Finally, the debut full length from this Bay Area black metal / blacknoise duo, who in recent months have garnered a whole lot of hype, based on a flurry of killer (albeit insanely limited) releases, and a recent West Coast tour, which found the duo playing outside of the Bay Area for the first time ever. And while we've raved about everything we could get our hands on from these guys, this is definitely the band's finest moment, albeit, weirdly their least noisy. But noisiness is all relative. Cuz this is still plenty noisy, it's just compared to some of their previous releases, and their blistering liver performances, this stuff is far removed from that black metal Merzbow sonic attack that defined their early days.
Here, the noise takes a backseat to the black metal, which is actually a good thing, the riffing, and prerecorded blast beats, weaving a woozy washed out buzzscape, which on their own, would make the sound a sort of soft focus Wold, all washed out and blackly buzzy, but over this blackened foundation, the duo add heapings of noise, the vocals, processed to oblivion, sound like gouts of white hot buzz, more guitars, extra layers of blackness, it's as if the black metal core is at the center of a swirling cloud of jagged, caustic blacknoise, the two seeming to function independently for the most part, but the band create dramatic dynamics with the twisted mix, which finds, various elements dropping out, only to erupt and explode back into action moments later, or the black metal riffing getting fused to the blacknoise creating a harsh wall of sound, which just as quickly separates leaving the blast and buzz to pound furiously, shadowed by streaks of hiss and hum, the sounds dramatically stereo panned too for further twisted effect.
The stretches of ambience are darkly effective, as are the weirdly mournful clean guitar parts, the band obviously capable of creating mood and mystery, and when the buzz kicks in, none of that mood or mystery is lost, instead, it's absorbed into the frenzied black chaos which transforms the sound into something more than noise, more than black metal, it's a darkly epic, strangely textured assemblage of buzz and blast, howl and pound, the sound a living black entity, sonic chaos given form, this is the real transcendental black metal, all should be worshipping before the altar of the priests of Sutekh Hexen.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!!
Another special limited Record Store Day release that we managed to get enough of to review and list post RSD. Aquarius faves Svarte Greiner deliver another dark gem, ominous strings woven into a sweeping cinematic soundscape, laced with plucks and scrapes, distant keening high end tones, plucked pizzicato melodies, a bit like a symphony tuning, transformed into some haunting and harrowing ambience, tense and intense, the creeping low end thrum hovering beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer and splattery percussion, all blurred and smeared into a hazy sprawl of dark sonic mesmer.
The flipside come courtesy of a band we'd never heard before, but who definitely exist in the same space as SG, which is obviously why they're sharing this 7", their sound is a lot like SG's only with much of the darkness peeled back, leaving just the hum of strings, and a minimal orchestral arrangement of plucked melodies and drifting chords, that is until the sudden surprise of a super distorted, crumbling doom riff, wrapped in a warped production, the sound is suddenly caustic and crunchy, the second 'movement' finds that riffage reigned in and transformed into a tense dronescape of rumbling metallic guitar buzz and longform Niblockian tones, all wreathed in streaks of feedback and underpinned by buried melodies and slow shimmering textures. Definitely need to hear more from these guys (this guy?).
Once again, this was a Record Store Day release, we have a tiny handful left, it's unclear whether once these are sold if we'll be able to get more, so your best bet is to act fast and grab one before they're gone!
We've been on a bit of a soundtrack kick here at aQ recently, listing Child's Play and White Dog last time, The Lion In Winter before that, etc. As we've learned, you don't have to have seen a movie to enjoy the soundtrack, in fact, you don't even have to have ever heard of the movie or care if it got thumbs up from the critics or not. Which brings us to to this list's soundtrack selection, a disc featuring scores to two recent indie thriller/horror films we're unfamiliar with by director Ti West, composed by Jeff Grace - whom we hadn't previously heard of either, though upon further research he gets some cred in aQ-land 'cause the Blackest Rainbow label apparently released a 10" of another of his soundtracks, we'll have to look for that now.
Anyone into classic fright flick soundtracks, particularly the stuff Death Waltz has lately been reissuing on vinyl, ought to check this out. The first score, for a film called Trigger Man, is a moody, unsettling creep out, understated and atmospheric, the tracks unified by the composer's brilliant decision to utilize pretty much ONLY solo cello and echo-effects (and some percussion). The suspensefully echoing pulsations of the droning, sawing strings can be strangely lovely and captivating, while clearly leading to, eventually (in the movie) Something Bad Happening. Which, on the soundtrack, remains "off screen", so this is an enjoyable, abstract avant-classical inflected piece of music, suitable for late-night listening, which weirdly reminds us a bit of some of free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker's electronically processed collaborations with Lawrence Casserley, to bring up an obscure and oblique reference. There's plenty of calm yet ominous twilight moments, giving way to more agitated string-scrabble and rhythmically propulsive drives into heart-pounding terror. These eight tracks of this kind-of "chamber-dub" are fantastic enough, but wait, there's more - included here also is Grace's soundtrack to another film, The Roost, another twelve tracks done in explicit homage to the most classic style of B-grade Hollywood horror film soundtracks of decades past, starting off with plenty of spooky oooky theremin and much morbid organ chording in the old school, Carnival Of Souls style! So good. A very well done pastiche, with tremulous strings, urgent orchestral buildups into frenzied crescendos, heartbeat percussion, and eerie drones suddenly silenced, always sounding like some crazy killer with a knife is about to step into the shower with you!! While it starts out deliberately hokey, pretty soon The Roost's score will get under your goosebumped skin and become rather intensely scary indeed, demonstrating why the type of music being so effectively emulated here was used for vintage horror films in the first place. In fact, the string quartet music of The Roost ends up almost in an avant-garde, Zornified territory (of terror) by the end. Now we want to see both Ti West movies to see if they live up to these excellent soundtracks!
So glad we discovered this, and at a bargain price too by the way - we only have a few, not too sure if we can get many more or not.
We've been slowly working our way through the catalog of this unsung SF outsider slo-mo avant country outfit, having already reviewed their 1993 debut, My Company Is Misery, and the maybe even better follow up 1994's Tender Places Come From Nothing. Hell, Yes! was the group's swansong, released in 1997, and is another gorgeous sprawl of detuned guitars, and woozy warped vocal harmonies. If you thought Souled American were druggy and drowsy, they didn't have anything on these guys. In a way. U.S. Saucer were almost like a country Residents if that makes any sense. Their sound definitely beholden to classic country, but filtered through a serious skewed outsider/underground music filter, resulting in a sound that literally sounds like nothing and no one else. Imagine some old country record melting as it spins on the turntable, or some classic country tune playing on a tape machine with dying batteries. The guitars are reminiscent of Marc Ribot in Tom Waits' band, atonal and detuned, the songs marked by strange tangled harmonies, the arrangements super economical, the instruments just two guitars, bass and viola, ultra stripped down, slipping from hushed and dreamy, to dense and angular. But even the prettiest most traditional sounding songs here can't help but end up sounding warped and weird once mainman David Tholfsen begins to deliver his twisted lyrics in that distinctively warbly dramatic croon. And when Margaret Murray chimes in, the harmonies, while strange, are utterly divine. And the songs that she sings lead on are hushed haunting gems.
Like the other two records, Hell, Yes! is a gorgeous collection of haunting outsider minimal country loveliness, that is definitely some sort of strange beautiful musical mystery, and comes extremely and highly recommended.
Originally intended to be a Record Store Day release, this killer compilation from the Learning Curve label made it to aQ just under the wire, but seems to have maybe not made it anywhere else in time. So for those of you who couldn't make it to aQ on the big day, and love themselves some knuckle dragging, head banging, pig fuck noise rock crush, well then this here comp is for YOU. No doubt, a bunch of the names will be familiar to long time aQ-ers, Hex Machine (whose new record is reviewed on this week's list), Seawhores, Dead (whose new lp we reviewed here recently), Gay Witch Abortion (whose new record can also be found elsewhere on this week's list), but there's a bunch of new to us outfits, most with awesome names: Cars & Trucks, Decoupler, Bang The Favorite Raver and Spilling Fingernails And Blood Sap, and looks like there's even some sort of mega noise rock jam credited to Gay Whores Skoal Power, which we can only assume is a bunch of those bands crammed together.
Pretty much every track here rules, and anyone who dug the golden age of Amphetamine Reptile will be like a pig in musical shit, some highlights include the Seawhores track, which is SO goddamn good. Forgot how great these guys are/were, didn't even realize they were still a band, but hearing their track makes me pray to Satan they still are. A tangled churn of progged out noise rock heaviness, the sounds distorted and doused in FX, rhythmic and trippy, locking into almost looped sounding hypnorock jams, one second, sounding almost new wave the next, the sounds all blown out and in the red. There NEEDS to be a new record by these guys for sure.
Gay Witch Abortion never fail us, and their weird, distorto dirge here manages to fuse some obtuse poppiness to some crumbling dirginess, a weird little sludge pop doom nugget that will have you wanting to pick up their full length for sure. Cars & Trucks were an awesome surprise, total nineties heavy rock radness, REAL singing, hooks galore, melodies, harmonies, but plenty of tripped out weirdness. They're the kind of heavy that could actually be popular. Pushes all our heavy rock buttons, and makes us definitely want to hear more.
Decoupler are cool too, sounding like a super caffeinated, progged out Torche maybe, catchy, but frantic and frenetic. Spilling Fingernails And Blood Sap are the most metal here, channeling some Today Is The Day for sure. And Bang The Favorite Raver is some sort of pisstake, sounding like Missing Persons. And that final megajam, not the heaviness we were maybe expecting, instead some super noisy psychedelic collage, feedback, and grinding buzz, buried vocals, buried melodies, buried drums, warped samples, voices and screams, bits from the radio, all beneath a swirl of hazy druggy noisiness.
So cool. Such a killer collection, the rare compilation that actually leaves you wanting to hunt down more music from pretty much almost all the artists. Includes a download too!
This past Record Store Day, the sixth volume in Tompkins Square's series of dreamy solo acoustic guitar compilations got its first vinyl release, and now post-Record Store Day, it's available on cd! And instead of contemporary players, or their Takoma-scene 60's and 70's forebears, they go even further back to the roots of what is often called American Primitive guitar, showcasing seven little known masters of the genre sourced from original 78 rpm recordings made between the 1920's and 1930's.
You might not recognize the names of Sylvester Weaver, Sam McGee, Riley Puckett, Davy Miller, Lemuel Turner, Frank Hutchison or Bayless Rose, but that shouldn't stop you from procuring some fine old rags and waltzes, parlor guitar meditations, slide guitar ruminations and dark blues folk, that inspired folks like John Fahey and Leo Kottke, and then Jack Rose and James Blackshaw and others of their ilk. Housed in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes of the player's histories as well as tragedies. This is beautiful stuff!
Sub Pop's contribution to the Record Store Day craziness was this super limited compilation, which we first took to be sort of a cash grab, as it looked sort of like a sampler of songs from bands that had recently signed to the label. But upon closer inspection, it seems that in fact, that was not the case, instead the fine folks at Sub Pop essentially made us a mix tape of some of their favorite jams, from some of their favorite bands. And we can tell you, that based just on the bands we know (and love), someone at Sub Pop has wicked taste. His Electro Blue Voice, Iron Lung, Peaking Lights, My Disco, Soldiers Of Fortune, and those are just the ones we know. Also included are Starred, Ed Schrader's Music Beat, Lori Goldston, Protomartyr, Chancha Via Ciruito. Phew.
We have to say we were actually a little disappointed when we discovered this WASN'T a label sample, cuz we've been a bit obsessed with His Electro Blue Voice, ever since we got their split single with Nuit Noire, and ever since, we've been tracking down every single we could find with no sign of a proper full length. So the thought of an imepnding full length on Sub Pop got us pretty excited, and we're guessing you'll feel the same way after listening to their track here, a gloriously twisted chunk of noisy, synthy, distorted garagey new wave weirdness that might be worth the price of admission alone. But then Iron Lung deliver a searing slab of noise drenched heaviness, twisted experimental powerviolence fused to churning doomy metallic crush, Peaking Lights get all swirling kosmische pop, My Disco deliver a bit of brooding haunting electro pop minimalism, Soldiers Of Fortune conjure up a baffling drugged out psych jam, that sounds like it was captured at some obscure music festival in 1969.
Of the other tracks, Protomartyr kick out the awesome old school style grunge jams, brooding and fuzzed out, sounding a bit like Mudhoney crossed with Interpol, and sounding right at home on Sub pop, Lori Goldston's track is some cool abstract doom psych heaviness, while Starred traffic in a hushed sort of acoustic folk dreaminess.
God stuff all around. Includes a big booklet, and a download code!
Here's one of those Good News, Bad News reviews. The good news is this 4cd box set is really fantastic, the bad news is that it's out of print and we only have 3 copies to sell. It actually came out over a year ago, but somehow we utterly missed out on it then, whoops! Too bad 'cause we probably would have made it Record(s) Of The Week! Sticking to the good news side of things, once we did finally find out out about it, despite it being already out of print, we fortunately were able to acquire a small handful of copies from Drag City, who as luck would have it had just received a few back in a return from a European distro. So, THREE of you out there are in luck. But might not know why, yet. What's the deal with the Total Groovy? Well, a while back, we reviewed what was then a vinyl-only Drag City reissue of an album called Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners, which appears as one of the discs in this box set. That lp of previously unreleased material came from the archives of Pete Shelley's own Groovy label, the Buzzcocks' singer's DIY outlet for the krautrock inspired, avant-garde experimentation of himself and his friends, and the other three discs in this box are reissues of Groovy's first three original lp releases, all from 1980.
So, first off, here's more or less what we said about Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners back in 2011:
Best band name ever? Definitely a contender. Never really thought that Pete Shelley of famed UK punks The Buzzcocks had anything like this in him, but this album is pretty damn good - almost living up to the ridiculous moniker! Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners was Shelley's oddball synth-wave project that began even before the Buzzcocks broke up in 1981. Back then, he took up the habit of inviting any number of unidentified 'guests' over to his studio to jam with anything and everything in the place; and these Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners recordings came from the many tapes that he made by these means circa 1980-1984. Who those guests in Shelley's studio might have been is anybody's guess. Ours? Maybe Eric Random, maybe Francis Cookson (who co-founded Groovy with Shelley), maybe Sally Timms from The Mekons. Regardless, the resultant recordings are an electronic-heavy art-punk with plenty of weirdo synth meanderings, Keith Levene sounding guitar splinterings, dub-inflected basslines, and scatterbrained effects. None of the punk-pop hooks of the Buzzcocks are found here, even when guitars, bass, and drums enter the picture; it's pretty much all about the studio as instrument with lots of effects swarming about the drum machine rhythms and bare-bones post-punk grooves. One could think of The Storm Bugs, Crawling Chaos, The Psyclones, or Jeff & Jane Hudson.
Then there's the other three, equally confusional discs also found here: the oscillator insanity of Shelley's solo lp Sky Yen, 41+ minutes of delightful knob-twiddling distorted drone actually recorded in 1974; some shambling drone-rock and dadaistic vocals shenanigans from a soundtrack by Sally Smmit And Her Musicians (aka Sally Timms, Pete Shelley, and others); and a record with four untitled tracks of lo-fi industrial improvised (?) rock from a unit called Free Agents. All stuff for which the terms 'weird and wonderful' were doubtless invented! Each disc comes in its own cardboard sleeve reproducing the original album art, the Free Agents one complete with miniaturized insert advertising the Groovy catalog, and tip-on cover. Also inside this eye-catching, Op Art adorned box is a booklet containing an interview Drag City did with Shelley all about everything Groovy, talking about other related projects like The Tiller Boys, revealing various influences (Eno, Can, Ralph Records), etc.
Totally great for anyone into the oddest of Messthetics tracks, NWW list stuff, or even the Boredoms' Super Roots series. Again, kicking ourselves for idiotically overlooking this when we could have gotten more, argh. So now it's first come, first served (and since we have so few, if you're mailordering this, it's always a good idea to pick an alternate as well). Good luck though - sorry to provide such a big review of something we probably won't be able to sell you!
Record Store Day alert! Here's a 2013 RSD release that we thankfully managed to get enough copies of to list...
Please don't ask us to pronounce Theppabutr, but do ask us why this is so awesome - though the best answer is: just listen to it!
International vinyl diggers, seeking out vintage grooves in far flung parts of the world, have made Molam music from Thailand into something that's now definitely a 'thing' in our world music section - we've had some other great Molam collections on the Sublime Freqencies label, for instance, so of course it's exciting to hear from 'The Man Behind The Molam Sound', Theppabutr Satirodchompu, responsible for the production work on the 17 tracks collected here from a variety of Molam artists. It's Molam of the modern variety (modern circa 1972-1975 that is, in this case), a form of electrified vocal music from Northeast Thailand that combines traditional folk melodies and ethnic instrumentation with electric guitars and electronic keyboards. Great stuff, all of it, lively and rhythmic, emotive and ear-wormy. Even though we don't understand a word, it's still immediately captivating. We love the keening singers and warbly organs, groovy beats and exotic vibes. If you haven't yet given Molam and closely related genre Luk Thung a try, this would be a great place to start. Seventies Molam like this is mighty fine stuff, up there with those 'Ethiopiques' recordings and certain Jamaican reggae of the same vintage, though we'd imagine the vocal stylings here might work for some folks and not so much for others.
This limited vinyl version is a Record Store Day 2013 release - there is also a (presumably less-limited) non-RSD compact disc edition too, that we'll be stocking and will list next time, but we wanted to get this RSD vinyl listed now before they were gone! Especially since the double vinyl includes two bonus tracks not found on the cd version - as well as a 12"x14" poster, and download card for mp3s of all the tracks. Gatefold sleeve in faux woodgrain wrapper, liner notes, foldout poster inside.
And yet ANOTHER special super limited Record Store Day release, we have a handful left, but like all the rest of the RSD goodies on this week's list, once they're gone, they're almost assuredly gone for good! The Todo Muere series is now a sort of RSD tradition, as this is year three, and this volume three of this series of Sacred Bones samplers, and as always, it's another pretty awesome collection of rarities and exclusives from a bunch of aQ faves. This time around, things kick off with The Men, who once again display their new, poppier sound, but here that sound gets cranked up a bit, and is on the noisier side, a sort of mix between the OLD and the NEW Men. Moon Duo do their thing, a hazy, druggy, tranced out, motorik groover, that's fantastically mesmerizing, and could easily have stretched out way past its 4:42. Oh and the lyrics are in German! A track from the recent Follakzoid gets a remix courtesy of Psychic Ills, who essentially transform the original into a sort-of Psychic Ills track, all tranced out Spacemen 3 worship, backwards guitars, swirling shimmer, and minimal motorik pulsations. A pretty effective reimagining for sure. The A side finishes up with Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem joined by the Entrance Band's Guy Blakeslee, for a haunting murder ballad like folk dirge, all haunting melodies and thick reverby ambience.
The B side starts off with Zola Jesus covering Rhianna's "Diamonds", and it's really not that different than the original, a bit gothier and gloomier, and a little bit tweakier and more electronic in its second half, but it definitely makes us think Zola Jesus could make the leap to the really big time anytime she wanted to! Next up, The Holy Drug Couple covers Serge Gainsbourg, and it's a good match, the new version a bit hazier and druggier and dreamier, but still retaining the energy and vibe of the original. Wymond Miles offers up some dark haunting gloom pop balladry, all twang flecked and haunting. And finally, Case Studies finishes things off with a gorgeous bit of strummy harmonica flecked lo-fi folk.
As always, great stuff, from lots of cool groups. And as mentioned above SUPER LIMITED, these are probably the last copies we'll see. Includes a download coupon too!
Here we have the two debut 12"s from local evil jackin' house and wormhole creating RAW AS HELL techno producer, Vereker... and they are head cracking buzzsaws both of em'.
EP 1 kicks off with the acerbic and hallucinatory side long "Rosite". A blistering modern acid track, layers of corroded noise, super blown out snare fills and white noise hi hats underpin some super twisted acid patterns, everything peaking and off kilter, some Wolf Eyes meets Phuture type of thing. Industrial strength noise house. "Disconnect" offers a little more space for the sounds to manifest, though not by much. Vereker's sound remains a mighty stack of analogue hiss and clang, rhythms grating against each other and somehow through all the chaos something pretty groovy manages to ooze through. "Falling", the last track, is probably the most dancefloor directed of the bunch, definitely meant for a pretty fucked up drug addled warehouse party rather than a pristinely sexed up nightclub. You can't hear this music before 2am... it wouldn't make sense, and that's a good thing! A pitched down and bit crushed voice intones what sounds like "I keep falling down" over a slightly more sparse and less caustic bassline, rolling and tripped out percussion phased to the max, kinda end of the night type a song where you lost yr friends and the lights are off and yr not sure how yr gonna get home type of jam. Scary stuff.
EP 2 starts off where the first one left off, with another killer side long burner, this one called "Fear Eats The Soul". An absolute seething mass of terrorizing house music. Claps that sound like they're gonna cut yr face off and a super twisted bassline bubbling under the surface, never fully breaking out. Tense and dark rave music, slowly evolving through a fog of dancefloor war! "Next" is slightly more toned down mutant groove, a jammed out feel throughout, with some seriously bent motorized drones filling out the background. "Untitled" is the final acid soaked bookend for these two PUNISHING 12"s. A simple yet effective bass line twists and turns over the machine riddims, when suddenly a beautiful forlorn, Silent Servant-esque (lo-fi Sandwellianism?) enters, emoting very darkly over the bouncing pulsations. KILLER!
Both these 12"s are on the constantly on fire as of late L.I.E.S. label run by NYC's Rob Morelli, who also put out the incredible compilation "American Noise" reviewed a couple of lists ago (which if you don't have, you need), and we only got a few copies of these sweet babies so act fast! A very impressive pair of releases from this young SF producer. Let's hope the first of many! A must have if you like yr electronic dance music murky and noisy and fucked up outta yr mind outta body high experience. TUNES!
Here we have the two debut 12"s from local evil jackin' house and wormhole creating RAW AS HELL techno producer, Vereker... and they are head cracking buzzsaws both of em'.
EP 1 kicks off with the acerbic and hallucinatory side long "Rosite". A blistering modern acid track, layers of corroded noise, super blown out snare fills and white noise hi hats underpin some super twisted acid patterns, everything peaking and off kilter, some Wolf Eyes meets Phuture type of thing. Industrial strength noise house. "Disconnect" offers a little more space for the sounds to manifest, though not by much. Vereker's sound remains a mighty stack of analogue hiss and clang, rhythms grating against each other and somehow through all the chaos something pretty groovy manages to ooze through. "Falling", the last track, is probably the most dancefloor directed of the bunch, definitely meant for a pretty fucked up drug addled warehouse party rather than a pristinely sexed up nightclub. You can't hear this music before 2am... it wouldn't make sense, and that's a good thing! A pitched down and bit crushed voice intones what sounds like "I keep falling down" over a slightly more sparse and less caustic bassline, rolling and tripped out percussion phased to the max, kinda end of the night type a song where you lost yr friends and the lights are off and yr not sure how yr gonna get home type of jam. Scary stuff.
EP 2 starts off where the first one left off, with another killer side long burner, this one called "Fear Eats The Soul". An absolute seething mass of terrorizing house music. Claps that sound like they're gonna cut yr face off and a super twisted bassline bubbling under the surface, never fully breaking out. Tense and dark rave music, slowly evolving through a fog of dancefloor war! "Next" is slightly more toned down mutant groove, a jammed out feel throughout, with some seriously bent motorized drones filling out the background. "Untitled" is the final acid soaked bookend for these two PUNISHING 12"s. A simple yet effective bass line twists and turns over the machine riddims, when suddenly a beautiful forlorn, Silent Servant-esque (lo-fi Sandwellianism?) enters, emoting very darkly over the bouncing pulsations. KILLER!
Both these 12"s are on the constantly on fire as of late L.I.E.S. label run by NYC's Rob Morelli, who also put out the incredible compilation "American Noise" reviewed a couple of lists ago (which if you don't have, you need), and we only got a few copies of these sweet babies so act fast! A very impressive pair of releases from this young SF producer. Let's hope the first of many! A must have if you like yr electronic dance music murky and noisy and fucked up outta yr mind outta body high experience. TUNES!
The depths of the ocean and the heights of the mountains. As poetic as these subject matters are for Blake Edwards, he seeks to describe the existential danger inherent in exploring such places. To ascend Mount Everest may be the most exhilarating experience in one's life, but the possibility of death is very, very real. The same can be said for plunging to the bottom of the sea. Manifesting such existential threats has been part and parcel of Edwards' project Vertonen. Recently, he's embodied a slipperiness between a tonal, electro-acoustic beauty and undercurrents of industrial violence lurking from within; and that holds true on this album as well. The coordinates of the first track refer to the location of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean; and appropriately enough, that track plummets through a series of aqueous, yet ominous electronic percolations coming to rest at a blackened pressurized hum, amounting to a great piece of bleak, industrial strength dronemuzik. A lurching heartbeat rhythm guides the first half of "HACE/26,250", whose title refers to the altitude at which the condition known as High Altitude Cerebral Adema begins to impact the human body negatively through the lack of oxygen getting to the vital organs and causing the collapse of brain activity. And thus, amidst this slow somatic rhythm, harsh sinewave electronics and squalls of tempestuous noise beckon from the nether regions behind a glacial pall of cold cold drone. Eventually, these actionist gestures dissolve alongside the heartbeat rhythm into a shimmering, snowblinding drift of minimalism, a portrait of a mountaineer gazing over the horizon from the top of the world while his or her body shuts down. Horrifyingly great.
In our reviews of the two most recent compilations on Castle Face, the Group Flex flexidisc book set Son Of Flex, and the Velvet Underground tribute, we singled out a group called Warm Soda, as being a new favorite, and in both reviews we mused "Who is this band?" And now we're kicking ourselves for not realizing it, but Warm Soda is the new group / project from big time aQ fave Matthew Melton, who has played in both Bare Wires and Snake Flower 2, as well as releasing a clutch of killer solo jams. And we're happy to report that Warm Soda pretty much falls in line sonically with all of those groups/records. Jangly garage pop, that unlike much of the current crop of garage rocker newbies, is much more beholden to classic seventies power pop and AM radio rock, the sounds here so genuinely seventies sounding, it would be easy to believe this was in fact a reissue of some long lost power pop gem. And really for all its garaginess and all of it's fuzzy riffage, Warm Soda is all about classic songsmithery, and hooks galore. Fans of another aQ fave Purling Hiss (whose new record is also reviewed this week) should flip for this big time. Think Dwight Twilley band, the Kinks, the Stooges, Cheap Trick, the Mice, even modern groups mining the same influences, like Redd Kross, and yeah, Purling Hiss, total Yellow Pills garage pop radness, with plenty of swagger and crunch, jangle and pound, but the sort of hooks most other bands would KILL for, and which Melton seems to toss off like it ain't nothing. Just check out the samples and you'll be hooked!
Hard to pick out a favorite track here, every listen, we become obsessed with a new song, or re-obsessed with a previous fave, needless to say, this is one of those rare records, where EVERY song is a potential fave, and in a perfect alternate universe, a total radio hit. And really, it's not just the music, but the sound, the production, appropriately lo-fi, but not shitty low fidelity, more like old analog tape style, early reel to reel 4 track, the sound lush and rich, and when things get distorted, the sounds ooze and bleed into each other, the way only old school analog recordings seem to.
Along with the Purling Hiss, and the Tony Molina solo record, another contender for pop record of the year on the same list!! Includes a download coupon as well.
Holy shit is this great! We knew Wavves were capable of some serious pop genius, but this new one seals the deal. You can sometimes forget how good a band is, when nonmusical stuff overshadows the actual music. Relationships, breakdowns, tour drama, whatever. It had been a while since the last Wavves record, which we LOVED, but ever since, most of our exposure to the band has been via tabloid stuff, and little blurbs here and there, about cancelled shows and tantrums, and then Wavves mainman Nathan Williams was on the cover of one of the last issues of Spin, with his girlfriend Bethany from Best Coast, and it wasn't so much about their bands, as their romance, which definitely rubbed folks the wrong way (and made it less of a surprise when Spin folded). But like we said, we loved the last Wavves, and pretty much every one before, but this one is some seriously next level fuzz pop genius. Granted, the band have gradually been shedding much of their scrappiness, the days of snotty lo-fi garage punk blowouts and rough edged hook heavy stumble pop are gone for these guys, this new record firmly establishes them as the sort of band that could, should and probably WILL give Weezer a run for their power pop money. Seems like Jeff The Brotherhood recently made the same leap, their last record was a game changer for them, transforming their scrappy two piece metallic punk pop into big riff crazy catchy stadium rock, but we saw them open for Best Coast at a huge beautiful theater, and while the songs may have been polished and poppy, the band were still willfully bratty, their set up a little ramshackle jumble in the middle of a massive stage, and after a handful of killer noise pop, the treated the crowd of Best Coast fans to 10 minutes of squealing feedback. Similarly it's hard to imagine this won't be the record that does if for Wavves, and it's equally hard to imagine that they won't continued to be the same noise pop punks they always were, just trafficking in something way more polished and radio ready. Not that they weren't already huge, but this record is definitely leaps and bounds past the last one. And sure there are plenty of weird bits here and there, and some programmed drums, some psychedelic bits, and they still have a definite lo-fi experimental bent, and lyrically, lots of swears that would have to get beeped on the radio, but almost all of the songs here are classic power pop anthems in the making, fuzzy and rocking, hooky and heavenly, even the slow brooders, are gorgeous dark ballads, replete with female vocal harmonies, and warm chordal swirls, but in-between all that stuff, are some of the most kick ass indie rock noise pop jams we've heard in AGES.
Might be too polished for the punks, but they're just missing out. If you dig Weezer, Jeff The Brotherhood, The Ovens, Redd Kross, Male Bonding, Sloan, Surfer Blood, all that big hook heavy pop, this could very well be your new favorite record. It just might be ours...
The new issue of The Wire features noisniks Wolf Eyes on the cover, on the occasion of their great new disc No Answer: Lower Floors. There were some guys from out of town in the store the other day who are buddies with Wolf Eyes and they were highly amused to say the least by the photos and interview, especially as pertaining to the Wolf Eyes member identified here as Crazy Jim, whose pull quote goes like this: "I have a reputation of being a nut. That's not so bad. I can't worry about what other people think. I barely know what I think."
Anyway, also in this issue, lots more good stuff, including a Slovenian scene report, an article about Woodstock's Creative Music Studio, and an Invisible Jukebox session with Oval. Plus Glenn Jones on John Fahey, and the usual ton o' reviews, etc.
