Lal Lal Lal sent us these, though technically it's private release not on that tiny Finnish label, the reason they had 'em being that Nuslux is a project of Roope from Lal Lal Lal, who's also in Maniacs Dream, Pylon, and Avarus. Meanwhile the Amon Dude (haha) is Arttu, also from Avarus, Anaksimandros, etc. It's limited, it's weird, it's vinyl, and it's Finnish. We only have a handful. What else need we say? Oh, what's it sound like? Well the Dude's side, "In Full Flight", is a live recording of their distorted, danceable (?) electronic shenanigans, while Nuslux jam on the flip, using mostly self-built analog instruments to make their "good-humored and chilled out" electronic minimalism. Basically if you liked that Lal Lal Lal festival cassette we listed not long ago, this is for you too.
We often get mysterious packages in the mail. Sometimes a tape, or a handful of 7"s, often surprisingly, with no info whatsoever, no note, no nothing. Which in some ways is cool, nothing to go on but the music itself, and the packaging. But unfortunately, sometimes it takes us a while to listen to everything, which means once in a while, we hear something we dig, and realize we have no way of tracking the band or the label down.
So a while back, we got a little package of 7"s in the mail, and they looked amazing. Transparent vellum sleeves, clear vinyl, the word 'Tickles' printed on the front in a cool font, a weird painting/picture of a stoplight pasted on the front, and a manga style drawing of a diner on the back, with a sad lonely girl sitting by herself underneath a sign for vegetable burgers and beans. Very strange.
It wasn't until a few days ago, months and months after the 7"s showed up at the store, that someone from the band finally contacted us and gave is the lowdown. We never noticed, but printed in tiny letters on the back is the name of the band, The Banana Crew, which is apparently the name of the group, but it's not just a group, it's also a sort of arts collective, and this, "Tickles" is their first musical document. If you're anything like us, a band called Banana Crew with a record called Tickles might not have sounded all that promising, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover, the music of BC was a sort of Gary Numan / Kraftwerk style krautwave machinemusic electro pop, all fuzzy synths, shuffling snares, tinkling melodies and moody dramatic new wave vocals. A definite eighties vibe, one that positions BC amongst many other contemporary acts mining that much maligned decade, taking a sort of Daft Punk thing, stripping it way down, and slowing it down, a sci-fi retro electronic future pop that's hazy, and dreamy, and softly propulsive, definitely with a little of that Carpenter soundtrack feel, but the vocals turn it into the sort of futuristic electro pop that groups like Soft Metals, White Car, Blank Dogs, Gary War, Greatest Hits and Autre Ne Veut and the like have been exploring lately as well...
A while back we reviewed a super limited tape from this local axeman, who at the time had a backup band made up of members of local psych rock heavies Comets On Fire, and whose sound, on that tape at least, fell somewhere between the brooding post punk of the Wipers, and the rough, ragged twang flecked crunch of early Uncle Tupelo, most definitely a sweet combo. We've been sitting on a couple copies of this 7" for ages now, and only just recently got enough to list, and like the tape before it, these two tracks offer up more of Beach's distinctive twang flecked songsmithery. The A side is a stripped down bit of folky psychedelia, dark and moody and countrified, again reminding us of Uncle Tupelo, not hard to imagine the song blossoming into some sort of guitar heavy crunch, but instead, it's a gorgeously cyclical and dreamily mesmerizing.
The flipside is a bit more droned out, with a softly churning electric guitar, backed up by minimal skeletal drumming, a series of slow brooding swells, Beach's vocals a bit more rough and ragged, the song mostly two parts, slipping back and forth, giving the track a definite hypnotic vibe, during the second half of the song the tempo gets cranked, the sound growing more and more frantic, ratcheting up the tension, with no release, a slow build all the way to the end. Cool!
Second single (we have a few copies of the first, just ask) from this Finnish apocalyptic post punk combo, which features members of Hexvessel, Code, DHG, and sounds a lot poppier than we expected, reminding us a bit of the Holograms (whose full length is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), or like a punkier Interpol, which is not a bad thing at all, the music is murky and washed out, the guitars a buzzy blur, driving drums and cool crooned clean vox, making this sound like some goth pop new wave artifact, doomy and melodic, propulsive and cold wave-y, at times a bit like a gothier post punkier Katatonia, the same sort of super hooky melody but still plenty heavy hybrid, the track "Void Mother" might be our new favorite jam, a seriously hooky and heavy slab of gloom pop that in a perfect world would be a post punk mixtape staple. Super rad. And very limited!
Chicago's formation Flying V pilots Bible Of The Devil fight in the skies on this split 7" with another band of metal maniacs, Louisville's Blade Of The Ripper (featuring one of the dudes from Nashville Pussy and The Hookers, letting his Venom fandom come to the fore). The 33 rpm Side A is BOTD's "Hot Deth", and it harks back a bit to their more Hellacopters-ish garagey rawk early stylings while staying as metal as their spelling of "deth" would suggest. On the flip (which is supposed to spin at 45, 'cause they're fucking with you or something), BOTR offer up "Cast Me In The Fire", maybe even more vicious and raw and metallically evil than the A-side, though you do have the option of speeding "Hot Deth" up to 45 if you want to hear something faster (and more ridiculous), to which "Cast Me In The Fire" can't respond unless you've got a turntable that plays at 78 too. We're big BOTD fans already, but this makes us want to check out more BOTR also. Limited edition, Italian import, we have but a fistful.
Got just a little handful of these special Record Store Day singles from Thrill Jockey country string band the Black Twig Pickers, two songs of old school Appalachia and back porch bluegrass hoedowns, the A side a rollicking, foot stomping barn burner, all sawed fiddles and intense fingerpicking, replete with hoots and hollers, the B side though a much darker affair, a haunting dirge-like lament, a dark folk ballad all minor key, melancholy and brooding, with sorrowful vox and wailing mouth harp. Gorgeous stuff as always.
Super limited too, so once these are gone, they are most likely gone for good. Includes a download coupon as well!
The second single in The Bug's (aka Kevin Martin, from God, Techno Animal, Ice, King Midas Sound, etc.) new Acid Ragga series/label, the first so limited, that we were never able to get enough of to list. And like that one, this is a killer, the sound fierce and furious, and like the name of the series lets on, this is indeed "acid ragga": big pulsing ragga beats, wreathed in a cloud of skittery snares, acid-y synth squelches, thick fuzzed out basslines, and on the A side, Daddy Freddy toasting over the top. Fans of the Bug will be in heaven, fierce and furious and funky as fuck.
The flipside offers up a similarly sonic template, wild swirls of insectoid snare fills, flitting constantly around that loping raga groove, more buzzy bass and super distorted synth squelch, Miss Red providing the vocals this time, her delivery, sassy and swaggery, a perfect match for the music underneath, both sides booming sound system killers, that we find ourselves listening to over and over, hankering for more more more!
Super swank packaging, yellow and blue printed silver reflective sleeves, pressed on yellow vinyl and if the first 7" is anything to go by, this one too is likely VERY LIMITED.
Well, this is a weird one! A four-way split of Portland bands with two of the bands playing at the same time on each side(?!) You have to pan hard right or left to hear each band alone. I guess it sort of makes sense when all the bands seem to traffic in a kind of ramshackle mumbly Americana with a bent towards the freaky. It just builds an added layer of bizarre disorientation to the proceedings when you play them at the same time. Pretty cool but super weird and really limited!
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.
Originally released for this year's Record Store Day, this seminal slab of SF punk is now available to the world at large, the first in what will hopefully be an ongoing reissue campaign of all the singles from these legendary punks. This 7" was originally released in 1976, and while some younger folks might not remember Crime, they probably remember the A side, "Hot Wire My Heart", as it was covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!!
Digitally remastered from the original master tapes, housed in an exact reproduction of the original sleeve, pressed on crazy tri-colored red, white and blue vinyl, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
We've long been fans of the mysterious Death Cheetah, aka local visual artist / musician Kevin Taylor, we've carried a super limited cd-r and a compilation tape, both long out of print, he also did the artwork for the AmocomA cd on Andee's tUMULt label, but beyond that we've heard little from Taylor lately. Until this showed up one day, a super striking screen printed black and white envelope, inside of which was a thick, SQUARE lathe cut record, apparently carved directly into sheets of plexiglass. The sleeve is adorned with artwork by local artist Andrew Schoultz, and the pressing is limited to just FIFTY copies.
None of the DC's past releases really prepared us for this new jam, which finds DC laying down some sort of twisted electro-black-metal, churning blackened riffage, furious drumming, but the whole thing underpinned by a blooping synth, that while reminiscent of Burzum, here transforms the song into something else entirely, especially when the guitars fade out, leaving just the blooping melody and the blasting drums, and occasionally the guitars get all blown out and stonery adding some weird almost Kyuss-y melody to the mix, but for the most part the sound shifts back and forth between the churning synth flecked buzz, and more dense drum heavy blackness. And then there's the vocals, super effected, a raspy demonic howl, draped over an almost Queens Of The Stoneage guitar melody, all the while the synth percolates in the background.
And since it's a lathe cut, the sound is transformed as well, the built in static and hiss, the extreme surface noise, makes this sound somehow like it's some rare early nineties Norwegian demo tape from the freakiest fucked up long defunct black metal horde you've never heard of, and beyond that, it fundamentally changes the sound, woozy and warped and warbly, which only adds to its genius. It's hard to explain how great and weird and cool this is, other than to tell you we've listened to it maybe 20 times JUST TODAY. And we don't see that changing anytime soon.
And as mentioned above, it's LIMITED TO JUST 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in hand screened sleeves, we have 15 copies, but those might not last long...
We've been going pretty nuts for French occult rock rhythmatists Aluk Todolo, their most recent record, appropriately titled Occult Rock, we made Record Of The Week, and could barely keep in stock. Hell, we made all THREE Aluk Todolo albums our Record Of The Week. But before there was AT, there was Diamatregon, a furious black metal beast featuring essentially the very same lineup, their second and third records released on Andee's tUMULt label, their sound, at least early on, a blown out raw satanic blackness, the drenched the usual buzz and blast it crumbling distortion and speaker shredding noise, but seeming to mature into something much more experimental and polished, which makes the eventual formation of Aluk Todolo less surprising. We're not entirely sure if Diamatregon is still a going concern, what with the members doing time in lots of other bands including Aluk Todolo and psych rock outfit Gunslingers, which is further suggested by this 'new' single, which is not in fact new at all, but recorded back in 2006, but it definitely reminds us of why we loved Diamatregon so much in the first place.
The A side starts of with a creepy soundtracky piano intro, but it's not a sample, it's part of the song proper, the piano continuing on into the first part of the song proper, even after the super distorted guitar comes in, the combination is truly haunting, we would have been happy for a whole side of this weird piano driven blackness, but soon, the sound explodes into some classic black buzz, with some seriously super sick vox, over frenzied insectoid guitars, the vibe raw and old school for sure.
The B side explodes out of the gate with a barrage of blasting beats and tangled anguished vokills, which gives way to some classic midtempo metal chug, before peeling away and leaving a long stretch of sinister black ambience, all detuned guitars, random drum hits, woozy FX, swirling sinister shimmer, darkly psychedelic and seriously creepy, eventually the band come back in proper and finish off with a blast of fierce metallic blackness. So killer! Has us hoping these guys are still a band, and hankering for a new full length!!
So far, the only thing we've reviewed on the awesome Ormolycka label, run by aQ pal Jason, was the cassette version of Liturgy's Renihilation, the one that featured a bad ass Liturgy jungle remix courtesy of our very own Andee. But we do carry everything else on the label, we just get such limited copies, they never make it onto the list, tapes by Pistol Disko, Anthro Rex, Synt.Tofs, Shams, M Ax Noi Mach, Modern Witch, Dubknowdub, GDFX, Pushups, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, A Magic Whistle, Juiceboxx, Frak, Narwhalz, Death Grips, Pictureplane, Kalambya Sisters and more! Phew. Ormolycka has also just started doing 7"s, the first two of which we have in stock, and we've go just enough to list!
Don't know much about the oddly named Dog Leather, other than they follow in the footsteps of other snotty white rappers like the aQ beloved Hawd Gankstuh Rappuh Emsees Wid Ghatz. Whiney and bratty, but the music changes everything, on the A side it's a killer lo-fi / hip hop tripout, all low slung, echoey and distorted, stripped down and super rhythmic, noisy groovy and distorted, sounding almost like hip hop via Animal Collective or Wavves or something. The flipside is all dubbed out, boomin' system low rider style, still fucked up and lo-fi and a bit electro, but way more banging, while Dog Leather flow over the top.
Limited of course, and pressed on fancy gold vinyl!
The first release from The Wormhole, a non tape offshoot of UK label the Tapeworm, comes in the form of this long in the works double 7" from Drcarlsonalbion, aka Dylan Carlson of doomtwang slowcore sludgelords Earth. We first heard from Carlson's alter ego on the now out of print Tapeworm tape Edward Kelley's Blues, which found Carlson beginning to musically explore his fascination with the occult and UK folklore, that record a mix of field recordings (of particularly occultic locations), Carlson's guitar, and some subtle vocals (sung in Enochian at one point) sounding not that far removed from Earth, albeit at their most bleary and softly psychedelic. The sound here finds Carlson creating dark, droning, buzz drenched sprawls of psychedelic guitar buzz, and twang flecked shimmer, and this time is even less removed from modern Earth, the music here a backdrop for spoken word by UK spoken word poet / activist Rosie Knight, the combination is pretty potent, Knight's lyrics mysterious, her voice nicely raspy, her accent thick, it definitely speaks to a sort of witchy seventies acid folk vibe, which we would imagine is precisely what Carlson was hoping to conjure. But for those of you (like some of us here), have issues with 'spoken word', fear not, the second 7" in this double set features instrumental versions of both tracks, and sans spoken word, they are essentially two new Earth cuts!
Not sure how limited this is, but we're guessing VERY. You know what that means...
First we've heard from these Chicago glam-prog punks, but we're pretty into it. Angular lo-fi riffs wreathed in thick swooshes of flanger drenched guitars, wild rhythmic flurries, avalanche like drum fills, the vibe VERY glammy, with some cool glimmering breakdowns, but plenty of glampop crunch and garage fuzz shimmer, reminding us a whole lot of a lo-fi Alice Cooper band.
The B side is even more glittery and glammy, with some super progged out drumming, lots of heavily flanged guitars here too, and a weird very seventies sounding mix, the track slipping into psychedelic space prog territory with some jammed out guitars and some strange percussion (even bongos!!). Tripped out, psychedelic and heavy, and LIMITED TO 475 COPIES!!
Another blast of Sic Alps, and another good one, apparently an outtake from their recent full length, it sounds like it too, a fantastic slab of crunchy fuzz guitar glam rock stomp, which starts off all folky and acousticky, fluttering falsetto vox and lilting melodies, before blowing up into some serious glam folk garage pop radness.
The flipside comes courtesy of a duo called Freakapuss, who we had never heard of, but apparently is a new group born of underground UK pop outfit the Tronics, who Sic Alps covered on a previous 7", and it's a good match, a more sort of electric era Dylan vibe, fuzzy electric guitar jangle, loose free percussion, and the vocals delivered in a stream of consciousness drawl, heck, had we not known, we might have just assumed it was a Sic Alps song too...
Ahhh, Fredrik is helping us start our new year in the most lovely fashion with this new 3-song 7". Gauzily atmospheric, softly groovy, subtly folksy, hushed elegance. The central pair Fredrik Hultin and O. Lindefelt are now joined by vocalist / instrumentalist Anna Moberg, and the new sounds they are conjuring together are a glistening joy to hear, a glorious progression from the duo's already sparkling previous recordings - Na Na Ni and Trilogi. If you have a penchant for lush and dreamy sounds you can snuggle into and drift off to, you definitely must make a bee line for any and all music created by this Swedish trio (psst, a new full length is slated for March)! Limited vinyl pressing, the first installment in a new 7" series from seven year old indie label The Kora Records.
Not sure where the idea came from for this match up: Billy Gibbons of legendary boogie rock gods ZZ Top, and Bonnie Prince Billy, formerly of Palace Brothers. Was it the two Billy's thing? Could be. But then there's also the fact that both are covering Fleetwood Mac! Seemed kind of silly, and like a total novelty, but goddamn if both tracks here aren't pretty great.
Gibbons tackles an older Peter Green 'Mac track, back from when they were a proper blues band, and thus it suits him perfectly, a dirge-y swampy blues, driven by a simple rhythmic stomp, Gibbons' badass raspy vox, all slithery blooze stomp, and it sorta kills! BPB takes on a Stevie Nicks track, and it ends up sounding like it could have been a BPB original, all stripped down and mostly acoustic, gorgeous vocal harmonies, all building to a lush final few minutes, helps that it was already a beautiful song to begin with.
We weren't sure what to expect from this mysterious outfit, but it definitely wasn't this! We got this from FRKSE, who's most recent releases was a Record Of The Week not too long back, and the fact that the group was called Goat's Gloom, and came via FRKSE, we were really expecting some sort of dark churning experimental abstraction, rhythmic, industrial, sorta home-brewed, which is precisely what we got, at least at first, muddy, and moody, a sort of grinding industrial crunch and clatter, noisy and lo-fi, definitely our sort of thing, and then all of a sudden, there's RAPPING. Woah. We were sort of thrown for a loop, but it didn't take us long to get right back into. The weird combination of rapid white boy flow over lurching stumbling junkyard beats and blown out industrial ambience is actually pretty goddamn great. Sounding a bit like some warped and woozy cross between DHR hip hoppers Fever and aQ faves Death Grips, via Bay Area hip hop label Anticon, if that makes any sense. And it sort of doesn't, but that's definitely what makes this so cool. As the record progresses too, it just gets noisier and more chaotic, lots of drones and low end rumble, sheets of buzz and all sorts of fucked up rhythmic weirdness. Fans of all the weirdo Ormolycka tapes we've been reviewing lately, this is definitely right up your alley. LIMITED TO 125 COPIES!!
Single number two from this Beach Fossils side project, and it definitely takes up where the first one left off, jangly, handclappy, eighties dreampop, still reminding us of the Style Council, acoustic guitars, soaring strings, hazy twee vox, low slung new wave bassline, all echoey and softly reverbed, with a cool production and some interesting production tricks this time around, mostly some subtle dubbing out of the vocals. The flipside offers up more of the same, super stripped down minimal pop, but here the strings are allowed to soar, while the verses are even more hushed and subdued, lovely and lush, summery sunshiney eighties retro pop, that we're finding surprisingly addictive!
This limited edition 7" featuring one our our favorite songs from JEFF The Brotherhood's fantastic Hypnotic Nights album came out as special 2012 "Black Friday Record Store Day" release. Album version of that song on the A side, with an exclusive alternate mix (lead vocal by special guest Tristen Gaspadarek) on the flip.
Latest single from this Aussie post punk downer pop outfit, but unlike their Siltbreeze lp, which we likened to vintage Guided By Voices or Strapping Fieldhands, the A side here is way more subdued, and definitely fits the song title, a gorgeous woozy lament, all detuned guitars, and lazy sad boy vox, over a skeletal shuffling beat, the sound fuzzy, and gauzey, when the record first started we though it was spinning at the wrong speed, it had that sort of warped warble. It's all drowsy, and darkly psychedelic, slo-mo garage pop, like some classic indie pop jangle jam slowed way down, softly noisy and really quite lovely.
The flipside is more of the same, a minor key, Velvets style chunk of minimal dirge pop, shimmery and reverby and sweetly melancholy, washed out and woozy, this time the sound laced with what sounds like a harmonica or some sort of organ, adding a druggy bit of wheezing whir, softening the edges, and making the already soporific pop seem just that much more wasted and dreamlike. Nice!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Two new songs from this local Oakland sextet who are not afraid of tight and compositionally complex pop epics. Like a mix of Aavikko's energetic synthetic pop, Grizzly Bear's vocal harmonies and Liars urgent avant leanings, Maus Haus are probably amongst the hardest working local musicians and it shows! This white vinyl 7" comes with a download card for both songs plus three other brand new tracks from their Sea Sides EP. That's a lot of bang for your bucks!
We dug Melchior's most recent full length, Assemblage Blues, like crazy. It was a wild collection of garage pop, and really our first proper exposure to his noisy chaotic outsider songstyle. We played that record to death, so were super psyched to get in this new single, and it's a doozy, much darker and lower key than that record. The A side offers up moody brooding verses driven by a woozy low slung bassline, which explodes into a dizzying psychedelic organ driven chorus, the song super catchy, and maybe one of our favorite Melchior jams yet. The B side is another brooder, that sounds a little bit like a more fractured lo-fi Cardinal if that makes any sense, the same sort of stately pop vibe, but here it's all lush darkly dreamy vocal harmonies over dizzyingly looped guitar figures and has us reassessing what we said about the A side, cuz the B side is also one of our favorite Melchior jams yet. Guess that means this is most definitely recommended!
So far, the only thing we've reviewed on the awesome Ormolycka label, run by aQ pal Jason, was the cassette version of Liturgy's Renihilation, the one that featured a bad ass Liturgy jungle remix courtesy of our very own Andee. But we do carry everything else on the label, we just get such limited copies, they never make it onto the list, tapes by Pistol Disko, Anthro Rex, Synt.Tofs, Shams, M Ax Noi Mach, Modern Witch, Dubknowdub, GDFX, Pushups, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, A Magic Whistle, Juiceboxx, Frak, Narwhalz, Death Grips, Pictureplane, Kalambya Sisters and more! Phew. Ormolycka has also just started doing 7"s, the first two of which we have in stock, and we've go just enough to list!
Although we've never reviewed anything by Mincemeat Or Tenspeed, some aQ folks have been fans for a while, in fact he played a while back at a secret brunch show in a cave right by the water. We have no idea who Dan Friel is [2013 edit: now we do, and he's got a great record called Total Folklore coming out on Thrill Jockey in February], but this is some sort of collaboration, hence the tongue twisty moniker.
Not sure what we were expecting but it sure wasn't this, the A side starts out all awesomely gristly rhythmic buzz, wrapped in distorted keening melodies, sounding a bit like Amps For Christ or Bastard Noise, all sorts of warped squiggles, and stuttery glitched out rhythms, surprisingly melodic, almost poppy in its own way, like some fractured blast of rhythmic soft noise bliss out.
And if the A side is -almost- poppy, then the B side is full on pop, sounding a bit like some super catchy chunk of indie rock, rendered in glitched out analog buzz, a looped sort of hooky lo-fi electro that is just about the catchiest shit we've heard in ages. Awesome.
Limited too, and pressed on swank milky blue vinyl!
We reviewed the debut 7" from these San Diego garage pop surf punks a while back, and recommended them to fans of Waaves, Drums and Best Coast, and on this most recent single, not too much has changed. They may have dialed back the surfiness a bit, but otherwise, there's still plenty of jangle and crunch, the A side a short sharp burst of off kilter noise pop, super hooky, with a crazy sing song-y vocal line, laced with squalls of psych guitars, while the B side has an old school classic girl group vibe, sounding a bit like Phil Spector produced era Ramones, tribal drums, murky riffage, snarly vox, crazy catchy harmonies and a wicked main hook. Good stuff, and still dying for a full length�
LIMITED TO 475 COPIES!!
The debut vinyl release from Smokey Emery aka Daniel Hipolito on Silent Land Time Machine's Indian Queen imprint is a pastoral grey affair, lush with church organ ambience and analog equipment malfunction, a sort of Carnival of Lost Souls meets the Sinking of the Titanic. Split into three movements, the first called "Movement VI (Jumping the Fire)" is an abrupt organ loop shifting in pitch maniacally in a zombie-ish two-step wrenched in the reverbed clacking and whistling of old portable tape machines. "Movement VII: A Craft in Control" sounds at first like an old ballpark anthem slowed way down to a ghostly crawl, but its source may be more sacred or sinister, eventually churning what could be a hymn into a demonic funeral dirge just like the female lead in the aforementioned film. The flip side dedicated to the final movement "Movement V" expands on the previous theme, letting the sound sprawl into a foggy underwater wash of ocean liner doom and the muddled voices of once heralded memories of happier times.
Limited to 300 copies comes in a thick duotone b&w folder-cover of dueling catastrophe-collages by Daniel Hipolito himself.
ATTENTION CIRCLE OBSESSIVES! And Finnish underground rock freaks, heck we might as well include Hydra Head nerds and Isis nuts, this one is for all of you. Well, seventeen of you at least. That's as many copies as we could get of the debut single from this new band featuring Jussi from Finnish hypnorockers Circle (among others) as well as Aaron Turner from Isis / Hydra Head Records, as well as one of the guys from Steel Mammoth. And considering that pedigree it sounds pretty much like you'd imagine. Or at least how you wished it would sound. Cranium splitting heaviness for sure. Pounding drums, kick ass riffs, massive HEAVY production, some seriously crusty punk blowouts woven into more metallic chug and crunch, peppered with wild squiggly metal shred freakouts, and bizarre echo drenched vocals, that make this sound very Circle-like indeed. Epic and melodic, a little like Turbonegro gone NWOFHM (that's New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal btw). A killer teaser for the upcoming full length.
The flipside finds the A side reworked by none other than noise maestro Daniel Menche, who takes all the punk and metal and blurs it and stretches it into smeared gristly walls of pulsing drone-noise, the various elements still present, but looped and layered and all tangled up into thick undulating sheets of white noise drenched rhythmic chaos, droned out and mesmerizing, the vocals in particular transformed into a haunting keening high end tone, woven into a hazy grey soft focus blurpunk drift. Super rad! And again SUPER LIMITED, not sure how many were pressed, but we got SEVENTEEN of them, and that's all we'll ever get, so get yourself one before they're gone!
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
We first heard from Tropical Trash on a split cassette with No Copper (we have a few copies left if you want one!), their track was definitely cool, but also listening to this 7" now a bit misleading, but it seems that perhaps that track was intended for the split, as it was super heavy and noisy and abstract, fusing jazzy avant noise with tripped out experimental abstraction. Which is definitely a bit different that what's to be found here, although not completely removed. TT seem to traffic in a sort of chugging churning noise rock, at least on the A side, thick angular riffs, tribal drumming, weird mathy arrangements, strange sing songy vocals, buzzing distorted melodies that mirror the vox, rife with some surprising poppiness, a distinctly indie rock vibe going on for sure. Loose and ramshackle, with the song occasionally devolving into a seemingly random free noise splatter before lurching right back into action.
The B side offers up a handful of shorter songs and finds TT cranking up the volume a bit, definitely heavier and punkier, sounding in places like a supercharged Polvo or Pitchblende, weird chords, still more mathiness, but still plenty of melody and catchiness as well as the occasional punky blow out and some cool tripped out droniness. Features members of Siltbreeze outfit Sapat.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Pressed on white vinyl! In handscreened covers with photo copied inserts.
Just one glance at the cover of this 7" should send most doom obsessives into an involuntary frenzy, the weird black and white washed out image, the twisted barely legible writing, so distinctive and immediately recognizable, but this is not in fact a lost record or weird reissue from New York doom legends Winter, but is in fact, the next best thing, two contemporary outfits, tackling their favorite Winter tunes, an homage / tribute to a criminally under appreciated band, especially considering that their sound predicted pretty much all the slow and low heaviness going on these days, and that the sound, and most of the bands that practice it, would sound a whole lot different if it wasn't for these guys, whether they know it or not.
Up first are long time aQ faves Unearthly Trance, who add their own twist but don't drift too far from the original, lumbering, lurching, plodding crusty doom sludge bliss, a filthy midtempo plod, peppered with bursts of double kick drumming, guttural vox, and of course twisted tarpit guitar buzz. UK sludge beasts Volition also don't mess with Winter's sound all that much, unfurling a blackened and dense bit of sprawling doom, that more than classic ultra doom, sounds more like a grindcore record played at 16rpm. Both sides rule, essential modern megadoom, and if you've yet to discover the dismal joy of Winter, maybe these two tracks will convince you to track some of that shit down. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
We got a brief taste of USBMers Venowl on the now out of print 4 way split tape with Horseback, Njiqahdda and Cara Neir, release on Handmade Birds earlier this year. Their contribution a particularly sick slab of lo-fi doom/sludge heaviness, replete with weird oinking pig vox and terrifying crusty creep, which is precisely where the A side of this new single lands, the same sort of super low fidelity practice space sound, which perfectly suits their abject lo-fi blacknoise, here rendered into something more approaching black metal, but a mutant slo-mo strain, that seems to lurch and stumble, a blackprog variant, that finds the music slowing down and speeding up, exploding into a frenzied blast, before devolving into another monstrous creep, and those freaky vox make a return too.
The flipside, subtitled the "Iron Forest Reimagining" compacts the 7 minute A side into 3 minutes, and transforms it into a weird pulsing, processed industrial electronic dirge, the sounds crumbling and blown out, the voices weirdly robotic, the song alternately driving by metallic pound and warped electronic skitter, gradually seeming to melt and ooze into one demented black hybrid, gristly, and crusty, skeletal, eventually shedding sounds until it's just a strange spare cold wave-y creep.
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES, already sold out at the label, so these are most likely the last copies we'll be able to get. Pressed on grey vinyl too.
For those who missed out on the super limited demo cassette from this SF lo-fi noise pop / post punk outfit, four of the tracks from that tape, have been re-recorded with a full band for this 7", and sound even better now. As we mentioned in our review of the now out of print tape, VC were born from late great punk pop weirdos the Sopors, who basically went mostly unheard outside of their little scene (which also included tUMULt pop heroes the Ovens!). And while Violent Change, at the time of that tape, was essentially a solo record by Sopors mainman Matt Bleyle, has since then, become a proper band, and now also includes Tony from the Ovens. And all of the above mentions of the Ovens is not for nothing, cuz Violent Change definitely has the same sort of pop vibe as the Ovens, but where the Ovens take the Beatles and Weezer and the Champs, Violent Change are a much more twisted and lo-fi proposition, an obvious comparison is definitely Guided By Voices, in fact, we'd imagine fans of GBV would flip for these guys, who kick out perfect pop jams at the drop of a hat, but don't shy away from getting more punky, or twisting a perfectly good pop song into a gloomy chunk of deeply crooned post punk dirgery. That said, the bulk of this four song 7" is some of THEE catchiest lo-fi pop you're bound to hear EVER, with excursions into blasting punk rock, noisy freakouts, and a moment or two here and there that position VC as a dead ringer for the Ovens, but the whole thing is way more fuzzy, and ramshackle and gloriously lo-fi, and punky and catchy and is definitely convincing us that Violent Change might be our (and possibly your) new favorite local band!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, includes a download coupon as well.
As a teaser for their upcoming Jennifer Herrema (Royal Trux, RTX) produced full length, psychedelic metallic noise poppers Wildildlife team up with their sludge pop doom noise pals in Flood for a killer two song onslaught.
Wildildlife just keep getting better, their sound getting poppier and poppier, but somehow managing to not get less heavy or any less weird or psychedelic. Their track here explodes right out of the gate with some mathy drum pound and some tangled guitar harmonies, sounding almost like some sort of Iron Maiden / Butthole Surfers hybrid, the sound woozy and distorted and druggy, the vocals processed and all tripped out, hooks galore, but all buried under Wildildlife's blown out glammy noise pop chaos. Swaths of crumbling sound and swirls of spacey effects get wrapped around looped samples, and wild streaks of pop flecked psychedelia, churning, and rhythmic and heavy, and noisy and crazy catchy to boot.
Flood counter with some low slung slithery post rock lope, which gains momentum and finally explodes into a seriously stonery doomy sludge, the brooding minimalism giving way to some epic, majestic hypno doom crush, but with plenty of groove, the sound at one point locking into a long stretch of repetitive and hypnotic chug and churn, sounding like a downtuned doom metal Circle, pounding away beneath bellowed vox and majestic melodies. So good.
Limited to 500 copies, we managed to get a bunch of the colored vinyl. Each one is hand numbered, and comes with a download coupon.
Latest single from this Factums side project, and like their previous 12", the sound of Yves / Son / Ace is worlds removed from the Factums mothership, and while the sound here can maybe be loosely described as garage rock, the six songs here are all over the map, and even the ones that DO sound like the garage rock you're familiar with, Y/S/A manages to fuck it up big time. The opener is a dirgey murky slab of primitive outsider garage pop, driven by a simple skeletal rhythm and goofy sing-song vocals, while the next track quickly devolves into something darkly Jandek-ian, a damaged detuned folk, shambolic and on the verge of collapse, but then the sound lurches dramatically into a super blown out, noisy reverb drenched guitar heavy garage punk pound. From there things seem to get even further out, first some tripped out lo-fi new wave-y creep, which blossoms into a sort of deranged almost industrial sounding sci-fi surf rock before finally finishing off in a blaze of chaotic angular noise rock garage blooze. Definitely recommended for folks who like their garage rock/pop with a healthy dose of outsider WTF.
