You've probably never heard of Nibiru (this Nibiru anyway, though maybe you're deep into Sumerian mythology and/or Babylonian astronomy and are familiar with the term in other contexts!), but if you're at all a fan of throbbing, spaced-out sludge psych then please pay attention. Before writing this review, we put a tag on this in the store that just said "Ritualistic Occult Italian Doom" and that managed to sell a copy or two already, but more can be said about it. To elaborate, this is the debut full-length from an esoteric Italian trio who play totally-trance inducing, heavy rhythmic ritualistic stoner sludge. UFOmammut is an obvious reference point, Nibiru are equally fuzzed-out and head-nodding, but have some characteristics unique to themselves, notably their vocal stylings, which bring in an undercurrent of 'world music', the heavily effected vocals sounding like distorted muezzin wails, or even digitized Tuvan throat singing. The electronic treatment of the vocals kind of reminds us of the nefarious Auto-Tune, but instead of making 'em sound like Cher or Britney Spears, Nibiru's hypothetical version of Auto-Tune is set on 'guttural alien shaman' or something like that! The singing is thus oddly melodic, but also otherworldly. It's definitely distinctive and effective in creating their primal, droned-out, mesmeric, magickal mood. Helping with that too, are all the thick effects-laden guitar/synth/organ textures and lumbering, staggering layers of rhythmic pound. Right from the smoothed out grind of epic 18 minute opener "Invokation I: The Acid Skull", Nibiru never really let up, the listener transported into their mystic realm of dreamtime, doomic dervish sounds for the duration. Fans of such heaviness as Gnod, Bong, OM, Zoroaster, UFOmammut, Los Natas/Ararat, and Lord Of Doubts' Eastern/Buddhist ceremonial sprawl, would do well to investigate forthwith.
Compact disc limited to 300 copies.
First we've listed from Obnox, the side project of Lamont Thomas, drummer for aQ faves Puffy Areolas, and like that group, Obnox traffics in similarly noisy, lo-fi dissonant, garage punk dischord, the difference is that Thomas adds some serious poppiness, and a bit of soul, and a smidge of glam, positioning Obnox more alongside noisy garage pop groups like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, albeit a whole lot grimier and noisier.
The four tracks here are INSANELY catchy, a noisy trashy garage punk, that's feedback drenched, driven by wild chaotic drumming, wreathed in blown out buzz and laced with tanged distorto leads, BUT, it's also poppy as fuck, with super cool. dramatic, soulful vocals, that at times even reminds us of Guided By Voices, in that effortless melody making, the sort that stick in your head forEVER. The opening track starts out all noisy and remains that way, but does blossom into some extreme catchiness with a tossed off chorus that poppier bands would kill for. And pretty much all the tracks here follow suit, vocal driven garage pop gems doused in grit and grime, at times the sound almost glammy, one song reminded us of the late great Lee Harvey Oswald Band. The B side adds some blown out big beat rhythms and sing along vox, even some chipmunky falsetto background vocals, but finishes things off with the title track, which sounds like it could be a cover of some long lost musical, soaring and dramatic, and again hooky as hell, and yet still noisy as fuck.
Running out of superlatives for these SF garage pop superheroes, fronted by the tireless music machine John Dwyer, and yet, another Oh Sees record pops up, and we can help but get just as excited as we were about the last one. We've made a couple record from Dwyer and Co. our Record Of The Week, but really, we're beginning to think we could have bestowed that honor on any/all of 'em, certainly the last handful, and most definitely this one. Everything we dig about these guys is present and in full effect, the sound is great, the songs catchy as hell, and of course, plenty of whatthefuck weirdness going on.
The opener this time is classic Oh Sees, with its jangly shuffling verse, and explosive distorted reverb drenched chorus, not to mention lots of distorted vocal 'whoop's, as well as a killer guitar/synth harmony breakdown before tumbling right back into it. Lots of background oooooh's too of course, and some wicked guitar crunch, this opening jam reminding us a lot of a more raw lo-fi Redd Kross, which is definitely not a bad thing. The follow up cranks up the guitar, in-the-red and blown out, but wrapped around a pretty little fuzz pop ditty, the combo of distorto guitar and lilting melody always a pretty potent one. Add in some echo drenched falsetto vox, and what sounds like a male falsetto/female vox harmony, all over tribal drums, and weird little guitar squeaks and scrapes before it's right back into it. Our temptation is to go song by song, cuz they're pretty much all great, but by now most folks already know what Thee Oh Sees sound like and odds are you either dig em or you don't (although we're probably guessing you do). But like all Oh Sees records, there are plenty of surprises, one here is the almost ska sounding title track, that starts off furious guitaring under ethereal vocals, before breaking down into aforementioned ska sounding breakdown, but somehow, it totally works. There's also the creepy crawl of "Night Crawler", which starts out scary, but somehow blossoms into what might be the catchiest riff on the whole record. The closer too is a cool brooder, all stripped down and minimal, and rife with lots of strings, and doo wop-y background vox, and a coll crumbly outro, all gristly static under cello. But in between all of that weirdness, is plenty of classic bash pop garage rock genius, hooks galore, lots of jangle and buzz, kinetic rhythms, varying productions, from murky and blown out to crystalline and super high fidelity, tons of falsetto vox this time around, seems like more than ever, but all taken together, another kick ass, and fantastically idiosyncratic blast of hyper catchy fuzz pop garage jangle radness from these perpetual aQ faves!!
Killer cover art too!
How does a black metal band from Kentucky start off a recorded tribute to his own state, a record inspired by the gorgeous Kentucky woods, with a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the record going to help preserve said woods? Well with a Southern style bluegrass hoedown obviously, which is precisely how the latest from one man black metal band Panopticon begins, three minutes of backporch banjo picking and furious fiddlin', loping upright bass, but fear not, Panopticon hasn't suddenly abandoned the buzzing blackness, in fact, the second track "Bodies Under The Falls", explodes into a furious blast of howling hellish fury, blasting drums, buzzing riffs, shrieked vokills, but Panopticon have never been an ordinary black metal band, so that whole opening salvo is accompanied by what sounds like a tin whistle, giving it a weird folky flavor, and then of course the songs' furious buzz, blossoms into some serious classic metal replete with wild shreds and killer guitar harmonics. And whattayaknow? About halfway through, that opening bluegrass jam resurfaces, the black buzz fades out, leaving this lilting folkiness, which instead of disappearing completely, is sort of absorbed into the song proper so when the heaviness comes back in, it drags that bluegrassy melody with it, making for a cool final stretch that sounds like a country flecked black metallized Godspeed, soaring and epic, strings alongside guitar buzz, all wrapped in that strange little tin whistle melody. So weird, and so goddamn great!
And that bluegrass/black metal hybrid seems to extend throughout the whole record. The next track is a straight up ol timey bluegrass jam called "Come All Ye Coal Miners", and as much as we're digging this, we can imagine some metalheads being quite confused! That song too is laced with samples of folks talking about miners, and the land around the mines being disposable.
"Black Soot And Red Blood" is another cool black and blue hybrid, starting off with soaring guitar buzz, dueling clean/harsh vox, pounding drums, before fading out and leaving just acoustic guitar, over which plays an interview with a coal mining talking about the trials and tribulations of mining, that whole stretched with strange distorted echo drenched drum crashes, and then finally, the song explodes into another soaring black metal epick, fading out into the cries of an angry mob. Intense stuff for sure.
And so goes the rest of the record, the shorter songs, bluegrass ditties, the final black metal epic, furious and frenzied, but with a long stretch midsong, minor key and melancholic, a woozy shimmery bed for more stirring samples, the final two tracks eschewing the blackness all together, at least sonically, focusing instead on the black lungs of mine workers, and the black expanses of ruined landscapes, the first a cool psychedelic drone, the last, a gorgeous minor key bluegrass lament, called of course, "Kentucky".
One of two new, ultra limited, extravagantly packaged releases from the always amazing Equation Records. Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a new one from Irr.App.(Ext.), a lp+7" tribute to Organum and David Jackman, and then there's this one, the most recent release from an oddball French duo who some of you might remember as a remixer on Nurse With Wound's Two Shaves And A Shine Remix Project. Others might even remember their last record on Equation, a twisted mix of psychedelic folk, spaced out lysergic cabaret, and ambient dronemusic, which definitely situates itself not that far from the NWW axis, occasionally also displaying more of a dramatic cabaret / balladry vibe.
This new one is limited to only 100 copies, and we got 10, so won't go into too much detail since these will likely be gone pretty quick. But if you've yet to be exposed to the warped musical soundworld of Pepe Wismeer, please step right up. This time around, the soaring, moody chamber pop that was only a part of the group's sound as expanded into something lush and majestic, reminding us of Antony And The Johnsons, Peter Hammill, Scott Walker, the vocals dramatic and passionate, alternating whispering and belting it out, the music is lush and lovely, soaring strings over tranquil folkiness, everything flecked with mysterious sounds and strange effects, swirling percussion drifts atop, hushed expanses of dark psychedelic shimmer, swaths of synths buzz through clouds of insectoid electronics, everything dialed back and muted, the vibe more stately and melancholic, almost like torchsongs, given a subtly experimental tweak. The tracks themselves are super short, but al woven into a single expansive songsuite, that's brooding and moody and darkly dreamy, and quite lovely, the weirdness and experimental elements just adding texture to the already deep, lush landscape of delicate pianos, hushed vox, swirling strings, and hazy, softly psychedelic ambience. So gorgeous.
And like all Equation releases, they've pulled out all the stops. the record is in a plain black sleeve, with pasted on full color artwork, inside a printed postcard, the lp sleeve numbered AND a bonus cd-r of extra home-recorded material!
Again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we got ten, and will NOT be able to get more.
Latest from these Aussie blackened death metal weirdos, and like all the records before, Vexovoid is another exercise in twisted sonic psychosis, the sound here weirdly polished and well produced, but that's really relative, as older records sounded like they were recorded in a subterranean icestorm. And at times sounded less like a metal band and more like some mysterious noise group. But here, the sound is seriously heavy, the riffing less blurred and indistinct, which would seem to be disappointing, but instead, makes this a way more satisfying listen. The opening track "Kilter", named we can only assume for the fact that it's about as far from off kilter as any Portal song we've ever heard, starts off all chugging and churning, frenzied and frenetic, looped and woozy, a dizzying swirl of downtuned riffage, and and avalanche of chaotic drumming, all wound into a tight, taut, gnarled sprawl of tranced out hypnometal crush. When the song finally kicks in proper, the vocals come in all murky bellow, and the riffs blur and smear and ooze, into a washed out, psychedelic buzzscape, that is somehow crazy catchy, as well as being baffling and brutal, and when the sound slips back into that opening churn, totally mesmerizing.
And so goes the whole record, the band either consciously going for a different sound, or just stumbling into what for them probably seems weird in comparison to their normal sound, not the other way around. In some ways, Vexovoid seems the most faithful to their country's metal heritage, oozing the sort of slo-mo death metal vibe of their forebears (Albeit not really slow at all, but somehow it FEELS slow, sludgey and filthy and dirgey, even when it's blasting away at lightspeed), most notably diSEMBOWELMENT but of course, for all of the polish here, this shit is still way demented, when the music drops out, the vocals are harrowingly hellish, and then the riffs, are fantastically droned out, the arrangements dizzying in their complexity, this is warped tech-death insanity that seems to get weirder and more out there as the record progresses, lurching from death metal pound, to woozy, atonal dirge, to tripped out, psychedelic guitarscapery, to doomic pound, to spare spacey drift. Might be our favorite Portal yet, but then it seems we say that about every one...
It's hard to believe it's now been more than a decade since the original release of this fantastic little slice of indie electronica, a collaboration between Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello (the electronics and production) and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie (the bitter sweet indie jangle and that voice!) a project they called at the time The Postal Service (with a little bit of protest from the actual USPS!). Since then, their sound has served as a template for a million other bands, mining much of the same territory, sad boy, mix tape break up indie jangle pop, but all wound up in percolating beats, and warm lustrous electronic shimmer, not indie club music by any stretch, it still had that sort of homebrewed 4-track bedroom vibe that made (and makes) music like this so relatable, but it expanded the typical indie pop sonic palette, and resulted in a serious of glistening, dreamily propulsive, nearly anthemic electronic pop, that does indeed sound just as good now as it did when everyone was freaking out about it the first time around. This tenth anniversary collection, gathers up the Give Up album in its entirety, along with two of the eps from around the same time, as well as some unreleased gems and rarities, and houses it all it a big fancy package, that incorporates the various iconic album art as well as lyrics, liner notes etc. Here's our slightly updated/revised review of these records from the first time around.
The Give Up record originally took shape via tapes mailed back and forth between Tamborello and Gibbard. Each track is subtle variation of the following: bashfully boyish vocals, chiming music box melodies and soft jangly guitars that play off one another over a simple thumping or clicking programmed beat. Gibbard sings oh so sweetly in his melted ice cream voice while Tamborello delivers the delightfully pretty electronics and bounding rhythms. Pretty much exactly what you might expect from a project starring these two fellows. Plus there's an added aural delight here and there in the form of occasional lovely vocals by Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis. The Postal Service's Give Up has a wonderful chemistry that swirls everything together perfectly.
The first single from that record, also included in this anniversary collection, is another gorgeous display of the Postal Service's effortlessly effervescent crushworthy tunes. And ah, such a sweet peep it is! A perfect accessory to the full length. The title track "Such Great Heights" is an instantly catchy gem that's sure to find its way onto friends' mixtapes everywhere (even still) and is most definitely the best song on Give Up. The rest of the ep is filled out actually by PS songs performed by two other bands - fellow Sub Poppers The Shins and Iron And Wine. The brief cover love ends with Iron And Wine's drowsy acoustic rendition of "Such Great Heights". And y'know what? It's definitely different, but in its own way just as good as the original. Beautiful! Each version is strong on its own and great in concert with one another.
Also included is the second ep, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, the title track, arguably the SECOND best song on Tamborello and Gibbard's Give Up album, "The District Sleeps Tonight" is accompanied by an alternate, much more percolated'n'squidgy mix by DJ Downfall, as well as a much more languid yet still thumpin' John Tejada remix of the aforementioned album's *best* track, the previously mentioned "Such Great Heights", plus... there's also a very mellow cover of the Flaming Lips' "Suddenly Everything Has Changed"!
Single number three is here as well, which in addition to the album track, includes two dreamy mixes from Styrofoam and Matthew Dear. And in addition to all that this new version tacks on a bunch of unreleased and rare tracks as well, including more collaborations with vocalist Jenny Lewis, their awesome Phil Collins cover, which was originally released on the soundtrack to the movie Wicker Park, there's also a John Lennon cover, originally from an Amnesty International benefit compilation, a Nobody remix, originally an iTunes only exclusive, and finally a live on the radio track from 2003.
And as mentioned above, the cd is gorgeous packaged in an oversized booklike package, 8 full color panels, multiple pockets, two booklets, tons of rare photos and more!! The vinyl too, in a similarly over the top multi paneled / pocketed jacket, and while they last we have the Loser Edition (i.e. colored vinyl!)
The latest from this long time aQ fave, comes in the form of a super limited tapes from the UK cassette label The Tapeworm, and features two sidelong tracks displaying two sides of Potter's sonic personality. The A side is a dizzying field of mathematically complex loopage, rendered in a seemingly perpetual state of decay and gradual disarray, beginning with fields of looped cascading electronic bleeps over distant pounded piano, and bleary smears of background shimmer, the piano becoming more insistent and jagged, almost maddeningly mesmerizing, all underpinned by a throbbing murky pulse, over which shifting rhythms collide and careen, sounds glitch and crunch, layers undulate, drones drift and swirl, the sound lurches and hiccups, lopes and churns, locking into weird sprawls of robotic hypno-groove, laced with what sound like cartoon bite sounds, and heaving black clouds of ominous rumble, a dizzying collision of black cinematic ambience, and kinetic, rhythmic skitter. The twisted backgrounds and the delirious dada-ist surrounding soundscapery, definitely point to Potter's longstanding collaboration with Nurse With Wound, but here those sounds are wound up tight, and let loose in a noisy, chaotic, carnivalesque funhouse, that at it's most intense sounds like a robot orchestra come to life, and running rampant, a barrage of buzz and hum, torrents of tangled rhythms, all bleeding and oozing into one thick viscous wall of pulsing pulsating sound, the eventually melts down to a cool droned out field of staticky skitter, and softly percolating grey noise drift,
The B side is a live recording of a rehearsal for a performance, and in some ways sounds like a more minimal, deconstructed, and sort of underwater version of the A side, softly noisy cascade pour down over beeps and bloops, splattery percussion is wreathed in warm swirls of echo and hum, the vibe murky and washed out, but building to occasional white noise squalls, the sounds a slow undulation, prickly and caustic in places, warm and shimmery in others, a field of slow moving drones, that splinter into shard of jagged sound, before sinking to the bottom, replaced by another thick layer of syrupy swirl. Dense and tense, but darkly dreamy, the sound eventually settling into something akin to old Oval, but replacing the muted shadowy swirl, with something a bit more abrasive, heavin swaths of industrial crunch, and jagged spears of high end skree, all wound up into slithery, prickly tangles, that eventually begin to unwind, the edges wearing off, the harsh surfaces burnished and glowing, the sound melting into a softly shimmering sprawl of hushed haunting thrum.
As with all Tapeworm tapes, extremely limited, this one featuring original cover art by noneother than Savage Pencil.
Martin Rev without Alan Vega (the artist's other half in the mid-'70s minimal electronic punk duo, Suicide) seems like Oates without Hall, maybe even Donny sans Marie. But members of duos often make solo "me" time to try stuff they might not otherwise with their sonic partners, and synthesist Rev has been releasing solo records for most of his tenure with/since Suicide. In fact, we were really impressed with his 2009 Stigmata album. While Vega typically donned a rockabilly hat for most of his solo releases, Rev has tried on more than a few musical caps. This new vinyl reissue of his first solo venture from 1980 is one of his more minimalist efforts - think early Human League experiments like "Being Boiled".
"Baby Oh Baby" is the only one of the lp's six tracks that isn't an instrumental - and even there, the lyrics don't extend beyond what you see right there in the song title. The melody on the opening track, "Mari", carries an optimism you wouldn't associate with the dark and eerie downtown duo, and demonstrates Rev's exploration of other moods. It's so upbeat, you might expect Stephin Merritt's low croon to swoop in any second. The rest of the short album is filled with the synth washes and oscillations Rev basically patented as the vocabulary of the synth wave to come. Any fan in search of synth pop's origins will want to include this classic piece of cold electronic minimalism in their collection.
NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas. Here is what we said about this Austin murkscaper's long out of print record when we first had the cd version back in 2009:
Austin-based painter and installation artist, Daniel Hipolito has been composing and releasing music in limited releases under the moniker Smokey Emery for awhile now. Composed of far away drones and loops, Hipolito builds his compositions like he builds his cave-y black and white painted installations and environments, cinematically, with a fine-tuned sense for mystery, vague longing and subtle dramatic flair. Like the lights of heavy traffic at sunset or a slowly sinking ship, there is an ineffable lonely quality to these compositions that is both beautiful and doomed, but fully engaging enough to still make us keep listening as the lights slowly fade.
It seems in the past couple of years, electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel has gone from an obscure cult-figure to a championed celebrity right before our eyes. Thanks in part to a key sound design role in this past summer's blockbuster movie, The Hunger Games, but also to this incredible, and indeed expanded reissue of her 1980 debut release, The Expanding Universe, complete with an extra disc of bonus material from the period and extensive liner notes by Spiegel herself. Following key archival releases from fellow female electronic innovators Daphne Oram, Maggie Payne and Suzanne Ciani, we're finally seeing Spiegel getting her due for her stellar accomplishments as both captivating composer and inventor.
While The Expanding Universe was released in 1980, it was made up of musical experiments Spiegel made throughout the seventies in her off time as a research scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories where she developed unique modes of combining interactive and algorithmic computer logic to the compositional process. Originally released on folk label, Philo, Spiegel's organic compositions had more in common with folk music than one would initially suspect. A trained banjo, lute and mandolin player, Spiegel's first released recording, "Appalachian Grove I" was included on the groundbreaking compilation of female electronic composers, New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, where she applied the idea of an open tuned string instrument to her electronically created composition. The entire Appalachian Grove suite is included here and is an unlikely mix of John Fahey and Philip Glass, where banjo-like tonal arpeggiations become a rhythmically organic and pulsating layered stream of undulating sounds. With each piece Spiegel seems to strive to explore the boundaries of the compositional process with a determined zen like focus on how sounds interact and overlap. But this is not an academically minded process of willful bleeps and bloops. This is instead a carefully realized beautifully layered intuitive sonic constructions that rewards deeply concentrated listening. Easily some of the best and most effective second generation electronic music we've ever heard, which gives this reissue our highest recommendation!
Somehow, even after releasing THREE full length Guided By Voices albums last year (or was it four) on top of the hundred or so that came before, and having recorded about a million more under his own name, apparently Robert Pollard still needs homes for some of his songs, so thus, The Sunflower Logic was born. And as you might imagine, the sound won't be at all unfamiliar to fans of GBV and all the various related offshoots. But then us GBV fans are indeed a voracious lot, and thus won't (and probably shouldn't) think twice about picking up another batch of Pollard-y pop perfection. The Sunflower Logic though is definitely a slightly noisier proposition, just give "UFO Nights" a listen, it's a fantastically loose-limbed droned out psychedelic noise pop, lots of buzz, and weird warbly melodies, some weird paranoid lyrics, and yeah, the sort of tossed off hook most other bands would trade their firstborn for.
The rest of the ep is just as off kilter. "I Wanna Marry Your Sister" begins with a creepy voice mail message, before the song unfolds as a super raw lo-fi home recorded acoustic dirge, Pollard's vocals weirdly processed, the guitar angular, all over a weird filed of glitchy static. "I Was A Boy" is classic GBV pop, doused in weird noises, muted and murky, laced with shards of squelch, and some near metallic chug. "Felt Stars" is a twisted bit of piano cabaret, Pollard's vocalizing over pounded piano, sounding like an unrealized GBV outtake, and finally, "Fuck You Mr. Smith", which starts off dirgey and near metallic, but instead of exploding into something heavy, it transforms into a loping droned out jangle, again, all over a weird drone, this time a churning processed guitar swirl, looped and layered, the song devolving occasionally into twisted little catchy choruses, the whole thing seriously druggy and damaged.
In fact, to some ears, this might sound like a tossed off odds and ends cash grab, which who knows, it could be, but GBV/Pollard obsessives will find lots to love amidst all the noise and deconstructed anti pop weirdness. Reservedly recommended, and only for the GBV faithful!
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas features a new release by Texas psych-heavies, Sungod. We raved about them awhile back for their debut release, Crash Galactic, now sadly out of print. On Contakt, these cosmic explorers are setting foot on a new and strange alien landscape, starting with a More-era Pink Floyd desert soundtrack vibe before breaking out with full kraut-inflected heaviness of lysergic guitar washes and pummeling poly-rhythmic momentum. A heady mix of gaseous electronics and acid guitar shred is nicely tempered by Blade Runner-like ambient passages of forlorn piano and slow burn synth-scapes. The final track, "Third Reichel" brings in layered acoustic guitar treatments in sequenced repetitions that evolves into full deep space rock take off. Limited!
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas is the full length debut (and second Holodeck release) from Texas Synth worshippers, Survive. We've previously listed a self titled tape and a self titled 10" (all of their records are basically self-titled and only distinguished by their catalog names) and we had the vinyl version that came out on Mannequin records for a little bit, but never had enough to list and now that's gone too, but at least we have this new tape to enjoy.
The 10" debut had an airy feel to the synth formations that gave the compositions lots of space, but their sound now has darkened into a molten early Klaus Schulze-like aesthetic. There's a more alien and perhaps passively menacing vibe at play that creeps into an eighties sci-fi soundtrack trajectory like you might hear in Judge Dredd, The Black Hole, or Tron. The moods are somber, cold and anxiety ridden, but not in a human emotional sense, more like the unrealized dreams of robots but with an occasional ray of hope in an otherwise darkened universe. Limited!
We didn't know anything about this band, until we heard Handmade Birds was gonna put out a tape, and then sorta randomly the band showed up at aQ with tapes, and having known nothing about the band, we probably would have ordered a bunch anyway, since A. They're on Handmade Birds. And B. They're called Terminator 2, which is either the most genius name for a band, or the dumbest. Maybe both! And finally C. The packaging is CRAZY, a cool color tape in a full color J-card featuring what looks like a Bosch painting, the whole thing wrapped in a black oversized slipcover, with both the name of the band and the label lazer cut, the slipcover oversized so that on one side a little scroll could be inserted, the tiny scroll featuring lyrics and liner notes. Wow. Thankfully, the music inside, more than lived up to the promise of A,B and C! A duo we think, noise guys from what we could figure out, from Denton Texas, and they kick up a pretty sick skree, all low slung bass buzz, jagged blown out guitars, swirls and squalls of analog synth, huge bashing drum damage, the drums mic'ed super hot, so they peg the meters with every hit, the sound slipping from murky, detuned churn, to grinding metallic doom drenched bombast, to super stripped down post rock lope, beyond the main instrumentation of bass and drums (and maybe guitar), there's a lot of other noise going on, even the most minimal stretches, are barraged on all sides by blasts of buzz, and weird sci-fi squiggles of FX, all sorts of textures and treatments, but at it's core, the sound here is pure minimal slo-mo black-doom crush, and when the vocals do come in, it's a throat shredding yowl, giving the sound a vibe somewhere between epic Neurosis-y doom, super lo-fi sludge metal creep, and blown out ultra distorted noise rock. We're definitely hearing Harvey Milk, Thrones, Prizehog, recent aQ faves [[[Altar-Thron]]], and other like minded purveyors of bellowing, lurching, doomy noise rock sludge. Cool!
As mentioned above, super insane packaging AND OF COURSE EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!
Looks like a good issue of ye olde Terrorizer here. Darkthrone on the cover, also Kvelertak, Ghost ("And The Rise Of Occult Metal"), Clutch, Rotting Christ, Spektr, Kongh, Necrowretch and tons more. Including an article about a band called Sabzius, blurbed on the cover as "11 F*cking Hours! The World's Longest Song?!" Gotta read about that.
AND, you get not one but two free cds this time, one the usual "Fear Candy" sampler with tracks from Darkthrone and others, the other being an Eastern European metal compilation with a whole bunch of bands mostly new to us.
We're constantly hearing that the printed newspaper (along with other tactile media like records, books and dvds) are quickly going the way of the dinosaurs. But we don't buy it. Physical media creates sense experiences that can't be articulated quite the same way digitally. Case in point, this beautiful publication by artists Kyle Williams, Matthew Stromberg and Whitney Horn, who have taken the old school newspaper format and made a journal of beautifully printed full page black and white images. Planned to be released quarterly, the first edition of The Sun is taken from a film-based project called "Foss" which was shot in both Iceland and San Francisco and the images capture stills and snippets of narrative text from the film that suggest a poetical rumination on landscape, memory and longing with gloriously printed large format images of mountains and hauntingly shrouded landscapes. We wish all newspapers took such advantage of their print formats to make inspiring images this large and beautiful. Can't wait to see more!
Tripped out sci-fi groove-rockers from Austin, Thousand Foot Whale Claw make their vinyl debut, and it's even better than we hoped it would be! We sold through a bunch of their Holodeck tape, Lost In Those Dunes, which was typical of their tape releases, two long sides of heady space rock drift, explosive cosmic psych expansiveness and ambient nuance. But for their vinyl debut, they really take their sound to the next level in the rhythm section, adding more bass and drum groove into tracks that enter an almost psych-rave territory, as if Spacemen 3 and Fuck Buttons gave birth to a baby in the bleak vacuum of space. Like local hypno-rockers, Lumerians, TFWC take advantage of an arsenal of psychedelic styles that propel the momentum, but keep the energy fresh, exciting and interestingly unpredictable. A tremendous debut that comes highly recommended! Fans of Cave, Moon Duo, Carlton Melton, White Manna, and Wooden Shjips take note!
Tivol were always the unkempt, crusty, scuzzy garage rock, deformed cousin-locked-in-the-basement, dirty, filthy side of the Finnish musical underground. Where Circle were channeling classic Krautrock, Tivol were spewing a sort of Brainbombs / Liquorball hybrid. Where Islaja was whispering flowery lullabies, Tivol were stomping through the flower garden in big black boots. Sure they were sloppy and noisy and scattershot, but even at their most chaotic and blissfully blownout, there were definite traces of Hawkwindy spacerock, propuslive krautrock, and full on stoner rock. Albeit obscured by clouds of pot smoke and an awesomely lo-fi production. A lot has changed since last we heard from Tivol. They clean up real nice. They're still a sloppy noisy scuzzy bunch, but now they've got their hair all slicked back, shirts tucked in (at least in the front), shoes polished, and have begun to faintly resemble their countrymen in Circle. That's right, this is relentless and repetitive kraut flecked space rock, with a stoner rock streak a mile wide, pulsing and pounding, with swoops and swooshes of interstellar synth and most surprising of all, vocals, real vocals, a sort of throaty croon way up in the mix, super dramatic and bizarre. A bit Bauhaus maybe, a bit Dave Vanian.... But their garagescum roots definitely shine through, there's nothing clinical or super tight, or polished here, the drums are splattery and pounding and the guitars are warm and muted and fuzzy, the vocals drift bizarrely, crooning and wailing, everything drenched in cosmic rays and super space FX. A little like Circle if they smoked a lot of pot, recorded on a 4 track in their parents' garage, and listened to nothing but Hawkwind and Mainliner. Which of course means FUCKING AWESOME!
Unlike the last few Alexander Turnquist records (As The Twilight Crane Dreams In Color, Hallway Of Mirrors) this new one eschews much of the sonic lushness in favor of something much more simple, but no less lovely. While those first two found Turnquist weaving expansive sonic landscapes of piano, violin, glockenspiel, vibraphone and more, all around his lovely 12 string guitar, the combination pushing the sound further from a drone folk minimalism into something more akin to a hybrid of classic Appalachia and a more modern chamber pop, strings sweeping over looped guitar figures, pointillist piano over rich, slow shifting backgrounds of thrum and shimmer, lots of counterpoint, lots of harmonies and overtones, and slow builds. All quite lovely.
Which is not to say that this new (or newish, it came out a few months ago) one isn't, it most definitely is, it just strips away the extra instrumentation, and allows Turnquist to explore the possibilities of the guitar itself, the colors he's able to coax from it, the various overtones, and while on the surface it might seem to be Turnquist's take on a Fahey or Kottke style record, it has more in common with those other records of his, as if even on just a guitar, he's composing for an ensemble, just here he's forced to figure out how to fill out the sound on his own. And fill it out he does, notes chime, and figures loop and cycle, the air is filled with the ringing of steel string buzz, and the chiming of crystalline harmonics, rhythmic and textural, some tracks smooth and lush and tranquil, others assembled from buzz, and strange jumbles of notes, the chords and notes' decay as important to the sound as the notes and chords themselves, lots of space, the vibe minimal for sure, but the playing most definitely maximal, often unfurling flurries of notes, even making the guitar sound like a gamelan at one point, and like the guitar equivalent to a prepared piano throughout, the sound shifting from pulsing and hypnotic to more free and abstract and back again. So gorgeous. A fantastic modern guitar soli record, but with Turnquist's own more modern, and yet somehow still seemingly timeless spin. WAY recommended. Like everything else he's done!
Pressed on blue and white swirl vinyl, and meant to spin at 45, but as you might imagine, at 33 it's a bit darker, and murkier! Either way, beautiful!!
Along with the revamped Conet Project, here's another no-brainer for a Record Of The Week� We've listed it before, years and years ago, when there was a cd version on Akarma, but this is a much nicer, expanded, official reissue and it's good to give it a proper review for the first time (back then, we merely quoted The Seth Man from Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, waxing rhapsodic about this record, now we'll do it ourselves).
Oh boy. Do you like psychedelia? DO YOU HAVE THIS ALBUM? If not, you're in for a treat, a mindblowing treat. Think Pink was the brilliant solo effort from former Pretty Things drummer John "Twink" Alder, and it's an all-time aQ fave, an all-time underground psychedelic masterpiece, right up there with the essentials from the likes of Amon Duul II, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Sam Gopal, Kaleidoscope, and Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it's just been properly reissued on cd by the UK's Sunbeam label, with a whole bunch of bonus freakery added on. Not that this album NEEDS any bonus freakery, it's about as freaky as you can get to begin with, packed with droning chant, druidic prophecy, spaced-out psych jams, weird twisted pop, and acid-folk ramble. But, too much is never enough, right? So heck, we're happy to have the eight bonus tracks too. More on those later. First, let's discuss the original album itself. As we said, Twink played drums for The Pretty Things, but before that had his own sixties R&B outfit the Fairies. After that band, he was in Tomorrow ("My White Bicycle") with future Yes guitarist Steve Howe, around 1967. Twink then briefly formed a duo called The Aquarian Age, before joining up with The Pretty Things and appearing on their concept-album classic S.F. Sorrow in '68, another aQ fave. At that point, for some crazy reason (things were different/better back then) Twink was offered a deal by Sire to do a solo album, and Think Pink was the glorious, if at the time somewhat unheralded, result, recorded in 1969 with Mick Farren of The Deviants producing. Released in 1970 in the US & Europe, but not 'til '71 in the UK, it's been called the first Pink Fairies album, and in a way it is, as soon after making it, Twink did team up with several ex-members of The Deviants, most of whom played on this, to form that infamous proto-punk outfit. And several tracks here feature contributions from what's credited as "The Pink Fairies Motorcycle Club & All Star Rock & Roll Band".
Also participating are several of Twink's Pretty Things bandmates, his girlfriend Silver Darling, and Steve Peregrin Took, Marc Bolan's partner in Tyrannosaurus Rex and early T-Rex, who plays, among other things, "pixie horn". And one of the most crucial contributors to Think Pink, besides Twink himself, has to be guitarist Paul "Blackie" Rudolph, who really lets loose, earning a hallowed place in the annals of distortodelic guitar wrangling for his work on this album alone (though in the course of his career before and after, he also played with The Deviants, Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Robert Calvert, and Brian Eno).
Eastern-tinged opener "The Coming Of The Other One" sets the scene, pulling us deep into its trippy Aquarian Age fantasy zone, with a solemn voice reciting Nostradamic verses ("In the year 1999 and seven months, from the skies shall come an alarming powerful king...") accompanied by tablas and sitar. Then comes Think Pink's biggest "hit" as far as we're concerned, an utterly perfect slice of stonery psych called "10,000 Words In A Cardboard Box", just listen to it! That's followed by "Dawn Of Magic" with its raga-like vocal ahhhaaaaahh sounds as if Pandit Pran Nath were on the mic, which suddenly segues into the space-out sike-pop of "Tiptoe On The Highest Hill", a lovely pastoral song that eventually builds into a howling guitar blow-out of the highest order. Then the trippy "Fluid" chimes into being, with its sexy heavy breathing and slinky, springy grooves, making us think of the acid-fried hippy orgasms of krautrockers Brainticket's classic Cottonwood Hill (released later on, in '71, we should also note).
Side two (track six here) opens with the martial fuzz-freakout of "Mexican Grass War", all chanting freaks and wild FX like early Amon Duul and Edgar Broughton Band. The freaky vibes continue, quite weird and wonderful, with the glammed up jam of "Rock An'Roll The Joint", the mellow morbid acoustic strum of "Suicide" and the maniacal "Three Little Piggies", before the album ends with the intense edgy psych pop of "The Sparrow Is A Sign", a song with a malevolent, sinister side to it that reminds us a little bit of Comus - and strangely too of the Sun City Girls, perhaps due to the vocals, provided by Steve Took.
Then, there's all those bonus tracks, the first two of which are actually from the lone 7" single released in '68 by The Aquarian Age, the immediate precursor to the Think Pink project. There's the A side, being the original version of "10,000 Words In A Cardboard Box", and the B side, an amusing number called "Good Wizard Meets Naughty Wizard", which displays just the sort of twee, hippie British humor the title suggests. It's great to hear both of those, and the bonus tracks proliferate further with unreleased, alternate versions of more Think Pink material, somewhat heavier or rawer or definitely different, including two takes of "Fluid" and another version of "10,000 Words...", which we can't get enough of anyway.
All in all, a nicely done reissue, as this deserves, with pages and pages of newly-written, informative liner notes, plus lyrics, credits, vintage photos & graphics. Plus, unlike that previous Akarma version, this is a fully-legit release, done with the participation of Twink himself ("issued under exclusive license from Mohammed Abdullah John Alder, February 2013" it says here, and there's even a picture of him today too - apparently he's become a Muslim, and looks quite happy).
By the way... Nobody here at aQ can think about Think Pink, though, and not also think about our "customer" whom we call The Twink Think Pink Guy. We don't believe he's ever actually bought anything, but he's this older guy that comes in once in a while (and has for years) and always, always, ONLY asks about Think Pink, whether we have it in stock or not, and then talks at great length to anyone who will listen about how great it is. It's his favorite record apparently, but don't let that dissuade you, if you get this you probably won't end up like him. Probably.
Message for The Twink Think Pink Guy, if you're reading this: we expect to see you soon!
The liner notes claim that "no ambient or field recordings were used during the production of this work," making this album, which really does sound like a collection of field recordings, all the more perplexing. So, instead of wandering outside and capturing the sounds of cars whizzing by on a distant highway, Paul Winstanley (the man behind Urban Space Music) painstakingly constructed an artificial sound ecology to appear as if it were the real deal. Ostensibly using white noise generators and a small army of EQ filters, Winstanley's sounds have all of the trappings of a gritty urban din that really does sound like opening a window in any given metropolis around the world and hearing the collective exhaust of hundreds of thousands of automobiles rumbling around the city grid. As a listening experience, it's not too far off from Organum's Vacant Lights (sans the chain dragging and clanking), and it actually works quite well as Winstanley suggests these sounds as an aural complement to any given urban soundscape, in melding with the street noise so commonplace on Valencia Street here in San Francisco. A strange record, but a compelling one. Limited to just 30 copies.
Second volume in Soul Jazz's stellar Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, collecting classic and rarities of, as the rest of the title helpfully explains: "Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music", which is probably better known to all of us as KRAUTROCK! The tracks here are from the years 1972-83 and features, like the first volume, a good balance of classic artists/tracks and more obscure rarities. All it should take is a list of artists to get most folks pretty excited: A.R. & Machines, Can, Agitation Free, Roedelius, Popol Vuh, Amon Duul II, Faust, Asmus Tietchens, Neu!, Gila, Conrad Schnitzler, Michael Rother, Pyrolator, You, D.A.F., Harald Grosskopf, and loads more. Odds are if you're already a krautrock obsessive, there's a good chance you have most of these tracks already. But even so, as a krautrock mix, it's pretty tough to beat, and who knows, there are definitely a few artists and tracks you might not have heard.
And as a primer / introduction, it's pretty bad ass, a good balance of driving motorik grooves, swirling kosmische shimmer, dreamy electronic ambience, avant electronic experimentation, wispy new age drift, brooding, proggy psychedelia, swirling analog synthscapery, pulsing hypnorock mesmer, electronic flecked, rhythmic space rock, the compilation touching on all of the different sounds these artists explored under the umbrella of 'krautrock'. There are a few oddballs, which in most cases adds to the weirdness and coolness of the comps, but in one specific case, ends up being maybe our only complaint. One oddball is Niagra for instance, who we had not heard before, but whose track here is super dense and rhythmic and gloriously psychedelic. But then there's D.A.F.'s "Co Co Pino", which is a cool new wave-y blast of hysterical vocals, skronking sax and funky rhythms, which on its own would be awesome, but in the context of the otherwise sort of tranced out hypnotic flow of the mix, ends up being a strange slightly disruptive sonic hiccup. But overall, a killer comp, an awesome krautrock mixtape, that is WAY recommended for krautrock newbies, along with the first volume, but even if you're a grizzled old krautrock vet, mixes are all about song choice and song order, and even the krautrockers around here who already have most of these records, have been digging this mix BIG TIME!
The cd version comes in a jewel case, and full color slipcover, with a BIG booklet, loaded with liner notes and photos, and then like most Soul Jazz compilation releases, the vinyl version is split into two halves, both double lps, each available separately.
Second volume in Soul Jazz's stellar Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, collecting classic and rarities of, as the rest of the title helpfully explains: "Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music", which is probably better known to all of us as KRAUTROCK! The tracks here are from the years 1972-83 and features, like the first volume, a good balance of classic artists/tracks and more obscure rarities. All it should take is a list of artists to get most folks pretty excited: A.R. & Machines, Can, Agitation Free, Roedelius, Popol Vuh, Amon Duul II, Faust, Asmus Tietchens, Neu!, Gila, Conrad Schnitzler, Michael Rother, Pyrolator, You, D.A.F., Harald Grosskopf, and loads more. Odds are if you're already a krautrock obsessive, there's a good chance you have most of these tracks already. But even so, as a krautrock mix, it's pretty tough to beat, and who knows, there are definitely a few artists and tracks you might not have heard.
And as a primer / introduction, it's pretty bad ass, a good balance of driving motorik grooves, swirling kosmische shimmer, dreamy electronic ambience, avant electronic experimentation, wispy new age drift, brooding, proggy psychedelia, swirling analog synthscapery, pulsing hypnorock mesmer, electronic flecked, rhythmic space rock, the compilation touching on all of the different sounds these artists explored under the umbrella of 'krautrock'. There are a few oddballs, which in most cases adds to the weirdness and coolness of the comps, but in one specific case, ends up being maybe our only complaint. One oddball is Niagra for instance, who we had not heard before, but whose track here is super dense and rhythmic and gloriously psychedelic. But then there's D.A.F.'s "Co Co Pino", which is a cool new wave-y blast of hysterical vocals, skronking sax and funky rhythms, which on its own would be awesome, but in the context of the otherwise sort of tranced out hypnotic flow of the mix, ends up being a strange slightly disruptive sonic hiccup. But overall, a killer comp, an awesome krautrock mixtape, that is WAY recommended for krautrock newbies, along with the first volume, but even if you're a grizzled old krautrock vet, mixes are all about song choice and song order, and even the krautrockers around here who already have most of these records, have been digging this mix BIG TIME!
The cd version comes in a jewel case, and full color slipcover, with a BIG booklet, loaded with liner notes and photos, and then like most Soul Jazz compilation releases, the vinyl version is split into two halves, both double lps, each available separately.
Second volume in Soul Jazz's stellar Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, collecting classic and rarities of, as the rest of the title helpfully explains: "Experimental German Rock & Electronic Music", which is probably better known to all of us as KRAUTROCK! The tracks here are from the years 1972-83 and features, like the first volume, a good balance of classic artists/tracks and more obscure rarities. All it should take is a list of artists to get most folks pretty excited: A.R. & Machines, Can, Agitation Free, Roedelius, Popol Vuh, Amon Duul II, Faust, Asmus Tietchens, Neu!, Gila, Conrad Schnitzler, Michael Rother, Pyrolator, You, D.A.F., Harald Grosskopf, and loads more. Odds are if you're already a krautrock obsessive, there's a good chance you have most of these tracks already. But even so, as a krautrock mix, it's pretty tough to beat, and who knows, there are definitely a few artists and tracks you might not have heard.
And as a primer / introduction, it's pretty bad ass, a good balance of driving motorik grooves, swirling kosmische shimmer, dreamy electronic ambience, avant electronic experimentation, wispy new age drift, brooding, proggy psychedelia, swirling analog synthscapery, pulsing hypnorock mesmer, electronic flecked, rhythmic space rock, the compilation touching on all of the different sounds these artists explored under the umbrella of 'krautrock'. There are a few oddballs, which in most cases adds to the weirdness and coolness of the comps, but in one specific case, ends up being maybe our only complaint. One oddball is Niagra for instance, who we had not heard before, but whose track here is super dense and rhythmic and gloriously psychedelic. But then there's D.A.F.'s "Co Co Pino", which is a cool new wave-y blast of hysterical vocals, skronking sax and funky rhythms, which on its own would be awesome, but in the context of the otherwise sort of tranced out hypnotic flow of the mix, ends up being a strange slightly disruptive sonic hiccup. But overall, a killer comp, an awesome krautrock mixtape, that is WAY recommended for krautrock newbies, along with the first volume, but even if you're a grizzled old krautrock vet, mixes are all about song choice and song order, and even the krautrockers around here who already have most of these records, have been digging this mix BIG TIME!
The cd version comes in a jewel case, and full color slipcover, with a BIG booklet, loaded with liner notes and photos, and then like most Soul Jazz compilation releases, the vinyl version is split into two halves, both double lps, each available separately.
First off, while B-Music/Finders Keepers have come up with some good puns before (Welsh Rare Beat ferinstance) we gotta give it up to 'em for the title to this comp. So we were already predisposed to like this, a collection of vintage heavy rock and rockin' bumblegum, all by manly bands from Manchester, England, if you haven't figured that part out yet. Also those are genres we're totally into, and besides when has a B-Music comp not delivered? Never! So this is quite recommended, 18 tracks (17 on the vinyl) by a bunch of obscure '70s Mancunian bands, most of which we'd never heard before. Rare singles and unissued demos full of fuzz guitars and sleazy horns and "hairy funk" and all that.
A person or band called Oscar starts things off, setting the mood with a stomping song about wanting a "Good Lovin' Woman", whom they'd also prefer to be good looking as well if possible. That brand of grunt continues throughout the disc, the heavier side of things represented by tracks by, among others, gritty blues bashers Stackwaddy. But it's a variety pack, ferinstance the delightfully named Greasy Bear gets a little bit country, sounding like Southern rockers on "Windy Day", while disco rears its head on the catchy "Come On In" by Sliped Disc, which somehow sorta turns into a ballad. Socrates throw down with some honkin' horns on the funkified "Johnny"; Plasma are fairly funky too, busting out with some seriously groovy instrumental prog. And freaky heavy psych is not neglected - J.C. Heavy deliver some driving, female-fronted (but still tough) proto-doom on the spookadelic, organ-laden "Is This Really Me?", which we remember well from another comp, and aQ faves The Way We Live (aka Tractor) offer up one of their classics, "King Dick II". Good stuff all around, packaged with the usual Finders Keepers informative care and colorful flair. We should list the other artists on here since some of the names are so great: Urbane Gorilla, Savoury Duck, Spider Jive, Sweet Chariot, Samsun, So On And So Forth, Grisby Dike, Young And Renshaw, & Chris Statham.
This long in the works comp features a bunch of underground outfits, some aQ faves, but way more unknown to us weirdos, all tackling their favorite top 40 jams, and we're not talking contemporary, we're talking top 40 as far back as anyone cared to go. Some of the names we know: Alvarius B, Amps For Christ, Carla Bozulich, Dennis Callaci from Refrigerator, R. Stevie Moore, Simon Joyner, Wckr Spgt, but there's THIRTY THREE MORE! Including: Marmits, Treasure Mammal, Key Losers, Captain Ahab, Nicole Kidman (not THAT one), Pregnant, The Receptionists, Knight Rider (not that one, at least we don't think so), Clark 8, Gulliver, Thundersnail and obviously loads more.
But the song choice is pretty crazy too, Bananarama's "Cruel Summer", Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi", John Lennon's "Woman", the Beach Boys' "Kokomo", Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun", Yes' "Owner Of A Lonely Heart", Blondie's "Heart Of Glass", Dolly Parton's "9 To 5", Talking Heads' "Burning Down The House", R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts", Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", Foo Fighter's "Everlong", and tons more, lots of songs we recognize but don't know who did them originally, and then plenty that we MIGHT have known, but here are so warped it's pretty much impossible to tell.
Some of our favorites? Amps For Christ covering John Lennon, which other than the warbly background buzz, is actually a pretty straight cover, Alvarius B does a seriously intense version of a song called "Prisoner", no idea whose song it is, but it sounds like it could be an Alvarius original! Someone called Whitman transforms the Foo Fighters' anthemic "Everlong", into a creepy, minor key lo-fi ballad, rife with moaning strings and warbly vocals, giving the song a whole different vibe. Simon Joyner does a darkly delicate version of Dream Academy's "Life In A Northern Time", which again, sounds like it could be his own song, creepy and dreamy. Pregnant Rick rolls us in the best possible way, with a super murky elecro-flecked slo-mo creep reimaging of "Never Gonna Give You Up". The best tracks here are the ones that DO sound like originals. Or sound JUST different enough from the original to make them new and exciting. There are plenty of goofball moments too, Wckr Spgt doing Yes, singing in falsettos is definitely one, and lots of damaged outsider freakiness, but for every WTF moment, there's a carefully crafted reinterpretation, and in many cases, hearing songs you may have grown to hate, recast as bizarre homebrewed sonic concoctions is all it takes to get you to fall in love with the song all over again (at least this new version). Cool, warped, fun and fucked up stuff.
Comes packaged in a super spiffy oversized plastic clamshell case, with full color artwork, and a download code!
At long last the highly anticipated debut from VHOL is here, via Profound Lore. Highly anticipated 'cause VHOL, if you don't already know, are a "supergroup" of sorts. Actually, as far as we're concerned, in more ways than one. Firstly, VHOL (dunno if the name is supposed to be in all-caps, but it looks good to us like that) is formed by members of several other groups we like, band that might not be household names required of supergroup status, but probably ARE household names where people who read the aQ-list dwell. And on top of that, they're all amazing musicians so it's "super" that way too. VHOL consists of guitarist John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, ex-Ludicra, ex-Slough Feg, etc.) and his former Ludicra bandmate, drummer Aesop Dekker (also of Agalloch, Worm Ouroboros, etc. - and a noted blogger too), plus on bass Sigrid Sheie, who is also in Hammers with John. And making this more than just a San Francisco scene thing, on vocals is Mike Scheidt from Portland's mighty sludge-space-doomsters YOB. With these individuals involved, it sounded pretty good on paper, and now the proof is here, it actually sounds extremely good for real as well!!
Prior to hearing this, we'd been informed that the concept behind VHOL was "psychedelic D-beat" music or something. Well... ok, sorta. Aesop's a punk drummer at heart, to begin with (remember Hickey?). And yeah, having Scheidt provide his unique soaring screaming vox, all spacey and wavery and effected, can't help but make this sound psychedelic, plus the preponderance of mindboggling guitar solo shred from Cobbett helps in that dep't too. Early reports that had VHOL being a full-on Dis-core Crust-Metal band were somewhat misleading, however. Just like Ludicra, Hammers, heck ALL their other bands, this is a hybrid of a whole bunch of different things. And ends up being its own special thing.
But if we had to say, sonically this perhaps aligns closest with John & Aesop's previous outfit, avant-black metallers Ludicra, and with the more black-metally side of Yob. There's some delving into doomy, post-rock depths at points, plus of course Scheidt's distinctive vocals. So a cross between Ludicra and Yob, perhaps. But with some of the grandiose artistry of Hammers too. And both hectic punkish attack and sheer rockin' NWOBHM-inspired old school metal moments as well. Lots of them. Which is really what makes this for us. What a combo - and it works. Both energetic and epic, with churning riffs, intricate soloing, pounding rhythmic chaos, and actual catchy songwriting too. Our knack for finding buried "pop" music in the most unlikely, ugly places is not to be thwarted here, especially ferinstance on track four, "Grace", where some very effective, very poppy hooks are hiding, amidst that track's dense ripping architecture that conjures the sci-fi spectre of old (and new!) Voivod - a connection also suggested by this disc's very Away-like cover artwork, done by Cobbett himself.
Crucially, Scheidt puts on quite a performance, varying his vocals in cleanliness, from clean-ish to unclean, layered over each other even, doing death grunts and blackened rasps and guttural screams as well as his trademark higher-pitched, but distorted wailings - even getting into almost '80s metal ballad territory on the album's closer, "Songs Set To Await Forever".
Favorite tracks are hard to single out, they're all good, but "Arising" really, really impresses - a rollicking tour de force that kinda reminds us of certain latter day Darkthrone efforts, a la some tracks on their recent The Underground Resistance. Some of the same influences at work perhaps.
All in all, VHOL lives up to expectations (whatever they were!), certainly quality-wise. And perhaps confounds some others. But definitely doesn't disappoint. In fact, we might be digging this more than some of the VHOL folks' "main" bands right now, and that's saying a lot.
American rock troubadour Kurt Vile continues his slow march back in time, as if he wants to actually be playing classic rock, instead of being a modern indie rocker just channeling that classic rock. His sound has always displayed hints of the old classics that came before, the magic being in how masterfully he made them his own, and essentially erased the border, real or imagined between modern indie rock and classic radio rock. Cuz really, if you removed all the non musical signifiers from Kurt Vile, the cool indie label, the punk rock pedigree, the cool underground rock royalty who guest on his records, the various high profile tour mates, the blog hype, the look, the shaggy longhair rock and roller, what you'd be left with, would be JUST the music, and really, it's absolutely the kind of music you could play for your Dad, not to say this is necessarily Dad-rock, but it IS sort of some modern mutant strain of classic rock. Not beholden to punk, or post punk, or new wave or metal, but to classic songsmithery. And it's all on display, the songwriting obviously, but the production too, the arrangements, the sonic palette as a whole. And sure, there are plenty of unlikely, and very UN classic rock moments, but somehow, Vile weaves them into something that DOES really sound classic. Check out the weird skittery programmed sounding beats at the beginning of "Was All Talk", at first it sounds like it's turn into some weird Ariel Pink outsider pop thing, but instead, that skitter is deftly woven into warm guitar strum, swirling synths, and Vile's laid back vox. Speaking of which, it's hard not to hear a little Dinosaur Jr in Vile's music, which makes sense, as Dinosaur's Mascis was an unabashed lover of classic rock, and was often compared to Neil Young himself. But if you can imagine Dinosaur minus all the incendiery guitar heroics, it might not be all that far removed from Kurt Vile.
The nine+ minute opener definitely sets the stage, pastoral and laid back, strummy and summery and breezy, reminded us a bit of the Woods at first, only to late learn that the guy from the Woods guests on this here record. As do folks from Beachwood Sparks, Warpaint, Royal Trux, and others, all of whom to be under Vile's thrall, aiding him in crafting this gorgeous slab of jangle and strum, the sound warm and comfortable, and just a tiny bit raw around the edges. That said, this is most definitely his least 'underground' and 'indie' sounding record. If labels and the radio and MTV still worked the way they used to or in some cases even existed, this is the sort of record that would be bandied about as Vile's 'breakthrough', and who knows, maybe it still will be. And it should be, cuz it's gorgeous. The songs are CRAZY catchy, it's a total top-down, cruising down the coast on a summer afternoon kind of record. The songs already sound timeless. There's no doubt Vile is a songwriter of formidable talent, one who just follows his own muse, and it just so happens that that muse is some strange hybrid of Tom Petty, Neil Young, Jackson Brown, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison, which to most underground music punks might sound horrifying, but the proof is right here in Wakin On A Pretty Daze, which might just be our favorite Vile record yet. Classic indeed!
The cd comes in a full color four panel digipak, with a full color printed inner sleeve, and a booklet with lyrics, but while they last, we have the ULTRA limited, already out of print, super deluxe blue vinyl version, which features the same cover as the cd (and regular lp), with Vile standing in front of a big wall, covered in graffiti, but on the deluxe vinyl version, there is no graffiti, instead, it comes with a special sheet of stickers, with which you can use to apply the graffiti yourself, however you want! How cool is that?
Atavistic's Unheard Music Series of obscure but amazing free jazz reissues (overseen by Chicago jazz musician and critic John Corbett) strikes again with this release from German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach and a squad of kick ass European improvisors including sax legend-to-be Peter Brotzmann, Dutch drummer extraordinare Han Bennink, trombonist Paul Rutherford, and others, including Manfred Schoof, on cornet, flugelhorn, bass, clarinet, etc. Engineer Conny Plank (later famed for his krautrock productions) put "The Living Music" to tape in April 1969, and it was originally issued on LP by both Schlippenbach's own Quasar label and then by FMP. Three-quarters of an hour of "living music" indeed: it's music full of breath, action, beauty, pulsing blood. Moody, melodic piano runs, percussive dances betwixt the drums and the horns, kinda noir-ish, sleepy interludes, and (of course!) hardcore, full-on, skree-filled blow-outs: this is the energetic free improv that you'd expect from the early days of the FMP scene. A good 'un, you jazz cats take note.
Preeminent field recordist Christ Watson returns with a bit of a twist on El Tren Fantasma. Pretty much all of his work up to this point (outside of his contributions to Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio way back when) has been audio verite. Even such albums as Weather Report, which edit field recordings from the African savanna (for example) into a condensed journey, are pristine, realist documents codified through the exquisite, lush details in Watson's enviromental sounds such as that of a lion panting after a successful hunt. El Tren Fantasma is much more engineered, imagined, and processed than anything else in his solo career; and this fictionalized Watson is no less compelling, no less dramatic, and no less awesome.
El Tren Fantasma - The Ghost Train - traces a now-defunct passanger rail line which ran from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to Veracruz on the Atlantic Coast. Watson had the opportunity to make this journey while working as a sound recordist for the BBC for their Great Railway Journeys. His compositions work with extracts from that excursion travelling across Mexico along with archival recordings whose origins are not specified. As he's stopping throughout the Chihuahuan Desert, Watson does capture the stunning chorales of chirping frogs, buzzing insects, and the blaring call of a California Quail (whose syllabic chortle is often mnemonically transcribed as "chi-CA-go" as if it were seeking a more temperate climate); but it the train's power and mass that provides so much of the impact for Watson's album. By the fourth track "El Divisidaro," Watson captures a series of loops of the train - with the bellowing horn pitched back and forth into a sustained symphonic tone and the clatter of the train's engine becoming an ersatz rhythm track, which in turn gets tricked out with some Martin Hannett styled, phasing delay work. It's easy to get lost in the majesty of this track, much like the expressive electronica that Wolfgang Voigt produced on Konigsforst as Gas. What a brilliantly simple transformation executed to perfection! "Mexico D.F." reprises this strategy with rhythmic churns building out of the grinding brakes and the roiling tumult of steam blasting through the train's pipes, becoming an almost militant thump on a lone drum. The train's horn drifts suitably in a cloud of reverberation at the end of the album, dissolving into the ghostlike apparition Watson intended it to be. As brillliant as this work is, we should also point out that Watson is not alone in composing such fictionalized scores purely through environmental sound. We would be remiss if we failed to point out the work of Australian composer Tarab, whose deft psychogeographical albums share the scope and execution with Watson's El Tren Fantasma. So great!
The title Discipline & Desire refers to Wax Idols' Hether Fortune's day-job (or rather night-job) as a dominatrix, before her tenure in the San Francisco garage-punk scene. In other words, fuck with her at your peril. Fortune's also to be found in the beloved distorto-punk-pop trio Blasted Canyons, whose two albums on Castle Face have long been favorites around these parts. With the first Wax Idols record on Hozac, Fortune didn't wander too far from what she was doing in Blasted Canyons with the short barked punk numbers; but on Discipline & Desire, she's painting her nails black and digging out the old Bauhaus t-shirts from back in the day, for a much darker, death-rock vibe. As such, she's continuing in a line of strong-willed, goth-inflected female fronted bands from San Francisco over the past couple of decades. Obviously, one can look all the way back to Romeo Void and The Avengers, but also more recently to Veronica Lipgloss, Subtonix, and The Vanishing. The songs are driven by Fortune's ice-queen demeanor through which she bellows impassioned tales of lust and fury on top of the buzzsaw drones and primitive rhythmic propulsion. Think X-Mal Deutschland, early Siouxsie, and Killing Joke's Night Time... and you're getting pretty close. Wax Idols also got some production assistance from Marc Burgess of The Chameleons, adding some true black-clad cred to the album. It's a record that's been on pretty heavy rotation here at aQuarius.
A brief blast of swirling organs, shards of crumbling noise, chanting children, streaks of feedback, swirling melancholy melodies, all tangled up into something at once caustic and chaotic, but also weirdly moody and moving, which is how we're introduced to Winter Line, aka Steven Vallot, who on this new tape (his debut?) displays a pretty serious knack for crafting beauty from blackness, his tracks like some sort of alternate universe, experimental noise DJ Shadow if that makes any sense. His sound palette is quite varied, but much of it tends towards the difficult. Be it blasts of high end buzz, or grinding metallic crunch, but those elements are balanced by Vallot's deft hand at weaving that noisiness into soundscapes of surprising musicality, a glowing dark energy seems to suffuse all the tracks here. It's often loud, ominous, clattery and crunchy, distorted and downright noisy, but it glimmers and shimmers, soars and swirls. At one point, a crunchy bit of rhythmic clatter is laid our beneath a sky full of high-end glimmer and tinkling chimes, wreathed in clouds of crunchy staticky hiss, and children's voices reciting some sort of ominous incantation, it could be a mess, but instead it all falls together perfectly.
From there on out, Vallot anchors thick clouds of black buzz, to churning machinelike rhythms, and drapes delicate melodies over the top. In some ways, it sounds a bit like recent Record Of The Weeker Dan Friel mixed with Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, both also past ROTW-er themselves, the tracks here are expansive and lush, and quite lovely, not despite the noisiness, but really because of it, and because of Vallot's deft hand at balancing those two extremes and meeting somewhere in the middle. At times, we get glimpses of Carpenter or Goblin, that sort of brooding synth soundtrackiness, and at others, it's just a gorgeous prismatic soft noise bliss out that's hard to really put into words, but it's rare sort of 'noise' we love, a noise that manages to move beyond sheer noisiness and attain its own sort of rhythmic and melodic beauty. Wow. So gorgeous. Fans of soft noise technicians and abstract soundscapers will be in heaven! Includes a download code too!
Might as well start out by saying this is most definitely the prettiest Wolf Eyes record we've ever heard. And certainly the most listenable, but of course, both of those descriptors are pretty subjective, especially when applied to a group like Wolf Eyes, who are as capable of conjuring up sheets of face melting noise as they are blissed out industrial shimmer. But for No Answer-Lower Floors, it sounds like they've tried something entirely different. The vibe is droney, and darkly psychedelic, the noise elements are muted, or sculpted into melodies, the opener sounds like Wolf Eyes via Can, a sort of kraut-noise, a simpler rhythm, wreathed in strange bits of buzz and thrum, the occasional streak of high end skree, the vocals laid back and laconic, almost spoken, a sort of woozy croon, the vibe is a mellower Dead C, or a super abstract lo-fi This Heat, weirdly hypnotic and trancey, minimal and murky, it's almost a sort of chill out version of Wolf Eyes, and we dig it a lot.
There are some brief song fragments, interludes maybe, that find the group digging into their slightly noisier bag of tricks, one is a sort of pounding muted pop song, laced with wild malfunctioning FX and electronic squiggles, but retains the vibe of the opener. One is a weird collaged of fragmented voices and weird swirling clouds of high end bleeps, all chopped and layered, but then there's "Chattering Lead" which is even more mellow and trance-y than the opener, whirling organ shimmer, over a muted pulse, a skittery electro rhythm, all manner of chitter and bleep swirling in the background, more of those druggy disembodied vox, it's a gorgeously soporific sprawl of minimal creep-pop dirge, reminding us of our favorite Gate tracks, that same sort of sad boy indie rock slowed way down and blurred into a hazy drift. "Confession Of The Informer" is another minimal drifter, this one a bit more creepy and cinematic, lots of space, and ominous rumbles, strange minor key melodies, and soundtracky ambience, there's a pulse, a spaced out rhythm, over which a strange swirl of voices and sounds drift and shift, dark and minimal and moody, hushed and haunting.
Finally, the record finishes with another stretch of rhythmic post industrial dirgery, this one flecked with bursts of what sounds like buzzsaw electronics, beneath which, another minimal rhythm unfurls, a dark somnambulant lope, looped and cyclical, a sort of power electronics hypno-drift, and while that relentless blast of electronics is mildly harsh, somehow, it ends up being more soothing and mesmerizing, the whole thing like some caveman This Heat. Definitely our new favorite Wolf Eyes record, and very likely the sort of record that could convince unsuspecting innocents to finally decide they like 'noise music'...
