Via Sacred Bones, here's another dose of sensual, spacey post-punk psych pop from this Brooklyn band, who remain in a mostly laidback mode for this recording, nobody's breaking a sweat here, but the fuzz n' throb still does its job. Nicely head-nodding, full of languid dreaminess, torpid grooves, spacious stoner jangle, and occasional moments of almost-rocking. One-track mind is right - the title to their previous album, 2011's Hazed Dream, could do for this one just as well, better actually as this is a mellower trip. Neil Hagerty (Royal Trux, Howling Hex, etc.) produces and provides some backing vox, and certainly does nothing to interfere with this record's zoned out pop vibe. Which is good 'cause we like it just like it is.
Another amazing archival release from the Teranga Beat label, who in the past have given us records by Guelewar and Karantamba, both huge hits around here, and we're digging this one just as much. The 1979 debut from this Senegalese nine piece band, whose sound is rhythmic and hypnotic, definitely psychedelic, with dense super hypnotic percussion and a killer horn section, not to mention a bad ass axeman, the songs here are tranced out and groovy, the rhythmic structure reminds us of Konono No1, with that very distinctive staccato start stop groove, right down to the super dramatic multiple drum hit breakdowns that seems to define Konono's sound as much as the amplified thumb pianos. But that's only part of the equation in Royal Band De Thies. The sound energetic and emotional, dark and minor key, a bit of that Ethiopiques vibe going on for sure, but these guys are relentless, their sound like some impossible hybrid of traditional African music, hard bop jazz, and heavy psych rock, with some tracks slipping into more high life style, some into brooding balladry, and others with a little bit of a rocksteady feel, but with many of the tracks culminating in stretched out jams, horns and guitars all tangled up over dense driving grooves. The vocals too, super passionate, lots of call and response back up vocals, but the lead vocals are do dramatic and intense. The recording too, captured live, with just a couple mics, has the sort of energy that made classic jazz records so vital and immediate sounding, as much about the energy and emotion as the music. Just give a listen to the first two samples, it's the band at their most intense and rocking, and while the rest of the record is not nearly so intense, it definitely gives you an idea of the sort of musical ferocity these guys were capable of, and even though much of the record is a bit more laid back, it's all pretty fantastic.
The cd comes housed in a full color slipcase, and both cd and lp include a big booklet packed with liner notes and photos!
Two brothers from Humboldt County are RV Paintings - one is Brian Pyle, whose name should probably strike a chord as one of the principals in Starving Weirdos and recently has been generating some impressive work under his solo Ensemble Economique moniker; the other is Jon Pyle, who occasionally makes a guest appearance in the Weirdos but also operates in Nudge with Honey Owens, Paul Dickow, and Brian Foote. For all of the method acting from the brothers Pyle in getting stoned and jamming, they have been remarkably consistent and consistently good in all of their ruminations, with RV Paintings probably the best that they've mustered. The RV Paintings debut on Root Strata is three years out but is still a timeless, gorgeous dronesmear of bowed metals and elongated guitar; this was followed by a well-suited split with Taiga Remains on Blackest Rainbow, and now, they've got this stunner on Helen Scarsdale.
RV Paintings speak about, to, and from their own immediate surroundings: the moss, mushrooms, and mycelium of the awe-inspiring redwood forests, the heavy fog that hangs at the coast and from their bongs, and the weightiness of the Pacific Ocean just off to the west. The title Samoa Highway gives the impression that the two brothers were on their own trip during a cold, wintery day, gazing off to the southwest and pondering the warmer climate of American Samoa. But no, the Samoa Highway is located in Humboldt County, connecting Eureka with the small community of Samoa on the other side of the bay which was thought to resemble that of Pago Pago in the mid-19th Century. It's also the bridge that would get you to the Arcata/Eureka Airport.
So, the album begins with field recordings of airplanes lifting off on the jawdropping track "Millions," as sitar-like harmonics and ghostly, levitating drones emanate from the distance. It's a perfectly narcotized smear of echo and drift, hanging in space as the remnants of a particularly lucid dream or the foggy headspace from an afternoon of smoking pot and staring at the sun. This is a track that could spiral onward forever. So nice! Samoa Highway continues with "Mirrors" driven by melancholy looped melody from a cello that dissolves into a flurry of shimmered guitar fuzz, whose shoegazed mantra has been submerged under centuries of felled trees and lichens. Cyclical patterns of samples from dark yet pastoral orchestral passages rounds out the album. If it weren't for the delicate freeform clamor of the drumkit, tracks such as this wouldn't be that far removed from the 'pop ambient' cuts by Gas. Citations of Taj Mahal Travellers, Organum, Grouper, Barn Owl, and The Caretaker certainly hit the mark. Music for airports? More like Music for California airports! Fuck yeah!
And a download coupon is tucked within the sleeve as well!
Whenever we review some classic sounding pop record or vintage power pop reissue, we inevitably reference the Shoes, one of THEE seminal power pop groups, but one whose records have been out of print and unavailable for ages. Finally, all of the classic Shoes records are getting deluxe vinyl reissues, and what better place to start than their debut Black Vinyl Shoes (there were a few small run private press releases, but Black Vinyl Shoes was their proper debut)
These Illinois power poppers had it all, fuzzy jangly guitars, dreamy vox, lush vocal harmonies, hooks galore, and some of the catchiest songs EVER, their sound so obviously the blueprint for so many bands that would follow, plus there was a weirdness to their sound too, crazy effects, strange arrangements, all woven into their perfect power pop.
Black Vinyl Shoes is pretty much all killer no filler, every song a seemingly potential hit, in some perfect world where power pop filled up the charts, and you can hear lots of other bands past and present - Big Star, Dwight Twilley Band, Cheap Trick, Tinted Windows, Barreracudas, Jellyfish, Redd Kross, Purling Hiss, Home Blitz, Telekinesis!, we could go on and on and on and on, needless to say, absolutely essential listening for pop fans, and anyone who digs the current crop of fuzzy jangly pop groups, and wonders where that sound came from, well the answer is right here. Seriously, an essential. So glad for the reissue, wish they'd do cds too.
Peter Christopherson, John Balance, and Boyd Rice recorded three tracks in 1985 under the moniker Sickness Of Snakes for a split single with Current 93 entitled Nightmare Culture, which understandably has been long out of print. According to the liner notes by Boyd Rice, there had been talk of the three continuing their collaboration by travelling to Calcutta and hiring a really cheap orchestra to perform some sort of atonal mass, whose content and score had yet to be determined. The adventure never took place, leaving the sum total of the Sickness Of Snakes material at very small amount of material (a fourth track was created for a German compilation around that same time, but strangely is not included here). While this reissue from Soleilmoon is commendable in uncovering these rare and quite impressive tracks, the price of admission is rather steep.
When the trio went into the studio, they had rented one of the Fairlight samplers which had been making the rounds in England, and they happened to get the machine right after Kate Bush had used it for her Hounds Of Love album. Samples of tubular bells, noir trumpets, and saccharine strings got repurposed for Sickness Of Snakes, whose opening track "Various Hands" is very typical of what Coil would have crafted on their debut Scatology, with lugubrious sampled strings marching through a doleful electronic sonata, but topped with the sounds of bombs being dropped into the WWII trenches. Those noir horns and electronic bells spill into an elegaic atmosphere on "The Swelling Of Leeches;" and "The Pope Held Upside Down" is a mangled collage of pigs squealling, for an unsettling coda to this unduly short collaboration. In full disclosure, Coil reissued these tracks on their Unnatural History compilation (also out of print), and Boyd Rice tossed "Various Hands" onto his compendium The Way I Feel. If only there were more tape to be scraped off the studio floor.
The latest musical project from longtime San Francisco artist and musician Kyle Ranson (previously of Pale Hoarse and the artist behind the human faced dog drawing on Thee Oh Sees Putrifiers II album), Strawberry Smog is a lo-fi indie pop group in the vein of Woods and the Fresh & Only's with an eye on sixties west coast pop-psych structures through a home grown folk-busking lens. Sort of like Olivia Tremor Control mining Incredible Submarine Band influences instead of The Beatles, the songs are catchy, well-written and infectious invoking a druggy California sunshine vibe without a whole lot of unnecessary gimmicks. The tape comes with a cd of the same material. Can't wait to hear more!
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The title may be an accurate mapping of Darren Tate's methods, but there is a clear compositional structure to this album which belies the equation of improvisation with mere wanking. Darren Tate's work has long been a staple here at aQuarius through his sodden impressionism in Ora and the deep-end dronework of Monos, with his solo work dialed into one of the odder facets of England's Hidden Reverse (to use David Keenan's terminology). Field recordings, empty spaces, blorping synths, Jandekian guitar plucks, and unkempt sonic rituals all revolve in and out of Tate's albums. And Two Improvisations finds the man situated behind two synths (a monotron and a casio, plus a few bells, and the aid of some avian twitter just outside his window), settling into an early Delia Derbyshire type of soundscaping with tonal long-form undulations pricked by a slow celestial beacon of a synth pulse. Towards the end of the first piece, Tate tweaks the filters to the shimmering electronics which point to the cosmic trippiness of JD Emmanuel. The second piece is considerably shorter and much weirder, with clusters of hand bells tapping against the microphone itself and an oscillating beat pattern hovering just at the event horizon. Another hand-numbered edition from Tate, this one was only pressed up in a batch of 80. We probably won't be able to restock it once it's gone...
Full length number three from these guys (this guy?), and like the first two, we've been totally obsessed, and have basically wanted to listen to nothing else. Longtime readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with Telekinesis! (yep, the exclamation point is part of the name), whose sound is plucked right out of 1995, sounding like every indie rock and college rock band you loved back then, or maybe more accurately, like you WISHED every band back then sounded like. Huge hooks, crazy catchy melodies, the sound bombastic and fuzzy, jangly and totally rocking. The opening one two punch is tough to beat, "Power Lines" with its acoustic intro, which leads right into some seriously kick ass crunch, there's chiming synth melodies, and fuzzed out power pop indie rock jangle galore, perfect vocals that slip effortlessly into a falsetto, big drums, and again it's the sort of crazy catchy pop songs few folks can pull off, let alone this consistently. Then there's the follow up "Empathetic People", which is just as catchy, but has a whole different sound, pounding drums, chugging distorto guitars, heck, even the verse is insanely catchy, and when the chorus hits, it somehow manages to be even catchier.
Like 12 Desperate Straight Lines, Telekinesis continue to dabble with electronics and different sounds, never more effectively on "Ghosts And Creatures" which sounds like some lost eighties MTV pop hit, a little bit new wavey, drum machine, buzzing synths, minor key melodies, at least until the chorus which sounds like buzzy electro pop a la M83, but a bit more wistful. And then it's right back into it. More fuzz, crunch and jangle, and more hooks, more songs that will get stuck in your head forEVER. We should mention "Lean On Me" if only for its E.L.O like chorus, sooooooo crazy good. In some ways this record, and it's catchiness is almost self defeating, we'll pick a favorite, play it to death, and then move on to the next song, play that one, which supplants the one before, and the cycle continues, records with only one or two great songs definitely don't suffer from that problem, but then, as far as problems go, it's a pretty good one to have. And if you're like us, when you get to the end, you can just start over at the beginning. Like the other Telekinesis! records, all it should takes is a listen to the samples below, and odds are you'll be as obsessed as we are.
Latest from these Bay Area punks, and like the Barreracudas 7" reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, originally available as part of a subscription series, but now available individually. And like the Killing Time full length we dug so much, the A side is another gloriously distorted punk pop blowout, the sound super raw this time around, the guitar blown out and crumbling, the vocals, even more dramatic, again reminding us of the late great Smoking Popes, a Smiths like croon, over churning pounding fuzzpunk poppiness. The flipside finds the band taking on "over 21" by legendary SF jangle poppers, Henry's Dress, and gives it fantastic fuzzed out makeover.
BACK IN STOCK! We had this very rare record many moons ago; and we've managed to get a handful back in stock. Here's what we had to say about it way back when...
The specialization of language offers the ability for those acquainted with certain phrases, words, and even verbal inflections to communicate with a greater efficiency. Here at Aquarius, we've coined such neologisms as "dronology" and "fuckery," simply because we hope that such words offer enough connotation even without a lot of context. Sure, we make references to obscure movies, books nobody read, and composers that never really got heard outside of some tiny state-funded electronic music institution, but hopefully we explain things in a language that can be understood. On the other hand, Italian composer / musicologist Giancarlo Toniutti communicates in nothing even close to a common vernacular; instead, his writings are a confounding display of specialized academic language and are composed within extended run-on sentences that make Aquarius look like the saints of brevity in comparison. There may have been a time when I had the patience to read Derrida, but not anymore.
Given that ridiculous prologue, I have to say that the collaboration between Toniutti and Andrew Chalk (who in contrast to Toniuitti has always been painfully quiet about his work) is truly fantastic. As the language in the massive liner notes is too convoluted to decipher with any certainty, I'm guessing that the two artists collaborated upon long thin wires which they set up in natural settings. They then took these recordings of windswept scrapes, amplified creeks, and bowed metals to ICR Studios where Colin Potter helped them mix their recordings into that eerily angelic drone which emanates from all Andrew Chalk recordings. As Chalk doesn't entirely dominate the proceedings, Toniutti's penchant for gritty textural striations does add an important aural characteristic to the recordings. In spite of the difficult-to-impossible liner notes, the music which it attempts to describe is transcendentally beautiful.
Another missive from these Northwestern musical miscreants, and another sprawling black-doom ultra-sludge, grim-dirge epic, two tracks, nearly 30 minutes, opening with a haunting expanse of creepy droned out ambience, like the score that might play over the credits to some super arty horror film, all ominous ritualistic percussion, black sonic swirls and heaving low end rumbles, all of which are soon subsumed by dense squalls of keening feedback, building to a furious frenzy, before the hammer falls, and the song proper lurches into aktion, a monstrous, lumbering, slo-mo tarpit creep, all spaced out drum crashes, 10 seconds a part, avalanches of chordal crush, that ring out endlessly, wreathed in shards of feedback, the vokills a sick demonic rasp, the tempo glacial, total abject blackened ultra-dooooooooooom heaviness of the highest order. Well within the sonic realms of fellow doomlords like Moss, Monarch, Bunkur, Corrupted, Khanate, The Body, Fleshpress and the like. Trees don't necessarily add anything brand new to the equation, but they do craft a pretty gorgeous sprawl of droning doomic miserablism, which toward the end of the first track, begins to blur and smear into something much more psychedelic and abstract.
Which perfectly leads into the second track, which begins all feedbacky and freeform, all swirling keening feedback, chanted vox buried in the mix, and abstract drum splatter, before, like the first track, the sounds coalesce into another grim doooooom creep, this one even more spaced out, the notes further apart, the chords left to ring out and fade even more gradually, the timbre of their crumbling decay as much a part of the sound as the notes themselves, maybe even moreso, a slow, trudging, downtuned tranced out chunk of mesmerizing hypno-doom mesmer, that ends way too soon, even at close to 15 minutes...
This disc collects two very hard to find pieces of vinyl from this aQ beloved duo, with the 2005 LP Nahtscato first issued by the German imprint Paranoise in an edition of 300 copies and Autopoiesis being a 2004 picture disc from Small Voices. As nice as it is to hear Troum material on vinyl, sinking into 75 minutes of Troum's vast, darkened dronescaping pocked with cinematic, intense loopings and dramatic melodies is a very good way to experience their work. We've carried both of these pieces of vinyl way back when and neither of them are currently available. On both of these records (it's hard to tell where one album ends and the other begins) the billowing dark clouds of ominous guitar drones that have been the trademark of Troum (and their earlier incarnation Maeror Tri) continue unabated in a thick morass of chorus, delay, and reverb effects boxes with occasional accompaniments of pounding tribal rhythms. Troum navigate through cavernous, subterranean spaces where thrumming low end engulfs everything in a blackened pit of emptiness, then dramatically lifts off through their cyclical drone-riffs that build towards impressive crescendos of icy noise and luminous drones. There's also two bonus tracks not found on the original pieces of vinyl. If you missed the opportunity to pick up the vinyl back then, this cd isn't going to be around for terribly long either as the bulk of Troum's catalogue tends to get snatched up in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Beyond Painting displays another facet of the enigmatic Robert Turman. Way back in the late '70s, he founded the seminal noise project NON with Boyd Rice, who soon adopted the name for his own work, with Turman seemingly disappearing from the public realm for well over three decades. There were just a smattering of self-released cassettes which emerged in the '80s, but it wasn't until John Elliott unearthed the beautifully hypnotic patter of Turman's 1981 cassette Flux on Spectrum Spools, that people began to really pay attention to Turman's work. Then the slew of Turman 'reissues' began to emerge, although it's really hard to call them reissues as the original editions were utterly minuscule. Beyond Painting dates back to 1990, but wasn't released for another 20 years as a self-released cd-r in an edition of just 100 copies; and thankfully gets a proper 2lp reissue via Fabrica. While Turman is often associated with noise culture, all of the work we've been able to hear (outside the early Non recordings) has steered clear of an aggressive tone with Flux adopting an introspective minimalism and with Beyond Painting taking a somber approach to ambient music with a distinctly postindustrial touch (e.g. Zoviet France, Cranioclast, etc.).
Spectral hues and back-masked synth notes interlock for the introductory "Soft Self Portrait" which ends up being austere, bleak, and self-negating if in fact it is a self portrait. A slow-motion, post-punk dubby bass line girds the stalker atmosphere of "Al Qa'ida" with its buzzing, harmonic synth lines. The name of this track in 1990 wouldn't have had the cultural weight that it does now, but there is a desperation and abjection to the desolate melodies that pushes through the lens of 9/11 right on through today. Another masterfully done piece is found in "Relux" whose eerily sci-fi / narcoleptic melodies predating what Aphex did on Selected Ambient Works II, but way creepier, or even what Burzum did on the ambient half of Filosofem. Yeah, it's that good! The second LP holds more of a Zeit era Tangerine Dream vibe with deep cosmic swells and hypnotic patterning through resonant tones and melancholy coloring. Who knows what other hidden recordings may emerge from the vaults of Robert Turman? Please keep 'em coming!
William Tyler has spent the last decade plus as a touring guitar player for both Nashville indie country combo Lambchop, and indie rockers the Silver Jews, but here on Impossible Truth he strikes out on his own, and comes up with something that harkens back to a different age, several different ages in fact, the obvious reference is the guitar soli / early Appalachia of folks like John Fahey, Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho, but imagine that sound filtered through something more Laurel Canyon-y, for a sort of seventies psychedelia, the sound evoking wide open expanses, big sky country, the soundtrack to a meandering drive in a big old car, top down, on single lane roads winding through rolling green hills, no destination, endless possibilities. Opener "Country Of Illusion" adds a bit of raga to the mix, giving the sound an exotic droney vibe, with a little bit of an Eastern tinge, but soon, a subtly rhythmic pulse, some slippery slide, a little bit of twang, and it's a whole different world, we're hearing Morricone, Pell Mell, James Blackshaw, all woven into a heady bit of sun dappled psychedelic folk, that is pretty divine. Steve Reich and Terry Riley may also be influences.
The mood darkens a bit on the "Geography Of Nowhere", the tones wreathed in reverb and delay, the sound looped and layered, minor key and melancholy, but then like the first track, the sound opens up, the mood shifts, as of the clouds parted revealing nothing but blue skies. The record tends toward dense melodic tangles and mesmerizingly repetitive arrangements, with the tone and timbre constantly changing between songs, some lush and warm, rich and lustrous, others more crystalline and high end, more shimmer and glimmer, all culminating in the closer, which might be the weirdest track of all, it starts out a sort of loping Western style Americana, looped melodic figures drifting over swoonsome slide and lush chordal swells, but then in creep what sound like horns, and maybe fiddles? The melodies get more playful, the slide more slippery, the sounds soar and swoop, the horns moaning and bleating, before finally exploding into a full on heavy psych drum heavy noise drenched freakout, the drums driving and motorik, beneath a cloud of roiling psych guitar tangle, that eventually fades out, into a shimmery sprawl of pulsing, echo drenched abstract guitar drift.
And everyone who buys a copy of Impossible Truth, cd OR vinyl, will be entered into a raffle to win a VERY RARE test pressing of the record!!
Heads up all you Sublime Frequencies obsessives out there, and we know there are a lot of you, this is record number two from a new label called Sham Palace, run by Mark Gergis, one of the guys who runs SF, and whose first release was the amazing Leh Jani lp from aQ fave Omar Souleyman. This new lp is a collection of Dabke, a celebratory music performed at weddings and parties in the Middle East, hypnotic electrified dance jams driven by the buzzing of the mejwiz, a double reed bamboo flute, this modern version accompanied by driving electronic beats, over which a male vocalist, calls out for the audience to dance and participate. Does that all sound a little familiar? That's because Omar Souleyman is probably the most well known Dabke performer, at least in the West, so if you can't get enough of that sound, here's a killer collection of super obscure Dabke cuts, collected from various tapes and cds, featuring tracks captured live at parties and weddings, and like those Souleyman jams, the jams here are driving and hypnotic, psychedelic and totally mesmerizing, totally tranced out, the beats booming, pounding, skittering, the melodies buzzing wildly, the tracks here all vary quite a bit, from stripped down and a bit more mellow, to bombastic and booming, to brittle and lo-fi and distorted and drenched in echo and reverb, the programed beats wild and chaotic, the grooves totally irresistible, some amazing stuff.
And needless to say, WAY recommended, especially for all Sublime Frequencies / Omar Souleyman fans!!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!! Packaged in nice full color sleeves with printed liner notes on the back of the jacket.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
Along with Funky Frauleins and the French Sixties Girls compilations, how could we resist the allure of Nippon Girls, a swinging mod-tastic compilation of hip-swaying and frug-dancing femme-fronted big beat gems from sixties Japan? We couldn't, and you probably can't either. The cd came out a few years ago, but the vinyl version only just got released so we thought we should finally review this especially after the success of another Big Beat disc, Nippon Guitars, we reviewed a few lists ago. Feeling the influence of Western pop music in the sixties (including Bossa Nova from Brazil and Ye Ye from France), Japanese musicians capitalized on the new sound often by lifting popular songs wholesale and rewriting the lyrics. But the enthusiasm with which these sexy and soulful songs are performed and arranged make them pretty outstanding in their own right. Acid-y guitars, cinematic orchestral flourishes, and sharp and dynamic arrangements are just too infectious to be ignored, especially by beautiful women who look and sound this fantastically fierce. It's party time!
Note: the cd version contains the full 25 tracks while the lp version only covers the first 12 tracks from 1967-1969. We assume there will be a follow-up volume 2 vinyl comp with the other tracks.
This would have easily been a contender for record of the week, if we got in enough in, so it will have to do as a highly recommended highlight. But let it be known that this latest volume of Spiritual Jazz is fast becoming our favorite of the series! We loved all the others of course and the first one was hard to beat, but they really brought out the big names and heavy hitters on this volume (Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry & Krzysztof Penderecki, Bobby Hutcherson, Hampton Hawes and Albert Ayler) and it's on two discs so lots of long form modal cosmic expansion is at the ready. The theme this time around is Americans in Europe and it documents a fertile period in the sixties and seventies where many American jazz musicians fed up with racism and decaying socio-economic conditions in the US found solace working in Europe on festival circuits and collaborating with great European jazz groups abroad in Denmark, France, Italy, UK and Germany, exploring new directions in sound. Many of these tracks are from rare recordings (some of them live), not released in America and are reissued here for the first time. Besides the big names, there are plenty of lesser known players like Billy Gault, Sahib Shihab, Frank Wright, Clarence Peters, Lee Konitz, Noah Howard and Grachan Moncur III. Beautifully packaged with lots of liner notes and record covers, this is some real deep and mind-expanding stuff! Like we said above, Highly Recommended!!!!
Debut release from this new SF band, born from late great punk pop weirdos the Sopors, who basically went mostly unheard outside of their little scene (which also included pop tUMULt pop heroes the Ovens!). And while we're doing our best to track down copies of the Sopors lp to review, we've got this new record from Violent Change, at the time of this tape essentially a solo record by Sopors mainman Matt Bleyle, although since, the band has been expanded to an actual group that includes Tony from the Ovens. And all of these mentions of the Ovens is not for nothing, cuz Violent Change definitely has the same sort of pop vibe as the Ovens, but where the Ovens take the Beatles and Weezer and the Champs, Violent Change are a much more twisted and lo-fi proposition, an obvious comparison is definitely Guided By Voices, in fact, we'd imagine fans of GBV would flip for these guys, who kick out perfect pop jams at the drop of a hat, but don't shy away from getting more punky, or twisting a perfectly good pop song into a gloomy chunk of deeply crooned post punk dirgery. That said, the bulk of this tape is some of THEE catchiest lo-fi pop you're bound to hear EVER, with excursion into blasting punk rock, noisy freakouts, and at least one track that is a dead ringer for the Ovens, but the whole thing all fuzzy, and ramshackle and gloriously lo-fi, and punky and catchy and probably the most listened to tape in the shop!!
Ok, with their nasty-sounding name and mostly-black cover art with a festering skull on it, you might get the idea that Vulgaari are gonna be a dark and heavy band. And they are! But their brand of blown-out, brutal death-doom sludge metal is also pretty darn spacey and psychedelic too, making even more to our liking. Vuglaari recorded this, their debut album, as a duo, but have an expanded live line-up, doubtless a necessity if they were ever gonna hope to sound this heavy outside of the studio. So sheer wall-of-FUZZ heaviness is indeed a big part of their equation. But what makes their catastrophic, claustrophobic crush work for us is the way it's interspersed with spacious ambience and eerie trippiness and sometimes out-and-out BEAUTIFUL guitar not-so-gently-weeping moments. Harmonies and all that. Gorgeous harmonies. Yeah, that's a major factor contributing to the greatness of Vulgaari, they're a sludge band that's more than just about the filthy "sound" and the slowness (though they have all that checked off for sure), they've also got some melodic, very "metal" lead guitar shred going on too, which, with the occasional squealing lick, reminds us a little bit of Zakk Wylde. In the context, though, of druggy-spacey-evil atmosphere and uber-low-end chugging riffage, "bendy" riffage that's usually in super slo-mo but sometimes speeds up to bulldozing effect.
Their page on the Metal Archive site lists their lyrical concerns as: "Outer Space, Hallucinogens, Motorcycles, Death". Cool. All of that makes perfect sense with this music, even though of course it's pretty tough to decipher the content of the singer's guttural vokill exhalations. But the occasional samples used to introduce the tracks are definitely about such things. The songtitles too are suggestive ("Outride The Reaper", "Dirt From The Grave"). Recommended heaviness!
Available as compact disc, or double vinyl in gatefold sleeve, that also includes a cd of the album.
