Celebratum is the debut release from this mysterious ritualistic dark ambient outfit, the sounds here comprised of remixed, reworked and remastered songs and sounds from three super rare tapes originally the group released in the mid nineties. Presented here, these bleak, blackened rituals offer up a surprisingly lush sonic palette, the usual industrial/ambient tropes are most certainly present, militaristic percussion, lots of drones, and ominous low end rumbles, but the band incorporate horns (or what sound like horns), in fact the opening/intro is a haunting bit of regal sonic pageantry, echo drenched voices intoning ominously over muted percussion, and mournful horns, shimmering strings, the result very dramatic and cinematic, which is sort of what we were expecting the whole record to sound like, but the sound here are even more intense, the first track proper, the near 19 minute "Nos Dominari Noctus: The Dominions Of The Night", takes that dramatic, cinematic sound, pushes the vocals to the fore, two voices speaking the same words but quite differently, over blurts of brass, churning rhythms, swirling black drones, the vocals becoming vokills as the track progresses, the vibe blackening, building to a near frenzy, before settling into a long stretch of murky rumbles, and sinister whispers, mysterious mumbling undertones, and darkly processed shapes and sounds, blurred into a sprawling, ominous, black ambient creep.
While much of the record plays out similarly, the sound is constantly shifting, a cloud of rainfall like hiss, drifts over a murky pulse, wreathed in a choir-like chorale, once again a backdrop for strange spoken vocals, mysterious incantations, that seem to slip from English into some unknown tongue and back again, the sounds drifting in and out, lush swells, bursts of crumbling noise, streaks of textured ambience, shards of melody, moaning and keening and rumbling and shimmering. Various bits of rhythm and percussion, offering a dark propulsion, from dirge-like throb, to strangely looped skitter, to warped, fractured anti-grooves, all woven into the bleak black fabric of Akhkaru's terrifying sonic rituals.
Bruce Anderson wandered into the store a few weeks ago, commenting in reference to Scott Walker's new Bish Bosch album that he would much rather experience subversion through beauty than something willfully ugly. While he's quite appreciative of Mr. Walker's art (in fact he has some amusing anecdotes about seeing him as a hired gun for some garage band touring the states back in his youth, wondering who that beautiful bassist with the booming voice was), the art of subversion through beauty is an apt description of where Anderson has taken his solo guitar work. Of course, Bruce Anderson was the frontman for the seminal Bay Area art-punk outfit MX-80, and this disc follows suit with the last couple of semi-improvised recordings that Anderson has graced us with. The angularity of MX-80 is here, but the tones he gets from his guitar are rounded and rich, suspended with a sustained drone that acts as a halo on his slowly paced plucks and strums. Sonically similar to Loren Mazzacane Connors, John Fahey, and Derek Bailey, and laced with a lovely, profound sadness. Limited to 75 copies.
Anthroprophh is a new solo project from Paul Allen, frontman for longtime aQ faves, psychedelic space rockers The Heads. Unlike another recent Heads offshoot project, Kandodo (from Allen's bandmate Simon Price), the sound of Anthroprophh is way less drifty and dreamy and really not all that far removed from the Heads mothership.
It starts off with a bang, in the form of a dense cloud of psychedelic guitarnoise, swirling and roiling chaotically, before transforming into a driving, sprawl of motorik kraut-psych heaviness, the biggest difference, is the pounding drums of Heads jams here replaced with a sort of looped Muslimgauze like percussion, which gives it a seriously tranced out vibe. The sound soon shifts to something more stripped down and minimal, an echo drenched voice drifts over flanged swirls, the sound building back up to a squall of murky, churning percussion. The rest of the side unfurls similarly, after a brief acoustic interlude, the sound blossoms into a droned out electric flecked stretch of trance-y psychedelic drift, more minimal looped rhythms, swirls of shimmery ambience, all drifting beneath keening soaring streaks of guitar shred, before settling into some gauze-y ambience, dark whorls of blurred dreamlike sound, all hazy and dreamily washed out.
The bulk of the flipside is taken up by a single epic psych jam, still more of that looped Muslimgauze like percussion, dense clouds of FX, glimmering electronics, long stretches of muted riffage and more wild squalls of guitarnoise, this jam more propulsive, a dense kraut-infused space rock mesmer, all wreathed in spidery guitar melodies and billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer. The final track is a brief coda, all clanging guitar chords and Hawkwind-ish riffy churn wreathed in swirls of effects and keening high end tones, all blurred into a fuzzy washed out smear of psychedelic shimmer.
Imagine a more abstract, minimal Heads, which means this is obviously essential for Heads fans, but for folks into the psychedelic spaciness of Carlton Melton, 3 Leafs and the like, this will definitely hit the spot too.
Super cool silver reflective jacket. Vinyl-only as far as we know. No download with it though.
This is an album that should have been huge, or at least an album that should sit next to Slint's Spiderland or My Bloody Valentine's Loveless as a seminal record from the early '90s. In fact, this was THE record that inspired music critic Simon Reynolds to first coin the term 'post-rock', when reviewing this record back in the day. But as it happened, Bark Psychosis was perhaps three or four years ahead of the curve, with Tortoise really stealing all of Bark Psychosis' thunder through the sculpted sounds melded by exquisite engineering, spacious arrangements, and careful consideration of forms past (e.g. that aforementioned Slint album, Miles Davis' more contemplative moments, and for Bark Psychosis, the latter day Talk Talk albums). Bark Psychosis also disbanded shortly after the release of Hex, which never really helped their cause in achieving greatness through this record.
That said, the band's beginnings were quite interesting, as they started out aping Napalm Death, whose short blasts of grindcore are the absolute antithesis of what Bark Psychosis would be known for - subtle, quiet, and beautiful scores of nocturnal music. Where their first handful of singles (which were later collected on the Independency compilation) pushed a post-punk intensity that was considerably effective (and still miles away from Napalm Death), they reached a whole new level on Hex with a lush atmospheric moodiness that's quite special.
A somber piano interlude starts the album off on "The Loom" which shifts into dubbed out orchestration for strings, electronics, and Graham Sutton's emphatic whisper of a voice. "A Street Scene" opens with one of those intricate bass / guitar concoctions that Pinback would lay out on Blue Screen Life, but with more of a cinematic, noirish approach to the construction of a sad pop-tune. "Fingerspit" opens with a graceful Durutti Column-esque melody settling on top of a slinky, deconstructed rhythm section skitter for piano, bass, and drums that erupts with a very Slint like jangled chord emphasizing Sutton's maudlin vocals. The bright ringing guitars cycle through a hypnotic chord on "Eyes & Smiles" as the rest of the band builds the tension upon Necks-style rhythmic crescendo. For all of the jazz conceits on the album, Bark Psychosis never faltered like so many of the British post-punks who attempted to dabble in the cool waters of jazz (e.g. Dif Juz, A.R. Kane, etc.), and it's pretty much because they realized that they needed to keep it as simple as possible in terms of the flourishes and let the complications speak through their songwriting and not a desire to jam. Yeah, it's an album that's definitely a precursor to Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die and Village Of Savoonga's Score. Brilliant.
Marc Behrens is a sound artist who hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention around these parts, despite having released plenty of compelling albums of conceptually driven compositions abstracting various environmental recordings. It's not surprising that he's worked with Francisco Lopez and Achim Wollscheid in the past, but to see that he collaborated with Atom TM certainly raises an eyebrow or two around these parts. But here, Behrens is operating in the clinical vein of the phonographer. 20 Zonen was originally commissioned for a radio piece and features field recordings entirely collected from a particular neighborhood in the German city Darmstadt. The 40 minute composition mixes the sounds of heavy industry, high-tech precision devices, rustic soundscapes of bird twitter at various ponds, and a brass band here and there. Behrens is more than happy to cut-up and reconfigure the sounds; but even in doing so, he typically keeps the sounds easily recognizable. This is most true when he chops up various sounds from an equestrian club, so the snorts of horses become a recursive theme as does a solemn clomp of a slow horse trot. Some of the more compelling sounds of 20 Zonen come from the specialized devices used at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, whose whirring machines emit eerie, strange gaspings and radioactively crackling drones that would be the envy any number of radical sound destroyers. Behrens' contextualization of these sounds is where the art lies in 20 Zonen, and there is a mathematical precision to his craft that makes this such an interesting listen!
Just got this in TODAY, list day, so we really didn't have a chance to write up our own review yet but wanted to list it anyway 'cuz we figure folks will want it asap. And we did give it a spin, it's awesome. For those who want a little more info, we'll quote the blurb from the record label: "Fans of Terry Riley, Kraftwerk, Conrad Schntizler, and Kosmische Musik in general take note! Bitchin Bajas has returned to Permanent Records (following their split single with Moon Duo) with a brand new record of side-long transcendental synth workouts. This is Bitchin Bajas most accessible and autobahn ready delivery to date! Bitchin Bajas began as a side project, but Cooper Crain of Cave and Dan Quinlivan formerly of Mahjongg have been spending as much time, if not more, with Bitchin Bajas as they have with the aforementioned groups and they've been progressing very quickly. In just two or so years, Bitchin Bajas have released three critically acclaimed LPs (one on Important Records and two on Kallestei Editions), two incredible splits (one with Moon Duo and the other with the Peaking Lights-related Faceplant), and one very limited edition cassette tape. The two side-long pieces on this nearly 40 minute EP were written on their 2012 European tour and recorded and mixed over three days by Bitchin Bajas at Minbal Studio in Chicago, Illinois. Edition of 500 copies."
Full length number FOUR from this local eco-terroristic, drum and dulcimer driven black metal one band band, whose first two records were released as a pair on our very own Andee's tUMULt label. At the time, as much as we loved Botanist's unique and warped take on black metal, we must admit we were a bit surprised when Botanist sort of blew up, making all sorts of year end top ten lists, even popping up on Pitchfork and NPR. We sort of assumed it was too weird to have much appeal, but it seems if anything, that weirdness only made Botanist more appealing to non-metalheads, and in another surprise twist, brought out the open minded experimental streak we had just assumed most metalheads might be missing. But it's easy to see why people dig Botanist. Heck Andee dug his stuff enough to put it out. Botanist's music is dark and twisted, droned out and buzzy, weirdly melodic, super trance-y and hypnotic, it's really barely black metal, the blasting drums and the croaked squashed spider vocals really being the only truly black metal elements, even the metallic buzz of the dulcimer, aping the sort of fast picked BM riffing, ended up sounding like something wholly other. Botanist's third record, on the Total Rust label, found him slowing things down, and creating his own version of doom, which like his take on black metal was appropriately and fantastically skewed. Which brings us to IV, the fourth Botanist full length in two years, and once again, a whole sonic shift has taken place, this one more difficult to quantify, it's not black metal, and not doom, and this time around, we're tempted to say it's not even really metal. Actually not at all.
When we first heard it, we were struck by how melodic it was, almost shoegazey, the dulcimer strangely recorded, to turn the brittle buzz of the early records into something washed out and gloriously distorted, single strings ring out like prismatic chordal swirls, and the more rapid passages blur into blissed out streaks of hazy blurred dreaminess. In fact, minus the vocals, Botanist IV sounds more like some experimental shoegaze pop band, even the blast beats seem to have been ditched in favor of more midtempo rhythms, and then those are mostly buried in the mix, beneath clouds of reverberant overtones, of whorls of FX drenched metallic chords, that all seem to sprawl like cloud of metallic shimmer, laced with keening melodies, the whole thing surprisingly sun dappled and prismatic, if we didn't know the grim story behind the lyrics of IV, we'd assume the theme was one of redemption and rebirth, or in keeping with the Botanist's themes, IV plays out like the soundtrack to post-human earth, once the human race has been eradicated, and the world is a lush nirvana, where nothing but plants grow, allowed to spread out endlessly, and reach forever heavenward. And heck, even with the vocals, it's hard to disguise the lush melodic elements that pretty much entirely define the sound of IV.
Considering the sort of surprising widespread appeal the first few records had, we can only imagine this one might just be the real big breakthrough record for Botanist, it's so catchy and melodic, so pretty and lushly layered, that it's hard to imagine that even some of the more metal averse folks wouldn't or couldn't be won over. We even suggested to the Botanist himself that he should release an instrumental version, imagining the pure psychedelic shoegaze sonic bliss that would result, but for now, IV's glorious mix of lush sonic bliss and grim verdant vokills is more than enough.
Debut blast of feral, furious, knuckle dragging hardcore from this SF crew, with a very UN-hardcore pedigree, featuring non other than Tony from the Ovens on vocals, and members of aQ pop faves the Sopors and Violent Change as well. But as CA, these guys ditch all that poppiness for something much more fierce and fucked up, brief blasts of grinding punk energy, the songs measure in seconds not minutes, pounding caveman drums, bellowed vox, wild squalls of guitar, sheets of feedback, buzzing bass, their live shows are bloody and brief, all hoodies and mic cords wrapped around fists, and they last about as long as this 7", which as far as we know is in fact their whole set captured on wax. Needless to say, this is some frantic heaviness, some pit destroying punk destruction. As the label describes it "There's not one ounce of originality in these grooves, but if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it". Haha fuck yeah. Includes a killer into from Bay Area rapper Antwon, whose Ormolycka tape End Of Earth was a big hit around here.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Although of course we like to say that EVERY day is Record Store Day, officially Record Store Day 2012 was a couple weeks ago - but that doesn't mean we're entirely done with the special limited edition RSD stuff. That's right, thankfully, we managed to get more copies of this, the album from one of our faves, Circle, that came out, on vinyl only via Hydra Head, for Record Store Day. (Hard to believe they had any left, but just maybe Circle is a little more popular with our customers than at other record stores?). So, yay, now we can list it!
Manner is Circle's latest studio album, and it's a doozy. Naturally. Like the last one of theirs we listed, Rautatie, there's a distinctly '70s prog vibe to some of the proceedings, and in fact they do a cover here (their first ever cover, on an album?), of Brian Eno's "Here Come The Warm Jets", which comes across as very suitably "circular" in its pulsations here.
Fans of Circle know that the band's output is as as diverse it is prolific, and it would be far too simplistic to say that there's two basic types of Circle albums. But, maybe there are, at the extremes. There's the pensively moody & atmospheric (Miljard, Infektio, Hissi), and the metallicized & rockin' (Sunrise, Katapult, Tulikoira). Of course, most of their records somehow display both tendencies at once. Manner leans towards the latter, there's definitely some heavy duty hard rock action going on here, stuff that could even have fit in on alter-ego Pharaoh Overlord's stadium rock Out Of Darkness album, like the triumphant, full on prog/metal opus "Blue King" that precedes the Eno cover on the first side. A lot of this has that epic intensity, also familiar from Rautatie.
Frontman Mika Ratto's wiggy operatic croon is in full effect, on album opener "Lintu Joe", soaring up n' out nonsensically over dramatic crashing guitar chords, restrained rhythms, uneasy synth squiggle, and in general, weird Yes-like proggery. As an introduction to Circle for the masses of Hydra Head fanboys & fangirls who perhaps have never heard these freaky Finns before (this is Circle's first album for HH), it's a bit of a bold move, but heck why not jump in at the deep end?
Like we said, this is vinyl only, but four of the six songs here also appear in more recklessly thrashed live concert renditions on Circle's recent Serpent cd, which we had in stock very briefly at about the same time we originally got Manner. Eventually we'll get more of those back in.
Of note, the die cut cover art, which looks amazing. Limited to 1000 copies in three different colors. We had the "red eye" colored vinyl for Record Store Day, but aren't sure what color the additional copies we got are, probably black.
Clouwbeck is yet another pseudonym for the British ambient folk experimentalist Richard Skelton, following A Broken Consort, Carousell, and a couple others which haven't yet found their way through these doors. Each of his monikers has its own slight yet particular bent on his signature sound of rough hewn melancholia, with Clouwbeck being the most somber and abstract that we've heard from him so far. He strips down the instrumentation to just the violin, although he does allow for a considerable amount of processing and thick applications of layered drone from that instrument, building up a ponderous atmosphere of wintry sadness. The album's opening track "Gossan" scratches out the melody as if the bow were dragged across a piece of barbed wire instead of violin, yet the buzzing, luminous beds of sound that Skelton broadcasts around these scraped recursive melodies prevents the whole thing from tumbling into dissonance. "Leached" softens the rustic buzz with a majestic billowing of overlapping violin melodies, distended and blurred into a rich mass of sound. The rest of the album continues to dive deeper with each track becoming incrementally more submerged in the dense loopings and hazy drones. Throughout, Skelton's album sounds like those beautiful orchestrations from Johann Johannsson as played by Alastair Galbraith and produced by the Caretaker. Really, fantastic stuff.
No, that's not a typo. The album is in fact called 'Early Apes' which is a different anthology than the earlier reviewed collection 'Early Tapes' by Column One, which is a rather strange post-industrial project that cites Dada as a technical blueprint for their collage-based actions, performances, and recordings. The band also speaks of "the politics of confusion" when describing what they're up to, and that seems about right even more so for this collection compared to the aforementioned Early Tapes with its gray masses of decentered loops loaded with psychological disturbances. But again, the spirit of Cranioclast seems to loom large in Column One's sensibility, in part due to the hermeticism of the work but also through the loose collage techniques which intertwine ritualistic rhythms into tape machinations and warbling electronics. The first three tracks on Early Apes come from the 1994 album A Dream Box Experience, which was a super limited LP printed up in an edition of 100 copies. These tracks are quite Spartan with plenty of space draped between the skeletal rhythms and with the specter of feedback resonances looming in the far distance and subtle rumblings that echo as if from some unknown dimension breaking through. The next two cuts are collaborative works with the Polish outfit Za Siodma Gora, but seem to maintain much of Column One's hypnotic patterning and buzzing sound accretions. The final cut "Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire" is an almost rock-based number, more akin to Sprung Aus Den Volken with an insistent bassline and rhythm section laced with exotic marimbas, wooden flutes, twanged guitars, and monotone vocals. This would be the kind of track that Wim Wenders would have picked for one his films back in the '80s, and it's something that would have been an interesting turn for Column One to pursue. Of course, they found other routes to take and concepts to realize, leaving this track a teasing piece of structuralism in their otherwise deconstructed amalgams. Comes in an oversized folio with a pile of postcards.
We first heard Dale Cornish in the context of a different tape on The Tapeworm label, that one from his mysterious ensemble Baraclough, which sounded like some warped and stumbling mix of No Neck style free form clatter and drift, and droned out modern minimalism. Much of that sound surfaces here as well, the main difference being that Fleshpile Thematic seems to be a showcase for Cornish's spoken word, which gives this whole tape a definite Shadow Ring vibe, Cornish's voice an accented deadpan, that only occasionally slips into something resembling a croon (at which times he sounds a bit like a wasted - or more wasted - Scott Walker), but more often than not, delivers his strange prose is a quite reserved manner, occasionally stretching out the syllables, and once in a while slipping into something that sounds almost cockney, but the background music is what makes this so good. Shifting constantly, from shimmery static, distant voices, chiming tones that sound like struck glasses or tiny bells, soft focus clouds of hazy static drift over smoldering chordal swells, lots of deeeeeep drones, woozy, turntable manipulations unleash truncated samples slowly shifting into warbled melodies, the rumble and swirl of music speeding up and slowing down, the white noise of television static, sculpted into strange shadowy, granular shapes, eventually splintering into a weird collage that sounds like Jeck, if most of his turntables were spinning Merzbow records, or were simply TVs turned on to some dead channel at 3am, noisy, but the hiss and wow of the static is muted and blurred into something downright soothing, the whole end of the A side is like a blissed out soft noise record.
The flipside begins with looped metallic shimmer over field recordings of rainfall, and more reverberant tones, the spoken word, now a sort of croon, over haunting swirls of sound, dark and looped and hypnotically droney. The sound shifts eventually into a sort of clanging metal junkyard cabaret, the spoken word dramatic and croony, deep and sonorous and a little over the top, laid over what sounds like someone playing the inside of a piano with a hammer, before dissolving into deep rumbling tones, that blur into a washed out thrum in the background, finally disappearing into a field of electronic hum, droned out and crackling.
Super cool. But definitely depends on your love/tolerance of spoken word, definitely seems like Shadow Ring fans might dig a lot!
Commotus is the debut from Spanish songstress/soundscaper Lucrecia Dalt, and definitely positions her amongst some like minded soundmakers we love - Grouper, US Girls, Valet, Chelsea Wolfe. Dalt has the same sort of knack for weaving lustrous dark dreamscapes, mixing the gothic folk of Wolfe with the hazy soft focus psychedelic drift of Grouper, but adding her own twists, in the case of album opener it's a background of layered, pitch shifted voices, which forms the whole of the sonic backdrop, all harnessed to skittery, percolating rhythms, and laced with a surprising blurt of woozy wah guitar and an out of nowhere swell of bleating brass. The overall effect is ghostly, spectral, haunting and darkly lovely, and the rest of the record unfurls similarly. "Excopolamina" almost sounds like an extension of the opener, a bit more hazy and blurred, metallic riffs muted into a churning rhythm, the beats more skittery, the vocals even more ethereal. Then there's the playful synth solo, and what sounds like an old fashioned wurlitzer humming in the background.
There's definitely a woozy, washed out sort of Caretaker vibe to the proceedings here, the sounds and songs faded and worn, transmissions from some mysterious shadowy otherworld, dark ballads that drift ominously, only to collide with tracks that are downright playful ("Conversa"), which almost sound like a slightly darker, gloomier Liminanas, before slipping right back into another sprawl of abstract shimmer, twang flecked, bass-bloop peppered minimal murkiness, or some wispy slo-mo space blues, or some tripped out doomfolk new wave dirgery. But whatever strain of Dalt's dark sonic DNA drifts to the fore, she renders it haunting and heavenly, mysterious and murky, whether it's propulsive and groovy, or blissed out and barely there, it's always dreamlike and otherworldly.
Stick around for the 8+ minute closer "Batholith", which is fast becoming our favorite, a sprawling stretch of minimal country murk, woozy, ethereal, laced with whirring organs, panned sound swooping from speaker to speaker, and some near carnivalesque melodies, all woven into a strangely psychedelic spaced out bit of lysergic dream pop shimmer. So good.
Yet another killer discovery from our pals at Medical Records, a lost synthpop / electropop gem from the duo Disco Volante, who existed briefly in the early eighties, and only ever released this one 7" in 1984, a dark and driving slab of DIY, lo-fi new wave pop, all skittery drum machines, pulsating synths, and snarly vox, the A side "No Motion" was definitely their coulda-been-a-hit, with a strange chorus, laced with cascading synths and swirling processed voices, the B-side "Click" is all dark pulsing synth buzz, wreathed in sound effects, laced with playful melodies, a loping rhythmic groove, and another twisted, not-exactly catchy chorus, but one that sticks in your head nonetheless. Longtime readers of the aQ list might find themselves reminded of the Jones Machine, which is NEVER a bad thing.
The extra live track on the B-side displays the group in their element, rocking some dark club, and sounding way more punk, the synth (or is that a guitar?), super distorted, the drum machine pounding away, the vocals wreathed in echo and reverb, and delivered even more stridently, in the background the carnivalesque synth swirls adding a definite psychedelic vibe, not to mention the FX drenched swirling synth freakout finale. Killer stuff! And finally widely available, for the first time essentially, after years of circulating as a low quality download and occasionally popping up as an outrageously priced eBay rarity. Get one before they're gone. Again.
Housed in a super heavy, full color sleeve, pressed on super thick black vinyl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
The return of Ducktails finds this formerly 'hypnogogic pop' outfit, who previously trafficked in a warped, murky tropical surf pop, delivering their most polished and poppy record yet, one that sounds less removed than ever from Ducktails mainman Matthew Mondanile's other band, Real Estate. The opener is a sweet slab of warm, shimmery, classic sounding jangle pop, the guitars lightly flanged, the vocals soft and breezy, the drums simple and propulsive, the whole sound wreathed in a soft haze of echo and reverb, chiming, and dreamy, and pretty darn near perfect. The second track offers up more of the same, but with more of a seventies soft rock slant, right down to the electric piano, that definitely gives it a bit of a yacht rock vibe, but Mondanile, manages to overcome any sort of cheesiness and craft a warm slab of classic pop, that really does sound like some lost seventies B side. And that seventies vibe is all over The Flower Lane, from the disco drums and horns (!) on "Under Cover", to the string laden echo drenched piano driven shuffle of "Timothy Shy". Some of the tracks slip back into the modern day, "Planet Phrom" is all chiming, psychedelic jangle pop, replete with weird lyrics about other planets and alien wives, but then it's right back into some lost alternative universe seventies, with a track like "Assistant Director" that adds some new wave to the occasion, that track a twisted bridge between both sides of Ducktails divergent musical personality here. Oh did we mention the bongos? Those bongos though are wreathed in spacey effects and wah wah guitar. It's a weird sound, and a weird record, for sure, and would definitely not work if Mondanile weren't such a good songwriter, and such a master in the studio, managing to somehow merge the sound of Squeeze and Steely Dan with something more fuzzy and psychedelic, the result at once retro and weirdly psychedelic.
For a while there, Enslaved were one of our favorite black metal bands, maybe our favorite in fact, Frost, Eld, Mardraum, all firmly ensconced in our BM pantheon for sure. And we always appreciated the band's progression, and sonic shift toward something more proggy, more 'proggressive', cuz obviously we love when bands get weirder and push their sound into new, weird directions, but even so, eventually we still sort of began to lost interest, so much so that some of the old school Enslaved fans around here (one of which is writing this review) didn't even bother listening much to their last couple records. But word was this new one was a return to form, or as close to it as could be expected, the band returning to heavier more classic black metal sound, without ditching any of their newfound/longtime progginess.
And while we definitely do dig this new record, rumors of the group's return to something blacker and heavier were definitely a bit exaggerated. There are still some heavy bits for sure, but the non heavy parts are WAY more abundant, and the while the progression over the last few records may have been subtle, returning to the band several albums down the line is pretty shocking, with the band sounding more like letter era Opeth, and often like Muse or Queens Of The Stoneage, both bands we love, but those sounds coming out of Enslaved still seem a bit weird, and the group seem to have shed their Viking metal sound almost entirely. That said, they do this new metallic prog pop thing really well, and if it wasn't Enslaved, we probably wouldn't have as many reservations, we'd just be thinking, wow, this is a seriously kick ass metallic prog combo. Which is probably the best way to approach it, as if they're essentially not the same band that made Frost and Eld. But really, even Monumension, which is probably our favorite record from the new era of Enslaved, seems pretty far removed from the sound on RIITIIR. But there are still heavy moments throughout that knock our socks off, like, there's a brief bit in "Death In The Eyes Of Dawn" where the sound coalesces into a killer stop/start break, before exploding into a wild tangle of furious snare drum and swirling psychedelic shred, all beneath shrieked and bellowed vox, serious prog metal bliss for sure, and then just as suddenly the band slip into some seriously poppy fuzzy crooning that sounds like Katatonia, and yet, as disparate as those parts are, they still sound pretty cool together. And on the other side of the coin, there are some seriously sublime poppy moments, hooky riffs, crazy catchy melodies, fuzzed out bass grooves, that would most definitely put most pop bands to shame.
We know this review is starting to sound wishy washy, but we're torn, still getting our heads around the new Enslaved, and trying to get over our undying love for those old records, but digging most of this record like crazy, and the more we listen to this, and the more we stop wishing it would start sounding like Frost, the more we realize just how good this record really is.
While they last, we've got the deluxe version with the bonus DVD, featuring a making of RIITIIR documentary. The vinyl is pressed on bone colored, charcoal splattered vinyl, and comes in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve.
For a while there, Enslaved were one of our favorite black metal bands, maybe our favorite in fact, Frost, Eld, Mardraum, all firmly ensconced in our BM pantheon for sure. And we always appreciated the band's progression, and sonic shift toward something more proggy, more 'proggressive', cuz obviously we love when bands get weirder and push their sound into new, weird directions, but even so, eventually we still sort of began to lost interest, so much so that some of the old school Enslaved fans around here (one of which is writing this review) didn't even bother listening much to their last couple records. But word was this new one was a return to form, or as close to it as could be expected, the band returning to heavier more classic black metal sound, without ditching any of their newfound/longtime progginess.
And while we definitely do dig this new record, rumors of the group's return to something blacker and heavier were definitely a bit exaggerated. There are still some heavy bits for sure, but the non heavy parts are WAY more abundant, and the while the progression over the last few records may have been subtle, returning to the band several albums down the line is pretty shocking, with the band sounding more like letter era Opeth, and often like Muse or Queens Of The Stoneage, both bands we love, but those sounds coming out of Enslaved still seem a bit weird, and the group seem to have shed their Viking metal sound almost entirely. That said, they do this new metallic prog pop thing really well, and if it wasn't Enslaved, we probably wouldn't have as many reservations, we'd just be thinking, wow, this is a seriously kick ass metallic prog combo. Which is probably the best way to approach it, as if they're essentially not the same band that made Frost and Eld. But really, even Monumension, which is probably our favorite record from the new era of Enslaved, seems pretty far removed from the sound on RIITIIR. But there are still heavy moments throughout that knock our socks off, like, there's a brief bit in "Death In The Eyes Of Dawn" where the sound coalesces into a killer stop/start break, before exploding into a wild tangle of furious snare drum and swirling psychedelic shred, all beneath shrieked and bellowed vox, serious prog metal bliss for sure, and then just as suddenly the band slip into some seriously poppy fuzzy crooning that sounds like Katatonia, and yet, as disparate as those parts are, they still sound pretty cool together. And on the other side of the coin, there are some seriously sublime poppy moments, hooky riffs, crazy catchy melodies, fuzzed out bass grooves, that would most definitely put most pop bands to shame.
We know this review is starting to sound wishy washy, but we're torn, still getting our heads around the new Enslaved, and trying to get over our undying love for those old records, but digging most of this record like crazy, and the more we listen to this, and the more we stop wishing it would start sounding like Frost, the more we realize just how good this record really is.
While they last, we've got the deluxe version with the bonus DVD, featuring a making of RIITIIR documentary. The vinyl is pressed on bone colored, charcoal splattered vinyl, and comes in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve.
Once again, these two Chilean psych bands, Follakazoid and The Holydrug Couple, each sharing a member with the other, release their records at the same time, giving us a glimpse of two sides of a similar sonic personality. Elsewhere on the list you'll find the latest from The Holydrug Couple, but here, we revisit the psychedelic modern space-kraut sprawl of Follakzoid, whose sound is equal parts classic psych/space rock, and more modern garage psych mesmer. The opening track here definitely had us thinking of Wooden Shjips, the looped and loping low slung bassline, the sonic swirls and laconic vocals, everything drenched in echo and reverb, a hazy, druggy, droned out psychedelic space dirge laced with weird little synth squiggles, and dense clouds of crumbling distortion. Like a darker, more rocking Spacemen 3, which is most definitely not a bad thing. A lot of the rest of the record drifts way more into old school jam band territory, think Hawkwind, Santana, Pink Floyd, just hazy, washed out stretches of hypnotic, rhythmic mesmer, the core sound a bass and drum groove, very propulsive and motorik, the krautrock vibe is huge, then all around that groove, synths, and guitars, and voices, swirl and swoop and drift. It's heady hypnotic stuff, in fact, some tracks, like "99" sound a lot like Circle at time, that same sort of kick ass hypnorock churn, but Follakzoid definitely make that sound their druggy, laid back, tripped out own. And be sure and stick around for 15 minute closer "Pulsar", which is the sort of heart-of-the-sun psych groove bliss out we could listen to forever.
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We were immediately blown way by this twisted slab of primsatic psychedelia, all lo-fi rhythms, bagpipe like synth squelch, and spidery snakecharmer melodies. It's crunchy and fuzzy, feedback drenched, droned out and totally hypnotic, like a dizzying mix of the shamanistic mesmer of Dan Higgs, the minimal zoner kraut-psych of Zomes, and the warped rainbow rhythm-ed distorto-hop of Black Moth Super Rainbow (and BMSR offshoot Tobacco too)! And really, this record totally came from out of left field, we had no expectations, in fact at first we had no idea who Dan Friel even was, being mostly unacquainted with his band Parts & Labor, and what little we did know had us thinking maybe we wouldn't really even be all that into P&L anyway. But Total Folklore definitely has us rethinking everything.
The first track alone is worth the price of admission, and even if the record had consisted of nothing but that lumbering, 12+ minute chunk of deliriously distorted, noise drenched, outsider grooviness, we'd still have made it Record Of The Week. After a short squall of tangled buzz and swirling tones, the sounds coalesce into a buzzing raga like melody, draped over a super crunchy, crumbling rhythm, a sort of hip hop / industrial lumber, each beat a burst of staticky buzz, sculpted into a dense, driving, motorik caveman groove, while over the top, those melodies are constantly shifting and swirling, stretching out into layered drones, streaks of feedback doused shimmer, and when the melodies to abate, leaving just the beat, to pound and stutter, when they do swoop back in, the result is a sort of chaotic noise-raga, that manages to be loose and freeform, but simultaneously tranced out and hypnotic. Eventually, the sound slips back into that opening groove, this time, all the synths and buzzing melodies even more distorted and blown out, making for a heady chunk of multi-hued noise industrial drone-pop zoner-psych that will have you setting it on repeat for sure.
The rest of the record is divided into way shorter fragments, none of the remaining tracks clocking in at more than 3:45, with a handful of ultra short 'intermissions', but all of those tracks, intermissions and songs proper, displaying the same sort of blown out psychedelia. "Windmills" sounds like Sunroof! and Our Love Will Destroy The World mashed up and transformed into something a bit more playful and groovy, while "Valedictorian" drapes ethereal shimmer over what sounds like stuttering fuzz pop riffage, a swirling super catchy melody, and it's about as close as this comes to some mutant strain of ultra hook heavy noise pop. It's not hard to imagine this as some warped remix of a classic early era Flaming Lips jam. "Velocipede" is all woozy crumbling distortion, tweaked electronics, in-the-red synth buzz, a noisy blur that somehow ends up sounding more dreamy and psychedelic than chaotic.
The rest of the tracks split the difference between tripped out experimental electronic groovescapes, dense noisy psychedelic swirls, pulsing pulsating komische freakouts and crazy catchy pop in electronic mad scientist's clothing, with each and every variation displaying an impossible knack for dense, heavily layered, ultra distorted productions that are pure headphone blossouts, but also even the most obtuse fractured bit of noisiness is somehow hooky as hell, whether it's the chugging blurred out crunch of "Landslide", or the crumbling feedback drenched electro-kraut churn of "Badlands". AWESOME!
Another awesome find from the diggers at Finders Keepers / B-Music! This '70s Spanish (Catalan) band, as their name implies, plays freaky fusion jazz/rock, kinda like a (more) wacked out Return To Forever! It's psychedelically groovy stuff, high on classical gasses, that at times even reminds us a bit of Bollywood, and much else besides (a goofier Goblin, anyone? Le Orme? Wolfgang Dauner?). Fusioon is for sure fun.
Ferinstance, the buzzy, bouncy synth and Spanish-languge chant of the quirky, rhythmic "Farsa Del Buen Vivir" is utterly delightful, deservedly drawing comparisons to old kid-friendly funk fave Stark Reality.
The dozen selections here, drawn from Fusioon's singles and lps for the Belter Progressiva label in the early/mid '70s, are percussively propulsive, sometimes soundtrack-suspenseful, and always packed with surprises, including symphonic-sounding bits and electronic blitzes...
And as always, the Finders Keepers folks fit this cd out with a booklet full of colorful photos, graphics, and extensive, expert liner notes (by Cherrystones and Andy Votel) delving into the details of Fusioon's career, and in general schooling us about the psych/jazz scene in Franco's Spain.
Been meaning to review this for a while now, kick ass split of distorto-electro from these two Chicago outfits, Windbreaker being the reason we were into this in the first place as that group includes members of aQ faves Lazer Crystal, and fans of that outfit's sound will find much to dig here, pulsing crunching beats, swirling kosmische synths, tangled melodies, there's an early eighties video game music vibe, but also some sort of alien dance party thing going on too, with the beats fractured and fucked up, and thick squalls of weirdo FX and dense swells of noisiness, the second Windbreaker track slipping more into Zombi / John Carpenter territory, with cheesy eighties synths and vocodered vocals, definitely channeling old VHS movie montages, groovy and funky, spaced out and cosmically psychedelic.
Gel Set bring it way down on their side, unfurling a sort of sexy sci-fi murk, all handclap rhythms, sultry ethereal vox, distant swirling synths, minimal pulsing rhythms, the vibe is definitely "love theme from outer space", the sound like it could be from some Italians Do It Better 12", dreamy and washed out, woozily hypnotic, the second track "U Lock In My Hand" is super stripped down and spacey, pure sexy pouter space slo-mo synth disco blissout dreamdrift with some surprisingly swaggery bad ass lyrics, delivered in a dreamy laid back chanteuse croon.
Pressed on green vinyl!
It'd normally be enough that Finders Keepers / B-Music decided to reissue a soundtrack, we'd assume it was awesome just 'cause they gave it their stamp of approval. That's true. But this one, though, well how could it NOT be good, with that title/concept?? Awesome music aside, heck we wanna see the movie. Werewolves On Wheels, for reals? As one of the radio adverts included here as a bonus track puts it: "Here comes the most eerie, the most chilling, the most terrifying motorcycle horror film ever made... Werewolves On Wheels - in color - is the most unusual bizarre film yet... Werewolves On Wheels is the ghoulish story of a wild motorcycle gang lost in the desert, mocking the supernatural... one by one they die... unnatural unbelievable deaths... they are afraid of nothing but they cannot fight what they cannot see and do not understand!" Sounds good, doesn't it? As lovers of another Satanic psychedelic '70s motorcycle horror film, Psychomania, we're sold. And like Psychomania, this has a way cool soundtrack. Which can also be filed alongside another biker B-Music release, Billy Green's Stone OST.
This 1971 low budget chiller thriller's "Main Theme" is 5+ minutes of percussive rhythms adorned with flashes of fuzz guitar, simple and effective, as hypnotic as it is haunting. Groovy! That's followed by the hippie country rock of "Mount Shasta Home", and there's another cool slice of country tonk later on with "One Foot In Heaven", but the majority of the soundtrack is devoted to more abstract, weirdly stumbling, atmospheric stuff, perhaps trying to evoke a tripped out Native American desert vibe, with ringing and rattling and what sounds like wrasslin'... there's sudden stabs of synth and the occasional line of campy movie dialog. Several of the tracks (the three spooky "Ritual" ones in particular) could be sinister krautrock jams, full of thumping hand drums, crackling fire, and synthesizer sounds. Other tracks are more groovadelic, yet creepy too, with propulsive rhythms, acid guitar licks, droning FX, and of course revving motorcycle engines and screams of terror.
For all we know, the movie, the directorial debut of Roger Corman/Russ Meyer associate Michel Levesque, isn't even so bad it's good. But the soundtrack, it's for sure fantastic! If The Byrds had teamed up with Goblin to do a soundtrack, maybe this is what the results would have sounded like!?! We're also reminded of Ry Cooder's Cyleib People - if they jammed with Sylvester Anfang, perhaps. The label suggests a Sandy Bull/Amon Duul team up, and we won't argue with that comparison either. Another winner - of course - from the Finders Keepers folks!!
This mysterious UK psychedelic space rock collective return with this sprawling three track 12" that displays a whole 'nother side to these faves. Whereas before, we typically aligned Gnod with groups like White Hills, and Carlton Melton, and the Heads, on these three tracks, they delve into a twisted strain of dark electronics, which to a certain degree still retain some of the psychedelia and spaciness of past outings, but here, those elements are woven into a pulsing landscape of murk and slow shifting texture, a sort of primitive psychedelic house music really, the opener is all sequenced pulse and throb, beneath a slow swirl of greyed out shimmer, and underpinned by deep rumbling low end, mesmerizingly motorik and minimal, not danceable per se, but certainly still some sort of mutant electronica, which on in "20 Sides A Minute" unfurls into an epic stretch of minimal skitter, percolating synth sputter beneath a slowed down four on the floor rhythm, the surrounding sounds swirling drowsily from speaker to speaker, the sounds growing darker and more minimal as the track progresses, sort of reminding us of Shit & Shine if they made a record for Kompakt if that makes any sense. Tripped out, and darkly meditative, with some extreme stereo panning that is definitely made for headphone trip out.
The whole of the B side is taken up by the 16+ minute "Defeatism", which starts out as a hushed drone, before revealing itself as some weird gothy new wave jam, all 303 drum machines, swirly synth pads, manic rhythmic skitter, over drifty chordal swirl and shimmery ambience, it's Gnod, so there's plenty of weirdness going on in and around and under the surface, and about half way through the sound shifts dramatically, and becomes super murky and muddy and ominous, the low end expanding into a black sonic cloud, before turning downright kosmische at one point, only to finish things off with a wild tangled of bass pulsations, fluttering skitter, and FX drenched crackle, once again swirling wildly from speaker to speaker, adding a disorienting psychedelic edge to the proceedings.
There's a certain degree of WTF? going on, but we're beginning to think these guys do actually have more in common with a group like Shit & Shine than The Heads, their focus on rhythm and texture, and achieving serious psychedelia by manipulating and sculpting the two.
There is of course a download code, which not only gets you the whole record in digital form, but also a FIFTY minute bonus track, recorded live, the band doing a similar set as to what's on the record, but a bit more rough edged and raw life, a little bit noisier and abstract, but channeling the same sort of electronic psych-kraut spirit.
Pressed on opaque gold vinyl, and as always extremely limited, so much so that this may very well be the only batch we'll be able to get!
The THIRD repress of this exquisite album on vinyl. If you missed it the last two times, don't expect this one to last any longer! The only difference is the black & white artwork, but the musical content is the same. Here's what we said way back when...
Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with an entirely characteristic yet coy swell of effected elemental smear, crumbling delicately yet forcefully, until giving way to what is, to date, and here is the coy part, Liz Harris' most songwriterly and structured album. As opposed to the rich swaths of drone that up until now defined her sound, Harris has shifted from the abstract towards a more distinct and figurative sound. True to the title, the record unfolds like a sort of mysterious and morbid fairytale, innocent in its clear and elegant melodies, yet creepy and highly abstract in its more droney and sublime interludes. For the most part, her guitar playing is laid bare, removed from the dense fog of effects that typically occlude them. And what we discover is actually a pretty strummy record, with plenty of clean guitar articulation though certainly the aroma of her previous tech heavy approach remains in what is relatively speaking still pretty effected. At times she even reverts back to the gorgeous icey crunchy string attack of some previous efforts. With so much space liberated in the absence of drones, we also get to hear her stunning voice. Furthermore, the occasional audible lyric creeps to the surface, one standout fragment being "Love Is Enormous," a somewhat shockingly affirmative sentiment from an otherwise darkly mysterious and abstract persona. From start to finish Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill lulls you into its graceful murmurings and hypnotic thrumming. An exquisite addition to an already compelling discography. Recommended.
Grouper's Liz Harris seems to be settling in comfortably on the Kranky label, with the release so far of the two AIA lps on cd for the first time, the debut from Mirrorring (Harris's duo project with Jesy Fortino from Tiny Vipers), and this "new" release, The Man Who Died In His Boat, which has come out in conjunction with a lp and cd reissue of her 2008 record Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, an AQ favorite. The release/re-release of both records together is no coincidence as the tracks on The Man Who Died In His Boat were recorded during the same sessions as Dragging A Dead Deer, and the new record has a long lost twin feel that we haven't heard on subsequent Grouper records since then. While she still employs the waves of foggy reverb and layered far away voices, there is a reappearance of fully formed songs and a sheen of less-filtered clarity. Both records are informed by key childhood memories, this one by a discovery with her father of beached sailboat, and their speculation about the man who disappeared sailing it. The ocean roar, swelling waves of reverbed sound, and the far away sadness of acoustic sea shanties pour throughout the release creating a moving hypnotic spell which invariably holds us helpless in its grasp. Beautiful!
Currently, we only have the cd version, but the vinyl versions of both this and the reissue of Dragging A Dead Deer are supposedly alredy being repressed.
If you asked us (do it!) to recommend you a good modern day "prog rock" band, Guapo would be at the top of the list, which would be obvious if you've seen our many, many reviews of the fantastically proggy output of this long running British unit, who have released albums on such labels as Cuneiform, Ipecac, tUMULt, Neurot, and now Cuneiform again. Their all-instrumental excursions into the epic outer reaches of compositional complexity and dark moodiness certainly owe something to the '70s prog greats but don't really come off as "retro" the way, like, Astra does (though that's fine with us too). Also their inspirations aren't just the more popular groups like Yes and King Crimson, they're probably more informed by the likes of Magma and Univers Zero.
With History Of The Visitation, Guapo's first album since 2008, the band's current lineup - featuring founding member and drummer extraordinare David Smith, along with three other gents, some of whom have also played in Cardiacs and Chrome Hoof, on guitar, bass, and keyboards, PLUS bunch of guests on violin, oboe, bassoon, French horn and other fancy instruments - continue to indulge in the epic, cinematic, somewhat sinister sounds that we love 'em for. Case in point, the album's opening track, a five-part suite called "The Pilman Radiant", at over 26 minutes commandeering a good half of the disc, an entire vinyl side in fact, which does the long slow build up from sedate & somber, sorta 20th century classical hiss/drone atmospherics, to a lumbering melodiousness, to full-on jazzed-up soloing, getting pretty darn convoluted before it's over, making for a powerful prog statement all right. Whew. Could almost be a Stinking Lizaveta song, stretched to, like, ten times ordinary length, with keyboards and effective soundtracky bits added in. The remaining two tracks here (side two of the vinyl) make similar, but somewhat more concise statements. "Complex #7" is relatively brief and ambient at under 5 minutes, and then there's the over 11 minute "Tremors From The Future", the later being a repetitive, rhythmically complex hypno-prog jam with plenty of muscle.
As mentioned, Cuneiform has released this on both cd and vinyl. Both formats come with a bonus dvd, featuring live footage of Guapo on stage at two festivals - NEARfest 2006 in Pennsylvania and RIO 2007 in France, when Daniel O'Sullivan (of Aethenor, Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses, Grumbling Fur, Ulver, etc.) was still in the band. That artists like Magma and Keith Emerson also appeared at those shows should tell you something.
The gatefold vinyl version is limited to 300 copies and includes a digital download.
One of two new tapes this week from the Brotherhood Of Light label, who over the last few months have brought us a bunch of killer releases from Sunchariot, Surt, Uruk Hai as well as a bad ass label sampler. This latest comes from a one band band called Haar, who as far as we can tell, is the work of the man behind the label, as well as both Sunchariot and Surt (or at least someone also involved in the Brotherhood Of Light horde), and like those two groups, Haar traffics in a mournful blasting black metal, super lo-fi, with frenzied insectoid riffing, bellowed vokills, and drums blasting away, but those drums mostly buried WAY down in the mix, the overall result definitely benefits from the raw production, turning minimal black buzz into something droney and almost psychedelic, the sounds blurring into one another, washed out and super hypnotic, doused in what sound like weird FX, but could just be fucked up tape and recording process, the tape hiss almost as loud as the guitars, which give the whole thing a sort of BM by way of Jeck or Tim Hecker vibe, at least a little bit. And yet, as primitive and low fidelity as the sound is, the guitars here are fucking fierce, some seriously bad ass riffing, that sometimes seem to soar into dense tangles of blackshred, the whole thing a dizzying blackened slab frantic blast and buzz, all underpinned by a haunting moody shimmer. And be warned, even with our Walkman as loud as it would go, it was still not very loud, so be prepared to CRANK IT, and be rewarded with ears full of glorious lo-fi hypno-trance, black buzz.
Once again, these two Chilean psych bands, Follakazoid and The Holydrug Couple, each sharing a member with the other, release their records at the same time, giving us a glimpse of two sides of a similar sonic personality. Elsewhere on the list you'll find the latest from psychedelic space-kraut combo Follakzoid, but here, we're reunited with cosmic, sun dappled dream psych duo The Holydrug Couple. Unlike the stretched out psych jams of Follakzoid, The Holydrug Couple traffic in a sound more overtly poppy, while still constructed from the same psychedelic building blocks, fuzzy guitars, propulsive motorik drumming, echo drenched vox, the song structures looped and hypnotic, THDC locking to endless grooves, and then playing those endless grooves at pop song length, the longest track here close to eight minutes, but most clocking in around 3 or 4. Fans of the Wooden Shjips, Spyrals, and other local SF psych combos will once again find much to love here, a sort of revved up Spacemen 3 vibe, but with plenty of jangle.
A quick listen to opener "Counting Sailboats" will tell you whether this is your sort of jam or not. Hazy, hypnotic, darkly groovy, infused with plenty of melody, and subtle hooks, psych pop minimalism that's hard to resist. And the rest of the record plays out similarly, mixing in swoonsome strings, acoustic guitars, organs, loads of FX, and weaving them into all sorts of different sonic shapes, from the fuzzy drift of "Sailor", a psych pop trifle, to the seventies sounding dreampsych soft rock groover "Follow Your Way" (which sounds a bit like a more psychedelic Bread), to the woozy, murky, druggy, longform drift of "Out Of Sight", that really could have been twice as long, even at eight minutes, to the echo drenched garage pop of "Red Moon", to the super warped, lysergic jangle of "Willoweed", to the seriously heavy garage psych of "Paisley", and on and on.
Definitely a sweet slab of psychedelic pop, for folks who dig the Shjips, Assemble Head, Sleepy Sun, Moon Duo and the like.
History hasn't always been kind to bluegrass and folk musicians of yore who weren't so lucky to get recording contracts or be discovered by travelling musicologists. Case in point the story of Lena Hughes, a Missouri born fiddler, banjoist and guitarist who specialized in parlor music, a folk form that consisted of renditions of hymns, sentimental songs, 19th century airs and finger-picked tunes of fiddle songs, often played in specialized tunings. She was born in 1904 and died in 1998, and during her long life she only cut one record, which came out on a private press in the sixties. But, she was well-known on the Ozark mountains music circuit that she toured extensively throughout her career. Her finger picking style is magical, often employing an ethereal open tuning technique, on songs that have the sweet sadness of days gone by. Recently remastered, this Tompkins Square rediscovery is truly a joy to behold. Highly recommended!
Incantation maintain their status as one of our all-time death metal faves (of which there aren't that many) with this devastating new album. However, we've noticed that death metal per se is perhaps not the most popular of metal genres that we stock at aQ, but if we described Incantation's music as 'extreme blackened doomic death-dirge' or somesuch, that should hopefully pull in a few of you!!
While there are some who would have it that long-running, line-up-changing death metal institution Incantation's glory (gory?) days belong to the '90s, with Vanquish In Vengeance, their first in more than 5 years, it would seem that these vets have their mojo back! You probably won't hear a more solid slab of doomed-out death metal this year. Perhaps because their brand of old school blasphemic blasting and slo-mo brutality has become the 'in' thing amongst the death metal underground, what with acclaimed acts like Hooded Menace, Encoffination, Vasaeleth, and Disma (ex-Incantation members, that one) all righteously worshiping at the Incantation altar, the originators wanted to demonstrate who does it best. Though, they do it here with powerful production (and a mix by Dan Swano) that's not quite as 'underground' sounding as that of their older stuff, or that of most of their current followers, but is no less brutal - if anything, moreso. And they remain dirgey as hell - just check out the 12+ minute album-closer, "Legion Of Dis", an epic of majestic morbidity.
W e d o n ' t k n o w h o w T i m e R e l e a s e d S o u n d d o e s i t . F i r s t , t h e y ' r e a l w a y s f i n d i n g s o m e n e w , i n t e r e s t i n g e x p e r i m e n t a l a r t i s t w e ' v e n e v e r h e a r d o f b e f o r e . T h e n , c o m i n g u p w i t h a n e l a b o r a t e & u n i q u e i d e a f o r d e l u x e , l i m i t e d e d i t i o n p a c k a g i n g , t h a t m u s t r e q u i r e h o u r s a n d h o u r s o f w o r k t o m a k e a n d a s s e m b l e . T h e r e ' s a R E A S O N t h e d e l u x e v e r s i o n s c o s t , l i k e , f o r t y - f i v e d o l l a r s , f o l k s !
O n T R S ' s l a t e s t r e l e a s e , t h e y ' r e i n t r o d u c i n g u s t o a B r i t i s h a r t i s t c a l l e d T h e I n v e n t o r s O f A i r c r a f t , w h o s e d i s c W h e r e T h e L i g h t S t o p s i s i n s p i r e d b y a n o t h e r m o d e o f t r a n s p o r t i o n - t r a i n s . M o r e s p e c i f i c a l l y , b y " t h e d e c l i n e a n d p r i v a t i z a t i o n o f t h e r a i l w a y i n d u s t r y i n t h e U K " w h i c h h a v e h a s l e f t m a n y o b s o l e t e , a b a n d o n e d r a i l w a y s t a t i o n s a c r o s s t h e l a n d . S o i t h a s a n o s t a l g i c , m e l a n c h o n i c v i b e . T h e b e a u t i f u l , d r o n i n g , d r a m a t i c s h i m m e r o f T I O A ' s m u s i c e v o k e s b o t h t h e p a s s i n g o f l a n d c a p e s o u t o f a r a i l c a r w i n d o w , b u t a l s o t h e p a s s i n g o f b e l o v e d t h i n g s o u t o f u s e , i n t o t h e m i s t s o f t i m e . M a d e w i t h i n s t r u m e n t s a n d f i e l d r e c o r d i n g s e l e c t r o n i c a l l y s a m p l e d a n d p r o c e s s e d , t h e s e c o m p o s i t i o n s a r e s l o w - m o v i n g , b l i s s f u l b u t s a d , f u l l o f e c h o i n g b i t s o f s t a t i c a n d n e a r - a m b i e n t m e l o d i e s , m o v i n g i n c y c l i c w a v e s . O c c a s i o n a l l y y o u c a n t e l l , t h a t ' s a p i a n o i n t h e r e , o r a b l u r r e d s u g g e s t i o n o f a c h u g g i n g t r a i n f r o m a t r e a t e d f i e l d r e c o r d i n g, I t ' s a t m o s p h e r i c e l e c t r o n i c a t h a t w o u l d p r o b a b l y a l s o b e a t h o m e o n t h e M i a s m a h l a b e l , o r U t e c h . Q u i t e d r e a m y , a n d a g o o d l i s t e n f o r a n y o n e t i r e d o f t h e f a s t p a c e o f m o d e r n l i f e , y e a n i n g f o r s i m p l e r d a y s . W e ' d r e c o m m e n d t h i s t o f a n s o f T h e C a r e t a k e r , R e i g n s , a n d J a s p e r T X a m o n g s t o t h e r s .
S o t h a t c o v e r s t h e m u s i c , w h i c h b y i t s e l f i s c o m p l e t e l y w o r t h w h i l e , a n d i f t h a t ' s e n o u g h f o r y o u , t h e n g e t t h e " s t a n d a r d " c d e d i t i o n , w h i c h c o m e s i n a w h i t e , h a n d - s t a m p e d s l e e v e . B U T , a s f o l l o w e r s o f T i m e R e l e a s e d S o u n d l a b e l k n o w , t h e r e ' s a l s o a d e l u x e , s p e c i a l l y p a c k a g e d v e r s i o n t h a t ' s b e e n c r e a t e d o f t h i s t o o . S u p e r l i m i t e d , t o j u s t 1 0 0 c o p i e s , a l r e a d y s o l d o u t a t t h e l a b e l - w e h a v e j u s t 5 a n d t h a t ' s I T . A n d w h e n w e s a y " s p e c i a l l y p a c k a g e d " , w e m e a n i t . T R S h a s d o n e s o m e o v e r - t h e - t o p p a c k a g i n g b e f o r e b u t t h i s o n e i s r e a l l y i m p r e s s i v e . L e t ' s q u o t e t h e i r m e t i c u l o u s d e s c r i p t i o n o f i t : " E a c h o f t h e s e c o m e s i n a h a n d s e w n , 5 . 5" x 1 4" f o l d i n g w a l l e t t y p e s l e e v e & f r o n t e d w i t h a n u m b e r e d , 1 0 0 y e a r o l d s t o c k c e r t i f i c a t e f r o m t h e n o w d e f u n c t T i m e R e l e a s e d S o u n d R a i l w a y s L t d . E a c h i s h e l d c l o s e d w i t h a s t r e t c h o f t r a i n t r a c k , a n d t i e d o f f w i t h s t r i n g . I n s i d e a r e a n t i q u e g r a v u r e s o f t h e p a s s i n g c o u n t r y s i d e , v i n t a g e s i g n a l d i a g r a m s a n d d e s c r i p t i o n s , a n d a w o r k i n g r e d l i g h t ! E a c h w i l l c o m e i n a h a n d l a b e l l e d b l a c k e n v e l o p e . A l s o, e v e r y o n e t h a t p u r c h a s e s a c o p y w i l l b e s e p a r a t e l y m a i l e d a u n i q u e , a n t i q u e s t e a m t r a i n p o s t c a r d w / h a n d w o r k i n g s, w h i c h u p o n a r r i v a l w i l l f i t n i c e l y i n t o t h e s l e e v e , a n d b e c o m e a p e r s o n a l i z e d p a r t o f t h e p a c k a g e ! "
Y e s , t h a t ' s r i g h t . T h e r e ' s a l i g h t i n t h e r e t h a t b l i n k s ! A n d a p i e c e o f a t o y t r a i n t r a c k . A n d a s t o c k c e r t i f i c a t e . A n d , y e s , i f y o u p r o v i d e u s w i t h y o u r m a i l i n g a d d r e s s ( w h i c h y o u n a t u r a l l y w i l l d o i f y o u a r e a m a i l o r d e r c u s t o m e r a n y w a y ) , w e ' l l p a s s y o u r i n f o a l o n g t o T R S s o t h e y c a n s e n d y o u t h a t p o s t c a r d ! A n d t h u s y o u ' l l h a v e a t r u l y o n e o f a k i n d , p e r s o n a l i z e d a r t e d i t i o n o f t h i s l o v e l y c d .
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
W e d o n ' t k n o w h o w T i m e R e l e a s e d S o u n d d o e s i t . F i r s t , t h e y ' r e a l w a y s f i n d i n g s o m e n e w , i n t e r e s t i n g e x p e r i m e n t a l a r t i s t w e ' v e n e v e r h e a r d o f b e f o r e . T h e n , c o m i n g u p w i t h a n e l a b o r a t e & u n i q u e i d e a f o r d e l u x e , l i m i t e d e d i t i o n p a c k a g i n g , t h a t m u s t r e q u i r e h o u r s a n d h o u r s o f w o r k t o m a k e a n d a s s e m b l e . T h e r e ' s a R E A S O N t h e d e l u x e v e r s i o n s c o s t , l i k e , f o r t y - f i v e d o l l a r s , f o l k s !
O n T R S ' s l a t e s t r e l e a s e , t h e y ' r e i n t r o d u c i n g u s t o a B r i t i s h a r t i s t c a l l e d T h e I n v e n t o r s O f A i r c r a f t , w h o s e d i s c W h e r e T h e L i g h t S t o p s i s i n s p i r e d b y a n o t h e r m o d e o f t r a n s p o r t i o n - t r a i n s . M o r e s p e c i f i c a l l y , b y " t h e d e c l i n e a n d p r i v a t i z a t i o n o f t h e r a i l w a y i n d u s t r y i n t h e U K " w h i c h h a v e h a s l e f t m a n y o b s o l e t e , a b a n d o n e d r a i l w a y s t a t i o n s a c r o s s t h e l a n d . S o i t h a s a n o s t a l g i c , m e l a n c h o n i c v i b e . T h e b e a u t i f u l , d r o n i n g , d r a m a t i c s h i m m e r o f T I O A ' s m u s i c e v o k e s b o t h t h e p a s s i n g o f l a n d c a p e s o u t o f a r a i l c a r w i n d o w , b u t a l s o t h e p a s s i n g o f b e l o v e d t h i n g s o u t o f u s e , i n t o t h e m i s t s o f t i m e . M a d e w i t h i n s t r u m e n t s a n d f i e l d r e c o r d i n g s e l e c t r o n i c a l l y s a m p l e d a n d p r o c e s s e d , t h e s e c o m p o s i t i o n s a r e s l o w - m o v i n g , b l i s s f u l b u t s a d , f u l l o f e c h o i n g b i t s o f s t a t i c a n d n e a r - a m b i e n t m e l o d i e s , m o v i n g i n c y c l i c w a v e s . O c c a s i o n a l l y y o u c a n t e l l , t h a t ' s a p i a n o i n t h e r e , o r a b l u r r e d s u g g e s t i o n o f a c h u g g i n g t r a i n f r o m a t r e a t e d f i e l d r e c o r d i n g, I t ' s a t m o s p h e r i c e l e c t r o n i c a t h a t w o u l d p r o b a b l y a l s o b e a t h o m e o n t h e M i a s m a h l a b e l , o r U t e c h . Q u i t e d r e a m y , a n d a g o o d l i s t e n f o r a n y o n e t i r e d o f t h e f a s t p a c e o f m o d e r n l i f e , y e a n i n g f o r s i m p l e r d a y s . W e ' d r e c o m m e n d t h i s t o f a n s o f T h e C a r e t a k e r , R e i g n s , a n d J a s p e r T X a m o n g s t o t h e r s .
S o t h a t c o v e r s t h e m u s i c , w h i c h b y i t s e l f i s c o m p l e t e l y w o r t h w h i l e , a n d i f t h a t ' s e n o u g h f o r y o u , t h e n g e t t h e " s t a n d a r d " c d e d i t i o n , w h i c h c o m e s i n a w h i t e , h a n d - s t a m p e d s l e e v e . B U T , a s f o l l o w e r s o f T i m e R e l e a s e d S o u n d l a b e l k n o w , t h e r e ' s a l s o a d e l u x e , s p e c i a l l y p a c k a g e d v e r s i o n t h a t ' s b e e n c r e a t e d o f t h i s t o o . S u p e r l i m i t e d , t o j u s t 1 0 0 c o p i e s , a l r e a d y s o l d o u t a t t h e l a b e l - w e h a v e j u s t 5 a n d t h a t ' s I T . A n d w h e n w e s a y " s p e c i a l l y p a c k a g e d " , w e m e a n i t . T R S h a s d o n e s o m e o v e r - t h e - t o p p a c k a g i n g b e f o r e b u t t h i s o n e i s r e a l l y i m p r e s s i v e . L e t ' s q u o t e t h e i r m e t i c u l o u s d e s c r i p t i o n o f i t : " E a c h o f t h e s e c o m e s i n a h a n d s e w n , 5 . 5" x 1 4" f o l d i n g w a l l e t t y p e s l e e v e & f r o n t e d w i t h a n u m b e r e d , 1 0 0 y e a r o l d s t o c k c e r t i f i c a t e f r o m t h e n o w d e f u n c t T i m e R e l e a s e d S o u n d R a i l w a y s L t d . E a c h i s h e l d c l o s e d w i t h a s t r e t c h o f t r a i n t r a c k , a n d t i e d o f f w i t h s t r i n g . I n s i d e a r e a n t i q u e g r a v u r e s o f t h e p a s s i n g c o u n t r y s i d e , v i n t a g e s i g n a l d i a g r a m s a n d d e s c r i p t i o n s , a n d a w o r k i n g r e d l i g h t ! E a c h w i l l c o m e i n a h a n d l a b e l l e d b l a c k e n v e l o p e . A l s o, e v e r y o n e t h a t p u r c h a s e s a c o p y w i l l b e s e p a r a t e l y m a i l e d a u n i q u e , a n t i q u e s t e a m t r a i n p o s t c a r d w / h a n d w o r k i n g s, w h i c h u p o n a r r i v a l w i l l f i t n i c e l y i n t o t h e s l e e v e , a n d b e c o m e a p e r s o n a l i z e d p a r t o f t h e p a c k a g e ! "
Y e s , t h a t ' s r i g h t . T h e r e ' s a l i g h t i n t h e r e t h a t b l i n k s ! A n d a p i e c e o f a t o y t r a i n t r a c k . A n d a s t o c k c e r t i f i c a t e . A n d , y e s , i f y o u p r o v i d e u s w i t h y o u r m a i l i n g a d d r e s s ( w h i c h y o u n a t u r a l l y w i l l d o i f y o u a r e a m a i l o r d e r c u s t o m e r a n y w a y ) , w e ' l l p a s s y o u r i n f o a l o n g t o T R S s o t h e y c a n s e n d y o u t h a t p o s t c a r d ! A n d t h u s y o u ' l l h a v e a t r u l y o n e o f a k i n d , p e r s o n a l i z e d a r t e d i t i o n o f t h i s l o v e l y c d .
Post metal heroes Isis may be long gone, but their legacy looms large, in the hundreds (thousands?) of bands they inspired certainly, but also in the fans they left behind, dedicated FANATICS who continue to worship at the altar of Isis, and no doubt anxiously await any sonic scraps left to be repackaged and offered up to the hungry hordes. And while we're tempted to suggest that this most recent collection, a double disc AND dvd, is only for those particular fans, this collection of demos, rarities and remixes spanning the decade from 2001 to 2011, is pretty goddamn great, and really anyone into post metal, experimental heaviness and/or metallic post rock, Isis fan or not, might wanna check this out, it's the rare sort of odds and ends collection that could easily win over new fans for sure.
The first disc (first half of the 3lp set) is mainly demos spanning the whole decade mentioned above, and thus early version of tracks that would end up on various records proper, some recorded in studios, others in practice spaces, but sound quality varying quite a bit, from raw and urgent, the vocals way up in the mix, to less heavy and more abstract, glimmering and glistening, slow builds to big bombastic metal crush, and still others super lo-fi, rehearsal boombox style, but even those sound pretty great, the sound you'd hear if you were seeing Isis in a tiny club. Overall though, the songs sound great, not sure how different they are, but as a whole, it makes for a pretty great Isis 'album', especially the epic closer "Grey Divide", which KILLS.
The second disc (or second half of the 3lp set) though is really the reason to get this. Starting off with Isis' version of Godflesh's "Streetcleaner", which the band manage to pull off, right down to the machinelike rhythms and jagged guitars, which leads right into their cover of Sabbath's "Hand Of Doom", crazy drum heavy mix, but still pretty bad ass. There's a couple remixes, including the genius reimagining by the Melvins and Lustmord of "Not In Rivers, But In Drops", which adds electronics and noise, and all sorts of woozy warped atmosphere. Then there's Thomas Dimuzio's remix of "Holy tears", which recasts the original as something much more washed out and murky and darkly psychedelic, and almost ambient industrial. There's the brief ambient title track, then the two tracks from Isis' split with the Melvins, both of them progged out metallic crushers, and finally, a gorgeous, surprisingly lush acoustic version of "20 Minutes / 40 years" that is exactly what you'd imagine Isis would sound like if they ever got to do an MTV Unplugged.
Both the cd and lp versions include a dvd with all the band's videos, the cd housed in a swank 8 panel digipak, with a big booklet, the lp similarly. Absolutely recommended for Isis obsessives obviously, but as mentioned above, as good a place to start for newbies, as any of their albums proper, and listening to this (and these guys again), it's not hard to see why so many bands aped their sound, cuz even now, all these years later, it still sounds pretty fucking amazing.
We reviewed the first 7" from Midwestern slowcore rockers Lark's Tongue last list, and at the time mentioned we also got a copy of their split with another Midwestern outfit, which is this right here, and like that 7" LT display a sort of laidback dark jangle minimalism that had us comparing them to another aQ fave, True Widow, but as we mentioned in that review, they're not nearly so dour and dark and a good bit more rocking, with a distinctly nineties vibe, the three tracks here letting the band stretch out, which definitely suits their sound, which is lush, and expansive, a little bit brooding, hauntingly psychedelic, this time with cool swoonsome background vocals, some seriously crunchy guitars, and world weary vocals, the songs laced with long stretches of droned out psych jam smolder, reminding us of Dead Meadow, sort of burnt out, sun dappled, hazy heaviness, which is even more evident on "Black Sue", which sounds like stoner rock slowed down to a moody crawl, again the song wreathed in smoldering guitars, and dreamy reverby effects. The final track slows things down even further, and the band builds up to an explosive, but still slo-mo finale, all dirgey drumming, and swirling clouds of guitarnoise, and dreamy laconic vocals that give the sound a Red Red Meat vibe too, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
We had never heard of Men Of Fortune before, but immediately out of the gate their sound is heavier, and dirgier, still psychedelic, a Midwestern noise rock, stop and start guitar churn, super dynamic, but soon, the sound blisses out, and in come super dramatic vocals, changing the tenor of the song big time, the vibe suddenly sort of gloomy and gothic, but when fused to the noise rock heft, makes for something pretty excellent. The other three songs also fuse noisy, stoner rock heaviness, and big riff crunch, even some weird electronics, to crooned dramatic gloominess, and sprawling gothic psychedelia.
Includes a download coupon!
Not to be confused with the Trunk Records compilation of Norwegian composer Sven Libaek's film scores that had the same name and cover photo, this Votary Records reissue is the actual full soundtrack to the 1973 Australian undersea nature documentary, Inner Space, from which only four songs were included on that previous Trunk comp. But they were among our favorite tracks on that disc, not only because of their inclusion in Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic, which used the film Inner Space as a referential touchstone, but because they are some of the most alluring and evocative jazz pop scores we have ever heard. A hallmark of what would be called in library music circles as "underwater music", Libaek captures haunting and wondrous melodic scores that carry just the right tone of curiosity, beauty and mystery found in the life of deep ocean waters. Remastered from the original tapes and including some of the best Australian Library musicians, such as John Sangster from the band Tully and an amazing soundtrack composer in his own right. Full of vibes, piano and flutes, Libaek's film score work recalls the best of John Barry, Vince Guaraldi and John Cameron, composer of Kes and Psychomania. 180 gram record in deluxe gatefold with extensive liner notes. Amazing!
Full length number three from these LA black thrashers, and easily their most ambitious. Just check out the opener, which weaves a dark spell that's simultaneously harrowing and hellish, melodic and psychedelic, the drums a tribal churn, the vokills a sick rasp, but its most notable element is the use of the bass as lead instrument, the guitars swirling and indistinct, while the bass picks out the moody melody. It's only an intro but it definitely sets the stage for some interesting sonic elements to pop up throughout, but once the song proper kicks in, the bass returns to it's typical black metal role sadly, as being mostly inaudible, but the band lay down a fierce sprawl of Scandinavian buzz and blast, with some awesome classic metal leads, some cool dynamic stop starts and a pretty progged out arrangement, and when the song shifts gears again near the end, the sound seem to ooze and melt and slither psychedelically before finishing off more metallically.
The band mix it up throughout, though, clean chantlike vocals, distorted and weirdly processed, droned out ambience, warped soundscaping, super cinematic ambience, that sounds almost sampled, churning dirgelike doom, and that bass does surface elsewhere, adding extra melody, more layers, plenty of heft throughout, there's definitely a late period Marduk vibe to much of the record, due in no small part to the doomy dirginess, but the band spend most of the time spewing some seriously sick black death heaviness, roiling riffage wrapped around insane torrential drumming, tranced out and super hypnotic, in fact, much of the record seems more hypnotic than heavy, which is not a bad thing, but definitely positions this outside of most black/thrash metal, the production not massive as much as it is textured and tripped out, strap on some headphones and you can hear all sorts of aktion in the background, that at times sounds almost like some demonic symphony weaving a tense minor key backdrop.
Check out the extremely badass video as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXZKxu9Zcx0 (we've never seen the drummer do the twirling hair thing, WHILE playing!)
For whatever reason, we've never reviewed anything by angular metallic noise rockers Microwaves, even though some aQ-ers are big fans, but we HAVE reviewed several records by Br0wn Angel, which just so happens to feature one of the members of Microwaves. And while the sounds are certainly pretty different, there's definitely a sonic link. Although probably best to consider that this 2012 release from Microwaves was released on Weasel Walter's UGexplode label, which of course means there's definitely a serious no-wave / free-noise vibe going on, which there most certainly is, but his guitar /drums / FX duo take that stuff and filter it through something much more mathy and metallic, which most definitely pushes all our buttons, the sound lurching from slithering progged out creep, to tangled, almost sci-fi sounding metal crunch, to warped new wave noise rock freakout, the guitars jagged and atonal, the drums wild and octopoidal, the vocals yelped and howled, some tracks wreathed in thick swaths of synth squelch, others a haze of psychedelic buzz, the guitars sometimes so distorted they sound like blasts of power electronics, and if you needed more of an idea of what these guys were shooting for, check out their awesome (and awesomely tweaked) cover of Devo's "Penetration (In The Centerfold)", which takes the already warped original, and manages to attain a level of cover version genius that almost rivals Pussy Galore's take on the same song. Total tripped out, psychedelic zoner-metal, noise-wave, math-rock radness that is most definitely recommended.
FYI this is the vinyl version, but there's also a cd, which we'll hopefully get in to list soon too.
This is the debut full length from this US artist/soundscaper, whom we first heard via a remix on Harald Grosskopf's Synthesist/Re-Synthesist lp, and whose sound falls somewhere between the ADD short attention span plunderphonia of John Oswald, and the textured, layered, warblescapes of turntablist Philip Jeck. Two sprawling sidelong tracks, that sound like they could be part one and two of the same piece, finds Moff, employing a definite kitchen sink style of composition, that initially had us hearing some Our Love Will Destroy The World, especially in his ability to create rhythms and grooves from strange samples and layered loops, in places it gives the sound a sort of hip hop / dance music vibe, but that vibe is subtle, and sort of gets lots in Moff's wild collaged soundscapes, the structures lurching and stuttering, the sound dense and chaotic and not a little bit noisy, super psychedelic, tripped out and in its own way sort of heavy.
The sound palette, and the seamless juxtapositions, also remind us of DJ Female Convict Scorpion, only armed with a DOZEN turntables instead of just two. A constant barrage of samples and snippets, looped and layered, tripped out and kosmische at times, darkly psychedelic and almost jazzy at others, it's definitely chaos, but some impossibly controlled chaos, the whole thing strangely, and seemingly impossibly melodic, the idea of some random jazz loop, some burst of truncated rhythm and some weird little blurt of distorted crunch, would somehow come together to form some brief bit of super hooky, noisy catchiness, speaks to Moff's mastery. A dizzying, mind melting sonic overload that is pure ear candy, absolute headphone blissout, with the B side sounding almost soundtracky, but the soundtrack to some sort of wild, super lysergic drug freakout, or perhaps some super arty, experimental film all rapid cuts and flickering images, the noisiness finally abating near the end of the album, and blissing out into a dreamy droney coda. WAY recommended.
And like all Pan releases, super deluxe packaging, the record housed in fantastic silkscreened PVC jackets over printed full color sleeves, pressed on 140 gram vinyl and of course EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!
We loved the last Night Marchers record, See You In Magic. It perfectly pushed all of those Rocket From The Crypt buttons, which had remain sadly unpushed for years, while at the same time soothing the hurt we were experience due to the recent dissolution of the Hot Snakes, 3/4 of which made up the bulk of the Night Marchers including of course Mr. John Reis himself, he formerly of Rocket, and of course the late great Drive Like Jehu.
On record number two, very little has changed, but then very little needed to. The songs are just as driving and catchy, the vibe maybe even more RFTC-like this time around, slithery and swaggery, lots of crunch and stomp, howl and slither. It took a while for us to make it past the opener, "Tropical Depression", which we found ourselves listening to over and over and over, the perfect mix of Jehu, Hot Snakes and Rockets, and while initially, the rest of the record doesn't quite reach such great heights, repeated listens seem to prove otherwise, as every song here reveals itself as a dark, twisted, gem, and within the framework of the sound these guys have mastered, they mix it up big time, frantic shuffles (complete with harmonica), pounding groovers, loping poppers, stonery blooz jams, catchy call and response jangle (with horns!), after listening to this whole record a bunch of times, gets harder and harder to pick a favorite, needless to say fans of RFTC, Hot Snakes and even Jehu (and definitely all three), will dig this big time.
We've got two new tapes on this week's list from the Merzbild label, the newly expanded offshoot of Merz Tapes. There's the latest from Swedish death drone dealer Trepaneringsritualen, and then this one, the years in the works Yksityisyys from Finnish dronescaper/sound sculptor No Xivic, who we had only heard before on a Drone Records single, but who here is give the space to flesh out his vision, a glorious, sprawling vision that includes field recordings, sampled machinery, mysterious voices, drones and textures, buried melodies. The tape starts off almost tranquil, with birdsong, and little else, evoking a summer day, but soon, black sonic clouds gather, a brooding dense thrum, that threatens to swallow the other sounds whole, atonal chords blurred into slow shifting swells, the sounds pocked with crackle and crunch, the vibe growing ever more ominous, the sound billowing outward, soon blotting out the sun, leaving everything in shadow. Chanted voices, droning organs, a grim swirl of dark sonic shimmer, which eventually settles into something even more bleak, a minimal foghorn like rumble, beneath the sound of rainfall, or perhaps traffic on rain slicked streets, foot steps, the vibe urban and industrial, that heavin wall of low end rumble surfacing again and again, threatening to crash down violently, but instead, fading out, leaving just footsteps, that seem to be walking into darkness, the surrounding sounds again, growing more and more threatening, and the field recordings, less recognizable as human, hissings and buzzings, all blurring into something truly torturous, but yet rife with some sort of melodic melancholy, lurking most often just below the surface. The whole tape is a series of sonic set pieces, musical renderings of lost places, the sort no human should dare tread, a place that one can not find, but a place that finds you, and lures you to your doom, and by playing this tape, the listener seems to be slowly sinking into whatever black horrors lurk on the other side.
Ultra minimal packaging, just a purple tape, with silver printing, housed in a clear plastic case, no art, no J-card. And like the other Merzbild tape, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Finally, the complete studio recordings of this legendary Japanese psych band, available all together, at an affordable price, and including a handful of bonus tracks, as well as their unreleased final recording session - which means even all you folks who already have these records, just might need to buy them again!
Formed in the early nineties, and originally featured on several early PSF Tokyo Flashback compilations, Overhang Party mainman Fukuoka Rinji (who also runs the Pataphysique label, which originally released most of the band's recordings) continued to make records until the early 2000's, with a handful of releases over the years (Overhang Party 1, 2 and 4 are included here, 3 was live), the ever shifting lineup of Overhang Party featuring members of Fushitsusha, LSD March, Kousokuya, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, which should most definitely give the uninitiated an idea of Overhang Party's sound. Which is incredibly varied, from tripped out psychedelic abstractions, to full bore heavy psych freakouts.
Overhang Party's 1993 debut, starts out all spacey and minimal, scattered percussion, abstract string scrape, strange blurred melodies, distorted croons, weird animal sounds, and wild blurts of drum splatter, before launching into a dense noisy guitarnoise freeform blowout, swirling clouds of grinding, howling heaviness, laced with wild loose drumming, mostly buried in the mix, the sound more Sunroof! or Skullflower than Fushitsusha, but the next track finds Overhang Party firmly in Les Rallizes Denudes, smoldering psychedelic balladry, wailed vocals, woozy swirls of guitar thrum, simple propulsive drumming, and of course some guitar freakout, but also some hushed drift, replete with falsetto vox! The rest of one splits the difference between freak out and dramatic broody ballad, the bonus track, a 14 minute epic recorded live on KFJC in 1999, a gorgeous tranced out psychguitar blowout!
The second record, originally released the next year, starts out all riffy, and immediately launches into some heady psychedeia, that's not that far removed from classic Hawkwind, chugging, churning, soaring and epic, the vocals much more polished and pronounced, and of course plenty of heart-of-the-sun guitar shreddery. The whole of two tends toward the riffier, more melodic, more polished, but also more rocking, almost all the tracks smoldering slow building space-psych epics, culminating in some fierce mega guitar jams, with one track slipping into something more pastoral and dreamy, while the bonus track here, another live track, is like a more melodic version of the album songs proper, jangly and dreamy and lilting, but with some crunchy riffs, dramatic vox, and some spiraling tangled super distorted leads. A definitely Les Rallizes feel for sure.
For disc three, we skip ahead to 1996's Overhang Party IV, since three is a live disc, and these are the complete STUDIO recordings. IV starts off with piano, pounding away in a squall of guitar shred and cymbal shimmer, the sound immediately launching into something distinctly proggy, sounding a lot like seventies prog, but with some extra guitar, in fact, a LOT of extra guitar, which is what transforms prog into heavy psych, the song mostly one part, that builds and builds and builds. But much of IV tends toward the proggy, "Barcelona" barely getting psychedelic, but then when we get to "The The Ship Sank" which while still more moody and melodic and proggy, is seriously majestic, and heavy, the guitars distort and howl, sounding like some sort of slow burn post rock intro, expanded to a droned out epic. "Winter Lovers" gets downright Hawkwindy, before slipping right into the soaring psychedelic prog-pop of "Mirror". "G House Blues" is the live bonus track from the first disc, and in the studio, it's somehow way more abstract, a heaving wall of layered guitars, buzzing and distorted, swirling textures, pretty free form and avant, total experimental guitar freakout bliss for sure. The bonus track is total Stooges / Hawkwind heaviness, all chugging riffs, and wild wah wah guitar shred, and super dramatic soaring vox. Maybe the heaviest jam here.
The holy grail of this set though might be the final disc, the group's last ever recordings, previously unreleased, done between 2003 and 2005. The opener is all acoustic guitar and woozy bass, dreamy jangle, and keening melodies, a seriously classic rock vibe here, softly crooned vocals, a minimal amount of psyche guitar, more a sort of dreamy laid back drift. In fact the awesomely titled "Wolf, Scorpion, Earth Fang" we sort of expected to be a scorcher, especially with its buzzing guitar intro, but instead it's another psychedelic ballad, albeit one with plenty of psych guitar. It's not really until "Pyramid", that things get really rolling, a dirgey slab of buzzing heaviness, more dramatic vox, over wah guitar, and pounding drums, swirling and VERY psychedelic. "Marseille" is another broody ballad, but one that features some wild shredding psych guitar freakout, and again, has a serious Les Rallizes feel. "Who Are You" is a woozy dramatic dirge, rife with keening melodies, awkward English vox, and yeah, plenty more buzzing howling guitars. The bonus track "Duo Improvisation", is just what it sounds like, guitars and drums, freeform, spaced out and spacious, the drums jazzy and free, the guitar emotional and intense, would have loved if this jam went on for another 30 minutes, but as it is, it's a seriously potent six minutes.
So great. And perfect timing what with the recent spate of Les Rallizes reissues. Anyone who has been obsessing over that group, owes it to themselves to check these guys out. You will not be disappointed.
Most definitely essential listening for fans of Fushitsusha, Flower Travellin' Band, Taj Mahal Travellers, LSD March, Kousokuya, Les Rallizes Denudes, Miminokoto, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Magical Power Mako, and even Acid Mothers Temple.
Comes in a deluxe TEN panel fold out color coordinated digipak, not much in the way of liner notes, but there is a booklet, with credits for each record, as well as lyrics.
Long before there was the fuzzed out garage pop of The Oh Sees, and even before there was the sweat soaked bloody knuckled noise punk frenzy that was the late great Coachwhips, there was the bizarre costumed duo Pink And Brown. Pink being Mr. John Dwyer, wearing pink pants, a pink leotard like long sleeved shirt and a pink mask, partnered up with Brown, aka Jeff Rosenberg, who played in Tarentel, Lumen (with our very own Andee), and is currently in Lavender Diamond. As a guitar/drums duo, they whipped up brief blurts and blasts of angular guitar skronk, pounding drum damage, and megaphone vocal bleat, all wound up into tense noise rock freakouts, that when hearing this stuff from within a heaving mass of sweaty folks, sounded a bit like pure noise, but on record revealed a surprising mastery of melody, one that definitely foreshadowed what was to come for Dwyer.
This here double lp collection gathers up everything ever recorded by Pink And Brown, their Shame Fantasy II record, their split with Death Drug, and their Final Foods album available here on vinyl for the very first time.
Fans of Dwyer will no doubt dig, even though P&B's sound falls somewhere closer to groups like Lightning Bolt, and Landed, and other Providence art/noise rock outfits, P&B being Dwyer's first band after relocating to the Bay Area from Rhode Island. The band existed from 1997-2003 (yeah, there was some overlap with the Coachwhips), and again, Coachwhips fans who missed out on Pink And Brown, you're gonna flip (the sticker describes the contents of this comp thusly: "Everything you were too young to have actually seen back in the day"), this is the sort of urgent, energetic, freaked out, noise drenched sound that would send kids into heaving apoplectic, club destroying, moshpit freakouts, the shows back then would often end up with Pink and/or Brown on the floor, in the crowd, rolling around on the floor, their costumes torn and shredded, and in some cases (check out the insert) shedded completely, and that unhinged, feral energy is definitely captured pretty well on these jams, fierce, fucked up, near metallic in places, utterly chaotic in others, slipping easily from droned out noise rock, to mathy punk and back again. Having seen P&B a bunch of times, and gotten caught up in the pure fucked up energy of those live shows, we had sort of forgotten how good some of these songs were, even removed from the 'gimmick' and the live experience. Definitely recommended for fans of noisy, garagey, weirdness, and Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, Landed, Burmese, The Coachwhips, the Hospitals and all of the usual garagepunk suspects.
Super swank packaging, thick full color gatefold jacket, printed full color photo insert, and a download coupon to boot!
Along with composing the scores for some of Werner Herzog's greatest films, Florian Fricke was as much a musical pioneer as were his contemporaries Faust, Neu and Cluster. Unlike his contemporaries, Fricke's music is informed as much by music from arounds the world as it was rock and classical composition (in which he was schooled). Sitars, pan flutes and assorted ethnic percussion have as much a place in any given Popol Vuh album as moog synths, guitars, bass and drums. One only need look at his choice of a band name, taken from the title of a sacred Mayan text, to see where Fricke's affinities lay.
Affenstunde, recorded in 1970, was Popol Vuh's first album. The four original album tracks are a combination of dark, droning synth soundscapes, hippy drum circle-ish drum james and improvised moog keyboard workouts. Imagine if you could crunch the bubbly synth era of Tangerine Dream into their dark, early days circa Electronic Meditation and Alpha Centari. In contrast to his later works for film, Affenstunde is much more textural, intentionally devoid of any melody. As a bonus this remastered edition, like the others in this series, comes with an additional -- previously unreleased -- track from the same period. And that cover picture! Hard to resist.
Latest from these Aussie blackened death metal weirdos, and like all the records before, Vexovoid is another exercise in twisted sonic psychosis, the sound here weirdly polished and well produced, but that's really relative, as older records sounded like they were recorded in a subterranean icestorm. And at times sounded less like a metal band and more like some mysterious noise group. But here, the sound is seriously heavy, the riffing less blurred and indistinct, which would seem to be disappointing, but instead, makes this a way more satisfying listen. The opening track "Kilter", named we can only assume for the fact that it's about as far from off kilter as any Portal song we've ever heard, starts off all chugging and churning, frenzied and frenetic, looped and woozy, a dizzying swirl of downtuned riffage, and and avalanche of chaotic drumming, all wound into a tight, taut, gnarled sprawl of tranced out hypnometal crush. When the song finally kicks in proper, the vocals come in all murky bellow, and the riffs blur and smear and ooze, into a washed out, psychedelic buzzscape, that is somehow crazy catchy, as well as being baffling and brutal, and when the sound slips back into that opening churn, totally mesmerizing.
And so goes the whole record, the band either consciously going for a different sound, or just stumbling into what for them probably seems weird in comparison to their normal sound, not the other way around. In some ways, Vexovoid seems the most faithful to their country's metal heritage, oozing the sort of slo-mo death metal vibe of their forebears (Albeit not really slow at all, but somehow it FEELS slow, sludgey and filthy and dirgey, even when it's blasting away at lightspeed), most notably diSEMBOWELMENT but of course, for all of the polish here, this shit is still way demented, when the music drops out, the vocals are harrowingly hellish, and then the riffs, are fantastically droned out, the arrangements dizzying in their complexity, this is warped tech-death insanity that seems to get weirder and more out there as the record progresses, lurching from death metal pound, to woozy, atonal dirge, to tripped out, psychedelic guitarscapery, to doomic pound, to spare spacey drift. Might be our favorite Portal yet, but then it seems we say that about every one...
Rainbows Are Free? Did they really name their METAL band that? Really? Well, they are on the psychedelic/stonery side of things, so that sort of thing kinda makes sense, just like the local band called Glitter Wizard, but still. You gotta really kick ass to pull off having a name like that. And, they do! Bottom heavy, fuzzed out, swinging riffage explodes out of the gate on opener "Slow Train". They don't really let ever let up, with wild, even more fuzz-filled soloing and a vocal style that surprises by morphing from a stoner drawl into what sounds more like a frothing rabid Rob Halford from Judas Priest! Really, on the second track the singer busts out a gruff, staccato style that's more metal than thou, over the top like Halford singing "The Ripper" with a frog in his throat, not at all what we were expecting but pretty damn awesome. That's actually when we knew we really liked this band, that they were willing to roam outside the standard stoner rawk template, the singer especially, screaming and/or crooning as the mood strikes, while the band RIPS right along. As a result, there's moments here that remind us of everything in the stoner/psych/doom/grunge realm from Kyuss to Reverend Bizarre to Skin Yard (or Gruntruck) to Goatsnake to Danava ... From their name on down, it's hard to peg these guys, but we like 'em and their chunky grooves and freaky ways. They get particularly far-out and bad-trippy on "Sinking Ship", and the singer's yowl on "Are You Dead?" even conjures up the shade of Saint Vitus' Scott Reagers.
Recommended to anyone into all the killer stoner stuff we've been giving the thumbs up to lately from the MeteorCity and Small Stone labels, for instance the Solace we listed last week. And, everyone who dug Freedom Hawk oughta dig the heck outta this too!!
Reto Mader is back, with a new release on the consistently-excellent Utech label. The haunting solo work of this Swiss dronologist (also a member of Ural Umbo) already got a rave review from us a couple years ago, for his previous release as RM74 on Utech, Reflex, so we're pleased to now hear more from this project - lots more, since it's a double disc! Previously, we described RM74 as organic, and abstract soundscapery, "bathed in glowing shimmer and shuddering suspenseful drone". Such is still the case here, Mader's semi-ambient, instrumental electro-acoustic constructs being both beautiful, and on occasion creepy - most notably when disc's two's "We Run In Vicious Circles" suddenly brings the noise, with grit and distortion and an insistent synth figure, something BAD happening in the inner-mind projected imaginary movie for which this is the soundtrack - move over, Umberto! Mostly, though, it's quite quiet and benign, warmly embracing the listener, as these discs spin on, incorporating delicate drones, scattered percussive tinklings clinkings, chimings and clatterings, sweetly keening strings, and soft buried melodies into a slowly unfolding, wordless narrative. Mader employs piano, bass, synthesizer, field recordings, kalimba, theremin, and many more unidentified sound sources (scrapings, cracklings, shortwavey-staticky-ings). These two discs could take some time to fully explore, played over and over. Our suggestion: remove your watch, lower your shades, let RM74's Two Angles Of A Triangle take over your timekeeping and create cycles of light and dark for you. You might be awake, you might be dreaming, days and days may pass - you'll have an experience. And even if you don't take it that far, it's a lovely listen.
These discs come in a beautiful, black/white/grey illustrated tri-fold, six-panel digipack, art by Thomas Hooper.
The latest mysterious musical missive from now local label Moon Glyph comes in the form of this gorgeous bit of collaged ambience from M. Sage, who sound hovers in the shadows between the Caretaker, Philip Jeck and Tim Hecker, a woozy loopscape of random radio snippets, of treated instruments and muted moody melodies, processed guitars drift wraith like over haunting field recordings, wreathed in hazy swirls of static, the various sounds all blurred into soft focus impressionistic drifts, that just seem to fade in and out, like the flickering of an old filmstrip, or the world viewed through the dusty old window of a beat up car, driving through empty towns and long abandoned neighborhoods. Sound become distorted, gristly and crunchy, shards of caustic buzz surface here and there, but are quickly smeared into another layer of sweetly swirling sound. And when proper instruments do surface, they give the sound a haunted otherworldly twang, or a glistening prismatic cosmic shimmer. The sound constantly shifting from sun dappled dreamlike glimmer, to murky, faded drifts, softly churning dronescapes, all slowed down sounds and softly keening melodies, warm whirs and hushed crackle, to darkly cinematic mesmer, the crackle almost becoming a physical presence, the dreamy lilting thrum beneath almost wholly obscure by this glorious patina of crunch and crackle, turning sound into something impossible tactile, a blissed out sprawl of heavenly soft noise. So utterly, and hauntingly gorgeous.
A very prescient, and very good, record by the sound-artist / field recordist Matt Shoemaker, Erosion Of The Analogous Eye pushes his work of tonal exploration and exaggerated found sounds into the neighborhood of many of the post-noise cosmic explorers who have been blossoming in every corner of the US it seems. At the same time, this is very much a Matt Shoemaker record, following a trajectory set forth through his acclaimed work on the once-mighty Trente Oiseaux label.
An ur-drone of analog synthesis opens the album, obviously harkening to '70s kosmische activities certainly a muscular revisitation of Schulze or even an extraction from Richard Pinhas. Such a lazerbeam of a drone has a lysergic sunrise feel to it, with the light and shadow brought into sharp relief, the colors shifted and separating into spectral bursts of yellow, red, pink, and orange. Yet, slowly, Shoemaker introduces atonal drones which clash with that introductory suspension. At first, the metallic slashes have almost an Andrew Chalk and Jonathan Coleclough feel, but Shoemaker quickly dispels those notions with a layer of field recordings of insects ravenously scurrying about. That introductory tone, which still continues through this first track, bends like a divebombing plane with Doppler tones trailing behind, descending in a series of bell tones. All of this in a seamless 17 minutes. A steady rhythm of gamelan bell tones opens the second track with accumulated complimentary drones shimmering and vibrating while harmonic dissonance abounds, collapsing into a quiet stream of percolating textures. Spread across 24 minutes, this track seems ancient and sounds beguilingly beautiful. Bellowing rumbles amplify out of recordings of rain, mud, and water and steadily arching through a metallic rattling of various pipes and gongs for the final track, which eventually gives way to an uneasy set of recordings of birds in a rainforest whose calls echo through the trees.
As with all Helen Scarsdale releases the packaging is stellar. Letterpressed text with hand-dyed paper. Each are different, each are quite special. Oh yeah, limited to a mere 300 copies!
Another blast of sinister grimness from this local tape label (who in the past have brought us Sunchariot, Surt, Uruk Hai and more), this time in the form of this two way split, featuring two bands who are not so much black metal as blacknoize, two strains of mutant death industrial. Sirius are up first, unfurling a caustic crawl of power electronics thrum, and noise drenched rumble, all blurred and glitched out, shot through with fragmented melodies, and swirling textures, as well as buried churning rhythms, over which a strange voice, doused in effects and heavily processed, delivers some arcane incantations, the sound roiling and blackened, dense and intense, caustic and corrosive, but also muted and murky, making it more listenable than a full on noise record, with the sound constantly shifting, and often settling into tripped out psychedelic drifts and sprawls of primitive lo-fi electronics, all whirling grey noise and burbling gurgling glitches, dark cascades of woozy melody, tumbling into gnarled black tangles of sound, one sound in particular sounding like that horn they always blow at sporting events, but here slowed waay down, and heavily processed into a creepy atonal bleat. The sound continues to unfurl, and unravel, detuned pianos, over warbly loops, and bowed buzzing metals, darkly hypnotic, and seriously warped and woozy, with most of Sirius's side of the tape tending toward creepy ambience and atmospheric mumbled mesmer.
Cosmic Breath begin with a serious of reverbed cosmic concussions, ringing out over a field of caustic crunch, before abruptly cutting out, and slipping into a haunting bit of atmospheric drift, all tinkling melodies, and moaning drones, of swirling synths, all woven into a gently undulating sprawl of glimmering psychedelia, and woozy droned out dirft. Minor key melodies seeming to melt over a dirge like churn, while the sky above is filled with high end streaks and shimmering sine wave like overtones, the sound transforming into stately synth marches, all wistful and melancholy, but paired with sick, raspy demonic vokills, that changes the cinematic synthiness into something much more menacing, the juxtaposition truly warped and bizarre, and it continues like that, creepy lo-fi Carpenter / Goblin style synthscapery, drifting and slithering and creeping beneath those monstrous shrieks, occasionally slipping into something much darker, wreathed in feedback, droning ominously, a super tripped out collection of grim black-synth cosmic ambience that definitely has us wanting to hear more!
Heck yeah, a 2nd pressing! Got a bunch, but sold a bunch too before this list so right now we only have a mere handful, so act quick if you missed it before 'cause we're pretty sure we won't be able to get it again. (Although, also fyi, Ben tells us that there probably will be a compact disc edition someday too.)
Mariakapel was a special tour only lp from Six Organs Of Admittance, aka Ben Chasny, originally released to coincide with a 2011 European tour. We got a couple dozen of the first pressing on Pavilion (ltd. to 500 copies) direct from Ben back then, but those went pretty quick as you may recall. And no surprise, cuz this is really really great. Compiled from two live performances in 2010 and 2011, the opening and closing tracks were recorded earlier in 2011 in Massachusetts, the opener is all wheezing harmonium, a gorgeous stretch of psychedelic mesmer, swirling and shimmery, laced with bits of acoustic guitar, very hypnotic and raga-like, gradually growing more lush and textured as the track progresses, extra layers, tangled melodies, all just beneath that glorious harmonium hum. The closer sort of bookends the record with a similarly droney sound, but this time with what sounds like organ, still very raga like, all long layered tones, and constantly shifting overtones. Gorgeous and intense.
But between those two drones, are a handful of recordings from 2010, recorded live in Tilburg, Holland, a fantastic collection of spare, sparse minimal Appalachia, in the background you can hear feet shuffling, people moving about, but nothing can distract from Chasny's darkly meditative guitarscapes, which include some of Chansy's most intense playing, super percussive and buzzy, downtuned and intense, sounds like he's getting a little Orcutt on some of these jams, but it definitely suites him, and even at his most aggressive, he manages to make the tracks lush and lovely and still impossibly melodic. Fantastic stuff as always.
LIMITED THIS TIME TO 250 COPIES, via Dutch label Whipping Post.
