The Cliff's Notes summary of A.R. Kane often begins and ends with the brief description: "the black Jesus & Mary Chain", which wouldn't be too far off the mark, if it weren't for the gradual / unfortunate shift that Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala made from blustery dream-pop to house-lite electronica. This collection of all the band's singles produced outside their three albums proper maps out that history from when they began as a beautifully scalding group that most definitely deserved all the Jesus & Mary Chain / Cocteau Twins comparisons to the less than stellar end of their career when the guitars were ditched in favor of some rather tepid Euro-pop numbers. Fortunately, the best work - the earliest stuff - is all found on disc one; so you can just leave the second disc firmly planted in the package and just forget it. The first single really does embrace that JAMC model fully with Psychocandy style hurricane-shock distortion grafted onto concise post-punk tunes, and even the Bobby Gillespie snare & floor tom dum-dum beat. As A.R. Kane, Ayuli & Tambala only recorded one single for 4AD, the lush, proto-shoegaze ep "Lolita" (1987) with a rather languid dreamy-pop number entitled "Sado-Masochism Is A Must" making the sexual fetish crowd swoon with the squalls of oceanic distortion instead of the sharp sting of a whip. The opening track to the following ep "Baby Milk Snatcher" (1989) is all about blowjobs followed by the rather stiff jangle of "Sperm Travels Like Juggernaut", lending to much critical debate from the stuffy British music press.
When A.R. Kane was signed to 4AD, label boss Ivo Watts-Russell suggested that the duo collaborate with the sample-heavy dance-pop outfit Colourbox; and they produced just two tracks - one of which is featured here in the downtempo proto-MBV number "Anitina." The other track was the chart-topping floor filler "Pump Up The Volume", also ascribed to their collaborative name M/A/R/R/S. It's not featured here; but for those who grew up in the late '80s and early '90s, that track is permanently etched into your memory anyway, it being a wholly memorable darkly-disco-pop number.
By the end of 1989, A.R. Kane left the guitars behind for sure, with the dubby martial funk of "Is This It?" which cops its moves from the post-industrial outfit 23 Skidoo with plenty of spooky atmospherics and atonal cornet blurting. But after this, it's all downhill. David Byrne signed them to Luaka Bop and A.R. Kane's quality control and their aesthetic choices took a serious nose dive. Buy this for disc one (which is brilliant!) and forget about the second.
Despite all the Acid- suffix and -Witch prefix bands out there (and vice versa for that matter), it appears that this is the very first band ever to use the name Acid Witch! And it really would have sucked if the name had already been taken, 'cause these guys are the PERFECT Acid Witch. Nobody could possibly do better justice to a moniker like that than this, um, coven.
Are they psychedelic? Yes. Are they metal? Yes. Are they creepy? Yes. Are they deathly? Yes. Are they doomy? Yes, yes, yes! Psychedelic drug doom death horror metal that cackles, wears a pointy hat, and flies on a broomstick. And, they have a sense of humor about it (hence song titles like "Witches Tits"), the same sense of humor -and- horror that gets us all into those cult '70s and '80s Italian fright flicks. Speaking of which, this album is amply laced with sinister, proggy Goblin-esque keyboards, draped over fuzzy chugging heaviness worthy of early Cathedral. Heavy, heavy doom riffs indeed abound, along with guttural grunting deeper-than-thou vokills, both of which manage to be fairly catchy as well, this album casting a spell of instant headbanging most definitely. Acid Witch's songs are furthermore infested with droning psych guitar soloing, weird electronics, witchy laughter, and spooky-ooky sound FX (is that a bubbling, boiling cauldron in there?) which makes this sound something like a "haunted Hawkwind" version of death/doom metal! Or let's say, take Acid Mothers Temple and Witchfinder General and mix them together (including the band names), then get 'em to play old school death a la Hellhammer. It's a bewitching, if totally gonzo, sound.
Further coolness: did we mention the main guy in the band is from Finland? And did you see the freaky EC Horror comics meets Cracked Magazine cover art? Which was done by Acid Witch member Shagrat (doubtless an Amon Duul II fan), who also provides a b&w portrait of the band done in the style of one of Witchfinder General's singles covers. Also, Witchtanic Hellucinations? Heck that's our review right there. These guys are brilliant (at least as much so as Electric Wizard and their "Satanic Rites Of Drugula" on Witchcult Today - hey maybe those two bands should go on tour and make black magic together!). Other bands that if you might like, probably means you should listen to this, include: Solar Anus, Coffins, Sigh (circa Imaginary Sonicscape), Moss, and Pan-Thy-Monium.
As soon as we heard 'em, we knew this was a definite AQ highlight. It took us a while to get more, our suppliers never had enough, but finally we contacted the label directly and got some, so here they are! Get 'em before they turn us all into (lysergic) toads.
Record number two from these weirdo psychedelic outliers, their first under the newly hatched moniker Alien Ballroom, after jettisoning their previous name, Koolaid (Global Tyranny). Not sure if it was some sort of cease and desist from that giant pitcher after smashing through their practice space wall, or they jut decided this new name better suited their sound, but either way, if you dug that Koolaid record, you're gonna dig this one too, and the new name is definitely pretty apt, this just might be the kind of thing that would get played in an alien ballroom, assuming it was some fucked up alternate sixties there, where everyone was out of their gourd on alien drugs, and wanted to get totally lost in clouds of tranced out caveman psych.
Just get a load of the opening track here, the sidelong "The New Revelation", which ditches, at least initially, much of the random sampled weirdness that was all over the Koolaid record, in favor of a simple, fuzzed out, knuckle dragging garage dirge psych groove, that sounds a bit like a Cro-Magnon Wooden Shjips, warbly organs, tribal drumming, a simple motorik groove, a killer main riff, the vocals laid back and a bit washed out, the whole thing wreathed in clouds of effects and layers of buzz and hum and thrum, it's not really until 5 or 6 minutes in that the samples pop up, but instead of taking over, like on the Koolaid record, they drift into the background, taking that main riff with it, the drums switching to a simple pounding pulse, the song transforming into something way more freeform and tripped out, the bass slithery, the guitars drenched in effects, and drifting through an expanse of druggy haze and tangled melodies, the sound gradually regaining momentum, not to mention some HORNS, which sound amazing, the sound blossoming into something weirdly stately and majestic, before resolving in a final squall of psych garage crunch.
The flipside is all shorter tracks, and way more varied, the horns returning on the dreamily psych-poppy "banks Of The Dee" that almost sounds like some long lost Elephant Six outtake, minus the warped samples and fucked up FX, "Hogs Are Coming", is all droned out dirge, driven by big reverbed drum pound, and an absolutely KILLER heavy psych breakdown that sound like it must be a sample, murky and blown out, and wreathed in fragmented samples of the same freakout. "Street Beacon" is a dizzying heady backwards guitar / dubbed out vox freeform psych-drone freakout, while "Instant K" adds some woozy sitar shimmer and echoey vox, to a loping garage rock groove. "Ringstone Round" is all murky proto-metal garage punk dirge, woozy and washed out, and finally, "Forty Ton Rock" finishes things off in a blaze of freaked out glory, a swirling tangle of chaotic sound quickly coalesces into a tribal drum driven dirge, all reverbed guitar and deep crooned vox, laced with some soaring surprisingly sweet melodies, which pepper the otherwise woozy swaggery murk.
Killer stuff for sure, fans of all things heavy psych and weirdo space rock, the line starts here. Might be even better than the Koolaid record, which is most definitely saying a lot!
Also includes a download!!
Holy cow, hard to think this record almost never saw the light of day, but it was nearly so, 2006-2008 being a collection of sorts, gathering up almost everything recorded by this short lived fuzzed out jangle pop garage rock combo from Memphis, whose members would be plucked out of the group to join Jay Reatard on the road as his backup band, and who would later go on to form the Magic Kids and play in Wavves. But while they were a band, and we assume before the above mentioned plucking, Jay Reatard would record The Barbaras whenever he wasn't on tour. Later, before his death, Reatard for some reason claimed to have erased all of his Barbaras recordings, which thankfully proved to be not actually true, as much later, in 2011, the bulk of this collection was discovered, still stored on Reatard's digital recorder. So after some further recording, mixing, polishing and reworking, the only full length from the Barbaras finally sees the light of day, and we have to say, it was well worth it.
All it should take is about 30 seconds of album opener "Day At The Shrine", with its dense barrage of drumming, sing songy vocals, HUGE hooks, jangle crunch, sunshine-y ooooooh background vox, total beach ready jangle pop bliss out, fun and summery and catchy as all get out. And that pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record, a twisted fuzz pop affair, with strange arrangements, vocals that slip into falsetto 'la-la's at the drop of a hat, swirling synths, the sound simultaneously murky and lo-fi, but surprisingly lush and rocking, fans of groups like Wavves, Dum Dum Girls, Best Coast, the Babies, Woods, will find much to love here, the songs super varied from rollicking rockers, to groovy sixties girl group style shuffles, to angular synth driven new wavey garage punk, to almost twee dream pop, to swaggery old school garage stomp, it's easy to see why Reatard wanted these guys in his band, and fans of later, poppier Jay Reatard stuff, will be in heaven. Pop record/reissue of the year, quite possibly!
Yet another breathtakingly beautiful release from Russian composer/pianist Anton Batagov, the fourth we've reviewed, and another recording/composition inexorably tied into Batagov's Buddhism. The Monk Thogmey's Thirty-Seven Precepts, like Batagov's other compositions, unfurls a lush, luxurious sonic backdrop, over which sacred Buddhist writings are sung/spoken/chanted, in this case, it's Gyalsey Thogmey Zangpo's titular poem chanted by Lama Tsering Dondrub, and the subtly sing songy delivery is mesmerizing, quite trancelike in fact, drifting serenely over the brooding, hypnotic, darkly lovely shimmer beneath.
A slow series of sonic swells, constructed from piano, organ, vibraphone, guitar, bass, cello and percussion strike the perfect balance between the meditative mesmer of Batagov's Music For The 35 Buddhas, and the almost Godspeed like post rock / modern classical minimalism hybrid of his Bodhicharyavatara. The record starts off very much like Batagov's masterwork The Wheel Of The Law, delicate piano, muted melodic percussion, a dreamlike sprawl of hushed, haunting rhythmic melody, before the vocals come in, accompanied by a lush almost wall of sound, swirling pianos and shimmering gongs, moaning strings, dramatic and majestic. The whole of the subsequent 21+ minute first movement seems to follow a similar sonic pattern, weaving a gentle, delicate sprawl of washed out and woozy, soft focus melody, chiming and lilting and dreamlike, before shifting to something ever so subtly darker, adding guitar and bass, and infusing it with some of that post rock brood, while the vocals drone prayerfully over the top, before slipping back into the more melodic ambient first half, the cycle continuing for the duration, a slow motion sonic seesaw, that in its structure is also quite meditative and trancelike. The second movement adds more shadow to the light, big booming drums, more guitar, melodically and structurally similar to the first part, but a bit more intense, darker and dronier, but equally as mesmerizing.
Finally, the record resolves with an instrumental epilogue, that fuses the two parts into a slow, dolorous piano driven post rock minimal drift, guitar strums drift weightless over pointillist piano, organs wheeze out lush softly undulating drones, that main melody woven deftly throughout. Fantastic stuff as always. The liner notes describe the record's arrangement as relating to seventies rock music, and although we're not sure we would have picked up on that, it is part of what makes Batagov's compositions and performances so singular, and so unlike the rest of his minimalist peers.
Fans of the other Batagov records will definitely want this one too, this could very well be our favorite recording of his (after Wheel Of The Law)...
Super elaborate packaging, a gorgeous full color slipcase, enclosing the cd in a jewel case, and a thick full color booklet, beautifully laid out with liner notes, in Russian and English, as well as Thogmey's poem in Russian and Tibetan.
A while back we reviewed a super limited tape from this local axeman, who at the time had a backup band made up of members of local psych rock heavies Comets On Fire, and whose sound, on that tape at least, fell somewhere between the brooding post punk of the Wipers, and the rough, ragged twang flecked crunch of early Uncle Tupelo, most definitely a sweet combo. We've been sitting on a couple copies of this 7" for ages now, and only just recently got enough to list, and like the tape before it, these two tracks offer up more of Beach's distinctive twang flecked songsmithery. The A side is a stripped down bit of folky psychedelia, dark and moody and countrified, again reminding us of Uncle Tupelo, not hard to imagine the song blossoming into some sort of guitar heavy crunch, but instead, it's a gorgeously cyclical and dreamily mesmerizing.
The flipside is a bit more droned out, with a softly churning electric guitar, backed up by minimal skeletal drumming, a series of slow brooding swells, Beach's vocals a bit more rough and ragged, the song mostly two parts, slipping back and forth, giving the track a definite hypnotic vibe, during the second half of the song the tempo gets cranked, the sound growing more and more frantic, ratcheting up the tension, with no release, a slow build all the way to the end. Cool!
Fuck yeah, another awesome new metal mag (new to us at least, they're on currently on issue three), this one hailing from Chicago, and BMoTA is full on old school style classic zine action, folded 8 1/2" x 11" paper, stapled in the middle, photocopied, and brimming with cool underground shit, most notably, a super lengthy interview with SF eco-terrorist drum and dulcimer black metal one man band Botanist! There's also Alaskan (!!) black metallers Bound By Entrails, aQ fave electro-black metal / black noise weirdo(s) Jute Gyte, Kentucky black metal horde Merkaba (who recently released a split with another aQ fave, Wheels Within Wheels), Canadian black metal duo Skagos, a Sutekh Hexen show review, and a handful of record reviews. Fans of Oaken Throne, Chips & Beer, Rape & Honey, Convivial Hermit, Gallery Of The Grotesque, etc. can now add Black Metal Of The Americas to their essential metal mag reading list!!
LIMITED FIRST RUN OF JUST 55 ISSUES!! Each one hand numbered!
Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Hototogisu, Voltigeurs, Total, etc.) returns under his Sunroof! guise, now seemingly expanded to Black Sun Roof (unclear if it's due to his interest in the black metal arts), and while much of the blissy drift and droned out ragas of past Sunroof! records is still present, it's been augmented with much of the noise that defines his other projects. The record opens with thick, buzz drenched, grinding drones, laid over looped mechanical melodies, which soon expand into full on shimmery blissout, heaving clouds of shimmering buzz over buried drums, keening melodies, all dense and darkly chaotic, murky and washed out, peppered with stretches of smeared psychedelic noise, the A side finishing off with a sprawl of churning murk-pop, sorta in the Dead C style, a minimal noise rock on the edge of total collapse, wreathed in static and hiss and hum, and glowing from within, lit by buried melodies barely obscured.
The flipside opens with another grinding stretch of noise drenched dronemusic, this time underpinned by wheezing ominous chordal swells, peppered with clanging bells, and all manner of buried percussion, swaddled in blown out guitar buzz, heavy and noisy, but as is the way with Sunroof! still impossibly blissful. Most of the side is taken up by an epic groove/dirge, loping caveman drum pound, garbled vox, clouds of whirring soft focus guitar noise, mesmerizing and almost meditative, the end of the song flecked with space-y synth shimmer, which gives the sound a definite cinematic vibe. The record closes with a short but sweet slab of lush, looped woozy murk, sounding like some lost Philip Jeck jam, a bleary, blurry symphony of muted turntable warble. So great!
And as if a new Sunroof! / Black Sun Roof wasn't enough, the lp comes with a bonus cd, of rare tracks hand selected by Matthew Bower himself, culled from various releases and comps, most rare and long out of print: Cloudz, Silver Bear Mist, Wings Over America, Optional Ingredients From A Vile Recipe Volume II, Splat!, Fatcat Split series #19, as well as a Total track from Glassy Warhead, and one brand new previously unreleased track, which is a gorgeous 8+ minute expanse of tangled, layered noiseguitar, keening feedback, fragmented riffage, and dense swirls of buzz and skree, all woven into a weirdly gorgeous slab of psychedelic freeform noise. The rest of the disc is all over the map, but all different shades of that sort of droned out dreamlike noisiness that Bower has mastered as Sunroof!, from the tinkling gauzy piano driven shimmer of "Machine", to the grinding low fidelity industrial noise drift of "Latex Unicorn", to the sci-fi bleep flecked churning almost doomy dreamy slow-mo space dirge of "She Is The Darkness / The Argument", to the hazy noise drenched swirlscape of "Marijuana Suicide", to the impossibly gorgeous, almost M83-ish bliss-noise / psych-pop dream ambience of "Trampled Dawns".
Essential for both the new lp, and the retrospective cd (from which all the below samples are taken), fans of Bower's many projects will be in psych / noise / bliss heaven!
Quite the tease that Thomas Carnacki, giving us only five copies of this mini-opus for nightmarish collage before declaring it out of print. 40 of these were produced in conjunction with a rare daytime performance at Amoeba Records in Berkeley for the suitably nocturnal Carnacki. Spooky drones culled from electrical hums and jagged artifacts get matched with elongated bowed-metals and haunted violin tones at the beginning of this 20 minute piece, gradually deflating into catacomb-like drips and clanking bells that later get coupled with subterranean moanings and bellowings coming to a ghastly conclusions of varispeed tape machinations churning over strange motorized sounds and elliptical looped patterns. The sonic references to Nurse With Wound, Andrew Liles, and irr.app.(ext.) are still quite evident on these recordings, although the cabal working for, with, under Carnacki (aka Gregory Scharpen who is Mr. Carnacki's doppleganger, Jim Kaiser of NF Orchest & French Radio, and Gregory Hagan of Common Eider King Eider) are building a stronger and stronger case for their own aesthetic in the wide-open field of post-surrealist / post-industrial sound design, which is always haunted and often very compelling. Like we said, super limited - and we only got 5 copies.
Another stunning album from British composer Andrew Chalk. While our man started out smashing acoustic noise through bowed cymbal skree and wild tape machinations in the mid '80s through his Broken Flag alias Ferial Confine, Chalk quickly settled down into the heavy gravity of the drone supreme. The albums that followed in the Ora / Mirror axis and his solo work conjured some of the finest drone mesmerism that we've ever heard. Oh, and we've heard a lot of dronemuzik! Chalk conjures sounds that are shimmering yet lucid, controlled yet open to all possible movements, occasionally dark yet always beautifully sublime. And now, after some 20 years of working with long-form composition, his love affair with the drone seems to be waning. In its place is a restrained impressionism for subtle melodies from a bleary piano, soft filigree of shadowy organs, and the occasional smeary echo of burbling cosmic-synth drift, as can be heard on the elegant fragmentation of albums like Violins By Night, Ghost Of Nakhodka, and The Cable House. Chalk continues that trend on Forty-Nine Views In Rhapsodies' Wave Serene in which he stitches 49 separate miniatures of delicate ambient passages into what could be seen as Andrew Chalk's take on Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Chalk's flickered melodies and soft focus ambience have the rich gold hues and nitrous oxide weightlessness found on Aphex Twin's classic, but Chalk's sounds express none of the midi-fired digitality or sequenced precision. Instead, Chalk's subtle gestures are clearly wrought by human hands, molded through arcane means, and slipping through his cottage industry in a moss-encrusted part of England. Satie and Eno also cozy up nicely to these Forty-Nine views. As with all of the albums that Chalk releases on his Faraway Press imprint, the packaging is equally as lovely as the music. Of course, it's recommended; it's Andrew Chalk!
Yup, it appears that Andrew Chalk has retained the impressive workload he and Christoph Heemann had managed for their now defunct project Mirror. The River That Flows Into The Sand is the second album in as many months to emerge from Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press. Like it's predecessor Shadows From The Album Skies, this album is a reissue of a cd-r originally released in a very small edition. However, Chalk has decided to truly develop Faraway Press into a viable cottage industry, encasing all of his work in elaborately hand-packaged constructions, that rival the original Zoviet France assemblages in terms of innovative design. How he managed to print these is a bit of a mystery, although Cup and Jim think it to be a form of decalcomania, in which an image is delicately transferred from one surface to another. Regardless, it doesn't hurt that Chalk again has produced an immaculate drone album housed within the beautiful packaging.
For many years now, the guitar has been the instrument of choice for Chalk's minimalist explorations; and here on The River, he's tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue. Undulations of extended sounds cascade from his guitar, occasionally rippling with beautiful half melodies. This is a a drop dead gorgeous album, and may even be better than the aforementioned Shadows From The Album Skies. We can't recommend this album enough!
Man, there's lots of good reading material on this week's list. But this 'zine is, for underground metal fans, one of the best. Embarrassingly, we came late to the Chips & Beer party, catching on circa issue #3 and then catching up with #1 and #2 (both now out of print). We've been waiting eagerly for #4, and now it's here. Even better, it's the "Satanic Panic Special"! Which encompasses everything from a comic (there's always a lot of comix and art in C&B) about the supposed Satanic cult freakout of the '80s, to features on such Satanic bands as Teitanblood (yeah!) and a HUGE section all about "Sinister Cinema" (cult, occult horror flicks of '70s mainly) accompanied by an equally HUGE section wherein such left hand path luminaries as Dennis Dread, King Fowley, Justin Bartlett, and members of Moss, Hooded Menace, Impetigo, etc. discuss in depth their favorite horror film soundtrack music. Rad.
There's also a lot of interviews this ish, including chats with betrayed Blizzard Of Ozz bassist Bob Daisley, a band we gotta hear just 'cause they're called Skullshitter, and the (kinda weird old) guy who painted the cover to Slayer's debut album Show No Mercy. Also, a piece on Possessed's seminal Seven Churches lp, and one about Roky Erickson's Satanic side. And a hell of a lot more, including of course C&B's trademark cryptic & confusing record reviews. 128 newsprint pages, everything written (and drawn) with anti-trend attitude and true underground enthusiasm, a crazy combo of elite intellectual interest and dumb headbanger humor, both. Highly recommended, for Satan's sake!
Column One is a mysterious German post-industrial project that began in 1991 injecting their grim constructions of crumbled noise, avant-turntablism, drone, and grimy grit with allusions to science, gnosticism, eschatology, and Dada. Their mission is one that seems to follow that of Cranioclast - another hermetic project from Germany whose hypnotic looping pieces are girded by strange texts, anagrams, and shadowy metaphor. As the title of the album attests, this is a collection of the earliest material from Column One culled from their first cassettes as well as some unreleased material recorded around the same time. A morose, unsettled atmosphere hangs throughout all of the 13 tracks, with blackened synth tones, gristled pulses, and martial rhythms slowly revolving through appropriated collages snatched from radio and old records playing Germanic anthems. Where the stained electronics certainly have their roots in the gnarled TG / SPK ambience of autopsy films and horror dronescaping, the found sonic objects remove Column One from the death-industrial camps of Brighter Death Now or anything found on Cold Meat Industries in the mid-'90s. These warbling, decentered loops and deformed, mediated samples are handled in an almost poetic and painterly manner that could be considered psychedelic if everything weren't so fucking dark. If not a direct influence on Dominic Fernow, these early Column One pieces articulate the same disturbed psychological vibe that Fernow built into his Christian Cosmos and Vatican Shadow recordings. Housed in an oversized sleeve with 8 postcards.
The Hermetic Drone is the first release from Dark Matter Halo, the most recent project of Monte Cimino, aQ pal, and head honcho of brooding twang flecked heavies Burial Tree, as well as the man behind BT ambient offshoot Time Spent. Dark Matter Halo has more in common with Time Spent, but pushes the sound even further into the kosmische drift, ditching all of the rhythmic elements that drove Time Spent, barring the subtle pulsations caused by the ever shifting overtones, these two lengthy tracks, sprawling expanses of dreamlike shimmer, lush layered tones infused with a warm energy, softly undulating chordal swells, wreathed in a soft halo of gauze-y blissed out blur. The first track, "A.M.", definitely has a sun dappled morning vibe, bleary slowly unfurling melodies, a time lapse exploration of tonal color, a grey landscape gradually taking on color, the tones here seeming to fill the sky with a prismatic palette of warm sonic hues, gorgeously mesmerizing and dreamily meditative.
The second track, appropriately titled "P.M." reverse engineers the first, effortlessly conjuring up a world in hibernation, a sky full of darkened blue, casting lengthening shadows, a lush crystalline expanse of low tones, woven into a gloriously textured backdrop, for the glimmering, glistening ghostlike melodies that hover above, spectral streaks of somnambulant mesmer, gliding lazily toward the dark, a soundtrack for drifting off, a sonic gateway to what lays beyond the veil. So lovely.
Long in the works split between these two Bay Area outfits, both practitioners of their own particular strains of post black metal, that post in full effect here, especially on Deafheaven's side of the split, on which this duo tackle Mogwai's "Punk Rock / Cody", the opening tracks from Mogwai's Come On Die Young record, and for the first few minutes, they do it pretty straight, a lilting cyclical guitar melody, a strange sample, barely there percussion, and then it gets even MORE post, with melancholic piano, haunting and lovely, but fear not, it doesn't take long for the song explode into blissed out heaviness, the guitars epic and soaring, the drums a dense powerful pound, the vocals, a blackened shriek, the first hint of blackness, but coupled with the soaring melodies, it has an entirely different effect, majestic and melodic, the song building and building, until the final few minutes where the vocals drop out, and another guitar swoops in and plays the melody, before fading out to a softly psychedelic drift, those harsh vokills continuing on in the background, over the spare skeletal guitars, before a final blast, and we do mean blast, as in full on blast beat, and frenzied riffing, the song transformed into a gorgeously blown out super melodic blast of blackened bliss pop heaviness. It won't do anything to assuage the true grim hordes who are constantly crying 'false metal' but fuck it, for the rest of us, this RULES.
Bosse-De-Nage counter with their own sprawling epic, starting off with martial snare, a low slung bassline, clean guitar shimmer, their Slintiness in full effect, the sound made even more lush and lovely by the addition of strings, which also gives the sound an almost folky vibe, spoken word vocals surface, the guitars begin to buzz a bit more, the sound suddenly splintery into a dizzying squall of mathy chaos, a wild drum driven churn, that gives way to a epic sprawl of blasting blackness, the drums WAY up in the mix, continuing to pepper the sound with mathy complexity, the guitars surprisingly melodic, the sound super blown out and in-the-red, a gnarled melodic black metal math rock hybrid, that might be the best thing we've heard from BDN yet, the second half of the song is laced with soaring swells of prismatic psychedelic guitars, a soaring post rock coda, that gives way to a final stretch of furious mathy blackness.
SUPER LIMITED!!!
Afro-Booty Musique! That's not just one of the song titles here, that's what this is. French techno producer Debruit makes his debut with this lively disc, that weaves both samples and rhythmic inspiration from various sorts of African music old and new (including stuff from "lost African VHS") into a slightly hip-hopped, drum-machine driven, largely instrumental techno funk full of fat, squelchy bass lines and infectious chants. It comes off like a mad, manic mix of the hyperactive, synthed-out sound of South African "Shangaan Electro" and the funky-but-fucked up approach of another aQ fave style, namely "Skweee"!! Syncopated, surreal like the cover art, exotic and energetic, great for a sweaty dance frenzy or fast driving in the car (simply sitting at home in front of the stereo, maybe that too, but you might not be sitting still for long). And track 7 is called "Zef", so now we know Die Antwoord didn't make that up.
Fans of skweee, of Shangaan stuff (particularly the Shangaan Shake remixes Honest Jon's put out), the electrified thumb-piano "Congotronics" of Konono No.1, and that great Francis Bebey "African Electronic Music" collection on Born Bad, all will hear things they like here, in one chaotic, jubilant, groovy jumble!
Next time, we'll probably have the double vinyl version of this too, plus also a remix 12".
More metal reading material here! Every month we enjoy Decibel's coverage of the latest metal releases, tours, etc. Plus their columns, reviews, etc. are often quite amusing. This time, Phil Anselmo of Down glares from the cover. Inside: C.O.C., Incantation, The Sword, Exhumed, My Dying Bride, Sarcafago (in the Hall of Fame feature), and more. Including, the magazine's picks for the top 40 best albums of 2012, always a fun read and surefire argument starter.
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.
One of the strangest, most controversial and fantastic releases of the vast Fahey catalog has been reissued and restored to its original glory by the great minds at 4 Men With Beards. Like the America double lp reissue, The Voice of The Turtle from 1968 is now once again a gatefold lp with a 12 page illustrated booklet with bizarre liner notes written by Blind Joe Death (the first sentence in the liner notes is 561 words long, a feat even our Andee may have difficulty in topping). At this point, the conceit of Blind Joe Death as a real figure who taught John Fahey to play was still in full swing, and even the credits were listed to both Mr. Death and Fahey. But there were also rumors that some of the recordings on this record were retaped from old blues 78s made by Walter Beasley and Sylvester Weaver. Even Fahey has said that the record was an elaborate hoax. But it is this conceit with the illustrated ephemera and Biblical tone of an age gone by that gives this record its strange beguiling charm. It's one of the first of many experimental approaches to the historical nature of his craft that he seems to exploit with the most unfettered reverie. Musically, the inclusion of old recordings with their scratchy sound quality, mixed with the addition of fiddle and flute players, Tibetan monk chants and gongs seem to mark a dividing line between past and future, as the raga meditations seem to point the way ahead to a folk-laden psychedelia. Essential Fahey!
We had never really heard of Bill Fay, at least until we started hearing him mentioned as an influence on folks like Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, Jim O'Rourke, Current 93 and the like. Which made perfect sense when we finally heard Fay's music. A reissue of Fay's debut album, originally released in 1970, this is majestic, emotional singer songwriter stuff, simple, beautiful songs, wrapped in lushly orchestrated, sweeping strings, regal horns, totally epic and emotionally grand arrangements (think Scott Walker). The sticker on the cover boldly proclaims Fay as "the missing link between Nick Drake, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan" and while we can perhaps dismiss that as hyperbole to a certain extent, there is definitely something special about Fay's voice and his songs. They definitely work best when they tend toward the more maudlin and miserable, it's then that the Nick Drake comparison makes the most sense. The orchestral filigree has the definite downside of occasionally making some of the songs a bit to saccharin and overblown. Which is unfortunate as Fay's songs are the sort that would work just as well with just a guitar or a piano, dark and brooding, and emotionally charged, stripped to its bare essentials. That said, some of the string parts are absolutely stunning, and the horns give some of the tracks a bit of a Chicago vibe which in no way is a bad thing. Not necessarily dreary or depressive or fucked up enough to transcend their seventies singer songwriter sound, but some close listening will reveal how ultra personal and simply fantastic these songs are!
Features extensive liner notes from Fay himself as well as two bonus tracks: both songs from Fay's rare 1967 "Screams In The Ears" / "Some Good Advice" seven inch single.
First proper solo record from the mysterious M Geddes Gengras, who recently collaborated with Sun Araw and the Congos, and has popped up on records by Robedoor, Pocahaunted and others. And while we weren't entirely sure to expect from Gengras on his own, the first clue was probably the fact that this was released on the Intercoastal Artists label, run by folks from Cloudland Canyon, cuz this definitely explores some of the same territory, sprawling kosmische synthscapery of the highest order. The entirety of the first side is taken up by the epic "Waldorf (Pts 1 & 2)", which sends ping ponging electronics back and forth through a field of swirling synths, and percolating melodies, a woozily sequenced sprawl of futuristic pulsations, tinkling chimes, and washed out new age-y shimmer, gradually building momentum, a panning shot of the endless depths of the solar system gives way to some sort of sci-fi chase scene. This definitely fits in well with the usual suspects, Cloudland Canyon, Umberto, Majeure, Zombi, lovers of all things Goblin and Carpenter will definitely be in heaven, but it's not all pure bliss out, the sound is underpinned by a haunting minor key malevolence, that infuses the sound with a definite pathos, the track eventually blissing out into near ambience, before finishing off in a tangle of distorted electronic crunch.
The flipside mixes it up a bit, adding in some skittery skeletal programed rhythms, deep ominous thrum, and clouds of glitch and static. The krautrock vibe is huge on the first track "Night Work", propulsive and motorik, giving way to the way more dense "Cairo", which explodes like a swarm of electronic bees, a dizzying churn of layered melodies, swooning and swirling and roiling, dense and driving, but still spaced out and seriously mesmerizing, probably our favorite track here. Finally, the record finishes off with the third part of the "Waldorf" suite that began on side one, a hazy, washed out softly psychedelic coda, that runs MGG's retro-synth sound through some sort of Tim Hecker like filter, resulting in a gorgeously blurry, crumbly stretch of muted bloopy bliss out that builds to a seriously dreamy, softly noisy, densely layered finale.
Includes a download coupon!!
Just as ghostly and mystical as her music is, so is the availability of Grouper's records. One moment they're here, but before you can even blink they're out of print. Lately Liz Harris (Grouper) has been releasing her own recordings, but not pressing that many of them when she does. We know she doesn't do so out of a desire to keep things 'limited' but instead it's her humble nature which tends to keep her scope small, even when the truth is there are thousands of people across the globe who have become huge fans of her dreamlike sounds.
The first pressing of these two new Grouper lp's "A I A: Alien Observer" and "A I A: Dream Loss" went out of print so quickly we weren't even able to review them. The thing about these small pressings that bother us is that the only folks really winning, are the eBay speculators selling copies for ridiculous amounts, none of that money ends up in Grouper's hands. So we do hope that in the future she (and the labels she works with) will start pressing more copies as she is the one who deserves to reap the reward of her beautiful creation.
OK, now that our rant is out of the way, we should let you know that although this is a repressing we're not sure how many, if any, more of these we're going to be able to get. What we got, So before we start going on and on about the music you probably should just add this to your cart asap to better your chances of actually ending up with these.
Now on to what really matters - the music on these records. We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these lp's are utterly gorgeous! While Dragging A Dead Dear, found her starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these lp's blur that focus once again. They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Her voice swirling in and out, and every sound and tone she uses and manipulates with such a mastered ease. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. Somehow whenever we play these lp's, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the records spin. We can't imagine only getting one of these, as they really do work as companion pieces. Totally beautiful! And sadly, AGAIN, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!!
Just as ghostly and mystical as her music is, so is the availability of Grouper's records. One moment they're here, but before you can even blink they're out of print. Lately Liz Harris (Grouper) has been releasing her own recordings, but not pressing that many of them when she does. We know she doesn't do so out of a desire to keep things 'limited' but instead it's her humble nature which tends to keep her scope small, even when the truth is there are thousands of people across the globe who have become huge fans of her dreamlike sounds.
The first pressing of these two new Grouper lp's "A I A: Alien Observer" and "A I A: Dream Loss" went out of print so quickly we weren't even able to review them. The thing about these small pressings that bother us is that the only folks really winning, are the eBay speculators selling copies for ridiculous amounts, none of that money ends up in Grouper's hands. So we do hope that in the future she (and the labels she works with) will start pressing more copies as she is the one who deserves to reap the reward of her beautiful creation.
OK, now that our rant is out of the way, we should let you know that although this is a repressing we're not sure how many, if any, more of these we're going to be able to get. What we got, So before we start going on and on about the music you probably should just add this to your cart asap to better your chances of actually ending up with these.
Now on to what really matters - the music on these records. We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these lp's are utterly gorgeous! While Dragging A Dead Dear, found her starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these lp's blur that focus once again. They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Her voice swirling in and out, and every sound and tone she uses and manipulates with such a mastered ease. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. Somehow whenever we play these lp's, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the records spin. We can't imagine only getting one of these, as they really do work as companion pieces. Totally beautiful! And sadly, AGAIN, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!!
Good news and bad news: Yay we got a few of the new Grouper 12"s for you all, BUT they were shipped to us with the records inside the sleeves and all of the copies we got have an inch long seam split on the side. Arggh! We won't be able to get more, but we are able to discount these a bit so we can sell them at $3 less than the normal asking price of $16.98. Sorry about that! Please don't order if you are overly anal about the condition of your record sleeves.
Another mysterious missive from the ever elusive Grouper, this one even more mysterious since it is a one-sided fragment of a longer sprawling piece she has been performing live for the past couple of years, first at the Berkeley Art Museum, but also recently in such exotic locales as an abandoned polar bear enclosure at a Vancouver zoo. The vast space of the museum and zoo provided the opportunity to set up remote speakers throughout the space, so the sonic dimension of the multiple collaged tape loops of murked out guitar drones, pianos, built up vocals and other gorgeous hiss and noise could easily be manipulated spatially as the sound hovered in shimmering miasmas or pooled in delicate ripples of sound. The piece culminating in a swirling fading vortex of disintegration, like a beautiful drowning. Limited to 800 copies on white vinyl, we only have a few so act fast as they'll be gone before you know it!
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...
Record number two from this offshoot / sideproject of cosmic synth drone combo, Scantily Clad, and in a way it's a continuation of the wildly chaotic cut and paste collaged weirdness of Hide Your Cold Dome cassette, which we compared to a caveman Art Of Noise, but this time around, it seems like the chaos was reeled in a bit, the sounds more measure and melodic, still fractured and fragmented for sure, but more warm and melodic, in fact tracks like "Tiger Spa" remind us of the whirling underwater sound of Oval, albeit a bit more home brewed and low fidelity. For every streak of soft focus shimmer, there's a little flurry of wild rhythmic skitter, or a cascade of weirdly chopped and screwed melodies. "Jetsam" is another one that displays the 'new' sound, all woozy, crumbling swells, slo-mo rhythms, the vibe more Philip Jeck, a dizzying time lapse sonic drift, lots of gristle and crunch, the sounds raw and rough around the edges, but somehow blurred and smeared into something more more soothing and mesmerizing, the jagged chaos of the first record transformed into a more controlled chaos, which Guisher has swaddled in all manner of lush, soft focus shimmer. Super nice.
Killer packaging too, the lp housed in a reflective anti-static sleeve, that sleeve adorned with a full color paste on track listing, that all wrapped in a super DIY photocopied jacket, and housed in a peach colored plastic sleeve.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
There's an ongoing argument at aQ headquarters about which is more preferable: a selection of a artist's musical works or the -complete- recordings. Of course that questions is completely relative to which artist one is talking about, and everyone will have a totally different opinion based on who you ask. But it instantly came to mind when we got this gorgeous new Mississippi reissue of Gurdjieff Harmonium Improvisations.
A little backstory: The fascinating Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949) whom some of you will know much better as a thinker and philosopher than a musician, was an early twentieth century Russian mystic (and retired hypnotist), who drew inspiration from Sufism, and was fascinated with music. Gurdjieff had composed for piano for some years, but late in life he acquired first a wire recorder, and then a tape recorder, to document his improvisations (his "moosic") on the harmonium, a sort of pump organ, that produces a sound that is rich and full, a sort of lush, wheezing melodious moan, haunting and otherworldly. He would often record these performances after hosting dinners and various social gatherings in New York and Paris both during its occupation and then right after the war had ended. Most of the surviving recordings come from the last year of his life.
Awhile back we got in a sprawling multi-disc / hardcover book box set on Basta (which is now sadly out of print), of his complete Harmonium Recordings. Over two cds, AND a third disc of mp3s, the entire output was 53 tracks and about 19 hours! That's a lot of harmonium recordings, and needless to say a bit daunting to take in and absorb, even if it was totally amazing. But what was really cool about that vast collection was the super intimate performances and long durations of the pieces (most in the 9-20 minute range), the sound of the harmonium peppered with all sorts of incidental ambience. It seems that Gurdjieff would perform a piece, slow and sad and gorgeously dreamy, enveloping all of his listeners in the mood, and when he was finished, he would then crack jokes and make small talk. Many of these performances feature this strange juxtaposition of almost religious intensity, and breezy lighthearted banter, which was somehow another part of his unique world view.
This current collection on Mississippi was originally issued as a French private press release in 1971 and is a sampling of seven performances between April and October of 1949. While taken from the vast collection of recordings, we believe they were edited down for length with much of the external ambience (banter, coughing, bellow clatter, etc) taken out, save for a final "Amen" at the very end of side 2, which is totally apropos, given the spiritual quality of the performances. The music though, is wonderful and completely mesmerizing, offering up lush, meditative, ritualistic, droney, melancholic harmonium music, a distant dark mystery, as if these minor key sounds were pulled from the ether, captured from another world and another time. Not quite ragas, more like slow and sad oceanic sea shanties. At once recognizable, but at the same time totally alien.
An early predecessor to the searching individualistic devotional recordings of Joakim Skogsberg, Daniel Higgs and Malachi, this is a perfect antidote for those seeking an immersion into Gurdjieff's mystical sound world without having to commit to a complete lifetime of listening.
A NOTE ABOUT THE SOUND SAMPLES: Due to the different title methods used between this record and the Basta collection, we couldn't find an exact match for sound samples, so we took similar sounding pieces from the same period from the Basta collection so you can get an idea of what this sounds like more or less.
We're really feeling the early house music vibe these days. Sometimes we just want to slip into some tiny hot pants and roller boogie away (sez Allan? Scott? Andee?). At least that's the feeling we get from this comp from Ghana's prodigious keyboardist Kiki Gyan and his disco-era music from 1978 through 1982. As this release's liner notes explain, Gyan got into recording disco tracks after he defected from Osibisa, the influential pan-African outfit that helped start the whole UK Afro-rock scene in the late '60s. In his post-Osibisa years, Gyan continued fusing African highlife sounds, jazz, blues, soul, and rock with fellow Osibisa defectors. As Gyan became swept up in Europe's cocaine-fuelled party scene, he and collaborator recorded the title track. "24 Hours In A Disco" has all the lush violin arrangements and falsetto vocals common to popular '70s disco tracks, but it also includes a bongo breakdown! Unfortunately Gyan wasn't always the nicest guy, and he stripped Ayivor's vocals from the original recording and re-released it in Nigeria without his bandmate's permission so as to horde the profits. That's the version you're getting on this comp. We haven't heard the original, but with its super-tight conga playing, this one is still pretty spectacular. On "Keep on Dancing" Gyan adds steel drumming into the mix along with a cowbell breakdown. "Disco Dancer" features some great syncopated hand-clapping and Gyan's slap bass work and funky keyboard lines. The atmospheric vocals here will lift any disco denizen into the heavens. Many of the tracks would be right at home at Larry Levan's Paradise Garage or even David Mancuso's super-underground Loft parties. All the cuts on this comp work really well as a cohesive album and you'll find yourself playing it from start to end and then back to the start again!
Record covers like this one just aren't fair. Michael Rother, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius hiply dressed on a platform in an abandoned train station with their backs turned to the audience playing all manner of amazing looking analog electrical equipment: synths, farfisas, banks of tone generators, oscillators, patch bays, stacks of amps, leaning guitars, and cords everywhere, amongst racks of machines with all sorts of knobs and levels. It just makes us soooo jealous. Not only for such beautiful equipment, but also nostalgic for this period of time in Germany in the early seventies when so much thoughtful and incredibly inventive music was being produced. First Amon Duul II, Can and Faust then Kraftwerk, Cluster, and, Neu!, with Harmonia being the perfect synthesis of the latter three bands both in sound and personnel. Especially when you see the back cover and you get a closer look at the band and you can tell the trio just have this alchemical connection with each other and the sounds they make. Each member is focused but self-assuredly calm. Not exactly what you would expect from a band whom Brian Eno once called "the world's most important rock band". Not that much of the world had ever heard of them. Nor is it what most folks consider rock music to be.
So this is it! We've been reading about this for months, and it's finally here: a live document of a now legendary show on March 23rd, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Not that it really matters that this is live, as their is no applause or chatter to clue you in, just bits of mumbled talking as the songs wind down at the very end. Harmonia members attribute this to there being only 50 or so people in the audience most of which were either too stoned to clap or too unsure at what points the songs begin and end. Doesn't seem to matter to the band anyway as we've already seen their backs were to the audience the entire time. But for a live document the sound quality is impeccable and what's even better all of the tracks performed weren't on any of their recordings, giving us, thirty-three years later, 5 new vintage Harmonia tracks to pore over. Most of which are over 9 minutes long.
Recorded between Harmonia's woozy debut, Musik Von Harmonia, and its more rock-leaning follow-up, Deluxe, Live 1974 is the logical conglomeration of both sounds, sort of like the merging of Terry Riley-ish repetitions with Robert Fripp's or Heldon's spacey and searing guitar extrapolations. But unlike conventional rock bands, Harmonia's music doesn't climax or necessarily change all that much, making their deceptively simple musical structures more akin to trance, electronica and slow disco. Beginning with the slow burn of "Schaumberg", an 11 minute epic of Rother's sinewy guitar lines that build and loop over gentle pulses of Moebius's programmed percussion and Roedelius' repetitive tonal keyboard patterns merging into a more sped-up and hypnotic version with bass rhythms on "Veteranissimo", an extended 17 minute meditation on "Veterano" from Musik Von Harmonia that breaks down to quiet heartbeats before slowly building again. "Arabesque", the shortest track at five minutes, does away with the percussive elements altogether, instead focussing on overlapping patterns of melodic synth and guitar before slamming into the loping quarter-hour stoner lurch of "Holta-Polta", then finally culminating in the blissful pastoralism of "Ueber Ottenstein".
It's been a stellar year or two for krautrock reissues as most of the Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Harmonia, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother catalogs have been reissued, re-introducing to the world the proto-new age realms of seventies German kosmiche music at a time when we can easily see its influence weaving through so many new bands like Arp, The Alps, White Rainbow, Lichens and Sylvain Chaveau. Always timeless, and never dated, Harmonia, like most of their German contemporaries mentioned above, were the most important rock band in the world simply because they cared about what they did, kept it simple, never indulged, and always left us wanting more.
Well, it's about time that this artifact showed itself again, what with all the Cluster, Kluster, Michael Rother, Kraftwerk, and Fripp & Eno reissues popping up all over the place, finally we have this last piece of the Harmonia puzzle, and it's never sounded better! Tracks and Traces is one of those curious krautrock documents, mainly because it was recorded in 1976, but never released until the late nineties. Its late release was always rather inexplicable, as there were no liner notes, but with this new reissue that bookends the original release with three previously unreleased bonus tracks and poetically expository liner notes, its former relegation as an "odds and sods" collection of sketches, can with all confidence be considered now to be one of the great lost krautrock records! If you bought this when it was first released, you may need to buy it again for the extra tracks that change the whole flow and feel of the album considerably.
Harmonia as a group was always meant to be temporary. When Eno went to see them live in 1974, he ended up on stage with them and was invited to come out to Forst to experience Moebius and Roedellius's placid countryside studio first hand. But it took Eno two years to make good on that invitation, and by then Harmonia had essentially disbanded. Michael Rother was working on his first solo material (Flammende Herzen), as was Roedelius (Durch Die Wuste), while Moebius was working on the Liliental sessions. But they were all there in Forst for eleven days, experiencing the wind, river, trees and sun, casually improvising music, but really just treating the sounds they made as a meditation on process and time together without a goal to make a product. Eno was eventually called away by Bowie to work on Low, and the recordings of their time together lay dormant for two decades.
It's easy to think that without the benefit of returning to the original recordings for overdubs, that these might be shrugged off as sketches, but the starker quality of these recordings are really what set them apart from the pastoral sweetness of the Cluster & Eno collaborations, and give them a distinctive expansiveness into the more shadowy and vague corners of their sound. Lots of ideas are explored, from rockish extrapolations, and baroque dirges to sinister and angular abstractions (Eno even sings on one track) but it never feels forced or indulgent. The sound just flows naturally. Essential!
Record number two for the Emeralds' synthesist on Kranky; and like pretty much everything from that prolific trio, Hauschildt's sonic fruit doesn't fall too far from the Emeralds tree. Where his cohorts delve more into emotionally saturated post-kraut explorations of guitar and synth, Hauschildt's ethos tends more toward a grid-snapped electronica with taut sequencing and the occasional drum machine pulse, and he's probably the responsible party for bringing the beatbox to the 2012 Emeralds album Just To Feel Anything. He reprises those electronic rhythms once again on about half the tracks here, and those rhythms are anything but heavy and deep. Their airy spaciousness is only outdone by Hauschildt's luminously bright arppegiations, melodic sequences, and faux-chorale vocal samples that again look back to Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre for inspiration. While the more rigid tracks with their LFO squelching and vintage synth stabs come across at best as a decent attempt at Kraftwerk homage (e.g. "Accelerated Yearning") and at worst pre-fab soft-porn fluff (e.g. "Constant Reminders"), he's much better when he applies his craft to the atmospheric and the cosmic sensibilities of a track like the ethereal "Kept" and the gauzy, lovely title track.
This record by the oddly monikered House Reverends was shrouded in secrecy when we first got copies, subtle hints as to the membership, references to obscure UK groups / collectives, never mentioned by name, and when we did find out who was behind this twisted slab of lo-fi outsider weirdo RnB, we have to say we never would have guessed. We thought about leaving everybody in the lurch, but this is in fact, a sort of Shit And Shine offshoot, featuring at least one member of that multiple drummered noise rock crew, but don't be expecting ANYthing like $&$ here. Instead, this is a collection of old cassette jams, improvised and recorded onto a 4-track using just drum machine, synthesizer, sampler and vocoder, and given those ingredients, it could have gone either way, totally tripped out avant psychedelia, or THIS, a warped, but still pretty straight, crooned RnB. Sounds scary, but give it a chance, you just might like it. Warbly organs, vocodered vox, minimal programmed beats, a twisted electro pop with vocals that sound like an alternate universe Justin Timberlake, albeit a much more raw and low fidelity JT, all over squelchy bass, stuttery grooves, pulsing beats, those croony vocals slipping occasionally into almost cookie monster like gurgles. But fear not, peppered throughout are some sweet experimental jams, like the skittery low rider groove of "Hype", with it's rad stuttery pitch shifted samples, or the sped up soul of "Close And Personal", which sounds like Burial at 78, and really, that's what a lot of the record sounds like, a less murky, muted Burial, but the same sort of roots in classic soul, just filtered through lots of underground murk.
There's plenty more going on too, eighties style electro, funky handclap rhythms, John Carpenter-like synth grooves, and a super beautiful almost choral sounding closer, that is easily the prettiest thing here, but for the most part, the House Reverends are all about the lo-fi electro soul murky RnB weirdness, and we dig it!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!! Housed in super swank hand screened sleeves.
Zines not dead! Here's the third ish of this excellent underground music fanzine in the grand old tradition. Covering proto-punk, power pop, glam rock, and other good stuff in that vein and/or of that vintage, Human Being Lawnmower (named after the MC5 song) comes across like a cross between Galactic Zoo Dossier and Savage Damage Digest. It's in the same format as the latter, 7" x 8 1/2", and features contributions from both SDD's Cory Lindstrum and GZD's Plastic Crimewave in fact. Graphically, Human Being Lawnmower is a treat. There's lotsa cool comix in here - several drawn by this zine's editor, Avi Spivak. But plenty of text too. Bands, some pretty darn obscure, covered here include: all-female rock pioneers Fanny, bubblegum punk Laurice, aQ fave fuzzsters Index, the Equals, The Troggs, The Sidewinders, The Hurriganes, Plod, Iron Virgin, Cock Sparrer, and more. Plus, a couple pages of reviews of current releases and reissues, mostly in the garage rock idiom. And, there's a hilarious "buyer's guide" to a bunch of iffy Lou Reed albums, mostly from the '70s and '80s, though last year's ill-conceived collaboration with Metallica, Lulu, gets an entry - you can tell where the writer is coming from when he says "This record stinks, there is nothing good on it� However this is still the best Lou Reed album in 30 years and the best Metallica album of all time". Can't agree, but ha!
HBL#3 is not all fun and games and music though - one piece, illustrated by Spivak, tells the harrowing true-life tale of David Millstein's visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in 2004.
All in all, 76 pages of pure fanzine goodness for anyone hip to it.
First release from this new SF label comes in the form of this kick ass single from Brooklyn art/pop/punk rockers Japanther, who on these tracks seem to have ditched all their warped artiness in favor of something much more immediate, a fuzzed out stripped down noise pop crunch, all murky riffage, practice space drum pound, and distorted reverbed vocal croon, jangly, hooky as hell, three short sharp garage pop gems that sound a little bit like Guided By Voices if they found themselves on In The Red.
The weirdest stuff going on here is the occasional sample, the quick one at the beginning, and the looped crackly old RnB record that starts out "Oh Washington", which the band then seamlessly transform into a dreamy chunk of organ driven garage pop blissout, all vocal ooooh's and swoonsome chordal shimmer, a washed out slab of glimmery soft focus sunshiney fuzz pop murk, which is well worth the price of admission all on its own.
Includes a cool mini comic book, and a download code!
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'!!!
This brilliant, super-limited cassette from Hitoshi Kojo collects various pieces that the Japanese psychedelic-drone-noise artist recorded on cassette back in the early to mid '90s, making the media especially suitable to the material. While Kojo's recent output as Juppala Kaapio and Spiracle has embodied a shamanistic ritualism through freak-folk instrumentation and cracked-drone expressionism, his earliest work was more of a feral beast with full-spectrum clattering of acoustic sounds and ecstatic noise shimmer. The six tracks densely pack the 45 minute cassette, with slippery references between the hallowed percussive dronescaping of Angus MacLise and the bloodcurdling wash of Matthew Bower's Sunroof! There are definitely glimpses of the psychedelic density that Kojo later refined through his luminous Juppala Kaapio recordings, but we would never decry the howling skree, ghostly harmonics, and vertiginous grit that sprawl across Lux Ova. Comes housed in a handsomely die-cut O-card.
The fantastic Sublime Frequencies "world music" label brings us another installment of incredible North African guitar music, in the vein of Group Inerane and Group Doueh. We first heard the talents of young Tuareg six-stringer Koudede & his band on Sublime Frequencies' previous Guitars From Agadez Vol. 5 single, and when we reviewed that we said we hoped there was a full-length in the works, 'cause we wanted to hear more of Koudede's hypnotic, hard-edged grooves. Sadly, though, with this release comes the news that Koudede was tragically killed in a traffic accident in October this year, while travelling back to Niger from playing a show in Burkina Faso. So while Vol. 5 was an exciting introduction to his music, Vol. 6 must be a tribute to his memory, and what might have been. The two tracks here were recorded live by SF's Hisham Mayet at a tumultous concert Koudede played in January 2012, in the midst of ethnic strife in Mali.
Limited edition of 700 copies (Vol. 5 is long gone already).
Full length number two from these SF heavies, and while they haven't sacrificed any of their Teutonic crush, or noise rock heft, they do display a surprisingly melodic side on Container Ships, a soft white sonic underbelly that was hinted at on their recent split 7" with Thou, on which they covered a Low track, and it feels like much of the sensibilities that not only drove that choice, but determined what they did with it as well, are all over Container Ships. And while nothing here is quite as darkly delicate, the band do definitely dial back the heaviness, letting the sounds linger, letting clean guitars spread out and set the mood, and when the hammer does fall, the sound this time around is much more crisp and lush, even when the guitars are downtuned, churning and chugging, they ring out, the sounds reverberant and rich. The debt to the Unsane and Helmet no longer so obvious, at least not all the time. On the opener, which might be the prettiest song here, the band offer up their own sort of slowcore minimal math rock / noise rock sprawl, subtly nuanced, and super melodic, another big change on display here is frontman Scott Evans' vocals, which have transformed from a gruff bark, to a serious croon, still rough around the edges, but way more emotive and the perfect match for the band's ever developing sound.
But fear not, get an earful of the second track, "50's Dad", which is all loping, chugging noise rock crush, Evan's vocals higher than on past record, which definitely changes the vibe throughout, and makes even the heaviest tracks here, less of a knuckledragging vibe, and more of an emo edge, which again totally suits them, especially when the band lock into a weird loping groove, and Evans sings himself ragged, his voice rough and raw and impassioned. Not to mention the burst of tangled psychedelic guitar leads that are wrapped around the middle of the track.
The guys have been busting their asses for years now, and we always sort of wondered why they weren't huge, but goddamn if this record doesn't change all that nothing will.
The whole record is a sort of push and pull between the muscled mathy noise rock of the early records, and this desire to make beautiful music, even if it's dark, mean, ugly, hard and heavy beautiful music, which this most certainly is, and it's that balance that makes this record, and these guys so good. The title track here is a dirgey doomy drag, the chords ringing out, the vocals carrying all the melodic weight, and transforming a dirgey chugfest into something epic and intense, the song revealing a grasp and mastery of dynamics that was most definitely underutilized on past records, but gets a serious workout here.
"Cornerstone" is about as poppy as these guys get, and again, they not only mange to pull it off, they also make it this hook heavy noise-pop fit seamlessly into the way heavier rest of the record, not to mention demonstrating another element the band have in their arsenal but obviously choose to employ very judiciously. The record finishes off with the 9 minute epic "You Don't Have Cancer", which again reveals their slowcore proclivities, and demonstrates their ability to subsume that sound into their own, the resulting hybrid another sprawling, gut wrenchingly emotional, crushingly heavy, surprisingly melodic epic, that would, and does, put most other heavy bands to shame.
We got a very small handful of this, a super new, ultra limited, tour only tape from local psychedelic space prog aQ faves Lumerians, who for this single half hour track, recorded a handful of the instruments, then flipped the tape, playing back those instruments in reverse, and tracking the rest of the band to the backward sounds. And if that weren't cool enough (we're a sucker for backwards sounds), the B side is the A side in reverse, which makes the original tracks play properly, while the proper tracks/instruments from the A side are now reversed. Trippy! And seriously psychedelic.
Both sides a dizzying sprawl of minimal drone-psych drift, swooping backwards rhythms, soft synth swells, twisted swirling melodies, lush builds to gorgeous expanses of dense sonic swirl, noisy and abstract, droney and hypnotic, a bit industrial in places, streaks of black ambience drifting through field of electronic shimmer, grinding electronics wrapped around whirling FX squiggles, both sides, obviously quite similar, warped mirror images of each other, a two sided palindromic psychedelic freakout, both halves heady, and dizzyingly divine, total mind melting headphone bliss.
VERY VERY LIMITED. Most of these the band sold on tour, it's LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered, we got a bunch, but unclear how many more we'll be able to get once these run out. If any!!
Prepare to be soothed and elated. Here's the second album from Majeure, aka A.E. Paterra, one half of Zombi. (FYI, the other half of Zombi, Steve Moore, also has a new solo album out, Light Echoes on Cuneiform, that we'll hopefully have reviewed for you next time around!)
Any longtime aQ customer knows we're big Zombi fans, and of the duo's respective solo work too. In fact, the first Majeure album, Timespan, was a Record Of The Week. So this new one, well, it's great, that's a given really. But beyond that, we're have a hard time coming up with stuff to say about it. What to add to what we've said already about Majeure's brand of propulsive, synth-laden, spacey instrumentals? (Of Timespan, we wrote: "Sprawling spaced out sci-fi electronic minimal kraut disco epics of the highest order. Fusing the creepy film music of Vangelis and John Carpenter with the pulsing hypnotic minimalism of Steve Reich or Philip Glass, even some propulsive motorik Can style krautrock, all woven into sprawling spaced out psychedelic futuristic retro faux film music, layered synths, looped melodies, and a killer mix of programmed rhythms and live drumming".) This new disc is a bit less sprawling, with only one of the six songs breaking into the double-digits duration-wise. And the mood is perhaps lighter and lovelier. But otherwise, what? We will stress that A.E. Paterra really knows what he's doing. (Moore too, on his discs.) This is well-crafted, retro cosmic shimmering synth bliss with some groove, yeah. We're lovin' it. It's like New Age disco music, and we mean that in a good way.
Ok, why not let's list all the gear Paterra is credited with playing on this: "drums, Moog Source, Moog Voyager OS, Kawai SX-240, Korg Lambda, Korg Polysix, Roland Alpha Juno 2 + Roland PG-300, Arp Omni II, Ursa Major Space Station, Mu-Tron Bi Phase, and an old German plate reverb". You don't even have to know what all that stuff is to get an idea about what this album is like. But gadgetry aside, what's more important is, like we said, Paterra knows how to use all those synths to make truly mesmeric music, that sounds both authentic and enjoyable.
Majeure's retro-vision isn't limited to the music - the art and graphic design is nostalgically spot-on. In fact, while there will be a vinyl lp release of this (which was bumped back a bit), the compact disc is the way to go anyway, on account of how they've replicated the '80s look, including the text explaining the superior performance of the Compact Disc Digital Audio System, and how to care for your new cd ("If you follow these suggestions, the Compact Disc will provide a lifetime of pure listening enjoyment"), which proudly bears the DDD code meaning a digital tape recorder was used for recording, mixing and mastering. At the same time, the cover looks like it's been reduced down from an lp-sized original, everything in tiny type, the tracklist divided between a side 1 and side 2. Nice.
You know that we at aQ are big fans of Turkish psych legend Erkin Koray. We were even incredibly lucky enough to have him spend an afternoon here recently, signing autographs!! We've also recommended stuff by various of Koray's contemporaries, like Cem Karaca and Edip Akbayram. But, we haven't gotten much of a chance to talk about another Turkish psych/pop legend, Baris Manco, a man immediately recognizable by his luxuriant long hair and impressive mustache.
Now, Spain's Guerssen label has, for the first time, properly reissued on cd several classics from Manco's discography. We'll start with this one. It's Manco's first full-length album, we think, from 1975, and is considered by some to be his masterpiece. Certainly it's got its special charms - most notably, as you might guess from the title 2023, there's a futuristic vibe to it. Which means, lots of far out synthesizer sounds accompany the traditional Anadolu Pop folk elements. So it sounds just a bit like Bruce Haack goes belly dancing! Weird that may be, but Manco's smooth singing tends to accentuate the mostly laid back, mellow mood here. Though this Middle Eastern soft rock prog does of course get kinda funky/groovy too. And we definitely can call it "prog", when one track is a 12 minute plus multi-part suite that incorporates both flute and field recordings of bird twitter, right? Oh, and there's one song, we swear if Ozzy were singing instead of Baris, that would sound a lot like Sabbath's "Planet Caravan".
To sum up: pretty cool. We wish our country's "most influential pop artists" made weird sci-fi sounding concept albums like this. And if you were wondering, our guess, without looking at the copious liner notes that this comes with, is that the significance of the "2023" date has to do with how that year will be the centennial anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish Republic.
Listen on: Deezer
We had never even heard of Canadian noise rockers Metz, until this record just showed up, but holy shit is it kicking our asses. Heavy and hooky, weirdly groovy, a bit mathy, a psychedelic grinding, churning, pounding blast of drum heavy crunch, the vocals all but buried in the mix, but still an integral part of the sound. The coolest thing about the record though might have to be the production. Instead of being super blown out, or ultra heavy, the sound is weirdly abstract, murky and muddy one second, blisteringly loud the next, certain parts smoothed out into tranced out hypno-rock, others exploding into prismatic noise pop freakouts. And yet somehow every track here manages to be impossibly catchy. We've read comparisons to Jesus Lizard, which might be the most apt, but while Metz are no doubt influenced by JL, their sound is much murkier, much more minimal, with many of the songs collapsing into weird drum-centric breakdowns, a pounding rhythm surrounded by swirls of effects, or some sinewy drum and bass lope, or something similarly abstract and stripped down, only to explode right back into another bout of melody infused near metallic churn. The label talks about how these guys have one of the loudest drummers ever, and while it's usually pretty impossible to capture that sort of thing on record, the drums here are definitely a HUGE part of the sound. They always are in a trio, but the drums here pretty much define the sound, driving, powerful, not overly bombastic, but recorded in such a way that they crush, that aforementioned weird production applied heavily to the drums, causing them to be muted thumps one second, rib cage rattling booms the next, the guitar and bass treated similarly, thick, gristly buzz on some tracks, detuned murky twang on others.
The single "Wet Blanket" is the band at their most classic noise rock, sounding very much like a band you might have seen play with Jesus Lizard or Don Cabellero, and anyone who digs those kinds of outfits should definitely check these guys out too, but even at their catchiest, like on "Wet Blanket", they still seem to slip into that sort of almost krautrock like mesmer, churning looped cyclical hypno-rock sprawls that transform song into sound, reminding us of other similarly inclined combos like Psychic Paramount or recent aQ Record Of The Week-ers Aluk Todolo, but with Metz, those moments, as tranced out as they may be, invariably lead back to something more rocking and melodic.
Easily our noise rock record of the year. Folks who dug the last album from The Men, another aQ ROTW, but who might be after something a bit more fierce and feral, this might just be your new favorite record.
(FYI, there's vinyl too, but our copies got munched in transit, @#$%!, should have more early next week...)
A whole bunch of new releases this week on local label the Flenser, the weirdest of the bunch might just be this one, mostly since it's way different than anything else The Flenser has released so far. Unlike the mostly metal Flenser catalog, there's very little that's overly metal about this release from guitarist Nick Millevoi, other than plenty of buzz and distortion. Instead, we're reminded of a more droned out abstract take on the sort of minimal psychedelic guitarscapery of another aQ fave, Blackwolfgoat.
The guitar tone here is thick and crunchy, buzzy and plenty distorted, Millevoi taking riffs and looping and layering, the opener here starting out as something blown out and raga-like, before the playing grows more frenzied, and does take on a bit of a metallic vibe, but it's like Reich or Riley composing with metallic riffs, growing more and more frantic, before melting into a roiling morass of long tones and endlessly sustaining chords.
"Slowly Dark" is all overtones and sustain, a bit like SUNNO))) crossed with Derek Bailey, that sort of obtuse fretboard scrabbling, set amidst long rumbling tones and deep reverberent thrum. The two part "Super-Lith" gets even more abstract, ditching much of the heavy drone, leaving notes to drift, keening high end shards, and woozy chordal shimmer, which grows more and more intense in the second part, reminding us of an even more abstract Mick Barr, the guitar emitting gouts of grinding high end laced with bits of scrap and skronk.
The tape closes with the 14+ minute "Endless Unfolding Hallways", which might be the 'prettiest' of the bunch, mixing some dreamy lilting melody, into wild squalls of swirling psychedelic high end, and heaving near heaviness, along with long stretches of softly pulsing drones, all peppered with fragmented melody and softly atonal chords.
Cool stuff. Probably pretty limited too!!
Originally released special on vinyl for this year's Black Friday Record Store Day, this new record from Scottish post rockers Mogwai is not in fact a proper album, but is instead a collection of remixes, and the remixers read like a list we would have put together ourselves: Justin K. Broadrick (Jesu, Godflesh, JK Flesh, etc.), Xander Harris, Zombi, Soft Moon, Tim Hecker, Umberto, Robert Hampson (Loop, Main, etc.), Cylob and more!! Which means if you're anything like us, a new Mogwai record would already be a no brainer, but Mogwai remixed by all those folks? Holy cow.
Broadrick starts things off with a remix that essentially transforms Mogwai into Jesu, and we're not complaining, fuzzed out and dreamily bleary, big distorted drums, swirling synths, weird shimmery processed (auto-tuned?) vocals, the M83 vibe looms large for sure, dirgey, and fuzzy and fantastically blissed out. Tim Hecker takes Mogwai's "Rano Pano", adds some grit and strips away some of the extraneous sounds, and creates a warm, warbly, almost Steve Reich-ish sprawl of pulsating repetition. The Soft Moon pours on the distortion, wreathing "San Pedro" is cloud of thick buzz, and dense swirls of synth squelch, turning the original into a crunchy post rock / new wave / noise rock hybrid.
Xander Harris drags "How To Be A Werewolf" into some futuristic soundtrack territory, all pulsing eighties VHS car chase grooves, and skittery programmed rhythms, all over soft chordal swells and sci-fi bleeps and bloops. The Zombi track could essentially BE Zombi, all pulsating synths, ominous minor key melodies, super cheesy eighties synth swells, total retro cinematic synthscapery. Umberto too digs into similar territory, but as you might imagine, he slows it down, and turns it into something much more harrowing and haunting, drifting choir like vocals over spare drum machine pulse, swirls of gauzy synth, all brooding and ominous and sinsterly soundtracky.
We weren't familiar with Klad Hest, but his/their awesomely titled "Mogwai Is My Dick RMX" is like a super charged Autechre remix, skittery IDM, that gradually grows more and more dense and frenzied, the drum progamming going blissfully haywire. Cylob represents the electronica sector too, their take on Mogwai, more electro pop, complete with woozy vocodered vocals, and more retro synths. RM Hubbert is another name we weren't familiar with, his track more like a cover, a blurry tangle of Appalachian guitar, with hushed, whispered vocals, that become hauntingly robotic, which sounds pretty amazing/surreal when paired with the dark brooding guitarscaping.
Finally, Robert Hampson finishes things off with a near 14 minute version of "La Mort Blanche", which over the course of its 14 minutes transforms repeatedly, from murky field recorded ambience, to dreamy washed out, sweetly melodic minimalism, to pulsing, shimmering electronic drift, to synth heavy droned out crunch, to textured glitchy abstractions, to lush soaring loveliness, woozy basslines and swooping backwards guitars, to a final blissful blowout which wraps crunchy swaths of super distorted buzz, around the lilting pastoral main melody. So good!
Also known as "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly", this is Ennio Morricone's most famous movie theme. Contains ten tracks *not* on the 1966 original soundtrack. We have this on cd (Italian title) and also on LP -- 180 gm virgin vinyl gatefold double LP with poster.
WOW marks the second album this year (2012) from the German duo Mouse On Mars, and it's jam packed with ideas, detours, and mutations of their already genre-bending take on electronica. The opening track is graced by a yelping vocalist who's a cross between Damo Suzuki and Eye Yamataka; and such histrionics only occur in a couple of a places dotting the record with barked syllabic utterances. The blorping electronics that spills out of this intro morph into a Zomby (that's the Zomby with a Y, not the Zombi with a Carpenter / Goblin crush) re-animation of dub-step dripping with colorful tones and oddball rhythmic inventions. Elsewhere, Mouse On Mars cut their teeth with some sci-fi / futuristic R&B synth stabs that might as well have their origins in the Personal Space compilation from Chocolate Industries, and mercurially twist those into acid house trax blossoming through squelchy glissandos and operatic vocals with occasional blurts from that Suzuki-esque madman. Quite the wild ride!
- MPEG stream: DOG
- MPEG stream: ACD
Recently we reviewed a soundtrack from psychedelic space rockers Mugstar, for a film called Ad Marginem, and we remarked that the band's sound was appropriately moody and brooding, appropriate for the film certainly, and thus weren't too surprised that in this context, the band's usual progged out bombast was tamped down a bit. And while we assumed that this shift toward brooding moodiness was perhaps a one off for the film, their most recent record displays something sonically similar, perhaps displaying an overall new direction for the band, but on Axis the band manage to bridge the gap, infusing their sonic brooding with a bit of their earlier bombast (Lime, Sun Broken), but only a bit.
Opener "Black Fountain" (originally on a split with SF spacepsych combo Carlton Melton) is a churning sprawl of mesmering hypnorock, dirgey and murky, the drums dense and busy and driving, driving the whole song, a relentless tribal pound that pulses beneath the chug and churn of the bass and guitar, building tension, but never totally exploding, instead slipping back into another stretched of brooding minimal mesmer. The second track "Hollow Ox" opens with a very This Heat sounding electronic melody, before bursting into some serious progginess, but again, the band seem to stretch out and let the sounds drift and drone, the keyboards heavy here, hence the progginess, but the sound remains locked in an almost looped sounding expanse of seventies progginess by way of Circle's relentless repetition. We're not knocking it at all, in fact we quite like it, and find ourselves listening to these tracks constantly, getting lost in their hypnotic heaviness. "Tangerina" also channels Circle, but adds more warmth, and more organic proggy swirl, even building an almost epic post rock coda part way through.
The sort-of title track "Axis Modulator" is the band at their heaviest, chuggy and mathy and proggy, the riffs churning, the drums relentless and driving, the sound washed out by thick swaths of droney keyboard thurm, building to a seriously rocking sprawl of krautrocky space-psych, that definitely harkens back to previous Mugstar records. "Upturnsidedown" returns the band to that new brooding murk, before finishing off with the almost Stereolab-ish "Vehicles Of Spain", which weds playful psychedelic keyboard melodies to dense drumming, and heavy clouds of woozy washed out psychedelia.
While at first blush, Axis most definitely seems like a departure, much broodier and moodier, darker and a bit less rocking, on repeated listens it reveals itself as the perfect follow up to their last full length Lime, and the more we listen, the more we can't seem to get enough.
Yes, it's that time of year again, where all we hear outside the store is the worst Christmas music imaginable playing incessantly everywhere. Luckily over the years, we've been able to find a few select holiday gems to play in the store that don't make our skin crawl. Like John Fahey's The New Possibility, A John Waters' Christmas, Basinski's Silent Night (now sadly out of print) and Low's beautifully solemn Christmas album. This year we got a new treat in the form of this strangely monikered National Jazz Trio Of Scotland. We say strangely monikered because this is neither a trio nor is it jazz, but really what it is is Scottish musician Bill Wells and a handful of like-minded musical compatriots taking apart and rebuilding (respectfully) the traditional Christmas carol canon. Musically, Wells brings an eerie hushed chill and a charming vibrant peacefulness to the proceedings that sound like carols heard shortly after a quiet early morning snowfall. With just keyboards, piano, viola and voices, this is definitely great for keeping the ire of holiday tension down to a sedate manageable minimum. Lovely!
Back in October, we wanted to make the reissue of Caravans To Empire Algol, the first album of blackened kosmische drone-synth drift from Neptune Towers our Record Of The Week, in fact we wanted to make both that AND this, a sort of dual ROTW. Both were records many of us here have loved for YEARS, so we were super excited for the chance to share them with all of you. Sadly, we were never able to get enough copies of that first one at the time to make it a proper ROTW, but we did manage to get a enough of the THIS one, so finally, Neptune Towers achieves aQ Record Of The Week status!! (And making it even more ROTW-worthy, this one, unlike the reissue of Caravans, includes previously unreleased bonus tracks from the never released third installment in the trilogy!)
Neptune Towers was in fact the alter ego of hilariously and hyper opinionated black metal mouthpiece Fenriz, one half of black metal legends Darkthrone, which is initially how we discovered Neptune Towers, Caravans To Empire Algol being the first in a planned high concept trilogy. But the music of Neptune Towers was about as far removed from the black buzz of Darkthrone as can be, instead, Fenriz in his NT guise trafficked in blissed out, kosmische, psychedelic synthscapery a la Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, which considering the current onslaught of retro-synth outifts, proves Fenriz quite prescient back in the day. And thus, for ANYONE into all the modern day practitioners of sci-fi synthwave psychedelia. Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Cloudland Canyon, M. Geddes Gengras, Gatekeeper, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice, Bitchin Bajas, etc., Neptune Towers is definitely worth checking out. But be warned, it's of a much darker strain than a lot of that stuff, gritty and low fidelity, but still impossibly spacious and epic. Black billows of spectral synth swirl around grinding cascades of low end buzz, everything swaddled in clouds of sci-fi squiggle and driven by dense echo drenched pulsations.
Like Caravans, the record is divided into two epic halves, the two lengthy tracks that make up Transmissions seeming to ooze from the darkest reaches of the galaxy, spectral sonic artifacts captured by arcane machinery in some abandoned bunker, the music pouring forth from the old dusty speakers, captured on those giant spinning tape reels, played back to a room full of baffled scientists, given this fleeting glimpse into some other world, in some far away galaxy, darkly cinematic, gritty and grimy, very rough around the edges, lush layers of grislty squelch, that suddenly explode into dizzying swirls of prismatic shimmer, all glistening and glimmering and downright new agey, before being sucked back down into the roiling blackened space-synth morass, only to emerge seconds later, transformed into a weirdly motorik pulsing groove, which again, soon dissipates leaving just shadows and ghostly melodic traces.
The sound throughout is in constant, glorious flux, hazy cosmic percolations, fractured, fragmented rhythms, swirling shimmering melodies, long droned out sprawls pocked with lazer beam blorp and space-sonar pings, the sound most definitely drifting into Goblin / John Carpenter terriroty here and there, with haunting little melodic refrains, that resurface, like the theme from some imaginary seventies sci-fi art film, or the perfect music for some blackened planetarium show.
This reissue tacks on four bonus tracks, excerpts from the aborted third part of the trilogy, 1994's Space Lab, four short sonic fragments that continue on right from where Transmissions fades out, continuing further into the reaches of the cosmos, lush, chordal swirs, arpeggiated melodies, all drifting through wide open expanses of deep black thrum, drifting somnambulently from swoonsome softly shimmering blackened cosmic-drone, to blissfully brooding synth-psych mesmer.
Comes in a swank slipcase too!
The first three records from BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa were a trilogy dedicated to alcohol, and wintery drones, as semi-fictions about getting really drunk sometime in December and nearly passing out in a snowbank while gazing up at the northern lights. Goda Nott is something of an extension of these ideas, except maybe for the alcohol part. Sometime in the winter of 2011 / 2012, this trio found themselves snowed in at Stilluppsteypa's Icelandic studio with no food or water; and no way of getting out until the snow began to melt away. While they did sleep as much as they could to pass the time, they also busied themselves with recording the sounds of the snow, ice, and wind, attempting to monitor what - if any - activity may exist beyond their frozen enclave. The possibility of any existence beyond their own became uncertain, where any rustling of the snow could be a footstep or a resonant tone could be a snowplow. Through their indeterminant amount of time in that studio, they smeared these field recordings into rumbling drones and static tones that mirrored the onset of their collective madness, made audible in the crazy sounding whistling that one of them fastens to the blustery isolationism of the first side of Goda Nott. The second side is even more desolate than the first, rivaling Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion for the most empty, most gasping, most claustrophobic slab of audio bleakness we've ever heard. This is a radical turn away from the melancholy kosmiche electronica of their previous two albums Space Finale and Big Shadow Montana; but they are also rendering something wholly new to the bad-ass dronescaping they mastered early on. So fucking good.
