A couple years ago, we discovered a musical gem someone had dropped by the store which had sat unnoticed for awhile until it finally caught the eye of AQ staffer Andrew. It was a double cd-r set of coldly seductive improvised instrumental synthscapes called Tripping The Dark Fantastic, by a little known five member group from Scotland called Altres. Most of their music was recorded in 1983-84 and released in limited cassette runs. The band went on hiatus in '85 but has since reformed 17 years later! We described the group's sound like this: "Altres manage to recall some of the best things throughout the history of electronic music as well as some of the hazier realms of rock n' roll (their website lists Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Philip Glass, Throbbing Gristle, Faust, the Doors, and the Church as influences; at various times we also picked up on Cluster, Heldon, Popul Vuh, and Zombi's coked out disco side), but the end sound is clearly their own. The songs effortlessly ooze deep, krauty melodies with a sustained and cinematic ambience, and when they break out the drum machines things can head into high speed Moroder territory, always a good thing."
After we reviewed it, we ended up selling a ton of 'em. Well, that review was noticed by Dark Entries label head honcho and aQ pal Josh Cheon, who became a fan and got in contact with Altres, and now 30 years after the band was formed they finally have made their vinyl debut! Archives selects seven of the best tracks from their five cassette releases. For those thinking there may be a lot of overlap between this record and the 2cd-r set, fear not. There is in fact only one song, "Icefield" that's on both releases, which we initially described as a darkly unsettling interlude that makes you think of, yes, ice fields, and probably some foreboding windowless compound as well. Coming at the end of side one, it's a great connecting piece between the two sides, showcasing the rest of the killer new-to-us material. It's really quite special to see some attention being paid to this ambitious but short-lived group, who managed to sound both cold and melodic, cinematic and claustrophobic, robotic and utterly human.
The sheer array of equipment used on these recordings is staggering as well and enough to make any synth geek salivate: Casio MT40 Moog Prodigy, EDP Wasp, Roland SH-101, Casio VL-Tone, Korg MS20, MS50, SQ10 Poly-61, Ibanez guitar and vocoder. All of the instruments are fed through various effects and echo units and yet, amazingly everything is played and recorded live - there are no overdubs - which is pretty incredible to think about as so much of their work is so complex and rich that an extraordinary amount of musicianship seems to be at play to bring forth such strong compositions. The pieces here are less minimal wave than one would expect, but instead seem to come through as a hybrid of provocative pulsating kraut-inflected atmospheres, Moroderic overdrive, a futuristic foreboding and cinematic robotic woe. We're reminded at times, of Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury's recently rejected score for the new Judge Dredd reboot, which gets played a ton in the store, especially on the second track, "Panic". Of course there's been no shortage of synth-worshippers past and present that we could compare this to, but there is something so stirringly visual about Altres' music that makes it beautifully all its own, probably stemming from the fact that when this music was made, the members didn't have a quarter of the contextual relationships with similar music and movements that we can easily nowadays connect them with. We're proud to have been instrumental in the group's rediscovery, and we hope more folks discover them because of this record.
The vinyl comes housed in a neon green jacket featuring the original design from the "Rise" cassette by Mike Nelson. Each lp includes a photocopied clear acetate with unreleased photos and notes for each song. Fantastic!
If you're a fan of Finland's Circle and/or their various offshoots (and if you're an aQuarius customer, chances you are!), then you know all about the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal), the invented sub-genre self-classification that many of those bands embrace, as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of incorporating various heavy metal signifiers that they're fans of, into their sound and image. Although even at their most "NWOFHM", Circle, Pharaoh Overlord and the rest still usually come across more proggy and poppy and WTF? than actually metal in most cases. Very few of their records could be mistaken for "real" metal albums, in their entirety - maybe Steel Mammoth's Nuclear Rebirth lp?
But this new NWOFHM unit, a project of Circle mainman Jussi Lehthisalo and his pal Samae Koskinen (a live member of Finnish grind freaks Xysma), is definitely (in our authoritative opinion!) a real metal band. A weird one perhaps, when you read the lyrics and look at the artwork, but metal first and foremost. The iron gauntlet is thrown down right on the opening track, the pounding "Cult Of No Return" (you'll find a video for it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjlLMCSZ_kk), which reminds us a bit of the the "black n' roll" approach of Norwegian kings Satyricon, circa such albums as Volcano and Now, Diabolical. Or at least, this sounds more like Satyricon than Circle, for sure. We're also reminded a bit of the Finnish melodic death metal band Sentenced, back on their long-forgotten NWOBHM (note the B, not an F) influenced Amok opus from '95. And this aggressive (yet also atmospheric) attack by the Akhamin Kirjasto duo continues, for ten varied tracks in total on Torches Ablaze. There's hella old school evil riffing a la Venom, some lashings of symphonic synths, and a dose of (melodic) death metal brutality in the form of the gruff (but intelligible) vokills from Samae, singing in English about such subjects as "Synthetic Death", "Knights Of Torment", and a "Bitch From Hell". Though, he changes up to a more clean style on the likes of "Sea Of Madness" and others, giving a whispery death-gasp on the speedy "Thousand Snakes", a track that could possibly have fit in on Circle's Katapult album. The Lovecraftian thrasher "Speed, Yog Sothoth" is another blazing ripper, albeit laced with unexpected weird noisy breakdowns, Jussi's avant-garde/experimental leanings coming to the fore without violating the essential metalness of this one.
Overall, Torches Ablaze is certainly something that Circle fans should check out, but is maybe more for actual metalheads. Since we're both, of course we're digging the results here, the weird atmosphere that arises from Arkhamin Kirjasto's unusual blend of chugging metal shred, majestic spacey psychedelic synthwork, and the harsh but catchy vox doused in reverb. As NWOFHM goes, if their tongues are in cheek here, they're well hidden. Hail!
We've long been fans of French composer / sculptor / musician Pierre Bastien, whose sound is a fantastically mysterious world of warbly rhythms, of woozy melodies, looped and mesmerizing and hypnotic, which would already be enough, but the fact that Bastien doesn't actually PLAY this music, instead he builds super elaborate robotic machines, customizes turntables and re-engineers household objects, creating impossibly complex mousetrap like contraptions, which actually play the music. Sounding a bit like a warped hybrid of Philip Jeck's abstract turntablism and Strotter Inst's customized turntable rhythmscapes, Bastien weaves looped, woozy soundworlds of muted murky rhythms, of constantly shifting textures, a sound warm and lush, but at the same time, sort of alien.
This album is a collection of sorts, gathering up a handful of tracks from soundtracks, and installations, and while being disparately sourced, works quite well as a record proper, and besides being a new collection of Bastien tracks, which is always cause for celebration, this disc also includes a dvd, containing a handful of short films, featuring Bastien's machines in action, and for some folks, it will be the first time seeing Bastien's music come to life, having only heard the records and seen pictures of his musical inventions. More on the dvd in a second. First the album.
The record opens with the murky "Pull Up", which for folks new to Bastien, is a perfect introduction. Besides building these machines, and composing the music, Bastien, a trumpet player by trade, would often accompany his machines, his trumpet providing the melody. So here, the melody, which could be a trumpet, sounds as if it's being played underwater, a burbly, bubbling woozy melody, melancholic and wistful (and underwater!), set over a deep low slung thrum, muted percussion, looped low end thrum, it's fantastically dreamy, and sort of sounds like Bastien's take on Portishead, a dreamy, nocturnal vibe. "Nip In" opens with some Morricone-esque rubber band twang, which is quickly joined by a backdrop of mechanized pluck and thrum, which in turn is soon joined by fluttery flute like melodies, and eventually chimes and bells, and finally Bastien's muted trumpet. Bluesy and woozy and divine.
"Now On" takes the aforementioned comparisons (Jeck, Strotter) and now adds Kid Koala to the mix, Bastien doing something similar to Kid Koala's recent blues record, where the backdrop is still all warped rubber band basslines, wheezing bellows basslines, but here a female blues singer's record spins lazily (or maybe it's sampled?), the vocals draped over Bastien's alien robot blues, there's also what sounds like a kazoo solo. The whole record is a stunning sprawl of meticulously arranged and impossibly choreographed robotic symphonies, from the gorgeously melodic dream like shimmer of "Never Even", a soft cacophony tempered by the songs melody and emotion, to the field recording flecked "Spare Spanish Sin Apse Raps" which includes recordings from the city which commissioned the work, Bastien's trumpet front and center, over another mechanoid framework, accompanied by the sounds of running water, distant conversations, the sounds of sidewalks being swept, tolling bells, all woven into a dreamy sonic cityscape.
The rest of the record unwinds equally mysteriously, the muddy creep of "Trope Report", which drags and oozes, and is flecked with wheezing ominous moans, and creaking melodies, "Yale Relay", which warps warbly opera singing over a strangely cinematic stretch of machine-looped percussion, Spanish guitar sounding twang, and the ever present low end robotic thrum, "Peep" with its super spare tangle of layered high end tones, and exotic percussion, and finally, "Dogs' God", which is a brief bit of wheezing drone and skitter, underpinning a return of that burbling underwater melody that opened the proceedings. So fantastic. And odds are, if you not already Bastien obsessed, this will do it, and have you obsessively tracking down everything you can find. And heck, if the record itself doesn't do it, the dvd definitely will!
The accompanying dvd is as fantastic as the record, maybe even more so, as it gives us a much more fully realized glimpse into Bastien's fantastical mechanized sound world. Seeing his inventions in action, brings the music to life in a way that the recordings sometimes struggle to do. Just check out the first video for "Mecanoid", which begins with a paperclip attached to a strip of plastic, vibrating against another piece of plastic. In front of it is a keyboard, with a strange music box stylus, seemingly made from an old rolling pin, with nubs attached, it's set revolving, and plays a woozy melody on the keyboard, while in the background, a tinker toy like assembly, spins like a bicycle creating more abstract percussion elements, while in the foreground, a customized record, lifts and sets down the needle, creating little lopped vocal snippets, all the while, Bastien's hands come into frame, adjusting, changing speeds, altering implements, its a strange mechanical ballet, that just so happens to sound as beautiful as it looks. And all the films are equally fascinating, the kinetic sculptures and robotic music making machines are stunning even just to look out, and the mysterious mechanoid symphonies they create seem impossibly beautiful to come from these robots and machines, a stylus is dropped onto a spinning record to make a percussive squelch, a primitive bellows becomes a homemade harmonium, flaps of paper and a fan, create something visually stunning, but at the same time provide a subtle bit of percussive skitter, a bow (as in a bow and arrow) is attached to a series of gears, and is flung about, creating strange rhythms, strings and rubber bands are stretched everywhere, with various robotic implements tasked with plucking and strumming, even a pair of scissors and a comb and other bits of every day household ephemera become impossibly beautiful sound makers. Stunning, both visually, and sonically.
As any solid Marxist-feminist will tell you, a girl's gotta own the means of production, right? Well, the influential and groundbreaking riot grrrl band Bikini Kill finally went and started their own record label. In honor of the 20th anniversary of their self-titled 1992 release, the band are reissuing their entire catalogue on cd and vinyl (plus downloads) - the eponymous debut record being the first. We know you riot grrl OG's out there already have the entire Bikini Kill catalog, but in case you partied too hard with your original releases (and you should have, because this record rawks), you might need a replacement by now. Also, you should know that the lp comes packed with a 34" x 21" poster (just like the White Album!) that includes snippets from drummer Tobi Vail's famed feminist 'zine, Jigsaw, photos, interviews with the likes of album producer and Minor Threat/Fugazi member Ian MacKaye, and other goodies. For those who have not heard this album, a) why the heck not? and b) it's sixteen minutes of pure punk rock heaven. The only way to explain it is to listen to it really, really loud - preferably while wearing a slip and tube socks (boys, that means you, too) and screaming along with Kathleen Hanna's defiant wail at the top of your lungs. For all the haters out there, look: You don't have to have an abusive father to protest patriarchal control over women's sexuality, as does Hanna in "Suck My Left One." Bikini Kill weren't man-haters, they just wanted to start the revolution grrrl-style. It's not too late to join them!
When this came out as a vinyl-only release earlier this year, back in May, we made it our very rockin' Record Of The Week. Now, we're happy to report that the band also has done a limited run of pro-printed cd-rs, for those of you lacking in turntable technology!
Boyjazz? Boyjazz! The name should strike fear into the heart of all posers. Not because they weren't a joke band, cuz of course they were... but in spite of that, they kicked ass on most quote-unquote real metal/hard rock bands out there. Silly name, funny lyrics, tongue-in-cheek attitude and all, damn they rocked. Great songs, super showmanship, part wiseass LA hair metal parody, part party time garage glam rock ravers in their own right, the bombastic Boyjazz couldn't be denied. The musicians in Boyjazz were tight all right, virtuoso nerds in cock rock spandex disguise, but the band's not so secret weapon was charismatic frontman Adam "Sexmouth" Hobbs, who had few peers and less shame in the live arena - and acted as if arenas were indeed where they belonged!
Or maybe you're too young to remember their 2004 album In The City Tonight? Or their US tour opening for The Fucking Champs and Zombi? Well, you're in luck, they're baaaack... sort of... with, at long last, the posthumous release of their final all analog studio recording, tracked back in 2006 but shelved 'til now. Maybe the world is finally ready. We are!
It's clear from the title Unlimited Nights & Weekends that Boyjazz didn't get much more "serious" on their long lost sophomore outing, not that they needed to, or we expected 'em to. Though, they did do it with their five member full band lineup, not as duo-with-drum-machine like on In The City Tonight. So it's more what Boyjazz were like at their peak live, including the six string shred of geeky guitar hero Eric Murriguez, and the actual drumming of Aaron "Supertouch" Levin, with songs just as instantly catchy and kick ass as any on that earlier album. So many infectious riffs and great songs here, straight up. Tracks like "Woman Come To Man", "Woman In Love", "She's Got Gold", "Danger Danger", "Pocket Unicorn", heck ALL of 'em, are gonna be stuck in our heads for the foreseeable future, and that's just after a few spins, the almost-overly-enthusiastic backing vocal choruses generally sealing the deal. Turns out, a bunch actually were already stuck in our heads somewhere, as we immediately recognized several as longtime live faves from the band, so glad they got properly recorded for posterity! Like sleazy side 2 album-ender "Booze", usually their encore as we recall... Armed with these songs, Boyjazz could time travel back to the '80s and take on all comers on the Sunset Strip for sure, though some of the jokes in the lyrics might go over the heads of those in the audience.
'Tis totally over the top boogie rawk action, with wailing vox, clever lyrix, '70s glam riffrock stomp... Boyjazz has tongues firmly in cheek, yes, but they're nonetheless doing it right, asking no quarter and none given, willing to put up or shut up (they choose the former), their goofing and spoofing dangerously close to blowing doors on the real thing, like when they make Led Zeppelin their bitch on "Treat Steamin'" or send Judas Priest running hellbent for cover when they belt out "The Monsters Are Smarter". Even power pop new wave like The Knack gets the Boyjazz treatment via "Hot On The Phone".
It's not rocket science, or maybe it is... Part T-Rex, part Tenacious D, part Turbonego; a little White Stripes, a lotta Whitesnake, Boyjazz almost make even Van Halen seem stiff & serious, uptight with stagefright. To sum up, we've got one word for you: Wooooah-whoooah-whooooah-oh-yeah!
Super limited cd-r edition, in jewel case with full color art, professionally printed. They only only brought us a handful, though if we run out we might be able to get more from 'em in after the holidays.
Brand new one sided flexi-disc 7" single from these aQ kraut/space rock faves, and it's a pretty sweet slab of spaced out psychedelia, the group laying down that immediately recognizable space-kraut groove, over which they lay down a fractured Rolling Stones style guitar riff, along with some woozy looped synth. Already locked into some serious psychedelic trance, then a second synth swoops in, weaving in an extra melody, even a bit of fluttery flute, the sound gradually drifting toward something less kraut-y or spacey and more toward something distinctly jammy, heck there's even what sounds like electric piano at one point, it's like Cave have decided to become a modern day jam band, fusing the classic old jam style (Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, etc.) to something more modern and kosmische and krauty, and it suits them big time. Too bad it's just a 7", cuz we're guessing this jam was way longer in the practice space. Super rad, and of course, super limited, only 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, pressed onto a green flexi, includes a printed cover/insert.
Super limited one sided live lp from these psychedelic headz. One sidelong blown out dub drenched psych rock heavy freakout, a dense layer of blurred buzz and sprawled static riffage oozes into thick billowing clouds, over which the drummer lays down a heavy groove, spare but seriously powerful, the instrumental backdrop isn't so much riff and rhythm as it is heavy swirls of sound, pulsing and driving. We weren't actually expecting vocals, but they bubble to the surface, heavily effected, doused in delay and reverb an echo, occasionally dubbed like crazy, the last word of a line spend spinning into the murk, it seems like an obvious homage to Japanese psychedelic heavies Les Rallizes Denudes, this jam has the same sort of loose feel, the vocals weirdly feral and abstract, all of the various sounds gradually seeming to blur into one heaving wall of churning psych, total drugged out zoner bliss, and as the track/side progresses, the band seem to gradually crank the sound, louder, faster, more frantic, everything cranked, even the vocals, wilder and more maniacal, all building to a frenzied final freakout. Super rad. Obviously fans of Burnt Hills, Carlton Melton, White Hills, The Heads, and all of those sort of psych combos will flip for this. Housed in an old school black and white bootleg style paste on sleeve, with a photocopied insert. And super limited, as in LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
This local San Francisco duo of heavy shoegaze witchery had us smitten with a way too limited tape awhile back, that we described as the fuzziest and loudest side of My Bloody Valentine, the haziest, most washed out and dreamy side of Bardo Pond, and the white noise of Flying Saucer Attack all somehow coming together. Sadly that tape quickly went of print and left us wanting more.
And now with this new single on new local upstart label Sleep Genius, run by our pal Brad from Tied To The Branches, we have just a little more, but it's so good!! Heavy and slow crushing swells of guitar churn and dark dream pop bliss, a heady mixture of early A.R. Kane's violent swooning feedbackdrift and Slowdive's gothic melancholia. The B side, a remix of the A side by Brad, stretches out the original into a witch house-y excursion of sustained hollowed out keys and slow motion creep. Featuring Marc Manning on keyboards, all we can say is: MORE, MORE, MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yay, this old AQ fave, now reissued on vinyl!
The Churchill's is psychedelic rock from Israel, circa 1968, the original lp a rare collectible, and a classic. With Middle Eastern touches, backwards FX, lovely melodies, and twanging guitar solos, Churchill's should appeal to all fans of international sixties psych. Influenced by the Beatles and other British rock groups of the era (in fact, Churchill's later on became very Led Zep-ish, and covered "Living Loving" on a 7" single!), the Churchill's debut was apparently recorded as the soundtrack music for a pair of obscure films entitled A Woman's Case and The Dress. But the album is definitely a collection of songs, not instrumental/incidental music. And great songs they are. Some soft and mellow ("When You're Gone"), others weird and wigged out ("Straight People"). No doubt drugs were involved. One of the best tracks is the melodic, mandolin-fueled "Subsequent Final", an East-meets-West stunner indeed, pretty much worth buying this disc for just by itself, though you get lots more treats besides!
Another blast (two blasts, actually) from the past, from our favorite Finns. It's been a long time since we've had copies of these, Hissi and Fraten, the 3rd and 4th albums respectively by the now-near-legendary hypno-rock outfit Circle. Originally released on the Metamorphos label, they've been out of print for ages. Ektro Records has finally arranged to put out remastered reissues, for those that missed 'em the first time around. It's interesting to have 'em back, considering them now in context of Circle's subsequent, prolific career in the years since they first appeared. When Hissi came out in 1996, we saw it as a major stylistic shift, but that's before we learned that Circle would amazingly morph through so many unexpected styles as they progressed over album after album - all the while keeping it quite "Circular" though. At the time, we stated that if their first full-length (Meronia) could be described as AmRep grunge meets Gregorian chants, and if the second (Zopalki) entered into a kraut-rocky chamber music realm with strings, etc., then Hissi was Circle's stab at post-rock electronica... The vocals are gone on all but one or two tracks, and Circle's trademark repetitive sound is less about riffs on this record than beats. And it's true, Hissi was mostly instrumental, there's no "Meronian" chanting (and certainly none of the faux-metallic operatics of latter-day Circle vocalist Mika Ratto, as found on many more recent albums). The whole "NWOFHM" thing that Circle & friends later invented is also far from evident, this isn't Circle in any of their bombastic, heavy modes at all. It's not truly electronica either, really, but there are a lot of keys, and effects. Synth sounds insinuate everywhere amidst the nervous percolations of the drums and percussion. It's low-key and motorik, moody and atmospheric, quite creepy even (in keeping with the cover and interior photos of a grotesque, grimacing old man marionette). '70s avant or krautrock bands like This Heat and Faust are assuredly influences, and the darkly suspenseful, slightly jazzy results align somewhat with the likes of '90s post rock contemporaries Tortoise and the Kammerflimmer Kollektief. But, as we also said, about Hissi's original release: still like nothing else, exactly. And quite recommended. This new, remastered edition features additional graphics, and a brief 2012 note from sole constant Circle member Jussi Lehthisalo, looking back, saying "this album was the starting point for calmer and lighter days that lasted until the end of the decade", also letting us know that Hissi was indeed written as instrumental puppet theater music!
Then there's Fraten, from 1997. What at the time we referred to as another album of "beautiful repetition" from Circle that was "not quite so heavy or dark as previous releases" but that nonetheless "explores (somewhat) mellower territory with equally hypnotic results as before". Indeed it does. While Hissi had its frightening moments, on the effects laden build up of "Kuukaarme" for instance, Fraten is a sunnier proposition to an extent, bright and playful, though it definitely has some dark undercurrents too (with the doleful double bass and plodding beats of "Kentta = Areend" for instance). But the gentle, lazy groove of something like "Hytti = Ser Ozm" is hardly sinister at all. Circle are clearly keeping powerful forces in reserve, operating with care and restraint. The glitchy electronics and dubby FX explosions that infiltrate these rhythmically propulsive tracks are mysterious, perhaps, but not threatening. Lovely, lovely. We certainly can't decide which album, Hissi or Fraten, we like better, and why should we? Both are great, and definitely (despite some slight lineup differences) belong to the same crucial creative era of Circle output, when the mesmeric art rock ideas of their landmark 2nd album Zopalki were being developed in various new musical directions.
The booklet for the remastered reissue of Fraten includes various graphics (show fliers, set lists, photos) not seen in the original. Also there's brand new liner notes, written by the bass player on the album, Tomi Harrivaara, who was with Circle from 1996-1998. He provides an interesting glimpse into Circle's past, from his perspective. In his essay, the likes of Bernard Hermann, Witold Lutoslawski, Arnold Schoenberg, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich are cited as compositional influences on the songs of Fraten, not such a surprise really.
Another blast (two blasts, actually) from the past, from our favorite Finns. It's been a long time since we've had copies of these, Hissi and Fraten, the 3rd and 4th albums respectively by the now-near-legendary hypno-rock outfit Circle. Originally released on the Metamorphos label, they've been out of print for ages. Ektro Records has finally arranged to put out remastered reissues, for those that missed 'em the first time around. It's interesting to have 'em back, considering them now in context of Circle's subsequent, prolific career in the years since they first appeared. When Hissi came out in 1996, we saw it as a major stylistic shift, but that's before we learned that Circle would amazingly morph through so many unexpected styles as they progressed over album after album - all the while keeping it quite "Circular" though. At the time, we stated that if their first full-length (Meronia) could be described as AmRep grunge meets Gregorian chants, and if the second (Zopalki) entered into a kraut-rocky chamber music realm with strings, etc., then Hissi was Circle's stab at post-rock electronica... The vocals are gone on all but one or two tracks, and Circle's trademark repetitive sound is less about riffs on this record than beats. And it's true, Hissi was mostly instrumental, there's no "Meronian" chanting (and certainly none of the faux-metallic operatics of latter-day Circle vocalist Mika Ratto, as found on many more recent albums). The whole "NWOFHM" thing that Circle & friends later invented is also far from evident, this isn't Circle in any of their bombastic, heavy modes at all. It's not truly electronica either, really, but there are a lot of keys, and effects. Synth sounds insinuate everywhere amidst the nervous percolations of the drums and percussion. It's low-key and motorik, moody and atmospheric, quite creepy even (in keeping with the cover and interior photos of a grotesque, grimacing old man marionette). '70s avant or krautrock bands like This Heat and Faust are assuredly influences, and the darkly suspenseful, slightly jazzy results align somewhat with the likes of '90s post rock contemporaries Tortoise and the Kammerflimmer Kollektief. But, as we also said, about Hissi's original release: still like nothing else, exactly. And quite recommended. This new, remastered edition features additional graphics, and a brief 2012 note from sole constant Circle member Jussi Lehthisalo, looking back, saying "this album was the starting point for calmer and lighter days that lasted until the end of the decade", also letting us know that Hissi was indeed written as instrumental puppet theater music!
Then there's Fraten, from 1997. What at the time we referred to as another album of "beautiful repetition" from Circle that was "not quite so heavy or dark as previous releases" but that nonetheless "explores (somewhat) mellower territory with equally hypnotic results as before". Indeed it does. While Hissi had its frightening moments, on the effects laden build up of "Kuukaarme" for instance, Fraten is a sunnier proposition to an extent, bright and playful, though it definitely has some dark undercurrents too (with the doleful double bass and plodding beats of "Kentta = Areend" for instance). But the gentle, lazy groove of something like "Hytti = Ser Ozm" is hardly sinister at all. Circle are clearly keeping powerful forces in reserve, operating with care and restraint. The glitchy electronics and dubby FX explosions that infiltrate these rhythmically propulsive tracks are mysterious, perhaps, but not threatening. Lovely, lovely. We certainly can't decide which album, Hissi or Fraten, we like better, and why should we? Both are great, and definitely (despite some slight lineup differences) belong to the same crucial creative era of Circle output, when the mesmeric art rock ideas of their landmark 2nd album Zopalki were being developed in various new musical directions.
The booklet for the remastered reissue of Fraten includes various graphics (show fliers, set lists, photos) not seen in the original. Also there's brand new liner notes, written by the bass player on the album, Tomi Harrivaara, who was with Circle from 1996-1998. He provides an interesting glimpse into Circle's past, from his perspective. In his essay, the likes of Bernard Hermann, Witold Lutoslawski, Arnold Schoenberg, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich are cited as compositional influences on the songs of Fraten, not such a surprise really.
The very first solo record from Al Cisneros, he of stoner sludge gods Sleep, and minimal doom heavies Om, and the first release on his Sinai label, which might have you expecting a sweet slab of downtuned heaviness, or slo-mo bass heavy minimalism, and actually you wouldn't be far off. But this is not metal, or doom, or even rock, this in fact a straight up DUB record. We're not surprised, as Cisneros has been ordering dub records from us for a while, but fans of OM at least shouldn't be that surprised either, as that group's sound was definitely heavily influenced by classic dub. And while Cisneros' first stab at pure dub is pretty excellent, it's also not hard to imagine it being reimagined as a proper OM track, but here, it's all dub, low slung woozy bassline, spare simple rhythm, what sounds like tablas, the vibe a little bit Muslimgauze, a little bit King Tubby, the sound lush and thick, rife with sampled vocals, chiming melodies, dark, droney, druggy and seriously dubby, crank the bass and blast this through your system.
And of course it's a dub single, so the flipside is the 'version', most of the vocals stripped away, or doused in echo and delay and spent swirling into the ether, super minimal and mesmerizing, the focus on the groove of the bass, and the rhythm, totally heady and hypnotic, WAY too short on a 7", it's the sort of jam you want to stretch out forever. Here's hoping there's a dub full length in the future, but for now, grab one of these before they're gone, as they're extremely limited. Housed in a plain white sleeve.
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".
Back in print/stock, these came in the mail slightly damaged, so anal record nerds steer clear, but for everyone else, these are seriously discounted, so if slightly bumped corners and less than perfect sleeves don't bug you, snap one of these up before they're gone...
We've pretty much dug everything we've heard from Mark Deutrom, one time bassist for the mighty Melvins, which is saying a lot, considering his recorded output has been all over the map, from Queens Of The Stone Age like metal-pop, to full on experimental soundscapery, so we weren't super sure what to expect from this new double lp, but we figured it was Deutrom, and it was on the always kick ass Rock Is Hell label, so we figured that however it panned out, we'd be psyched. And right off the bat, Deutrom unfurls some Earth-like dusty twang, not at all what we were expecting, but super cool, acoustic guitars, simple dramatic percussion, we were definitely into it, and then the second song kicked in and BAM, total epic sludge heaviness, huge churning riffage, wild chaotic drumming, angular slo-mo melodies, murky textural drones, the sort of shit that should send fans of the Melvins and Harvey Milk into paroxysms of doom/sludge pleasure. And so it goes, over the course of three sides (the fourth one features a cool etching), the sound pretty much all over the place, but with a focus on riffs and heaviness, which is right where the focus should be. Deutrom has a handful of guest vocalists, who compliment his own gruff croon, with the music slipping from lurching noise rock, to Harvey Milk-ish sludgey groove, churning riffage, howled bellowed vox, at some points that Earth-y twang returns, but in the heavier bits, making for some awesome twangy sludgey noise rock epic-ness. There are some bits with drum machine, and some strange interludes, but the record is rife with epic doomy heaviness, sometimes laced with angular noisiness, but also sometimes slipping into something more dirgey and even almost ballady at one point, but it all works, the production is massive, the riffs kill, there are plenty of hooks too, seriously Melvins/Harvey Milk fans, grab one of these before they are gone!
LIMITED TO 466 COPIES!!! Packaged in a super swank full color gatefold jacket, with two full color cardstock inserts, pressed on heavy vinyl, and again, side 4 features a cool mysterious etching!
When we first got this in, based on the name of this UK band, and the mysterious cover, we were expecting something more like Witchcraft, or Ghost, or In Solitude, that sort of retro classic metal, equal parts churning heaviness, and hook heavy poppiness, and the opening track gave us no reason to assume we were mistaken, starting off with some ominous rumbling drones, swirling faux strings, darkly majestic and hauntingly baroque, laced with monklike chants, then when the band comes in, it's spare chugging metallic riffage, simple drumming, minor key and dramatically epic, making us think a little bit of early Katatonia. But that opener is really just an intro, which did little to prepare us for what The Devil are really all about. Which is a strange strain of minimal metal, all instrumental, and heavy on the samples. Reminding us a lot of old '90s industrial music, each song based on a theme, whether it's space exploration, Roswell or 9/11 (!!), the band chugs away, weaving lush minimal landscapes of riffy metallic crunch, Goblin like cinematic synths, the sound soaring and dramatic and moody, the music really only a backdrop for the samples. "Universe" musically is a gorgeous sprawl of metallic melancholia, which in a different form, with say, Ghost (the band) style old school NWOBHM vocals, would have been something else entirely, instead, the band pepper the track with various snippets from news broadcasts, NASA mission control, etc., pretty sure we heard some Reagan in there too. And while the record is primarily sample heavy melancholic metal crunch, there's tracks like "Astral Dreamscape", which sounds just like the title would suggest, all swirling synths, dreamlike kosmische shimmer, laced with indistinct samples of radio static, garbled transmissions, buried voices, very surreal and VERY cinematic. Or "Transcendence", which does indeed sound transcendent, whirling winds whip below ethereal streaks of keening synth shimmer and deep rumbling drones.
And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention some of the stranger tracks, like "World Of Sorrow", The Devil's 9/11 track, which is another sweetly sorrowful slab of minor key synth swirled metal, intense and dramatic, made only moreso by the samples, news reporters broadcasting live as the towers fell, even what appears to be actual sounds of the towers falling, it's definitely moving, and the music is suitably somber, and then the track shifts, and the samples suddenly become a litany of conspiracy theories, discussing the various 'explosions' and planted explosive devices (argh sez Allan). Then there's "Intervention", where the band essentially set Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream' speech to moody melancholic metal, and the record finishes off with a nearly 29 minute synthscape, the first few minutes of which sound a bit like Emeralds by way of the Caretaker, before slipping into a strange ultra minimal pulsing tone, that sounds like it would have been right at home on some mysterious Raster Noton release, and while we imagined at some point the metal would kick back in, it never does, instead, that softly pulsating tone plays the record all the way out.
A beautiful selection of solo folk blues instrumentals from longtime member of the North Mississippi All Stars and the latest lead guitarist for the Black Crowes. Luther Dickinson is also the son of legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson, and deep in the grit and twang of the Southern blues, we find a momentously stripped down affair that is both raw and transcendent. Hambone's Meditations is a conjuring of ghosts that preceded the Fahey school searching instead for the origins buried in the oral traditions of rural folk blues.
The Grammy-nominated recording is close and intimate, you can hear the squeaks of guitar and the rub of the slide as it trips and sways through exploratory and contemplative instrumental excursions. On the Sutro Park label, home of beautiful vinyl reissues by Jesse Mae Hemphill, Sandy Bull, Fred McDowell and Peter Walker, among others. A new classic!
Recently Romanian black metal horde Negura Bunget, big time aQ faves for years now, found two of their three members leaving to form a new group, which left just the drummer to continue on as NB, with the other two forming the oddly named Dordeduh, a name that in English might be a tad bit goofy, but in Romanian, actually means 'longing for spirit', and as you might imagine, with 2/3 of Negura Bunget making up the core of Dordeduh, the sound is not that far removed from Negura Bunget, a sort of black metal / folk hybrid, as was Negura Bunget, but there seems to be even more folk here, and certainly more clean vocals than there ever were in NB. The first thing we noticed was the fact that there were THREE people playing hammered dulcimer on this record! There's also flute, panpipe, and a handful of other distinctly non metal instruments, al put to great use here, the opening few minutes sets the scene, all rumbling drones, mysterious percussion, chanted monklike vocals, ethereal swirls of female background vox, bells and chimes, haunting spoken word, we briefly considered the possibility that perhaps Dordeduh would be all ambient/folk, and not metal at all. But at about 2:40, we were shown otherwise, the band launching into a serious blast of dense, gnarled black buzz, the sound blurry, and echo drenched, noisy and washed out, a gorgeous heaving avalanche of sound, underpinned by thick sonic swells, the folk element seeming to run through the heaviness as well, super tranced out and hypnotic, so much so that we wish it had locked into this woozy buzz and never let up. The sound shifts again, and displays more of the groups folk/BM hybrid, with the churning blackened riffage, peppered with some sort of woodblock percussion, which changes the vibe completely, even more so as the song shifts into a weird folky prog, all swirling synths, classic metal chug, before slipping back into more black buzz, before transforming again, lacing some serious black riffage with soaring flute melodies, only to blossom into some clean vocal driven metal epicry, sounding almost liturgical, that is if a black metal band blasted away beneath the hymns. The rest of the song breaks down as a dreamy, softly psychedelic folk dirge, tribal and ritualistic, but lush and lovely, finally leaving some sort of campfire folk hoedown, all strummed acoustic guitar, simple hand drums, panpipe and call and response vox. Woah. A seriously epic and ultra varied 16+ minute opener, and over the next hour, the rest of the record unfolds in a similarly idiosyncratic fashion, soaring synths over folky percussion, chugging guitars over impossibly catchy melodies, soaring clean vocals that give much of this a sort of Alcest vibe, haunting expanses of folky psychedelic drift, loping stripped down low end almost post rock, furious black metal blowouts, rife with impossibly fast blast beats, but then clean vocals and spiraling melodies and even some piano, the record gets into some serious progginess, getting almost fusion-y at points, but for every twisted chunk of folky prog, there's an epic blast of majestic buzz drenched blackness, more often than not, those two sides of Dordeduh's sonic personality bleeding gloriously into each other. There's a definite Enslaved vibe as well, after all Negura Bunget and Enslaved were always sort of sonically linked, there's even an Enslaved cover on the bonus disc here, alongside two earlier, much rawer sounding demos.
Fans of Negura Bunget, Enslaved and other folk flecked, nature obsessed black metal outfits, will find much to love here, the balance pretty evenly split between black buzz and folky flutter, so metalheads looking for something relentlessly black might be disappointed, but the rest of us can happily revel in Dordeduh's gloriously blackened foresty folky soundworld. Packaged in a swank full color six panel digipak, with a big booklet. While they last we have the double disc version, not sure how long those will last.
This is the very first we've heard from the oddly monikered DVVLLXNS (pronounced "Vallens", we think), which in fact is the new project from Jon Porras, one half of doomdrone duo Barn Owl. Originally releases as a download, LXTVNY is only now getting a proper release. As we mentioned in our recent review of Porras' latest solo album Orilla Oscura, as much as the various Barn Owl related projects and records push past Barn Owl's twang flecked ambient drone sound, they all still share a similar sound and vibe, something that Porras was aware of when he conceived off DVVLLXNS, which still shares the same vibe, it's dark and psychedelic, it's most definitely a whole different beast. When we first got these in, we joked about the very witch house-y logo that adorns the cover, but once we threw it on, we realized that maybe that cover is sort of appropriate, cuz the sound on LXTVNY is actually kind of witch housey to these ears, murky and swirling and psychedelic, lots of processed voices, programed beats, the opener is all skittery drum machines, and ethereal vocals molded into psychedelic swirls, stuttering loops, the result is sort of dance-y, but more sort of hazy and rhythmic, certainly super shoegazey, the whole thing ethereal and ghostly and fantastically washed out and shimmery. The second track adds some dubbiness to the equation, the beats fading in and then out, over which soft swirling shimmering swells drift dreamily, before the rhythm resurfaces and the song is transformed into a weird sort of witch-kraut groove, again crafted from more distorted voices and a pulsing beat, before splintering into an abstract drift of echo drenched sonic fragments.
The flipside starts out all haunting and dramatic, a blurred slo-mo chamber music almost, super minimal and Caretaker-y, a buried heatbeat like pulse beneath the soft psychedelic swirls, before an oscillating synth melody swoops in, the sound blurring into some super minimal Kompakt style Pop Ambience, and then finally, the record finishes off with a woozy cascade of arpeggiated synths, wreathed in tinkling music box melodies and a thick ominous low end drone, the sound super cinematic and sinister, when the beat comes in, it's less a beat, and more a sort of rhythmic filigree, swooping hard from speaker to speaker, wreathed in gauzy hiss, leaving a crackling contrail draped over the percolating synths beneath, fans of all that Carpenter / Goblin worship, will dig this track especially.
As much as we love the sound of Barn Owl, and Porras' various side projects, we're digging this new direction a LOT, and we probably say this every time, but this might be our favorite Porras recording yet!
Even though Ex-Cult (formerly Sex Cult) hail from Memphis, the sound of their debut owes the Bay Area big time. Not only is it produced by SF garage pop wunderkind and repeat aQ Record Of The Weeker Ty Segall, sonically, it definitely sounds like these guys were born from the same fertile fields that gave us lots of favorites, Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, Bare Wires, The Mallard, Mikal Cronin. Sure the sound is a bit more raw and urgent, and a bit punkier, but then these guys did actually start out as a proper punk band. But with a clutch of new songs, and Segall behind the mixing board, their sound has transformed into something distinctly garagey poppy, urgent and swaggery, definitely Stooges-y (but then really what garage rock isn't), but without losing any punk energy. Close listening reveals lots of stuff that will sound familiar to the SF scene, and Segall in particular, check out the back up vox on "Don't Feel Anything" for instance, but Ex-Cult definitely channel classic punk into their garage pop sound, we hear lots of old SST, even some Orange County HC, but deftly woven into some crazy catchy jams, that have been sticking in our heads like crazy, and getting tons of play around aQ.
Another absolutely killer John Fahey box set , this time compiling his first six Takoma lps recorded between 1962 and 1967: Blind Joe Death; Death Chants, Breakdowns, And Military Waltzes; The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites; The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party; The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death; and Days Have Gone By. All reissued on 180 gram vinyl with deluxe old school tip-on style jackets. Chances are if you are a fan, you may have some if not all of these, but maybe not all on lp, eh? or if you do, we bet you don't have a T-shirt, or poster, or postcard that are all also included here, hmmm? Or what about that good friend you are always trying to turn onto classic Fahey records, might be a nice gift for them. Or even better yet perhaps this is the time to give your shitty scratched up thrift store-bought copies to that good friend and buy this incredible set for yourself!
For those few readers who may have absolutely no idea what we're talking about, here is a simple overview from past reviews to get you caught up. John Fahey revolutionized guitar folk. His immediately recognizable, simultaneously ethereal and earthy virtuosic guitar picking and compositions combined influences from the folk blues of Charley Patton to Indian ragas to classical music, gospel, and Americana, and has had a vast influence on too many trad folk, neo-folk and psych artists to mention. His singular approach to the ephemeral culture and the stubborn individualism of early American musical history led him to create wondrous, contemplative, melancholy and drone-oriented works in a metaphysical hybrid of esoteric sound and spirit. While there are many practitioners of the solo guitar craft, there are none with the crazy wisdom, guts and breadth of knowledge that Fahey exhibited in his lifetime. Incredible!
Local DJ / turntablist / sonic collagist / audio alchemist DJ Female Convict Scorpion (aka Josh Pollock of aQ beloved local psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs) returns with another twisted slab of mutant fuzz funk, outsider psychedelia, tripped out cosmic prog, and whatever else he has in his record bag, but as always employed in such a way that the original track blur into one twisted single sonic miasma, from which Pollock pulls some seriously twisted musical madness. This time, the framework is Bill Cosby's iconic Talks To Kids About Drugs record, with DJ Female Convict Scorpion, actually showing the kids what being on drugs sounds like, and even to those of us here who don't partake, it sounds pretty goddamn god. Warped and wild, a super psychedelic dance party that sounds a bit like a more lo-fi Andy Votel, with much of this sounding like it could be some obscure Finders Keepers mix/comp. The opener begins with Cosby explaining the purpose of the record, to talk to kids about drugs, and then DJFCS takes over, with a blast of grinding distorted psychedelic skree, bellowed slowed down monster vox, wild tangles of psych guitar freakout, before settling into a serious groove, wreathed in sci-fi FX squiggles, and woozy sonic swells, a swirl of Jeck-like turntable manipulations, some funky wah guitar, deep ominous drones, fluttering flutes, fragments of sixties pop songs, vocal harmonies surfacing then fading away, seriously trippy for sure.
And the rest of the record follows suit, with each track incorporating the original, whether as an intro, or slowing it down, so those wise words of wisdom, become a scary demonic invocation, and what follows, is all over the map, one track slips into a sprawl of record crackle and distant shimmer, over which is laid some seventies acid folk vocals, hand claps, and strange alien sound effects, the result is a stunning stretch of alien seventies freak folk (listen close and you'll even hear the Star Trek warning klaxon!), another starts off slow and contemplative, before exploding into some seriously heavy psych rock crunch, made even more freaky when the track begins to skip and locks into a woozy loop, over which DJFCS adds all sorts of warped sound effects, bleating trumpets, the looped bassline transformed into a throbbing droned out thrum, and yet another dissolves into a cloud of swirling druggy murk, before an old spiritual surfaces through the swirl, again the juxtaposition so deftly engineered, that the resulting combination is strangely moving and haunting.
And there's so so much more. Like all DJ Female Convict Scorpion mixes, there's much to discover, sonic subtleties that only surface on repeated listens, and even music nerds like us find ourselves constantly trumped by the sources, crazy obscure, we're barely able to pick out any of them, which has a lot to do of course with DJFCS's mastery of weaving all of these disparate sounds and sonic fragments into one, dizzying, seriously psychedelic whole!
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We always look forward to this time of year - it's the holiday season, of course, but also it's when Christian Virant and Zhang Jian (the artistic duo known as FM3) unveil their newest Buddha Machines! And even though Christmas is not remotely a Buddhist holiday, these popular little gadgets ARE just about the best stocking stuffers ever, for all the music/sound nerds you know (after you get one for yourself, of course). If you're unfamiliar with what a Buddha Machine is, well, you should take a gander at our previous reviews of FM3's other releases in the series, but basically, it's a rectangular plastic gizmo, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a deck of cards, or an original iPod, that plays a pre-recorded set of sound loops (composed by the FM3 duo) that reside on a chip somewhere inside, through its own speaker, or out via a jack to your stereo or headphones. You can toggle between loops, and on recent Buddha Machine models like this one, also speed up or slow down the loops by fiddling with a pitch wheel.
The idea being that these looping sounds are all dreamily meditative and relaxing, or at least quite mesmerically interesting! Forget mp3 players, the Buddha Machine is thee perfect all-in-one, pocket sized music device. And we really like this new one.
This latest iteration of the Buddha Machine concept, Buddha Machine Mark IV, not only features nine brand new loops (which we will describe in great detail in just a moment) but also comes in a selection of 4 vibrant new colors: day-glo orange, pink (they say red but it's more of a neon pink), yellow and green. Very '80s lookin'!
Ok, here's our run-down on each and every loop, based on a brief first listen (hours of listening to 'em may reveal further nuances of course, we expect)...
The first loop here consists of swirling, almost John Carpenter like synth melody, woozy and tranced out, fantastically tense and cinematic. Loop #2 features soft focus chordal swells, lush and oceanic, washed out and hazy, slowly building to near blown out psych bliss drone, before fading right back into a hushed crystalline shimmer! The third loop has keening high end tones, layered into a softly undulating soundscape of dreamlike overtones, and ghostly glimmering drift, for however long you care for it to last. Loop #4 features spare, delicate Brian Eno or Harold Budd like piano, the notes ringing out, drifting through fields of sun dappled shimmer, slowly dissipating into the ether. If you ever toggle past that one, you'll get to loop number 5, in which the aforementioned pointillist piano is draped over a glazed sprawl of bleary background thrum, soundtracky and dreamily dolorous. Loop number six has warm whorls of deep muted buzz and soft rumbles, woven into another set of slow swells, lazy and languorous, building to a glorious prismatic crescendo, before melting down into a dense low end drone. Then, loop the seventh features a haunting woodwind melody, mournful and melancholic, wreathed in a reverby haze of softly effected glimmers, moody and meditative. That's followed by loop number 8, a distorted thumb piano melody, locked into a short cyclical loop (within the loop) repetitive and stuttery, minimal and hypnotically mesmerizing. The ninth and final loop is some kind of minimal distorted dub, its gorgeous throbbing tones doused in echo and delay, building from softly pulsing to blown out, with lots of gauzy space wrapped around the keening fractured melody, lots of crumbling texture too! Wow. All in all, this Buddha Machine 4 sounds like an obvious AQ-fave album, and it's INFINITE.
Like the last few Buddha Machines, again, this one comes with a volume knob, a pitch knob (to alter the pitch of the sounds), a mini output jack (to plug into an amp or your stereo, or for headphones), and a little red power light, but this time, as mentioned, they come in eye popping NEON colors, green, pink, yellow and orange. Each box comes wrapped in a swank, embossed, textured black paper O-card, with liner notes, etc. Requires two AA batteries, which are NOT included, sorry.
We dug the most recent Food Pyramid record, Mango Sunrise, a fantastic collection of psych kraut synth wave weirdness that we couldn't stop listening to. So we were super excited for this, a collaboration with the oddly monikered Roy Orb D.MT., not sure who, or what that is, but he/they make a good match for Food Pyramid, this collaboration even more blissed out and ethereal than the FP record proper. The opener sounds like a warped, lysergic reinterpretation of Vangelis' Chariots Of Fire, with swirling, soaring washed out ethereal melodies, that distinctive 'ch-ch-ch-ch' dubbed out drum skitter, the whole thing laced with eighties style drum fills, squiggly melodies, and crunchy squelchy synth swirls. The follow up is another sprawl of soft shimmery synth swirl, but here wedded to a programmed beat, which grows more and more propulsive as the track progresses, eventually the track transforming completely into an awesomely cheesy chunk of eighties VHS chase scene / credit sequence synthscapery, replete with shredding guitar leads, and pulsing Carpenter like synths.
The rest of the record sonically splits the difference, from the electro pop via psychedelic hypno-rock of "Summit Expedition", to the buzzy, noisy, dubby kosmische skitter of "Sandstorm", to the prismatic planetarium, synth bliss out of "Passage Rites", to the low slung electro-funk pop synth swirl of closer "Corealis".
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Godspeed are one of those rare bands who enjoy a slavish dedication from their fans, a nearly unrivaled level of hero worship style extreme fandom, the sort of thing enjoyed by very few others (Neurosis? Neutral Milk Hotel?), with fans treating GYBE like a post rock Grateful Dead or an alternative underground Phish, following them from show to show, state to state, hoarding live recordings and patiently awaiting the second coming. And by second coming, we of course mean the first Godspeed record in a decade! And ever since word leaked, that there was in fact a new record on the horizon, and especially as soon as the band started playing shows, and playing the new material, we've been barraged with requests for the new record, questions about the release date, months and months before it was actually released (heck, probably before it was even recorded). But here we are, and the new Godspeed is in fact among us, and we are pleased to say, it's definitely pretty goddamn great. We had actually cooled a bit on Godspeed, having LOVED their debut, and Slow Riot almost as much. But both Lift Your Skinny Fists and Yanqui didn't quite do it for us the way those first two did. This one though, is a whole 'nother story.
The record is split into two twenty minute tracks, and two 6 minute interludes, the two proper tracks are exactly what you'd expect, and want, from a new Godspeed record, droned out psychedelia, layered tones and soft swirls of melody, the opener all brooding slow build mesmer that over the course of the few minutes builds in lush billows of sound, before the drums kick in, and the song gains momentum, sort of Hawkwindy at first, before exploding into what sounds to these ears like full on psychedelic space rock, as in Heads, White Hills, and the like, driving, distorted, spiraling leads, swirling effects, propulsive almost krautrock like drumming, but it is Godspeed, so there are plenty of Eastern melodies, strange textures, lush layers, and after a bout of FX drenched wig out, the song gradually settles down into a slow fade outro, one that is pocked with bursts of psychedelic freakout and shard of abstract heaviness, looped and cyclical and gorgeously majestic, the final two minutes, near symphonic and utterly breathtaking.
The second proper track is much more subdued, the strings taking up much of the melodies, tinkling chimes over spidery guitars, and simple spare drumming, the sound dynamic and dramatic, but never quite exploding into full on freakout, instead just building and releasing tension, the way only Godspeed can. There is a bout near the end, where they again dabble in some psychedelic space rock, but it's Godspeed style, and like the first track it leads to another final few minutes that explode dramatically and tug on heartstrings, creating another majestic finale.
The shorter tracks are more abstract, droned out and minimal, textural and atmospheric, definitely gorgeous in their own right, the first, acting as a brief interlude between the two slabs of post rock bombast, the second, a haunting outro, a winding down, a fading out, after the sonic catharsis that is Allelujah!
FYI, the vinyl version of this is currently MIA, being repressed, so we'll have to list it another time, soon we hope...
HERE ARE THE VERY FINAL COPIES OF THIS VERY LOVELY PICTURE DISC!!!
Yup, we do love picture discs. They may not sound the best, but they look so amazing. Especially with the right images embedded in that there vinyl. We all definitely have a little treasure trove of picture discs that we hang on to just because they're so goddamn beautiful. It's just a bonus when the music is good too. Especially when the music actually benefits from the limitations of the picture disc format.
The latest release from our very own Jim Haynes is the inaugural release in Elevator Bath's picture disc series and they couldn't have chosen better. For those of you who have never seen Haynes' artwork, he rusts things (as he always so reductively describes his process), but the truth is he coaxes impossible textures and patterns from chemicals and metals, often letting nature determine much of a pieces final look. And they are simple amazing, deep oranges and browns, streaks and smears, strange shapes where metal has rested on other metal, drips and layers where the chemicals have pooled or allowed to shift, inconsistencies in the metal revealed after having some of it's surface eaten away. The process is almost as amazing as the outcome, but needless to say, Jim's pieces are total industrial-wasteland-decay eye candy.
The two images chosen for this picture disc are no exception. And knowing that some of Haynes' music was also created utilizing the process of rusting, it's nice to think that the sounds within are in fact produced from chemical and metal interacting, the picture disc the literal visual analogue to the resultant sounds on the recording. But the sounds here are way too lush and varied to be produced so simply, so the images are left to spin, only somewhat removed from the sounds to which they are linked.
Eraldus / Eravaldus is probably Haynes' most varied and lush recording to date, whether on his own or with sound artist Loren Chasse in Coelacanth. The chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, underpin what sounds like an airplane passing overhead, but the sound remains, too static to be an airplane, soon revealing itself to be manufactured, gradually melodies take shape, bits of glitch and little shards of electronic interference surface, tiny little sonic events pepper the slow shifting rumble. But those little sonic events eventually blossom into thick streaks of high end, which not soon after transform into strange scraping and whirrings. The rest of the record drifts from mysterious soundworld to mysterious soundworld, dark dronescapes rife with clicks and hiss and grit, like a recording of some swamp late at night, gritty landscapes of reverbed percussion, blurred into droney smudges, smeared static becomes long expanses of slow shifting sound, that slips effortlessly from corrosive to shimmery and back again. Quite nice!
LIMITED TO ONLY 260 COPIES!
Jacob's Ladder, the third full length from French black metal horde Hell Militia, continues pretty much right from where 2010's Last Station On The Road To Death left off, another dizzying concoction of creeped out ambience, dense gnarled black buzz, and lumbering doominess, a sound not that far removed from their countrymen Deathspell Omega, but Hell Militia seem more rooted in classic metal, their sound equal parts classic Scandinavian blackness, modern French BM, and some bastardized strain of blackened death metal. The tracks this time around are even more dynamic, lots of stop starts, plenty of long ambient stretches, laced with creepy samples, the songs slipping easily from blurry buzz, to doomic death march creep, even mixing in some Khold style midtempo groove. And like with past HM records, there's lots going on beyond the usual BM tropes. Cool bits of droned out almost psychedelia, thick swirls of industrial churn, murky folk flecked drift, even a haunting bit of crackly twenties style radio broadcast found sound tucked away at the end of the epic 9+ minute midtempo closer. Killer stuff as always. Most definitely for fans of DSO, Funeral Mist, Katharsis, Marduk, Antaeus...
We've been trying to get his new Holy Other record for ages, and while the vinyl version remains tantalizingly out of reach, we did manage to get the cd in, and for you cd folks, grab one asap, cuz it was well worth the wait, another gorgeously warped and woozy collection of nocturnal slo-soul post-witch house groovery, but with some bigger beats, the sound still druggy and drowsy, but with some seriously extra heft, that doesn't detract from that nocturnal / somnambulant vibe AT ALL. Shit this record would be worth it for the first track alone, with a garbled, crunchy, distorted intro, a throbbing pulse, swirling disembodied processed vocal fragments, the momentum building quick, to a loping laid back groove, laced with blooping, bleeping melodies, some handclaps, all sorts of buzzing clanging percussion, sort of muted and muffled, and then when the big beat drops, it's epic, somehow totally bangin'/boomin', but still gorgeously murky and lysergic.
The rest of the record takes a sound that could very well be a straight continuation of With U, all Burial style slo-mo soul, with sped up vocal fragments, and muted muddy barely there beats, and twists it all up, making it even more fucked up and experimental in places, while in others going full on commercial, while somehow managing to stay plenty fractured and fucked up. Check out "Inpouring", which sounds like a straight up radio pop soul ballad, but chopped up, jumbled up, and reassembled as some sort of avant dub soul, turning it into precisely the sort of stuff we WISH was all over the radio. In fact, much of this new Holy Other record, sounds like H.O.'s misguided stab at commercial radio, taking just some of those commercial elements, and then weaving them into his way-too-tweaked-for-the-radio sound. And the end result is some of the deepest, darkest 'soul' music we've heard. The sound shifts constantly from swirling Pop Ambience, to stuttering almost dubstep, to murky skittery drift, to -almost- straight up pop, the record super vocal heavy, but in a way that doesn't at all alienate the diva vocal averse around here, in fact, if anything, we're digging this even more that With U, which we LOVED. The tracks much more lush and fully realized, as much about song as sound, it's like these twisted murky witch housey soul jams were written specifically to be pop hits, but then Holy Other just couldn't help himself, and sliced and diced and fucked with the sounds until what once might have had some commercial potential, ended up this twisted slab of dreamy electronic outsider dub-soul weirdness.
Here's one of those beautiful drone albums that should resonate with anyone keen on something to follow Stars Of The Lid, The Caretaker, or Basinski. The Ingenting Kollektiva remains something of a mystery both to us and, so it seems, to the rest of the world. Some information about their ideas are available (thanks to the impressionistic "art of memory" blog run by the Kollectiva's M. Swiezynski), but much remains purposefully arcane, which suits their smoke and mirror approach to sound design. The Kollectiva's first album seemed an homage to Ingmar Bergman's definition of nothingness, in spanning the existential gap between the mundane and the eternal void. It also channelled a zeitgeist that threaded together various pieces of music and film from 1969, but the results of that project formed an ethereal set of dronemuzik that found a particular voice that transcended the cultural references.
The ghostly mood and nocturnal spell of their first album continues here on Lost Beyond Telling, tracking further back in time with references to Messiaen and Baudelaire. And again, the Kollecktiva finds itself making a slow, almost liturgical album of minimalist serenades through heavy processed instruments (guitar, cello, psaltry, etc.), field recordings, and manipulated pieces of crusty vinyl. A beautiful night sea music opens the album with pools of deep drones that gradually fracture into Basinski-like looping patterns phased through a refined use tremolo and delay. Comparatively scabrous textures churn through spiralling bird-song-like twitter on "The Dark Backward Abysm Of Time" all leading up to the somber, twenty-three minute conclusion of damp field recordings and backmasked bells dragging through a darkened loveliness of oceanic driftscaping getting close to a Salt Marie Celeste vibe. So nice!
The dvd portion of the program features two distinct visual aesthetics from within the Kollektiva. The first four short films come by way of Tarrl Lightowler, who operates with an intense stroboscopic flickering of ever magnifying, ever vibrant images. Thickets of wire, bright petals, chunks of ice, and piles of leaves are just a scant number of the images that Lightowler projects in his videos, all siphoning out of a violent vortex of pulsing light. For all of its natural source materials, his videos are quite violent, countering the hypnotic wash of the sound, much of which originates from the material on the cd. Brilliant stuff for sure, but please watch carefully, as retinal fatigue comes on very quickly with these films. The two latter films are from Matthew Swiezynski, whose videos are far murkier with whisps of fire and shadows of the landscape dominating the darkened field of vision. On both of his films, the sounds are wholly unique based on creepy sounding loops that could have been culled from Tibetan horns and harmonium.
Home Is The Sun is the debut from guitar and drums duo Invisible Things, which is made up of Mark Shippy, he of late great weirdo noise rockers U.S. Maple, and Jim Sykes of Parts & Labor. On the surface, this might initially seem like a cool chunk of slightly angular, sort of experimental avant rock, which it most definitely is, but it's also a lot more than that. While the first few minutes to explode right out of the gate in proper rock song form, complete with vocals and everything, sounding a bit like Polvo actually, or yeah, U.S. Maple, but it doesn't take long for that song to fracture into its actual form, a loose billowing cloud of abstract textured guitar noise, which is beautiful and blissed out, and we would have been happy if that's stretched out to fill up the whole record, but that's really only part of what's going on here.
Apparently, the drumming is based on Sri Lankan percussion, and is applied to a modern rock drum kit, the result is a wild and loose, polyrhythmic sprawl of free percussion freakout, flitting from rhythmic churn, to wild frenzied chaos, to abstract propulsive pummel, the guitars thus left to work their way around Sykes' constantly mutating rhythms. And Shippy is more than up to the task, his guitar unfurling frantic gouts of wildly tangled psychedelic freakouts one second, lush textural shimmer the next, the two surprisingly synchronized, what could have been a mess of free rock wankery, somehow coalesces into proper songs, albeit wildly fractured and dizzingly abstract and obtuse songs, but they're eminently listenable, the vocals drifting in and out, hazy and settled way down in the mix, the sound shifting constantly, but all of the tracks woven into one epic song suite, somehow sounding not at all improvised, it's obvious that much of this WAS, but somehow these two lock tight from the very first few minutes, and react to each other, the results super dynamic, rife with gorgeous sonic tension, and some surprising melodies. The overall somehow both loose and tight at the same time, the two players able to each drift off into the ether and let loose with dense clouds of sound, but somehow never losing sight of the other, and when everything does settle down into something more traditionally 'rock' sounding, it's pretty exhilarating, but it's not long before the sound splinters, and things warp and mutate once again. But the magic here is just that, the constant shifts, the wild tangles, the far out exploration, somehow, those seemingly free and abstract elements are part of a way bigger picture that isn't always visible, but IS always felt. Imagine the weirdest, loosest, free-est, avant indie noise rock record ever, one that includes all the stuff you love about indie/noise rock, all the tropes, all the sonic signifiers, but then ignores them completely, or more accurately, reimagines them, and somehow recontextualizes them into something at once entirely new, but also eminently beholden to what came before. A new favorite for sure!
Now this is a holiday record we can get behind. Originally released a couple years back, now reissued with a bonus remix, Justin Broadrick, of Godflesh, Ice, Techno Animal, JK Flesh, Final, Pale Sketcher, etc., tries his hand at writing a modern metalgaze Christmas carol, and pretty much pulls it off. Although the only real Christmas-y bits, are the lyrics, some chiming holiday bells, and the song's sort of wistful lullaby like vibe - otherwise, it's a primo slice of blissed out psychedelic shoegaze post metal chug and shimmer, Jesu style, with swoonsome swirling verses, all hushed vox buried beneath whorls of woozy crystalline thrum, and churning chugging downtuned choruses, laced with strange squiggly melodies and distant tangled melodic filigree, much of "Christmas" plays out like a slowed down, super distorted M83, which seems to a reasonable shorthand description of Jesu's sound in general. The song balances heartfelt melodic dreaminess, specifically the Christmas-y break midsong where the aforementioned bells toll over lush acoustic guitars, and the hazy dreamy vox, with some serious metallic heft, the results perhaps not appropriate for your family holiday get together, but perfect for that heavy holiday mixtape.
Broadrick tacks on three remixes, each by one of his other projects/alter egos. Up first is the new track, credited to JK Flesh, which hadn't really happened when this was first released, but in that guise, Broadrick, pushes the sound back a bit toward his bleak industrial roots, transforming the blissful holiday shimmer into a brooding expanse of grim blackened ambience, anchored to a plodding death march beat, which is soon augmented by some murky jungle breakbeats, the tolling bell drifting on long stretches of droned out minor key shimmer, the vocals too reimagined, and transformed into a strange alien chant, a serious slab of not very Christmas-y electro-industrial blackened jungle grimnity. The Pale Sketcher version heads for the exact opposite of the sonic spectrum, stripping the original down into a hazy swirl of barely there beats, echo drenched vox, lots of softly billowing synths, everything gauzy and sun dappled and so dreamily washed out. And finally, Broadrick slips back into his Final persona, originally more of a solo guitar project, and takes the original version of "Christmas" and Caretaker-izes it, blurring the sounds into ghostlike ambience, and long softly undulating tones, a smeared sprawl of drifting melodic fragments, of soft focus sonic shards, the track building to a sort of crescendo, a softly roiling, dreamily psychedelic climax, before settling right back down into something even more muted and minimal, a bleary stretch of shadowy, soft around the edges chordal shimmer.
SUPER LIMITED!! Once we run out, odds are we won't be able to get more.
Yes, that is faux-fur sprouting from this cd by Juppala Kaapio! As we mentioned before, this duo has a Finnish name and shares a Finnish freak-folk ritualism, but neither participant is Finnish. They are in fact the husband / wife pairing of Carole and Hitoshi Kojo, who bring extended technique vocals, bleary instrumentation from smoke & mirror, and lots of liquid nirvana electronic processing to the source material. Where their earlier works had 'jammed nature' along the Jewelled Antler / RV Paintings / Kemiallyset Ystavat axis with a wistful crunchiness, Rewound Groves marries the golden-summer glow of high-latitude pagan liturgy and the rapturous blur of Andrew Chalk's contributions to Organum or even some of the Taj Mahal Travellers broadcasts to nowhere. The vocals from both Hitoshi and Carole wax and wane on the opening number "Sewing Through Twigs" amongst a richly patterned undulation of glistening drones from what might be bells, might be flutes, might be guitars, might be the sparkle of twilight stars. Watery textures and backmasked tape bridges these sounds with the :zoviet*france: like haze of "Mycophiles And Pebbles" with spectral loops and holy mesmerism sprawled throughout the soft-focus layering of sound. Probably the best thing that Juppala Kaapio has released to date; and given the artwork this is justifiably limited to 123 copies. Brilliant.
It's been a while since we've heard from Kid 606, we've long been fans of his wild and warped, super fucked up, gnarled, glitched out electronic pummel, every record a dizzying, ADD, short attention span, sonic onslaught, but apparently things in the Kid's life have been rough recently, and this record is a dark, surprisingly restrained chunk of meditative and melancholy minimal synth heavy reflection. Gone are the sliced and diced, chopped and screwed, blown out beat-blasted freakouts, and in their places some seriously droned out mesmer. Opener "Godspeed You African American Emperor" (at least he hasn't lost his knack for irreverent song titles), is all blurred synth shimmer, and muted skeletal skitter, wreathed in dark swirls of ethereal thrum, and soft focus cosmic FX, a darkly dreamy, cinematic dreamscape, that sounds a bit like a remixed Tim Hecker. "Gimme Summer" takes the same sort of gauzy sonics, stirs in some swirling synth melodies, and adds another stripped down beat. "New Boss Same As Old Boss", cranks up the volume, adding some grit and gristle, but the sound remains blurry and bleary, and woozily melancholy, the beat all but buried in the mix, the vibe almost like a more abstract M83, sort of shoegazey retro electro-pop, but smeared into something much more fuzzed out and druggy.
We sort of kept waiting for the record to explode into a burst of tangled rhythms, or a grinding squall of blast beats, or some wild junglized drill & bass, but instead, the record remains pretty sedate throughout, slipping into some serious, hushed ethereal ambience ("Cardamom's Gone Soft"), delving into dreamy dubby outer space drifts (I'm Sick But I Ain't Dead"), blossoming into swoonsome electro gaze club jams ("Night Club Vs. Book Club"), and slipping into smears of soft swells and percolating dreampop melodies ("Big Black Ketamine Jesus"). There are moments, where it seems like the sound is about to explode, but it's more about a delicate balance of tension and release, the whole record fantastically mellow and moody, and easily the darkest dreamiest thing we've heard from the Kid yet.
More breathtaking cosmic music from the Japanese artist Hitoshi Kojo, whose densely layered constructions once found company with the brutal, malcontent sounds of Maurizio Bianchi. Where that collaboration was suitably apocalyptic and bleak, this solo album (made just six year later) is remarkably light and airy. Such a move could easily be anticipated through the waking dreamscape of the stratospheric Ananta 2cd under his moniker Spiracle as well as the freak-folk clatter of his ensemble Juppala Kaapio. Like all of Kojo's work, High Tide Mirror holds to a single vision, pulling facets and variations from his stratified sounds. So the fundamental drones and tactile happenings all still occupy a strong presence in his compositional agenda, but the sources for all of his sounds are far more bright. So when he gets a little more feral with a droning set for chord organ and Jew's harp on "Seminal Weavers", he intertwines the holy minimalist drive for overtones and rich harmonics with rapturous psychedelic romps akin to Kojo frolicking through the woods with bacchanalian glee. Elsewhere, you'll find plenty of allusions to Terry Riley trills on analogue electronics and the swirling vocal intonations of Pandit Pran Nath amidst Kojo's slippery phasing electronics and liquid shimmer. He saves his best work for last with the sunrise of a title track that gasps with blurry tones stretched from a shakuhachi and layered on ever blossoming ambient radiance. Lovely hand packaging and limited to 200 copies!
Record number two from this French fuzz dream pop duo, not sure how we missed the first one, but we're digging this one a lot! The music a heady concoction equal parts modern garage rock and classic French pop, swirling synths wrapped around ukulele (!), simple propulsive almost krautrock drumming, new wave basslines, the sound crystalline and dreamily druggy, the vocals washed out and woozy. Some of the tracks sound a bit like like Moon Duo, that sort of stripped down kraut-psych, while others sound like old French Ye Ye music channeled through the woozy drugginess of Spacemen 3, melding sultry French spoken word, to wheezing psychedelic organ and those krautrocky grooves. The ukulele is possibly the strangest part of the equations, adding a truly distinct and unique sound to the proceedings, even when the band unfurls a thick swirling blast of buzzing guitars, it's underpinned by a lilting melody played on the ukulele. The slower tracks here play like some alternate universe sixties girl group, all fuzzy and shimmery and dreamy, but the bulk of the tracks are droned out organ / ukulele / fuzz guitar zoner-psych groovers, that we can't seem to get enough of.
Killer two way doom split, the A side, from witchy Idaho heavies Uzala and the B side from Texan sludgelords Mala Suerte. Uzala are another band you can add to the current crop of female fronted doom outfits, fans of Loon, and Royal Thunder and Jex Thoth and all the rest will most definitely dig these guys and gal, the riffs a little bit Sabbathy, the sound dirgey and sludgey, vocalist Darcy's got a wicked croon, the track heavy and a little bit psychedelic, definitely has us wanting to hear more.
The flipside finds Mala Suerte pushing their doom into a more psychedelic realm, opening with swirling psych leads over some laid back slo-mo doom. But it's the vocals where things get really weird, almost folky, delivered in a gruff, sing songy monotone, sort of OM style, but more like some twisted doom metal sea shanty. Weird, but for sure kinda cool.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Geez, Rachel Evans is really developing into quite the electronic songstress. Over the past four years or so, her Motion Sickness Of Time Travel has grown from her exploratory bedroom synth-drones into impressionistically sparkling electronica born from the retro-futurism of Harmonia and Delia Derbyshire, with tinges of deconstructed electro, through the druggy, rounded basslines that gird a couple of her tracks on this new cassette on Old Frontiers. "Cut Away" sprinkles bright glissandos of kosmische synths on top of those strange basslines with Evans' wordless voice drifting through the mix in piles of reverb. "Rising" tonebends sad, little melodies amidst a burbling, step-sequencing, arpeggiated fizzings, and star-burst electric blossomings. "In Our Dreams" cycles in a satellite orbit with terse, deep-space bleeps echoing into a shimmering reflection pool of blue-green ambient wash, whose driftscape is wrapped in Evans dubbed-out / washed-out breathy vocalizations. So nice. Twenty-one minutes on this cassette, in a pressing of 100 copies.
The long overdue reissue of the Rifts anthology, which was originally released on cd by No Fun in 2009 as a collection of the first three vinyl releases from Oneohtrix Point Never (Betrayed In The Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind), and now also sports a half dozen or so tracks from OPN's constant stream of cassette and cd-r releases, many of which never made their way to aQuarius. That was a double CD, which now gets expanded to FIVE pieces of vinyl, with even MORE unreleased material!
Here's a bit of a rehash of what we've said about those earlier records (and which would apply to the bonus material as well): Oneohtrix Point Never is a curious resuscitation of progressive electronics by Daniel Lopatin who so far has not strayed into the dodgy waters of vapid ambient-lite found in so so many New Age records from the late '70s and '80s. His vision is a conscious nostalgic trip into the cosmic drones of Klaus Schulze and the lazer-ping melodies of John Carpenter. The seven tracks from Betrayed In The Octagon ripple with densely layered electronic swoosh and sweep, with more of a sci-fi sound design feel than anything else. It's not entirely ominous in these emanations of analog synths, but a gloominess persists just beneath these tumbling oscillations of electric drone. A few tracks bubble and percolate with clunky, geometric arpeggiations and major chord melodies which have all of the charm of an '80s John Carpenter filmscore, or for that matter a Zombi album of today (although admittedly not as well produced).
Above a solar-powered electric hum, the tracks from Zones Without People interweave poly-synth pulses which insistently push up against each other, collapsing into the electronic sunrise which is the next track of slowly building arpeggiations and sequences situated on top of cybernetically pastoral ambience. When Lopatin gets to the title track of Zones Without People, his laser beam pings have calmed into a sublimely sad offering, easily the best thing that he's produced to date. This isn't to say that the rest of these tracks are duds. Far from it, as a wigged-out squiggling collage splatters into cosmic arpeggiations and stargazing drones to amazing effect.
A set of gaseous ambient chords opens Russian Mind and could have been lifted from an early Boards Of Canada release, although the lack of IDM-rhythms to the Oneohtrix Point Never's electronics steer this work in an entirely different direction. His bright chimes of arpeggio poly-synth tones build asymmetrical waves that are as compelling as they are cheesy. But that's always been the point, to terminally obliterate the lines between a high-brow piece of Terry Riley minimalism and a lowest common denominator of sub-Eno ambient drivel. Here, Lopatin tends to be a bit more stratospheric in nature, with these sublime arcs of vapor trails passing through moonlit nightscapes, all redrawn in neon hyperdelic colors.
Beautifully packaged in a stunning heavy box, with eye popping new artwork, each one hand numbered, and LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!
Drummer Aaron Levin and guitarist Eric Murray, both formerly of tongue-in-cheek (but over-the-top awesome) glam rockers Boyjazz, have banded together as a duo since that band's unfortunate dissolution to create another outlet for their "bow down, we're not worthy" level instrumental talents. Pegataur is the result (the name referring to a Pegasus + Centaur hybrid, a winged man-horse, of course). Their debut cd, Eternal Flight, is quite a treat for anyone who digs rippin', all-instrumental heavy metal. Technical and melodic and riffy - basically, imagine The Fucking Champs as a two-piece. If you like the Champs, you'll like this, maybe that's all we need to say!!
Any of you out there who perhaps found Boyjazz too jokey (you shoulda given them a chance anyway, what an entertaining band they were!), should have less of an issue with this, in fact, Pegataur not only shut up and play but really go off the deep end in terms of seriousness if you delve into their, um, mythology. The packaging, a large circular poster that folds up to hold the cd, inside a plastic sleeve, bears mysterious illustrations of supposed significance within the occult sciences, relating to their own research. We've gotta quote what their press release says about it: "Orbiting around the Pegataur seal are 11 sigils for the tracks and a 12th king sigil to bind and rule the album as a whole. Utilizing techniques employed by such famed Renaissance occultists as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim and Dr. John Dee, each song title and corresponding sigil were generated by custom software (written by guitarist Eric Murray) that correlates the musical structure of each track with the many esoteric traditions in which Pegataur is initiated. It is suggested that the neophyte concentrate on each sigil as the song plays while holding the song title firmly in their mind to further their studies." (Hmm, they don't say how you're supposed to do that whilst headbanging.) So, maybe their joking has just gotten even more nerdy and obscure. Or maybe there's something to all of this. Certainly this duo seriously seem to be channeling an unnatural abundance of heavy metal chops and catchiness through each one of these 11 rockin' songs, as if they've got some direct psychic link to a dimension of metallic wonderment and the devil's music just effortlessly, endlessly flows through the Pegataur boys and their instruments like magic.
Pegataur probably could have scored bagfuls of gold pieces (or weed) from The Sword or High On Fire in exchange for some of the best of these riffs and still had plenty of good ones left over. Likewise, their hella tricky metallic mathrock moments would likely garner applause from folks like Electro Quarterstaff and Girth. We've already compared 'em to the Champs, but you could also try to imagine Zebulon Pike, stripped down to one guitar and forced to condense their usual 20+ minute epics into the 3-minute pop song format.
From the pinch harmonic frenzies and chugging changes of "Lesser Bow Of The Herdsman" and "The Weeping Quiver" to the grinding distorted stoner riffage of "Lord Solomon's Eyes" and "Human Appetite" (among the 11, we could mention 'em all) this kicks ass utterly, with no vocals to get in the way, just tons of guitar shred in an indie Van Halen mode that might make Thee Speaking Canaries jealous. No joke!
People's Temple are another group whose debut record seemed to slip right past us, but record number two from these Michigan sixties style psychedelic garage poppers is definitely pretty great, groovy and swaggery, fuzzy and jangly, their sound definitely transplanted from the past, it's actually not that difficult to imagine this is some lost sixties artifact recently dug up and reissued, the sound stripped down and raw, super jammy, with plenty of spidery leads, some serious blooze jams, a few with harmonica even, lots of echo and reverb, the guitars slipping easily from urgent crunch to shimmery jangle, the vocals a snarly drawl, almost Scott Walker-y at times, but with some cool dreamy two part harmonies, the songs slipping from low slung brood, to soaring baroque pop, to fuzzed out dirge, to soaring FX heavy trip outs, to crunchy stripped down garage rock groovers, a serious grower, the sound instantly digable, but with every play, the songs seem to get catchier and catchier, and it's easier and easier to get lost in the People's Temple's sixties sonic time warp.
Here's the record that was never released on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a second.) This double cd contains all the recordings of Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty great) teenage garage/psych band that got together in Sacramento circa 1964. As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time. Supposedly, also, they were as "heavy as the Stooges". The truth is, that's a bit of a stretch. Some of this *is* at least heavier than, if not the Stooges, the Stones, but they do a lot of lighter, Beatles-y stuff too. They perform a nice cover of the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" in fact. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On the other hand, their song "Love Is A Feeling" sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes! The 28 tracks here actually cover quite a wide spectrum of sounds from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal R&B stomp w/ plenty o' fuzz. This collection mainly consists of 1969 sessions recorded for an LP that never came out 'cause their label was owned by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding and his label folded... But now, decades later, here are those unreleased sessions plus some rare singles tracks recorded under the band's earlier moniker Moss & The Rocks. Maybe a single-disc "best of" would have been more uniformly killer, and cheaper, but we can't really argue with getting to hear it all. The super thick, colorful, photo-filled cd booklet is full of essays written by Mike "Ugly Things" Stax, Clark Faville, and others -- including notes about each and every song!
Definitely something for fans of the Seeds, Stones, Creation, and "Nuggets" stuff in general to check out. Even if they're not quite the "unknown Stooges" we'd hoped for, Public Nuisance are pretty cool.
Hot on the heels of German label Disko B's release of Otherworldly, the first lp in 35 years from the incredible cosmic Afro-jazz-funk ensemble The Pyramids, comes this, a triple cd box set containing all three of The Pyramids original '70s albums - King Of Kings, Lalibela, and Birth/Speed/Merging. All are fantastic! Birth/Speed/Merging is the only one to have previously been released on cd, back in 2006 by Japan's EM Records, who can take credit for turning us on to the music of The Pyramids and their bandleader, Idris Acakamoor - a great guy who turns out to be a neighbor of ours here in San Francisco! We've reviewed each album separately in the past, as the other two, while never on cd, were eventually reissued on vinyl. So, here's what we wrote (a lot!) about each album, in chronological order:
Lalibela from 1973 was the first recording by this previously little known spiritually tribal free jazz unit, The Pyramids. Originally formed in Europe by students from Antioch College, The Pyramids were based in Yellow Springs, Ohio, before moving to Oakland, California around 1975. The Pyramids were led by Irdris on saxophone and his then wife Margo on flute and piccolo, backed by four other musicians using an arsenal of African tribal instruments such as clay and talking drums, Ugandan harp, bailofone, and masenqo.
That presence of ethnic instrumentation makes itself felt right away. The nearly thirty minute title track (comprising a side and a half of the original lp) begins with some raucous Morroccan-style funk rhythm with horns and piccolos swirling over the top before some soft chanting and Ackamoor's sax lay down the key melodic figure. Then everything sets in at once, hectic sax skronk, the percussive rhythms undulating at times claustrophobic and intense filling the space then gradually separating, becoming airier, sparse and placid before laying down a more martial rhythm that once again collides into a cascade of bamboo flutes and chants, and cymbal washes that becomes a serene idyllic pool of intense calm.
The second track,"Indigo" is more lyrical, though it begins with some powerfully heavy drum fills, with lilting flute, melodic sax laying on top of lurching bass rhythm and percussion. The vibe is more majestic and pulsating then "Lalibela", with a lone shaker being the wildcard instrument for a bit as slow dramatic drums build, offset by metallic bowls and noises before the wooly skronk of the horns and woodwinds sets in and all the players ride that manic torrent before finally settling into a more subdued ending of call and response between Margo's flute and Idris's saxophone. It's that intuitive dynamic between the players, how they stay afloat through recurring periods of noise and calm that make listening to The Pyramids such an enjoyable and worthy experience!
Then, released in 1974, came King Of Kings, which opens with "Mogho Naba", featuring some mantra-like chanting over a frenetic groove straight out of something on one of the Ethiopiques comps while the lead flute and saxophone played by husband and wife leaders Idris and Margo Ackamoor duel it out in a sort of ritualized frenzy, the saxophone becoming more smeary and free, ending with the reemergence of different kind of flutes playing around the same tone like a busted calliope, before that riff comes back and takes us out to the next track, "Queen of the Spirits". Leading with a beautiful lilting flute melody that gains energy and dynamics with lots of ethnic percussion. But being about the Queen, this is Margo's track with the sax kept at bay except for some key transition moments, merging into a Brazilian carnival percussive breakdown and ending with beautiful languid flute and Ethiopian harps.
Side Two has the record's shortest and longest tracks. The first one is the 18 minute "Nsorama (The Stars)" that leads with Margo's intoning the word over a piano and a soft percussive riff, sounding like a more tribal version of a Doug Carn or Alice Coltrane track full of brooding majesty as the horns and flutes come in all plaintive and slow that keep this pace for awhile before the flutes let loose over the calm, but the frenzy on this track is minimal, in fact it becomes really minimal in parts with just a sole percussive rhythm taking the space for a few minutes before the key elements slowly reemerge. Definitely, one of their loveliest tracks! The final number, "My Africa" is more call and response mystical chanting over a repetitive piano and bass riff. This is the most vocal-centric track and in its listing of African homelands suggests a settling peace as it fades out. Such a beautiful record!!
Finally, their third album (and the first we heard), 1976's Birth/Speed/Merging is definitely one of the most amazing rediscovered free jazz gems we've ever come across. And it's not just free jazz, all wild swirl and skronk. Instead it's an exotic blend of Don Cherry's Orient, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain, some Art Ensemble Of Chicago, with wild Eastern sounding tribal rhythms, shuffling jazzy post bop, fluttering flutes and skronking horns, chanted vocals, droning buzzing ragas, seventies psychedelic free folk, propulsive krautfunk jams, some totally chaotic free jazz here and there, octopoidal drumming and wild shrieking sax, haunting percussive soundscapes, replete with strange creaks and whistles, and then before you know it transforming before your ears into what sounds like traditional African music with warm muted thumb piano melodies, chanted harmonies, bird calls, and sweetly melodic flute, rollicking bass heavy grooves under wild hand drums and carnivalesquee noisemaking. The final track, the 16 minute long "Black Man And Woman Of The Nile", is a mellow slow burning groove, with a throbbing bass riff, warm rich sax runs, shuffling percussion, the whole thing a laidback, sun drenched, barefoot funkjazz jam, warm and dreamy and hypnotic, with a short break in the middle for a brief skronky freakout, and then straight back into it, eventually drifting off into abstract ambience, softly moaning horns, dreamy melodies and barely there percussive chatter. Awesome!
These three albums, on 3 remastered cds, come in a handsome little box, with a 44 page booklet. And, on one of the discs you'll find a video for your computer, of The Pyramids live on San Francisco's KQED TV, from 1975!
After two amazing tape releases, The Rainbow Body returns with this super limited (just 50 copies!) ep, which again, like Metatron's Cube and Return Under Void before it, unfurls a gorgeously gristly landscape of blown out guitar crunch and blurred kosmische psychedelia, opening with a heavy, heaving sprawl of crumbling distortion, wrapped around glistening melodies, like a Tim Hecker jam cranked way up and run through a bank of dying-battery distortion boxes, simultaneously noisy and chaotic and utterly dreamy, especially when there's a super sudden shift, and all the distortion drops away, leaving a keening stretch of muted melodic mesmer, all low end melody and swirling shimmering hiss. The rest of the ep plays out similarly, balanced deftly between full on noise, and bleary blown our dreamdronedrift, sometimes harnessing wild squalls of blackened psychedelia and crafting them into droned out soundscapes, other times, unfurling hazy washed of muted melody and blurry celestial shimmer, and still other times, conjuring up dense swells of thick chordal thrum, wreathed in soaring swirls of cosmic dream psych blur. So gorgeous. And as we mentioned, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!
This is record number three from these aQ faves, a metallic math rock duo whose sound is pretty much the perfect hybrid of all the heavy stuff we like, a sprawling, dizzying collection of tangled metallic, dirgey instrumental grooves, woozy post rock drift, strange almost operatic epicness, plenty of warped experimentation, lots of texture, and tranced out mesmer, although technically it's not a collection, as this is in fact a single song, spread out over both sides of the record, but as with any 29 minute song, it's essentially, a bunch of different parts, or even different songs woven into one single epic.
The A side starts off all droney and creepy, before the thick buzz bass and skittery drums come in, eventually exploding into a killer sprawl of almost stonery riffage, psychedelic and groovy, heavy as hell, we can almost picture wailing vocals over the top, but these guys are mostly instrumental, so instead, they continue to rock out sans vox, the vibe more trancey than rocking. As the song unwinds, things get way more mathy and complex, super dynamic, at times sounding like some impossible hybrid of Neurosis and the Fucking Champs, which is obviously not at all a bad thing. The last part of the A side is all loping post rock heaviness, super hypnotic and cyclical, before the guitars drop out completely, and the last 90 seconds are just drums.
The flipide starts off right where the A side ended, it is the same song after all, the solo drum fills, tribal and spaced out, building a framework of keening feedback, some piano (!), ominous and brooding, tinkling chimes, and then POW, the song explodes into some seriously crushing riffage, utterly crushing and eminently headbangable. The sound gets mathier, and then the vocals come in for the first time more sort of spoken word at first, and then a second vocal, which sounds like a processed female vox, and gives the sound a seriously psychedelic, almost dream poppy vibe, at least briefly, soon the song erupts into another stretch of chugging heaviness, and eventually explodes into a final sprawl of galloping double kick driven, riffy metal crush. Fucking awesome. No idea why these guys aren't more popular. Maybe third times the charm.
This comes with a download code too. But we thought we should mention, it's a 32 CHARACTER DOWNLOAD CODE!!!! Took us three tries to get it entered right, good grief! Pressed on lovely pale blue vinyl, with a full color printed cardstock insert.
What can we say that the title doesn't already tell you. Yes, this is Pole (aka Stefan Betke) remixing three tracks from Roll The Dice's last record, In Dust. Pushing the Swedish duo's carefully crafted kosmiche epics into ghost in the alien dub machine techtonics. From the darkly pretty and mysterious "Calling Dub Workers" to the heavy intense dub of "Echo Hands" and finally the Middle Eastern skittering excursion of "The Skull is Built Into The Version", this is a match made in heaven!
We're pretty into twisted psychedelic music. The more twisted the better. And that mutant strain of weirdo psychedelia that is CHRISTIAN psych, somehow that seems even weirder and more ridiculous. Even though in some strange way, both Christians and psychedelic freaks were each trying to attain enlightenment, albeit by very different means. Which makes it all the more glorious, to hear the squares try to co-opt the super hip, in hopes of luring some of the lost toward the light. It rarely worked, and in most cases had the exact opposite effect, portraying the co-optors as painfully out of touch, and even more impossibly square. However, Brother John Rydgren might just be the exception. This Lutheran pastor very nearly pulled it off, due in no small part to his amazing voice, equal parts Ken Nordine and Orson Welles, his radio show a twisted dizzyingly psychedelic meditation on love and sex, war and death, set to some seriously fuzzed our psych rock. This double cd collects his three late sixties lps, which were originally only distributed to radio stations and churches (the radio stations instructed to burn them after broadcast, hence their rarity), and it's some of the craziest, coolest stuff you'll ever hear. Every once in a while, when we're playing this in the store, and people are freaking out, laughing, not believing what they're hearing, we sometimes jokingly ask if folks are ready to convert, but listening to this now, it's actually not that far fetched to imagine that back in the day, Rydgren could have really pulled it off, making Christianity cool and convincing druggies and hippies that somehow, that was the more righteously psychedelic path. Really, all it takes is a listen to the opening track, "Music To Watch Girls By", with its fuzz guitar crunch, and exotica vibe, all tropical horns, and groovy rhythms, Brother John intoning over the top, sounding way too lascivious as he describes one girl from head to toe, her lips, hair, her body, her lipstick, hearing that impossibly deep voice say things like: "She likes to be watched", "It's creamy", "Looks like she's ready for a happening", obviously there's a punchline, but it's a pretty uncomfortable wait, until he finally explains, that God created people, girls included, "Quite a design". "God made it", he explains, so you can think about it next time you're out watching girls, he doesn't want to take the fun out of it, it just makes girl watching... mean more! Holy shit, how cool is this Brother, it's okay to watch girls, just know that those gorgeous honeys were created by the man upstairs. And it doesn't get any less weird.
"Personality Doll Of The Week" is a weird anti-war sketch, where a nerdy scientist pulls the string on the back on the Personality Doll Of The Week, and she continues to say the same thing over and over, no matter what question he asks "I don't like war, I think everybody should love everybody else". Then there's "Mercy Mercy Mercy", which lays down a bluesy gospel groove, with Brother John, prosthelytizing over the top. Some seriously sweet sermonizing, and that voice, that VOICE!! Keep digging, up next is the "Hippie Version Of The 23rd Psalm", where Brother John rewrites that iconic psalm in hippie speak, with lots of baby's, and cool's, and dig's, and man's, all over a wild organ driven psych rock freak out. But it's the next track, "Rinky Dink", that sealed the deal, with Brother John's stentorian lyric reading, over another groovy fuzzy psychedelic jam, and thee most ridiculous chorus, Brother John delivering this line in a deep deadpan: "One, two, three, four, rinky dink". Groovy and ridiculous, and sorta crazy catchy too!
It stays relentlessly far out, warped and psychedelic, the music pretty great, choirs, sitars, fuzzed out surf guitar, tribal drumming, streaks of feedback, even some cool collaged experimental soundscapes, replete with samples of popular songs and fragments of Christmas carols, there's "To Sir With Love", a stately bit of baroque pop, over which various women describe love, and how to treat their man, and how their man should treat them, there's "The Happening", where Brother John interviews various people: Smokey Robinson, both Peaches and Herb from Peaches And Herb, one of the guys from the Association, one of the guys from Paul Revere And The Raiders, and bunch of others about God, and their faith, and how drugs are not the way to attain enlightenment, all peppered with Brother John again explaining: "They're young, they think, and some of them live what they think", there's the sultry sitar driven "Dark Side Of The Flower", with Brother John again sounding disturbingly sensual, there's a "Christmas Montage", that mixes Christmas carols, with horrible samples of news reports about people dying from drunk driving, rats overrunning neighborhoods, crying babies, so bizarre!
The whole second half of the first disc finishes with 20 one minute tracks called "They Say", each one a different vignette, delivered over some groovy psychedelia, each one finishing off with Brother John delivering the solution, beginning with the words "They say�" And again, some of them are disturbingly 'sexy', all about what men want, want couples need, etc., and of course, Brother John explains what 'they say' and ties it all back to God. Wow.
The second disc starts off with the "Cantata Of New Life", a sprawling 26 minute epic, rife with choirs, and orchestras, call and response vocals, very dramatic and cinematic, and of course the whole thing's peppered with plenty of fuzzy psych, and Brother John's deep sonorous voice, reminding us a bit of another recent Record Of The Week, William Sheller's Lux Aeterna. But then we get back into yet another collection of his radio broadcasts, and if it's possible, things get even creepier, Brother John in conversation with some mysterious woman, about dying young in car crashes, going AWOL, there's a track about computers, which is goofy and crazy, there's one about how God made rhythm, and more more more. Finally, the two part "This Is Silhouette", a weird collaged soundscape of fuzzed out psych, Brother John telling us how it is, and interviews with young people talking about God and drugs, and one final psychedelic sermon from Brother John!
Seriously incredible stuff, warped and wonderful, disturbing and inspiring in equal measure, fans of sixties spoken word, Christian psych, outsider music of all stripes, weirdo radio broadcasts, and other Omni releases, this one just might take the psychedelic Christian cake!
Packaged in a swank full color six panel digipak, with a huge booklet, with rare photos and extensive liner notes.
The latest transmission from this alien psychedelic black metal duo, and when we first got this in, we were convinced we had already reviewed this before. And then realized that it was in fact, a vinyl reissue of the long out of print cassette that was originally released on Handmade Birds as a companion to Servile Sect's Trvth record, but it was something else, something more, and then it hit us, the new cover art was what was so similar, and then we realized, it's actually the EXACT same painting as the cover of the Lumerians' Transmallinia record. Doh! What can you do? It's obvious why both bands picked it, cuz it's a seriously bad ass painting by famous outsider artist Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, all cosmic and swirled greens and yellows, and in some weird way, it suits both bands. In the case of Servile Sect, it definitely taps into their weird alien vibe, and their subtle psychedelic undertones, both of which are present throughout Surrender. Here's what we had to say about the cassette version when we first reviewed it earlier this year:
Released as a companion to the group's recent Trvth record, Svrrender acts perfectly as an extension of Trvth, building on the band's sprawling blackened psychedelia and scorched blackbuzz drones. The record opens with sheets of thick buzzing synths, and swirling electronics, all over strange murky pulses, and laced with strange disembodied voices, before launching into a full bore blast of traditional sounding black metal fury, huge thick squalls of barbed riffage, programmed beats blasting wildly through the murk, the vocals a sick, raspy demonic croak, a blur of chaotic blackness, that manages to meld traditional BM tropes to something much more mysterious and experimental, the group infusing the seemingly traditional sound with all manner of unlikely texture and subtle warped FX. Definitely grim enough for unadventurous metalheads, but as this is Servile Sect, the sound soon shifts to something much more spacey and droned out, total psychedelic cosmic drift, thick undulating swells of crumbling rumbles and sci-fi shimmer, wrapped around chantlike vox and smeared layers and textures, and over the course of the five songs on the A side, the sound veers from that droned out celestial thrum to furious churning black metal blasts and back again, the whole side a dizzying twisted black/drone juggernaut.
The flipside is just as heavy, but in a completely different manner, taking the band's knack from blackened soundscaping, and applying it to a blurred, lumbering ultradoom, sort of SUNNO))) like in its slo-mo glacial heft, but the band's grim psychedelic dirgery somehow manages to take that sound and push it even further, the guitars grinding (or are they synths) and rumbling, streaks of spacey FX and glitched out electronics, not to mention heavily effected vox, swirl above whorls of feedback, and smeared synths, all anchored by a deathmarch ultradoom pound, a caveman creep wreathed in thick downtuned rumble and thrum, super hypnotic and heavy, but also caustic and abject and fucking massive sounding, not to mention somehow totally spacey and psychedelic. Easily some of the best stuff we've heard from these guys.
And like the tape version, this vinyl is also limited to so grab one quick before they're gone!
Back in print/stock, now in a red sleeve with black printing, these came in the mail slightly damaged, so anal record nerds steer clear, but for everyone else, these are seriously discounted, so if slightly bumped corners and less than perfect sleeves don't bug you, snap one of these up before they're gone...
Latest sprawling rhythmic whatthefuck epic from these Texas-by-way-of-the-UK-by-way-of-Texas-again multiple drummer-ed weirdos, and it's maybe their most ambitious and most over the top yet, which is saying a lot, considering pretty much everything these guys do pretty goddamn over the top. But this triple lp takes their sound in a whole different direction. We might have imagined them going even noiser, more drum heavy, but no, instead, $&$ offer up six sidelong jams, looped out and tranced out, that tend toward the super minimal, the mesmerizingly rhythmic, ultra repetitive and hypnotic, but not in the usual bombastic heavy $&$ way, no these are like alternative universe minimal dancefloor chillout jams. Or something. Probably best to just go through em one at a time...
Side A, "Flirtations At A Cocktail Party", pretty much sets the template, looped tribal drumming, a revving engine, loping low slung bassline, all blurred and looped into a sort of abstract rhythmic mesmer, laced with strange robotic vox, like some sort of alien lo-fi electro, the track gradually growing more and more blown out, finally becoming extra melodic and dense right near the end. That's the most typically Shit & Shine track of the bunch, cuz the next one, "Frankies Theme" dials everything back, loopy and minimal, with muted melodies, a sort of circular slow motion groove, motorik and locked in, while around it sounds swirl and shimmer, distant melodic swells ebb and flow, it's sidelong but it's the sort of thing that sounds like it could have gone on forever.
The second lp starts with "Switching 2 Nite Mode", which lives up to its title by swiping the main part of the Rolling Stones' "Emotional Rescue" and looping it into a jumbled psychedelic freakout, adding swirls of processed vox (even some sliced and diced Jagger falsetto), dubbed out production, some deep ominous vocals all slowed down, before the song transforms into a slo-mo creep, all weirdly muted and creepily sexy. The flipside, "Frenchys Automotive", is another super minimal loop-jam, a main melody repeated rhythmically, pulsing hypnotically, the vibe almost kosmische, but more sort of murky and mesmerizing, that main figure looped and looped, while all around it, random sounds swirl and shimmer druggily.
The final lp starts off with "How To Rattle A White Tailed Buck", which unfurls a brittle looped melody, peppered with occasional rib cage rattling boomin' system low end bass thumps, the whole thing sort of blurpy and lumbering, a stuttery groove that shuffles through clouds of staticky hiss, which finally leads to the final side / track, "Klipp", which is most definitely the most high fidelity of the bunch, super heavy, repetitive, Circle like hypno-rock, but a bit more minimal, the main guitar riff and shuffling rhythm totally in sync, while all around it sounds swirl and decay, shards of melodies and and crumbling FX, processed vocals and constantly shifting layers wreathe the hypno-rock in a buzzy, blurry, noisy gauze.
Packaged in a 6 panel hand screened triple gatefold jacket!
