Another barrage of new tapes from Ormolycka this week. And after barely being able to keep that Lil Ugly Mane tape in stock over the last few months (and before you ask, yeah, we're probably out of it AGAIN), we can only imagine this one, the debut from Bay Area rapper Antwon, is gonna be the new one folks will be freaking out over. Which makes sense, cuz holy shit is this good.
And this isn't any sort of home brewed lo-fi shit (although it probably is actually home brewed). No, the production is epic, each track handled by a different producer, so the sound is super varied, from buzz drenched super distorted raw big beat crunch, to looped soul sample swirl, to groovy, almost commercial sounding hip-pop, to new wavey retro-electro, with Antwon's super distinctive, sorta mush mouthed flow, raw and rough and rugged, closer to something like Death Grips than more mainstream hip hop, which makes sense since Ormolycka also did the Death Grips tape. But just check out the dirgey, noisy, crunchy "Laugh Now", with its loping beat, thick corrosive buzzing droned out chorus, complete with weird sorta moaned back up vocals, or "Sittin In Hell", which ditches all that noise for a woozy loopscape and some skittery stutter, or even "Living Every Dream" which has Pictureplane looping Suzanne Vega, slowed down and warbly. "Lap Of Luxury" is all glossy pop infused hip hop, shot through with out of place easy listening horns, and awesomely chaotic drum squalls bookending the washed out hazy dream poppy chorus. And then there's "Hidden Room" which is all percolating synths, and handclap electro. The whole record rules, and if there's any justice, all that blog/online hype that helped Kreayshawn, Lil B, Tyler The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and all the rest, blow up big time, will do the same for Antwon.
As always, sweet packaging, and also pretty dang limited.
As some of you probably realized, this Friday (today) was a Black Friday 'Record Store Day', which is a sort of mini-RSD, to hold everybody over until the real deal actual RSD in the Spring. A much smaller batch of special releases on BFRSD, but a few things we were pretty excited about, and some of those, we even managed to get a bunch of, so our faithful mailorder customers without a local record store to call their own, could still nab a copy, like this one, a limited split 7" between Japanese heavy rockers & longtime aQ faves Boris, and US shoegaze blisspoppers Asobi Seksu, each band covering the other.
The A side finds Asobi Seksu taking on Boris' "Farewell" from their record Pink. And in the hands of AS, it's transformed into an ethereal swirl of soft focus electro-pop shimmer, soaring and sweetly melodic, female vocals drifting over a lush layered backdrop, all anchored by some stuttery glitchy beats, the sounds building slowly to a full on MBV worthy psychedelic shoegace coda, before slipping back into a hazy vocal/synth dreamlike drift.
On the flipside, Boris take Asobi Seksu's "New Years", retitle it "Neu Years", and proceed to unfurl a heady sprawl of modern electronic flecked indie pop crunch, the sound super polished and sounding like something you might even hear on the radio, with Wata's angelic voice floating atop big booming drums, and soft streaks of choral shimmer, the whole thing rife with strange effects and studio production weirdness, culminating in a cool backwards psychedelic breakdown, before a final burst of exuberant electro indie pop bombast.
Both bands masterfully re-imagine the music of the other, and is revealing that for two bands with dramatically divergent fanbases, and very distinctive singular sounds, they they aren't so different after all!
The latest from this avant/industrial/experimental/noise trio finds the group operating without their most famous member, porn star Sasha Grey, who seems to have sat this one out, this one being a strange, but sonically compelling score to a recent English/German sci-fi film, for which the group used just the script, and the existing footage at the time, to craft their soundtrack. Having not seen the film, it's difficult to say how these tracks work in that context, we can say from a purely sonic perspective, those limitations did little to hinder the process, as these tracks are all pretty fantastic, dense, and sinister, heavily textured and darkly atmospheric, thick grinding, gurgling synth drones give way to minimal murky rhythms, very ambient and atmospheric, it is a score after all, but the group fill up much of that spaced with thick swirls of looped synth, clouds of abstract effects, woozy streaks of chordal shimmer, dubbed out production, low slung basslines buried in the murk, much of the sound washed out in an almost shoegazey haze, while some tracks are stripped down and minimal, spaced out electro dub rhythms driving weird sonic ripples and hushed gristly buzz. Some tracks are more overtly musical than others, drifting from a sort of new wave murk, to pulsing minimal synthscapes, and from gauzy kosmische drift to almost orchestral sounds moodiness. While much of the soundtrack is more concerned with mood, thus it ends up being about texture and tension, the group particularly adept at creating gorgeous swaths of sound, be it garbled voices, buzzing synths, or looped bell like rhythms, we can only imagine the strange sort of images that must accompany these sounds.
Limited to 500 copies! Pressed on transparent green vinyl. Includes a printed insert, and a download coupon as well!
Record number two from this collaboration between members of the Woods and the Vivian Girls, and like their debut, it again sounds exactly like the membership might lead you to believe, at least at first: twangy jangly pop, sweet boy/girl vocals, fuzzy and hooky, girl group classic pop smithery mixed with more modern/retro garage-iness, definitely falling squarely into that 'Woodsist' sound, which obviously makes sense. But the interesting thing about Our House On The Hill, is that after a few songs in the beginning, especially "Slow Walkin'", which is a dead ringer for Best Coast, the influences become less obvious; as the record progresses, the songs darken, and become much more interesting, the melodies more minor, the sound more tense and complex, still classically poppy, but definitely more charged and hauntingly psychedelic. In fact those first two tracks seem light and fluffy in comparison to the rest of the record, which is hitting us hard, the way the most recent Woods record did. "Mess Me Around", is a dark pop gem, with some sinister lyrics, cool dueling multiple guitar lines, drawled vox, the vibe insistent and propulsive, and a killer chorus. "Get Lost" too, cranks up the psychedelic vibe, with swirling squalls of psych guitar, and wraps ghostly female vocals around the chorus, and again it's gorgeously dark and driving, and so it goes, the whole record unwinding, like some ultra personal, minor key jangle pop classic, laced with lots of ooooh's and aaaah's, hooks galore, some of the tracks ghostly and folky, stripped down and skeletal, even the occasional lap steel, and some lush and lovely strings, and while there are moments throughout that drift closer to that opening salvo, the bulk of the record is a much more shadowy, and dreamily dark. Great stuff!
There are very few bands from the past, whose reemergence has the potential to get pretty much everybody at aQ freaked out, but legendary NZ shoegaze noise rockers Bailterspace are definitely one of 'em. Their record Robot World still ranks among our all time faves, and over their decade plus lifespan, they pretty much never made a bad record. Featuring members of the Gordons, the Clean, the Terminals and the Pin Group, Bailterspace took the noisy experimental rock of Sonic Youth, and molded it into something unique to themselves, creating a sort of woozy, washed out heaviness, a heaviness that had people describing them as one of the loudest bands ever. But it definitely wasn't just about volume, BS were masters of texture and tone, taking super catchy melodies and stretching them way out into tranced out expanses of mesmerizing hypnorock blissout. Moody and melodic, minimal arrangements wedded to maximal volume, yielded a sound that was visceral and intense, yet somehow weirdly dreamlike. Super catchy stripped down minimal indie rock jangle pop, but cranked up, stretched way out, and doused in distortion and a My Bloody Valentine like sonic haze.
While there was a greatest hits released in 2004, the band remained on hiatus until a surprise show in 2008 in NYC, which in the days of old bands reuniting, wasn't a huge surprise, but a new record most definitely was. And while it's been close to 15 years since the band's last proper record, Stroboscope definitely finds the band in excellent form, the record sounding like it could have easily come out a decade ago, the music gorgeously woozy, the guitars angular and atonal, but sculpted into lush blown out swells, the vocals deep and dramatic, the drumming buried in the mix, a sort of noiserock slowcore, at least on the opener "Things That We Found", woozy and druggy, droney and dirgey, the sort of thing that should have Wooden Shjips fans who have yet to discover the joys of Bailterspace, flipping their shit big time.
The title track shrugs off some of the murk, the guitars sharper and more crunchy, but otherwise, the sound laid back and washed out, thick seasick basslines wrapped around acoustic guitar strum, and big crashing electric guitar chords, the vocals all but lost in the swirl and shimmer. "Blue Star" sounds like Dinosaur Jr after a heaping dose of thorazine, similarly whiny vocals the guitars blown out and psychedelic, and then "Polarize" lets the drum drive things, the muted guitar strum draped over wheezing organs, the whole thing blurry and bleary, the vox a weary drawl, the whole thing laced with jagged streaks of feedback, and then there's "No Sense" which is hugely dramatic, the vocals howled and crooned, over a super stripped down jangly noise pop, before "Meeting Place" gets all modern noisy new wavey, reminding us that whether they realize it or not, a ton of new bands owe these guys royalties big time.
And so it goes. The whole record oozing that classic nineties sound, equal parts NZ and the US indie underground, but distinctly Bailterspace, and another record to add to their perfect streak. And while Robot World remains our favorite, this is definitely a good starting point, and odds are it will lead to an obsessive quest to track down the rest of the catalog!
More teched-out uber-complex instru-metal madness from this celebrated math-metal unit, at last! Technically (and these guys are technical all right) this is only their 2nd full-length album, though they have released several densely-packed eps as well. But this is their first release in several years, following 2007's Skullgrid, about which we said: "chock full of their usual blazing fast fretboard acrobatics (on instruments with WAY more strings than most guitarists would want to contend with) and blasting superprogalistic complexpialidocious drumming."
Well, after all these years, things haven't changed much in the BTA camp, except that they have the infamous Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, Hatewave, Burmese, etc.) on drums now, making 'em even scarier! He's the newest crazed cog in the chaotic clockwork of this trio, also featuring guitarist Mike Lerner (Direwolf) and Warr guitar maestro Colin Marston (who is also a member of technical black metal maniacs Krallice, alongside Mick Barr).
So, slap this on, stand back, and prepare to be both blasted and boggled, via such dense, deathly, demented ditties as "Monolithic Destractions" and "Putrefucktion"... For fans of Electro Quarterstaff, Krallice, Melt-Banana, Meshuggah...
We're gonna do this review in 2 entirely separate parts:
FIRST, for folks already fans of this kickass Chicago-based old school metal squad (perhaps on account of our previous rave reviews), hell it's a new album from 'em, after four years a fine follow up to 2008's rulin' Freedom Metal - 'nuff said, you know you need it!
SECOND, if like a lot of folks, you're not familiar with the inexplicably underrated BOTD... well maybe you're into another band of shredders, from here in SF, The Saviours? They're pretty durn popular, and we love 'em too (their reviews on our site should attest to that), but we've always wondered why BOTD weren't at least as successful, 'cause, not to take anything away from The Saviours, BOTD are even better. Both bands play heavy, riffy '70s/'80s inspired, but sorta punked up metal, with tons o' twin guitar action - and with both bands, the vocals are the weak link. While the singing is superior in BOTD's case, let's say that their gravelly vocals still aren't the greatest, with more attitude than aptitude, but do get the job done. Besides, they sure do come up with catchy choruses, so that YOU can (and will) sing along, and see if you can do better! The backing vox whoah-oh-oh style stuff has become a BOTD hallmark all right, so they're doing the best with what they got.
But anyway, it's in the guitar dep't where these boys shine. And shine they do, here, there and everywhere. The guitarwork is jaunty and jubilant, with plenty of nods to what's gotta be one of their biggest influences, Thin Lizzy. Yep, as always, we're hearing a lotta Lizzy... NWOBHM too of course... and also some Led Zeppish funkiness on the track "Raw & Order". BOTD are the heirs to a lot of classic rock and metal moves that few bands today do as well as they do, or even do at all. Mention should also be made of the surprise horn section in the middle of "I Know What Is Right (In The Night)", nice!
The rough n' ready production job points up something else you should know about these guys - they're a great live band, go see 'em if you get the chance. Drunken air guitaring will be your fate... very likely too even if you just listen to this at home.
Recommended especially, as indicated, to fans of The Saviours and Thin Lizzy, also to fans of the likes of High Spirits, Gypsyhawk, Danava, and occasional partners-in-crime Slough Feg...
Latest slab of tripped out fuzzy garage punk from Down Under, and another dizzying blur of primal rhythmic thump, woozy synth swirl, distorto guitar crunch, the opening track "Acting Strange" might be our favorite (and most rocking) Blank Realm jam yet, with super distorted angular guitars, weird speaking-in-tongues vocals, tribal drum pound, and a super heavy blown out garage psych squall of a chorus, the song seeming to grow more unhinged by the minute, the sound more atonal and warped, like the sound was run through a funhouse mirror. So we were sort of expecting this to be the most noisy and psychedelic and rocking record yet, but the second track strips things way down, into a sort of Best Coast by way of Velvets sort of lazy reverb drenched jangle pop sprawl, driven by a sinewy bass line and super stripped down Mo Tucker style drumming. And then track number three sort of fuses the two, poppy jangle and garagey pound, woven into a sort of Sonic Youth sounding slab of garage psych.
The rest of the record tends toward the druggy and stripped down, especially the fantastically murky psych ballad title track, woozy and wasted, but in between, the band deliver another rocker like the opener ("Pendulum Swing"), heavy on the synth with a definite new wave vibe, and the kick ass two part "The Crackle", the first part, distorted and dirgey, blown out bass buzz and snarly girl vox, atonal and a little bit synth wavey, while the second part, pours on the reverb and the drifty guitar shimmer, unfurling a super washed out, spacey sprawl of unhinged psychedelia.
Another super recommended chunk of killer psychedelic spaced out garage pop weirdness, comes with a download coupon to boot!
One of FIVE new releases on Ormolycka, and another contender for most fucked up and confusional, which by now, having been exposed to the mutated musical gene pool that produces these warped and wonderful tapes, you know that means a lot. A sort of damaged DJ collage, BT is all primitive analog lo-fi hip hop loopscapes, but with little regard for groove, or beat, instead, it's like if one of the guys in Faxed Head did a solo electronic record. Plunderphonic weirdness galore, mutated samples, the tape physically being stopped and primitively scratched, synths that buzz and burble, snippets and sample colliding and then crumbling, the various random chunks of sounds loosely organized into some sort of stumbling downer funk, like a brain damaged DJ Shadow, Dubs Absoludicrous is like a caveman Endtroducing, made with boom boxes, a broken 4 track, and a handful of old tapes, woozy, druggy, fractured and freaky, our favorite part is when all the beats seem to ooze into one billowy black mass, and then transform into a lurching low end thrum, squelchy and blurpy, a synth bass slowed down and captured on tape, while the tape is just dragged back and forth over the tape head, weirdly hypnotic and rib cage rattlingly dense.
Fucked and fantastic, and peep the awesome photo inside, of a corpsepainted metalhead sitting in an old faded grandma chair, watching a tiny red TV in his crappy apartment! Six different covers!
The second single in The Bug's (aka Kevin Martin, from God, Techno Animal, Ice, King Midas Sound, etc.) new Acid Ragga series/label, the first so limited, that we were never able to get enough of to list. And like that one, this is a killer, the sound fierce and furious, and like the name of the series lets on, this is indeed "acid ragga": big pulsing ragga beats, wreathed in a cloud of skittery snares, acid-y synth squelches, thick fuzzed out basslines, and on the A side, Daddy Freddy toasting over the top. Fans of the Bug will be in heaven, fierce and furious and funky as fuck.
The flipside offers up a similarly sonic template, wild swirls of insectoid snare fills, flitting constantly around that loping raga groove, more buzzy bass and super distorted synth squelch, Miss Red providing the vocals this time, her delivery, sassy and swaggery, a perfect match for the music underneath, both sides booming sound system killers, that we find ourselves listening to over and over, hankering for more more more!
Super swank packaging, yellow and blue printed silver reflective sleeves, pressed on yellow vinyl and if the first 7" is anything to go by, this one too is likely VERY LIMITED.
Our pal Jason's Ormolycka label is home to all sorts of warped electronic music, from Southern hip hop, to lo-fy synth pop, to total summer jam radio pop, to woozy witch house to THIS, a glorious blast of super distorted blown out, boomin' system, big beat bumping Miami Bass music, but constructed entirely from samples of Middle Eastern music!! It's so nuts, but so amazing, Middle Eastern folk music, Bollywood loops, chants and prayers and all sorts of unlikely sounds wedded to booty shaking beats, nasty rapping, female call and response vox, it's like 2 Live Crew if they did a record for Sublime Frequencies, total what the fuck GENIUS. This is most definitely what we'll be blasting next time we're driving down the coast with the top down and the bass BOOMIN'!!
One man folk outfit, The Cairo Gang, gets his solo vinyl debut on local label Empty Cellar and it's quite beautifully melancholic and intimate. We've been familiar with singer songwriter Emmet Kelly's work for awhile now, especially his collaborations with Bonnie Prince Billy where he managed to take Oldham's recent maximal ambitions back to the spare economy of his work as Palace Brothers. Like another Will Oldham release we favor above most of the others, Master and Everyone, The Corner Man is a spare and close set of tracks that has lovely British folk lyrical qualities with guitars, pedal steel and soft thumping drums. Kelly's clear resonant tones lay out wistful moods of impermanence and a weary knowing regret. On the Corner Man, The Cairo Gang's sound has become fully realized, and it's a thing of beauty indeed.
Comes with download card!
Death Waltz does it again. This amazing new soundtrack vinyl reissue label resurrects another John Carpenter classic, 1987's Prince Of Darkness, a trippy horror movie about the discover of an 'anti-god' in a strange vial of green liquid, there's messages sent through time, tachyons, MATH. It's a doozy, and the soundtrack is pretty much perfect. Carpenter once again teams up with Alan Howarth, the two having collaborated on the soundtracks for Halloween II and III, Escape From New York, They Live and loads more, and the sounds here will be immediately familiar to fans of those other soundtracks, even if they've never seen Prince Of Darkness. The opening is classic Carpenter/Howarth, a whipping wind beneath a dark sinister bassline, just a handful of notes, sort of like the beginning of an eighties rock song, but instead of breaking into a song proper, those notes just loop ominously, over and over and over, underpinning a haunting six note refrain, the sort of thing Carpenter and Howarth are masters of crafting, evocative and haunting, an earworm on par with the Halloween theme. Other abstract sounds swirl around the theme, muted pulses, distant drones, haunting choir like vocals. And the interesting thing about this soundtrack, moreso than any of Carpenter's others, is that all of the tracks here are essentially variations of that single theme, that bassline, and that melody, resurfacing in multiple incarnations, some lush and almost symphonic, others spare and nearly silent, hushed and harrowing, and still others, pounding and sinister and a little bit new wave sounding.
The majority of the second side is taken up by "The Devil Awakens", which stretches the preceding sounds way out, into a grim, sprawl of spectral drift, lots of drifting drones and abstract ambience, punctuated with strangely out of place horns, mysterious voices, that melody hidden just beneath the surface, very tense, and darkly ominous. So great!
And as with all Death Waltz stuff, the packaging is fantastic, that immediately recognizable red black and blue cover, with a super striking new painting, a strange figure with beams of light shooting into a black sky, the title in a pool of blood red, multiple eclipses, and some scary figures lurking in the background, that same painting is reproduced on the big poster included inside. The back of the jacket features liner notes from Howarth, while the inside sleeve features notes on the cover painting from artist Sam Smith. And as you might have suspected, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!
Also back in stock...
Yet another release from our pal Jason's amazing and weird as fuck Ormolycka tape label (along with two others on this week's list), this one weird for an entirely different reason. Sort of.
Where most of the Ormolycka tapes hover WAY out on the periphery of popular culture, as in seriously underground, bizarre, challenging, confusional, noisy, chaotic, each with a hefty helping of WTF going on, well, for fans of the label, this might end up being the most WTF of all.
Cooper was maybe best known as the singer for the Passionistas, but since that band hung it up, he has struck out on his own, we reviewed his debut 7" a while back, and the jams here are not that far removed, sunshiney, sugary electro /techno pop, cheesy house music grooves, drum machine driven new wave, synthy, swirly, fey sung / spoken slightly auto-tuned vocals over thumping beats and dreamy melodies, gay club jam meets '80s new wave, fun and funky and a little bit fluffy, like the dance/love scene or montage from an old VHS eighties romantic comedy. Ormolycka definitely has a soft spot for summer grooves, radio/MTV pop, Hot/Wild FM style megajams and the like, and this definitely pushes some of those same buttons.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
The return of our favorite Medieval, Middle Ages, and plague obsessed ambient atmospheric dronescapers Dark Ages, who just so happens to be a member of Ukrainian black metal Hordes Drudkh and Hate Forest. No buzzing blackness here, instead Dark Ages is a sonic trip through, well, through the Dark Ages. Another Bosch / Breughel style painting on the cover, this time skeletons on horses, pulling a wagon full of skulls, driving through a town square littered with corpses and robed skeletons. The song titles are also appropriately grim: "Ships Full Of Blackened Corpses", "Rats", "Dead Desolate Villages", "The Doors With Scarlet Crosses" and of course "Black Death".
The sound this time around is even darker and scarier. This is ambient music, sure, but it's also a sonic travelogue, a weary wander through the plague ravaged villages of Middle Europe. The sky is choked with black smoke and the stench of burning flesh. Corpses lay stacked like firewood. Dead children litter the ground like leaves fallen from trees. The few survivors, walk zombie like, an endless death march with no destination other than the grave.
The music is sounds JUST LIKE THAT. It's totally evocative and ultra creepy. Thick washes of keyboard drones, chiming minor key melodies repeated mantra like, a deep churning dark ambience underpinning the melancholy ambience, stabs of atonal harpsichord add jagged shards of horror here and there. Long stretches of super dramatic cinematic shimmer definitely recall Goblin and Zombi, some tracks are super murky minimal rumbles, with the melodies muted and buried under a thick crumbling wash of mumbled whirs and swirling low end, others are majestic and grand, fanfares for the dead and dying. They're all quite grim, a bit black, super intense, and surprisingly emotional.
Sonically, Dark Ages almost sounds like a super dismal, way blacker Dead Can Dance, or like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh covering Skepticism. Or even like some long lost Jacula album.
So gorgeously dark and creepy. Recommended!
Holy Shit! This release is just as amazing as we had expected, maybe even more so, and how could it not be? An incredible mixture of modular synth, tape manipulations, field recordings and traditional Persian string instruments of Tar and Sehtar. Originally released on Folkways in 1985, this rare avant-garde release gets a deluxe reissue by the mythical vinyl conjurers of Dead-Cert (whose previous resurrections of works by Suzanne Ciani, and Bruno Spoerri & Betha Sarasin were equally awesome). The combination of instruments bridge worlds of spirituality and science that hitherto had been unheard of in Middle Eastern music and the results are quite mesmerizing. By allowing the basic elements of the instruments' musical nature to determine the composition, instead of applying a pre-written organisation upon them, Dolat-Shahi uses the repetitive motif of strings as a progressive invitation into a world of hypnotic textures and otherworldly moods, employing robotic modulations, musique concrete and sounds of oceans and birds into a unified field of neo-tantric drones and blissful primitive exotica. Housed in an oversized sleeve with wrap around print to look like the original Folkways sleeve and includes the original liner notes, Fan-Fuck-Ing-Tastic!!
The first in a new series of eps from stoner/sludge super group Down, which for the uninitiated, includes members of Pantera, Crowbar, Corrosion Of Conformity and Eyehategod. No doubt fans of all those bands are already hip to these guys, their sound heavy and stonery more than sludgey, but recent converts to Electric Wizard would do well to dabble in some Down as well. Down are a strange bunch, not sure if it's the music, or their musical pedigree or both, but seems like EVERYone we know, metalhead, nonmetalhead, stoner rockers, death metallers, they all seem to love Down. But then it's easy to see why, the sound is pure psychedelic stoner sludge Sabbath worship, massive riffs, Phil Anselmo's killer vox, some wicked leads and classic guitar harmonies, hooks galore, bombastic drumming. Doesn't get more headbangable than these guys. All the tracks here slay. Groovy, riffy, slithery, Sabathy heaviness to be sure, but the best jam here is most definitely "Witchtripper", immediately catchy, heavy as fuck, with an insane main riff, a crazy catchy chorus, and and a hilarious (and hilariously literal) video, with Anselmo dressed up as Aleister Crowley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fCoz5P3foY
The first release from The Wormhole, a non tape offshoot of UK label the Tapeworm, comes in the form of this long in the works double 7" from Drcarlsonalbion, aka Dylan Carlson of doomtwang slowcore sludgelords Earth. We first heard from Carlson's alter ego on the now out of print Tapeworm tape Edward Kelley's Blues, which found Carlson beginning to musically explore his fascination with the occult and UK folklore, that record a mix of field recordings (of particularly occultic locations), Carlson's guitar, and some subtle vocals (sung in Enochian at one point) sounding not that far removed from Earth, albeit at their most bleary and softly psychedelic. The sound here finds Carlson creating dark, droning, buzz drenched sprawls of psychedelic guitar buzz, and twang flecked shimmer, and this time is even less removed from modern Earth, the music here a backdrop for spoken word by UK spoken word poet / activist Rosie Knight, the combination is pretty potent, Knight's lyrics mysterious, her voice nicely raspy, her accent thick, it definitely speaks to a sort of witchy seventies acid folk vibe, which we would imagine is precisely what Carlson was hoping to conjure. But for those of you (like some of us here), have issues with 'spoken word', fear not, the second 7" in this double set features instrumental versions of both tracks, and sans spoken word, they are essentially two new Earth cuts!
Not sure how limited this is, but we're guessing VERY. You know what that means...
We don't always get everything that stoner rock specialists Small Stone put out, but the stuff that we do, is always really good. Case in point, this new disc from a trio we'd never heard of before, Dwellers. We're guessing there's some sort of Lovecraftian connotation to their name, though the ropy intestines / psychedelic tentacles in the portrait painting of the band on the cover are presumably referencing the album title too, but not in a gross way. Anyway, Dwellers are a heavy duty stoner metal band from Salt Lake City, with some grunge going on, the vocals in particular definitely giving it a bit of that old school Seattle vibe.
Actually, after getting this Dwellers in, and digging it, we realized that while we hadn't known who they were, we HAD reviewed, and really liked, an album by the singer/guitarist's previous band, Iota, also on Small Stone. These lines from our review of Iota's Tales pretty much also apply to Dwellers' debut: "A mixture of trippy Hawkwindiness and more aggressive blues based hard rockin', sorta like (early) Soundgarden or Skin Yard meets the heavier, more spaced out sounds of Sons Of Otis or UFOmammut. One reason we mention Soundgarden and Skin Yard is 'cause of the grungy melodic vocals, which bear a certain resemblance to that of those bands, but otherwise this is HEAVIER and SPACIER than any Seattle grunge for sure."
So, sweet. Dwellers definitely continue to a large degree in that Iota tradition, these six tracks being damn heavy, fuzzed-out, and graced with the gruff, drawling, grunge-worthy vox of Iota's Joey Toscano (the rhythm section here having their own pedigree, being from the band Subrosa). Maybe in comparison to Iota there's something a little bit earthier, and even bluesier, to these jams, which while they can get lengthy (up to ten minutes), don't orbit quite as far out in space as some of Iota's more extended, alien assaults. Instead, there's a greater focus on, say, Southern-fried slide guitar in service of Dwellers' gritty rockin'. There's slowburn builds ("Old Honey") and catchy groovers ("Lightening Ritual"), Good Morning Harakiri sometimes stompin', and sometimes spaced out, with lots of loping riffage and raspy holler. Maybe imagine a much more succinct Earthless, gone grunge? Dead Meadow channelling some Alice In Chains? CoC circa Blind, playing the blues?? Ah, we're not quite getting it right. But anyway, if you're into the stoner rock stuff and want a good dose (of something a bit different, but still familiar), give this a listen! Recommended.
By the way, we like how this album, despite being on cd, is obviously sequenced with a Side One / Side Two concept in mind, the tracklist on the back cover making this obvious with a gap between tracks 3 and 4.
The great Mexican experimental filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky directed, starred in and composed the music for one of THEE flat out strangest cinematic experiences ever made. El Topo from 1970 was Jodorowsky's bloody surreal take on the Western genre and was the film that began the phenomenon of the Midnight Movie. Funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, this film is like a Sergio Leone film on a serious dose of brown acid. Visually stunning and brutally violent, El Topo shares the avant garde qualities of all of Jodorowsky's early films: the soul-baring psyche of experimental theater, the role-playing excess of costumes, props and pageantry, the ritualistic entanglements of violence and beauty as catalysts of transformation, and most importantly the notion of existence as a journey through all kinds of personal and mystical revelations both sacred and profane. The soundtrack is comprised of 18 tracks composed by Jodorowsky and John Barham inspired by both the soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota. Full of flutes and droning horns, accordions and organs and twisted Mariachi styles. The music is as visceral as buzzing flies around the rotting corpse of an evil marauder. Highly Recommended!
180 grams, gatefold, remastered from original tapes, with 4 page booklet including stills from the movie.
Mark McGuire, John Elliott, and Steve Hauschildt - the talented trio of synthesizerists and guitarscapers collectively known as Emeralds - have taken a break from their own personal, prolific release schedules and other music-related activities like running labels and such, to enter Tangerine Sound Studios in Akron, Ohio and come up with this, their umpteenth (we have no idea really, what with all the limited cassettes and cd-r's as well as cds and lps!) album together, following 2010's Does It Look Like I'm Here?
The instrumental shimmer of Just To Feel Anything carries on from that prior release, Emeralds' mix of motorik beats, majestic ambience, and "glowing guitar workouts" again being expressed in shorter form, more "song-like" compositions. After an opening track, "Before Your Eyes", which begins as a barely audible bliss-scape of subdued synth before building up into militant beats and soaring melodies, this new Emeralds opus keeps the old school drum machine beats going on the bright and energetic "Adrenochrome", which goes from kinda dancey to guitar-oriented by the end of its own epic trajectory. Emeralds are annexing some Zombi/Moore/Majeure territory there, or sounding like something by Trans Am. A sudden shift of mood brings us to "Through & Through", a pensive & romantic sounding piece for guitar� But the very next track, "Everything Is Inverted", gets us back to the late-night-driving, early '80s krautronica soundz that make us think Zombi (and Michael Rother). Gorgeous future-retro grooves. Then, "The Loser Keeps America Down" (which would be the start of side two, on the vinyl version of this that we expect will be out in the next few weeks) sees Emeralds embrace their not forgotten, more experimental side, its textural distorted crackle not unlike a burning fire of electronic origin. Following that, eerie Goblin-like tones open up the album's title track, which blossoms into probably our favorite cut here, encompassing all the attractive features of the current Emeralds program. 'Tis shimmering, burbling, propulsive, and ultimately emotionally stirring. The album then comes to a close, bookended by another beautiful bliss-out piece. Nice!
Finally a new Brian Eno solo record, his first for Warp (his past two Warp releases were collaborations, mind you), and it's a record we can fully get behind without apology. His first solo record since 2005's Another Day On Earth (which was a return to rock forms), Lux is a beautiful ambient recording reminiscent of his classic period especially the records, Discreet Music and Thursday Afternoon, Lux serving as a continuum of those same ideas, namely his "Music For Thinking" project started on those records and continued on 1993's Neroli. Lux is a 76 minute composition broken into 12 movements over 4 tracks, at its core a progression of layered loops of piano and synthesizer that shift in unpredictable ways. Evolved from a work currently housed in the Great Gallery of the Palace of Venaria in Turin, Italy, if you try to listen to this with intense scrutiny, it may just come across as merely pretty and evocative, but it actually evolves in ways that are very compelling. If left to play and forgotten about, it has the ability to sink into your consciousness and subtly vibrate your peripheral surroundings with an unidentifiable charge. Eno once said that the inspiration for Discreet Music was from being in a hospital bed unable to turn up the radio in the room, so had to lie motionless listening to a barely audible murmur and was trying to recapture that strange disembodied audio-acoustic feeling. Lux works on that same level. It's a rare ambient release that we could seeing being used as a tool of meditation, as well as a score for a psychological horror film. It will play with your mind! This first edition comes with a series of prints Eno made exclusively for this release, and there's a download card with the 2lp verion.
From the minute we saw the cover, we knew this had to be something special! I mean we can easily see this psychedelic graphic of a hooded horn-playing figure with a gnarled tree emanating from below being a new record by any number of druggy experimental outfits from psych-folk to pagan eco-metal, but this Smithsonian Folkways reissue is from the Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble, a modern ambient classical outfit who hailed from Baltimore. Recorded in 1973, the ensemble of musicians performed with a dance troupe making these strange tripped out pieces of abstracted sound and movement heavy on viola, keyboards, percussion and guitar, with an emphasis on interesting harmonics, organic percussion and textured melody. The music is impressionistically gorgeous conjuring all kinds of mental sound pictures, reminding us of a combination of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Harry Partch, but also Barton Smith, or perhaps a hippie folk version of Philip Glass. The ensemble was active until 1983 when the founder and director Joe Clark died. They put out two records, this and The Neptune Collection from 1975, both produced by Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, and both incredibly amazing!!
Even though Ex-Cult (formerly Sex Cult) hail from Memphis, the sound of their debut owes the Bay Area big time. Not only is it produced by SF garage pop wunderkind and repeat aQ Record Of The Weeker Ty Segall, sonically, it definitely sounds like these guys were born from the same fertile fields that gave us lots of favorites, Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, Bare Wires, The Mallard, Mikal Cronin. Sure the sound is a bit more raw and urgent, and a bit punkier, but then these guys did actually start out as a proper punk band. But with a clutch of new songs, and Segall behind the mixing board, their sound has transformed into something distinctly garagey poppy, urgent and swaggery, definitely Stooges-y (but then really what garage rock isn't), but without losing any punk energy. Close listening reveals lots of stuff that will sound familiar to the SF scene, and Segall in particular, check out the back up vox on "Don't Feel Anything" for instance, but Ex-Cult definitely channel classic punk into their garage pop sound, we hear lots of old SST, even some Orange County HC, but deftly woven into some crazy catchy jams, that have been sticking in our heads like crazy, and getting tons of play around aQ.
Dust-To-Digital are known for their excellent reissue work, unearthing and preserving music from scratchy old shellac 78 rpm recordings and the like. Bringing us vintage blues, gospel, Tuvan throat singing, and more, all with elaborate packaging and incredible attention to detail. They've been responsible for a host of fine cds, boxsets, and books, among 'em Victrola Favorites, Opika Pende, Steve Roden's I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces, and Goodbye, Babylon.
But THIS handsome book + cd set may be their most remarkable release yet, at least in terms of radical sound-conservation technique. It's certainly their most unusual. For example: one of the tracks here is an excerpt of an after-dinner speech given by late-19th century American orator and politician Chauncy M. Depew. You can listen to it on the cd, and distinctly make out the speaker's words, voice, and phrasing, amid a thick patina of hiss, hum, and distortion. Sounds like a poorly-preserved old gramophone disc. But, that sound isn't coming from the disc itself being played (and re-recorded for release on the cd). It's actually derived from a PICTURE of that disc, reduced by 2/3rds original size, that appeared in a 1898 magazine advertisement. The spiraling grooves on the record were pictured clearly enough that with creative use of off-the-shelf computer software, author Patrick Feaster was able to "play" a fairly accurate semblance of the sounds originally encoded on the gramophone record being advertised!!! Ok, that's pretty cool! Talk about DUST-to-Digital. And it's but one example of the MANY different, quite intriguing excercises and investigations in "playing back" sound from such antique and/or unusual "recordings" that Feaster and his colleagues at the First Sounds initiative have come up with, presented in fascinating detail in this fancy (gold gilt edges!), hardback 144-page book and accompanying 28-track compact disc.
Of course, one can argue, just what IS a "sound recording" anyway? In large part, that's what this is about; in fact, Feaster's introduction is devoted to that very question, which turns out to be both a philosophical one, as well as a technical one. Even in Feaster's expansive notion of the term, the idea that "sound recordings" exist from as far back as the year 980AD is perhaps a fanciful one, as he will admit, but still fruitful to consider.
Because, what this book is also about, more generally, is how human beings have sought to understand sound phenomena (from nature, voice, and music), through the ages, how sound has been "captured" and put on paper in graphical form to be perceived and studied visually. These visual representations of sound, are essentially all in the form of graphs of frequency, or amplitude, over time: sound spectrograms, sound oscillograms, phonoautograms, melographic inscriptions, manometric flame sketches, and many more. Various techniques, applied to various subjects. Found in these chapters and tracks, there's FBI voice-recognition studies from the '70s, phonophotographs of Negro spirituals from the '20s, and examples of Athansius Kircher's "Magia Phonotatica" circa 1650 (works which bring to mind Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano), among others.
So, this is all very historically & scientifically interesting. Also, completely compelling just for the beauty of these images alone, which may or may not directly reflect the beauty of the sounds they represent - this is a lavishly illustrated book, with full-color reproductions of these various "sound recordings" to accompany the insightful text explaining it all. And the magic really happens, when you experience the book and cd in tandem, as each track on the cd, even the briefest, has an entire several-page chapter in the book devoted to it, and it really helps to read about and look at the visual sound source, while listening. Some tracks sound like antique recordings we're used to from wax cylinders and 78s, complete with the surface static we love so much; others like strange field recordings or ghostly experimental drones or balloons being rubbed together; still others like music boxes or similar devices�
This is the sort of unusual sound document to file with such aQ faves as the mysterious Ghost Orchid EVP recordings, the VLF recordings of Stephen McGreevy, or even the famed Conet Project (soon to be available again, with a bonus 5th disc!). In fact, one of the exhibits here, an 1890 phonoautogram by Emile Berliner, kind of reminds us of a Conet "numbers station" track, being a spoken series of numbers and letters recorded at varying speeds.
All in all, an astonishing, thought-provoking, and simply gorgeous book and cd, recommended to anyone interested in sound, science, OR art; meaning, probably everybody reading this!
It's raining Ormolycka releases this week! One of our favorite tape labels has sent us a massive box of tapes, restocking a bunch of old favorites that we can barely keep in stock they sell out so fast, and FIVE new releases, including this one, a mysterious outfit called Forgotten Pathways, the cover looking very metal, and the sound inside, well not metal, but still very 'metal'. A sprawling chunk of weird ambient synthscapery, medieval and moody, with swirling soaring synths, dark and dramatic, and primitive programmed drum machines, stumbling and lurching, warped and warbly, and plenty ominous, rife with bursts of thunder, and super creepy raspy whispered vox, and the occasional blast of twisted drum chaos, which sounds like suddenly multiple drumlines started playing on the drum machine. The sound ends up somewhere between Mortiis, creepy carnival music, Ukrainian medieval ambient soundscaper Dark Ages, weirdo local outsider genius Fastest and aQ faves and tUMULt recording artist Varghkoghargasmal. Sounds like a fucked combo and it is, but that's precisely what makes this so good. And so fantastically twisted. Fans of that whole weirdo synthguitar/outsider metal axis that we've raved about over the years (Shevelreq, Xynfonica, Gluttony, Thursar), will probably consider this essential, as might fans of primitive doom duo Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg and Lovecraftian ritualists Ungl'Unl'Rrlh'Chchch.
Needless to say, on the Ormolycka whatthefuck scale, this definitely ranks way up there, and considering some of the warped genius craziness they put out, that's saying something for sure. WAY recommended.
Imagine a whole record crafted from an old box of jungle cassette mix tapes, but imagine it without any of the jungle, or more specifically, none of the beats, just the surrounding sounds, intros, outros, interludes, swirls of synths and snippets of vocals, woozy basslines, strange percussion, mysterious melodies, the whole thing layered and recontextualized into some sort of modern collaged avant dub soundscape. That's pretty much what Lee Gamble's Diversions 1994-1996 is, and it's fantastic. On the surface, in a lot of ways it reminds us of the recent lp from SeekersInternational, which crafted dub out of static and hiss, crackle and sonic detritus. Diversions has a similar vibe, in some ways even more so since the sound sources are old tapes, so tape hum and hiss and warble are everywhere, giving the sounds here even more of that washed out Caretaker-y feel we can never get enough of. In fact, much of this exudes that sort of Caretaker / Tim Hecker vibe, murky and muddy, woozy and looped, the vibe definitely dubby, but a sort of super abstract avant strain of dub, maybe Chain Reaction style, but even MORE abstract and murky. The track "Emu" is practically perfect, a lush, hazy sprawl of blurred buzz, laced with mysterious bits of percussion, the whole thing driven by a heaving swell of industrial thrum, one that builds to a seriously caustic crunch, the whole track mesmerizingly cyclical, dense and dark, but so lush and layered, dreamily textured, everything gauzy and washed out and indistinct. And while the rest of the record is not nearly that dark and murky, it is similarly abstract and minimally dubby. Dense psychedelic loopscapes, that often lock into a sort of minimal house music, if only because they're anchored by a heartbeat like pulse, while all around sound swirl and ooze and overlap and gradually change shape.
Actual Jungle beats only show up on one track, and even then, they're slowed down, doused in effects, and laid over a swirling sea of crackling static and echo drenched shimmer, which had us hankering for some sort of avant slo-mo, minimal jungle mix.
But Diversions is mostly just the opposite, while the sound source may ostensibly be jungle records, the sound is much more like minimal abstract murk and blissed out loop buzz mesmer, and we're digging it big time!
Pressed on 140 gram white vinyl, and packaged in a super striking orange silk screened PVC plastic sleeve.
We try to get everything we can on our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, we usually only manage to get enough to put a few in the store, so while some lucky local tape nerds have managed to snag some of these, our long distance tape obsessives have been left in the cold until now. Of the many releases on Ormolycka, we've only really ever managed to list a few. There was the tape version of the Liturgy record (which featured a remix by our very own Andee!), as well as the Death Grips Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list), this week we have a big handful of Ormolycka tapes, enough to finally review on the list, one of which is this, the first we've heard from a mysterious outfit called GDFX, who we know nothing about, other than this tape is a sweet slab of low end synth buzz, stuttery fractured beats, looped layered drones all woven into a sort of tranced out new age big beat lo-fi synth pop, that slips from creepy minimal thrum to tripped out skitter to 8-bit video game groove, easily on of our favorite jams on Ormolycka.
For those of you keeping track, The Bears For Lunch is the THIRD new Guided By Voices record this year, and yeah, that means just in the last 10 months! It's like they're making up for lost time. That brief period when the band was broken up or on hiatus or whatever, even though their were numerous side projects and multiple solo records, it still wasn't enough for the overflowing backlog of songs that Robert Pollard seems to keep filling up with pop gem after pop gem. And yeah, as much as we want to scoff, The Bears For Lunch is another fantastic collection of pretty perfect pop songs, sonically all over the map, still the hi-fi incarnation of GBV, but a very lo-fi strain of high fidelity (with a handful of the songs actually lo-fi, sounding like they were recorded at home, and not in the studio), but really, little has changed dramatically since the 'old days' of GBV, when they first made the shift to recording in proper studios, around Alien Lanes, and while nothing here is as immediately catchy as "A Salty Salute" or "Game Of Pricks", repeated listens will definitely have you humming "King Arthur The Red" to yourself like crazy, a super rocking chunk of classic GBV noise pop, that starts things off on a serious high note, and the record doesn't really let up. Some of the songs here are SO good. Definitely worthy of the GBV canon/pantheon, all the more shocking that even after hundreds and hundreds of songs (out of thousands and thousands supposedly written), that Pollard and company can still pull it off, and have it sounds as fresh as the first time we head Bee Thousand.
If you're already a fan, and have probably already bought the other two 2012 GBV releases, this one is a no brainer. And if somehow you've made it this far in your indie rock life and managed to not get into GBV, heck, might as well start here, and then prepare yourself to fall into GBV's musical rabbit hole, as you find yourself needing more and more, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Vampire On Titus, Mag Earwhig, Propeller, Isolation Drills and on and on and on on...
What a crazy release! Imagine a drug-addled Doug Blunt turning his outsider RnB synth grooves into something even more strange and rarefied, as if he somehow discovered a primitive synthesized folk-blues through ritual sculpture building and obsessive, constantly shifting meta-narratives about space and technology.
Lonnie Holley has quite the backstory. Born in 1950 in Alabama, the seventh of twenty-seven children (!) and the byproduct of the state's poorly regulated foster care system, Holley had a difficult childhood that he overcame through art and music which he developed on his own, his creative output manifesting itself through drawing, painting, sculpture and performance (examples of his artwork are included in the booklet that comes with this cd). Holley had never recorded his music previous to this release, which marks the first time that the Dust-To-Digital label has brought an artist into the studio and it's unlike anything we've heard on the label before. While Holley may look like a Sun Ra type eccentric, and this record was in fact recommended as being very 'Sun Ra-ish', there really isn't a whole lot of that kind of instrumentation or jazz sound, instead, the minimalistic music is mostly layered and woozy psychedelic synth washes and percussion. What's most noticeable and remarkable is Holley's vocals, which come across as a shamanistic Arthur Russell as he sings a primitive-futuristic brew of blues mantras that twist into strange abstracted vocalizations, evoking at first an old-world sound until he starts going off about cellphones and other modern technology. This is a pretty amazing release for folks with a penchant for bizarre outsider figures such as Ariel Pink, Doug Blunt and Jandek. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is definitely wholly original!
Apparently MF Doom, now just Doom, was on tour in Europe, and got stranded, with visa problems, eventually finding his way back to the UK, where he was born, but hadn't lived for years, and being stuck decided to do what he does, and make a record, first hooking up with Jneiro Jarel, who produced all the tracks here and is the JJ in JJ Doom, and sorted out some surprising guests, Damon Albarn of Blur/Gorillaz and Beth Gibbons of Portishead. While much attention has been paid to the unlikely guests, and a fair bit of flak has been hurled at the record for being somewhat lackluster, we have to say we're pretty into it. The record opens with a strange psychedelic collage, all warped samples, pinball/gamelan melodies, field recordings, eventually wound around a stuttery handclap beat, before "Guv'nor" lurches into action, a woozy tangle of melted loops and a barrage of unlikely samples, musical and otherwise. "Banished" is a murky sprawl of soundtracky kung fu groove, "Bite The Thong" is all big beat hook heavy groove, Albarn's contribution a barely noticeable refrain, same with "GMO", Gibbons offering up a very Portishead-y style chorus, but hardly the most exciting part of the song, a dizzying assemblage of strummed acoustic guitars, and weird sound effects, streaks of electronics and dramatic strings. "Rhymin' Slang" is a killer slab of pulsating synthy stutter, the whole record is pretty fucking great, and to these ears the production, while dramatically different than Doom's past collabs with Madvillain and Danger Mouse, is really fucking cool and far out, Jarel definitely has his own twisted thing going on, and it suits Doom's weird flow for sure, a mush mouthed stream of consciousness that's as brilliant / baffling as ever. Been listening to this like crazy, and doesn't seem like we'll stop anytime soon.
Not only does our pal Jason run the weirdo tape label Ormolycka label, responsible for a whole mess of awesome releases including jams from Lil Ugly Mane, Death Grips, Burqa Boyz, Pictureplane, M Ax Noi Mach and tons more, he also puts together amazing shows at the Sutro Baths, that happen in THE CAVE!!! Which is even more remarkable considering he lives in New York City! The 5th annual Oromolycka Cave show just happened this last weekend, and it was awesome, tons of folks showed up, there was free BBQ and the bands KILLED. It ended up being a wild hip hop cave show, with even M Ax Noi Mach doing some rapping, but it was Lil Ugly Mane that stole the show, the whole crowd singing along to every single line.
Here we have yet another rad/weird Ormolycka release, this one from Milwaukee rapper and energy drink entrepreneur (we kid you not) Juiceboxx, whose sound is like a whinier goofier version of Lil Ugly Mane, sped up soul samples, skittery beats, the vibe a little bit crunk, very Southern in places, all sorts of twisted samples, squelchy synths, and lots of that weird sports horn sound, EVERYwhere. Total party rap that's pretty fun, pretty silly, but definitely self aware and clever, hints of Eminem, Beastie Boys (all the usual white boy rapper touchstones), but Juiceboxx definitely has that outsider Ormolycka hip hop thing going on which makes this well worth checking out, and odds are you'll be blasting this big time, for what remains of Summer.
Comes in a cool old school double cassette case, with two different J card / covers for each album, one a Springsteen homage/pisstake (!!). And yeah, SUPER limited!
This classic album from 1971 has been lovingly reissued by Tompkins Square. Released originally on the LA-based Black Jazz label, Shawn-Neeq was soul-jazz guitarist Calvin Keys debut release after years being a member and session player in several famous jazz combos with the likes of Jimmy Smith, Richard "Groove" Holmes, and Jack McDuff.
Shawn-Neeq begins with the cosmic opening herald of "B.E." before launching into an understated groove backed by Fender Rhodes, bass, and flutes, some low-key horns, but the main space is left open for Key's travelling guitar lines that explore wildly while still keeping it all glued together. The title track delves into a softer focus of pretty balladry with lyrical flute and Rhodes keeping the momentum. The eight minute "Gee-Gee" brings a funkier vibe back into play and is probably our favorite track. Though it's hard to beat the closer, "B.K." which has a harder funk vibe and distorted Rhodes again that give the song a more acid-y psychedelic feel. This is an excellent slice of empowered soul jazz and we're psyched to see it available on vinyl once again! Recommended!
Calvin Keys lives in Oakland these days and we've heard he's playing out again in support of this reissue, unfortunately we missed his show at Yoshi's but hope to see him soon.
It's been ages since we last heard from turntablist Kid Koala, who by now is most definitely not a kid anymore, but whose early records were huge hits around aQ, heck, he even did an instore way back when that was incredible! Those Kid Koala records were/are fantastically fun, funky collaged mash ups of unlikely pop culture ephemera, deftly juggled into beats and grooves, and easily some of the most playful hip hop / turntablism we'd ever heard. One of Kid Koala's 'trademarks', was when he would play solos on the turntables, one turntable spinning some old blues record, while he would scratch out a crazy trumpet solo on the other, transforming this classic blues sound into something warped and woozy. So it only makes sense, that he would do a whole album of blues jams, and like those moments on past records and live shows, the result is pretty amazing. The samples seemingly all classic blues tracks, but all jumbled up, looped and layered. Even the simplest grooves, stutter and shimmy, the speeds constantly changing, the pitch too, sometimes mixing in some wild hip hop scratching, but more often, subtly manipulating the music, adding extra beats, wrapping layers of bass buzz around bluesy grooves, the best moments of course where he manipulates single elements, a vocal line that suddenly gets all tangled up, a warped wild croon, blasts of chaotic drum freakout, manipulated solos, woozy and warbly, it's really exactly what you'd want an all blues hip hop DJ set to sound like, that is if you had ever actually thought of someone making a hip hop DJ blues set, but it works, and is incredible.
Some of the tracks sound almost untouched, and only close listening reveals the subtle manipulations at play, others are all twisted up, some of the best moments though are the most subtle, like when things stripped way down, and slowed to a drowsy drag, infusing slo-mo blues dirges with subtle sonic flourishes, adding texture, rhythmic alterations, we almost wish the whole record had been made up of those dark moody drifts, haunting and totally gorgeous.
The packaging is totally over the top, with an actual cut out turntable you can build yourself, as well as a little mini flexi disc 'battle record'!!!
It's too bad sometimes that we don't get to really sit down with some records until right before it's time to review them for the list, cuz often, records that we were only able to hear once or twice in the shop, or briefly on the computer, reveal themselves as something super special, and in the case of this latest full length from the oddly and somewhat inappropriately monikered King Dude, a potential Record Of The Week! All the promise of past releases seems to be full realized here, in what is no longer really neo-folk, or post industrial, but is instead, some sort of alternate reality classic country music. Imagine some dark shadow version Johnny Cash, and that's King Dude, aka T.J Cowgill, a modern man in black, whose sound is equal parts classic country songsmithery, warped echo drenched rockabilly, and brooding sinister balladry. All reverbed twang, murky percussion, and Cowgill's impossibly deep croon. It's like some fantastically demonic Johnny Cash / Woven Hand / Der Blutharsch hybrid, the sound sinister, and haunting, emotionally heavy, dark and shadow, death ballads from beyond.
The opener "Holy Land" is a roiling murky twang flecked dirge, a churning rhythmic backdrop, wreathed in washed out chords, the vocals a woozy croon, everything so doused in delay and echo, that the sounds blur into one single hazy sprawl of black country shimmer. But King Dude ain't no one trick pony, "Barbara Ann" ditches pretty much all the effects, leaving just acoustic guitar and vocals, Cowgills deep voice, made even more so (almost cartoonishly), but the effect is simply harrowing and haunting, it's on tracks like these, that the classic country comparisons are so apt, albeit with a slight twist making the sound just that little bit darker.
"Im Cold" returns to the cavernous sonic underworld of the opener, with jagged twangy strumming, swaggery snarled vox, lots of percussion, again everything hazy and indistinct, the verses super dynamic, but the chorus is a druggy, drowsy sonic blur, the sound reminding us of Dirty Beaches, but a much more sinister, demonic version of them. It's a modern post industrial trip to the fabled crossroads, where the power of the blues was given to Cowgill, but stained black, with the blood all who came before. The songs here are so dark, and ominously powerful, whether it's the bluesy country dirge of "Jesus In The Courtyard" rife with muted industrial percussion, those deep growled vox, and a crooned chorus, or the soft focus twang-gaze dream drift of "My Mother Was The Moon", with fantastic female vox, over simple muted strum, everything gauzy and washed out and otherworldly, the woozy ooooooh vocal refrain utterly captivating and spellbinding, maybe the best track here, the post industrial black country analog to the Afghan Whigs' "My Curse".
The rest of the record unfurls darkly and dreamily, the weird processed vocals on "Lorraine" leading into the classic fifties style country pop of "You Can Break My Heart", all dark torch song balladry, but sprinkled with soft swirls of celestial synth, the sounds weaving from speaker to speaker, wrapped in some extra grit and noise, and laced with ghostly female backup vocals, finally finishing with "Lord I'm Coming Home", which like the title suggests, the intro a dark, shadowy spiritual, all echo drenched chorale voices, and muted smears of soft focus feedback, before the song proper kicks in, that deep dramatic croon, over urgently strummed steel string guitar, all beneath a haze of chiming ethereal melodies, the vocals blurring into the background, taking on the form of some alternate reality spiritual, drifting dreamily on a bed of warm whirring organ, before finally fading out for good.
So fantastic, and another one of those records that makes it hard to review anything else, since this is all we want to listen to. Consider this a could have / should have / would have been Record Of The Week, and thus consider it highly and extremely recommended!
We first heard Euro synthwave combo Lust For Youth on a witch house mixtape of all places, which sort of makes sense, as the sound of most modern minimal wave synth groups is really not that far removed from some witch house. What we heard was buzzy and murky and washed out and yeah, kind of witchy, but it definitely gave us a taste for these guys (now apparently just one guy), and this new full length definitely hits the spot, fusing classic synth driven eighties pop, modern retro minimal synth music, experimental noise, kosmische synthscapery, and pounding EDM beats into something we find ourselves listening to constantly, and something that every time it gets played in the store, someone comes up to see what's playing.
The bulk of the record is made up of buzzy, dark wave synth pop gems, the synths gloriously distorted, wrapped around lilting melodies, and driving rhythms, the vocals drenched in echo and draped over the top. Just check out "Behind Curtains" which adds some post punk swagger to the otherwise moody swirly synth poppiness. "It's You" sounds like deconstructed Depeche Mode, another sprawl of pulsating distorted synths, woozy warble melodies drifting in the background, a definite kraut-wave vibe, motorik and hypnotic, again those vocals, weary and heavily reverbed, soporific incantations over shadowy synth pop.
Then there are tracks like "We Planted A Seed", which mix in some crumbling distorted noise, and unfurl very retro-futuristic sounding Carpenter style eighties chase scene synthscapery, all tense and dark, and slightly sinister. But then right on the heels of a track like that, a track like "Champagne" swoops in, all old school electro pop, but still, just buzzy and dark enough to retain some sonic malevolence. Imagine Breakfast Club recast as some sort of seventies horror art flick, this stuff could definitely be the soundtrack (there's a bit of Goblin going on too needless to say).
But sonically this is most definitely dark synthwave, slipping into something a bit poppier on some tracks, but then something much darker on others, ultimately culminating in the shadowy kraut-wave groove of "We Got Lost" which even manages to channel a little Suicide into the equation, not to mention some eerie sampled screams of terror, before finishing off with the almost M83 sounding "Neon Lights Appear", those wasted vox, the only thing keeping the track from slipping into full blown synth-gaze territory.
Chicago's Mako Sica have been a longtime favorite here at aQuarius, and with their second full length (third if you count their live vinyl debut), we figured it was about time more people took note of this amazing band. The trio whips up a heady and unique noise that goes way beyond simple classification and remains blissfully in its own world. The main ingredients � two guitars, drums, and evocative wordless vocals � are augmented here and there with trumpet, thumb piano, and various percussive flourishes, but it's the way the musicians interact with each other that makes this band so special. And while they certainly do rock as they ascend to higher levels of psychedelia, calling Mako Sica a "rock band" or a "psychedelic band" doesn't quite hit the mark. The noise addled skronk of hometown labels like Skin Graft is certainly evident as well as plenty of free jazz and world music influences, but the band never tries to be anything other than themselves, and with those influences guiding the way they have arrived at a stellar sound that will be instantly accessible to adventurous listeners. At the same time, a level of mysteriousness remains constant, demanding repeated listens. As distinctive as it all is, we know this will appeal to fans of legendary groups like Trad Gras Och Stenar, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Les Rallizes Denudes, not to mention the current crop of San Francisco bands blowing the minds of the world like Barn Owl, 3 Leafs, and Carlton Melton. How could we not make this a Record Of The Week?
Essence opens with the monolithic sidelong "Fate Deals A Hand". A slow, eerie buildup gives the impression of a rising sun as the sounds bubble to life. Sustained, cello-like drones and bells accompany a voice that is itself another layer of beautiful sound. The mood gradually shifts and an underlying harmonic fuzz on one of the guitars indicates that things are finally gonna take off. The heaviness and unease of the guitars grows as the percussion becomes more insistent, and six and a half minutes in the sounds begin to merge into a more distinct form before launching into an ominous psych jam that is almost metal if it weren't for the way the drums hold it all in place. Queasy, discordant sounds kaleidoscopically swirl about as the vocals (which at times sound almost like Nina Simone if she were wordlessly chanting) add an awesome, somewhat disorienting vibe that makes it difficult to guess when and where this music could be coming from. It's amazing how the vocals illustrate a story without words and create drama, even if you aren't quite sure what it all means. Eventually a delayed trumpet glides into the maelstrom, at which point the band somehow still holds back and lets an atmosphere of spaciousness build - spaciousness being one of the key elements separating this band from the rest of the pack, who often try to cram as much as possible into the proceedings. Of course, Mako Sica launches into another distorted freakout before reaching a final and total silence. Fucking awesome.
Side two offers up two more lengthy jams, beginning with "On Cracked Sea". Cosmic chanting and guitars operate in unison, trading melodies freely without confining themselves to any traditional structure. Instead, it's just TOTAL music, melodic, jagged, beautiful, and noisy, all at once, with the drums clattering about creating just as much mood as the guitars. More of that awesome harmonically rich fuzz guitar comes cascading in, bringing the song to a new level of intensity before winding down into a woozy blissful fadeout. The final track here, "Chain Leg", begins with some low ominous rumblings and more bad ass vocal chants, reminding us a bit of a less metallic version of UK space/psych/drone collective Bong. Eventually the proceedings get a little more abstract even as some discernible riffing takes center stage. Everything sounds perfectly in place and open to whatever adventures appear to be happening in real time. Musical freedom, pretty much.
For a band that has continuously surprised and inspired, Essence stands as Mako Sica's greatest achievement so far. Their somewhat shadowy existence may mean they might not the first band that comes to mind when pondering the international resurgence in explorative, free form psychedelic music, but it's hard to imagine that not changing with this amazing record. Get it now!
Of all the tapes in this most recent batch of doozies from weirdo tape label Ormolycka, this one, from the oddly monikered Narwhalz (Of Sound), is notable for two reasons, one, it's not actually new. But we sorts skipped over it the first time around. Which brings us to two, which is, it's actually fucking AWESOME. The reason we skipped over it before, is we kinda had it pegged as jokey friend rock, the name, the song titles, the hot pink goofy cover, but holy shit, what an awesome surprise. In some weird ways, it reminds us of that awesome Fever hip hop record on DHR, super distorted, blown out, noise drenched 8 bit, hip hop weirdness, the beats crunchy and super distorted, the vocals a buried mumble one second, a distorted megaphone yowl the next, all set to the strains of woozy video game squiggles, thick blurry bass buzz, total happy hardcore style techno beats wrapped around dubbed out noise-hop, everything doused in hiss and buzz, wild swooping effects, stuttering and skipping and swirling and lurching and lumbering, total dancefloor destroying, speaker shredding sonic chaos that KILLS. This is the sort of shit we'd want to blast in our tricked out boomin' system ride (especially the one that instead of a trunk full of woofers, features a hundred tweeters, total glass shattering, eardrum melting high end skree). Fucking rad. Ormolycka strikes again. And we stand corrected and bow before the mighty Narwhalz (Of Sound)!!
Three And Seven is the debut full length from NYC psychedelic doomlords/doomladies, and Negative Plane offshoot, Occultation. Their sound is a dark and dramatic, almost cinematic sort of witchy metallic psychedelia, the heaviness tempered by a fantastically muddy, murky cavernous production, the heaving swells of downtuned riffage, blurred into smeared swells of minor key shimmer, the drums spare and buried in the mix, barring the occasional burst of chaotic frenzy, lush layered organs wheeze and whir, and the vocals, dueling (or perhaps multitracked) female vox, that wind around each other in creepy occultic harmonies, the arrangements dense and complex and proggy, the sound perfectly channeling the spirit of classic metal, old horror soundtracks, and seventies British acid folk.
The songs are dense tangles of minor key melody, the guitars unfurling spidery melodies, wrapped around haunting woozy almost goth/post punk sounding basslines, a twisted dissonance marks each of these sonic rituals, epic and majestic, like Death SS via King Diamond, covering Comus, all recorded in some subterranean grotto, before some primitive stone plinth, adorned with skulls and sacrifices. Because this falls into the witchy female fronted metal category, inevitably comparisons will be made to the Devil's Blood, Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, and while fans of that stuff will undoubtedly dig this, more apt comparisons might be Ides Of Gemini or Menace Ruine, as Occultation, while still metal, manages to exist in some haunting sonic nether region, seemingly much more beholden to non-metal influences, fans of Sabbath Assembly might dig this too, the same sort of satanic spiritual vibe, but obviously WAY heavier, and much more bleary and blackened.
Gorgeous, twisted, heavy, haunting stuff.
We first heard the Ohio Penitentiary 511 Jazz Ensemble on the first volume of the Spiritual Jazz series with their sparkling horn groover, "Psych City". Turns out that the "penitentiary" part of their name was no joke. The 511 Jazz Ensemble was made up entirely of prisoners doing time in the Ohio State Penitentiary and was formed in 1971 to give inmates with musical abilities a means to be productive and creative. One of the ensemble's key founders was Logan Rollins, nephew of Sonny Rollins, who due to his musical conservatory experience was able to form the group to perform for various functions, namely entertaining inmates during the holidays. An inspiring meeting with the Ohio State University band allowed for a record to be made and these 4 tracks of long-form jazz excursions were the result. The music is ecpansive and spiritual, as one might imagine, displaying a sense of serious sonic freedom for its many players. Privately pressed in 1971, this album is a mega-rarity among soul jazz fanatics, with not even the founding members having their own copies or receiving any money for their efforts. The group disbanded after Rollins and other founding members were released. Yet this release still continues to inspire, showcasing the beautiful articulation of freedom that can really only be expressed when one no longer has full access to it.
We know you folks love limited edition vinyl releases, as Record Store Day just proved yet again. Well, here's something we just got a handful of copies of, and might not be able to get again - it's on the same label that did the Saint Vitus Die Healing vinyl that sold out so fast. And it's another one for vintage doom fanatics, a vinyl version of the debut album, aka Vol.1, from NWOBHM (aka New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, in this case, make that very very British) cult Pagan Altar! Songs written circa 1978-'81, recorded 1982, not released for the first time officially until 1998, and now available again in a deluxe gatefold vinyl edition. Obscure as it is, this is really a classic, '70s Sabbath/Priest styled (proto) metal, with an authentic occult vibe, powerful and melodic, up there with Angel Witch and, especially Witchfinder General - if you like them, you need to hear Pagan Altar as well!
Amazingly, the band is still around, still quite active, having released a couple other excellent albums, with work proceeding on a new one. They also did a split 7" with Jex Thoth not too long ago. As a matter of fact, Allan had the pleasure of seeing Pagan Altar play live just last week, at the Roadburn Festival in Holland! As far as he was concerned, one of the highlights of the fest (along with one of the only bands there to have been around longer, Comus!!!). When they came out on stage, the silver-haired singer (Terry Jones, brother to lead guitarist Alan Jones) was wearing a feathered top hat, that he gracefully doffed towards the audience, greeting us in a mellifluous Yorkshire accent. He possessed a theatrical, charismatic presence that made him seem not unlike one of the earlier incarnations of Dr. Who! They then proceeded to kick out an utterly classic sounding set of twin guitar NWOBHM, including of course many songs from this album, folkloric metal of witchery and doom, sung in a reedy voice that sounds a lot like a British version of Roky Erickson. They were really, really good.
So, if you're lucky enough to get a chance to see 'em, do so! And, at the very least, if doom and NWOBHM is your thing, check out their recordings, this being a great one to start with, except that we probably won't have it for very long (we only got, like, 8, and already have sold a few)...
Red letter day here for old school doom vinyl fanatics. Buried By Time And Dust bring us two essential reissues, the Witchfinder General lp boxset reviewed elsewhere this list, and this, a vinyl version of the 2nd album from those mystic, misty masters of British metal majesty, Pagan Altar. A truly "cult" doom act from the NWOBHM era, somehow still kicking in the here-and-now. Their debut was recorded in 1982, but kept secret and unreleased until almost the year 2000. They followed that with this album in 2004, featuring songs which were originally written back in the late '70s, early '80s by the brothers Terry Jones (vocals) and Alan Jones (guitar). While all Pagan Altar rules, this just might be our fave. Terry Jones' nasal voice is a dramatic, wizened croak and caw, that can soar with ravens in the night sky... evoking both both Roky Erickson and Ozzy Osbourne (which means, Witchcraft fans should hear Pagan Altar). His brother brings the Sabbathy riffs and lead guitar rippage, also playin' some banjo on twangin' folk instrumental interlude "The Devil Came Down To Brockley".
Throughout the album there's drifting soft folky parts and epick metal stormers, Pagan Altar combining a pastoral prog vibe with a Satanic metal one... sad and melancholic, with intelligent lyrics, and it doesn't get more DOOM than songs about nuclear armageddon! Somehow the overall sound reminds us of Ozzy (early solo, circa Randy Rhodes Blizzard Of Ozz era), but gone way underground and druidical. A classic that stands with the best of the NWOBHM even though it was released so many years later... like a time capsule from the '80s.
The original cd release of this we never were able to get enough of to list, so it's nice to finally review it and on vinyl, too. Not cheap, but super swank and of course limited... as you may recall, earlier this year we blew through Buried By Time And Dust's vinyl reissue of Judgement Of The Dead (aka Vol. 1), PA's first album, all too quickly. This one may or may not stick around longer...and in any case it's just as recommended. Brilliant stuff any NWOBHM and/or doom lover who's got a pagan bone in their body ought to own. 180g vinyl, heavy gatefold sleeve with lyrics, and it also includes the 2 bonus tracks ("Witch's Pathway" and "Flight Of The Witchqueen") from the original limited vinyl pressing by Miskatonic in '05, not found on the cd version.
Our pal Jason's Ormolycka label puts out some of the coolest weirdest shit, all of it super limited, most so much so that we rarely get enough to list, in the past we've had the tape version of the Liturgy record (which featured a remix by our very own Andee!), as well as the Death Grips Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list), and now this week we have a whole bunch of releases, finally in amounts enough to list, one of which is this tape, from Denver witch house / electro pop outfit Pictureplane, whose sound drags the woozy lo-fi drag of witch house into total bumpin' electro pop territory, big beats, fuzzed out synths, sexy vox, skittery rhythms, warped loops, soulful and synthy, funky and poppy, super summer jams for late night dancefloor bliss outs.
Another release in the new batch of Ormolycka tapes, and all we can think with this one is how the hell had we not heard of these guys, a weirdo noise duo who make a fantastically unholy racket that sounds like some ungodly mix of Suicide, Merzbow and Spacemen 3, all run through old DHR records. Noisy, and dense, droned out and seriously psychedelic, the tracks here pound and pulse, swirl and soar, grinding crunch collides with near metallic mesmer, this is like Moon Duo super charged and dosed on PCP.
A super raw, permanently in-the-red, echo drenched sci-fi noise-kraut hypno-trance psychedelia, that is so goddamn fierce, and fucked up, and fantastic, feedback everywhere, beats buried under avalanches of white, and brown, and grey and pink noise, all of that noise somehow sculpted into heaving blasts of cosmic pulsation, the vocals delivered from on high, dripping in blown out effects, bellowed from beyond, the sounds locked and looped, anchored to murky pulses, a sort of blacknoise house music transformed into abstract hypno noise psych. Experimental, and abrasive, and caustic, and seriously chaotic, but totally and utterly mesmerizing. We're a bit obsessed now and want to track down every goddamn thing these guys have done. One of the best tapes on Ormolycka, and one of the best things we've heard in ages, period. Here's hoping someone does an even more comprehensive collection soon. WAY WAY RECOMMENDED.
Looks like we've got a new contender for pop record of the year! After a clutch of kick ass singles, the debut full length from these San Diego garage pop punks more than fulfills the promise of those 7"s, a non stop barrage of hook heavy noise pop bliss out, big jangly crunchy guitars, pounding drums, echo drenched whiney boy vox, hooks galore, crazy catchy choruses, everything sort of lo-fi and blown out, the songs laced with occasional squalls of psychguitar freakout, and super distorted guitar melodies woven into the jangle and crunch, the sound a little bit surfy, a lot bit garagey. Some of the tracks definitely remind us of Thee Oh Sees, some of the others like Jeff The Brotherhood, we described these guys in a past review as Eat Skull crossed with the Fresh & Onlys, which is still pretty on the mark, although on this full length, Plateaus have really come into their own, taking everything they've borrowed and transforming it into something their very own, all the sounds cranked, and in the red, the vibe is loud as fuck, but still beholden to classic jangle pop. It's not hard to imagine these guys actually hailing from NZ and not SD, their sound rife with classic Kiwi jangle popisms, but obviously filtered through the current crop of garage pop. Not sure what else to say, other than we can't stop listening to this, and every time we play it we have a new favorite songs. Summer may be gone but drop that top, put on a hat and scarf, bundle up and blast this like you were cruising down the coast, basking in the summer sun...
When we first got an earful of Aftertime, the debut solo release from Roly Porter, who was/is one half of the dubstep duo Vex'd, we were pretty surprised. We had been expecting something more along the lines of that duo's lush dark beatscapes and swirling skeletal stutters but instead were treated to something entirely different. The beats almost entirely jettisoned, bar the occasional squall of rhythmic splatter, or super spare muted pulsations. The vibe is much more abstract, and droned out, a sort of dark cosmic mimimal modern classical? But somehow filtered through the grim industrial crunch and crumble of groups like Wolf Eyes. The sounds at times caustic and grimly grinding, but more often then not, woven into a sprawl of sweeping musical melodrama, lush, soaring string like shimmers, underpinned by gristly buzz, and dubstep style bass warbles, but sans the 'step'. The dub vibe too, minimal, but still pervasive, imagine if you can, the lush, hushed, cinematic ambience of Stars Of The Lid crossed with the blackened industrial crush and sculpted noise of past Record Of The Weekers Cloaks, it's almost like the most dense, and bleak, sonically sinister intros to the darkest dubstep jams, expanded into whole tracks.
But these are not just glorified extended intros, Porter crafts roiling landscapes of abstract ambience, a series of sonically harrowing epics, the opener sets the stage, all moaning tones and extended drones, very symphonic, but again, rough around the edges, as if the sounds are slowly decaying, the soundtrack to some otherworldly post apocalyptic wasteland, which leads right into the first track proper, which sounds like an alternate soundtrack to The Conversation as imagined by Organum. Dense sprawls of metallic rumble, laced with buried electronic squiggles, sonar like pings, all wreathed in a layer of gauzy, crackly, washed out sonic grime, and the whole thing wrapped around a weirdly dreamlike melody, drifting hauntingly through this heaving cloud of soft black noise. Eventually, the sound blossoms into something even more intense, blasts of electronics, shards of noise, all somehow fashioned into a dizzying barrage of almost beat-like buzz.
The record gradually introduce more and more melody, Porter's dense electronic blurscapes balanced by lushly melodic stretches of layered string like shimmer, a definitely modern minimalist vibe, but then of course, those bits of melodic tranquility, seem to sink into Porter's crumbling distorted electronic morass, sometimes completely, leaving just roiling expanses of buzz and hiss, glitched out crunch and keening electronic bleat, but just as often, striking some seemingly impossible balance, lacing this heaving sonic hostility with something totally at odds, soaring strings, lush chordal swells, which transforms the sound into something else entirely. Later huge demonic foghorn like low end rumbles moan ominously, adding a weird almost demonic drama to otherwise near tranquil drift, that low end constantly expanding, into black, gristled drones, woven into the aforementioned string sweeps, but often drifting into the background, leaving gorgeous bits of hazy minimal drift, mournful piano, swaddled in soft swirls of lush thrum, even at one point bursting into what might be the most moving moment on the record, with a soaring minor key melody, achingly melancholic, driven by a strange super distorted, crumbling almost metallic sounding 'riff' that mostly adds texture and heft, and reminds us of another longtime aQ fave Tim Hecker, as well as the recent record from Seirom, a more blissed out offshoot of Gnaw Their Tongues.
An utterly gorgeous collection of minimal electronic soundscapes, grim buzz laden modern chamber music, and black drone ambience, a record we've been wanting to make our Record Of The Week for over a year now. So glad we finally can. Absolutely recommended, and of course, most definitely for fans of Ben Frost, Stars Of The Lid, Tim Hecker, Cloaks, etc...
We got a whole bunch of tapes from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, one of our favorite tape labels going, and certainly one of the coolest and weirdest, with an insanely varied roster that evades any sort of easy classification. There was the tape version of the Liturgy record (which featured a remix by our very own Andee!), as well as the Death Grips Exmilitary tape (relisted elsewhere on this week's list), which speaks to the label's obsession with fucked up weirdo hip hop, as does this one, by a 'band' called Pushups, written with a little infinity symbol before the bandname, but it's a seriously cracked slab of super distorted radio style hip-pop, more of a mix really, a dizzying mashup of soul, hip hop, pop, electro, a relentless barrage of booty shaking grooves, the sound super blown out and in-the-red, as if it was being blasted from a booming system with blown speakers. There's a serious footwork vibe too, with loops repeated over and over and over, stuttering samples, maddeningly mesmerizing, some of it totally bumping, some of it cheesy and fun, all of it ruling and while it may be Sommer Jammz for 2007, they'll sound pretty good this Sommer too!
We first heard this beautiful, hypnotic recording when it was reissued on compact disc back in 1997, on the Dexter's Cigar label that Jim O'Rourke used to do, via Drag City. It was one of the best Dexter's Cigar releases we remember, but sadly has been our of print for many years. But, we're certainly not the only folks to consider it a classic, as now Important has reissued it again on cd for those who missed it before. It's an album of minimalist electronics, sounding way ahead of its time, recorded in 1967 in the studio of Swedish Radio, Stockholm, by a young composer (and former jazz trombonist) named Folke Rabe. There's two tracks here, the second a half-speed (and thus, one octave lower) version of the first, for advanced exercises in drone-absorption. The first 25 minute version of "What??", originally released on vinyl by the Wergo label in 1970, consists of gentle, wavering drone-tones, shimmering blissfully, continually morphing, forming pulsating, fluttering "beats" as the various vibrations interact. The subtle shifts of these pulsations seem somehow to come into being from nowhere, even though your ears must be perceiving the gradual changes. This is active dronework, there's a lot going on here, over time, despite the "minimalist" tag. We suspect a Terry Riley influence on this piece, and not just because we know that Rabe was an associate of Bo Anders Persson, of Parson Sound/International Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar, also big Terry Riley fans.
Not that the first track by itself wouldn't be enough to transport you to drone nirvana with its pulsing shimmer and glimmer, but the second version of "What??" found here, 50+ minutes long, slower and lower, and if anything even more glowing, will REALLY send you into a trance!
It's so great to have this deceptively simple, but so effective, obscure avant-electronic classic back in print.
Japanese reissue label EM gives us another killer reissue from this unsung post punk / dub / reggae icon, this one a fantastic slice of classic late seventies / early eighties DIY weirdness/radness. Ostensibly a post punk record, but WAY heavy on the dub influence, the whole thing was recorded and assembled in a home studio, and overflows with all manner of abstract experimentation and twisted songcraft. From the first few seconds of "The Scream", we were smitten, with its weird processed drumming and handclaps, its weird industrial shimmer, and FX heavy vocals, the pulsating bassline, it's groovy and funky and fierce as fuck, and had us wishing it was way longer than 2 minutes. The second track is all woozy drum machine driven fuzzy sixties pop, sounding like Young Marble Giants or Black Tambourine, all reverbed jangle, hazy vox, and then the next song is some home brewed lo-fi reggae, with wheezing melodica melodies, groovy upstroke guitar strum, weird samples, and cool fractured vocal snippets, and what sounds like pinball percussion.
The whole record is all over the map, tending toward a dub/reggae for sure, but even within that 'sound', Ray mixes it up, processed horn blurts, FX drenched guitars, dueling girl boy vox, tripped out rhythms, and for every straight up reggae dub jam, there's some cool fuzzy pop jam, Ray's dreamy vocals wreathed in reverb and wrapped in angular guitars, surfing atop propulsive grooves, but it's the weirder jams here that get us the most excited, thankfully that's most of them. "Maybe It's Because I'm Not A Londoner", is a dubby creep, all tinkling chimes, skronking horns, woozy low slung basslines, droned out and darkly psychedelic, while "Rahmatullah", is a gorgeous slice of fluttering flute flecked spiritual jazz, with a slight dub bent, Ray's dreamy vocals draped over dense tribal drumming, and all tangled up with the ethereal flute melodies, and "Spring Thing-Hippy Dread" is some seriously dubbed out psychedelic abstract reggae, woozy and warped, and dreamily druggy, and in between all this weirdness, is some seriously catchy, and slightly fractured post punk dreampop, and the combination of the two is weirdly perfect.
Includes extensive liner notes in both Japanese and English and tons of rare photos.
Hurrah! We've long been waiting for the opportunity to list something by Italy's Sensations' Fix. A long time ago, we encountered their debut album Fragments Of Light (1974) and were immediately smitten (it also was a great "secret weapon" to use whenever we were called upon to DJ a set of vintage psych/prog music or what have you). But reissues of anything by this spacey synth-based '70s trio have been seemingly impossible to find. We were excited, however, not too long ago when the Emeralds-approved Spectrum Spools label added a vinyl reissue of the 1975 solo album by Sensations' Fix leader Franco Falsini to their catalog of amazing unearthed cosmic electronic artifacts. That record, Cold Nose, or Naso Fredo, we described (well, raved about) as a gorgeously cinematic longform take on psychedelic new age music, a spiralling composition of EMS and Moog washes and floating guitar lines that reminds us of krautrock legends Michael Rother and Manuel Gottsching, with stratospheric guitar leads over organically pulsating synth treatments, constantly shifting and shimmering. Sounds good right?
That brings us to this very welcome archival double cd (or triple lp) set released on the obscure electronics oriented RVNG label, featuring 30 tracks taken from Falsini's tape vaults, including several alternate mixes of material from Cold Nose, alongside alternate versions of songs that appeared on all five albums released by his band Sensations' Fix circa 1974-77. Plus a number of previously unreleased tracks from those recording sessions as well. Sensations' Fix and Falsini recorded everything in a home studio, on a TEAC 3340 4-track machine, so fortunately Falsini still has access to all these productions and was able to personally select and mix the tracks for this RVNG anthology release. Especially fortunate considering that apparent record label business BS has thus far prevented the individual, original Sensations' Fix albums themselves from coming out again under Falsini's guidance, though we can still hope for full reissues someday. Regardless, this is a wonderful and extensive sonic glimpse into the spacey output of Sensations' Fix, if occasionally therefore somewhat lo-fi.
The blissfulness of Cold Nose is too part of the Sensations' Fix sound, but also there's some krauty rock grooves (some sampled by DJ Shadow, we learned from the liner notes) alongside the electronic-based driftworks. And they have a quite lovely "pop" side to 'em too - while mostly instrumental, some tracks do have gentle, Robert Wyatt-ish singing to go with the hazy, meandering, meditative atmospheres. It's definitely not the usual sort of quasi-operatic, over-the-top, classically influenced Italian prog that we're used to (and love), from bands like Il Balletto Di Bronzo, Le Orme, or Osanna, no. Also fairly far from the sinister soundtrack funk of Goblin. Rather, Sensations' Fix have more in common with the kosmiche krautrock electronics of the era, and also may have indeed been influenced by the Canterbury sound of bands like the Soft Machine, so one Italian prog act we could compare them to would be Picchio Dal Pozzo. We could also compare 'em to a kinder, gentler version of Richard Pinhas & Heldon, from France, with a similar futuristic co-mingling of synth (MiniMoog) and effected guitar, for sure.
Music Is Painting In The Air is handsomely packaged, with a booklet full of those aforementioned liner notes presented in both English and Italian, written by RVNG's Joshua da Costa (who like us was also smitten by Fragments Of Light when he first heard it) and Franco Falsini himself. These notes, while not removing all the mystery of Sensations' Fix, reveal much interesting information... like that prior to SF, Falsini was in a "space-blues" band called Flying with Dave Anderson of Hawkwind & Amon Duul. Or that their debut Fragments Of Light actually consisted of basement demos recorded not in Florence Italy, but Alexandria, Virginia, where Falsini had temporarily moved with his wife, who was American. Which is where Falsini found SF's drummer, also an American, and also the guy who turned him on to LSD...
