appetite for more fucked up filth from the mysterious Humiliation...
