We love bands whose music-making formula appears, on the surface, simple and intuitive, yet the sounds they create are huge, engulfing and seemingly complex. Using two synthesizers and echoing vocals, The Slaves inhabit a sound that is as lush and dense as it is mysterious and minimal. Their debut album, Ocean on Ocean, is the perfect showcase of a group that can conjure up bountiful sounds within a restrained approach. Honestly, we can't get enough of Ocean on Ocean, something about those enormous, dreamy, engulfing songscapes just leaves us wanting more. Their oozing brew of minimal pop melts and blurs with the melodic thickness of MBV's Loveless or early Slowdive, but surrenders to a contemplative mode that falls somewhere between Gregorian hymn and pagan ritual. The duo spin a radiant web of sustained vocals and heavy synth, each chord drawn out and smeared into a neon haze while indecipherable lyrics suggest longing, loss and submission to oblivion.�
"Seventeen" unfolds with a slow arching chord progression that grows and dissipates like a coastal tide. Female vocals creep into the oceanic haze while fluttering noise and cosmic wash hover in obscurity. And though the rhythm-less wash may appear to be aimless improv, a close listen reveals a defined structure beneath the veil of long tones and heavy atmospherics. And yes, The Slaves are heavy. And it's not a 'down-tuned guitars through a wall of amps' kind of heavy. It's more evident in the slow movement of the songs, and the visceral effects felt by each musical gesture. The duo have perfectly crafted a searing offering of 'soft doom', so gorgeous and mesmerizing we've had Ocean on Ocean on repeat for the past week. "Shadows" is another noteworthy track. We love the push and pull of heavy synth and whispery vocals, whirls of female voice echo into the night then dissipate into huge swells of HEAVY distorted synth. Crumbling low end amid ethereal dream chants, what else could we ask for?? One of our favorite records in recent memory and highly recommended!�
A rollicking group-authorized live artifact from arguably the best period of Sonic Youth's 30+ year history. This live set at Chicago's Smart Bar from 1985 made between the albums Bad Moon Rising and Evol was performed just as Steve Shelley joined the band and includes many tracks from the eps of that period such as Kill Yr Idols, Death Valley '69 and the Flower/Halloween single. Including songs from the self-titled ep and their debut Confusion is Sex, there's also a little known track called "Kat 'n' Hat" from a limited magazine release that serves as a twangy instrumental palette cleanser between the first half and the second half of the set. This is one of the best examples of SY's early live sound with lots of their most vital songs freeforming hard into noisy, beautifully dissonant sheets of sweaty adrenaline-fueled feedback and no-wave-ish industrial din. Vinyl version comes with download card. Nostalgic Youth!
That's an aptly chosen title, as you should probably make sure your place has been seismically retrofitted before turning this up loud! Canada's space lords of lumbering, fuzzed out stoner rock / doom metal have returned with a new album, their sixth, which continues in the mesmerically massive, heavier-than-thou mold of past classics of theirs like Temple Ball and Songs For Worship. Once more, huge waves of repetitive, echo-effected, amplified sound surge forth, with the gruff vocals (a hacking gargle, doubtless sweet leaf damaged) and slow sludgey guitar riffs melding and melting in the spaciest, heaviest, most drugged out and distorted display of sheer stoner doom this side of Italy's UFOmammut, with whom Sons Of Otis share many similarities. Or imagine early Monster Magnet jamming (to the death) with Electric Wizard, all effects fully cranked. But we probably don't need to tell you any of that, 'cause any aQ-shopping connoisseur of 'the heavy' probably already has the Sons Of Otis spaceship/deathstar on their radar already, pinging away ominously... They've been doing this for 20 years now, after all! The trio's honest allegiance to classic rawk / blues / psych is still quite evident, their warped, wailing cover of a song by '70s rockers Mountain on here ("Never In My Life" - they already did "Mississippi Queen" on Temple Ball) joining past interpretations of tracks by the likes of Hendrix, Motorhead, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Saint Vitus and Steppenwolf in the Sons Of Otis catalog. "More cowbell!" is all we can say. Into the future, out of the past, Sons Of Otis do their granddaddies proud while rocketing off into space, the album culminating in a lengthy "Cosmic Jam" that naturally makes us think of another aQ fave, Earthless.
Luxury Problems is another stunning progression in the already brilliant catalogue of Andy Stott. The game is fully upped on this one, the dark hues even more melancholic, the fogged hiss and forlorn night drones ever present buried beneath sheets of crumbling percussion and is associated ether-rag induced slo-mo ghost house lamentations. It's a haunted sound for sure, as were his previous two mini albums, Passed Me By and We Stay Together, but it seems the bleak vaporous vibes of this Manchester artist are now fully realized. The addition of Allison Skidmore's beautifully woebegone vocals on most of the tracks provides just enough emotional power to really push Stott's vision forward.
Kicking off with "Numb", beautifully dark chords swell underneath Skidmore's plaintive and gorgeous utterances, sounding like that Julee Cruise/Burial collaboration we've all been dreaming of, recorded on a cassette deck and blasted LOUD from some reverberating corner of an abandoned bus station. Sorrowful and droning, the 4-on-the-floor way slowed down, everything blurred out and disintegrated. "Sleepless" is a standout as well, starting with a hissing Zoviet France like syncopated drone, with dubbed out reverb drenched percussion and off-kilter loopy sheets of unraveling hiss, the rhythm track slowly starting to creep in about halfway through. Hitting those drugged out R&B vibes we've been digging so much, a pitched down vocal loop intermingles with the drums, creating a hypnotically swinging, yet dirge like dirt-house stomper. Everything blasted out and fuzzy, the beat goes on, never peaking but developing into a blissed out trance state, time stretched windchimes cascading from left to right as the cut up vocal samples surface from some deep subterranean sonic cavern. Exquisite. "Hatch The Plan" has a field recorded mechanics vibe, starting and ending with what sounds like a rusted squeaking conveyer belt drenched in 'verb, a totally heavy and corroded sub baseline appears. This is one of the more minimal moments of the record. Essentially a bass line, a kick drum, and some percussion, and plenty of space for Skidmore's vocals, which are multilayered to brilliant effect. Elegiac vocal passages double and triple up over this blackened percussive skitter, subtle elements of noisy details peak through the mix, building towards a break in the drums, the angelic chorus of the vocals given full reign in the mix, haunting and sonorous, before the conveyer belt sound reappears and pitches up and up til being left alone, untreated, to cap off the jam. Drugged out and woozy, layers of dirt and skree undulating, altogether creepy, yet still, somehow sublime.
The vibe of the record remains totally consistent throughout, but what's truly great is how Stott finds understated ways to insert some funk into the proceedings. Stott, after all, has some dance floor cred, gained through his garagey bassy alter ego Andrea (also worth checking out is Millie & Andrea, Stott's collab with Miles Whittaker of Demdike Stare), but this is an Andy Stott record proper, so any dance floor tendencies are going to be handled with a handful of bleak dust. The title cut offers the best example of a clever infusion of dance floor tropes. A flickering breakbeat rolls along, slow and low slug swing, stark vocal harmonies commingle with a downtuned & groovy bass guitar line. Suddenly a 'verbed out to the max disco-y conga loop shows up, WAY high in the mix, giving the whole thing a very handmade, mid nineties NYC hip hop by way of Bristol vibe. Cut up and funky, yet with all the forlorn noise dappled feeling emblematic of Stott's sound.
"Up The Box" though, at least rhythmically speaking, may be the greatest departure on the record. It starts as a grinding and mesmerizing caustic drum drone. Again with some serious Zoviet France vibes, reminding us a little of our favorite Demdike Stare moments, the otherworldly percussive grime looping on and on, swirling hissing textures building until suddenly the whole thing turns into a screwed and chopped breakbeat work out! Although dirty and decimated as hell, just a breakbeat and a handful of effects go toward creating this stark rhythmic roller. Finally, "Leaving" caps Luxury Problems with more of Skidmore's beautifully funerary vocal intonations, multilayered and of course with a healthy dose of cavelike reverb, a gloomy gothy synth bass line combined with all the gauzy heavenly texture in these final moments has our collective hearts about to break. SO FUCKING GOOD!
Luxury Problems is definitely Stott's best work to date, which obviously means this is totally essential. The sonic palette here is definitely consistent with all the various releases under his own name, but the addition of the voice adds an incredible layer of emotional depth. Inhabiting a deep and dark nighttime universe, ghostly and mourning, disintegrating and dreary, the perfect soundtrack to those moments of lonely reflection. So utterly recommended! Beautiful Modern Love sleeve design too. (FYI, the vinyl version we had for a moment, but it's now being repressed, we'll list it when we can!)
Swans, Version 2.0 continues with The Seer, and how could it not be monstrous, epic, and utterly all-consuming? When Michael Gira reactivated the Swans several years ago, he did so with the intent of constantly touring the band, who furiously and methodically pounded through every set with Gira devilishly commanding to his band "More, you fuckers, MORE!!!" The songs which dominated the universally acclaimed 2010 album My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky became grotesquely engorged during the live sets, with each track telescoping in length and straining with each note, each rhythmic smash made more intense than the previous one. The shows were exhausting from the perspective of the audience, and Gira's marathon-length sprint must have been hell on the band, but unlike previous incarnations of Swans, it was obvious that Michael Gira was full of joy in orchestrating all of this controlled havoc.
So, we come to The Seer - an album devised as a template malleable to the pressures of the Swans live performances. How these songs will sound at the end of the Swans 2012 tour, who the hell knows? Even outside the context of the forecasted mutation, The Seer is a beast of an album. The opening number "Lunacy" is a brightly charged march through dissonant guitar monochords and militaristic snares, before giving over to a wild-eyed chorale featuring the vocal talents of Mimi and Alan Sparhawk of Low. With Gira in charge, the emotional fragility that's emblematic of Low becomes lupine in its collective howl. "Mother Of The World" reprises the jackbooted rhythms found on the first Swans records, with a jagged guitar chord scraping bloodily against the unrelenting groove. The title track itself is a 32 minute piece that lesser bands would have used as an entire album with its massive crescendos of drone-rock pummel crashing down to a doomic plod and extended passages of slumped distortion, as something of a breather before ripping into another frenzy of gleeful obliteration.
Disc two opens with the much ballyhooed appearance of Karen O on the brief, lilting number "Song For A Warrior." It's more of an intermission for the band to shake out their arms and ears before Gira launches into another lengthy percussive workout, which is exactly what he does on "Avatar" - lockstep grooves for drums and bells rise up through a drone-rock ascent of guitars, bass, and vocals uttering languid melodies throughout before Gira commands the drummers into an furious crescendo of control, power, and noise. "A Piece Of The Sky" slowly unfurls through a shimmering drone density with plenty of Ligetti references but is probably also a thoughtful homage to Gira's amphetamine driven deconstruction on the brilliant Body Lovers cd from 1998, with a temperate Swans lurching forward into a near symphonic ballad. The finale "The Apostate" is a 24-minute vehicle for the screeching drones of lapsteel player Kristof Hahn, emitting divebombing raids across the throttled basslines, yelped vocals, and of course those interlocked rhythms.
We've got the limited 2cd combo which comes with a bonus dvd of live material from the last tour, during which Swans worked through variations of tracks that made their way on to this album, including "Avatar," "The Apostate", and "The Seer", with two gems from Children Of God and a few from My Father Will Guide Me...
And yeah, The Seer is just as good as everybody has been saying.
UK tape label the Tapeworm launches their new, non-tape imprint, called The Wormhole, with two new releases, the double 7" vinyl debut of Drcarlsonalbion aka Dylan Carlson from Earth, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and the oddly named outfit The Swifter, a trio of piano, electronics and drums and percussion, featuring long time aQ fave BJ Nilsen manning the electronics. This record documents the group's first encounter, which took place in an old German church, and found the trio taking full advantage of the space's incredible acoustics, for a fantastic bit of dreamlike minimalism, beginning life as a creaking ship's hull, channeling Nurse With Wound's fantastic Salt Marie Celeste, but quickly letting the piano move to the fore, the sound transforming into something much more Necks like, the flurries of swirling notes reminding us of Lubomyr Melnyk, the drums a subtle background shuffle, the electronics alternately adding texture, or manipulating the sounds of the other players, but on the opening track, the sound is quite organic, minimal motorik free jazz drift, that gradually splinters into something much more rhythmic and abstract, and electronic sounding, but due to the instrumentation and the space, even the electronics sound organic.
The rest of the record explores similar territory, the piano adding most of the melodic color, while the drums and electronics supply the texture, dreamy and washed out one second, spare and skeletal the next, with some really fantastic moments throughout, the looped piano fragment and martial snare on "Neap Tide", or the No Neck Blues Band like soft cacophony on "Swallow", the record finishing off with the fantastic "Wave Guidance Allows Three", which again on the surface has a Necks like feel, but the low end piano is looped and layered and processed, creating huge dense blackened billows, churning and strangely atonal, while the drums supply a simple subtle driving rhythm underneath, before dissipating into a gorgeous glistening bliss out coda.
In Limbo is the debut full length from Kristina Lieberson, who plays keyboards in a band called Here We Go Magic (who we've never heard), but as Teen, Lieberson whips up a pretty sweet slab of indie pop post punk, heavy on new wavey swirliness, and minimal space out dreaminess. There's definitely a serious old school post punk vibe, but filtered through something more modern and psychedelic. Opener "Better" pairs Lieberson's strident vocals (that remind us a bit of Grass Widow) with primitive simple drum pound, and clouds of swirling synth shimmer, not to mention the occasional handclaps, the vocals layered into a dizzying round. Which leads right into "Come Back", with it's strange calypso percussion, and stripped down muted guitar chug, a weird match for the squiggly synths and hazy echo drenched vocals, but those disparate elements seem to mesh more and more as the song goes on, before slipping into a weird swirly psychedelic breakdown. "Charlie" slows things down into a woozy, trudging, synth heavy ballad, that sounds a bit like Best Coast on horse tranquilizers.
And the rest of the record unfurls similarly, like some weird Grass Widow / US Girls hybrid, taking a simple jangle pop garage rock core, mixed with some quirky new waviness, and adding some dirgey, murky post punk churn, not to mention some serious weirdness (the cool pinball sound effects on "Electric"), and some crazy catchy songs. In fact "Electric" might just be our favorite of the bunch, those aforementioned pinball sounds mixed with some M83 style electro glam bombast, some blown out synth buzz, and a chorus to die for.
The second of two releases this year from black ambient alchemist Theologian, the other, Finding Comfort In Overwhelming Negativity, released on Handmade Birds and reviewed here recently, and now this one, The Chasms Of My Heart, released on Crucial Blast. Like Finding Comfort (and The Further I Get before that), Chasms is another stunning collection of grim, industrial wastescapes, all bleak drones and industrial percussive crunch, although Chasms does start out on a remarkably 'musical' note, opener "Abandon All Hope" weds actual singing to tense layered keening tones, and churning machinelike rhythms, the vocals mantra like, wreathed in static and crackle, drift atop a dense droned out thrum, driven by that relentless rhythm, eventually the vocals and drums drop out, leaving some seriously serene sonic shimmer and softly sweeping cinematic ambience.
The second track makes up for the melody in the first, unleashing a heaving onslaught of power electronics and blacknoise skree, which eventually blurs, and is melted down into a thick morass of crumbling low end that gradually becomes a hushed blackened drift.
But it does seem that melody will be a recurring theme on Chasms, as "My Body Is Made Of Ash, I Live As Ash" begins as a series of thick thick distorted synth swells, which rapidly blossom into something much more melodic, soaring and cinematic, like M83 via the Swans, but even slower and meaner, and then the beats come in, and you can add Muslimgauze to the mix. Weird combo, but it works, hypnotic and tranced out, until the hammer falls, and the song explodes into full on face melting noise, but if you listen close, within that caustic cloud of noise, the rhythm continues to churn, vocals wail, and melodies drift and shimmer, it's the sort of hard noise, that softens a bit the more you listen, and seems to transform before your ears into something weirdly, and impossibly catchy. The rest of the record reveals more of Theologian's bleeding black sonic heart, the stuttering, almost 'danceable' "We Can't All Be Victims", the processed vocal driven blackened power electronics skitter of "I Don't Exist", the blown out noisebliss of "Bed Of Maggots, the almost house music-y pulsating noisescape title track, and finally, the sprawling 13 minute, haunting, grinding cinematic ambient noisescape closer.
Comes packaged in a super striking, full color, oversized dvd style, six panel digipak.
Record number three from these local country punks, and the first one we've reviewed, which is weird, since some aQ-ers have long been fans, but also because Trainwreck Riders include amongst their members, Andrew from SF pop gods the Ovens, but while TWR are in fact a bit poppy, their sound is much more twangy, bringing to mind, most obviously, Camper Van Beethoven, Uncle Tupelo, Dieselhed and that whole No Depression crowd. And sure none of those bands exist anymore, and really that whole scene sorta dried up and disappeared, but these guys definitely remind us of why we loved that stuff so much, and have us again wondering why more bands still don't do the whole country punk / country rock thing. It sounds as good now as it ever did. And it's easy to imagine these guys being huge back in the nineties, records on Bloodshot, touring with the Old 97's or the Mekons, but these days, they're definitely doing something WAY outside of what's hip and cool. But goddamn these guys nail it. Big jangly guitars, lush arrangements, loping rhythms, plenty of twang, drawled, laid back vocals, crazy catchy songs, with some occasionally exploding into kick ass start/stop almost mathy breakdowns, like on the second half of "Gypsy Stealin', which finds the band unfurling a dense tangle of progged out twang flecked post rock churn, which somehow fist perfectly with the rest of the songs droned out blugrassy groove.
The band definitely have their pop down too, every song here impossibly catchy, "House On The Hill" being one of our favorites, heavily beholden to Uncle Tupelo, sounding like it could be a cover of some Anodyne B-side, which is a huge compliment for sure! "Orchard Keeper" too, definitely displays a huge UT influence, the song shifting constantly from country gallop to woozy twangy dream pop and back again. But the more we listen, the harder and harder it gets to pick a favorite, as more and more of the songs become potential candidates, which is always the sign of a great record, in fact we only just now made it to the brooding closer, "Shark Attack", a moody woozy reverb drenched country ballad with some seriously grim lyrics about, yep, a shark attack, the music appropriately dirge-y and ominous, a serious chunk of grim dark twang.
The cd comes in a digipak, the vinyl pressed on 180 gram vinyl, also includes a cd version of the whole record!
The third full length record from Detroit garage punks Tyvek, finds the group once again, mixing things up, after beginning life as a warped lo-fi fractured garage pop combo, the last few records found these guys getting more and more punk, shedding much of their quirkiness and poppiness in favor of something more angry and urgent, culminating in the recent Nothing Fits, which found the band in full on punk mode, short blasts of crunchy guitar, pounding drums and yowled vocals, but here, on their latest, On Triple Beams, it's almost as if those preceding records never happened at all. Chronologically, this definitely sounds like it should have come right after their Siltbreeze debut, the songs are longer, noiser and poppier, lots of tangled guitars, wild chaotic drumming, all wound into tense sprawls of droned out, crunchy post punk garage pop pound, opener "Scaling" channels the Fall, the vocals sung/spoken over a relentless jagged jangle, and peppered with blurts of distorted buzz, the chorus loose and chaotic, all the while, catchy as hell.
And that Fall comparison definitely proves apt as the record unwinds, most of the track just two or three parts, frantic riffing, wound around stripped down propulsive drum pound, locked tight, while the vocals testifyin' over the top. The sound is much more in line with their In The Red brethren, but at the same time, they're definitely sounding very British post punk, angular and angsty, sharp and swaggery, somehow fusing the warped garage pop of their debut, with the agit punkiness of their last few records into this heady, sweaty, bruised and bloody blast of kick ass garage punk crush.
Not sure why it took so long for us to get turned on to these guys. We definitely remember listening to them in the past, and not being too impressed. It could be a case of just being a bit garage rock-ed out. Too many bands in a scene that seemed to be spawning a new band ever 5 seconds, the last thing we needed was one more. But on Racism, UV Race quickly show us what we've been missing out on. Definitely way weirder and quirkier than most of the garage rock out there, the label describes them as "Australia's most genius avant-tards", which kinds sums it up. Catchy and jangly, fuzzy and crunchy, but also sort of druggy and fucked up, warped and demented (check out the chorus on "I'm A Pig": "OINK OINK OINK OINK"), the songs are super simple, one or two parts, sing along lyrics, guitars that get woozy and angular, lots of fuzz and distortion, the sounds weirdly psychedelic, plenty of handclaps, squiggly freak out leads, and loads of super blown out fuzz guitars, ridiculous lyrics, so ridiculous in fact that the whole booklet is a series of paragraph long descriptions of each song, the lyrics, who wrote it, what inspired it, pretty goddamn funny. There's a definitely Fall vibe too (just check out "Life Park", with its sung/spoken vocals), and a lot of this is of the drug addled, brain damaged, outsider pop variety, but scattered throughout are some seriously ruling jams, the record at its best when those two sides collide, which they do quite often, maybe nowhere moreso than on the ultra tripped out closer, "Memenonome", all primitive drum plod, echo drenched shards of space guitar, dense psychedelic swirls, a long stretches of near silence, all leading up to some surprisingly catchy poppiness which quickly devolves into a melting miasma of bleating horns and tinkling xylophones, all wrapped around the group's lilting, and weirdly catchy psych pop dirge.
Hell yeah, at last! When this now-semi-legendary album was first released by UK heavy psych doom metal specialists Rise Above in 2011, it came out in an ultra limited edition of just three hundred vinyl-only copies, which proved almost impossible to come by. That first edition sold out instantly and those lps started trading for seriously ridiculous amounts of money on eBay and elsewhere. Even though, really, who the heck were Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats? Well it wasn't just the cool band name generating a buzz, the music was awesome, as we later were able to ascertain. Eventually Rise Above did a repress, of which we were able to get a few, though those were expensive too and we were never able to get enough of 'em to actually list. But, we did figure out why this record was in such demand (as we'll discuss in more detail in a moment). We also learned that Blood Lust had also come out on compact disc, but oddly enough via a small Finnish label instead of Rise Above, and again we never were able to get enough of those to list, either. But we had hope that someday, somehow, we'd be able to review this for you, 'cause eventually most Rise Above stuff gets released in the USA by licensees Metal Blade, and while its been a damn long time, we're now pleased to, ta da, finally have Blood Lust on cd at a domestic price. Record Of The Week? You bet!
So, what we thought we were in for, way back when all we knew about band was their name & label, was some lysergic sludgey doomy jamming, like maybe Electric Wizard (another Rise Above band) or UFOmammut. Which we would have been perfectly happy with, of course. But, instead, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats proved to be a lot more song-oriented and more melodic than we expected, with a kind of poppy '60s garage psych rock side to 'em, amidst their heavy fuzz-filled riffage. The singer (that's ol' Uncle Acid himself, natch, also on guitar in this power trio, and mellotron and synths too) croons his twisted tales of witchburning, black magic, and murder, in a languid whine, his voice nasally pinched and reverb effected, reminding us a bit of Kyle Thomas of aQ faves Witch (and King Tuff and Happy Birthday too by the way). His delivery lends a delicate, decadent touch to the band's brand of both despondent plod and swinging catchiness, able to render lines like "I was born a bitter man, no hopes or dreams / I get my kicks from torturing and screams / I lust for womens blood, and their evil ways / I twist my words to what the good book says" with sick sincerity -and- showmanship, in a way that is surprisingly not very much metallic, instead staying (despite the music's undeniable heaviness) more in the pop realm, though one obsessed with vintage horror films.
These rollicking, but dread-infused tunes are further full of ripping fuzz guitar leads, and lumbering downer riffs. Without a doubt, doom originators Black Sabbath are a major factor in this band's sound, but they're doing something rather different with that particular inspiration than most do. And we're also reminded of some other British '60s/'70s proto-metallers like Stray, High Tide, T2, and May Blitz, who were quite heavy but psych-pop catchy as well. Perhaps very early, very psychedelic Alice Cooper could be added to Uncle Acid's roster of influences too, we're thinking of the way the song "Ritual Knife" marries a pounding tribal beat and urgently chugging ominous riffery with glorious bursts of shining melody come chorus time.
One much more recent band that these guys also remind us of, is Swedish occult rock sensations Ghost, another act whose "pop side" is so effective as to possibly threaten their "metal cred" among the more closeminded. We'd also recommend Uncle Acid to fans of that other recent, equally retro stunner from Rise Above, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. And, like last week's Record Of The Week by Golden Void, this has that laidback classic sounding '70s psychrock vibe, immediately familiar, though Uncle Acid comes across as much more dark and sinister to be sure. And lastly, fans of Witchcraft should pay attention - we'd rank this up there with that band's celebrated Rise Above debut, we're pretty sure this is gonna be considered a classic too. We're sooooooo glad they didn't just press only those 300 vinyl copies and leave it at that!! You will be too.
This cd reissue includes a bonus track not on vinyl, which provides a nice coda to the record proper, relinquishing the fuzz guitar for acoustic strum and hand percussion, Uncle Acid doing their doom-pop-psych in a more folky style a la, say, Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex.
An impressive survey of the curatorial aesthetic from the Russian imprint Observatoire, which has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years with some great releases of cracked dronology and mangled field recordings. The concepts on Archaic Variations slant toward crude electro-acoustics, psychogeography, obsolete technologies, and improbable strategies all mapping out tactile soundfields with variable degrees of manipulation and deconstruction. The first handful of tracks (Emmanuel Mieville, Richard Garet, and Takanobu Noshino) are relatively hushed compositions of shadowy drones, distant vocalizations, and raw field recordings lending an air of clinical detachment. Chris Whitehead's elegaic piano and field recording piece addresses a rural British ceremony that dates back to the 12th Century, recalling the piano laced impressionism of Andrew Chalk and Cindytalk. The latter half of the disc tends toward claustrophobia and decay, introduced by none other than our own Jim Haynes, whose chainsaw drones and swarming radio bursts transmit through thickets of scabrous noise dialing up comparisons to Kevin Drumm's more noxious facets. The Russian artist Radioson maintains the shortwave theme with an paranoiac set of hypnotic melodies revolving around repeating beacon tones and gray masses of static. Gonna have to dig into this project more for sure. The compilation concludes on a very bleak note with a track from Francisco Meirino, the brilliant, if under-recognized electro-acoustic tactician here jettisoning razor-sharp errata of EMF interference across pierced feedback shards, and the finale from another Russian artist Dasein, compacting distorted synths and tortured vocals into a more nuanced take on the early Whitehouse / Ramleh axis. 300 copies, only.
Another killer calendar of classic blues artwork from original early twentieth century blues records. It's a series of calendars that as we mentioned in a review of a past year's calendar, some of us at aQ have hung on our kitchen walls for years now, and once you check one of these out, you'll understand why. Like the years before, 2013's installment is another doozy with some crazy, over the top artwork and loads of blues nerd trivia. Just check out the calendar's cover, "The Devil & God Meet At Church"!! And inside, "Pig Meat Blues", "Snatch It Back Blues", "Police Dog Blues" and more! Each month has lots of info about each release, as well as significant blues birthdays and other relevant dates, not to mention biographies, rare photos and death dates. And to top it all off, as always, there's also a cd, with the songs featured each month, as well as NINE bonus tracks, from folks like Charley Patton, Blind Blake, Memphis Minnie, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Buddie Boy Hawkins, Ardelle Bragg and more!
Originally released in 1967, this is the pinnacle of guitar soli talent from the Takoma label including John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Max Ochs, Bukka White and Harry Taussig. The original cover had a more hippie folk design, but we're glad 4 Men with Beards went for the cooler space age cover art of the 1968 repress, re-imagining the antiquated notion of acoustic guitar as a modern tool of forward thinking progression. John Fahey and Robbie Basho have the longest tracks with exploratory meditations that capture an array of bucolic moods. But the pair of tracks each by little known but highly influential folk figures Max Ochs (brother of Phil) and Harry Taussig create a beautiful flow with stirring slow build ragas and wistful childlike reverie. Poised between the old world and the new, is delta bluesman Bukka White with an amazing blues dirge that ties both sides together. A definitive collection for all Takoma / solo guitar fans!
Anyone who shops for orignal library records can testify that it can be a grueling, expensive and oftentimes unrewarding quest. Even libraries with good track records like DeWolfe or KPM can fall short if the themes are uninteresting (like Casino Royale or British Fanfare). Separating the wheat from the chaff takes lots of knowledge and research, and more often than not the good music is only likely found through high end-collectors or a connection with the library archives itself. Thankfully we have this superb compilation that takes out a lot of the guesswork and delivers some incredible sounds to boot. Hailing from Toronto, the Parry Music library was founded in 1974 by John Parry and Chris Stone. Parry's connections with the great UK library Chappell Music helped bring him incredible talent including Nino Nardini and Johnny Hawksworth among a host of others. Selected from a 10 year period, this is an absolutely incredible and essential collection of warm electronic majesty in the form of music for unrealized industrial films, kids' TV shows, commercial spots, radio broadcasts and B-movie cinematic soundtracks. From avant-garde soundscapes to cosmic proto-Balearic disco, sublime choral pieces, blithe autumnal warp and woozy abstracted kinderlieder, a beautifully realized compilation of pure joy!
Wow! Of all the various releases for today's 'Black Friday Record Store Day', this one might have been the one we were most excited about. A super swank, ultra deluxe, eleven 7" boxset from Lee Hazlewood, or more specifically, as it says on the box, from Lee Hazlewood Industries. Culled from the years 1967-1970, and from Hazlewood's LHI imprint, much like The LHI Years: Singles, Nudes & Backsides release from earlier this year, which was released on Record Store Day proper. But unlike that collection, the tracks here are mostly Lee Hazlewood -productions- instead of performances, featuring Hazlewood produced tracks from Suzi Jane Hokom, Honey LTD., Kitchen Cinq, Ann-Margaret, The Woodchucks and of course Mr. Lee himself, solo on one single, and dueting with Suzi Jane Hokom! We haven't cracked one open yet, and will give this a more extensive review if we can get more of 'em post Black Friday. But figured we might as well list it today so folks who don't want to wait can grab one now.
The packaging is incredible, a custom made, full color, magnetic flip-top box, housing all eleven singles, each with original labels and sleeve art, an ultra rare reproduction of the Woodchucks 45 picture sleeve, a Lee Hazlewood puzzle (!), for, as the sticker on the box suggests, "those lonely nights", a custom LHI 45 adapter, and a download card for all the tracks. LIMITED TO 3000 COPIES!
Ornamented Walls is the latest blast of primitive gothic electro industrial from Dominick Fernow, Hospital Records head honcho, and the man behind Prurient, Christian Cosmos, as well as sometime member of Cold Cave. And while this is the third or fourth VS record we've reviewed, this one differs in a big way, namely its creation. The A side is a vinyl reissue of a super limited tape (17 copies, sold at the first VS live show), which demonstrated Fernow's cassette deck technique, as in using tape decks and a mixer the way a DJ does a turntable and mixer, a primitive collage of blown out beats, of distorted melodies, of caustic noise, and all manner of raw buzzing texture, somehow deftly woven into a churning electro industrial crunch that kills. The three tracks on side A are live rehearsals for the above mentioned gig, and are raw, and powerful, intense and surprisingly nuanced, flitting from chaotic caustic crush, to stripped down droned out beatscape, to churning industrial pound, the sounds hissy and crackly, lots of tape noise, and murky whirring soft noise shimmer, not to mention mysterious voices, bits of other songs, primitive samples, stuttering beats and throbbing in-the-red basslines.
The flipside features a handful of tracks whipped up post show, using the same multi tape deck set up, and offers up still more of the same, thick insectoid buzz, dirgey distorted beats, creepy droned out melodies, swirling gristly textures, dark sinister atmospheres, and some gorgeously crumbling blurred bliss out noise, sounding a bit like Muslimgauze by way of Tim Hecker. In fact the B side tends toward the minimal and abstract, a more mellow balance to the A side's bombast, but it's great stuff, skeletal and spare, haunting and sinister, much more moody and atmospheric, gorgeous stuff, which definitely had us hoping there was more of this tucked way in the vaults somewhere.
It's weird to realize that RuneEater is only the second full length record in 5 years from this black metal outfit, but not too surprising considering how much time these guys spend on tour. And all that touring has definitely paid off, as record number demonstrates a huge progression from 2008's Sovereign Nocturnal, a record we dug, but one that was more obvious with its influences, but even then demonstrating the haunting folkiness and weird experimental streak that would finally come to the fore on RuneEater. The nearly ten minute opening track here pretty much lays it all out, a weird, drum heavy tribal intro, ritualistic and mysterious, bleating horns, chantlike vocals, throat singing, a bit of spoken word, which all disappears in a cloud of feedback, before the song proper kicks in. Dirgey and murky and super distorted, midtempo, but double kicks pounding away beneath the thick fuzzed out guitars, the whole thing reminding us of obscure Sub Pop outfit Rein Sanction, due in no small part to the guitar tone, but then the vokills come in, ands the song unfurls, revealing a definitely folk underpinning, before exploding into a weird stretch of blasting, that doesn't blast ferociously as much as texturally, if that makes any sense. The sound is truly unique, where before it was post rock infused BM, has now become some weird black metal / blackened doom folk / experimental hybrid that definitely seems like that the band were shooting for all along. There's a definite prog vibe going on too, which is inevitable in long songs with lots of twists and turns, but it suits them for sure, eventually the song winding down into a weird folk flecked doom, all slithery spidery guitar melodies, howled vox, and droned out melodies. It's a gorgeous part, and ends way too soon.
"Reverend Flames Of Antiquity" spends its first three minutes weaving a dark brooding sort of psychedelia, spare and abstract, lush chords drifting through shimmering fields of warm thrum and cymbal shimmer, before launching into a doomy creep, and then a weird tangled black prog churn, a dense chaotic crush, the sound slipping easily between dreamy drift and crashing chaos, and even drifting into some soaring epic slow build heaviness (a la Sovereign Nocturnal), finishing off with a seriously heavy Neurosis style chug heavy outro.
"Reclamation Of Valour" finds the band dabbling in some Barn Owl style twang flecked psychedelic folkiness, before again unleashing their twisted progged out black doom, the band slipping into some cool stripped down, droned out stretches, and adding some very medieval sounding folk melodies, before finally getting down to some seriously black buzz, only to shed the black and the buzz, for a sprawling doom folk outro. Finally, "Iconoclast" finishes things off, easily the most overtly black metal of the bunch, with some of the fiercest buzzing and blasting, but here too, the band mix in lots of melody, more of that medieval sound, the second half transforming the black buzz into a super dynamic black prog folk doom finale.
The packaging is insanely over the top. The cd comes in a gorgeous black on black hardcover book style jacket, complete with fancy gold on black printed inner booklet, and the lp, comes in a similarly book-like jacket, and the gatefold features what has to be one of THEE best band photos ever. Assuming you can even find the band in the photo!
Florid Pagoda marks the return of the enigmatic Von Himmel, a scant few months after we awarded Record Of The Week status to the monolithically awesome Space Communion lp. The four collage-like pieces here conjure all kinds of beautifully disorienting atmospheres and moods. Pulsating melodies provide a rhythmic, breath-like quality to all the tracks, while there seems to be no discernible percussion, and at times it sounds like some subterraneous orchestra is trying to claw its way out from below. In the end, those demonic scrabblings and cavernous rumbles can't help but be overtaken by the majestic swells of melodic noise. At one point in the song "Shadow Locus", from out of the cosmic hugeness there appears to be some sort of synth war, with electronic sounds raining down from above. While at other moments you feel as if you're wandering dreamlike through some creaky old house. Closing number "Luminous Inertia" alters the vibe with Klaus Schultze-like spaciness and sequenced sounds taking things into eternity. Awesome.
Super swank hand painted packaging, and of course ULTRA LIMITED.
South Of Salem is just the second record from this long running (14 years!) Portland doom outfit, but it's their first with vocalist Uta Plotkin, and she really makes all the difference, transforming the groups dirgey bluesy Sabbathy groove into something much more unique, soulful and slithery, and weirdly poppy too. In fact Plotkin is not possessed of a raspy howl, or a guttural growl, but an actual voice, a serious set of pipes that almost sound out of place in a metal band, which is exactly what makes this record sound so special. Plotkin belting these tunes out like some metallized Janis Joplin or doom-ed Heart, like the lost Wilson sister who chose the darker path. The music is a doom lovers dream, thick churning downtuned guitars, dense busy drumming, the sound thick and heavy and epic, and then Plotkin just seals the doomed deal, her voice slipping from a sultry croon, to a powerful yowl, occasionally launching into some seriously wild wails, with some cool multitracked vocal harmonies only adding to the doom-Heart-ed vibe.
Rad stuff for sure, and most definitely recommended for the other witchy doom combos we've dug in the past like Loon, Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Witch Mountain tour-mates Christian Mistress, etc.
An acoustic record might seem strange coming from Chelsea Wolfe, whose two records The Grime And The Glow and Apokalypsis, seemed to rely heavily on the production and surrounding sounds, the murky home brewed outside alchemy of the Grime, and the churning blackened full band energy of Apokalypsis, but as much as those records were about sound, they were more about the songs, and Wolfe may have wrapped her songs in all manner of bleak sonic gloom and dusky dolor, but it did little to disguise the power and emotion of her songwriting.
Unknown Rooms is Wolfe reconnecting to the country and folk music that inspired her, Townes Van Zandt, Hank Williams, and is not strictly 'acoustic' in the sense of just voice and electric guitar, no the sound here is much more fleshed out, the guitar and vocals are obviously the focal point, but the sound is gorgeously lush, songs laced with muted simple percussion, minimal drumming, shimmering strings, multitracked vocal harmonies, the production too, spare and cavernous one second, muted and washed out the next, some tracks here sounding clear and bright, like they were recorded in a proper studio, others, like the darkly delicate "Hyper Oz", sound like they were recorded at home, in the grey light of morning, hushed bedroom dreamfolk, and others, like "Boyfriend", sound like neither, hovering in some netherworld where it's perfectly natural for aching downer folk to be flecked with strange analog synth blurts. And of course Wolfe's vocals are divine throughout, rich and throaty, and swaddled in subtle smears of echo, often slipping into a witchy falsetto, the effect electric. Some folks at aQ hear Wolfe on Unknown Rooms as sounding a bit like Marissa Nadler, but Wolfe seems to be exploring a world much darker.
The record starts with "Flatlands", which is stirring and moody, starting out spare and stripped down, underpinned by haunting string shimmer, before blossoming into a lush sprawl of classic pop, the switch into the soaring sweetly melodic second half, and the final minute of swirling strings are stunning, and definitely set the stage for the rest of the record. "The Way We Used To" finds Wolfe sounding a bit like Zola Jesus, but the sound recast as a spare apocalyptic folk, the sound anchored to a gorgeous looped harmony vocal refrain, Wolfe slipping into that divine falsetto for the chorus. Those falsetto vocals bleed over into "Spinning Centers", hushed and dreamlike, with lush chordal swells, pizzicato strings, the vocals hushed and delicate and crystalline. And so it goes, song after song, which somehow play like lost classics, dusted off and reimagined, Wolfe's eerie folk as much indebted to the classics as to whatever darkness must haunt her musical soul.
So, we raved about Small Cruel Party a few months back, being an unheralded genius of tactile minimalism hailing from the Pacific Northwest; and now we have the reissue of the Yeast Culture album IYS, in many ways, a document originating from the same time and place that's even more cryptic and more obsessive than Small Cruel Party all the while achieving similarly cracked abstraction of sound-art. Yeast Culture was the brainchild of an artist named Abo, who set up shadowy installations, performances, and even a record shop in an abandoned building in Seattle. The days of such romantic squatting are surely over in Seattle, but they provided the context of damp concrete, rusted rebar, and festering mold. Through collaboration and in piloting the ship himself, Abo steered Yeast Culture into a strange beast of DIY musique concrete, self-immolating electro-acoustic strategies and dangerous field recording situations, amidst all that rubble and decay. While there were only a handful of releases to coincide with the seemingly rich history of activity through that space, the 1989 album IYS is the Yeast Culture masterpiece. An enigmatic smear of crumbling events, metallic scribblings, aerosolizing hiss, poltergeist-like clunks of grey noise, and strange whirring machines caught in their last dying breath. What little information that can be found on the record is that the source material was entirely taken from a three day session on an island in the Puget Sound, after which Abo quite literally ripped those recordings to shreds and painstakingly reassembled the artifacts. Like Small Cruel Party and Organum, Yeast Culture's constructions are densely layered and aggregated, with the compositional strategies keeping to a blank linearity. The sounds themselves have the feeling of being an amplification of the wood beetles gnawing through oak trees or an invasion of mechanical insects adopting a scorched earth policy in miniature or perhaps some unwritten noise symphony for Jan Svankmajer's films, full of disembodied teeth chewing incessantly on cutlery and old furniture. As if that weren't enough to entice, there's the artwork - a densely silkscreened poster that wraps around an equally densely silkscreened inner sleeve with multiple belts of paper holding everything in place. As chaotic as the heavily overlaid silkscreens look, the packaging is quite elegant and perfectly reflects the sounds on the grey / splattered vinyl. While the artwork on the original was pretty stunning, it's even better here on the reissue. Yeah, it's pricey; but when you get your hands on this, you'll realize that the price is totally justified given the amount of work that went to each album. Of course, it's super limited and so fucking recommended! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
Grunge godfather Neil Young has often been a hit or miss proposition, especially lately. That's gonna happen when you've been around for so long and made so many albums, some of 'em of the contractual obligation variety (and others merely misguided)... But we always get at least a little bit bit curious when a new Neil Young comes out. There's always the chance he's gonna bring the heavy amp-worship, as on the quite excellent Le Noise a couple years ago. Plus, this one's with his beloved band Crazy Horse. However, so was another disc of his this year, Americana, which we didn't bother to review 'cause we felt it fell into that "misguided" category - Neil & Co. doing hoary old tunes like "Oh Susannah" and "This Land Is Your Land", really? But we're ready to give Neil and his Crazy Horse brethren another chance, or rather, they've given us another chance, two discs worth. The first disc of which, we'll note up front, starts with a nearly half-hour long track called "Driftin' Back". Basically, what you think of that, will determine whether you want to proceed with checking this whole thing out. Nobody can say that Neil Young & Crazy Horse are afraid of the word "indulgent". You know you're in for some endless jamming, for good or ill. Check out the sound samples, see what you think. Your mileage may vary, as do the lengths of these songs, there's 3-4 minute numbers but also a couple in the 16-17 minute range, along that that aforementioned opening epic. While lyrically this is Neil's typical old fogey hippie getting old stuff, you'll get more out of this from listening instead to the way his guitar swooops and soars, drifts and rumbles. Ultimately, that's the payoff; that sound, that soloing. Thus, some of the Neil Young fans here at aQ were willing to swallow this Psychedelic Pill, and found it mesmeric, but others here might have reviewed it with one of those "McKayla Maroney is not impressed" photoshop pics.
Oh, and this IS on vinyl too, but for some reason (and not just 'cause it's of neccessity a triple lp) it's really outrageously expensive. We could probably order it for you if you ask, but we're not gonna get any otherwise.
