Finally, the first full length from these mysterious French post black metal krautrock alchemists. And if you think calling a band French post black metal krautrock alchemists might be overdoing it, you haven't hear Aluk Todolo.
An offshoot of black metal horde Diamatregon (who have one record on tUMULt, and another one coming soon), this trio, just guitar, bass and drums, are most definitely alchemists, working some sort of ancient magic, turning the simplest of rock band instrumentation, into something massive and mysterious, heavy and haunting, brutal and mesmerizing, repetitive and motorik. Crafting songs, that manage to be both pieces, in the classical sense, abstract and intellectual collections and arrangements of sound, subtle shadings, tonal color and timbre, harmony and dissonance, and SONGS, in the rock sense, fucking kick ass jams, that seem to go on forever, killer riffs, and relentless head nodding rhythms, like krautrock, only heavier and darker and way way blacker. Like black metal but without all the buzz and howl, stripped down to its very essence, to just mood and rhythm, ambience and propulsion.
In the review of the previous 7" we described the band's sound as: Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy.
And the full length essentially still sounds like that, but having loosed themselves from the shackles of the way too brief 7" format, the band can take all those elements, and lay them out, an epic massive post rock, krautrock, dronerock, experimental post black metal sprawl. These are the kinds of songs and sounds that need space, and time, need to lull the listener in, to entrance, ensorcel, the rhythms are stripped down and repetitive, looped and hypnotic, simple, but surprisingly and subtly complex at the same time. It's not hard to hear other hypno rockers in Aluk Todolo's sound, Circle, Salvatore and the like, but also space rock masters of repetition, Hawkwind, The Heads, and of course krautrock legends Can and Faust. Especially Can, with their focus on the power of the rhythm, no mater how seemingly simple or plain. But more than anything, it's legendary UK experimentalists This Heat whose, haunting mysterious rhythmic influence is all over Descension.
The opening track is the heaviest, a brutal slab of in the red distorted riffage, the actual riffs barely discernible, more like a heaving mass of crumbling distortion and space rock FX, but the rhythms that frame the whole record are already in place, pounding steadily beneath the buzz and skree. A head nodding pulse underpinning the swirling distorted clouds above. A bracing and white hot burst of blackdronekrautpsych that has the speakers rattling for all of its 8+ minutes.
But that track mostly serves as an intro to the complex and moody rhythmic sprawl that makes up the other three tracks. "Burial Ground" begins with what sounds like a slowed down This Heat rhythm track synched up to the free abstract drift of legendary seventies dronepsych collective Taj Mahal Travellers. The drums unwavering, but the background constantly in flux, swaths of black buzz, brief flurries of chaotic FX, distant low end swells, haunting fragmented melodies, a gorgeous spare kraut rock jam dropped into the abyss.
"Woodchurch" is a dense wall of high end buzz, all swirling distorted hum and keening feedback, tones all tangled up, a chordal wash of tuned vacuum cleaners, a sort of Sunroof! Style urdrone, but beneath it, the simplest of bass lines, distorted and downtuned, a heartbeat like throb, only a handful of notes, just enough to tie into the even simpler drum part, just kick drum and snare, a two step tattoo, as completely mesmerizing as it us utterly simple. The background buzz, swaying and pulsing, like some massive black sea, or clouds of insects ravaging a blighted sonic landscape.
The disc closes with "Disease" which opens with an ultra heavy slide guitar, unfurling a slow motion blues riff, caked in black buzz and thick distortion, the notes left to hang, ringing out until the tones slowly transform into feedback, immediately being swallowed up by the riff right behind it. It's like Robert Johnson playing SUNNO))), and then suddenly, the sound shifts, and the band reverts to its murky trawl, a thick throbbing bass line, another Can like rhythm, guitars warm and warbly, more like a layer of wet fuzz than distinct riffing, but occasionally, bits of that opening salvo return, offering up brief blasts of speaker destroying crunch, or brief bits of grinding buzz, a sudden start that almost, but doesn't quite wake you from your soporific reverie. Near the end, the distorted slide guitar returns, and drums drop out, and the track finishes with a thick coda of pealing guitar roar and shimmering chordal drone�
Intense and hypnotic and heavy and fucking genius. Ritualistic sounds, both black and brilliant, pulled from the void, a mysterious and sonic netherworld. Definite contender for record of the year.
Another gorgeous collection of blissed out ambience from local label Time Released Sound, this one from a TRS vet, Mr. Wil Bolton, whose Quarry Bank release was a big hit around here, and who in Ashes Of Piemonte, is teamed up with another like minded soundmaker by the name of Lee Anthony Norris. The two together have conjured up a broody bit of haunting minimalist drift, one that's not that far removed from what we're discovering is a sort of "Time Released Sound SOUND", and while each band has their own distinct take on THAT sound, at its core, it's typically an ethereal, ephemeral ambience, neo-classical dronescapery that's softly psychedelic, hushed and mysterious, almost new agey at times, an electronic flecked dreaminess that blends organic and machine generated sounds into something lush and lovely. Winter's Fire though takes that TRS sound and darkens it a bit, adding an overcast patina, the sound more grey and rainswept, low tones rumbling and shimmering beneath crystalline flecks of glimmering melody, hazy swaths of voice like synth floating weightless above softly thrumming chordal swells, the sound almost choral in places, very cinematic, wistful and melancholy, a weary, washed out sprawl of delicate moody mesmerism, drifting spectrally through field recordings of rainfall, mysterious echo drenched samples, and ghostly voices, all of which seem to fade eerily into the gauzy shimmery backdrop Bolton and Norris so effortlessly weave. Fans of other Time Released Sound releases will most definitely not be disappointed, but folks into sounds darker and dronier, might just want to give this one a try, a perfect mix of hushed haunting ambience, ominous cinematic soundscaping and dark droning drift.
As with all Time Released Sound releases, Winter's Fire comes in two versions, one a pricey ultra deluxe package, and less expensive standard one. The deluxe version this time around consists of a stamped and printed page from a 100 year old apothecary's ledger, complete with all the original hand written prescriptions, the page has tiny twigs woven into it, and the whole thing is tied with antique string, to which is attached an old brass clothespin. All of that is then housed in an antiqued envelope, printed and distressed with ash, ink and pastels, then hand stamped and sealed with wax. WOW. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have but a handful. The Standard version is less limited and comes housed in a simple printed paper sleeve, slightly smudged and distressed.
Another gorgeous collection of blissed out ambience from local label Time Released Sound, this one from a TRS vet, Mr. Wil Bolton, whose Quarry Bank release was a big hit around here, and who in Ashes Of Piemonte, is teamed up with another like minded soundmaker by the name of Lee Anthony Norris. The two together have conjured up a broody bit of haunting minimalist drift, one that's not that far removed from what we're discovering is a sort of "Time Released Sound SOUND", and while each band has their own distinct take on THAT sound, at its core, it's typically an ethereal, ephemeral ambience, neo-classical dronescapery that's softly psychedelic, hushed and mysterious, almost new agey at times, an electronic flecked dreaminess that blends organic and machine generated sounds into something lush and lovely. Winter's Fire though takes that TRS sound and darkens it a bit, adding an overcast patina, the sound more grey and rainswept, low tones rumbling and shimmering beneath crystalline flecks of glimmering melody, hazy swaths of voice like synth floating weightless above softly thrumming chordal swells, the sound almost choral in places, very cinematic, wistful and melancholy, a weary, washed out sprawl of delicate moody mesmerism, drifting spectrally through field recordings of rainfall, mysterious echo drenched samples, and ghostly voices, all of which seem to fade eerily into the gauzy shimmery backdrop Bolton and Norris so effortlessly weave. Fans of other Time Released Sound releases will most definitely not be disappointed, but folks into sounds darker and dronier, might just want to give this one a try, a perfect mix of hushed haunting ambience, ominous cinematic soundscaping and dark droning drift.
As with all Time Released Sound releases, Winter's Fire comes in two versions, one a pricey ultra deluxe package, and less expensive standard one. The deluxe version this time around consists of a stamped and printed page from a 100 year old apothecary's ledger, complete with all the original hand written prescriptions, the page has tiny twigs woven into it, and the whole thing is tied with antique string, to which is attached an old brass clothespin. All of that is then housed in an antiqued envelope, printed and distressed with ash, ink and pastels, then hand stamped and sealed with wax. WOW. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have but a handful. The Standard version is less limited and comes housed in a simple printed paper sleeve, slightly smudged and distressed.
The oddly named B/B/S is another aQ sonic dream team, the sort of band we might have dreamed up ourselves, this time brought to us by the always impressive Miasmah label. B/B/S/ features longtime aQ fave/pal Aidan Baker from Nadja on guitar and bass, Miasmah label head honcho Erik Skodvin, better know as Svarte Greiner, on bowed guitar, and experimental soundmaker Andrea Belfi on percussion. It's about as dark and brooding, and sonically dense as we expected, but what we didn't expect was for it to be so jazzy. Brick Mask is a seriously tranced out sprawl of minimal darkjazz dirgery, think the Necks, Supersilent, Bohren, Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, etc. Four long tracks of skittery, smoldering, pulsing, blackened jazziness. Opener "Brick" spends the first half of its ten minutes in a smokey swirl, a hushed droning churn, the percussion barely there, but as the percussion builds, the guitars do to, they begin to chime, ring out, grow more jagged and sharp, expanding into clouds of keening high end, building it seems, to something explosive, but instead, the cymbal shimmers dissipate, leaving a roiling tribal rhythm, over a backdrop of ghostly chordal thrum, peppered with the occasional cloud of blurred metallic shimmer, eventually settling down into a spaced out sprawl of woozy low end murk and echo drenched abstract drift.
The opener pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record, the other three tracks offering up variations of that dark jazz-drone theme, the second track "Mask" laying down a haunting mesmeric stretch of softly undulating melodies, anchored by a thick, sinewy bassline, over the top a wild, loose, freeform percussive clatter, all of which eventually coalesces into a dense dirgey doomjazz throb, the drums driving and propulsive, the rest of the instruments surprisingly ethereal, wreathing the proceedings in ghostly chords and spectral melodies. "Plants" unfurls even more abstractly, with a strange bit of clattery minimal percussion, draped over a distant low end thrum, soft swirls, and keening melodies, all faded into the backdrop, the rhythm demarcated by a tolling bell, and little rhythmic flurries, the drums the star of the show here, even as minimal as they are. It's a super abstract rhythmic drift, woozy, and drowsily hypnotic.
Finally, "Mott" finishes things off with a sprawling 13+ minute slowburn dronescape, that begins as a hushed, barely there creep, but soon, furious cymbal skitter gives the track some tense forward momentum, while the rest of the sounds seem to ooze and drag, the implied eventual release or perhaps the promise of the whole band launching into something more meaty, only adds to the tension, and as you might have guessed, the track remains locked in this slow-mo black-jazz creep, the cymbals providing the rhythmic heft, the band doing their best to drag the sound down into the smoldering black abyss. When the cymbals do let up, the track suddenly seems loosed from it's moorings, and the final few minutes are spent in a jazzy druggy drift, a gloriously murky, somnambulant, drone-jazz finale.
Gorgeous stuff for sure. WAY recommended for fans of all of the above mentioned bands, as well as some of Baker's jazzier solo recordings...
As if to make up for a relative dearth of releases from Aidan Baker over the last handful of lists, we've got two new ones this week, the collaborative B/B/S/ project, which finds Baker joining up with Svarte Greiner for a gorgeous disc of Necks-like brooding jazziness, and this one, a sort of family affair, a duo of Baker and his brother Richard on drums, and in some ways it's actually a lot like the B/B/S/ record, droned out, trancey and mesmeric, a sort of sprawling hypno-rock minimalism, jazzy and skittery, looped and cyclical, but where B/B/S/ is all low end thrum and murky darkjazz swirls, Smudging is much more psychedelic, and krautrocky, Baker's bass and guitar sounds heavily processed and transformed into soft billowing synth like swells, and long shimmering drones, slipping easily from soft focus dreamdrone riffing, to something way more abstract. Brother Richard's drumming is subtly yet powerful, measured and minimal, but with plenty of expression. Check out the opening track "Sage", which is a gorgeous hazy slowburn motorik kraut-psych shoegaze epic, the sound wreathed in gauzy wisps of atmosphere, and subtly glimmering effects, the track loping and hypnotic, the drums gradually fading out, as the guitars blur and bleed into a gorgeous chordal smear, laced with cool little backward effects and lush softly shifting layers.
The rest of the record follows a similar sonic blueprint, although pushes that sound into interesting directions. "White Desert Cedar" is like the opening track, but wrapped in a crackling field of weirdly distorted FX heavy guitar, the vibe very Circle-like, but way more blissed out, dreamy and druggy, a pulsing psychedelic shoegaze trance-out, that like many of the tracks here, even though lengthy, end way too soon. Things do get even more Circular on the side 1 closer, which explodes into a blown out hypno rock blast, only to have the drums immediately splinter and and instead of a driving krautjam, the song seems to expand into some serious tripped out kosmische heaviness, the guitars swirling and super distorted, the drums wild and chaotic, but still providing a firm anchor for Aidan's soaring sheets of blurred buzz and muted howl.
The flipside slows things down, opening with a brief burst of synth like soft noise, before settling into a dreamy sprawling meander, shuffling and drowsy, all beneath a haunting choral like drone. The follow up too, unfurls gradually, super abstract spaced out drift, keening tones floating above warm bass swells, laced with looped melodies, slow shifting textures, and all manner of cosmic effects, the perfect score for a weightless drift through the abyss, before finally finishing off with another dreamy brooder, a slow jazzy creep, all barely there percussion, hushed guitar filigree, more woozy bass thrum, a dreamy nocturnal skitterscape, darkly cinematic, mysterious and lovely.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!
We flipped from the debut lp from these power pop punks, Nocturnal Missions, one of our favorites of 2011. Equal parts Cheap Trick, the Shoes, Dwight Twilley Band, that seventies Yellow Pills style power pop, cranked up and revved up with buzzing guitars and a hefty punk rock production. The result was easily one of our favorite punk-pop records in recent memory. This new 7" is/was part of a subscription series, but is also available on its own (we're listing the Terry malts installment elsewhere on this week's list), and is a doozy. Two 45rpm blasts of fuzzed out glammy, trashy power pop radness that sound like they could have been plucked right off Nocturnal Missions. The A side driven by some fuzzy organ and handclaps, sounding like a Yellow Pills version of the Ramones. The B side is total Cheap Trick worship, which minus the distorted buzz and blown out production would reveal some pretty perfect pop, there are even some rad falsetto backup vox. Way recommended, just like the full length.
We've got a couple copies of this lp, released last year on Dangerous Age, a new label run by John Elliott of Emeralds. Black Past is one guy from Cleveland, putting his synths to use to live out some dark kosmische krauty motorcycle groove fantasies (the alternative title for this is "A Soundtrack for a Deranged Motorcyclist"). Drums and guitars etc. are also employed for these minimal motorik one man jams. Simple but effective, repetitive and hypnotic. Limited to 300 copies, vinyl-only.
We're huge fans of pianist and composer Lubomyr Melnyk, his playing so distinctive, his Continuous Music System and the way he creates dense flurries of notes, and lush chordal cascades - it's transcendent, a sort of swirling, almost psychedelic modern classical / new age hybrid, the sound dreamlike but rife with melodic subtleties and tonal colorations that make his music prismatic and expansive and impossible to mistake for anybody else. We also love Blackshaw, in a field of modern minimal guitarists, mining classic Americana, we often find ourselves drawn to his interpretation, one that's not always so minimal, slipping easily from a Melnyk like style of whipping up clouds of swirling chords and notes, to weaving lush landscapes of dark dreamlike chamber music.
Not sure whose idea it was to put these guys together, or if they were simply the sort of like minded artists who eventually find each other, but whatever the reason, or whoever is responsible, we're so grateful, and glad that this sonic summit took place. And it's just about as fantastic as you might hope. Four long form compositions, both Melnyk and Blackshaw effortlessly unfurling lush swaths of swirling melody, Blackshaw's guitar bathed in the reverb and overtones of Melnyk's piano, the sound sometimes so blurred it's hard to tell who's playing what, and that constant shift is part of what makes this so mesmerizing, the tracks hypnotic and tranced out, dreamy and melodic and woozily tranquil, but still sonically super active, each track is like a thick billowing cloud of dreamy melodic drift, the musical equivalent of a jar of fireflies, look away, and the world is lit by a soft warm glow, but look closely and that light is revealed as a dense whorl of tiny little lights, swooping and shimmering. The sound these two conjure up occasionally slips into something more folky, or more classical, but most often meets right in the middle, heavenly and hypnotic, rife with lilting melodies, and warm sonic swells. When things do slow down, the music settles into a moody melancholy shimmer, but those moments are fleeting, with the two tending to slowly add and build until the sound swirls and swoops and soars skyward, and blossoms once again into something truly transcendent.
The vinyl version is limited to 500 copies.
Bootblacks are a relatively new NYC outfit mining classic 1980's post-punk and no wave, creating dramatic songs that, in their best moments, evoke Depeche Mode as much as The Birthday Party. This self-titled lp captures the group early on in their career, on the cusp of a transformation into a really great live band, one we here on the Left Coast have only managed to see twice. Strange pyramids, ever-present smoke and psychedelic lights frame really loud songs that wear their influences like a runway model wears the latest designer frock: with pride and style. Bootblacks have found moderate success in Europe, through touring there multiple times, and on the East Coast where they play constantly.
On the record itself, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds are ever-present, especially on "Save Me Maria" which sounds, in the best possible way, like a B-side off Tender Prey. Jim Sclavunos (of the Bad Seeds / Grinderman) produced a few tracks, including one of the record's best, "The Flood". A tom-heavy beat stomps around a big fuzzy bassline and a clean vocal line. Layers of guitar lines slip in and out, building tension, until the chorus erupts with some weird backwards sounding laser-gun effects. The guitar playing throughout the entire record is excellent, full of skill and heart and hooks. Alli Pheteplace, musically the record's shining star, fluidly conjures the spirit of Rowland S. Howard and makes it her own. Melodies seem to fly effortlessly from her reverb-laden instrument. Her backing vocals on songs like "The Things We Did" and "The Flood" provide an almost sensual contrast to vocalist Ryan MacDonald's in-your-face sexual overtones. Pheteplace and MacDonald are both formerly of San Francisco's The Holy Kiss, another group that worshipped at the altar of The Birthday Party, albeit the swampier-blusier side of the band. The best track off the second half of the record is "Machina", a cacophonous rolling ride of a song. A repeating trumpet line and lyrics you can't quite understand play call and response until the chorus busts through with a perfectly complimentary marching snare beat. There's just enough noise to make the song sound fucked-up and interesting without distracting from its bass-and-drums guts.
The record is housed in a nice silver and black jacket, with some kind of sliver sticker on the back. An obi proclaims the glories of Bootblacks and provides the only information available on the outside of the sleeve. Limited to 350 copies, each one hand numbered. Also includes an mp3 download card, as well as a silk-screened patch for all you punks out there.
Been waiting for this, those of us here into the authentic, ass-kicking Seventies hard rock action that is. After their 1975 debut, Pound Of Flesh, the cd reissue of which we reviewed some time ago (you know, the one with the gross can o' meat cover, to illustrate its title), Cain returned with a second album in '77. Now it's been reissued on cd too, with six live bonus tracks.
Like we said about Pound Of Flesh, this is music made to loudly blare from an 8-track in a muscle car. These long-haired and bushy-mustachioed Minnesota boys, lead by bare-chested, leather-lunged frontman Jiggs Lee (how did he not become a big rock star with that name?) sure knew how to rock n' roll it, in a very '70s swaggery cock rock style that mixes hard riffing and sweet melodies. Lotsa badass boogie here, and some more "sophisticated" moments too - "The Minstrel Song" is their pomp rock opus, recalling early Styx (when Styx were sorta heavy, yes they were) and Queen. There and elsewhere we're also reminded of Rainbow (and Elf) and Starz and other more famous '70s contemporaries. Cain's songs are designed to get a crowd goin' with wailing guitar heroics, soaring vocal hooks, and what might be just the right amount of cowbell - definitely dated but damn good fun, though maybe they didn't really need to do a cover of "Gimme Some Lovin'".
If disco and new wave hadn't come along, Cain might have gone places, 'cause apparently they were one heck of a live band, as you can kind of get a taste of here from the bonus tracks, most of which were recorded at the 1977 Minnesota State Fair. Jiggs was even known to do magic tricks and juggling, in addition to belting it out, wow.
So yeah, Rockadrome/Vintage deliver the '70s hard rock/proto-metal goods again, after the Hooker and Sainte Anthony's Fyre reissues we've reviewed on recent lists. Especially if you liked Hooker, you'll like this. Keep 'em coming, guys! (They have the proto-doom legend Icecross on deck next, yeah!!)
Seems like UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz is slowly working its way through all the John Carpenter movies (and scores), they've done Escape From New York, Prince Of Darkness, Halloween II, Halloween III, there are so many others we were waiting and hoping they'd get to, but probably none more than this one, THEY LIVE. One of our favorite movies EVER, Carpenter or otherwise. The movie itself is great - pro wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper discovers that aliens are living amongst us, and via subliminal messages, are controlling the humans. The only way to see these aliens is with special sunglasses, which when worn, not only reveal the true faces of the aliens, also reveal that almost every surface is covered with slogans meant to control us and make us meek. That's it in a nutshell, but the movie looks great, the concept is awesome, the special effects too. It also includes one of THEE longest, and thus most uncomfortable fight scenes ever, where Piper fights Keith David, in order to convince him to put on the glasses. There are classic lines galore including the almost Evil Dead worthy "I have come here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." So before we even get to the soundtrack, if you haven't seen They Live, probably best if you go watch it, RIGHT NOW. We'll wait.
OK, so besides looking amazing, and being hilarious and scary and over the top, as always Carpenter and his musical partner Alan Howarth have whipped up another stunning score, that perfectly suits the movie, this one a bit bluesier than other Carpenter/Howarth scores, as the two were trying to capture the feel of LA, and of Piper as a down on his luck drifter, the opening (after a TV broadcast from the resistance about the aliens), is all low slung blues creep, a bit twangy, with some woozy harmonica, a little slide guitar, a bit of sax, it's the perfect intro. But then things get classically Carpenter-y, with the creepy synthy "A Message", all drones and haunting minor key melodies, deep chordal throbs, or "The Siege Of Justiceville", which is minimal and skeletal and ominous, with more brooding synths, martial snares, mysterious percussion, there are even a couple melodies that harken back to Carpenter's classic Halloween score. The rest of the score splits the difference between the bluesy swagger of the opening, and the haunting synthiness of the creepier tracks, often mixing the two, like on "Return To Church", "Kidnapped" and "Transient Hotel" which meld the harmonica, and bluesy dirge of the opener with sinister synths and ominous swirling ambience. "Underground" might be the coolest track, with its glitchy noisy opening, its haunting minimal throb, and its tense sonic sprawl. And it was 1988, so closer "Wake Up" is a sorta eighties end credits bluesy synthy funky jam, revisiting the theme of the opening, and creating a template for the warped retro pop of folks like James Ferraro and Ariel Pink. SO GODDAMN GREAT!!!
Like all Death Waltz releases, the packaging is over the top, super swank gloss varnish full color covers, with new They Live artwork by Gary Pullin, liner notes from both Pullin and Howarth, and a huge fold out poster of Pullin's new artwork.
A fine follow-up to 2011's Flak Planet, here's another hectic, headspinning batch of blat, bash, and blast from this unusual unit, avant-industrial-prog-jazz-doom titans Combat Astronomy, the collaborative project of American James Huggett (fretless 5-string bass, guitar programming, production, etc.) and the UK's Martin Archer (horns, organ, electronics). Archer also brings in the Juxtavoices choir for the disc's 13+ minute finale "Cave War", Juxtavoices being the vocal ensemble we last heard on the recent Record Of The Week outing by Archer's incredible Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere.
As any Combat Astronomy aficionado expects, 'tis total, tumbling heavy jazz-grind, the burble of Archer's clarinet or saxophones surfacing amidst the thick low-end rumble of Huggett's bass and jackbooted machine rhythms. Where else are you gonna get this fix? You'd have to go back to John Zorn's Painkiller or England's mighty God back in the '90s to hear something like this. Keeping it interesting, the iron fist of Combat Astronomy slips on the velvet glove, sometimes, with occasional snatches of sinister but blissful ambient drone or third-stream jazz or buried melody battling the propulsive chaotic crush of the riff/rhythm onslaught. The pounding power, freakout energy, and sometimes ceremonial-sounding beauty of these ten tracks have us fully entranced. Seeing 'em live (do they ever even play live??) would be amazing.
Never thought about this before, but we hope that the name Combat Astronomy doesn't mean that they're opposed to the science of astronomy, as in "fight against astronomy". Combat astrology, ok, but astronomy? Or maybe, it's a type of astronomy, the kind used in combat, like if you're a starfighter pilot or something. Anyway, not important, nevermind. What is important is that this band shouldn't be as under-the-radar as they are, 'cause they're pretty incredible.
This one probably doesn't require too much of a review (and we're not being too timely with it either!), but we might as well start this one the way we started our review of 2010's Diamond Eyes, and say that we STILL don't understand how anyone who digs heavy music doesn't love these guys. Pretty much every record since Around The Fur has been chock full of brooding, moody heaviness, the sound as much beholden to their nu-metal past as the Cure and Depeche Mode, and somehow the weird fusion of metal and moody pop has transformed into a super unique sound, one that almost everyone we know, metalheads included LOVE. When this record came out, a procession of aQ friends and customers, came in, called, emailed, all SO excited about a new Deftones record. And we're talking weirdo music nerds, metalheads, pop kids...
And like Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan is another killer, heavy as hell, crazy catchy, super atmospheric, the sound massive, the production HUGE, and with some of the best songs in ages. "Romantic Dreams", is so poppy it's almost criminal that's it's not all over the radio. Then there's "Poltergeist", with it's weird hand clap breakdown and soaring chorus. There's also plenty of the Deftones slower doom poppy dirges, which still sound amazing. Fuck it, fans are gonna want this, haters oughta give the samples a listen, you might be surprised. For all the weird black buzz and dense drones and hooky indie rock and heavy psych we've been digging, odds are this may very well end up being the record some of us listen to most...
The latest from Dirty Beaches is not at all like past releases, which trafficked in a sort of grimy lo-fi RnB, since here there are no vocals, so that haunting Elvis-y croon is absent, and really, the whole dark twang slomo-soul thing has been replaced with a dreamy, ethereal, swirling liquid shimmer, which makes sense once you realize this is not in fact a new album, but is instead a soundtrack, for a film about an indoor waterpark in a mall in Canada, and Dirty Beaches does manage to conjure up the vibe of glimmering reflective sun dappled water, the music almost sounding as if it was recorded beneath the surface, a sort of blurred Oval like dreaminess, the instrumentation just oscillators, mellotrons, chamberlins, strings and processed electric guitar, all smeared into lovely swaths of hushed minimal drift.
The opener is almost New Agey, sounding a bit kosmische, but sunshiney and softly swirly, one can almost imagine floating on the open water, ears underwater, gazing at the blue sky above. The second track, titled appropriately "Floating Underwater Watching Waves", gets a little bit noisier, the sound gritty and low fidelity, with noisy swells swirling over murky melodies, and a sonar like high end pulse, haunting and hypnotic.
The rest of this brief soundtrack is separated into shorter sonic vignettes, lush orchestral drones, twang flecked, hazy slowcore dirges, swirling solo guitar thrum, echo drenched tangles of deep pools of reverb, chiming, cinematic melancholia, replete with faux woodwinds, and finally, a reprise of the opening track, that seems to let the listener, gradually disappear into the (not so) deep blue mystery of this tranquil pool in a strange Canadian waterpark. Lovely!
The latest from local black metal tape label Brotherhood Of Light (Sunchariot, Surt, Uruk Hai, Haar, Sirius, Cosmic Breath) comes the debut from Domus Mactibilus, another group featuring BoL head honcho, the BoL scene starting to get very Ukrainian, as in a bunch of bands, with the same members, but hell, we're not complaining, we've dug pretty much everything we've heard and Domus Mactibilus is no different, although from the first track on this rehearsal tape it's hard to tell exactly what to expect. A tripped out noisescape, all buried synth melodies, creaking groaning industrial buzz, lots of clatter and crunch, swaths of effects drenched thrum, sheets of feedback, the vibe is definitely black ambient / industrial, a droned out fractured psychedelic creep, that seems to get more trippy and chaotic as the track progresses, we were initially imagining that maybe that first track was an intro, and some black buzz would explode into aktion at the beginning of track two, but nope, it seems that DM is not black metal, more a sort of blackened industrial kraut-drone thing. Track two is rhythmic and hypnotic, a pulsing, softly churning sprawl of soft noise shimmer, and murky muted throb, reminding us a bit of a previous Record of The Week from Torlesse Super Group, albeit this is much more primitive and raw.
The third track cranks up the noise again, the throbbing rhythmic pulse buried under clouds of skree and buzz, but the noise here is muted, and muddied, that makes it more sort of droned out and darkly psychedelic, strap on some headphones, and what through speakers may have sounded like swaths of grey noise, reveal themselves to be dense layered dirgescapes, rife with shifting layers, crumbling textures, fractured melodies, and all manner of hypno-noise drift.
As with all BoL releases very very LIMITED!
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Finally, after decades of being out of print and unavailable, the debut solo record from Dump is available again. Dump for those who don't know (or don't remember), was the bedroom 4-track solo project of none other than James McNew, bass player for indie icons Yo La Tengo. And back in the day, as in 20 years ago, Dump pushed all those buttons we couldn't seem to get pushed enough. Dump was like a less purposefully frustrating Sebadoh, sure quirkiness abounds, as do sonic experiments, and unlikely covers (Wreckless Erik, Sun Ra, Henry Mancini, Silver Apples, NRBQ), but at its core, Dump was fundamentally, heart on sleeve, home brewed indie pop, that indie pop sound varying dramatically throughout, from hushed folkiness, to rambunctious distorted fuzzy noise pop, to near metallic chugs, a few tracks are dead ringers for modern sounds (check out the impossibly Pinback like "Good Medicine", Pinback, twenty years before there WAS a Pinback), some not so modern, like "So Sedimentary", a track from a cartoon made by Georgia Hubley of YLT's parents, which just so happened to be composed by a young Quincy Jones! And others, like McNew's reinterpretation of a Shaggs classic, ostensibly not a cover, but deftly capturing the naivete of the original, and recasting at something that sounds like it could be a Dump song proper. Which is really the magic of McNew's Dump, if you didn't know the covers WERE covers, you'd think they were written by McNew himself, which speaks to a deft songwriting pen, and the collection as a whole, recorded in various locations, and of varying sound quality, over the course of several years, is often derided for being so all over the place, and yet, to these ears, it's the sort of early nineties patchwork style bedroom pop that we never get tired of. And considering this stuff is twenty years old, it sounds pretty great even today.
It's hard to pick favorites, and hard to resist going through the whole record track by track, but "So Sedimentary" the above mentioned cover, sounds like some lost sixties psychedelic gem, "Secret Blood" is total classic nineties indie rock, right down to the distorted noise poppy chorus, and McNew's strained sad boy vox. The Sun Ra cover is cool too, and again, if you weren't familiar with Sun Ra, it definitely sounds like a Dump original, albeit a pretty weird one. "The Sea Wall" is fuzzy and shoegazey, and Dump's cover of "Moon River" is pretty divine. "19 1/2" is the 'heavy' track here, all distorted dirgey riffage and squealing feedback, pounding drums and some rad psychedelic shred, "Pennies From Heaven" melds buzzy distorto guitars to lilting fuzzy indie pop, while Jaundice IS in fact a Sebadoh cover, and definitely points to the sonic connection, and finally, "Bus-Kicker's Theme" is fuzzy and playful, like the theme song to some alternate universe children's TV show. And that's really just scratching the surface.
This new reissue tacks on a bunch of bonus material, songs from comps, and collections, and an early ep, there's also expanded artwork and new liner notes, lots of photos too, odds are, even if you already own Superpowerless, and love it as much as we did and do, you're probably gonna want this new version for the extra stuff. And if you've yet to discover Dump, you're in for a treat!
BACK IN STOCK, AT A LOWER PRICE!!! In the early '80s, John Duncan moved from Los Angeles to Tokyo where he began a number of very interesting works with grandiose agendas of destabilization and transgression. One facet of his Toyko period was his pirate radio station using the frequency of NHK 1 after that station signed off at night. But perhaps the most infamous work was the pornography that Duncan produced under the pseudonym John See. Part of the intention of the John See series was for this work to be used by the viewer as source material for any video collage work; of course, Duncan was also going for sexual titillation as well. During that time Duncan shot five films for the adult film company Kuki - Doll, Fallen Angel, Inka, Aidayuki Passion, and Power Love. There are some distinctly unconventional aspects to these films, as Duncan often layered multiple images and early video effects during the build up to the money shot. But most of the sex and the "scripting" around those sex scenes tended to be pretty standard fare. What's most bizarre about Duncan's porn is the soundtrack that he uses. Instead of the funk grooves and wah-wah guitar workouts, he recontextualizes the ecstatic gasps and moans from his own footage alongside sterile drones culled from shortwave. If anything his use of sound is the most provocative element to the John See films.
In 1994, Duncan returned to the John See series, remastering several of the scores as well as remixing others in new compositions (which fit into his original idea that this work should be recycled for the viewer's use). The John See Soundtracks is a quintessential document of Duncan's early styles which ruptured violently with shortwave static and sexual outbursts in direct contrast to the cauldron of somatic fluctuations and electrical drones.
A while back we reviewed a four song ep from this North Dakota stoner rock band who during their very brief lifespan, only ever managed to record those four tracks, which we dug BIG time, some seriously groovy stoner doom, heavy on the Kyuss, Sleep and the like, we even mentioned Deep Purple in our review of that other ep, and they just so happen to cover a Deep Purple jam this time around, but more on that in a second.
So after close to a decade, Egypt got back together to play a show, and ended up reforming officially and managed to finally record their first proper full-length, with many of the songs dating all the way back to the group's first incarnation, and the sound not that far removed, still Sabbathy, and sludgey, stonery and seriously groovy, all it should take is a few second of opener "Matterhorn" for you to figure out if this is your cup of THC laced tea, it most definitely is ours. Much like the recently reviewed record from stoner rock outfit Greenleaf, this is the sort of sound we never seem to get tired of - heavy and hooky, huge riffs, slithery and snarly, swaggery and sludgey, super long tripped out heavy psych jams, that slip easily from riffy churn, to blissed out sun baked space jam and back again. This is much more stoner ROCK, than stoner metal, in fact, it's almost more stoner BLOOZ, very reminiscent of some of our proto metal heavy blues faves, but with enough heft, and a crushing guitar tone that definitely makes this heavy enough for all you metalheads. The tempos are still swinging and Sabbathy, but tend toward the downright doomy, with at least one track sounding like classic true doom, and most of the songs, doomy or otherwise, do seem to always end up in stretched out space jam territory, the sort of heart-of-the-sun jams we wish would sorta go on forever, and in some cases kind of do.
And yeah, they cover Deep Purple's "Black Night", and while it's not do far removed from the original, it definitely fits pretty snugly amidst the rest of their originals. The one thing that might be a stumbling block for some folks are the vocals, which at least one aQ staffer found to be too growly and shouty, but that's definitely what the singer has going on, a rough, raw, growly bellow, that reminds us of Scissorfight, or Crowbar, and even more recently like Fucked Up, it's the sort of voice that seems like it can only come from a big burly bearded metalhead.
Fans of stoner rock, stoner metal, stoner doom, and yeah, stoner blooooz, WAY recommended!
J.D. Emmanuel's beautiful 1982 new age release, Wizards, was a unanimous aQ favorite when it was reissued first by Lieven Martens of Dolphins Into The Future back in 2007, and again by Important Records in 2011. Subsequent reissues of the Texan synth wizard's other releases have been equally praised. We managed to catch him live a year ago when he played in SF's Electronic Music Festival, and it was mind-blowing, especially with the psychedelic visuals behind him.
We never managed to get the Aguirre label release of Trans Formations I: Ancient Minimal Meditations, but we jumped at the chance to get the follow-up, Into Separate Realities reissued by Deep Distance, an imprint of UK label The Great Pop Supplement.
This set, recorded by Emmanuel on the road while travelling for a job in the nineties, is a bit different than the meditative works we have heard before. Recorded using a Yamaha QY-10 synth module/sequencer or Korg X5DR synth module and a Novation MM10 keyboard into a Windows laptop, this album employs more rhythmic and percussive elements. Like Oneohtrix Point Never or Umberto (both of which we're pretty sure Emmanuel has been a major influence on), there is more of a driving vibe to Emmanuel's compositions here that still harness the feeling of cosmic expansiveness, but with a more forward-leaning momentum. Limited to 500 copies, we got about a dozen and that's it. Take flight!
Our second favorite band from the Heavy Artillery roster - after Vektor - make the step up from that now-defunct retro-metal specialist label to the big leagues, Nuclear Blast (boom!), with this, their third album. While the venue has changed, Enforcer hasn't, it's more of the same and that's just fine with us. Enforcer continue to enforce the law of headbanging here, in style. Maybe they've cranked the speed up a bit, but that's about it. Another nine tracks of shredding, spandex-tight '80s styled metal, hitting hard (and hitting falsetto highs) with youthful energy to burn. Lotsa catchy rockarolla flashes by here in a 35:48 blaze of glory, this disc totally in their home country's proud tradition of classy '80s metal mastery (a la bands like 220Volt, Torch, Heavy Load, early Europe, etc.) though of course NWOBHMer's Iron Maiden are probably still Enforcer's biggest influence most obvious to the layperson.
While we'd say this album doesn't quite scale the heights of its shining predecessor Diamonds, it's still quite good and undeniably full of gusto. Any fan of the New Wave Of Old School Metal (or whatever you want to call it) populated by the likes of Cauldron, Twisted Tower Dire and Zuul, not to mention fans of the actual First Wave Of Old School of metal too, ought to dig this big time.
We raved about the most recent record from these Italian weirdos, a confusional mix of droned out folk, abstract psychedelia, math rock, punk rock, and who knows what else, but that's precisely why we dig them so much. We initially thought this was a new single, but in fact, it's part of a remix campaign for that record, "Anyway, Your Children Will Deny It", with various tracks being reworked and reimagined by friends of the band.
The A side here finds Indian Jewelry transforming the FM original into a weird industrial abstract loopscape, a pulsing chordal bleat, over metallic shimmer and FX squiggles, which are soon joined by brass like moans, that begin to skip and glitch and skitter, the whole track becoming more and more rhythmic and hypnotic, all the while remaining murky and woozily psychedelic.
French composer and aQ pal Philippe Petit offers up his FM rework, a staticky field of glitchy pulsations, heavily panned, swinging druggily from speaker to speaker, before in swoop moaning processed cellos (?), but wrapped in a crumbing distortion, the sounds blurring and bleeding into each other before transforming into a drowsy dirge, laced with mysterious effects and random blurts of clatter and crunch. The sound suddenly warped and fractured, pitch shifted as if someone has their finger on the single and are altering the speed, the end result is a little bit dubby, and a whole lot creepy, and haunting, and weirdly lovely.
Pressed on bright yellow vinyl.
Okay all you techno-phobes (and we mean techno music), it's time to add another killer weirdo dark techno record to your collection, you know that little stash of brooding, pulsing minimal electronica that you maybe keep tucked away, hidden from the reproving glances of your punk rock or metalhead friends. But hell, if the recent spate of killer techno records hasn't convinced you that there's sonic darkness to be found creeping like a black fog across underground dancefloors worldwide, then you might need to revisit some recent faves: Shed, Raime, Terrence Dixon, Stefan Goldmann, even the witchy avant electronica of Demdike Stare or the recently reissued murky heroin house of Porter Ricks, all deliver the sort of dark, dubbed out, seething, narcotic, trancey minimal sounds we can't get enough of, and that have won over even the most techno/house music averse.
You can now add Function to that list, the solo project of David Sumner, who happens to be one half of legendary techno duo Sandwell District, and whose debut, Incubation, is a seriously ominous slab of blackened techno, the sound slipping easily from cinematic horror movie creep, to prismatic dark kosmische, to spaced out digidub, to druggy kraut-house, and plenty of other sonic stops in-between. The opener "Voiceprint" sounds like a John Carpenter score, all tinkling melodies, heaving ominous drones, and the sort of ch-ch-ch, h-h-h sound effects that definitely reminded us of Friday The 13th. The follow up doesn't get any lighter, instead, it introduces a pulsing 4 on the floor beat, but it's a throbbing, skittery groove, surrounded on all sides by dubbed out blackness and murky sci-fi swirls, the result is less dancey and more trancey, a tense dubbed out minimal house music that gradually grows more and more druggy and abstract as the track progresses.
"Counterpoint" ditches the rhythm completely, and instead unfurls a swirling psychedelic synthscape, all cosmic arpeggiations, and lush layered prismatic shimmer, it could be Oneohtrix or Cloudland Canyon, but then in swoops "Modifier", a skittier, jittery groover, that peppers it's muted melody with a disembodied intake of breath, giving the track a seriously creepy vibe. And so it goes, the sound in constant flux, pulsing house music is woven into Goblin like synth creep, sounds blossom into drowsy, drifty dubs, before slipping right back into some slithery techno skitter, or reprising the opening track, this time wound around a serious groove, the song transformed into a tense, intense sprawl of atmospheric, cinematic electronica.
The record closes with the epic "Gradient I", which lays down a house-y rhythm, but then wraps it in keening tones and hissing high end hum, the tones stretched way out into tense drones, the sound murky and washed out, darkly psychedelic, minimal and motorik, but super hypnotic and mesmerizing, laced with swaths of soaring synths, but always slipping right back into a gauzy, druggy, techno murk. So great. Anyone who's been digging the recent breed of 'dark' minimal techno will flip for this, and the previously mentioned techno-phobes, this might be the one that finally convinces you to come out of the techno closet!
We've been hearing all sorts of great things about the mysterious Gary War. We always hear him mentioned in the same breath as Ariel Pink and John Maus, who just so happened to produce the Gary War full length. And for sure those brilliant outsiders are a good reference point for the kind of warped bedroom pop that Gary War conjures up. Lo-fi and warbly, these songs almost sound like several great bizarre pop songs playing at once. If you've been digging folks like the aforementioned Ariel Pink, John Maus and Night Control then we're pretty sure Gary War will be your next favorite. This 7" is the perfect taster for the also kick ass full length reviewed elsewhere on this list. You definitely need BOTH!
We thumbed up the spacey synthy glitter-glam garage retro not-really-metal of this SF band's Siltbreeze 7" a while back, but then somehow skipped over reviewing their subsequent full-length, and are even a little behind the times in getting to this new elope of theirs too, but that's ok 'cause the Glitter Wiz guys are also behind the times, or maybe way out futuristically in front, way out anyway, again using '60s and '70s rock inspirations like Deep Purple, Hawkwind, The Doors, Bloodrock, Black Widow, and Iron Butterfly to help formulate their super groovy, more wizardly-than-thou sound, one that's got lotsa synth, jamming electric organ, some flute and sax. Along with catchy riffs and amusing lyrics, often gleefully unserious ("I don't worship the Devil, the Devil worships me"). Our kind of entertainment!
There's one little hushed-folky-trippy-acoustic number, "Sunlit Wolves", but otherwise most of the trax are swaggering rockers, such as "Wizard Wagon" (about the singer's van, it would seem) which definitely has hit potential, in our world anyway. "Motorider" reminds us of both The Stooges and Steppenwolf, and when they get heavier on the 7+ minute "Space" it sorta sounds like an agitated Om with keyboards. Album-closer "Big Sur" also has that Om/Sleep vibe, due to the chant-like vox and slomo swinging plod. It's another long one, the longest here at close to 9 minutes, and so about half way through stops plodding and starts ripping and rollicking, reminding us more of early early Sabbath, like back when Sabbath covered Crow's "Evil Woman" on their first single. That said, though, mostly Glitter Wizard doesn't even seem all that heavy or metal or even proto-metal. They're retro-proto-proto-metal maybe? Definitely G. Wiz love their '60s sounds but do their own cool new thing with that, rather than going for some kind of Nuggets redux. For fans of Blood Ceremony (minus the female vox and much of the metal) and Danava and Mammatus when they do get heavy-ish.
Vinyl-only, goddamit. Maybe someday they'll realize that compact discs are more glittery and magical.
Not sure about you, but when we rip cds into iTunes to put on our iPods, we long ago ditched the traditional genre descriptions and began making genres of our own, that more accurately reflected what the music really sounded like. A quick glance at our iTunes library reveals genres like African Psych, Rembetika, Experimental / Minimal / Classical, Powerviolence, Funereal Dooooooom, Gore Grind, Finnish Avant Rock, Electric Sitar Garage Psych, Gooom, Cinematic Space Psych, Psychedelic Space Synth, and then of course one genre, reserved specifically for Gnaw Their Tongues, Industrial Symphonic Cinematic Black Doom. Which if you've yet to hear this twisted one man band, should definitely give you an inkling of what you're in for.
On this split though, much of the symphonic, bombastic element has been dialed way back, in favor of something much more bleak and minimal, a creepy distorted black ambience, laced with all sorts of creepy field recordings and industrial clatter. Eventually this abstract drift coalesces into something much more intense, a furious blast of full on blacknoize, crumblingly distorted and seriously blown out, processed vox wound into the roiling blackened mix, all underpinned by a dark lurching rhythm. The vocals eventually morph into voKILLS, the background black abyss becomes more intense, a churning glitched out crumbling buzz, that threatens to swallow up all the other sounds, and eventually does.
GTT is matched up with Corephallism, who we had never heard before, which is apparently a solo project of one of the guys from Boston noise outfit Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck, which had us expecting some harsh noise, but instead, the first begins with long layered synth tones, and deep sonorous chants, blurred hazy rumbling drones, the vibe is almost liturgical, at least until a cascade of crumbling static explodes into action, bringing with it, some crzed demonic vocal rasps, the match up of the almost serene synths and the crumbling, crackling, hissing howling noise is pretty potent, an ends up making it more listenable than you might think. The second track follows a similar pattern, but the noise triumphs this time around, the background a slow rumbling chordal swell, hypnotic and woozy, over which is laid a sheet of feedback drenched white noise skree, and more buried vokills, and while this track is much harsher, that pulsing low end background manages to balance the noise, and make it more droned out mesmer than ear destroying pummel.
San Francisco's unclassifiable (though don't worry we'll try) Grayceon are back with a limited edition lp for The Flenser label, after several full-lengths on Vendlus and Profound Lore. This vinyl-only release consists of two long tracks, one per side, "Pearl" (10:11) and "End Of Days" (17:21), both demanding, emotional epics of beauty and power. Immediately even those previously uninitiated into Grayceon's unique sound will get the idea - their chamber-prog-doom-post-rock-metal (there you go!) blenderizes gloomy lugubrious plod, operatic female vocals, classical cello, and nervous proggy chopsiness into a very moody, majestic, art-metal mixture. Uh, can you imagine a cross between Zs, Apocalyptica, and Hammers Of Misfortune? Besides the latter, some other Bay Area "metal" acts like Worm Ouroboros, Giant Squid, Ludicra (RIP) and Asunder come to mind as well, and not just 'cause Grayceon's singer/cellist Jackie Perez Gratz has also sawed the strings for most of 'em too.
Some might have a problem with the "thespianism" of some of this, and/or find the swinging betwixt extremes here - from the lovely atmospheric parts to the punked-out progmetal ones - a bit TOO extreme. But others will absolutely fall in love - or already have. No doubt Grayceon is someone's favorite band EVER. Maybe yours, and you just don't know it yet.
In tip-on jacket. Comes with download.
Two new releases from UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz this week, elsewhere on the list you'll find the soundtrack to John Carpenter's They Live, one of our favorite movies EVER, and then there's this, a more recent proposition, the soundtrack to 2011's The Devil's Business, which we have yet to see, but the trailer looks pretty incredible. And the soundtrack too, not Death Waltz's first foray into modern soundtracks (they did Let The Right One In recently), but it is their first foray into compact discs, this being the first DW release available on both vinyl (being restocked soon) and cd. And they've gone all out on the cd, with some of the coolest, most creative packaging we've seen, but more on that in a second.
The soundtrack/score here is by Justin Greaves, who many aQ-ers should know as a member of sludgelords Iron Monkey, as well as the mainman in atmospheric post rock brooders Crippled Black Phoenix, which makes sense, as the music here is not that far removed from Crippled Black Phoenix. The excellently titled opener "My Enemies I Fear Not, But Protect Me From My Friends", perfectly lays out the sonic template sounding like a haunting, brooding, slow burn post rock, loping and doomy, soaring and darkly majestic, the vocals though a deep croon, the sort of voice to imagine singing old hymns in Latin, which perfectly fits the vibe. There's some Morricone-ish twang too, and swirling strings, tense and moody, building to a seriously intense climax, before slipping back into a droney brood.
And the thing is, unlike a lot of scores and soundtracks, only a handful of these tracks are cues, most are proper songs, hard to say if the whole songs are used in the movie or just parts, but those tracks are pretty great, droney, and dark, psychedelic and smoldering, super atmospheric and cinematic (obviously), laced with synths and strings, buzzing guitars, plodding rhythms, a few tracks have a gypsy vibe to them, sounding almost circusy, others are slow, creepy doom folk drifts, occasionally laced with operatic vocals, or field recordings, but just as often, allowed to creep ominously, and some songs full on rock sounding like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky or yeah, Crippled Black Phoenix.
A few tracks get reprised at the end of the record, one song is revisited, only spookier (the 'spooky version'), another is an alternate version that recasts the original as sounding more like Goblin or John Carpenter, and one of the shorter jams gets fleshed out as a huge, majestic post rock blow out. The shorter cues are pretty great too, from ghostly high end ambient shimmer, to woozy, sinister synthscapery.
As with all Death Waltz, the packaging is super swank, the label's first cd is no different, with a spot varnished cover, with new art, that makes the movie seem like it could be from the seventies, all housed in a six panel gatefold pop-up (!!!), and the cd is affixed to the little part that pops up. So when it's open, the cd is vertical, suspended above the artwork. So cool!!
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.
Latest from our very own Jim Haynes, and his first for the esteemed Editions Mego label, and like releases past, Haynes immediately delves into a world of decay. As a visual artist, he often jokes that his art consists simply of 'rusting things', and rust is definitely a large part of his visual aesthetic, but it's evident that in some ways his goal is similar in the music making process, to take sounds and corrode them, to treat them in such a way that they crumble, and decompose, revealing whatever mysteries lurk within, those subsequent sonic mysteries also decaying, as if the process was akin to nesting dolls, layer upon layer of sound, peel one away and fall deeper into the abyss, one that seemingly has no termination point.
The source sounds here are quite varied as always (most notably this time around a particle accelerator), but Haynes tends toward the greys and browns, static and hiss molded into streaks and shimmers, melodies subverted and melted down into textures, the opening track on The Wires Cracked (another nod to decay), begins with a hushed rumble, an accretion of thrum and hum, pocked with bursts of static, and shards of granular buzz. As the track progresses, the melodic component, becomes more pronounced, but subtly so, still merely a show beneath Haynes' churning windstorm of sound, a blurred, muted squall that manages to whip up billows of caustic noise, but then tamps them down into something much more malleable.
The sprawling "X-Ray" lays down a field of field recorded crackle and spatter, foot steps on snow, broken glass, hard to say precisely, but that gristled crackle hovers beneath an opening blast of noise, before giving way, to a hushed creep, a distant keening shimmer beneath a series of near microscopic sonic events, headphones most definitely required, a hazy, gauzy expanse of windblown emptiness, the sonic approximation of a wintery tundra, transformed into sound, and again, wreathed in Haynes's slow shifting textures, and peppered with insectoid like chitter. The track seems to seesaw between thick, billowing soft noise swirl, and breathless minimal near nothingness, tense and intense, a sonic travelogue through some lost land, or perhaps as the title infers some strange network of inner pathways, not hard to imagine being shrunk down, injected into a human body, and traversing a series of blood vessels and capillaries, the previously silent sound of the body's inner workings, now rendered terrifying and overwhelming, an organic machine pulsing and throbbing, the listener lost in a world of darkness, with only these mysterious sounds as proof that the listener still exists.
The whole of the second side is taken up by the near 18 minute "November", which unfurls like ghosts in the machine, deciding to dismantle the machine before our very ears, again, the sound is seemingly being pulled apart, Haynes there to chronicle its gradual decay, the most active of the three tracks, reminding us in places of the Conet Project, not the recited numbers, or the snippets of music, but the sounds in between, the various bits of static and hum, the tense interludes between sounds, here allowed to become sounds themselves, erupting into huge droning tangles of crunch and crumble, wrapped in keening high end shimmers, occasionally dipping into serene stretches of bleary ambience, the eye of the sonic storm as it were, the sedges of the sonic field still corrosive and crumbling, lending an air of impending doom to these otherwise tranquil passages, but the hammer never falls, instead, the sounds gradually dissipate, the clouds of noise clearing, revealing a hushed landscape of whistle like tones, smoothed out into a blurred susurrus of streaked shimmer, pocked with what sounds like the rasp of stone on stone, a final moment of decay, before the record itself crumbles into silence.
Light In The Attic continues its deep digging into Lee Hazlewood's LHI archives with a beautiful and welcome reissue of Hazlewood's 1963 recording debut, Trouble Is A Lonesome Town. Lying somewhere between Johnny Cash and a bohemian Porter Wagoner, Hazlewood takes the listener on a travelogue of a tiny backwater called Trouble and its crazy cast of colorful characters. A sort of country novelty record, it's Hazlewood's deft handling of song-writing, narrative delivery and musical production that gives it a lasting quality that elevates it beyond kitsch. This expanded reissue comes with 15 bonus tracks of Hazlewood's singles and productions from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties that paint a fuller portrait of the legendary artist in his early years, including tracks with Duane Eddy. Beautifully packaged with an 8 page booklet featuring a previously unpublished interview from 1998. Fans of the other LITA Hazlewood reissues should jump on this!
This is the first time we've reviewed anything by this strange Swiss group, active since the nineties, who use self built machines and old analog junk to create a disturbingly genius hybrid of power electronics, old school industrial music, avant turntablism, and abstract whatthefuck sound art. We got these from another aQ fave, and previous Record Of The Weeker, FRKSE, which makes sense, since like FRKSE, and Strotter Inst. among others, Herpes O Deluxe employs tape loops and broken/modified turntables as primitive rhythm machines, giving their sound a haunting, home brewed, robotic vibe, which Herpes O Deluxe then transforms via vocals and other sonic alchemy into something even stranger and creepier.
The A side begins with fields of industrial clatter, and blurts of Psycho like strings, churning mechanical rhythms, and howled distorted vox, all over a backdrop of hazy melodic shimmer, and softly pulsing spaciness. The sound slipping from hushed rhythmic mesmer to full of face melting power electronics and back again, like an even more unhinged Wolf Eyes, but even then, the sound somehow remains listenable, and mesmerizing, that rhythmic backdrop churning beneath fragmented synth stabs and processed heavy breathing, and finally a super creepy chorale.
The B side is no less far out, beginning with a bed of gristled buzz, over which sampled vocals drift, some sort of argument, a man and a women, not in English, all of which is partially obscured by a buzzing pulsing super minimal rhythm, and peppered with sine wave bleeps. The low level background hum builds and builds, finally transforming into a seriously hefty drone, layer upon layer of buzz and rumble, an oozy black sonic creep, the female arguer, now solo, and now wailing and screeching, beneath a roiling black buzz wreathed in swirling clouds of strange squiggly static, eventually settling into a final stretch of blackdrone softnoise mesmer.
Super striking John Baizley / Pushead style cover art, and a cool, multi panel sleeve.
The Iron Dogs are a Stratocaster-wielding power trio playing '80s inspired denim n' leather, punked out speed metal, that sorta sounds like a hybrid of Speedwolf and Slough Feg. They hail from the far northern climes of Ottawa, Canada, where it's not that hard to find husky sled dogs to pose with a naked bloody warrior woman in the snow for the cover photo of your album, apparently! That somewhat cheesy cover pic and the band's fairly generic name (they're on a label whose roster includes at least two other "Iron" bands, Iron Kobra and Iron Curtain, by the way), while piquing our curiosity, had actually kept our expectations low; little did we know that Iron Dogs would become one our our favorite new metal bands once we actually heard 'em - indeed Allan here has become a little bit obsessed, proclaiming this to be his fave metal album of the year thus far, though technically it came out in 2012, but definitely hasn't been widely distributed or reviewed. Seriously, as you can imagine, we listen to so much new music here all the time that if something winds up in actual heavy rotation, garnering repeat play, can't wait to go home and listen to that disc again and AGAIN status, it's something pretty special.
Their name provides a few clues. First off, it clearly references two of their biggest influences, namely Iron Maiden and the English Dogs. With Maiden, we're talking first two albums, short haired singer Paul di'Anno era, and English Dogs, they were an '80s punk band who just happened to do a couple of amazing heavy metal albums - so yeah, think NWOBHM at its closest intersect with '77 punk. Also, "Iron Dogs" was a song from the first album by Canadian speed metal pioneers Exciter, so they're named after that too. And they live up to it all, totally back alley punk, totally fist waving metal, plus they possess their own special, undefinable X-factor that just puts this over the top.
Vocalist/guitarist Jo Capitalicide is no Paul Di'Anno but his rushed, rough vocals still possess yobbish punk charm and sound both sincere and spirited, and totally works with this music, which is soooooo energetic and catchy, played with sloppy, off-the-rails abandon. The lo-fi garage production is totally PERFECT for this too. The combo of their rollicking riffs and the raw sound is just killer, Iron Dogs rockin' like excited, inspired kids.
Lead off cut "Razors Of Doom" gallops into view riding a riff that's straight up Iron Maiden Paul Di'Anno era. Ooooh-yeah. Then the magnificent "Dragon Chord" appears, a song that's somehow a punk rock version of mystical Manilla Road metal. Literally fantastic. Next up, "Wrath Of The Barbarians" has got another one of those classic Maiden-ish riffs to it, it's (again) quite a stormer� but heck we could go on and on talking about each and every one of the nine tracks on here, they're all great, full of hooks and feeling, it was friggin' tough to pick which ones to make sound samples of, or maybe it was easy since we couldn't go wrong with any of 'em.
Basically, THIS is metal at both its purest, and punkest. It's practically joyous. Probably not for everyone, but if you "get" this you'll really really love it.
By the way, anybody who might be worried that the aforementioned cover or album title is (however quaintly) not that PC, should be comforted by this note from inside the cd: "Iron Dogs is fiercely anti-fascist! Homophobes, sexist idiots & bigots: F.O.A.D.!!" They also proudly state: "Only Fender Stratocasters were used in this recording! Total Strat-metal!" Maybe that's the X-factor?
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ah ha! The deluxe edition of the Night Wearing Feathers collaboration between the surrealistically minded irr. app. (ext.) and the enigmatic At Jennie Richie. We previously listed the standard lp version, but this extremely limited box set edition (we have only THREE copies), in addition to the vinyl, also features the previously released but now out of print cassette Unknown Invertebrate Drama AND an entirely unreleased cassette as well, both gorgeously package in deluxe printed jackets. And to the best of our knowledge, none of the material on any of these three elements overlaps with anything else. Everything's housed in a beautiful box and includes two deluxe printed cardstock inserts, each one #'d and signed. We've not checked out the unreleased cassette (which looks to be a proper split between irr. app. (ext.) and At Jennie Richie, but probably only the members of those projects know for sure!), but here's what we said about the other two elements:
The first side of the vinyl - "Night Wearing Feathers" - was originally a 3" cd-r from 2006; and as you could probably guess, that's long been out of print. This track begins with a squeak and sigh only to snap into simple skittered rhythms that succumb to a radiant drone build from and / or occluded by various mechanical vibrations that poke through the glassy mesmerism. It's not out of step from the brilliant trilogy of Wilhelm Reich related recordings irr. app. (ext.) embarked upon around that same time period (e.g. Ozeanische Gefuhle, Cosmic Superimposition, Kreiselwelle). The B side - "Sunshine Bus Rider" - was composed six years later in 2012 and is a far angrier, more gnarled composition, with a buzzing guitar (or maybe a detuned sitar?) slowly blooming at the onset like some of the more recent OM recordings with fucked collage noise, nervous slices of diabolical laughter, and clattering found objects all getting jostled around in the true spirit of Nurse With Wound's sonic Dada.
On first half of the Unknown Invertebrate Drama cassette, At Jennie Richie's track is mysterious through and through with gray blasts of sound ebbing from silence only to blink out of existence in seconds. These are ghostly sounds, or rather these noises are treated in a ghostly way akin to the acoustic materialization that Francisco Lopez would offer forth about a decade ago. The motorized rumblings that massage themselves into a eerie cosmic purr open the second side and could be generated by no one except for irr. app. (ext.). Out of this introduction, Waldron sets up weirdly flanging, filtered tones that undulate above watery field recordings and nocturnal bumps in the night, concluding with a strange set of angular synth beacon pulses and gasped utterances. What we've heard are mind-fuckers for sure, and we mean that as the highest of compliments!
The boxset is limited to 66 copies. We have only THREE!!
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Another five dollar no-brainer here. If you like the FUNK that is. Like it says, some of the best ever tracks from James Brown's crack backing band the J.B.'s, including such classics as, well, they ALL are really, heck you've got "Doing It To Death (Part 1)", "Pass The Peas", "Breakin' Bread", "Damn Right I Am Somebody (Part 1)", "Gimme Some More", "Same Beat (Part 1)", and half a dozen more. All heavily sampled in the hiphop realm of course. If you like Public Enemy, ferinstance, you'll for sure recognize the crazy fat synth wobble of "Blow Your Head" (played by James Brown himself) and the squealing horn intro to "The Grunt (Part 1)". Not to mention numerous breakbeats. Yep, lots of funky drumming and horny horns here, all killer no filler, 'cause the best of the J.B.'s really means the best of '70s funk in general!
Recommended to us by an aQ pal (thanks Hank!) as most likely being 'right up our alley', we were pretty excited to check out this French / Italian outfit, heck, they're called JC Satan, and the record cover is a pretty intense and bizarre painting of a masked man covered in blood and sores, surrounded by two topless demon women, one wearing a pentagram, the other with 666 carved on her belly, the trio standing between two big pillars of smoke, but the drawing is not 'metal scary', more cartoonish, which should have been our first hint that this 'Satan band was not at all metal, and instead, trafficked in something else entirely. That something else in this case is some fantastic fuzz poppy garage rock, a sound much more in like with Thee Oh Sees and the Fresh And Onlys and the like than anything remotely heavy or evil.
In fact the opening track "Odyssey Of Love" might be out new favorite garage pop jam, all big chiming reverby guitars, pounding echoey drums, Beach Boys-ish vox, sweet female background vocals, dreamy and hooky and washed out and hazy and a little bit druggy. But wait, the second track "Prehistoric Love" is just as good, more laid back and low slung, with some impossibly distorted guitars, that blown out, peaking production making everything that much more murky and muddy, but with a soaring chorus, kick ass drumming, and some rad howled female screams, this is some dark buzzy fuzzy garage rock bliss for sure.
"Your Place" gets all spaced out an minimal, like some lost lo-fi NZ drone pop gem, a smoldering garage rock ballad, all spidery melodies, and woozy, weary boy/girl harmonies, "Itaca" is also laid back and dreamily druggy, sounding like Mazzy Star via Dum Dum Girls, "The Day" gets things going again, with some Lyres like riffage, some knuckle dragging drum pound, and more of that meter pegging production, while "You Are Good" is another warped dirgey blast of sixties style reverb heavy garage-y groove, and so it goes, a dark and mysterious collection of deliriously druggy fuzzed out garage rock from this Euro crew, the sort of thing that should have the current crop of fuzz pop garage rockers anxiously checking their rearview mirrors...
Most definitely recommended for fans of Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, Ty Segall, Bare Wires, Davila 666, etc...
We've been experiencing something of a Jandek craze here at aQuarius as of late. Not that Houston's legendary loner went away or anything - it's just when you have 60+ albums to your name it can be possible to overwhelm anyone trying to write a review. Well, the last few Jandek releases have overwhelmed us in the best way imaginable, signifying another unexpected turn, this one towards more melodic group improvisations showing a heavy free/spiritual jazz influence with wandering piano melodies, sustained strings, clarinette, dramatic cymbal washes, and an overall sense of restraint that hasn't been really heard on Jandek records before. You get the impression that Jandek, handling the piano on this one, acts more as a conductor outlining the general direction for the songs and trusting his cast of supporting players to simply be themselves within the ensemble. The results are strikingly beautiful while somehow managing to remain classically Jandek-ian in their freewheeling execution.
Atlanta Saturday follows a similar path as the last two releases, Where Do You Go From Here and Maze Of The Phantom, though it predates them, having been recorded in 2007 at the Academy Of Medicine. The album is another beautifully subdued affair with plenty of breathing room and drawn out instrumentation. Who would have ever thought that the man responsible for unleashing one of the strangest careers (if you want to call it that) in modern music back in 1978 would have landed in such a peaceful sounding place three decades later? Of course, once the occasional vocals come in there will be no mistaking who this is, and the recent material appears to be the latest phase in the continuing saga. Again, the emphasis here seems to be on the group dynamic and the songs gel together into one gigantic harmonious whole. If you dug the previous few albums, or possibly even the recent slew of Anton Batagov releases we have been going crazy for, then you will definitely want this one.
Originally released for Record Store Day 2012, this cool for-fans-only power pop artifact is now available again, for those of you who weren't able to nab one on RSD. We recently reviewed the reissue of Jellyfish's second record and swansong Spilt Milk. Not sure we could describe Jellyfish any better than we did in that review, so probably best to revisit that really quick:
Even 13 years after it was released, Spilt Milk still gets played A LOT, and still pretty much destroys every other pop record around. Jellyfish started out as a bellbottomed, paisley psychedelic retro combo, but quickly blossomed into a completely amazing, heavy rock power pop supergroup. Not in the sense of being made up of members of other famous bands, but in the sense that they were an absolutely super amazing rock group!!! Jellyfish took the over the top bombast and incredible harmonies of Queen, the perfect summery pop of the Beach Boys and mixed in their own off kilter approach to power pop. Incredibly intricate and complex arrangements, but done so deftly as to never take away from the inherent catchiness of the songs. The guitars are huge, crunchy and heavy, like a super charged Brian May, the drumming is incredible, heavy hitting, super creative, and as catchy on their own as any of the guitar parts or vocal lines. In fact, the one time we saw Jellyfish live, vocalist / drummer Andy Sturmer managed to sing all of these incredible harmonies WHILE playing incredible drum parts, on a STAND UP kit!! Totally blew our mind. A look at the cover and the incredible arrangement of instruments in the studio gives an idea of how epic and amazing this record sounds, gongs, timpani, strings,piano, organ, acoustic guitar, harp, xylophone and more and more and on an on.
Some of the songs are delicate and sweet, soft and shimmery, some are bombastic and heavy, some are sweet simple lullabies, others are incredibly complicated slabs of ultra complex prog pop, but every song on here is a stone cold classic.
So if you notice the mention of all the instruments in the studio and the impossibly lush production, and well, once the vocals were added to the music, the vocals being incredible, with insane harmonies, bordering on Queen-worthy, a lot of the sonic subtleties that the band labored over for months, and in some cases years, were lost. So the band decided to release this double disc, that includes instrumental versions of both Jellyfish records, 1990's Bellybutton, and 1993's Spilt Milk, so obsessive fans, which most Jellyfish fans are, could here all of the amazing sonic weirdness that band conjured up to make some of the greatest pop music EVER. And as a fan it's pretty incredible, the songs sound so crazy sans vocals, and some parts that were nearly inaudible on the record proper, jump to the fore with the vocals removed, and give the songs a whole different vibe. Really not sure why we even wrote this much, Jellyfish fans are absolutely gonna want this, nay NEED this, and for casual listeners, or folks who are intrigued enough to check these guys out, start with the Spilt Milk album proper, you won't be sorry.
Ready to go clubbing? In another galaxy? With his latest record under the not-a-person-but-a-band Jonas Reinhardt moniker, Jesse Reiner (and friends) have turbocharged the synth swells and flourishes of their previous kosmische krautrock-inspired releases with some powerful booty-shaking beats. As much as we loved their self-titled debut, and Powers Of Audition (both on Kranky), we're happy that Jonas Reinhardt are providing fuel for our dance-making body parts. Such an effort seems fitting with their new home on Not Not Fun Records, a serious concern in new electronic and dance music that has also released material by aQ faves Peaking Lights among others. The result is an entrancing visit to planet space disco that owes as much to Giorgio Moroder and other Italo devotees as it does to Neu!...
To kickstart the party, Reiner and co. rely less on the amazing motorik drumming of Damon Palermo and more on drum machines, which creates an equally ecstatic vibe, but for a more vertically positioned human. Frequent Jonas Reinhardt participants Phil Manley (Life Coach, Trans Am, The Fucking Champs), Diego Gonzalez (3 Leafs), Tim Soete (The Fucking Champs), Steve Moore (Zombi), and others are also on on board. Don't let all our talk of discoing make you think Mask Of The Maker is a soundtrack to the coke-fueled lives of mere beautiful people, because Jonas Reinhardt forms melodies with otherworldly synth sounds and stratospheric mantras from the ethereal mouth of Meryl Press (check out "Elimination Street") to guide you on your imaginary extraterrestrial journey. Thus Emeralds is still a definite comparison.
Perhaps the Philip K. Dick quote "It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity" on the inner-sleeve suggests the journey you are on is actually to a star called The Real You. Or maybe this turn towards real-deal dance music is the revelation that follows. That's just a guess, though. Jesse Reiner and his Jonas Reinhardt cohorts may have pulled back the veil a bit, but we still don't know what truths lurk under Reiner's red beard (which is on full display on the front cover), now do we?
Originally going by the ill chosen moniker, Bananas, this solo ambient project from 3 Leafs' Josh Pollock (aka DJ Female Convict Scorpion) was wisely rechristened The Lake Millions, a name much more in keeping with the sound, a sound that actually surprised us. Pollock's 'ambient' record is not so much ambient, as it is a sort of serene, tranquil, dreamlike psychedelia, we were expecting a simple minimal landscape of drones and tones, but instead, the sound here is luish and lovely, spare aching guitar melodies, wreathed in reverb, soft tangles gradually unfurling, blossoming lazily, sun dapped and soft focus. The slide guitar adds a subtle twang to the proceedings. Imagine Barn Owl, if instead of trafficking in dark brooding droned out doom folk, they set up in a meadow, under the late afternoon sun, gorgeous blue sky overhead, soft billowy white clouds drifting by, the grass waving softly in the warm breeze. The vibe is definitely back porch-y and dreamlike. Some tracks sound like a lost, more blissed out strain of classic Americana, others drift drowsily through a hazy, old timey, faded memory, reverb drenched shimmer. And here and there tucked away amidst all this sunshiney dreamfolk drift, there are some subtle haunting minor key melodies, the cinematic vibe that runs throughout, growing shadowy and a bit sinister, it's mostly a subtle melodic shift here and there, but then check out the title track, which closes things with an epic sprawl of brooding abstract drift, somehow weaving the warm melodious vibe of the previous tracks into something distinctly darker, but with a warm glow that seems to infuse the sound, however dark, with a lush glowing loveliness, the song unfolding as a tense sonic sprawl, that over the course of its 13 minutes, finds sonic shadows gradually being overtaken by the light. Gorgeous!
Andrew Lagowski is a man of many hats, from his earliest post-punk work as Nagamatzu (reissued by Dark Entries) to brilliantly paranoid sci-fi concrete compositions as S.E.T.I. (the best of which came out on Ash International) and the muscular electronica under his own name from the early '90s that bridged the practices of Autechre and Clock DVA. Lagowski is not the first to use the name Legion, and there's no doubt somebody else will pick up the moniker somewhere along the way; but for this project, he propagates a dark ambient agenda similar to the one he helped Lustmord craft on the seminal Heresy record, through long-form electronic tones and undulations scattered with psychologically charged samples and bursts of white noise. Originally released in 1992 on the German imprint Hyperium, False Dawn was a grim parallel to much of the ambient techno offerings that were spawned from the post-rave culture, with a handful of other likeminded artists delving into the deep cosmology of an industrially minded ambience. The album's central tracks - "Colossus" and "The Plasma Pool" - are aptly named with a liquid gravity that ripples through echoing, abysmal drones, bookending a shorter rhythmic track akin to the sequenced techno that he produced under his own name.
This reissue of False Dawn is full of bonus material, much of it unreleased. There are two versions of "Tunnelvision" which was recorded about the same time, with one of the versions being released on a super limited 7" single, and the longer version making its first appearance on this collection. Both sport much of the same deep sound design with stretched / blurred / echoed liturgical chants that weave in and out of the shadowy electronics and buzzing static. "Komarov" loops a slow feedback pulse with synthetic orchestrations and snatched shortwave radio conversations, leaning a bit more towards the S.E.T.I. recordings. And Lagowski revists a handful of the original cassettes for two of the tracks which were produced in 2008 and 2012 respectively, with both keeping true to the deep dark extended gasping of Legion's earlier sounds. The collection ends with three remixes from other artists that feel tacked on, but certainly don't diminish the power from Lagowski's aesthetic.
Record number two from this French fuzz dream pop duo, not sure how we missed the first one, but we're digging this one a lot! The music a heady concoction equal parts modern garage rock and classic French pop, swirling synths wrapped around ukulele (!), simple propulsive almost krautrock drumming, new wave basslines, the sound crystalline and dreamily druggy, the vocals washed out and woozy. Some of the tracks sound a bit like like Moon Duo, that sort of stripped down kraut-psych, while others sound like old French Ye Ye music channeled through the woozy drugginess of Spacemen 3, melding sultry French spoken word, to wheezing psychedelic organ and those krautrocky grooves. The ukulele is possibly the strangest part of the equations, adding a truly distinct and unique sound to the proceedings, even when the band unfurls a thick swirling blast of buzzing guitars, it's underpinned by a lilting melody played on the ukulele. The slower tracks here play like some alternate universe sixties girl group, all fuzzy and shimmery and dreamy, but the bulk of the tracks are droned out organ / ukulele / fuzz guitar zoner-psych groovers, that we can't seem to get enough of.
Another gorgeous collection of dreamy downer pop brilliance from these slowcore legends, and like on 2010's C'mon, it's hard to know what to say about Low, that we haven't already, but on The Invisible Way, some things have definitely changed. Not just the sound, but the songs as well. The sound, is massive, lush, and layered, much of the record sounding like some classic pop record, baroque and majestic, the instruments perfectly preserved, the sound live, and ALIVE, as if they were playing right there in front of you, but also meticulously recorded to perfectly capture every nuance, no matter how subtle. The harmonies, always an integral part of Low's sound, are even more beautiful this time around, so much so, that in places it seems like the instrumentation has been purposefully dialed back to let the vocals carry the whole song, and they do, and it's sublime. There's also lots of piano this time around, and what sounds like strings. There's one track with a weird sort of handclap beat, that almost sounds like a drum machine. It all makes for a gorgeous record, one that remains true to the group's slowcore past, but is definitely pushing the sound in exciting new directions. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco produced the Invisible Way, so he can probably take credit for some of this new sound, but then there's the shift in Low's sound, which in places, definitely sounds a bit twangy and even a little bit country, but in others like seventies British folk, and in others like baroque pop, and still in others like some sort of ethereal blues. All of those elements definitely existed in the band before now, but never has each of those been so perfectly honed, the songs here achingly beautiful, heartfelt and haunting, and yet still impossibly catchy. As much as we sometimes think to ourselves, "oh ok, another Low record, ho hum", the second we hear it, we are immediately transfixed, utterly smitten, and are reminded that Low is one of the rare bands who seem unable to make a bad record, and who just get better and better and better, even after nearly twenty years. And once we begin listening to a new Low, we can't help but let ourselves get fantastically and inexorably lost in Low's dreamlike soundworld. And The Invisible Way is no different.
It's been a very long time since Robert Hampson has released a Main album and an even longer time since he's produced a *great* Main album. Ablation changes that, although those who would be expecting the deconstructed hypno-rock of Motion Pool or Hydra-Calm will be disappointed; but those who had followed Hampson's trajectory starting with the last few Main records about a decade ago into spatialized electro-acoustics only to rediscover his infatuation with the drone which finally brought him back to the guitar as a principle instrument will certainly understand where this record is coming from. Hampson is still working at the storied GRM studios in Paris, and there is an infusion of the classic aesthetic of what came out of GRM within Ablation (notably Parmegiani and Ferrari), but at the same time he does link it back, if in a subtle way, to the mesmerism which girded the Main productions in the '90s. That said, any connections to his former group, Loop would be quite a stretch indeed.
On Ablation, Hampson has recruited Stefan Mathieu - a brilliant drone technician in his own right whom we've not heard from in ages - and the pairing works seamlessly, even as it clearly slants towards Hampson's vision of a cold disconnection dispensed in overlapping hissing layers and hypnotic patterns of abstracted sound. The percussive klank of a prepared piano on "I" is a bit of a red herring for what's found throughout Ablation especially on "II" and "III", is a series of slow ellipses of churning guitar drones and golden tonal coronas drifting with all of the uneasy beauty of an android's dream. The closing track "IV" bends along a radiophonic arc with ether crackle and metallic rasping and slow motion pixelations from a sharply rendered synth that forms the coda to the album. Organic. Liquid. Electric. Motorized. Bleak. Holy. All of those adjectives apply to this fantastic album. Welcome back, Main!
Blues rock gets a pretty bad rap around here sometimes. Whenever Allan is excited about some proto metal reissue or heavy psych rarity, Andee's first question is always "is it blues rock?", which essentially means, is it really heavy psych rock or proto metal, or does it fall to just that side of the sound, and is really just plain ol' blues rock? Which Allan and plenty of other folks still definitely dig, but is just too bluesy for some of us, getting dangerously close to pub rock or dad rock or whatever pejorative you use to describe cheesy blues.
Which makes this reissue all the stranger, and all the more frustrating for Allan, cuz Andee LOVES it, loved it when it first came out back in 1990, and STILL loves it, but the thing is, it totally and absolutely is BLUES ROCK. And Andee can't really deny it, and yet still digs it. But c'mon, check out those first few samples, it's GREAT blues rock, not quite heavy enough to be stoner rock, but it is pretty rocking, big riffs, pounding drums, wailing vocals. And it is kinda stonery, which makes sense, since the mainman behind MoR is Chris Goss, who produced a bunch of the Kyuss records, and because of that, Masters Of Reality has always been connected to that Palm Desert stoner rock scene, which again, even sonically makes sense. While this may be way more poppy and mainstream, and yeah, bluesy, it's also groovy, and stonery, and kinda heavy. Cream's Ginger Baker joined briefly, to play on the second record, Sunrise On The Sufferbus, and the band has featured plenty of stoner rock luminaries over the years, but this is the one, their Rick Rubin-produced debut, is still the best, and still sounds awesome almost 15 years later. If you actually do dig blues rock, this will kick your ass, and if you're into stonery bluesy psych, you might be surprised to discover how much you dig this too.
The reissue comes in a super fancy multipanel digipak, and includes a bonus live disc!
We love NYC noise rockers the Men, pretty much every one of their records ended up being a HUGE favorite around here, heck we even made Leave Home our Record Of The Week back in 2011. Review-wise we'd sort of been leapfrogging between records and sounds, having first reviewed, Open Your Heart, before reviewing their much noisier, WAY more chaotic debut Immaculada. And while we did love that record, it may have distracted folks from the fact that The Men had been growing steadily more poppy and less noisy with each record. And we'd been hearing rumblings recently about how this new one was crazy poppy, so much so that some folks just couldn't handle it. We were pretty skeptical, but listening to it now, we can definitely see what had people all worked up. Don't get us wrong, we still dig it, it's a pretty awesome record, but it IS crazy poppy, sounding way less like nineties noise rock, and way more like nineties indie/college rock, which might not seem like that much of a distinction, but in some ways it really is.
But if you're like us, and you love jangly pop as well, there's still some noise pop goodness to be had here, it's just now heavier on the pop than on the noise. Just check out the opening one-two punch of "Open The Dorr" and "Half Angel Half Light". The first of which is all acoustic guitar and piano, whirring organ, laconic laid back vocals, a little bit twangy, it reminds us a bit of the Woods, or for a nineties reference, a little bit like a less guitar heavy Dinosaur Jr, maybe Sebadoh? Might not be what we expected, but it's pretty great. And the follow up is definitely more rocking, but somehow it's even more nineties indie rock sounding, a la Replacements, Soul Asylum (when they were good, and when they were good, they were GREAT), Skunk... This could be some lost band on Minneapolis label TwinTone, with the heartfelt vox, the urgent jangle, the fuzzed out riffage, swirls of wah wah guitar and a big chorus. And that's pretty much how the whole record plays out, a killer throwback to the heyday of nineties indie rock, but these guys began life as a post punk / noise rock band, so they can't ditch that side of their sonic personality altogether, and when it pops up, it adds some awesomely noisy heft to the proceedings, like on "Without A Face", the stripped down verse give way to a wild squall of a bridge, complete with wild harmonica blowing (!!), or on "I Saw Her Face", the band unfurl a super blown out, crumbling distortion drenched dirge, wild and psychedelic, but underpinned by some serious poppiness. Elsewhere the band further confound with the stripped down jangle garage rock of "The Seeds", but return to melt faces with "The Brass", which could definitely have been plucked from one of their older records, and the sprawling 8 minute closer, which fuses dense drum pound with chugging, noisy distorted riffage, the whole thing tranced out and hypnotic, but laced with some stretches of pure poppiness, which are balanced by some fierce noise drenched psychedelic blowouts, sounding not only like an ideal final track, but probably a live set closer as well.
So yeah, don't believe the hype, odds are if you dug the other Men records, you'll likely dig this one too, unless you're extremely averse to pop, but in that case, what the heck is wrong with you?!?
Milk Music's Beyond Living lp was the sort of record we could barely keep in stock. The band hyped to high heaven for ages before we actually heard them, but somehow, when we finally did get an earful, it more than lived up to all that hype, an explosive hybrid of classic nineties indie rock, fuzzed out noise pop, equal parts Dinosaur Jr, Husker Du, the Wipers, and fuck, pretty much every band we've loved from the last four decades. Fuzzy and hooky and heavy, jangly and crunchy, super melodic and crazy catchy. But still pretty goddamn punk. Which is why we were pretty surprised when we discovered their new record was on Fat Possum, home to the Black Keys among others. But then they were sort of primed for mainstream success anyway. And while we're definitely digging Cruise Your Illusion, the group's sound has changed a lot. At first blush, it's way less fierce and furious, more laid back and fuzzed out. The Dinosaur vibe is huge, right down to the guitar tone, fat and buzz drenched and blown out. Not to mention the fact that once we're 3 or 4 minutes into the record we're already in full on psychedelic guitar jam territory. But you know what? It suits them, and it still sound pretty great, you just have to prepare yourself for something a little less sweat soaked and headbangable, it's more that sort of bounce up and down, nod along nineties style college rock jangle, there's definitely a big shoegaze vibe going on too, with some of the songs boasting explosive tranced out riff heavy blissouts, but for every one of those ("Cruising With God") there's another shuffly jangly groover ("Crosstown Wanderer"). We're tempted to think these guys are actually engaged in a super high concept musical hoax, but if that's the case, why are some of these songs so goddamn great!
The vocals too, way higher in the mix than last time, wavery quavery keening about-to-break sad boy indie rock vocals, reminding us again of Dinosaur, but of course also early Soul Asylum (back when they were GREAT), and in fact, there's a huge Soul Asylum / Replacements / Husker Du feel to the whole record, which is most definitely not a bad thing. We'd be surprised if folks who dug Beyond Living didn't dig this too, but in some cases, it could be borderline too jangly and indie poppy. But for folks who love that era, and that sound, there's probably not a new band doing that old sound better than these guys.
This is a weird one, the latest from local reissue label Superior Viaduct, who have so far reissued recordings from Factrix, Black Humor, German Shepherds, Noh Mercy, and the Sleepers, and even still, amongst some seriously weird company, this might outweird them all! We had never heard of Monitor before (although we just learned Scott is a big fan!), apparently the musical offshoot of a seventies LA art collective called World Imitation Productions, who fused modern technology with more archaic influences, and whose music somehow struggled to sonically represent that hybrid.
The group was part of a loose group of like minded outfits, know as the Associated Skull Bands, which included Nervous Gender, NON, among others, but even amidst a weirdo Hollywood punk scene, Monitor proved too much for the not so weird weirdos. And hell it's easy to see why listening to this now.
The record opens with queasy synths and ominous rumbles, from which emerges a minimal rhythm wrapped in primitive synths, peppered with burst of drum freakout, and angular fuzz guitar, super hypnotic and darkly dirgey, the vocals are breathy and reverbed, dueling boy girl voices, trancey, and woozy, the guitars seem to grow more detuned, the sound seeming to fray at the edges, super psychedelic and crazy creepy cool. That's the core sound of the group, the drums driving most of the tracks, the guitars and synths doled out a bit more judiciously. The track "Mokele-Mbembe" lays down a sinewy bassline, and some tribal drumming, and then over the top, the group deliver some very straight ahead sounding African high life style vocals. "In Terrae Interium" drapes distorted guitars, over a dirgey rhythmic stumble, tangled vocals croon and moan over the detuned dirge, super trippy and abstract.
And so it goes, the group unfurling twisted ditties, rhythmic and playfully synthy one second ("Herb Lane Theme"), distorted and and almost carnivalesque the next ("Amphibious"), replete with weezing organ and angular guitar skronk, cold wave twee pop one second ("Pavillion"), minimal washed out drone-psych doom creep the next ("Phosphorea"). And when they came up with a song that required more rocking than they were equipped to do, well hell, they just hired it out, in this case, to the Meat Puppets, who kick out the jams on "Hair", a fierce staccato punk rock blow out, all howled vox, swirling sci-fi synths, noisy buzzy guitars, serious drum pound, squiggly Black Flag like leads and some seriously harsh vox! Almost wish Monitor had written a whole record for the Meat Puppets.
The reissue tacks on a handful of bonus tracks to the nine from the original 1981 album, which like the record proper are all over the place, from murky rhythmic minimalism, to wild squiggly angular electro-punk to tripped out backwards recorded noise experiments.
So, it only took twenty-two years? It's a little hard to believe that this album is actually finally here, and not at the bottom of some Irish loch as was rumored to be the fate of some tracks recorded in the mid '90s. But here it is, the follow-up album to My Bloody Valentine's iconic, legendary Loveless. No doubt, you've already read a review or two of mbv, which was initially being sold directly from the band's website and is only now being made available in the shops; and we probably won't sway too far from the prevailing opinions that most seem to have about MBV '13. Yeah, this is definitely My Bloody Valentine, and it's really fucking great to hear another album from the band; but no, it doesn't compare to Loveless. The latter statement isn't fair, as very few records are on par with Loveless; but so many people (we definitely count ourselves amongst those) have been waiting with various degrees of patience for Kevin Shields and company to finally finish something. And here it is.
The album opens with a heavily fuzzed-out, dream-pop number in "She Found Now" with Bilinda Butcher taking up the cooing vocalizations that drift along with Shields bending the whammy bar on his languid, magenta guitar notes. "Only Tomorrow" and "If I Am" are tracks that really do date themselves (favorably, of course!) back to the early '90s again with Bilinda singing to a hip-swaying backbeat and shoegazed guitar melodies that could have graced albums by the more astute MBV acolytes (e.g. The Lilies, Medicine, Lush, etc.). "Who Sees You" is probably about as close to a track from Loveless as you'll get on mbv, but it's more of a the narcotic swarm of sound as opposed to those huge noise-pop singles in "Soon" and "Only Shallow." At the album's conclusion, My Bloody Valentine takes a huge swing into some serious damaged sonic weirdness with "Wonder 2" - which had aQ-ers divided (Jim thought it was a big 'miss', Andee thought it might be his favorite track here, reminding him of MBV style weirdos Teenage Filmstars) - it's clearly a response to Simon Reynolds' long standing argument linking My Bloody Valentine to the birth of jungle / drum 'n' bass. The skittering breakbeat is there; but the song itself with its atonal chunks of sampled guitar noise, that had us thinking it was the sound of a truck driving by outside, seems wholly unrelated to the rhythm and while some here found it forced others found it fractured and blissfully fucked up. That said, mbv is totally worth getting, and diving into, but the big question remains, why the hell did it take so long?
The vinyl edition of mbv includes a cd of the record as well! Oh and sorry it's not cheaper, but we imagine Kevin Shields wants to make the most of / from this release! Plus it's of course an import.
Words of Ash, Walls of Smoke, Minds of Glass is the debut solo release by the Bay Area avant-rock denizen Gregory Hagan, whose languid violin and tempestuous guitar work was prominently featured in one of our favorite local outfits Common Eider King Eider. He's also active in the Thomas Carnacki performances / recordings as well as in the post-MX-80 project Grale. But as Pale Reverse, he sets down the strings in favor of analogue electronics and a four-track to build this elegantly creepy piece of nocturnal dronemuzik. A ghostly rumble introduces the 20 minute piece which slowly morphs into radiant, shivering oscillations of guilding tones suspended with hiss, mist, and fog. Subtle melodies flicker with beautifully singing overtones echoing throughout the electronics, eventually amassing into a holy crescendo of interlaced dronescapes snapping back to the industrial pall which opened the proceedings. At loud volumes, the tape detritus from multiple overdubs and erasures become all the more obvious and lend more than a few complimentary comparisons to William Basinski. But fans of the BJ Nilsen / Stilluppsteypa collaborations, the latter day works from The Hafler Trio, and even the Caretaker would be well served to check this out. Limited to 73 copies!
Prurient does techno? Oh, yeah. And we have to wonder just how much input / influence recent aQ fave Silent Servant had on these recordings, as Through The Window sure does sound like a pretty solid response to Silent Servant's fantastic dark-techno album Negative Fascination which was released on Dominic 'Prurient' Fernow's Hospital Productions in 2012. That said, Through The Window did begin as out takes from the divisive Prurient album Bermuda Drain, noise-purists scoffed, but most everybody else was pretty taken by the EBM-rhythms and blackened synth propulsions on that record (us included). While the dark synth lines, horror-house melodies, and monstrous pitch-shifted vocals of Bermuda Drain are held over on Through The Window, the rhythms are pure minimalist techno with the production values polished for the dancefloor. Even in comparison to the grim gothicisms and industrial strategies of Sandwell District (the broader operation to which Silent Servant belongs), the atmosphere on Through The Window is utterly claustrophobic and ominous. Monophunk basslines lifted from any number of Autobahn techno bangers (e.g. Model 500's "No UFO's" or Konigsforst by Gas or anything from that aforementioned Silent Servant album) laced with metallic, flanging synths headed for a total death-trance trip. A four-minute crusted drone interlude breaks up the two lengthy techno workouts, which are essentially variations on the same theme. A damn fine album.
