We had first heard about this local SF duo via various blogs, hyping them to high heaven, as the next big name to watch out for in the ever expanding world of 'shoegaze black metal', but from the very beginning, their sound was at the most tangentially black, the blackness implied in their gorgeous hazy, blown out, blissy shoegazey gloom pop sound. And even at their most buzzy, their songs still oozed pathos and passion and more importantly, melody, and moodiness, this new one is no different, if anything, it's their best sounding records yet, but also maybe their heaviest, but that heaviness is again tempered by a masterful command of melancholia and minor key melody. The opening title track should tell you all you need to know. Beginning with a slow progression of crumblingly distorted chords, sprawled beneath a female spoken word, everything hazy and reverby, we'd honestly have been happy if that's all it did, but then when the song proper kicks in, it's not with a bang, but a strange oozing melty drift, the programmed (?) drums spare and skeletal, multiple guitars winding around each other, spidery melodies and fuzzy strum, all beneath the vocals which are breathy and wistful, and just on the edge of sinking below the surface of the dreamily gauzy mix. But hold on, near the end of the song, the guitars slowly build to something more frenzied, the drums following suit, blossoming into something more Godspeed like, but then into a proper double kick blast, but as mentioned above, the sounds themselves continue to soar and swirl.
But it's not all cotton candy guitarchords and prismatic dreampop buzz. The second track gets all post punky, with yelped swaggery vocals over more powerful drums, the guitars though, still a bit soft focus and fuzzy, and then in swoop more layers, and some oooohing and aaahing background vox, the drums flitting into blast beat mode occasionally, but really barring the strident vocal yowl, this would still be pretty dreamy and shoegazey. Which is right where the sound ends up on the third track, channeling Swervedriver and Spacemen 3 through something more urgent, the vibe post punk death rock, like a super charged Joy Division, given a slightly metallic makeover, the vocals slipping back into something more poppy, Airs delicately balancing urgent gloom punk churn, epic emo, and shoegaze dream pop, and not just on that track, throughout the whole record, and we presume, their whole career.
There's definitely a sonic thread holding these songs together, but they definitely shift pretty dramatically over the course of Adore. "Missing" is a wistful dirge of a distortion doused ballad, a creeping tempo, lots of guitar buzz and rumble, but the vocals, super emotive and heartfelt, the main melody wistful, a potent combination of sonic heft and dream pop delicacy. Which is followed by "Adrift", another stripped down sprawl of psychedelic downer pop, multiple vocal lines intertwined, lots of swirling sheets of feedback, thick swaths of buzzing riffage, but all blurred and smeared into something much more dreamlike, building again to a soaring majestic Godspeed like coda, swirling and noisy and chaotic, but still lush and lovely.
The rest of the record plays out similarly, a churning, driving, nineties style blast of heavy shoegaze pop, that's a dead ringer for pretty much everything we listened to and obsessed over in our twenties, but maybe supercharged a bit, gives way to some noisy, mathy, post punk, frenetic and a little bit jagged, and with a cool bombastic stop start breakdown, but still swathed in shoegazey shimmer, and finally finishing off with a short burst of what sounds like shoegaze screamo, which if it wasn't a genre already, it is now, or really should be, cuz that last two minute blast, will most definitely leave you wanting more. Tripped out, heavy, psychedelic, gloomy shoegaze blackened buzz pop bliss of the highest order.
While not necessarily recommended for black metal folks, if your BM tastes rung more towards Alcest, Amesoeurs, Les Discrets, Deafheaven, Hypomanie, Lonesummer, Lifelover, then this could very well be your new jam. And really anyone into broody, blissy shoegaziness of all stripes, Tied To The Branches to Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine to Foreign Cinema, Moonbell to Grave Babies, will definitely dig this big time.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!
This long in the works split finally sees the light of day. Two sides of raw primitive blackness, one from Canadian outfit Akitsa, the other from Dominick Fernow's Ash Pool, just one of his many bands/guises/projects (Prurient, Cold Cave, Silent Servant, etc.)
Akitsa have long been favorites around here, purveyors of a particular strain of primitive, blackened, D-beat driven black metal crush we can't ever seem to get enough of here. And little has changed on these four tracks, filthy fuzzy riffage, harsh howling guttural rasping vokills, and of course pounding drums. One thing that has changed, at that at least seams a little lot more pronounced, is a serious poppiness, which is established pretty much immediately on the opening track here, which sans vox, almost sounds like some Ramones outtake, hooky and heavy and super melodic, weirdly catchy too, but with a churning punk metal 'chorus', and of course generally more blackened all around. The second disc finds Akista in full on trance out mode, what is essentially buzzing black metal, but here slowed down to a crawl, the guitars are still buzzing and frantic, but the drums (or drum?) is just a static pulsing throb, while the guitar soar and swirl hauntingly above it. Akitsa enter the final stretch of their side with another weirdly catchy punk pop jam in grim black metal clothing, right down to clean reverby vox, the sound, minus the extreme buzz, some weird cold wave post punk jam, that KILLS. Fans of Soror Dolorosa and Grave Babies and the like maybe have found their black metal jam. That leads directly into a bit of mournful blackbuzzscaping, swirling soaring insectoid guitars over reverby Morricone like twang, space and darkly psychedelic, and finally, a sprawling closer that's equal parts post punk, classic metal, and gloom pop dirgery, a super repetitive tranced out churn, that almost sounds like krautrock at times, or at least like a black metal Circle, but still all wreathed in gloriously crusty production, that makes it appropriately murky AND blown out.
Ash Pool start off with their own sort of weird pop / black metal hybrid, sounding like some mutant strain of very evil pop punk, a downright jaunty main melody and a galloping rhythm, but soon that splinters into full on furious chaotic black squall buzz, the drums relentless and dizzying, the vocals a raspy croak, the guitars swirling dervishes of sound, but then BAM, they slip right back into that opening poppiness, and so it goes back and forth, a seemingly impossibly hybrid, but it works, and sounds kind of amazing. All before a final black-psych blowout, replete with shredding head spinning guitar freakout. Most of the Ash Pool side remains firmly entrenched in pure grim black buzz territory, but throughout, they pepper the proceedings with super catchy melodies, lush textures, progged out arrangements, managing to keep things dense and brutal and furious, but also strangely catchy. And then they respond to that Akitsa track, by going full on black-pop gloom-buzz, clean vocals soaring over the mix, and again, minus the distortion, this would be some strange bit of dreamy downer pop, but when wedded to those frenetic guitars, it becomes a weirdly soaring sort of blackened postrock/post punk, before finally finishing off with a short blast of shrieking black crush.
Amazing stuff from both bands, fans absolutely NEED, newbies, this could be the record that finally turns you on to both Akitsa and Ash Pool, you won't be sorry!
We recently got to see Barn Owl perform at the Thrill Jockey 15th anniversary celebration, alongside Wooden Shjips, Liturgy, Eternal Tapestry, Man Forever and Trans Am, and as always, they were amazing, performing in the shadows below a constantly shifting wall of visuals, dark swirling psychedelic visions, that seemed to mirror the sounds the group were conjuring from their instruments, guitars as always, but this time the guitars seemed to play second fiddle (sorry) to their banks of synths, and tables full of gear. As we've mentioned on recent records, the duo seem to have been consciously moving away from guitars, and toward a more predominantly synth based sound, being keenly aware, that they were running the risk of making the same record over and over again. Not that we'd complain, their dusky sort of twang flecked ambient creep was and is a beautiful listen, but the expanded sonic palette, and all those synths, gave the band a much more expansive sound, and instead of just treading the same ground, only with synths instead of guitars, Barn Owl actually set out to make something new and exciting, and not just the listener, but for themselves as well.
Back to that Thrill Jockey show, Barn Owl were unfurling thick swirling washed of sound, when all of a sudden, boom, a lumbering, thunderous beat rolled in, a cool pulsing murky drum machine rhythm that changed the tenor of their sound completely, and instead of drifting, they were sort of driving, the sound moving toward something a bit krautrockier, and a whole lot doomier. Sure they's played with drummers before, but this was something all together different. And on V, we get our first record glimpse of the duo's new sound, which they introduce gently, starting with the opener "Void Redux", which fills the sky with billows of chordal synth shimmer, laced with fragmented melodies, and slow shifting textures, while within, spaced out beats pulse and percolate, no specific rhythm, more adding texture, and a little motorik heft, those rhythms and rhythmic fragments drifting on the ethereal swells and ominous cinematic shimmer. A sort of blackened psychedelic new age space drift. Which is not a bad thing at all.
But fear not, the guitars have not been jettisoned completely, far from it. "The Long Shadow" sounds like Barn Owl of old, at least at first, but synths add some Arvo Part like chorales to the background, and underpin everything with deep chordal rumbles, even transforming into full on church organ at one point, the sound building gradually to a triumphant majestic coda, before devolving into a looped swirl of crumbling distortion and keening distant melodies.
Throughout the rest of the record, the band definitely flex their musical muscles, and seem to be referencing the old Barn Owl sound, rather then still embodying it, undulating tendrils of reverbed melody drift atop, thick, churning synth wash, the tracks occasionally exploding into full on psych noise chaos, but a measure chaos, that still reveals plenty of deft melodic and textural soundscaping, and when the rhythms do surface, it can sound like some sort of super space-y kosmische Muslimgauze, or like some abstract electronic shoegaze. After a brief bit of old Barn Owl guitar tangle fused to lush, prismatic new Barn Owl synth shimmer, somehow crating the perfect twang flecked synth doom dreaminess, the record finishes off with the sprawling minimal epic "The Opulent Decline", which begins as a barren landscape of synth squelch and dubbed out barely there rhythms, lots of echo and reverb, and lots and lots of space. Over the course of the song's 17+ minutes, the sound blossoms into huge billows of soft noise swirl, still driven by that slo-mo rhythmic pulse, the tempo is set to creep, the surrounding sounds following suit, oozing and melting, but then seemingly channeled heavenward, a gorgeous bit of kosmische kraut-gaze drone-doom bliss for sure.
While they last, both the cd and the lp versions include a bonus cd, called The Factory Session / Live At Berkeley Art Museum, which is an actual cd, NOT a cd-r and features 40 minutes of exclusive unreleased music, the first three tracks, experimental, raw, swirling synthscapes recorded right here in SF at the band's rehearsal space, and a final more guitar based track, huge billows of churning distorted echo drenched sound, taking full advantage of the cavernous space in which it was recorded, which of course was at the Berkeley Art Museum, back in 2010. We're one of the few places you can get it, and once these are gone, they're gone for good, and then we'll be shipping both cds and lps SANS the bonus disc. So act fast if you're after the bonus disc.
Got another lucky 13 tracks here of the gloomy garagey stonery jangle from Austin's Black Angels. Once again they deliver the retro moody psych pop, heavy on the fuzz and reverb and Farfisa organ, made more distinctive by the spooky, weary femme vox - shades of Nico (they're named after a VU song) and Grace Slick and Siouxsie. It's got some '80s sounds to it, they're definitely still into Spacemen 3 and all, and of course we're hearing '60s, lots of '60s stuff - makes sense they're from Roky Erickson's backyard. Their doomed out '60s vibes conjure The Doors and Jefferson Airplane even more than the Velvets. For more modern references, let's say Psychic Ills and Wooden Shjips and that sort of thing; fans of those bands may well want to wander in the bluish gloaming through the tall weeds of that imaginary meadow where The Black Angels are rockin'...
It's hard to be objective about this Swedish synth wave gloom punk garage rock outfit, 'cuz our very own Andee released their debut self titled record on cd back in 2011, and that record was a big time unanimous aQ store fave, not to mention a big hit with aQ customers. Heck how could it not be really? We probably won't be able to describe them better than we did in that review, so maybe we'll just borrow a bit for this new record.
We described that record as "visceral and immediate, emotional and bombastic, a bloody screaming sonic gem, equal parts heart and hooks, groove and grind, blast and buzz, an insanely catchy chunk of ultra blown out, bloodied and bruised GENIUS that we literally could NOT stop listening to." And the band specifically as "a furious feral synth driven monster, their sound equal parts cold wave gloom, riot grrl yowl, in-the-red punk rock, and ultra raw blown out garage pop, but even that's a bit reductive, there's something magical about what these three conjure up, both in sound and song, with just synth, bass, vocals and programmed drums. Their sound is all over the map, from howling pounding furious crunch, to warped woozy synthy drone, to dour pulsing minimal cold wave, to super anthemic almost emo garage rock, and every variation in between. The recording is raw and lo-fi, the drums, the synths, the bass, the vocals, in various stages of blown out distorted crumble, the drums are clipped and weirdly processed, pushed as loud as they can go, the synth too, fuzzy, buzzy, wreathed in a sort of decaying haze, the vocals of frontwoman Lily are wild and unhinged and super emotional, sometimes a playful yelp, sometimes a cold croon, other times a full on hysterical shriek."
Heck, it's obvious why we were and ARE so goddamn smitten. And if anything this new record is just as good. Managing to still sound buzzy and blown out, furious and fierce and punk as fuck, but also new wavey, and crazy poppy. The big difference this time around, is that there's way more boy vox, which gives this a whole different vibe, it sounds gloomier and more dramatically post punk, a quick run through of the first four songs, a head spinning 1-2-3-4 sonic punch that will have you reeling, and not only buying this record, but trying to track down everything they've ever recorded.
"You Scream" starts things off, all robotic rhythm, crumbling distorted riffage, a woozy dizzyingly psychedelic percussion, the vocals a brooding croon, the whole thing laced with little bits of twang, giving it a subtle whif of the Cramps, some serious garage rock stomp, but one that's driven by synths and drum machines as much as guitar. The second track is from a BB single we reviewed a while back and is all dirgey and ominous, a claustrophobic sprawl of futuristic sinister synthwave that could be some sort of soundtrack, some seventies zombie sci-fi thriller, the creeping, moody cinematic synths all tangled up into impossibly poppy hooks, the sort of hooks that you'll find yourself humming days later, the track continues to shift back and forth from hooky synthy fuzz pop to creepy seventies psychedelic soundtracky synth buzz and back again.
"Police Helicopter" is from the same 7" and lays down a weirdly jaunty beat, wreathes it in some low end synth buzz, before a creepy computerized voice intones some ominous phrase, and a second synth swoops in and wraps everything in thick crumbling melodic buzz, and then transforms into a crazy catchy melody, before peeling away, leaving a chiming music box melody, only to swoop right back in, another jam, that could be some modern re-envisioning of Carpenter/Goblin, and folks into the current wave of retro futuristic synthscapery, would do well do dig some Black Bug for sure. Then there's "TV Screen", which is from a BB single we never got, and is a fierce, muddy, murky blast of Brainbombs like buzz, the sound woozy and off-kilter, the drums buried in the mix, the main riff KILLER, and buried in all that buzz and fuzz are some squiggly sci-fi melodies. Weird thing is, it sounds a lot like one of our favorite Bongwater songs, albeit blown out and doused in buzz!
And heck that's just the first four songs. We're stopping right before "Masks", which might be the catchiest jam here, with the weirdest, most warped guitar sound yet, and "Delta" which sounds like it could have been plucked from some Dark Entries reissue, murky lo-fi synth wave gloominess, or "Threads" which is all lysergic dirge pop that should have John Maus and Ariel Pink looking over their shoulders.
Overall, Reflecting The Light is less fist in the face, guitar to the guy, synth to the solar plexus blown out noise drenched garage punk, although there's still plenty of that to be found, but the songs are more carefully crafted, the production varied, but at times massive, the synths so thick and caustic, it's like you have your headphones plugged directly into them, and then there's plenty of slow creepiness, that would most definitely sound right at home on any of those recent Death Waltz John Carpenter reissues. So good. And every time we review a BB record we wonder again, why aren't they huge?! Fans of weirdo garage rock who might be up for something even more weird and far out, we can't recommend Black Bug enough!!
That's right a double disc live recording from these Satan worshipping, weed obsessed instrumental ultra-doom sludgelords, a live document of their two night stint at 2012's Roadburn Festival. The first night, they performed a sort of greatest hits, including a few even hardcore fans might have missed out. Sure the faves are all here, "Hate Ashbury", "The Great Barrier Reefer", "Reefer Sutherland", etc. But also two songs from a 7" we have yet to track down: "Sex Tape" and "Fisting". Then, the second disc finds the band doing their whole Satan Worshipping Doom record in its entirety! Both nights sound killer, the recordings loud and raw, the band on fire, massive riffs, gut pummeling drum pound, the songs slipping easily from downtuned churn to blasting almost punked out thrash, and lots of long tripped out psychedelia in between, like the segue between "Fisting" and "Hate Ashbury" on the first disc, that weird swirling psych shimmer drifting quite a ways into the next song proper. And the band never let up, no between song banter, no nothing, just pure, relentless, non-stop, sludgey doooooomy dirgey bliss. In fact you might not even know these recordings were live, until the very end of the first disc, when we finally hear the thoroughly pummeled crowd show their appreciation. And the same goes for the second disc. Satan Worshipping Doom is presented essentially as a sprawling single 53 minute 4 part mega-epic songsuite, and like the studio record, it's a seriously epic slab of psychedelic-urdoom that should have metalheads, doomlords and drone obsessives equally entranced. Normally, a live record might be the last place for someone to start, but if you've yet to dip your toes into the lysergic waters of the mighty Bongripper, this is as good a place to start as any.
Comes packaged in a super swank six panel digipak, with lots of live shots of the band tearing it up live at Roadburn.
This is a vinyl reissue of a rare-ass 1975 private press LP from Baltimore that anyone who digs, say, Michael Yonkers should perk up their ears at. It's that sort of outsider psych obscurity. Guitarist/vocalist George Brigman, a teenager at the time we're pretty sure, was definitely into such underground (back then) influences as The Stooges and the Velvet Underground. This record consists of fierce, fuzz-fueled punk rockers, lo-fi blues, and VU-inspired melancholia -- a downer vibe typified by such songs as "It's Misery", "Worrying", and "I'm Married Too". There's more of the latter so don't get the idea that this is Raw Power part II or anything. But the Stooges moments, like the killer title track, ARE super Stoogey. So imagine an unholy, amateur, low-budget blend of Iggy, Lou Reed, and some Nick Drake too. Sounds good don't it? It is pretty great. Very soon a cd reissue on the Bona Fide label should also be arriving in our shop, but for the vinyl-enabled among you, Anopheles has the goods right now, on clear vinyl, mastered from the original tapes.
Once you get past the cover (trust us, it'll take you a minute) which features a lovely young lady, holding a bag of oranges in her teeth, with the bag, her hair, and arms, perfectly positioned to keep the image, if not chaste, then at least sorta PG-13, but yeah, once you get past that, inside you'll find the latest from Minneapolis noiserockers Buildings, and within seconds of dropping the needle, you'll get a serious earful of classic old school AmRep style pigfuck heaviness. Albini sounding drum bombast, sharp edged guitars, slithery swaggery tempos, a guttural vocal bellow, which we know comes from one of the skinny dudes on the back cover, but sounds more like it should be coming from the mouth of a bearded monster man, breath stinking of raw meat, dead babies, dried blood, old cigarettes and lots and lots of booze. And for a singer, in this kind of band, that's most definitely meant as a serious compliment! The songs are dense, and driving, tangled and confusional at times, creepy and brooding one second, explosive and progged out and chaotic the next. Jesus Lizard is a HUGE influence (check out "Noxema Gurl", which is like Buildings' "Mouth Breather"!), as is pretty much the whole Amphetamine Roster, in fact if it was 1995, these guys would be touring with the Unsane and the Melvins and people would be losing their shit. But for those of you (like us) who LOVE this sound, and miss those days, Buildings bring it all back, their sound positioning themselves along the current crop of sludgey, noise rock heavies: Kowloon Walled City, Gay Witch Abortion, Multicult, Keelhaul, Hex Machine, Catalyst, Clockcleaner, Dead Meat, Rabbits, Seawhores, etc. Odds are if you dig any / all of those bands, these guys will hit the spot too.
But to be fair, it's not just straight up old noise rock revisionism, no Buildings definitely make these songs and that sound their own, adding lots of weird textures, some slippery slide guitars, slowing things down throughout, often filling the songs with as much space as pound and crunch, deftly and subtly adding all sorts of hooks, vocal AND riff, so you may end up finding yourself humming some weird little melody, only later to remember it was a random Buildings riff, which is always a good sign. Heavy as hell, brooding, and hypnotic, dirgey and tranced out, mathy and moody and really fucking great.
Includes a download coupon too! And on green vinyl while they last!
Hearing this being played in the store, when they didn't know what it was, on several occasions aQ staffers have thought we were listening to some 20th century avant-classical piece, like by some obscure Eastern European atonal academic composer or something, what with its uber-spooky swells of ominous shimmering string drone and sudden attacks of clattering orchestral percussion. Even if you guess it's a soundtrack, it seems like it must be from some cult classic arty Italian suspense film from the '80s.
Well it is from the '80s, and it is from a cult classic, but it's not Italian. The dramatic crescendos and atmospheric interludes you'll hear on this are from tracks with titles like "Batteries Included" and "Chucky Kills The Doctor". Because of course this is the soundtrack to Child's Play (1988), the first film in the "Chucky" series of horror movies about a kid's toy, a doll that's been sorcerously possessed by the soul of a serial killer, turning it into an animated, not-that-cute-anymore, pint-sized knife wielding maniac. Whose subsequent reign of terror is accompanied by an appropriately sinister score - full of creepy rumbling, stabbing shards of sound, electronic-sounding treatments, and echoing rhythmic passages, and featuring a suitably eerie, melodic main theme. Who knew the Child's Play soundtrack was this good? And, even better, this limited edition & now discontinued La-La-Land release - which we have for a special sale price while they last - includes 3 bonus tracks, including one that wasn't used in the film itself but is practically worth the price of admission here, "The Chucky Song".
As with most horror flicks, there's an element of humor to Child's Play - how could there not be? But as we recall, this first Chucky film was actually pretty scary. And the soundtrack sure is. What humor you get on this disc comes at the very end, via the "The Chucky Song", featuring jaunty synths, drum machine beats, a children's chorus of playground Double Dutch style jump rope rhymes, and Chucky himself (voiced by '70s outlaw biker blues rock singer Simon Stokes!) singing and rapping about just how bad he is. The track is bizarre and silly and we can't help playing it over and over. Even though this novelty number is completely at odds with the stark, scary vibe of the actual soundtrack (which is why it probably was left out of the movie!) we love it. The rest of the disc, though, makes for good late night listening, but we'd recommend locking your doors... Any fan of John Carpenter, etc. style stuff ought to love this - in fact, we'd suggest that the Death Waltz label ought to look into getting their hands on this to do a deluxe vinyl version one of these days, it would be perfect for them!
Another awesome French pop chanteuse gets resurrected from obscurity, thanks to the Born Bad label. Clothilde (whom we first heard through those awesome Sixties Girls and Swinging Mademoiselle comps of femme French pop) was the stage name of Elizabeth Beauvais, the daughter of an actress and writer who, despite wanting to follow her mother into the acting world, was pushed instead into the music business by producer Germinal Tenas.
Tenas, a producer known for arrangements involving unusual instrumentation, signed her to Vogue Records in the mid-sixties and rechristened her after the beloved medieval Queen and Saint instrumental in bringing Catholicism to France. Clothilde only recorded two eps for the Vogue label in 1967 (both captured here) before becoming fed up by the business and leaving it for good. Which really is tragic, because these are some of the most infectious French pop tracks we have heard in a while with swinging arrangements peppered with marimbas, flutes, violins, bells and Farfisas. Clothilde co-wrote a couple of tracks herself and they were noted for their shocking (at the time) use of sexual double entendres, perhaps adding to the sex-kitten image she really didn't want to have. Thus an untimely end of what could have been a promising singing career. Like so many French pop obscurities, we're thankful for the labor of love that goes into making sure these great tracks see the light of day once again!
The Conet Project, originally released in 1997, has attained near mythical status around here. Many folks associate The Conet Project inextricably with our store itself. Which makes sense. We championed the Conet Project relentlessly, everyone here is obsessed, most of us owning multiple copies, some of us incorporating sounds from The Conet Project into our own music, and The Conet Project still ranks as probably THEE best selling release ever at aQuarius. Even more remarkable for the fact that it's not really music at all, at least not in the typical sense, and it is and always has been pretty expensive, as a deluxe 4-cd set initially, and import to boot. In fact until it went out of print for the last time a few years back, we had sold close to one thousand copies, and that's just in our little store. We even used to have a big chart on the wall, where we kept track of the sales, and for a while, we were even taking Polaroids of people who bought the Conet Project to display in the store, a snapshot of them holding what we can only imagine would become their new favorite record (buyer #382: Mike Patton!). Which all leads to the question some of you may have, what the heck is The Conet Project, and why are we (and many of you) so obsessed with it? And so thrilled that it's finally available again?! Yes, available again and obviously a big time Record Of The Week.
Basically, the Conet Project is a now FIVE-cd compilation (more details on the new 2013 edition's additional fifth disc is down below, near the end of this long review!) of recordings of mysterious shortwave radio broadcasts, known as "numbers stations". These numbers stations are generally believed to be encrypted spy transmissions, but no concrete evidence has ever surfaced proving that supposition. However, no credible *alternate* explanation has ever been demonstrated, either. For years (ever since the start of the Cold War), amateur radio enthusiasts have come across these sinister signals, and they continue to this day, broadcast in many languages all over the world (the theory is that some are CIA, some are KBG, some are Mossad, etc).
In general, the transmissions consist of a deadpan voice (sometimes an old man, sometimes a young woman, etc.) reading a seemingly random, meaningless series of numbers over and over. Sometimes the broadcasts are preceded by a musical cue (the "Swedish Rhapsody" music box one being a favorite of ours), and sometimes the numbers are not conveyed by voice but by even more cryptic electronics (as with "The Buzzer", and other noisy, abstract stuff found mainly on disc four).
Needless to say, hearing those amazing and baffling sounds collected on these cds is an unnerving experience. Not only does knowledge of the supposed purpose of these transmissions imbue them with a disturbing quality, but the repetition of the numbers combined with the background of shortwave radio static makes for a aurally hypnotic experience. If merely regarded as a piece of experimental ambient sound sculpture, The Conet Project would be a brilliant and affecting piece of work, yet with the added context of international intelligence and conspiracy theory, it becomes even more intriguing and creepy. Lots of information is included that provides a great deal of description of, and speculation about, The Conet Project. Which is possibly the most incredible, and weirdest, item of sound art/documentation that we've EVER had here at aQuarius. Mesmerizing, fascinating, unique, massive, scary, but sometimes even soothing. 100 percent recommended to the adventurous listener ('cause it's not for everyone!). And once you have it you'll understand why it had to be so many cds - being overwhelming is part of the obsessive allure of this Project. And it's not just us, The Conet Project has popped up in lots of unlikely places, most notably it was sampled on Wilco's breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, the title of which in fact comes from The Conet Project itself. Wilco were also famously sued by Irdial, the label who released it, and they lost! Some sounds from the Conet Project also popped up in that Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky, and over the years, we've heard it in various films and on various records, it shouldn't be surprising that so many weird music obsessives love The Conet Project.
Really, as we said, if there's one recording that seems to be most identified with aQuarius recOrds, or that at least we mention most often when trying to explain to people what it is that we're all about here, it's most definitely The Conet Project, and yeah, over the years there have been plenty of others, including Sounds of North American Frogs, Os Mutantes, Burzum's "Filosofem", Comus' "First Utterance", Boris, Circle, Philip Jeck, Village of Savoonga, and loads more since, many other records near and dear to our hearts (for instance, hearing the first Neutral Milk Hotel album always makes us nostalgic for the old 24th street store). But for some reason it's The Conet Project that really seems to sum it all up. It's all the things we really love: completely ridiculous (4, no, now 5 cds!), completely fucked (secret government spy transmissions), droning, weird. It's just so interesting and evocative on so many levels, both musical and totally non-musical, as a listening experience and also as a geopolitical cold war and beyond artifact. Definitely an all time perpetual aQ fave: Allan's got the whole thing on his iPod, so does Andee, he also owns multiple copies of the set, many of which found their way into his old band A Minor Forest's live performances, Jim has steadfastly maintained that this is the greatest record of all time, and who are we to argue? If it's not obvious, we all are a little bit obsessed.
And what this is all leading up to is that YES, finally after literally YEARS of being out of print and unavailable, The Conet Project, has been reissued AGAIN, but this time, with a WHOLE EXTRA DISC, with its own jewel case and booklet!! That's right, the new Conet Project is FIVE discs, not four, and if you're big Conet nerds like most of us, you might just have to buy a second (or even third!) copy. The new disc is not just another numbers station disc though, instead it's a collection of "noise stations", which essentially sound just like the numbers stations MINUS the numbers. So it's a series of gorgeous buzzes and strange hissing fields of blurred melody, lots of crunch and crackle, buried rhythms, whistling tones, strange textures, in fact, much of it is downright musical, so much so that we were musing, hmm, what if this new disc is in fact a hoax, a series of number/noise station like soundscapes created by some electronic musicians like Hrvatski? Naw... But there was in fact talk of a Conet remix project for years now, so it's not that far fetched, and in a way, if it WAS a hoax, it would be even cooler. But as far as we can tell, and according to our resident numbers stations / shortwave expert Jim, these are in fact that kind of weird alien sounds you can hear, tuned in to these mysterious stations. As much as we love the other four discs of The Conet Project, this new one is pretty exciting, and we have to say, definitely makes a case for buying it AGAIN! But for all the rest of you who have yet to discover the bizarre sonic mysteries of the Conet Project, there is no higher recommendation we can give, an all time unanimous aQ fave, our best selling record EVER. Sonically, and conceptually mind blowing. We never made it Record Of The Week before for some reason, but in our hearts, it has always been, and always will be, a perpetual aQ Record Of The Week!!! FOREVER.
BTW, this counts as a "box set" for shipping, it won't fit in the USPS flat rate box we use, so it'll have to go media mail or UPS if you're mailordering it domestically.
- MPEG stream: Swedish Rhapsody
- MPEG stream: 5 Dashes
- MPEG stream: Iran/Iraq Jamming Efficacy Testing
- MPEG stream: Magnetic Fields
- MPEG stream: Tyrolean Music Station
- MPEG stream: The Buzzer
- MPEG stream: "Data Bursts, 5.201kHz (USB And AM)
- MPEG stream: "Exotic Cipher, 6.215kHz/AM October 5th, 2008 19:27 GMT
- MPEG stream: "Descending Jammer, 7.969kHz/USB
- MPEG stream: "Drone, 17.964kHz
- MPEG stream: "Oscillating, 5.178kHz, March 12th, 1997
- MPEG stream: "348|10|13|36|19|21, 11.573kHz, 19:17 GMT
More old zines from the vaults! This is from a very limited quantity of new old stock of this fantastic late '70s / early '80s San Francisco punk zine. Creep sprung up from the void created when Search & Destroy ceased publication, with a fresh local bent and coverage of the Next Wave.
This issue from 1979 features a cover story of Jello Biafra for Mayor, an interview with (then just a radio show) Maximum RocknRoll, as well as a super profile of the Vancouver punk scene (Pointed Sticks, DOA). Also, Craig Lee of the Bags, a Paris scene report and a perplexing (i.e., trolling) interview with local contrarian Johnny Genocide of the band No Alternative. The best piece might be a first-person account of the seduction of punk from a self-identified sadomasochist lesbian, who found aesthetic and emotional community in the chaos of the infamous Valencia St. venue, the Deaf Club.
What makes Creep stand out - aside from the plethora of mind-bending new wave graphics and ads - is its earnest and intelligent commentary on punk as a movement and musings on why it wasn't going to go away any time soon. The political and social critiques of youth culture are surprisingly still interesting, even in a San Francisco that barely resembles itself of 30+ years ago.
Recommended if only just for the vintage aQuarius recOrds ads, but you should know by now that you probably want to read this. And obviously, very very limited quantities available!
More old zines from the vaults! This is from a very limited quantity of new old stock of this fantastic late '70s / early '80s San Francisco punk zine. Creep sprung up from the void created when Search & Destroy ceased publication, with a fresh local bent and coverage of the Next Wave.
A super 1980 issue featuring legends DKs, Angry Samoans and Zeros, as well as a great document of the Alter Boys and their (then) new performance space, Club Foot. Also fascinating is an article on demystifying the record production process, a Germany scene report and interview with the legendary Nervous Gender. And the polemic from the Art Police - destroyers of boring art - isn't half bad either.
What makes Creep stand out - aside from the plethora of mind-bending new wave graphics and ads - is its earnest and intelligent commentary on punk as a movement and musings on why it wasn't going to go away any time soon. The political and social critiques of youth culture are surprisingly still interesting, even in a San Francisco that barely resembles itself of 30+ years ago.
Recommended if only just for the vintage aQuarius recOrds ads, but you should know by now that you probably want to read this. And obviously, very very limited quantities available!
More old zines from the vaults! This is from a very limited quantity of new old stock of this fantastic late '70s / early '80s San Francisco punk zine. Creep sprung up from the void created when Search & Destroy ceased publication, with a fresh local bent and coverage of the Next Wave.
Another stellar 1980 issue featuring a wider assortment of artists - Vktmz, Geza X, Social Unrest, Pink Section, Alex Chilton and the Flamin' Groovies. Also, articles on the Reno punk scene, Brian Eno's use of the tape medium, the looming commercialism of punk, and a trenchant piece about shock value art inspired by Noh Mercy's inflammatory "Caucasian Guilt." Not to be missed!
What makes Creep stand out - aside from the plethora of mind-bending new wave graphics and ads - is its earnest and intelligent commentary on punk as a movement and musings on why it wasn't going to go away any time soon. The political and social critiques of youth culture are surprisingly still interesting, even in a San Francisco that barely resembles itself of 30+ years ago.
Recommended if only just for the vintage aQuarius recOrds ads, but you should know by now that you probably want to read this. And obviously, very very limited quantities available!
More old zines from the vaults! This is from a very limited quantity of new old stock of this fantastic late '70s / early '80s San Francisco punk zine. Creep sprung up from the void created when Search & Destroy ceased publication, with a fresh local bent and coverage of the Next Wave.
Final 1981 issue of this great, long lost SF punk zine: "If you love God, burn a church." Articles on Crass, Flipper, Jamaican reggae, local promoter Paul Rat, Bryan Ferry, Roky Erickson and the usual local news and controversies of the day. Also notable - an interview with Olga de Volga of the Lewd/VS and her not-so-ironic use of leather/BDSM imagery, appropriately dubbed "Bondage Rock."
What makes Creep stand out - aside from the plethora of mind-bending new wave graphics and ads - is its earnest and intelligent commentary on punk as a movement and musings on why it wasn't going to go away any time soon. The political and social critiques of youth culture are surprisingly still interesting, even in a San Francisco that barely resembles itself of 30+ years ago.
Recommended if only just for the vintage aQuarius recOrds ads, but you should know by now that you probably want to read this. And obviously, very very limited quantities available!
Another choice slab of gnarled industrial dekompositions from Black Horizons! Crooked Columns is a new project to us, hailing from Portland, Oregon with handful of equally unknown ancillary projects from the various members. Searing synth tones, crushing noise concoctions, and an occasional rhythmic outburst of militaristic aplomb set the stage for a cassette that could easily be passed off as something with origins dating back to 1984 from some armpit town in sodden England or from some death-obsessed Italian miserably enduring the Mediterranean sun. Even with all of the noise and grind and toxic bloom, Crooked Columns muster some intriguing variations on their core strategies of loops and noise. Sure there's plenty of references to MB's mechanical lurchings from back in the day, but that extended track with pronounced rhythms has more of a Konstruktivists feel topped with atonal horns and plenty of scabrous blurts of noise. Warbling loops and heart-beat pulses lead into smashed amplifier destruction on the second side of the tape, with plenty of horror-score sound design vibes tossed in for good measure. Really great stuff, we have to say. And as is the case with all of the Black Horizons tapes these days, very nice packaging with gold offset printing on metallic blue paper. Careful though of the drug-sized baggie tucked away inside the J-card. Supposedly, the rusted metal has been dosed with tetanus. Don't tempt fate, please. As with all the Black Horizons tapes... LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
Odd and obscure '80s heavy metal alert!! If that got your attention, you may remember that not too long ago we reviewed a disc by a band called Black Hole, '80s Italian metallers who were all spaced-out and psychedelic, like some strange mix of Jacula and Voivod. In that review, we made mention of one of their contemporaries, a band by the name of Dark Quarterer, whose debut album from 1985 is to be found on this slipcased cd reissue. We were pretty stoked to find a supplier for these and grabbed a bunch 'cause we figure anything that both Allan and Andee and Andee's fiancee Heather all instantly fell in love with, is something that at least a select few AQ customers are gonna dig too. Why did A, A and H all fall for DQ? Well Dark Quarterer just push all our eccentric, ancient metal buttons. To us, the low-budget, fidelity-impared production is part of their charm (what are those drums made of? cardboard?), the English-almost-as-a-second-language vocal stylings as well (without looking at the lyric sheet you'll have some trouble puzzling out what he's singing about -- his pronunciation is, let's say, creative). And the name "Dark Quarterer" curiously great too. But what's most important (and the reason why they indeed do have a cult following to this day) is that they wrote some awesomely epic and undeniably catchy metal songs. While Black Hole's favorite band must have been Black Sabbath, we're pretty sure Dark Quarterer were inspired by the grandiose he-man metal of Manowar. But it's Manowar-worship laced with the influence of Goblin and Yes and other proggy weirdness, as befits a band from the prog-crazy land of Italy. Andee even detects some hints of our beloved Comus in the title track, though we should stress that Dark Quarterer are very, very metal. Bizarre and poverty-stricken, yep, but metal through and through, with heaps of heroic vocals and majestic riffage to put some starch in your shorts (or loin cloth?). Not terribly unlike another eccentric '80s metal fave 'round here, Manilla Road.
The first pressing of this single from the brilliant Swedish, haunted-pop duo Death And Vanilla was cut on a square slab of vinyl and disappeared before we even knew about it. This marks the second (now round, like normal) pressing, which will undoubtedly see the same fate given its paltry pressing of 300 copies. But colored vinyl still this time around too...
As we mentioned in the review of their nearly impeccable eponymous lp from 2012, Death And Vanilla deftly channel all of the references that Broadcast also incorporated into the delicious retro-futurist pop on albums like Tender Buttons and The Focus Group, including the United States of America, Free Design, and any given BBC Radiophonic reference you could imagine (e.g. Derbyshire, Oram, White Noise, etc.). The two cuts here pick up right where that record left off with spookily disembodied female vocals floating above fantastic '60s avant-pop with melodies woven from vibraphones, blooping synths, and languid guitar strummings situated above spry rhythms. It's really a shame that there's only 300 of this second pressing around, as Death And Vanilla are way too good to remain an unknown. But for those who are quick on the draw, you'll have a gem on your hands.
Latest issue of the USA's best glossy metal mag, with Cathedral on the cover, also Kvelertak, Iron Reagan, Batillus, Pestilence (Hall Of Fame induction), and more - including their 9th Annual "Extreme" Baseball Preview for those who care - which a lot of metallers do it turns out, seeing who participated.
Also, lots of reviews (leading off with the new Ghost opus), and the usual amusing columns including John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats "South Pole Dispatch" (this time he parodies the BS of an "asshole product manager").
More so than any of the other singles they've released, Demdike Stare here drop two heady tracks of darkened techno and horror-disco. We've long loved their mysterious, hauntological blacker-than-black dub tricknology and claustrophobic atmospherics, and all of that is still firmly intact on these tracks. What IS different here however is that DS push the rhythms forward, jacked in the mix, and not just teasing with a Chain Reactive rhythm here or a Middle Eastern groove there all of which would typically collapse into a pool of echo, dread, and ghostliness. It's actually quite nice to hear Demdike work out a more rhythmic, creeped-out floorfiller sound on these two tracks. The A-side "Collusion" begins with an intense snarl of electrocuted noise that eventually locks into a bassline throb of a skeletal drum-n-bass (yup, the quintessential Amen Break is deconstructed once again). Steadily, Demdike Stare build the rhythm back through its component parts -- a skittered snare fill, a rollicking hi-hat, and that manic frenzy which is why everybody loves this rhythm -- with those thickened, tesla-coil bursts of electricity firing around the programmatic dervish. Think Hrvatski and Aphex at their heights of influence but given over to the dark side. The B-side "Misappropriation" locks in a zombified rhythm culled from West African drum patterns, taking a cue from William Bennett's Cut Hands projects and really cranking the dynamics and darkening the tone if that were even possible. Totally brilliant! Who knows if this is a detour or a new direction for Demdike Stare? But who cares, cuz it's fucking great. Unfortunately, destined to be out of print in the blink of eye.
You know it's not just us recommending stuff to our customers here at aQ, it works the other way too, with our customers recommending stuff to us all the time. An example being one of our very favorite customers, David Katznelson, whom you may know as the mastermind behind several different, quality labels including country/blues/folk vinyl reissue specialists Sutro Park (and also WTF? specialists Birdman). David asked us to order this for him and then after he picked it up, immediately emailed excitedly about how fantastic it is, so we checked it out ourselves and then asked him to write it up for us to share with everybody else! Here's the great guest review Dave came up with:
I will not tell you how much money I have wasted on reissues of private press records from the '70s, bullied into buying them by well written descriptions namedropping other need-to-know ultra obscure artists, saluting their eBay sales price and touting their snot-nosed record collector desirability. It has gotten to a point that when I read, "ONLY 100 made back in 1972" - I figure I know why. To be honest, thank GOD for aQ's curation of the best, as well as big props to YouTube which lets me preview the other potential expensive crap-takes before I make a wrong decision and sacrifice money that could just as well be used at the local pot dispensary.
Thus, the discovery of a killer record from the outsider world is so sweet. Hell, the name of the label behind John Drendall & B.A. Thrower's lp is called OUT-SIDER RECORDS. The name of the game, plain and simple. Their record, "Papa Never Let's Me Sing The Blues" has all the markings of a brilliant mirage: a questionable title, a bizarre cover layout, and a slide guitar player named "Stiff-finger Eddie", but throw the needle down and BINGO, you realize that there is something more here. It starts with the early-'70s Stonesy-vibed "Cold Night In August", and flows into the very pushin' groover "Old Man Gibbs". The whole record is a groove...and to name drop sundry band names to stir the pot: there is definitely some late-late-period Byrds going on here...maybe a taste of Lucifer's blues abandon, the swagger of The Faces, or a smattering of the acoustic-side of Zeppelin. And there are meandering guitars that are the basis from many a great 60s downer (check out "I Feel" for example). The resultant sound for John Drendall & B.A. Thrower is bluesy brownish muffley warm outsider magic...the kind that you hope for!
Limited to 500 copies, 180 gram vinyl, thick sleeves. Includes liner notes by Patrick "Acid Archives" Lundborg.
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!
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas is a double album of intrepid dancefloor excursions divided into day and night moods. Dylan Cameron is the engineering mastermind behind most releases of the Austin underground, including Troller and Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as most of the Holodeck catalog, but on Samsara, he brilliantly displays a knack for crafting rhythm and nuance. The A side, Causes, is all big four-on-the-floor house music jams full of bubbling acid synth textures and diva-ish vocal samples hearkening back to the Hacienda sound from the mid-to late-eighties with a more refined modern sense of compositional detail that one might find on Kompakt or Hot Flush.
The B side, Conditions, is a suite of more late night, two-step grooves that have a more ambient dub-step feel. The vocal samples are more filtered and hazy. The mood more pensive and dark, like an uptempo Burial, but a nice coming down counterpoint to the more high-energy A side. Also features a remix of an unreleased Troller song. Limited!
This is the second record, originally released in 1971, by Bill Fay, who we had never even heard of until recently, when we started reading how Fay was "the missing link between Nick Drake, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan" and hearing his name bandied about as an influence on groups like Six Organs Of Admittance and Current 93 among others. And once we heard this record in particular, it didn't seem so far fetched. Unlike his self titled debut album released a year earlier (and reviewed elsewhere on this list), Time Of Last Persecution is a much more immediate, stripped down record, mostly guitar based, with simple insistent piano, even some horns, but without all the swooping strings and lush orchestration that was all over the first record. And Fay's songs do indeed shine when allowed to be heard naked and exposed like this. His voice sounds so much more forceful and emotional, the simple melodic underpinning so much more effective. Even the photo on the cover, featuring a bearded and bedraggled Fay, hints at the personal intensity and intimate emotion within. Intense and incredibly moving, moody and melancholy, you can definitely here some Davies and Drake, even some Eagles, some E.L.P (at their most balladeering) and most definitely some Allman Brothers. As if the songs and the amazing vocal performance weren't enough, the record features occasional inspired and frenzied bursts of ferocious psychedelic guitar freakout from jazz legend Ray Russell!
The Russian noise-artist Nikita Evsuk has adopted the apt moniker Fear Konstruktor; and at least for the couple of cassettes we've heard from him, he lives up to the name. Ball Metall, released through the impressive Black Horizons imprint, is an appropriately grim offering of abject ambience and post-industrial bleakness. It's a very murky sound that Evsuk generates, with the desolate melodies from what might be a synth, might be a guitar, might be a voice, all treated with FX to sound as if dripping with tar, soot, and moldering soil. He stitches in burbling electronics and creaking loops of disarming textures that could be the sounds of stretched ligaments and disembodied sinews. Bowed metals and bashed steel resonance also litter the soundscape, giving everything a very cold, post-Neubauten feel. All of the tones and drones which ooze from the cassette crumble and fall apart into a morass of gray production murkiness. As a whole, it seems that the Russian industrialists (Fear Konstuktror included) seem to fully embody an existential bleakness that their German counterparts certainly achieved, but never sustained. More swanky packaging from Black Horizons with sparkly card-stock, marbled art-mini booklet, and gold offset printing. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
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!
NOW REPRESSED AND AVAILABLE AGAIN AT A CHEAPER PRICE!!
Here's our review of the Die Mutter reissue when we first listed it back in 2009:
Two long out of print cd-r's from our favorite symphonic black doom noize combo, gets the ultra deluxe reissue treatment. Both Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen, originally released on Corps-Morts (the first thing we ever heard from GTT), and Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh originally released on Universal Tongue, are both represented here in full, and on top of that, there are THREE unreleased bonus tracks, so even folks who have those original cds will probably want this, not just for the bonus tracks (although that might be enough), but to have those two out of print cd-r's on a proper cd!! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking 6 panel digipak, comes with a GTT sticker too.
Not sure how we first heard about Gnaw Their Tongues, pretty sure a customer recommended them, but believe us when we say that the words Gnaw Their Tongues had barely left their lips (or maybe more accurately, the words had barely left the email and reached our cerebral cortex) and we were already smitten. How could they not rule with a name like that? The question was merely HOW they would rule, dark and creepy? Heavy and harsh? Doom? Blacknoise? Drone? Howabout all of those?! Oh yeah, it's almost like someone snuck into the AQ barracks in the middle of the night to scan our minds and see what kind of bands we dreamed about, the bands our subconscious really wished existed.
They took all the data back to their lair, the one hidden beneath that big scary mountain, and spent years analyzing it, and creating equations, chemicals, compounds, months in an underground lab, until eventually the whole project was forgotten.
Until years later, when a record store employee was hiking and discovered the ruins of some old, well, it looked like a fortress, maybe a lair, and decided, against all the wisdom gleaned from a million after school specials, to explore. Way down deep in the dusty recesses of this old forgotten lair, this record store feller discovered some sort of portal, rusted shut it seemed, and adorned with messages in some strange language, an alien tongue if you will, they looked like warnings, but what the heck, shit like that only happens in horror movies, so the feller went about trying to unlock the portal, and after what seemed like ages, the lock clicked, and the rusty metal swung open, and suddenly all was blackness, and dripping red, and agony and misery, and hell embodied on earth, in the form of this filthy black musick.
That filthy black musick was in fact these two musical documents by these mysterious black beasties known as Gnaw Their Tongues. Who on Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen, spew forth a caustic noxious ultradoom. A black metallized lurch and stumble, harsh, hellish vocals buried beneath an avalanche of corrosive guitar, strange alien ambience, and mechanical monster drumming. Horrible and grotesque and dizzyingly brutal, but with tiny vestiges of beauty and melody, occasionally visible through the dense black sonic fog. Stretches of distorted doom verging on the beautiful, separating gut wrenching squalls of utter black chaos. And that's just the first track.
The second is like the first, only fast. Really fast. Like sticking your head into the middle of a lightning storm. Like Velvet Caccoon and Wold and AmacomA all playing simultaneously, at full volume, broadcast through Konono's PA, until your ears bleed, but it's not all pain and suffering, this whirling world of sound is again strangely melodic, twisted into some almost pop like shapes, but always quickly bathed in blackness and sent spinning back into the fray.
"29 Needles" is a step away from the end, and is some sort of industrial plod, a garish landscape of bleak brutality, sparse ultradistorted percussion, clouds of caustic whir, creepy ghostlike voices, the sort of sounds that make Wolf Eyes sound like the Carpenters. A musical death march through a world of fire and death and destruction, of keening musical misery and downtuned sonic punishment.
Finally, the prophecy is complete with once the sounds of "Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen" reach the ears of mortal man. The plants wither and the sky grows dim, our hearts beat slower and our blood begins to boil, the earth begins to crack, and slowly we sink into the depths of the underworld, and this is the sound that the end of all things makes. A lonely slowed down low end caterwaul, a rumbling whir peppered with jagged streaks of harsh noise, thick swells of coruscating sonic malevolence, storm clouds of hiss and buzz, a pounding skull splitting din from the heavens, an electrical storm that singes every nerve in your body, leaving you paralyzed, supine, blind, and mute, with only your ears ringing painfully, just barely able to make out the dying gasps of life as we know it.
Then came Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh. We almost missed out on it completely. The original version limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. But those were gone before we knew it. Which is why this reissue is such a godsend (satansend?) Since we first discovered this band we had become pretty obsessed. As have the aQ blacknoize minions, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical.
Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh finds GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality.
The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy.
As mentioned in the introduction to this review, in addition to the reissued tracks, this version of Die Mutter also includes three new, unreleased tracks. The first is a gorgeous post industrial orchestral crawl, heaving horns, crunching metallic percussion, guttural vocalizations, blasting beats, exotic strings, long stretches of haunting cinematic ambience, heavy and harrowing, the production fucked up and fractured, the sound woozy and wonderfully grim. The second is more of the same, a lumbering death march painted in broad swaths of majestic strings, buzz drenched guitars, all wrapped around a super spare machinelike pound, fuzzed out Goblin like synths, like a Bernard Hermann score gone haywire. And finally, the awesomely titled closer "I Am The Lord And There Is No Other; I Make The Light, I Create Darkness" (GTT definitely have a way with song and album titles), a slow burning bit of black ambient drift, distant drones, creepy keyboard shimmers, dark layered waves of low end rumble, epic swells of soundtracky creepiness, while all throughout, the track drifts through sprawling fields of mysterious creaks and groans, clatter and crunch. Occasional squalls of orchestral percussion tangle with blurred bits of otherworldly whir, all streaked with sweetly sorrowful strings. So good.
If you're new to Gnaw Their Tongues, and you're into sounds blackened and brutal and bizarre and fucked up and noisy and creepy and epic, then you couldn't find a better place to start than this, and yeah, GTT fanatics, you're definitely gonna want this, even if you have the cd-r's, as we mentioned above, this is some of the best GTT material, finally on a proper cd, but even more importantly, this would be well worth $10 even if it was just a 20 minute / 3 song ep containing only the bonus tracks.
Latest from upstart UK import label MIE, who have been killing it lately. The recent reissue of Gate's Dew Line, which we made a Record Of The Week, the even more recent Pelt double lp, also records from Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and Pelican offshoot Chord, and now this, a vinyl reissue of Hallock Hill's debut, a gorgeous collection of layered slowburn psychedelia, acoustic and electric guitars, reverb and echo and delay, all deftly woven into sweetly smoldering, improvised soundscapes, that remind us alternately of Scott Tuma, Jack Rose, Steven R. Smith, Ben Chasny. Hallock Hill is a fellow named Tom Lecky, a name you probably don't know, but after hearing this, we can't imagine it will be too long before he's mentioned in the same breath as Tuma and Rose and Chasny and all the rest.
The tracks here all seem to bleed into one another, from echo drenched abstract psychedelic drifts, to dark brooding folk flecked shimmer, to lush dense intricate Appalachia. Haunting and hushed one second, loose and freeform the next, little flurries of notes wreathed in drifting harmonics, strings are scraped and plucked, the body of the guitar thumped, lots of buzz and hum and shimmer, but all wrapped around gorgeous bits of melancholic melody, notes allowed to ring out, swimming in swirling seas of overtones, the occasional backward studio swoop adding some subtle trippiness, but for the most part, it's Lecky's deft arrangements that drive these lovely landscapes of psychedelic folk, a hazy early evening, cloud cloaked sky sort of vibe that occasionally blossoms into something sunshinier, but utterly dreamy throughout.
Another essential addition to your modern psych / psych guitar collection.
Packaged in a super swank heavy gatefold, and includes a glossy book of photos and poetry (lyrics?).
Debut from this NYC hard rocking new wave glam pop combo, whose sound is a fantastically twisted mix of the Cars, Sparks, Cheap Trick, the Tubes, a little Devo, more Cars, even glam pop hard rockers Kix (remember them?). Just check out opener "She's Flexible", with its crunchy guitar, snarly vox, bouncy kinetic rhythm, and big hook heavy chorus. A sound that perfectly straddles the line between eighties new wave and seventies power pop. The production is massive, the guitars crunchy and fuzzy, the drums muscular and groovy (courtesy of Bill French formerly of SF indie rockers Mist And Mast!) which gives the whole thing a definite modern vibe, not to mention the occasional explosive mathy blowout, but at its core, the sound is total old school glammed out power pop, and it kills.
And while the opening one-two punch is a blast of bouncy glammy rock out bliss, the rest of the record settles down into a much more laid back glammy jangle pop, again harkening back to the classic days of MTV and eighties radio, brooding moody verses, big choruses, swirling synths, spidery melodies, still plenty of guitar crunch, there's one almost ballad, and a serious swinging anthemic stadium-worthy foot stomping glam pop closer to finish things off.
Vinyl includes a download code that comes with a bonus track not on the lp. Cool trophy cover art too!
Here's another group you can add to the current pantheon of warped, lysergic, fractured WTF outsider pop songsmiths. John Maus, Ariel Pink, James Ferraro, Gary War, please welcome Heavy Hawaii, whose sound is hazy and softly psychedelic, a little bit tropical, a little bit dream poppy, a little surfy, but a LOT twisted up and tweaked. Even at its prettiest, it sounds like the vinyl is melting while it's spinning on your turntable, your turntable which suddenly seems to have a faulty pitch control. Just give a listen to the opener, which sounds like some lost Beach Boys B-side, covered by Ariel Pink, and played back on a Fischer-Price turntable, plugged into your Walkman, you know the one with dying batteries.
Detuned guitars, loping, lumbering beats, chiming melodies, woozy textures, buried loops and samples, all deftly woven into some seriously swirly sunshiney avant pop weirdness, the vocals get pitched down on a bunch of the tracks, and those might be our favorites, the vocalist transformed into some alternate universe alien crooner, belting it out over slipper squiggly melodies, distorted drumming, and warbly atonal melodies, not to mention swirls and squalls of soft noise, the songs occasionally locking into tranced out loops, other times breaking down into woozy sprawls of falling to pieces hypno-rock mesmer. Some of the tracks sound like they were recorded in a crazy karaoke dive bar, others are surprisingly hi-fi, but sound like they were recorded by someone who had no idea how to work a studio, and just twirled knobs and slid faders up and down. Dizzyingly tripped out, fantastically prismatically hooky, fuzzy, and gauzey and very very druggy and dreamy. And yet for all of its demented damage, and seemingly haphazard ramshackleness, the sound is so luch and full and layered, sounds careening everywhere, hidden melodies surfacing and then slipping back into the shadows, lots of noises transformed into rhythms, voices doused in effects and sent spinning into fields of fuzz and shimmer. Sure it's damaged and supremely fucked up, but it's also inspired, and total classic pop given a botched sonic lobotomy, and transformed into utterly divine, and impossible to resist ear candy, obviously the work of a genius. Or a madman. Probably both! Easily our new favorite WTF lo-fi weirdo pop record!!!
San Francisco's Anna Hillburg has has been making noise in the garage-pop community for a good portion of the past decade, guesting on albums by The Dodos, Greg Ashley, and The Fresh & Onlys; and we would be remiss not to mention her twee-pop ensemble Dreamdate. This eponymous record is her debut, and finds her again in very good company working with Greg Ashley and Greg Moore (of The Moore Brothers and Joanna Newsom's ensemble), in producing this elegantly simple album of folk-inflected pop numbers. Beach House would be the most obvious reference in the daydreaming pop hooks and hip-swaying / '60 girl-group arrangements, all with some subtle hints of Nashville twang, and an earnest seductiveness, although Hillburg's production is far more intimate, with added flourishes from Hillburg's trumpet. With summer right around the corner, here's a great slow-burner of an album for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Limited to 500 copies.
For some folks, it might just be enough to say that the debut release from Howling is indeed a howling, heavy slab of WEREWOLF-themed death metal. Add that the band features members of aQ faves Wooden Stake and we're ready to crank this loud (after stocking up on wolfsbane and silver bullets). The beautifully rendered, kitschy cover painting, which looks like it belongs on the front of some '70s Italian erotic-horror "fumetti" comic book, ought to give you some idea of what sort of sick slasher-thrasher outfit this is. A trio that teams up shredding guitar player Tony P. with screaming, guttural vocalist Vanessa Nocera (Wooden Stake, Skeletal Spectre, Scaremaker, etc.) and pounding drummer Electrokutioner (Wooden Stake, Encoffination, Father Befouled, Scaremaker, etc.), Howling doesn't just play straight up death metal, though there's plenty of that, old school style; there's also lots of classic '80s metal melodicism to the guitar licks and soloing, giving this a bit of a Carcass feel at times. And Howling happily delve into some doomy bongsmoked jams too, like the lumbering stoner riffage of "A Night In The Crypt", that Acid Witch fans ought to dig. Lycanthropic death at its best.
How To Assess Your Damages is record number two from these Colorado post hardcore heavies, released on the same label that gave us the recent records from Lark's Tongue (see elsewhere on the aQ site). Il Cattivo features members of Planes Mistaken For Stars (whom we love, but who for some reason have never made it on to our list ever), and traffic in a dense flurry of dueling guitars, mathy drumming and howled vox, their sound a brooding heavy noise rock, with a dash of screamo, and plenty of classic hard rock melody, as well as pop smarts, not to mention a particular strain of Midwestern rock that some aQ-ers are a bit obsessed with to this day, we're talking about bands like Paw and Kill Creek, their hard rocking indie rock flecked with a bit of twang, and a bit of Southern rock, which seems to make it into the music of Il Cattivo as well. The dual guitars here mean the heavy parts are dense and layered, and also means there are plenty of killer guitar harmonies. The vocals too are surprisingly varied, a super commercial croon one second, a throat shredding howl the next. Some of these songs are crazy polished and poppy, and it's not hard to imagine them on the radio or MTV (if they still played music), but then even the catchiest song will splinter into a wild squall of heaviness, and vice versa, the band will lay down some furious metallic mathiness, only to inject it with a heaping dose of impossible catchiness, which makes for a seriously sweet combo. It's definitely easy to hear Il Cattivo as a logical extension of Planes Mistaken For Stars, just a bit more melodic, a bit more polished, and with some serious kick ass songwriting chops!
All it takes is a handful of listens and you'll be obsessed, seriously, dig into the samples below and you won't be sorry. We were just gonna give this a quick review, but with every listen, we found ourselves digging it more and more and wanting to listen to pretty much nothing else. WAY recommended!!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered!!
Album number two for Chicago's heavy shoegazing quartet Implodes picks up exactly where they left off with their Kranky debut, bridging the blur of Slowdive with the depressive post-punk of Joy Division (or more accurately, the first New Order records which held over much of the existential bleakness of Joy Division before switching gears entirely in offering forth "Blue Monday"). Recurring Dream is an apt title, although whatever dreams these guys are channeling, they ain't pretty. Every song is a monochromatic fug of blurred vocals, heavily pounded slow motion rhythms, and black/blue maelstroms of overdriven, reverb laden guitars that might be pegged as psychedelic if everything weren't so dark and so cold. A somber atmosphere from their icy drone-rock introduces the album's first three cuts, leading up to the comparatively dynamic "Necronomics" with its propulsive rhythms and Mogwai-like explosions and crescendos. The harmonic, lead guitar lines of "Ex Mass" are right out of the Daniel Ash playbook for Bauhaus / Tones On Tail but grafted onto a sullen, slow-core arrangement all caught in a sonorous tarpit of murk and blur. The album ends on a perfect downer note with "Bottom Of The Well", with an exasperated Matt Jencik emoting a very sad tale even as the words are entirely obfuscated in echo and reverb, while the rest of the band propels forward into a black hole of twin guitar solos and swirling synths akin to Emeralds rehashing The Cure's Pornography. Awesome.
We were sorta late to the game on these guys, having only recently reviewed their second record earlier this year, Destroyer, when their debut for Relapse (record number three) was all ready to drop - and here it is. But late or not, we're happy to have discovered this Richmond crew, whose sound is a tough one to classify. In the review of that 12", we described their sound as "dark, mathy noise rock, rife with psychedelic flourishes, bursts of furious black metal buzz, and swaths of sludgey downtuned crush." Which really definitely pretty much sums it up, but on Sky Burial, they're given plenty of space, which is essential for a band whose song lengths tend to average about 10 minutes.
Like on Destroyer, Inter Arma let their songs unfurl gradually here, exploding out of the gate with a churning blastbeat driven blowout, which quickly settles into a woozy, almost looped sound dirge, which churns and roils for the next several minutes, this churn laced with all sorts of dynamics, heady and hypnotic, and in a weird way, we'd be perfectly happy, if this record had been on hour long song, and this was all it did. The drums explode in chaotic patterns throughout, the vocals a demonic rasp, the sound slipping occasionally back into that opening blast, but always seeming to lumber right back into that head nodding churn. Finally, at the halfway mark, the sound settles into a super spaced out minimal drift, spidery tendrils of melody, of skeletal drumming, all underpinned by a distant rumbling drone, a brooding post rocky drift, that soon splinters into some dense downtuned mathiness, reminding us of the late great Dazzling Killmen. Before finally returning to a swirling chaotic blast to finish things off. And that's just the first track!
Here's where we'd normally say something like, "and the rest of the record continues on in a similar fashion", only it doesn't. Acoustic guitars, drift over slippery slide guitars, the vibe a little deserty, a little Morricone, disappears in a cloud of white noise static, before slipping into a haunting, slo-mo organ driven creep, spare and moody, a melancholic slow build, that reminds us of True Widow (who coincidentally enough also have a new record coming out on Relapse soon!). Psychedelic leads drift in, the drums get more loose, the sound unfolds and expands, building to a sort of coda, all whispering wind and wheezing organ, before abruptly launching into a furious howling blast of black metal buzz!
It doesn't get any more predictable from there on out, ultra slow funeral dubbed out doom, gives way to droned out dirgery, a pounding crescendo, total metal Godspeed majesty, before a serious Neurosis like tribal drum driven downtuned tangle of FX drenched guitar swirl and downtuned riffage, all beneath bellowed vox, the sound slipping in an out of clouds of FX, minimal and muted one second, explosive and blown out the next. Chugging doom, laced with hellish shrieks, devolves into dense mathy tangles, before slipping into another stretch of acoustic psychedelia, this time wreathed in what sounds like a theremin, haunting and mysterious, all leading up to the epic 13 minute closing title track, which again finds the band in epic doom mode, wild drumming wrapped around alternately chugging/soaring guitars, moody and droney, but before too long, the heaviness peels away, leaving more shimmery strum and minimal drum pound, over which the vocals howl, exploding into a long stretch of dense, blackened mathiness, some serious melodic and metallic guitar crunch, bordering on poppy, but before that can happen, the song evolves again into another sprawl of soaring epic doom, before getting all Champs-y, super technical and mathy, classic metalisms all wound up into dizzying progged out tangles, cycling through some classic true metal riffing, before collapsing into a chaos of chug and swirl, pound and churn, and finally, a dreamy bit of folky strum.
Super dense, crazy technical, proggy and epic, noisy post rock meets Neur-Isis style doom, laced with blast beats and psychedelic drift - phew, for how hard these guys make it to actually describe their sound, they sure make it easy to dig it!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not much point in belaboring the issue too much on this one. There's only 100 copies. Most of them are gone. But, FUCK, if this isn't the best Organum record ever made, even if it wasn't made by David Jackman. Instead, we have a brilliant homage to the turgid acoustic dronescaping and thoughtfully composed noise arrangements of David Jackman's best period of Organum (circa 1988 - 1994), produced by the less-than-sensible irr. app. (ext.) / Matt Waldron. Quite literally, this was the album of his dreams, as one night in 2011, Waldron was overcome by a vision of encountering Jackman at an indoor shopping mall in California, where he was selling a brand-spanking new Organum LP which featured a strange bear drawing on one side and an even stranger fox drawing on the other, with the rather explanatory "The Other Side Is Blank" as the title, pointing out that the lp was a one-sided lp. While we are not all that sure if such a strategy ever came up in Organum's back catalogue, he was known for releasing 7" singles with a mere minute and half of sound on both sides. In the five tracks (four on the one sided lp, and one very short cut on the one sided 7"), Waldron dutifully creates fantastic, industrial blurs of vibrating metal, acoustic rattlings, and infernal roars of very tactile noise all very much within the aesthetic of Jackman's Organum project. Pretty fucking brilliant and pretty fucking stupid at the same time. A perfect record for aQuarius! But grab one before they're gone for good...
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas is this washed out retro '80's synth jammer from Juan Cisneros, who previously operated under the moniker, VC Childkraft (and who had one of our favorite tracks on the Brainclub Vol. 1 compilation). Vaporware is a hard to quantify mix of post-witch house haziness through a glaring Miami Vice heat. "Shattered Glass in Oil Rainbow" jarringly begins with a choked speedboat motor noise before settling into a calm seascape invoking a sonic comparison to The Holy Other channeling slow motion Jan Hammer. Romantic synth textures and even far away saxophone, taking us back to some love scene from an unrealized Michael Mann thriller, but filtered through an even dreamier veil of alien sensuality, placing an unfamiliar tense spin on a forgotten nostalgic moment. "Angel Cop/Black Market Exotica" brings some danger to the proceedings with sounds from a futuristic Asian crime thriller with crowd screams and laser bursts. Less tongue in cheek than someone like, say, Umberto, JU4N actually manages some thoughtful compositional choices that takes this to a deeper place than the references invoked would suggest. This is not your standard, Carpenter/Goblin synth worship, instead diving bravely head-on into some scarier Phil Collins "In The Air Tonight" territory and re-emerging rather unscathed with a unique sonic twist. Wear your Ray-Bans and proceed with caution! Limited!
Many moons ago, a strange disc passed through our doors from a mysterious Swedish post-punk outfit called Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons. That disc collected one of the band's albums plus a bunch of random odds and ends. Dark Entries has now reissued that album proper from the collection - Screams To God. Weird. Fucked-up. Angular. Totally great. Here's what we had to say about K&TPS way back when:
An amazingly weird synthy Swedish new wave punk band that burned bright for one short year way back in 1980. Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons were herky jerky, full of demented pep and enough deranged energy to make themselves a seriously freaked out and super unique proposition. Sort of how we always wished new wave sounded, not overly polished but instead kind of demented and mad in all the right ways. Like The Pop Group and the Dead Kennedys all mixed up with Siouxsie and Johnny Lydon taking turns on vocals. As much as this makes us think of some of the more well known (relatively) bands of the era like The Slits, Raincoats, Au Pairs, Liliput and Maximum Joy, there is something so singular and unique about Kitchen And The Plastic Spoons that makes it kind of surprising that this is the first time these tracks have been dug up in almost 30 years. It's amazing how vibrant and timely this still sounds. It's hard not to imagine that bands like Erase Errata had somehow gotten their hands on one of the few hundred original lp's and used it as a sort of template or inspiration. With all the hype in recent years over lost punk reissues this might just take the cake for a long overdue rediscovery of a truly weird punk classic!
The Outside is the second full length from this Hungarian black metal duo, who initially kick things off with some pretty fierce, but ultimately straight forward black buzz. It's a sound we seem to never tire of, so a wall of furious fast picked guitars, and furious blastbeats like this definitely still pushes all our BM buttons, but there's a lot more going on here than straight black buzz. In fact that opening salvo barely lasts two minutes before the sound splinters into a weird doomy crawl, with some sick, raspy vokills, before launching into a churning midtempo, almost post rocky sounding lope, fuzzed out bass, spare driving drumming, the guitars offering up little bits of melodic filigree here and there, but ultimately the band lock into some seriously tranced out mesmer, before finally returning to another stretch of epic buzzing blackness.
The rest of the record delivers a series of buzzing epics, heavy on the creeping atmosphere, the core still being a raw blasting black metal, but with much of the group's time spent locked into downtuned dirges, and doomy lumbers, the guitars spiraling into woozy tangled harmonies, clouds of chiming harmonics over the motorik rhythms, at times sounding like some blackened strain of hypnorock (check out "Drowning"), and when the the black metal does kick in, it's fierce and majestic, soaring and utterly epic, sometimes, though, the band drops out, and those tell tale buzzing guitars begin to build momentum, but then instead of bursting into blasting blackness, the drums emerge as a doomy slow-mo pound, creating a weird sort of blackbuzz/doomdirge hybrid. And so it goes, the sound shifting from blackened churn, to furious buzzing frenzy, from surprisingly minimal melodic blackened gloomrock (a la Khold), to raw black buzz and back again.
Super striking, black and white, digipak style packaging too.
Back in 2010 or 2011, these guys were being touted as the next big thing, which was crazy, cuz we couldn't track down their record. We were reading about them everywhere, and seeing the on all sorts of top tens, all before we heard a lick of music. Well when we finally did, we definitely understood what everybody was so excited about. That first record was heavy and hooky, and was a sort of mish mash of influences, black metal, D-beat, cock rock, stoner rock, and somehow it all worked, it might not have knocked out socks off like everyone else, but we did dig it a lot. Enough that we were pretty excited to discover there was a new record.
And if anything, this new one Meir, pretty much oneups that first record in every way. Well, almost. The first one was definitely meaner, and had more of the black metal and D-beat stuff going on. This new one is a whole lot poppier, and the clean vocals are really good, like proper singing, with some of the songs here catchy enough that we wouldn't be at all surprised to hear them on the radio. We mentioned Turbonegro in our review of the first record, and recently when someone was in the store asking what these guys sounded like, we came up with "Turbonegro, if they weren't joking", which isn't all that far off the mark. The sound is crazy catchy, over the top, totally bombastic, but still pretty heavy, most definitely metal, but there are some crazy melodies that sound like they were plucked straight off some top 40 jam, the saving grace is that they're then doused in distortion and someone howls their guts out over the top. And most of the songs have full on blast beats, furious riffing and lightning fast pounding, but often those blasts don't sound mean or black, just epic and triumphant, and like a faster version of the catchy part already in play. Check out the first two sound samples, those have to be the happiest, most sunshiney blasts EVER. And the third track starts off with a full on blast, but with gang vocals, and some swirling guitars, and the blast blossoms into some classic sounding anthemic eighties metal, or at least a meaner more modern version. Again, catchy like crazy, but still heavy, there's even some slide guitar giving the sound a sort of Hellacopters vibe. In fact, every time the clean vocals come in, the sound gets VERY Hellacopter-ish. Allan hates when we mention bands like Queens Of The Stone Age or the Foo Fighters, but in some ways, Kvelertak sounds like a heavier, meaner, louder and WAY better band than groups like those. Holy shit we just got to a part with handclaps and footstomps, the band suddenly sounding like a super metal version of Queen. Which is absolutely a good thing!!
These guys are Norwegian, so this stuff probably IS top 40 there, that's usually how it works, in a country where Dimmu Borgir win Grammies, but really, this record is so good, and these guys are genuinely fucking great, it's sort of a crime this stuff is not all over the radio EVERYwhere. Which of course means, if you couldn't tell, WAY recommended.
The Last Visible Dog label, who specialize in some of our favorite genres (improv drones, Finnish weirdness, Japanese free-psych, NZ noise) sadly seems to be winding things down, but we did just arrange to restock a whole bunch of their stuff to sell at a "nice price" (thanks Chris!), including a few old aQ faves that we got enough of to relist, though these are the very last copies we're gonna have, ever...
Here's what we said the first time we encountered these Japanese fuzz mongers back in 2004:
Downer murk and amp-flaming distorto rock from a young Japanese psychedelic rock trio in the wasted, wigged-out tradition of many on those PSF label Tokyo Flashback comps, also harking further back of course to underground '70s lo-fi legends Les Rallizes Denudes! LSD-march, named for a track on the first, heaviest album by krautrockers Guru Guru, slowly whisper and wander through a veil of feedback and plodding rhythms. There's both gentle and searing stuff to be found here. These guys are more serious, mysterious and melancholy than Acid Mothers Temple, with a definite Velvets vibe at times. And when the guitars get cranked, this sounds like the Neil Youngiest of Nagisa Ni Te freakouts. With liner notes (and stamp of approval) from Japanese translator/psych expert Alan Cummings.
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!
This is the first we've heard from this one woman black metal band, the work of a single entity almost comically named Climaxia, but there's nothing comical about Hel, an epic and super progressive slab of experimental atmospheric black metal. Inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, this six part songsuite finds ME weaving an impossibly lush landscape of black buzz, industrial murk, dreamy almost psychedelic ambience, part one pretty much lays it all out, loping black metal, more muddy and washed out than buzzy, giving the whole thing a seriously dreamlike quality, the sound sound shifts, and splinters into a strange soaring blackened majesty, with some insanely deep demonic bellowed vokills, which get processed and transformed into clouds of hisses and whispers, before the buzz peels away, leaving clean guitar, murky drumming, a sky full of tangled voices, the sound super cinematic and WAY creepy, and then in swoop some angelic clean female vox, the effect choral, almost liturgical really, the sound seeming to grow more and more abstract, more psychedelic, the metal elements disappearing in a cloud of druggy FX heavy swirl. But we're still only partway through, the sound explodes into a grinding gout of heaviness, before once again transforming into a sort of gloomy dirge rock, the vocals now a throaty croon, haunting and heavy.
The second track begins in full black metal buzz mode, but again, the timbre and quality of the sound makes it much more dreamy and tranced out, those growled demonic vokills the only thing making it sound truly black metal, and even here, after a minute, the sound devolves into a stretch of clean guitar drift, before launching into another blast of blackness. The whole record, while heavy on the black buzz, spends much of its time drifting through fields of psychedelic shimmer, distant buzz, and slow, dirgey atmospheric creeps, and it's those interludes and non-metal parts that seem to seep into the blacker buzzier parts, transforming them into something much more moody and melancholic, not to mention all sorts of strange effects, warble guitars, twisted harmonies, dubbed out drumming, each song imbued with a sort of soft cacophony, that constantly threatens to overtake the black buzz, and often gloriously does!
Packaged in a super swank black and gold six panel embossed digipak...
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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.
Some recommended, unusual improv here. We were quite surprised at what a pleasant and compelling listen this is, considering the definite weirdness and occasional wackiness of it, which comes mainly from the "Two Voices" referred to in the title. Those two voices - belonging to Phil Minton and Audrey Chen (who also have a duo-only all-voice disc out on Sub Rosa, released simultaneously with this, that we'll be listing soon too) - specialize in mostly nonverbal, nonsensical "singing" - not really what most folks would call singing, but freely improvised sound-making with lips, teeth, tongue, throat, lungs... And what they do is really taken to extremes here - quiet extremes as there's not really any screaming or shouting. Lots of moaning muttering mumbling whining wailing whispering whistling burbling babbling blubbering hissing and humming, however. Pretty much almost any noise you could imagine being able to make with your mouth and some others that you can't! And while without meaning linguistically, you can't say it's not meaningful on some other level, more primal and emotive.
Sometimes there's a silliness to it, Minton and Chen sounding like Muppety monsters with gastric disorders, but sometimes it can be downright disturbing, harrowing stuff like a chorus of damned souls; either way we're enjoying it and we think fans of, like, Mike Patton's various vocal experiments and a lot of the singing of Eye from the Boredoms would really dig this too. Obviously that also goes for anyone already into UK voice improv vet Phil Minton - or similar "sound poet" Jaap Blonk of Holland.
On the face of it what we've just described might seem to be outside of a lot of folks' usual musical comfort zone, but for those with open ears, we feel that this comes off as being intriguing and entrancing rather than in any way annoying, also in part perhaps because of the other elements on here, the "Four Instruments" portion of this quintet (as well as singing, Chen plays cello, Segers is on electric bass, Jacquemyn on double bass, and Verbruggen plays drums), which provide the perfect environment of gently improvised "chamber orchestra" music for these eccentric voices to inhabit. The instruments and voices really mesh well, the musicians laying down delicate drones, skittery percussion, scraping strings... all of which mimic or is mimicked at times by the human voices themselves, achieving an atmospheric synthesis, so you can't always tell what's voice and what's instrument, not to mention how many there are.
It's soothingly bass-heavy, as you might imagine from the instrumentation, and also as we said rather gentle and oddly pleasant, with quiet blissed-out stretches, despite its textural density and potential disturbance factor. Even when Minton, on the fourth track, gets into some rapid fire glossolalic mumbo-jumbo like an auctioneer with Tourette's, it's actually somewhat hypnotic (or amusing). By the way, he's the only person on here with whom were were previously familiar (and we haven't reviewed much by him, just a couple albums he's been on with folks like Bob Ostertag and Tom Cora), most of the other folks are presumably from the Belgian improv scene since this was recorded in Brussels and released on Sub Rosa.
Again, like we said, a bit of a surprise, but we've been listening to this A LOT, even when going to sleep at night. Strange dreams...
Moonrises are the latest in a long line of psychedelic revivalists, many of whom we revere here at aQ, whether it's White Hills, or Carlton Melton, The Heads or Wooden Shjips, but these guys (and gal) have a leg up on lots of their psychedelic brethren in that they're led by none other than Plastic Crimewave, who oughta have a PhD in psychedelia at this point, and here, he puts that knowledge to work, crafting a gorgeous, intense, druggy and heavy modern psych rock that manages to channel jammed out space rock, with witchy occultic seventies acid folk, organ heavy prog and tranced out krautrock into some seriously heavy musical mayhem.
The opening one-two punch of the first two tracks definitely sets the stage, buzzing synths, dramatic female vocals, minimal drumming, soft swirls of guitar shimmer, woozy organ melodies, the vibe very witchy and demonic, keyboardist Libby Ramer's vocals a force of nature, slipping from whispery croon, to deep ominous drone to banshee like wail, the first track starting off all minimal and moody, but gradually building to a fierce psych rock blow out, the organ and guitar all tangled up in thick gouts of wah wah whirl, the drums wild and chaotic, the whole thing droned out and trancey, a fierce opener for sure, but it only get more fierce from there.
The second track, "Lorelei's Grasp" begins as a rumbling drone, which is soon joined by more of the creepy organ, some crumbling guitar noise, bursts of drum splatter, a free form space noise drift, that coalesces into some dense dark progginess, the organ letting loose a super intense minor key melody, the drums following with along, Ramer's vocals going crazy, a maniacal trill, a woman possessed, the whole thing so tense and intense, and unlike any of the so called space/psych rock we've been hearing. This could totally be some lost rare psych artifact, not just the sound, but the spirit, and the energy, the song settles down, and drones out, but soon, erupts into a final squall that sounds almost triumphant. Wow.
And so it goes, Moonrises effortlessly channeling the lost psychedelic seventies, the sonic spirits revealed through distorted organ buzz, and wild tangles psych guitar, deep chant like vocals, and skittering motorik rhythms, druggy clouds of hazy soft noise shimmer, but it's not all straight retro revival. The band are capable of seriously fucking shit up, check out "Eyelid Chamber", which sounds less like old psych folk, and more like some modern freakout avant noise rock, dizzying drumming, wrapped in thick organ drones, and peppered with swirling shards of jagged guitar crunch, before finally coalescing into a song proper, but even then it sounds like something more more modern, dirgey and grungey and heavy. Elsewhere they get into some tripped out rhythmic experimentalism, droney and woozy and looped, other descriptions we've seen mention This Heat and the Dead C, and yeah, there's a little of that going on, but to our ears, it's simply an extension of their tranced out psych, which already contains elements of both. Incredible stuff! Fans of all the current crop of psych/space revivalists, this is for YOU. And fans of the old stuff, who only dig the REAL thing, this could be the band that flips your lid and changes your mind.
Samuel Fuller's dynamic and gritty film career often courted controversy but it was this last film he made in the US in 1982 that was perhaps his most controversial of all. White Dog, based on the Romain Gary book of the same name and starring Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives, is a social thriller about a stray dog found and taken in by McNichol and the harrowing discovery that her new pet was trained by previous owners to attack and kill black people. After several attacks and one brutal killing, desperate attempts are made to try and cure the dog of his trained behaviors, the most radical and questionably successful method by a trainer played by Paul Winfield, a black man. The overarching themes and hard questions raised by the movie whether racism can be unlearned or is indeed incurable were too controversial for the time and Paramount pictures suppressed the film after receiving negative press attention accusing the film of being racist before its release. It didn't even get a proper dvd release until 2008, by the Criterion Collection. Originally slated to be Tony Scott's directorial debut, his lack of a coherent script forced producers to turn to Sam Fuller and screenwriter Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, 8 Mile). Fuller douses the film with a B-movie grittiness, and it's his hard line look at racism dead on that makes this film so dramatically compelling. The movie never had a trailer, but one YouTube user made one and it's pretty damn great and shows how the amazing score by the one and only Ennio Morricone is used to full dramatic effect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhkrvBNnAcw). Morricone utilizes a dreamy but pensive title theme with piano, reeds, and strings that is pastorally lilting, but tinged with an undefined creepiness. Like David Shire's score for The Conversation, Morricone's score lingers lovingly on the surface, but is all paranoid foreboding underneath, and like The Conversation, beautiful to listen to on its own. We highly recommend watching this film though as well as pretty much anything else by Sam Fuller!
It's been a little while, but finally time to all out another complement of o's. That's right, UK doomlords Moss return with their latest batch of ultra mega doooooooooooooooom. And like their last record, Tombs Of The Blind Drugged, Horrible Night is another collection of slo-mo-sludge, sub-Sabbathian swing, glacial downtuned creep, and churning, lumbering low end heaviosity. The weird thing is, considering how heavy and sludgy these guys are, we only just now discovered they don't have a bass player, and the singer ONLY sings. We always assumed they were a proper three piece, guitar, bass, drums, with one of those blokes singing. Kinda insane that just guitar and drums can conjure up such a thick, blackened oozing sound. But we digress.
While much of the sound on Horrible Night is essentially a continuation of their multiple o'd ultra doom, there is one thing that has changed, and that's the vocals. There are in fact still some throat shredding howls, but the bulk of the vocals are clean, soaring proper singing. Suddenly Moss have a twinge of true doom to them. Vocalist (just vocalist) Olly Pearson does a decent Ozzy-ish wail, which most definitely changes the tenor and tone of the Moss musical universe. The opening title track eventually settles into some old style Mossiness, replete with the howled anguished vokills, there's even some super weird tripped out psychedelic leads at one point, but the whole first half is total old school true doom, slowed down to a crawl, Pearson belting it out. Not sure if we're imagining it or not, but with the clean vocals, even the music seems to swing a but more, sounding a little bit more Sabbathy and stonery. Hard to say if true ultra doomlords will be disappointed, but we're digging it a lot. Definitely adds some melody and musicality to the group's otherwise minimal but massively crushing dour dirgery, and it's interesting too, that the music hasn't changed all that much really, so it's still droned out and doomy, lumbering and trudging, funereal/funeral ultradoom, but now with proper vox. We can't help but feel like the sound's gonna explode into a galloping classic metal groove at any point, and it feels like that expectation imbues the music with a weird dark tension, cuz it never does, Moss have it locked down, keeping their BPM to a minimum, and tuning down as low as they can, unfurling thick sheets of undulating, crumbling, super distorted buzz, the riffs serpentine and slow motion, it's the sort of metal that doesn't inspire headbanging so much as a sort of swaying back and forth, hypnotic, mesmerizing, a many o'd dooooooooooom, given new life, and transformed into the world's slowest, and most abject, blackly psychedelic true ultra doom. And we DIG it.
We love Mudhoney. How could you not. WHY would you not? Every time we decide we maybe don't care about Mudhoney anymore, or decide they're no longer relevant, they release a new record that kicks our asses, or we see them play, and have our minds blown thoroughly. At some point, we decided to just stop going through that. And just understand that Mudhoney are one of those rare bands, who sound as good now as they did in the old days. Vocalist Mark Arm still has one of the most distinctive yowls in rock and roll, Steve Turner's guitar playing is untouchable, and Dan Peters is still a madman behind the kit. So fuck it. We love Mudhoney, we always will. And sure, maybe they won't ever make another Superfuzz Bigmuff, but then they don't have to.
There are definitely some moments on Vanishing Point that had us doubting, mostly some painfully trite lyrics, but we're tempted to believe that we're just not getting it. Like maybe those lyrics are meant to a -parody- of truly trite lyrics, cuz c'mon, these are the same guys who wrote "Touch Me I'm Sick", "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More", "Burn It Clean" and about a billion others.
But sonically "Vanishing Point" is a monster, from loping Stoogesy swaggers, to furious pounding punk rock blowouts, to blown out grungy dirges, to slithery Green River like grunge-blues breakdowns, the guitars thick and viscous, howling and screeching, chugging and buzzing, the rhythm section tight as fuck, plenty of wah guitar freakouts, the heavy psych vibe all over Vanishing Point, but ultimately, just another face melting, head banging, post-grunge classic slab of Mudhoney crush, which we're digging more and more with every spin.
While they last, we have the super limited Loser Edition of the lp (that means colored vinyl and a bonus photo booklet)...
Nether Dawn is the alter ego of Mr. Antony Milton, who really needs no more alter egos, but what the heck, with each alter ego comes another chunk of gorgeous sound, so we're not complaining. This is not really new, it's just been sitting here waiting to get reviewed, and we've finally gotten around to it, and as is often the case, from the second we threw this on, we were wondering why the heck we waited so long.
Whisky Mute-Down begins as a gorgeous crumbling wall of rumbles and drones, of buried melodies and streaks of high end feedback. Noisy, but soft noise, it totally had us wishing it was the only track here and would continue on in the same vein for another hour. But thankfully, the rest of the record has other sonic treasures to offer. A spare guitar drifts above buzz and crackle, of amp buzz and the sound of bad connections and old cords, warm soft whirs spread out in thick waves, sounding a bit like field recordings, far beneath the call of some alien creature rings out, a clattery clanging guitarscape rings out over an almost techno pulse, the beat and the pulsing guitar swaying woozily back and forth, while a second guitar unfurls delicate little high end melodies, a long slow burning distant grinding guitar shimmers beneath glimmering high end, and above bellowing low end, the various layers blurring together like oil and water, offering up various colors and tones, and finally, another minimal dronescape, a doomy riff, wreathed in crackle and stripped to the bone, occasionally rearing up to chug and crunch, but otherwise laying prone, and the buzz and hiss pile up, the whole thing a smoldering sea of distorted drones, decaying before our ears. Worth it for the first track alone, but even more worth it for the rest...
