When legendary So-Cal punk rockers the Urinals decided to retool their sound, and get a little artier, they realized that maybe the band name the Urinals didn't quite match up with what they were going for, and thus, the Urinals became 100 Flowers. This is their one and only full length recording, originally released in 1983, and now reissued by local label Superior Viaduct. To be fair, the Urinals were already kinda arty, their sound super minimal, not punk in the sense of so many punk bands at the time, more sinewy and tribal, the guitars sharp and jagged, the songs short and spare, and that arty minimalism was super prescient of much that would follow. And the fact that only a couple years passed between the Urinals and 100 Flowers, and really, it's essentially the same band, you might think that that sounds would be pretty familiar, but in fact, 100 Flowers was a pretty dramatic shift, the sound much more melodic, less minimal, the sound more full and more poppy, just check out opener "Without Limbs", total jangle pop blissout, with crooned vocals, bloopy bass, shimmery guitars, some kinetic drumming, and a main hook that's pretty tough to resist. But the band didn't ditch all their angular weirdness, follow up, "All Sexed Up" is angular, and actually sort of funky, with sung spoken vocals, and a main guitar part that wouldn't be out of place in a Minutemen song (a group HEAVILY influenced by the Urinals / 100 Flowers), but even that doesn't sum up the new sound, cuz "Our Fallout" gets a bit punky, snarly and intense, the vocals venturing into almost Jello Biafra territory, the guitars fuzzy, the temp frenetic, but then suddenly, there's the minute long "Horizontal", with its weird woozy synth solo, and Devo like vocals, and its stuttering start/stop arrangement.
And they're pretty tough to pin down from there on out, but essentially, the elements displayed in those first few tracks, make up the rest of the songs in different measure, the funky punky Minutemen vibe is present throughout, there's also a surf sound that pops up constantly, especially in the guitar, and their So-Cal hardcore roots shine through all over the place, some songs slipping into something more poppy and jangly, others getting buzzier and punkier, and still others, slipping into arty angularity, often some twisted mix of the three.
Catchy and quirky, punky and poppy, this stuff sounds pretty great even all these years later. And while we always loved the Urinals, we're now becoming pretty obsessed with 100 Flowers too, and after having only heard songs on comps here and there, are extremely grateful to Superior Viaduct for rescuing and reissuing this killer slab of post punk pop.
Includes a printed insert, and a download code as well.
One of two new releases on this week's list from the Michigan based Colloquial Sound label, a label we just discovered, and who have an incredible catalog which we plan on slowly working our way through! Elsewhere you can read about (and order) the atmospheric Indian black metal of Dressed In Streams, and then there's this, the first we've heard from this experimental avant garde black metal one man band who also just so happens to hail from Michigan, Grand Rapids to be exact, and on this tape offers up a single sprawling 20 minute epic, which begins all clean guitar strum and dense tribal drumming, chugging and droned out and hypnotic, sort of psychedelic too, minimal and stripped down, not at all what we were expecting, but it ends up that's just the intro, which gradually fades out, before the track proper explodes, a furious black swirl of sound, everything DOUSED in reverb and echo, the drums and guitars a chaotic whorl, beneath bellowed vox, eventually, the sounds coalesce into something more structured and rhythmic, super hypnotic and almost mathy sounding, the sound seesawing between that rhythmic mathiness, and more loose howled blackened chaos. But that mathiness is most definitely a core component, the sound constantly returning to a cool intricate math metal, rife with melody, and whether the sound is strummed clean guitar psychedelic shimmer, or seriously grinding blackness, or one particularly cool stretch where the sound locks into an almost Helmet-y groove, albeit way more raw and washed out, it's that rad math rock thread that holds it all together. Seriously cool stuff. And it seems like this guy/group has way more stuff out, and odds are like us, you're definitely gonna want to hear more.
On the last list, we reviewed a new record from Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings, and we could barely keep em in stock. Folks went a little crazy for their brand of churning AmRep style nineties informed math/post/noise rock heaviness. So we figured we'd review something else on the same label, another band that also seems like they could have been plucked right out of the midnineties. Accordion Crimes are from Denver, but sound like they could/should be from Chicago, the Jesus Lizard vibe is huge with these guys too, but so is Shellac. In fact, where buildings were murky and muddy and thick and blown out, Accordion Crimes' music has a bit more space, it's a bit less pigfuck, and more sort of rhythmic and post rocky. The guitars sharp and jagged, the vocals yelped and crooned, even spoken on some tracks, which definitely makes these guys a dead ringer for that glorious bygone era. And yeah, if you're like us, you sort of miss that sound, and those bands, and these guys channel that stuff brilliantly.
The sound throughout is dense, and hypnotic, the bass low slung and sinewy, the drums tight and controlled, the whole sound lurching and lumbering, totally tranced out, and mesmeric, there's the occasional pretty part, but it seems like those are just to build tension, until the band can uncoil and strike. There's even some cello too, adding some lush drama to the pretty parts. We have to admit, we're pretty biased when it comes to stuff like this, but holy shit are we loving it. Along with that Buildings record, and really pretty much everything we've heard on Cash Cow. So yeah, if you need your nineties fix, or just want something heavy and hooky, noisy and catchy, then this will definitely hit the spot.
Includes a download code too!
Oh, Agnes. We know nothing about you, but you make such hermetically strange drones and noises. Given the utter lack of information - just a name and the sounds on this 3"cd-r - the triangulation towards something like the hauntological noisescaping of Haxan Cloak might be appropriate or maybe the electro-shock rhythms of a latter-day Aaron Dilloway might serve as an apt comparison. That contextual void is a defining characteristic of the Agnes recordings, as she (we'll assume this to be a she) makes compellingly skeletal pieces that orbit around the defined camps of witchy electronics, pulse-tone minimalism, analogue fetishism, oblique experimentation, industrial mind control, and hell, let's throw Fluxus in the mix, cuz that could definitely fit with what she does.
There was a Frans De Waard project many moons ago called Goem that took its cues from Pan Sonic and Ryoji Ikeda, but what made Goem really interesting was that many of the rhythms were created from an obsolete medical device which was designed to heal and massage damaged muscles, tendons, and nerves through electrical pulses. Of course, Goem turned that into a rhythm box, and something similar could be the source for Agnes' electro-pulse minimalism. However, Agnes does this WAY better than Goem, whatever she may be using, bringing a mid-tempo voltage control pulse to the first track with cryptically sourced hisses and wheezing tones that surely must be electrical in nature. The second track finds the rhythm more disjointed and its electrical signals overdriven with a whumping bass distortion that would be hard to fabricate within a digital workstation. A strangely percolating half-melody of what might be a feedback loop or might even be a shortwave utility signal beacon repeating around this squelching rhythm. Both tracks never remain static but are constantly shifting, twisting, and morphing. Brilliant stuff. Limited to 70 copies.
We knew this would get reissued again, one day. It's just too good to not be. You hear about "lost classics" all the time but the Anonymous album definitely is one, a rare, super collectible record originally from 1977, that more people need to hear. We had it when it was reissued before, years and years ago by the Aether/OR label, but now even those reissues are expensive rarities themselves. So be sure not to miss it this time.
Out of step with the times when it was first released, the Anonymous album sounds more '67 than '77, heavily influenced by the psych-pop sounds of the Byrds, the Beatles, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Mamas and Papas, etc. Lush 12-string guitarwork, unison male/female vocals, epic song structures, and a heavy California psych vibe permeate the music in a really good way. Very fresh and pretty. If these songs had come out in the late '60s, they could have been hits, no doubt. Instead, the Anonymous album languished in obscurity until the late '90s when a few lucky folks got to hear it thanks to the aforementioned reissues. Hopefully even more people will get to hear it now - if you're one of 'em you might find you have a new favorite '60s album that's not actually from the '60s. Highly recommended!!
The latest of a seemingly endless onslaught of Aidan Baker solo releases (we're not complaining, just a bit overwhelmed!) comes in the form of this extremely limited cassette, released by our pal Jon who runs Anthem Records up in Portland, and it's another good one, keeping stylistically with most of Baker's recent solo records, it finds him conjuring up a dark jazz, but this time, at least on the opener, that swirling Necks like moodiness is tethered to some seriously propulsive rhythms. "Paperhouses" sounds like a krautrock Necks, the tempo locked in at a pretty good clip, driving through clouds of deep thrum and warm whirling shimmer, hazy and haunting and dreamlike, and minus that rhythm, we'd be in pure ambient bliss out mode, but that rhythm changes everything. But then things quickly settle down on the second track, the tempo dialed back down, the track a jazzy dirge, but then something strange happens, the rhythm gets all busy and skittery, and we realize that it's sort of jungly, which is weird, and cool. It never gets full on jungle, but definitely an interesting variation. And one that seems to pop up subtly throughout the rest of the record. Which unwinds similarly, dark, and droney, jazzy and minimal, lots of long tones, layered and slowly drifting, laced with metallic swells and soft focus squalls of sound, but ultimately darkly dirgey and dreamily doomy, the final track, bookending the record by returning to the ramped up rhythm of the opener, again transforming into some darkjazz krautrock, this time the surrounding sounds building to something almost shoegazey, but still dolorously muted and murky. Fans of any of the other recent Baker solo records will for sure dig, and we actually are thinking this might be one of our favorites of the bunch...
While they last, we have the special Record Store Day version! Includes a download code!
The latest from local label Valley King, is the first release from Black Elk Medicine Band, the solo project of Isaiah Mitchell of recent aQ Record Of The Weekers Golden Void, as well as psych rock shredders Earthless, and in BEMB, at least on this single, Mitchell is joined by Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach, The Fucking Champs, etc.) and John McBain of the mighty Monster Magnet (and Carlton Melton!). You'd never know it on the B side, which just happens to be the one we listened to first - a dark, brooding, seventies sounding psychedelic drift, swirling soft tangles of slow burn guitar shred smolder, draped over a thick, ominous sprawl of sinister synth buzz, sounding like Mitchell's homage to Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain", the same sort of dark psych brood, tense and emotional and moody.
But flip the record over, and Mitchell and crew let loose with a heady barrage of spaced out psych that wouldn't sound out of place on a Golden Void or Earthless record. A simple skeletal programed rhythm pulses away beneath clouds of heavily flanged riffage, and yep, some seriously soaring heart of the sun shredding, sounding almost like a snippet of a much longer jam, fading in, the action already underway, the band locked into some seriously tripped out psychedelic mesmer, Mitchell laying down another blast of tangled super emotive guitar god leads, over a tranced out motorik background, eventually fading out, as if the actual jam, the one we just got a single side glimpse of, continued well on into the forever.
LIMITED TO 500 NUMBERED COPIES!! In a swank sleeve featuring all new artwork from artist Alan Forbes, each one signed!
Seeing this doom duo live is as much a physical experience as it is a sonic one. Standing right in front of the band as they play, the sheer force and volume of the sound, literally blows your clothes and hair back, like they have fans instead of speakers inside their cabinets. The weird horn shaped drums like sonic snowblowers. It's seriously visceral, and pure noise bliss for sure, BUT, it's on record where these guys get to flex their avant doom muscles. Cuz live, it all blurs into a nearly Merzbow-ian onslaught, sheets of ear shredding doomnoise that seems like it would be a room clearer, but instead seems to lull the crowd into a headbanging doom-noise trance.
One their last full length, All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood, the band pulled out all the stops, adding a choir, multiple drummers, fucked up experimental production, some tracks ambient, others nearly electronic, their actual doom balanced by all the other sounds, making for what still ranks as one of the coolest weirdest doom records ever. On this new EP, the band balance both sides of their sonic personality, opening with a churning noise drenched dirge, the sound blown out and crumbly and in-the-red, there may be sirens howling in the background, but this is the sound of the band as a two piece kicking out the jams. The vocals a hysterical shriek, the drums crushing, the guitar a wall of churning white noise. It's not until the last minute or so that things start to get weird, electronic drums (or weirdly processed acoustic ones) lock into a loop, leading into the second track, which definitely sounds like it could have been plucked right off All The Waters, a simple minor key strum, a creepy sampled vocal, an angelic choir, weirdly clipped and effected drums, the vibe mysterious and moody, then those shrieked vox come in, then the sound of a cocking shotgun explodes into more blown out doom dirgery, the band finishing things off with a sprawling blast of dirge noise heaviness.
Finally, the EP closes with the nearly ten minute "Worship", which begins all distorto drums, swirling psych guitars, collaged sampled voices, the band locked into a tranced out tribal drum driven psychedelic noise dirge, sounding like Gnod via the Butthole Surfers, it's not until nearly 6 minutes in when the hammer finally falls, the band slipping back into their monstrously lumbering downtuned trudge, more shrieked vox, the drums WAY blown out, the band lurching wildly, before it all drops out again, leaving an extended outro of rumbling guitar buzz, more buried voices, strange abstract percussion, manipulated effects, the sound shifting in pitch, warbly and woozy, laced with field recordings, a haunting ambient drift, that easily could have stretched out endlessly...
More warped avant doom brilliance from these Portland via Providence heavies, and it definitely has us hankering for the upcoming full length.
Alone In The Grave is the 7 song, 18 minute debut lp from this old school punked out death metal crew who hail from Olympia Washington, and whose sound is totally beholden to the old days, classic death metal punked up into something crusty and noisy and filthy, short sharp songs, most of which begin with feedback drenched creepy lurching doomy intros, which inevitably explode into churning downtuned riffage, belched and bellowed demonic vokills, furious caveman drum pound, the whole thing laced with wild leads and tons of oozy blackened atmosphere. A little grind, a little doom, a little classic metal, but a lot of grunting, head banging death metal heaviness. Not to much to say, these guys aren't reinventing the death metal wheel or anything, instead they're paying homage to all who came before, and injecting the sound with a little of their own punkish Northwestern energy. Fans of recent releases by outfits like Howling, Antediluvian, Knelt Rote, Abyssal and others will dig big time.
Primitive black and white cover art by one of the sickos behind the Chips & Beer magazine!
Good grief, we've never listed this??? Every once in a while we realize when such an oversight has occurred. Thankfully, we've got this new vinyl reissue to review. This album, originally released in 1971 (that's right!), the debut from Swiss krautrockers (I think you can call 'em that) Brainticket, is simpy one of the freakiest, LSD-trip inspired slabs of groovy mu-sick ever. Up there with Funkadelic's Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow, even.
The first two tracks on side one, "Black Sand" and "Places Of Light", ease you into it, being laidback groovers laced with stabs of distortion... then the true "trip" begins, the utterly over the top, three-part "Brainticket", that starts on side one and spreads over all of side two, dense and propulsive and repetitive, with orgasmic female vocals and all kinds of intense psychedelic throb. It's the perfect soundtrack to goin' completely mad. In addition to wah-wah guitar, organ, flute, tabla, and sci-fi electronics, there's layers of musique concrete "samples", tapes of rainfall, clanging bells, clattering trains, cheering crowds, all sorts of chaotic noise panic...
Quite a overdose of LSD-enthusiasm, that even today still seems more likely to scare folks off from trying drugs than encourage 'em to do so. But then, who needs to actually drop acid when you can just listen to this? Fans of the likes of A.R. & Machines, Amon Duul II, Siloah, Tangerine Dream's Electronic Meditation, and other cosmic trips (as well as hippie kitsch) this is another one you need to get turned on to if you haven't already. Oh, and as a footnote, the drummer went on to play in proto-metallers Toad.
An old fave, maybe a bit more expensive than it needs to be, though to be fair this package does come with a cd version of the album as well, which is a nice touch. 180 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve, which is nice too.
Repressed and back in print.
Record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
Leyland Kirby has been on a real roll lately! Not only recently releasing two of our favorite albums from last year, Eager To Tear Apart The Stars and The Caretaker's An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, but also three installments of synth and sound experiments in his Intrigue and Stuff series. And now we have this beautiful and elegiac new Caretaker recording which is a soundtrack to a new documentary by Grant Gee on the German writer, WG Sebald and the influence of his most renowned book Rings of Saturn. It's an apt fit as both Kirby and Sebald have both been concerned with themes of memory, time, loss and decay (both individually and historically) and the attempts to reconcile with them in both literary and musical terms. We got a limited amount of the now out of print vinyl of this a couple weeks ago, not nearly enough to list, and those are surely gone now, but at least now here's the cd version!
Sebald's book mixed history, travelogue, fiction and memoir into a meditative account of the personal and public histories of Suffolk. The essayistic documentary takes a similarly multi-layered and nonlinear tact by tracking the same locations and landscapes, which is greatly aided by Kirby's score, which instead of using the prewar ballroom music of his last two Caretaker albums, sources a 78 rpm recording of a song cycle by Franz Schubert from 1828 called Winterreise. One of Schubert's last compositions before his death, Winterreisse was based on the poems of Wilhelm Muller, a soldier intrigued by the miraculous and grim cycles of nature, and stands as one of Schubert's most melancholic and dark compositions. In his notes for the song cycle, Schubert describes the setting: "Early on the wanderer sings about his lost beloved. As the song cycle develops he sings of abject loneliness, longing for death, and glimpses of delusional hope." Certainly sounds about right for a Caretaker album.
In true Caretaker fashion, Kirby sources snippets of melodic piano loops and wreathes them in a sheen of murky hiss, and weaves them into repetitive sonic layers. Sometimes a snippet of vocal can be detected before being cut off when the loop restarts putting the piece in a constant flux of promise and denial. The distant resonance of romantically wistful piano reverberations culminate in a seemingly rapturous fog of rained out daydreams. While Winterreise is largely a vocal cycle, Schubert saves most of the emotional heft of the composition for the piano, using it as the voice of the poet moreso than the vocal elements. Kirby fashions his composition much the same way, filtering or burying the vocal elements until the final track, where the ghostly chorus of voices slightly slowed, comes out in full force for a deeply moving climax.
This is a gorgeous score that is beautiful on its own even removed from its source or ignorant of its inspiration, but it has also made us equally excited to see the documentary, read the book, listen to the original Schubert piece as well as read the poems that inspired them. Enthralling!
All the headbangers at aQuarius have been waiting for this, the 3rd album from Toronto hesher trio Cauldron. Loved their others, and this one's no different. In fact, these Canucks are nothing if not consistent, once again delivering damn catchy '80s inspired metal that's heavier and tuffer sounding than most MTV hair metal bands back in the day, but still with a bit of that good old glammy, melodic, pop vibe. Rockin' like Dokken in other words, and yet still matching the very menacing metal mood of the album's cover painting, bleak and gloomy. If you liked their other albums, you'll like this one too - and for newbies, why not start here?
As always, Cauldron have a knack for coming up with riffs and choruses that immediately stick in your head like you've headbanged to 'em many times before, with the only real weak link being the workmanlike vox of bassist/frontman Jason Decay, not a lot of power there, definitely not "tuff", but we're used to 'em, and anyway by now his singing is a recognizable, distinctive part of the whole Cauldron "sound" that we can't help but respond to, all part of this band's unique charm, the major portion of which is being non-ironically stuck in, like, 1985. Heck, we appreciate how they put so much effort into writing truly "pop" heavy metal songs despite the fact that they stand very little chance of winding up on the radio, being about 30 years too late for that. Thus, Cauldron are in a way a more honest and respectable band than some of their '80s antecedents, being obviously motivated only by their sincere love of that style of metal rather than any mercenary hopes of commercial success and material gain (and hookers and blow). Underground status, maybe, but arena-sized stardom, never. Too bad! But they do have their fans, us among 'em. Long may they rule the nite!!
Hell yeah! Break out the chips and the beer - and crank the metal music LOUD - 'cause it's already time for the fifth installment of Chips & Beer, our favorite idiosyncratic underground cult metal (and more) 'zine. If you've got the earlier issues you know what to expect, if not, how do we explain the charm of Chips & Beer? Well, imagine a metalhead version of the old Bananafish 'zine - cryptic, creative, obviously intelligent, often absurd, and sometimes (especially when it comes to the comix) quite crude. Chips & Beer's writers, whether being straightforward or pseudo-intellectual or just plain weird, always manage to amuse, confuse, and (sometimes) enlighten, and definitely fulfill the FANzine's chief imperative of being enthusiastic admirers of whatever subject they chose to celebrate - in this issue, ferinstance, you get a piece on original Saint Vitus singer Scott Reagers ("Reagerding Reagers") that's practically a prose-poem in its effusive praise of that neglected vocalist's one of a kind talents (sentiments with which this writer can only agree).
This issue is the "Italian Metal Special", and as you may already know, the Chips & Beer crew don't half-ass these "specials", nope, you'll find stuff here about every damn crazy Italian metal band you've ever heard of and many more you hadn't, the big features being on Death SS, Bulldozer, Dark Quarterer, and Mortuary Drape, but lots of obscurer Italo HM obscurities get covered too, from Adramelch to Zess - plus there's even an interview with truly obscure AQ fave and former Record Of The Weeker, Tony Tears! The Italian theme continues into in-depth coverage of Italian '80s Z-grade swords & sorcery cinema, and the works of erotic auteur Tinto Brass.
But that's not all - also this ish: Betsy Bitch, Morbus Chron, Borrowed Time, Bone Sickness, Moss, Blue Oyster Cult (sort of), Lester Maddox, Longmont Potion Castle (yeah!!) and plenty more, including lots of hard-to-grok music reviews, and also reviews of modern straight to video (well, dvd) horror films, that part including a sidebar interview with director Ti West whose films Triggerman and The Roost we just listed the soundtrack to. 136 action-packed newsprint pages all in all, and recommended - nay, required - for anyone into this shit.
Cliffsides is the solo work of Ryan McGill, a Georgia native currently residing Brooklyn who is half of the kosmische synth project Afterlife. Where Afterlife tightly wound itself around the post Manuel Gottsching / Klaus Schulze ethos that led into so many of those great Emeralds related projects, McGill's solo work is all sleepwalking sprawl and narcotic mist. Bubbling abstractions, big sweeping oscillations, and lazer-shot synth tones work through the variable curtains of delay and echo effects that McGill pours over all of the synthesized sounds. Vast empty spaces with distant vocal and guitar signals cascade through those delay patterns creating a 'floating in outerspace' vibe from the onset, only to glide into a very choice step sequence of Schnitzler-esque melodicism.
By the second side, McGill offers forth some midnight electronica / sci-fi worship channelling Tangerine Dream's Zeit only to turn that into a very dark set of ambient passages, complete with ritualized chanting and industrially grim sawtooth synth lines. There's lots to cover on this tape, as McGill sprawls and drones for over 80 minutes here. Nice that somebody is using the long form medium of the cassette to its fullest potential! Limited to 100 copies; and like most everything on Hooker Vision, this will not last long.
Making music is all about transporting the listener to another place. Creating sounds or songs that transform the listener's whole world, so with eyes closed, a person could be anywhere, drifting through space, wandering in caves miles below the surface of the earth, laying in tall grass in the countryside, holed up in a concrete bunker during a war, wandering through the smoking ruins of some ancient city, all through the magic of music.
Most of our favorite sound makers use their considerable talents to sonically alter the course of time, taking us back with them to some unrealized past, some mysterious otherworld where it's still the middle ages, or the 1900's, or the fifties or even just the seventies. Their sounds are faded postcards, old snapshots browned with age, glimpses of places and people long forgotten, it's all very evocative and hauntingly emotional. Philip Jeck, Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, they all meticulously craft windows to other worlds, using various instruments and techniques, they allow us to step through our speakers and into some rainy day, an overcast afternoon, in a barely populated city, an intimate get together with family and friends, a lonely walk through dark alleys and rain slicked streets, but unlike a film or a photo, these are less distinct, more like memories than actual visual images, and like memories, they are nothing but personal recollections of events long past, and like memories, some parts are fuzzy, indistinct, everything seems faded and ghostlike, on the verge of being lost forever. Capturing that ineffable sound, manufacturing a world of mysterious musical memories, with music, never fails to captivate us completely, and we could listen to those sounds, rich with nostalgia and warmth, rife with magic and mystery, pretty much forever...
French experimental sound artist Eric Cordier has taken a bit of a detour from his usual electro-improv and installation work and has joined the ranks of our favorite sound makers, with his latest, Breizhiselad, an epic and gorgeously inventive exploration of tape, the turntable and a single 78rpm 10" record found in the attic of a friend's grandmother. The original recording, one of the first to proudly feature the Breton language after years and years of persecution, was to Cordier's ears, "horrible because of the catechism-like vocal arrangements" but the conviction of the vocalists, as well as the condition of the record itself, convinced him that these were important sounds. SO he transferred the sounds to tape, and attempted to capture the essence of the music, the power and the passion, while discarding the rest.
The result is a haunting epic, an expansive drift through some lost era, the voices are disembodied and wreathed in murk and static, an EVP broadcast from the beyond, rhythms and melodies develop suddenly amidst a cacophony of distortion and processed voices.
The opening track sets the tone, with a looped low end rumble, fuzzy and mysterious, the rich warm sound of deep harmonies, amidst a bed of tangled crackle, looped and chopped into lurching rhythms, like some disembodied short wave doom, a creepy low end moaning melody that gradually fades into a soundscape of layered angelic voices, creating a stuttering blurry chorale. The record is peppered with field recordings and bits of found sound, whipping wind, footsteps, snippets of conversations, the crunch of boots in snow, all woven into the strangely liturgical sound of Cordier's mysterious world of sound.
Imagine the murky undersea drift of Oval's skipping cd-scapes, but wrapped in a thick cloak of analog imperfections, skips and pops and crackle and hiss, imbued with an ominous undercurrent, minor key melodies assembled from rumble and hum, thick swells of static and clipped stuttering snatches of organ or voice, all transformed into creepy complex squalls of sound, scraping and hiccuping, but just as often, smoothed into hushed, dreamlike drifts, warm and muted, almost like some analog Pop Ambient, letting us float serenely and ghostlike through a sonic world of dark forests and crumbling castles, small villages and rolling hillsides, battlefields and ruined cities, of war, famine and death, but also of hope and salvation.
After years of being a sidekick of, and special guesting on records by, folks like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, Mikal Cronin came into his own in a big way in 2011, with his self titled debut full length, which we dug so much, we made it our Record Of The Week. And we were psyched that the rest of the world began to finally take notice too. And now here we just a couple years later, and Cronin has a super hyped new record on Merge and seems poised for the sort of success that his fellow SF garage rockers have been enjoying lately. As is often the case with the follow up to a record you love to death, II took some warming up to. At first we were thinking it was a watered down, more mainstream version of the debut, and while it most definitely is WAY more polished, and not nearly as raw and rambunctious, it's definitely not watered down, and after a few listens, the songs began to reveal themselves as the genius pop songs they are. And now that we've had a few weeks of constant listening, we've beginning to think we dig this new one as much as the debut.
Check out the sound samples below, the opening 4 song blast is pretty much untouchable, hooks galore, lush classic pop, acoustic guitars, piano, even sax, the guitars jangly and shimmery one second, crunchy and buzzy the next. After raving about the new Telekinesis! record on the last record, we're getting a lot of the same feel from this one. Personal and passionate, super rocking and rollicking, but introspective and sensitive at the same time. The chorus of "Shout It Out" is a killer, the fact that is sits in a song that's predominantly acoustic guitar strum and sweet sad boy croon, only makes it that much more fierce. "Am I Wrong" does something similar, pairing a crunchy, stomping chorus with a lilting main melody, and some sweet falsetto vox. "See It My Way", is a groovy shuffle, again, all spare and psychedelic and jangly, and then a seriously fuzzed out chorus, with wild drumming, and swirling vocal harmonies. And did we mention the opener? Setting the stage perfectly, with it's dreamy piano, heartfelt vocals, and fuzz guitar. Total hook heavy noise pop bliss. That song more than anyone here perfectly straddling the sound of the two records, maybe purposefully acting as a bridge between the raw rocking of the debut, and the more polished poppiness of II.
And one thing we noticed is Cronin's mastery of classic heart tugging pop epicness, with many of the songs exploding into those sort of instrumental sprawls that you always hear in movie trailers, or underpinning the super emotional parts of indie art films, soaring, melodic, emotional, majestic, moving, that vibe finding its way into the garage poppiness of the rest of the record and transforming II into something classic and timeless and really fucking great!
A super limited new tape from Berlin based lo-fi noise pop weirdo Jacob Faurholt, aka Crystal Shipsss, only 50 copies in the US, and aQ is the only store carrying them. And this is just the sort of thing that pushes all our warped pop outsider jangle fuzz buttons, and we imagine yours too. At its core, the sound of Crystal Shipsss, is fuzzy, jangly, lilting pop music, sweet sad boy vox, dreamy melodies, plenty of hooks, crazy catchy choruses, but the SOUND is what it's all about. A mad scientist kitchen sink approach to pop songsmithery, with even the sweetest slab of poppiness here wreathed in crumbling distortion, or swirling clouds of fractured FX, the drums are blown out, sounding like they were recording in an airplane hanger one second, on cardboard boxes in a kitchen pantry the next, the vocals wavery and woozy one second, that sweetly crooned the next, the guitars thick and crunchy, exploding into epic, majestic fuzziness, and then slipping right back into dreamy soft focus jangle. Just check out the chorus of "Where The Wild Things Are", it gives Mikal Cronin a run for his money. In fact, this is the kind of record that has us thinking that stuff like this probably won't remain underground for very much longer.
Every track here is a warm, swirling, psychedelic gem, "Crushing Like A Skull", is all warm and melty and shoegazey, what sounds like organs, blurred into thick swaths of chordal shimmer, droned out and so so dreamy, while "Listening To Devil Town" is a weirdly creepy minor key fuzz pop dirge, with brittle rhythms buried in the mix, and some seriously weird lyrics about Daniel Johnston and carrot cake (!). "Dusty Vinyls", is a woozy drone-pop ballad, all distorto strum, hazy swirls of droned out tones wrapped around some sweetly fuzzy poppiness, and "Night Of The Creeps" is a drum machine driven sprawl of spare jangly garage pop shuffle, which disappears into a weird cloud of swirling metallic shimmer and woozy soft noise swirl.
Fans of everything from home made 4-track pop, to fuzzed out garage rock, to DIY shoegaze noise pop, this could very likely be your new favorite jam.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!! Includes a download coupon as well!
Norway's number one "hiking metal punks", the Darkthrone duo of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto are back with another album (their 16th!) that melds the grim frozen Nordic black metal of the '90s (typified by their own corpsepainted classics from the era like A Blaze In the Northern Sky and Under A Funeral Moon) with '80s NWOBHM, punk, crust, and speed metal, as they have been doing for the past six or seven years.
We'd heard before we got this that the new Darkthrone was heavily influenced by Agent Steel, and while Fenriz does pull of some amazing high pitched shrieks in the style of John Cyriis from that cult '80s speed metal outfit, we suspect that people were saying that 'cause a copy of Agent Steel's Skeptics Apocalypse lp is prominently displayed behind Fenriz in his picture on this album's back cover. What also should have been in that picture is a copy of Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales, 'cause plenty of this has that brand of '80s underground doomic deathliness to it too. Mercyful Fate and Venom, the '80s originators of black metal, are also clear inspirations. A good example of what that means, is the album's truly epic final track, the 13 minute 49 second "Leave No Cross Unturned", written/sung by Fenriz, which opens with an impressive balls-in-a-vice scream, the song speeding along with rapid riffage ornamented by soaring swooping vox. But then, whomp, it slows for a sluggish doomed out break, chugging thenceforth under a Hellhammered, Frosty vibe. Eventually the velocity ramps up again as do Fenriz's operatic affectations, and then back again into the doomy depths, the song a tour de force display of what Darkthrone dig in metal, as well as serving as a representation of the entire album in microcosm, it's got it all. A headbanging masterpiece right there.
That could be the only song here and we'd still be into this, but wait, there's more. Six tracks total, three by Nocturno Culto (the guitarist) and three by Fenriz (the drummer). Fenriz sings his compositions with an extreme/eccentric mix of falsetto wails and guttural deathgrunts, while on his tracks Nocturno employs a capable (if less WTF?) black metal rasp. They alternate songs throughout the album, beginning with Nocturno's gnarly snarly punked out black metal opener "Dead Early", followed by the more-likely-to-get-you-staring-at-your-stereo "Valkyrie" of Fenriz, some very epic wailing metal, fast but glorious, like a weird mix of Bathory and Manilla Road, maybe. Nocturno is back on the mic with track three, the dense churning rocking riff-fest of "Lesser Men". Fenriz responds with the rollicking "The Ones You Left Behind", sorta like "Valkyrie" but with some Motorhead added in? It's hard to describe actually, and that's what's cool about Darkthrone these days, while these guys wear their influences on their sleeves (and can do so with impunity 'cause they themselves were once so influential), the stuff they come up with here is still original, somehow channelling their obvious inspirations into weird hybrids never before attempted or envisioned.
Then to the album's penultimate track, Nocturno's own pounding epic, the 8:37 "Come Warfare, The Entire Doom", which is indeed doomy, but cranks at speed too, and almost would be this album's more metal than thou piece de resistance if we didn't know that the massive "Leave No Cross Unturned" was coming up next. But it sure comes close.
All we can say is, if you love metal, you gotta love Darkthrone. Long may they reign. As long as they're around, metal will never die.
The cd comes packaged in a hardcover digibook, 20 pages, necessary 'cause of course the ever talkative Fenriz takes up a lot of space with his notes on each song, etc. One of his songs ("Leave No Cross Unturned", natch) even has its OWN lengthy "thanks list", separate from the two page thanks list Fenriz himself has. Nocturno Culto, aka Ted, more taciturn, limits himself to just one page for his thanks list and doesn't deign to analyze his songs, unlike Fenriz, who practically writes reviews for 'em, listing precise inspirations for each section of each of his compositions. Also, in recent Darkthrone tradition, Fenriz provides a list of recommended new bands he likes, in his role as tastemaker for a new generation of metallers. So folks who download this, illegally or otherwise, are missing out on a lot!
Arthur De Eriomem is one of the shadowy figures behind Ingenting Kollektiva, a dreamy disintegrated drone project with a keen knowledge of avant-garde music, art, film, architecture, and design, all of which gets churned through whatever arcane processes may be at work, resulting in some rapturously dark driftscaping and visually arresting videos as well. De Eriomem cites that the title of this release was culled from David Toop's Sinister Resonance, a book that runs with the idea that sound, for all of its physical attributes, operates more in the realm of the ghostly. It's an apt description, especially in relation to Simon Reynolds' appropriation of hauntology to describe particular threads of retro-futurism in electronica. Like The Caretaker, William Basinksi, and Phillip Jeck, who augment their sounds through an aural patina of antiquity, De Eriomem's slippery composition has the feel of something very, very old - like a lost wax cylinder recently discovered in some midwestern attic, covered in flecks of ash and dust. It would be easy to believe these warbling recordings are of a 19th Century hurdy-gurdy, playing doleful, repetitive melodies all the while the echoing slowly sustained drones and evanescent blossomings of golden ambience; but De Eriomem mentions the sources to be analogue delay and guitar. It hardly matters how he did it, it's just a gorgeous drone disc, one that would warrant comparisons also to The Aeolian String Ensemble and the guitar based work from Andrew Chalk. Handmade packaging in a numbered of edition of 100 copies.
Dunno about you, but man, we've always loved some sax/drums improv skree. Its just a thing that rules. Going way back to John Coltrane and Rashied Ali out there in Interstellar Space, you know. This Dutch duo are totally in that tradition, but of course (as you might guess from their excellent name) taking it to the extreme, playing essentially "acoustic noise" in freeform shred mode, one of 'em blowing like crazy, the other attacking his kit - not for nothin' that this Utech release was mastered by Jazzkammer's Lasse Marhaug. Also it's perhaps worth noting that one track is named "Yamatsuka Eye". So, yeah, this disc is intense -not unmusical, but intense - with sudden frantic tangles of tenor sax blurt and spasms of percussion slamming into your skull. Pure pleasure in other words, if you dig Peter Brotzmann machine gunning style sax, Zornified jazzcore, and/or the most aggressive Jooklo Duo stuff! Only just about under a half-hour in length, but that's fine, cuz Dead Neanderthals give it their all for the duration, ripping it up here like the sax/drums equivalent of Slayer's Reign In Blood (RIP Jeff Hanneman btw).
Here be the second 'Test Pressing' from Demdike Stare, which of course is not a real test pressing, but an actual release in an edition of 500 or so. The first of these sold out here in a weekend, and we're expecting the same result for this one too, especially given that we're presented with two more great cuts from Demdike Stare, one of our all time favorite electronica projects, divining the dark arts through horror score allusions, dubstep claustrophobia, and a witchy set of production tricks that are both heavy and ghostly at the same time. The A side "Grows Without Bounds" is a lurching number of industrially grinding electronics that are tempered into a Nocturnal Emissions sound dirge, with a quiet heartbeat pulse easing into the mix. The B side "Primitive Equations" is an updated version of the darkened, cocaine-laden drum & bass stylings of Metalheadz and No U Turn from the mid '90s, complete with sparse placed basslines that stab at a very nice breakbeat that sorta falls between the seminal Apache and Amen breaks, but seems to be something else entirely. Always great to hear Demdike Stare, but if you blink, you might miss out on this one.
This is one of two new releases on the Colloquial Sound label, a Michigan tape label we had somehow totally overlooked, but are making it our mission to get caught up with, cuz everything we've heard so far has been sorta mind blowing. Including this, the latest from this US black metal band who play "atmospheric Indian black metal", which when we first read about it, we actually thought it was in fact a band from India, but instead, this American outfit mixes murky soaring majestic buzzing blackness with actual Indian music, the A side here starts off with a sample of some traditional Indian music, all buzzing sitars, skittery tablas, intense emotional vocals, then all of a sudden, furious riffing swoops in, the sound exploding into some echo drenched buzzing blackness, the vocals a deep raspy demonic bellow, the drums not blasting so much as pounding, while the guitars are sharp and jagged, and doused in effects, the whole thing noisy, and reverby and sorta psychedelic. The sound gets even more psychedelic as the track progresses, slipping into long stretches of tranced out drone metal and even erupting into something near symphonic at one point, the sound laced with synths (?), giving the track a seriously tripped out vibe, and then near the end, it gets super melodic, and crazy catchy, before finally fading out in a cloud of blackened swirl and atmospheric synth shimmer.
The second track/side is more of the same, a dense dizzying swirl of sound, frantic and frenzied, tons of echo and reverb, the sound bordering on utter chaos, but constantly slipping into something more structured, with some cool chugging almost math metal parts, not to mention more epic synth swells, and as if to bookend the two tracks, the blackness fades out leaving just tablas, that mesmerizing Indian rhythm this time wreathed in strange demonic hiss and softly shimmery synths. Super cool. These are the VERY LAST copies we'll be able to get. And apparently Handmade Birds will be doing a Dressed In Streams compilation cd eventually, but get an earful of this now, and grab one before they're gone, you won't be sorry!!
The Dump reissue campaign continues! Dump being the one man 4-track bedroom indie rock solo project of James McNew of Yo La Tengo. A few lists back we reviewed Dump's debut, 1993's Superpowerless, a deliriously dreamy collection of indie pop gems, super catchy originals and unlikely covers, all delivered in McNew's warbly croon, the sound varying dramatically from fuzzy jangle to distorted crunch, hushed balladic shimmer to plaintive twee pop, but all of pretty goddamn great. So two years later, and it seems very little has changed in the musical mind (or bedroom recording studio) of McNew, with Dump record number two, 1995's I Can Hear Music, which strikes a similar balance between, sad boy, home brewed, Sentridoh style bedroom minimalism, and some surprisingly ambitious full band blowouts. The opening two tracks here display that perfectly. Warbly, woozy opener "Slow Down", all simple skeletal drum beats, acoustic guitar strum, and sweetly crooned vocals, not to mention all sorts of warble and tape drop out, the result a subtly catchy, super personal chunk dreamy and catchy indie pop, which leads directly into "Jury Duty", which opens with a squall of feedback, and soon explodes into some fuzzed out shoegazey noise rock, which seems a bit too rocking and noisy to have been bedroom recorded, and yet, it still retains much of the vibe that defines the rest of the more intimate tracks. And again, it's pretty goddamn catchy!
And so it goes, McNew whipping up another sweet batch of covers, our favorite maybe being his version of Ultravox's "Vienna" which is SUCH a great song to begin with, that even in its stripped down lo-fi form, it manages to be so haunting and moving and goddamn great! Elsewhere McNew tackles jams by Tuli Kupferberg, Bob Dylan, Fish And Roses, Refrigerator, Half Japanese, Mayo Thompson and the Beach Boys (the title track). And in between all those covers, a clutch of originals that more than hold up along side the covers, in fact, like on the first record, if you weren't familiar with the originals, the covers here easily could be McNew originals, which definitely speaks to not only his musical influences, but his knack for songwriting and lo-fi popsmithery.
"Invisible" is a hazy, washed out softly psychedelic slowcore ballad, "Liberty Spikes" is distorted Dinosaur Jr / Teenage Fanclub style fuzzed out indie rock, "Beyond The Door" is a gorgeous slab of 4-track bedroom folk, "Never Comes" is a dark brooder, organ driven, laced with primitive Casio drum machine rhythms, the vocals a hushed croon, droney and dreamy, and we could go on and on and on. Needless to say, fans of classic indie rock/pop and lo-fi 4-track bedroom jams, it doesn't get a whole lot better than this. And obviously Yo La Tengo fans will find much to dig here too.
This new deluxe version includes a ton of extra tracks (included as a second bonus disc with the cd), and a massive booklet, with new liner notes from McNew, as well as rare photos and drawings, and the original notes from the original release, not to mention hilarious illustrations of McNew's pedal set up, the usual distortion and delay pedals replaced with pedals like Boo Hoo, Mood Ruiner, Frequency Ignorer and Oops. Awesome.
Rather surprisingly, vinyl of this was one of this year's Record Store Day releases. Wish we still had 'em but we sold all the copies we could get already. However, they also reissued it, as a two-for-one disc, on cd, and not being a RSD release we were able to get some of those to list. We've had reissues of both Dust albums before, most recently as rather expensive Repertoire imports, so here's the reviews of both of these proto-metal essentials.
For those who need to know: the American hard rock trio known as Dust are another of those legendary early '70s bands that get mentioned in the same breath with heavies like Captain Beyond, Sir Lord Baltimore, The James Gang, Bang, Stray, Leafhound, Highway Robbery, and the like. They cut two excellent lps of late-psychedelic-era proto-metal back in '71 and '72. Of their two albums, the first, self-titled one is swampier, with a lot of slide and country/southern rock moves on tracks like "Stone Woman" and "Chasin' Ladies". But then there's the lugubrious and weighty 10-minute epic "From A Dry Camel", and conversely, the gentle acoustic dreaminess of "Often Shadows Felt". Mostly, though, the album kicks ass with uptempo hard rockers, including the ripping, rollicking instrumental "Loose Goose" that closes the album quite frenetically.
Following that is 1972's Hard Attack, generally considered the harder of Dust's two albums, the more metal. Though that may be in part 'cause of the awesome Frank Frazetta cover painting, and album title! But perhaps it is somewhat more Sabbathian. "Downer rock" they called it back then (we're told). Their song "Suicide" (the penultimate track on side 2 of the original vinyl) - whooah, that could be Pentagram! That song alone makes this an essential purchase for any true doom/psych fan. It's an all time classic.
But it's not all doom n' gloom n' barbarians - Hard Attack has its lighter side, but unlike a lot of their peers, the poppier and/or less rockin' stuff Dust do here is actually really great. Sure, a song like "Thusly Spoken" features strings and a Beatlesy melody, but the lyrics still name-check Satan and speak of dancing demons. Lush, gorgeous downer-pop that sets you up to be crushed by the following, urgently hard-rockin' track "Learning To Die". They do that throughout the album, alternating gentle - even acoustic - numbers with the proggy proto-metal workouts that the headbangers of 1972 must have loved.
It's hard to understand why Dust didn't "make" it, as this stuff is certainly the equal of big sellers from their era by Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. Great singing, riffs, melodies, and that "feel" - it's all here.
We mentioned Pentagram above - if you've got that Relapse anthology of Pentagram's original seventies recordings, First Daze Here, you should definitely check out the work of Dust, who were both contemporaries of, and an influence on, the Ram's Head boys. Yes, Dust are an important name on the list of forgotten but godlike '70s hard rock bands that make today's so-called stoner rockers sound like punk/grunge wanna-bes. In a word (again): classic. Too bad you'll never hear 'em on your local "classic rock" radio station...
Oh, and Dust featured the future Marky Ramone on drums, by the way, before he decided punk was the way to go (or even had that option).
This remastered reissue sports its own new cover design, but inside the thick cd booklet there's smaller versions of the original album art, plus lots of vintage photos, and plenty of liner notes (including some from Marky), etc.
This single actually came out before the recent III lp, but we only now managed to get our hands on enough copies to list. When it did pop up a few months ago, it was the first anyone had heard from these guys after a fairly long silence. And while we've already raved about III, this single was a welcome return. The weird thing is that this single seems to be the last hurrah of the OLD Eat Skull, total shitgaze bliss, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, stumbling drum pound, wild squalls of psychedelic guitar noise, yowled vocals, goofy lyrics, all wrapped around some pretty crazy catchy melodies, in a way it's the perfect link between the noisier off kilter Eat Skull of the past and the more polished poppiness of III. The first track on the B side definitely sounds like with a little polish it would have fit perfectly on III, but here it's delivered in all its raw, low fidelity glory, and it sounds as good as ever. And the second track on the B side is from a Volar records label comp, and definitely displays a softer side of Eat Skull, all Casio drum machine, shimmery acoustic guitar, lilting melody, really pretty.
All in all, a pretty killer single from a band we dig a lot, and considering it's been out for a while, best grab one quick before they're gone for good!
Our pal Dave put this KILLER record out and we think he describes it the best:
"In the winter of 1967, a psychedelic-garage-punk band from Woodland Hills, California, arrived in Europe for what would be their first and last tour of the continent. On the strength of their hit single 'I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night,' the band was welcomed with open arms by European rock fans as well as British rock royalty - they smoked out with Hendrix, partied with Brian Jones and Keith Moon, and hung out in the studio with the Beatles - but were also subjected to harassment and ridicule over the fact that their homeland was at war in Vietnam. Yep, good times, good times... Twenty days and six countries later it was all over. Luckily, on the last stop of the tour someone pushed the record button and this artifact is the result.
"Stockholm '67 finds the Electric Prunes at the height of the powers. Some ninnies have griped that the 'Prunes were nothing more than a psychedelic one-hit wonder, and a studio project at best. This performance burns the criticism to the ground. Over-amplified and fuzzed to the max, the 'Prunes here are explosive, noisy and wild. This recording proves that the Electric Prunes deserve to be ranked alongside the very best bands of their era."
We never really stopped digging the Flaming Lips. We'll always probably be partial to the early days, the chaotic, drug addled noise rock psych pop era of course, but even more so that transitional three album arc that marked the band's transition from fucked up underground legends to weirdo stadium rock popstars, Hit To Death In The Future Head, Transmissions From The Satellite Heart and Clouds Taste Metallic. With The Soft Bulletin, the band embraced their pop side, and it paid off, and we have to say we're pretty thrilled, that a band this weird, could end up being one of the most popular bands in the world. And it's pretty heartening, that even while they were crafting these crazy commercial records, they continued to be willfully difficult, and extremely experimental and unconventional. From crazy elaborate performances to bizarre limited releases (thumb drive in a human sized gummy skull!), they're essentially one of the only bands who never seemed to be corrupted by success, and who never let that success go to their heads, or really affect their music. In fact, if anything, the Lips seem to have peaked pop wise with the trilogy of The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and At War With The Mystics, and ever since, they seem to have been getting less and less commercial, like some sort of musical Benjamin Buttons. 2009's Embryonic was pretty weird, but The Terror trumps it big time.
Originally rumored to be a return to the band's old sound, The Terror instead finds the band slipping into a sort of abstract experimental almost krautrock sounding psychedelia. The sounds are lush and layered, fantastically atmospheric, the vocals sparse and minimal, no proper pop songs to be found anywhere, instead, The Terror delivers long sprawling dream-psych jams that are some of the best songs we've heard from these guys in ages. The opening tracks set the scene, pulsing electronics, woozy looped synth melodies, skittery drums, hazy vocals, the opener "Look... The Sun Is Rising" maybe the closest to modern Flaming Lips, and actual pop song structure, but even here, there's lots of jagged angular crunch, droned out synths, shimmering layers, everything washed out and hazy, the song leading directly into "Be Free, A Way", which is like an even more abstract extension of the opener, with a woozy soporific hook that will stick in your head forEVER, all over a lush landscape of synths and electronics, and murky pulsing rhythms. "Try To Explain" continues on in that drifting ethereal ephemeral psychedelic dream pop style, laying vocals over a lush bed of electronic pulsations, soaring symphonic arrangements and weird sound effects.
It's on "Your Lust" where the band seem to slough off the vestiges of pop that defined the opening few tracks, unfurling a heady sprawl of hypno rock electro-kraut grooviness, all sun dappled and woozy, eventually fading out into a lush and lovely coda of warble organ, and distorted chiming melodies.
And while there are moments of poppiness popping up throughout the record's remaining five tracks, those tracks seem to bleed together into one gorgeously lysergic sprawling songsuite. The rhythms minimal and motorik, the vocals wispy and ethereal, the sound often bursting into weirdly corrosive crumbles, or densely swirling buzz, blossoming into blown out shoegaze heaviness, before settling back into a twisted bit of swirling sci-fi kraut-pop drift, or some stripped down Can like minimal mesmer, but all wreathed in a constantly shifting cloud of effects and textures and disembodied voices, at one point the band slip into some hushed electronic creep, with falsetto vox, and lots of glitch and buzz, sounding a bit like Thom Yorke's solo record The Eraser, but things here are much weirder, the sound exploding into a noise drenched buzz pop, before devolving into the gorgeously abstract weirdo noise-pop prog of the closer "Always There In Our Hearts", which manages to be both poppy and impossibly catchy, as well as dense and claustrophobic, intense and super dramatic.
The whole record bleeds into one fantastic and lysergic whole, it's hard to pick out a single song, or even a single part. in fact we've yet to NOT listen to the whole record in a single sitting, the only thing that separates the songs for us is hearing a phrase, or part of a title, the record in many ways feels like one huge piece, an interconnected songsuite, and while with every listen, certain parts stick in our heads, certain melodies, specific sounds, even textures, or rhythms, we still just can't bring ourselves to not listen to the whole thing, all the way through, over and over and over.
(By the way, we're still waiting for the vinyl version of this to arrive, we're now told next week, supposedly.)
Originally released as a cd on the Ampersand label way back in 2001, now available on vinyl via local reissue label Superior Viaduct. Here's our (brief) review of Graduation from when we listed the Ampersand version...
After hearing the excellent "hillbilly drone improv" found on the recent double cd archival release You Are My Ever Lovin'/Celestial Power by this obscure but fascinating Fluxus artist, we were excited to discover this additional archival release (of material unreleased these past 20-odd years) see the light of day. But, our enthusiasm was a little dampened somewhat by the preponderance of vocals (!) found here. There's some prime drones to be found here for sure, and some truly sublime moments, but you'll have to also deal with some not-so-prime folksy singing. Which, for us, makes this unfortunately a somewhat disappointing listen in the Flynt oeuvre - but obviously not all Flynt fans (like the folks at Superior Viaduct, obviously) would agree with us about that.
Includes download code.
Originally released on cd by the now we believe defunct Emperor Jones label in the year 2000, this, the fourth solo album from New Zealander Alastair Galbraith (A Handful Of Dust, The Rip, Plagal Grind), is a stunner. Rarely has music this experimental been so ACCESSIBLE. But that's genius at work, folks, right here. "Recorded onto TEAC-4 track in a shed at Taieri Mouth between 1998 and 2000", Cry mixes pastoral folk drones with muted electric guitar outbursts, ominous organ rumblings, and Alastair's sung poetry. It's super pretty and quiet and haunting and we highly recommend it. Even if you've never heard this veteran of the Kiwi music scene's records before, this is a fine, fine place to start. A favorite ever since we first reviewed the compact disc version way back on list #99! So glad UK import label MIE has granted this new life, and for the first time on vinyl - which is limited to 500 copies, and comes with a download code.
NOW ON LP!! Pressed on red vinyl, includes a download code too...
Like most of you, we kinda flipped for the 2010 debut record from mysterious Swedish hard rockers / retro metallers Ghost. And some of our pals / customers went absolutely apeshit about 'em - going to every show, buying every possible permutation of the record, picture disc, import cd, along with shirts, hats, whatever. And while we were perhaps not as over the top nuts for Ghost as that, we definitely loved that record, a lot, and played it like crazy. The sound being a strange hybrid of Mercyful Fate like metal, and Blue Oyster Cult like classic heavy rock. The band fronted by a ghoulish Pope-like figure, wearing corpsepaint, and wearing papal robes, often carrying some sort of staff, while the rest of the group were a mystery, their identities hidden by robes and masks. A silly gimmick maybe, but it definitely kept everyone talking about these guys, trying to figure out who they were, which famous metal guys from other Swedish bands were actually involved. And plus, let's admit it, watching some super theatrical performance with costumes and characters, is way more satisfying than a bunch of dorky long haired dudes in jeans rocking out.
So anticipation was high for record number two. The band were rumored to have been given $750,000 to record. They flew to the US, and got a high profile producer, and the results are here, and well, the response has been divisive to say the least. Now re-christened Ghost B.C. due to to some legal difficulties, the new record finds the band almost completely ditching the metal, their sound even more firmly entrenched on the seventies hard rock side of their sound. Some of us were thrilled, as we dug that side of the band WAY more, while others, not so much. In fact one of the above mentioned superfans, hated the two songs he heard so much, he didn't even buy the record, and had no plans to do so. While that seems a bit dramatic, considering, minus the less metal, the sound is ultimately not that far removed from the first record, and in fact, the songs are way better, and way catchier, and the production, while to some ears sounded too slick and polished, ultimately sounds perfect for the songs, and with every listen, we become more and more obsessed. In fact two aQ staffers were really, really keen on making this a Record Of The Week. Certainly those two aQ-ers have listened to virtually nothing else since this came in. But there was some dissent, so we'll leave it up to you. The samples below say more than we ever could, but we'll try anyway.
While the first record was definitely a metal record, the most you could say about Infestissumam is that it's hard rock, but really it's almost more like hard pop. The songs are crazy catchy, the guitars are distorted, and a little bit buzzy, but the production is such that they don't sound heavy exactly, and the organs from the first record are all over the place here, giving some songs a very carnivalesque, circusy feel, and others a weirdly Partridge Family vibe. The songs so hook heavy, with huge choruses, and equally catchy bridges, the solos are simple, the sort that mirror the main melody, and stick in your head like the vocals, the vibe is actually kind of mellow, slightly ominous, a little bit sinister, but only a little bit. It's bouncy, almost power poppy, epic and lush and super detailed, headphone listening reveals so much sonic detail, that at times it's not hard to believe this record could have cost almost a million dollars. When we were all arguing about whether to make this a Record Of The Week, one aQ-er sent this text to another aQ-er: "Ghost is Satanic bubble gum. Total genius. I've listened to it like fifty times already!" And the aQ-er writing this review wouldn't deign to argue. Cuz it is like Satanic bubblegum. Catchy and bombastic and almost orchestral in places, pure pop in others, hard rock in others, but so far removed from the metal that popped up throughout the first record, it seems insane to call them a metal band at this point. But whatever you call them, and however you feel about their sonic progression from their debut to this new one, have a listen to those sound samples, and see if you can resist. We're guessing you won't be able to. And why fight it?? A glorious slab of Satanic bubblegum hard pop genius!
First proper full length (after a super limited cd-r), of gorgeously blissed out post rock from this Bay Area ensemble. Lush and textured, rhythmic and hypnotic, slow burning and sprawling, epic and super rocking, these guys take that nineties sound we love so much and make it their own, the songs smolder and pulse, before exploding into dense roiling Godspeed / Mogwai style blowouts. Meandering prettiness, gives way to loping mathy minimalism, chiming guitars, simple spare drumming, looped melodies, a slow build to near metallic crush, the bass throbbing, the guitars tangled up in psychedelic squalls, the drums muscled and propulsive. The sound moody and minor key, cinematic and soundtracky, brooding and intense, heavy and emotional and harrowing. If you dig stuff like Mogwai, Aereogramme, Mono, Pelican, Grails, Explosions In The Sky, Magyar Posse, Red Sparowes, Snowblood, that Temporary Residence instrumental rock sound, that heavy post POST rock, well, Glaciers does it as good if not better than most of your favorites. Not sure how these guys slipped under our radar, since they're from right here in the Bay Area, but it's time to right that wrong, RIGHT NOW.
Pressed on gorgeous ice blue vinyl, comes with a download coupon, and yeah, it's probably limited too...
Got just a few copies of this left, released for this year's Record Store Day, the first release by a group called Golden Gunn, a collaboration that's one part Steve Gunn, and one part Hiss Golden Messenger (featuring former members of the late great Court And Spark!), hence the name. And it sounds a lot like you might imagine, fusing HGM's Grateful Dead / Dylan style classic country folk with Steve Gunn's penchant for tripped out FX heavy psych. Check out the opener "Vysehrad" a lush, psych-folk sprawl that takes a groovy acoustic guitar riff, a simple skeletal beat, and then wreathes it in swirling synths, billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, woozy backwards swoops, then lacing in some spidery leads, a seriously dreamy, dark-psych jam that ends way too early even at 8+ minutes. Then there's "Dickie's Theme" which is slithery and soulfully bluesy, with some fuzzy bass, and sinewy minor key melodies, which leads right into "Let Me Shine (Deathhouse)" which finds HGM frontman MC Taylor doing his best Dylan crooning over a bed of snarly psychedelic blues. And so it goes, the sound shifting from dark psychedelia, to dreamy pastoral Appalachia, to drowsy drum machine driven folk flecked country dirgery, to lush seventies sounding Laurel Canyon classic rock, and right back again. Fans of either band will no doubt dig big time. And really anyone into folky psychedelia will want to check this out as well. Too bad they made it so limited. We wanted to get enough to write a m,ore extensive review and properly list it, but it's apparently out of print for now, and it seems these are very likely the last copies we'll have, until it gets repressed, if it ever does. So grab a copy before they're gone, in case these are truly the last ones...
Two new releases from UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz this week, elsewhere on the list you'll find the soundtrack to John Carpenter's They Live, one of our favorite movies EVER, and then there's this, a more recent proposition, the soundtrack to 2011's The Devil's Business, which we have yet to see, but the trailer looks pretty incredible. And the soundtrack too, not Death Waltz's first foray into modern soundtracks (they did Let The Right One In recently), but it is their first foray into compact discs, this being the first DW release available on both vinyl (being restocked soon) and cd. And they've gone all out on the cd, with some of the coolest, most creative packaging we've seen, but more on that in a second.
The soundtrack/score here is by Justin Greaves, who many aQ-ers should know as a member of sludgelords Iron Monkey, as well as the mainman in atmospheric post rock brooders Crippled Black Phoenix, which makes sense, as the music here is not that far removed from Crippled Black Phoenix. The excellently titled opener "My Enemies I Fear Not, But Protect Me From My Friends", perfectly lays out the sonic template sounding like a haunting, brooding, slow burn post rock, loping and doomy, soaring and darkly majestic, the vocals though a deep croon, the sort of voice to imagine singing old hymns in Latin, which perfectly fits the vibe. There's some Morricone-ish twang too, and swirling strings, tense and moody, building to a seriously intense climax, before slipping back into a droney brood.
And the thing is, unlike a lot of scores and soundtracks, only a handful of these tracks are cues, most are proper songs, hard to say if the whole songs are used in the movie or just parts, but those tracks are pretty great, droney, and dark, psychedelic and smoldering, super atmospheric and cinematic (obviously), laced with synths and strings, buzzing guitars, plodding rhythms, a few tracks have a gypsy vibe to them, sounding almost circusy, others are slow, creepy doom folk drifts, occasionally laced with operatic vocals, or field recordings, but just as often, allowed to creep ominously, and some songs full on rock sounding like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky or yeah, Crippled Black Phoenix.
A few tracks get reprised at the end of the record, one song is revisited, only spookier (the 'spooky version'), another is an alternate version that recasts the original as sounding more like Goblin or John Carpenter, and one of the shorter jams gets fleshed out as a huge, majestic post rock blow out. The shorter cues are pretty great too, from ghostly high end ambient shimmer, to woozy, sinister synthscapery.
As with all Death Waltz, the packaging is super swank, the label's first cd is no different, with a spot varnished cover, with new art, that makes the movie seem like it could be from the seventies, all housed in a six panel gatefold pop-up (!!!), and the cd is affixed to the little part that pops up. So when it's open, the cd is vertical, suspended above the artwork. So cool!!
Local reissue label Superior Viaduct seems to be branching out beyond the punk/postpunk/industrial genres that they'd heretofore mainly specialized in, with some surprising (but cool) reissue selections, including a record by hillbilly dronester Henry Flynt, and this one, by '60s Italian improv "gruppo" featuring famed soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone, plus also Egisto Macchi and other notables. Long a favorite around here, we're happy to have this new vinyl reish, nicely done. Here's what our pal Drew Daniel of Matmos was kind enough to write about this for the aQ site the very first time we listed it:
If there was such a thing as "catchy" improv this sumptuous, careful record would be it. Not reading Italian I am in the dark as to the extent to which this recording is based on "game theory", but the numerous pictures of chess boards in the room with the assembled throng of Italian composers / improvisors suggests that some kind of game based operation produced these sounds - but you don't need to be Bobby Fischer or speak Italian to be stunned by the beauty, immediacy and focus of this gathering, which includes luminaries such as Ennio Morriconne. Far from the skronking racket which "improv" can call to mind in some listeners, there is a kind of majestic, attentive, and totally confident quality to these performances that will have the hair on your neck standing at attention, and the cinematic scope of Morricone's past work is fully in evidence here. When all six musicians build up a resonant, triumphant drone from horns and piano in "Omaggio a Giacinto Scelsi", both honoring and extending the work of the Italian aristocrat / mystic composer, the result is a kind of 17 minute long "transport" that very little contemporary music comes close to. Best of all, they also know when to make a track only two minutes long! Required listening for fans of Morricone, Supersilent, Godspeed or AMM.
Bravo, Superior Viaduct, bravo!
And it includes a download code!
Seems like Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings were the big hit from the last list. We sold out of their record immediately, and hell, for good reason, that record was a fierce chunk of old school AmRep style heaviness, beholden to all the bands we grew up with and still love, Buildings paying homage, but making that sound their own.
So here we have a brand new split single from those guys, teaming up with fellow noise rockers Hawks. Buildings offer up more of what we dig, chugging, churning, rhythmic mathy radness, the bass super distorted, the guitars buzzy, the band immediately locking into some serious crush, swaggery and snarly and heavy as fuck, both tracks here laced with squalls of feedback and driven by some seriously kick ass drumming, not to mention some soaring distorto guitar swirl and some blown out bass buzz. Cannot get enough of these guys!
Hawks counter with their own take on mathy, noisy heaviness, starting off with a weird sample, and a slow swell of distorted guitar, before the drums kick in, and the song lurches into a pounding, riffy swagger, the vocals a bearded bellow, it all reminds us of that old classic Sub Pop sound, a bit grungy, a little poppy, but seriously heavy. And when the lead guitar swoops in, it transforms everything, and the song is suddenly catchy as fuck! The second track is a bit busier, with weird chiming guitar harmonics, wild drumming, more bellowed vox, and again, the grunge vibe is huge, which is really the only way we could dig this sort of noise rock sound ANY more. There's a Hawks full length out there somewhere, and these two songs have us begging for more!!
While they last, we have the yellow vinyl version. Includes a download code too!
It seems Haxan Cloak has gone through a bit of a reinvention. Up until now, we would have classified Haxan Cloak as psychedelic folk, their previous records darkly ritualistic, with urgently strummed acoustic guitars, swirling black ambience, chanted monk like vox, moaning cello rumbles, a fluttery folkiness that seemed more in keeping with industrial neo folk outfits like Death In June. Which raises the question, how did they end up on Triangle, and how did they end up sounding like Burial and Vessel and Raime? Not that we're complaining. We can't get enough of this new strain of slo-mo soul, dubbed out minimal electronic murk, and that's pretty much what Haxan Cloak deliver on their Triangle debut. Sure much of the moodiness and black ambience of their previous sound carries over, but then that's the perfect delivery system for spare, skeletal, glitched out rhythms, and Excavation definitely straddles the line between new and old Haxan Cloak, peppering black drifts of deep rumble, and keening sine wave tones, with weird sampled voices, and shimmering Tibetan bowls, but soon that tell tale Burial style wood-block snare sound comes in, all echoey and reverbed, and the song transforms into a blackened electro creep, the background sounds swooping ominously, soft swells of hiss and grit wreath the rhythm, the mix a bit warped as well, the sound pulsing, laced with thick bursts of ominous thrum cranked WAY louder than everything around it, creating a secondary rhythm, one that's even more woozy.
Which is pretty much how the rest of the record plays out, and perhaps exactly what you might expect from a formerly psych folk / black ambient technician gone electronic. In fact, strip away the beats, and this would be some harrowing black ambience, but it really is all about the beats, as much as the textures and moody ambience. In some places, the sound slips into an almost dubstep, but a hellish ultra minimal, avant dubstep, a swirling swath of fractured blurred samples, glitched out beats, and rib cage rattling low end.
The shorter tracks here seems to drift back toward the Haxan Cloak of old, with scraped cello string rumbles, keening distant melodies, echo drenched industrial plod, ominous minor key piano stabs, but the two 2-part epics here definitely have the new sound on full display, channeling a Burial like minimal dub, and the more spare haunting minimal abstract beatscaping of recent aQ faves Raime, filtering it through Haxan Cloak's sinister black ambient industrial filter, the results might be one of the darkest, meanest sounding electronic records ever. The second half of the record finds some melody filtering through, the second half of "The Mirror Reflecting", is almost pretty, although still fractured and fucked up, but it builds to a seriously psychedelic coda, before the relatively brief "Dieu" delivers the most straight ahead electro jam here, but it's really relative, freaky vocal snippets, swirling strings, buzzing bass thrum, fragmented rhythmic skitter, ominous pulsating melodies, it's almost like an intro for the massive 13 minute closer "The Drop", which ditches beats completely for the first half of the track, instead, weaving a lush undulating landscape of shimmering chiming melodies, moaning strings, deep bass pulsations, lysergic chordal swirls, everything hazy and washed out, the beats do eventually surface, but they're more like processed low end throbs, looped beneath the song's haunting almost orchestral sounding swirl, the beats becoming almost Kompakt worthy for the last half, but the blackened surrounding sounds, and the weirdly static churn of the main single beat rhythm, keeps the track from getting at all 'dance-y', the beats merely adding texture to the song's blurred and blackened abject sonic sprawl. The sort of seriously sinister, cinematic soundscaping that transform any dancefloors into a crushing, harrowing, black pit of sonic despair. Awesome!
After killer releases from Motion Sickness Of Time Travel, Grant Evans, Quiet Evenings, Afterlife and a bunch more, the Hooker Vision label gives us a brand new recording from our very own Jim Haynes, who seems to move well beyond his "I rust things" method of sonic alchemy, creating what in Haynes' world is about as close to a minimal avant garde shoegaze as we can imagine. And in fact, we had wondered if Haynes might try something more overtly melodic for his first Hooker Vision outing, and while perhaps The Incident With A Ghost isn't strictly melodic, it's much more lush and warm than past release, seemingly trading in some of the grey austerity he often traffics in for something more organic. The first side opens with a strange rhythmic tangle made up of what sounds like the warm rhythmic patter of rainfall on clay pots, geiger counter crackle and the snap of crackling fires, those sounds form the core of what becomes a slowly expanding sonic sphere, all softly swirling reverberations, lush tonal thrum, and strange pulses and pulsations. The vibe is definitely some underwater world, or the surface of some alien planet. The sound is stormy, that rhythmic crackle blurring into shapeless whorls, beneath which tones shimmer and churn, before a sudden glitch, sends the track into much more tranquil territory, a deep slow building rumble, that begins to smolder, and transform into a sort of soft focus dream-noise, eventually giving way to some Caretaker like creep, all gauzey longform tones, and timestretched ballroom dreaminess, which billows into thick droney clouds that border on serious shoegaze blissout. Maybe the prettiest thing we've heard from Haynes yet!
The flipside is much less active, a sprawl of blackened ambience, pocked with all manner of micro sonic events, scrapes and thumps, rumbles and whirs, the sound a series of slow swells, hazy and haunting, downright tranquil until the last 5 minutes or so, when those tranquil sounds begin to grow corrosive, exploding into a raw, grinding howl of sound, wrapped in junk metal clatter, and jagged shards of static, only to suddenly dissipate, unfurling a haunting outro, all mysterious sounds, voices and machines, buried beneath slow shifting layers of bleak glowing shimmer, a woozy, wraithlike drift.
Nice metallic silver packaging. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Two simpatico noisescapers from Austin square off for this limited split cassette release. We're well familiar with Smokey Emery from his many releases on Holodeck, Indian Queen, and his own Kiamesha Drive imprints, but Andy Hendrix & the Skwaarmalar Machine are new to us. We can't imagine what a Skwaarmalar Machine would look like or how it operates, but the sounds contained on that side of the cassette are cavernously industrial sounding like a go-cart race slowed down for intense drama. The slowly throbbing rev of an echoing motor as it swerves and skids around a warehouse, speeding up to an intense climax then slowing down to a deep bass pendulous pulse. The Smokey Emery side is from four live edits and contain his trademark hazy murk of built up tape loops of infinitely recycled recordings. Using an arsenal of personal recording devices including cell phones, and digital video cameras, it's a rich cloud of tunneling drones containing smoldering pockets of murmurs and atmospheric rumbles that are sublime and at times quite terrifying.
Super limited tape from modern musical shaman Daniel Higgs, he formerly of the late great Lungfish as well as Lungfish offshoot the Pupils. By now, most readers of the aQ list are familiar with Higgs, post Lungfish, having carved out a truly unique niche for himself, creating distinctly personal, spiritual music, in all manner of sonic forms, whether it's solo jaw harp, banjo drones, or tranced out vocal mesmer.
All of those come into play here, a dizzying, tripped out, psychedelic melding of Higgs's peculiar hypno-poetry and his visionary modern minimalism, the opening track here a dense swirl of programmed primitive rhythms, some sort of drones, harmonium maybe? What sounds like banjo and jaw harp, all blurred and tangled into a churning backdrop for Higgs' entrancing vocals, which sort of sets the template for the rest of the tape, even tracks like the second one here, which begins all warm and warbly, just a wheezing chordal drone, soon blossoms into a dizzying soft chaos of layered rhythms, looped voices, and mysterious chants. Here and there, Higgs does break it down, at one point, a reverb drenched banjo (?) is wreathed in reverb and unfurls a fluttery bit of folky psychedelic mesmer, and there's bits that sound like some sort of alien Appalachia, but it all fits perfectly into Higgs' wonderfully warped sonic worldview.
EXTREMELY LIMITED! These are likely the last copies we'll be able to get!!
The return of these noise rock sci-fi garage glam blooz punk weirdos, fronted by Timmy Vulgar, formerly of aQ faves Timmy's Organism and frontman of the Clone Defects. But in Human Eye, Vulgar and his cohorts whip up a dizzying collection of warped, whatthefuck, outsider psychedelic space rock garage punk, or something like that, it's heavy, spacey, garagey, bloozey, definitely psychedelic, and definitely kinda punk, all swaggery and groovy, the sound slipping from Stoogesy stomp to Hawkwind style space out, and from organ driven garage rock vamps to brooding almost echo drenched fuzz pop, there are organs whirring all over the place, the drumming is wild and chaotic, everything wreathed in wah wah guitar, with pounding piano, and clouds of FX. The vibe is definitely glammy, and there's all sorts of weirdness going on, bloops and bleeps, analog synths, blorping bass, Human Eye coming off like some alien glam rock combo, and in many way reminding us of the Lee Harvey Oswald Band, the same sort of irreverence coupled with crazy catchy songs, anthemic and hooky as hell. But it's noisy and grimy and sorta slithery and dark too, the sound is dense and dangerous, laced with extreme poppiness, but that poppiness often underpinned by a shadowy sonic malevolence. But just as often, the shrug off the darkness completely and kick out some impossibly poppy jam, or disregard any sort of musical gravity and go careening into the stratosphere, all blissed out and prismatically druggy!
What?! A somewhat sort of sensible Alan Bishop recording? We had thought the amazing Baroque Primitiva from 2011 might have been the most polite thing the former Sun City Girl had ever released; but his latest project under the moniker Invisible Hands might just take the cake, as this one can be downright lovely, not too far from Giant Sand or Calexico weirdly enough. Nope, there's none of the misogyny or misanthropy which Bishop routinely tosses into his lyrics for the Sun City Girls or as Alvarius B, and most definitely nothing as rude and wild and over the top as his Uncle Jim pseudonym; and that may have to do with the company he's keeping. The Invisible Hands ensemble is comprised of members of the Egyptian rock band Eskenderella; and they recorded this album in the summer of 2011 after the ousting of Hosni Mubarak and the upheaval that spread throughout Northern Africa. Perhaps, the timing was such that it would be unwise to record an album with the sorts of provocative subjects that Bishop is generally known for; but then again, it might have been equally improper to have recorded an album that might have been offensive to an Egyptian sensibility. To Bishop, it might be one thing to offend his politically correct audience in America and another thing to offend his hosts in Egypt, 'cause that would be rude. Eh. Or hell, maybe we're just getting a glimpse of a lesser seen sonic side to this musical misanthrope...
Either way, the album's arrangements are lovely and spacious, mostly driven by acoustic guitar with plenty of those Morricone nods common to the Bishop songbook, but there's some more aggressive turns with the theatrical gravity of Tom Waits and a few incendiary psychedelic moments that had us wondering aloud "Hey, when is somebody gonna reissue Torch Of The Mystics?" In fact, one of the songs here "Black Weather Shoes" is a pretty radical reinterpretation of an old Sun City Girls track from their record Grotto Of Miracles. We've been told that there's an Arabic version of these recordings under the Arabic name El Ayadi El Khafeyya, but that's only being sold in the Middle East. Major bummer, dude! That would be a very cool thing to hear, although this is cool as it is. Let's petition the White House and force them to comment on an Alan Bishop record!
Jacob isn't a person, but a duo, consisting of David Cordero, who belongs to a Spanish experimental post-rock ensemble called Ursula whom we haven't heard before, and Marco Serrato, who's the bassist/vocalist in Spanish avant-doooOOOoomsters Orthodox, whom we HAVE heard (and love). This disc on Utech finds the two working together on a new project in the spirit of what's described as "Xenakis-worship", making a dark and droney soundscape that lives up to its title, and then some! Full of spooky seismic rumblings, fluttering static, scary grinding distortion, speaker-rattling drone, avant-chamber string skree, it's only loud if you turn it up (we dare you), but even at a fairly low volume it's still sinister and eerie stuff. Inspired, perhaps, yes, by the electronic compositions of Xenakis, but also definitely by the duo's mutual love of sci-fi and horror film soundtracks. It doesn't say anywhere what the instrumentation is, but we think we're hearing cello or double bass, and electronics, and bowed cymbals maybe? All played by skeletons, or wraiths, in a dead void of inky blackness. Some haunting buried/effected wordless vokills enter into the listener's (sub)consciousness during the final track, too, we think, and hint at somethings we've heard from Orthodox. But if it turned out that this really was the work of an obscure 20th century composer we'd belive it - and be putting in a call to Creel Pone just to say, why have you been holding out on us?
The six tracks of nightmare atmospherics on this disc aren't just ominous, but THE ominous. Seriously. Open-minded Orthodox fans (what other kind are there?) should investigate, as should anyone else into claustrophobic isolationist soundscapery!!
Comes in typically nice, slim Utech packaging, with translucent printed sleeve and three cards bearing b&w photographs, morbid and beautiful.
Bassekou Kouyate is like the Steve Vai of Mali. About as close as you'll get to a shredder. His instrument of choice the ngoni, an African lute which is an early ancestor of the banjo. Bassekou builds his own ngonis, at at some point decided he just didn't have enough strings, so started adding MORE, and eventually formed Ngoni Ba, the first ever group formed around FOUR ngonis, augmented by percussion and of course soulful stirring vocals, but it's the ngonis that are the star. Apparently, when Bassekou was a young man, he observed guitar players moving to the front of the stage to solo, and as luck would have it, Bassekou had outfitted his ngoni with a strap, and while most ngoni players traditionally sat to play, when it came time for his solo, he stood up, headed for the front of the stage and proceeded to blow everyone away. Signaling his radical intentions for the instrument. He also developed his own unique style of picking, a unique version of slide guitar technique as well, a style that was quickly adopted by a new crop of young ngoni players in Mali.
Jama Ko is the latest from Kouyate and his Ngoni Ba, and is easily the best thing we've heard. His Sub Pop records (!) didn't quite capture the raw energy and emotion, but here, the songs are dreamy, haunting, emotional, passionate, the vocals a huge part of the sound, with the ngonis weaving a lush melodic backdrop, but it's when the ngonis take center stage that things get really good, the sound very reminiscent in places of Konono No.1, the lead ngoni, super distorted and buzzy, unfurling wild tangles of melody, but every song here is incredible, the sound of four ngonis divine, easily slipping into wild psychedelic swirls, with at least half of the record spent in some sort of Afro-psych mode, but just as easily, weaving soft lushly layered textures, over which the group lays down swoonsome minor key melodies, and delivers heartfelt vocal driven Afro pop dreaminess. So great!
It's been a while since we've heard from these Italian atmospheric epic post-prog, math-metal heavies, who in the past have shared a split with psychedelic doomlords and countrymen Ufomammut, and who gave us the stunning Earthen record we raved about a while back, and if anything since then, it seems like everything we dug about these guys has been further honed, their sound still a swirling, chugging, dense and driving, sprawling epic instru-metal, but just, MORE. More mathy, more psychedelic, more proggy, in fact, where most bands like this deliver a handful of lengthy mega-epics, allowing the songs to continually morph and cycle through the millions of parts, Lento cram their metal prog majesty into short, regular song lengths, the longest barely cracking 4 minutes, a few brief two minute blasts, but with most hovering around the 3 minute pop song mark. But there's no way any of these tracks will be mistaken for pop songs, sure, some are dangerously catchy, but for the most part, each song is a dizzying collision of multiple parts, constantly shifting textures, flitting from moody brood, to howling metallic fury, to fluttery folky drift, to loping post rock drift, to hushed jazzy shuffle, to churning almost blackness, to soaring Godspeed worthy, keyboard wreathed swirl and soar, and really, in lesser hands it all might feel like too much, like a band cramming way too many parts into way too little song, but somehow Lento make it feel strangely natural. It's a wild ride for sure, and one that is pretty sonically dizzying, but the songs all feel linked sonically, some sort of prog-math songsuite, and while their Earthen record had a bit of a churning industrial feel, we likened it to Godflesh, and Jesu, as well as more obvious comparisons like Isis and Nadja, the sound here is way more varied, and organic, more math rock and noise rock, with hints of power metal and post rock and spaced out psych and whatever else these weirdos want to mix into their strange sonic brew.
We hear lots of Isis and Nadja still, but plenty of Dutch instrumental metal legends Gore too, as well as LOTS of longtime obscuro aQ faves Fuehler, definitely some shades of the Fucking Champs, the aforementioned power metallisms in places, the mathy chug of Meshuggah for sure, but for the most part, Anxiety Despair Languish is just a fantastically forward thinking, wildly progressive, sonically heavy rock record that RULES, and should have metalheads (and heck adventurous non metalheads) of all stripes losing their shit big time.
The vinyl version is 180 gram and includes a download code.
Our pal Phil Manley (Trans Am, The Fucking Champs, Jonas Reinhardt, etc.) has done that thing where the title of his krauty, kosmiche, Schulze-y, synthy solo record from 2011, Life Coach, has now been made the name of his new band, Life Coach, a duo featuring Phil and drummer extraordinare Jon Theodore (Golden, The Mars Volta, Queens Of The Stone Age, etc.), both of 'em pictured cartoonishly on the disc's colorfully trippy cover. Guess Phil's really into the Life Coach concept, and we're into the music for sure, which does sometimes sound like it could be the background track on a New Age motivational speaker's VHS cassette, in a good way of course. And that's just sometimes, 'cause this rocks out a bit more than most real life life coaches could stand, harshing their ponytailed mellow with guitar riffing and pounding drums.
We'd always heard a lot about what a great drummer JT is, but it wasn't until we saw Life Coach play live a little while back that we really understood - man, he stole the show! No wonder everyone was always raving about his mad skillz. So, naturally, this Life Coach album is full of rhythmical radness, alongside the spacey guitars and synths of our man Manley. The results are fine listening indeed, as mood music and more. "Sunrise" serves as this album's intro, starting things off appropriately with lovely break-of-dawn, "Rites Of Spring" shimmer, prayer bells tinkling amidst quiet electronic drones, tambura strum, and gentle peals of electric guitar - but then, wham, Jon Theodore's drumkit kicks in with track two, the title cut, and it's all Trans Am bombast meets Michael Rother bliss now, a style of new agey krauty postrock that we'd be happy to enjoy for the duration, and while there's plenty of it throughout the album, Life Coach have a few surprises in store - with Isaiah Mitchell of Earthless/Golden Void dropping in for a couple guest guitar solos (he even appears, with his guitar, in that cover drawing), turning the track "Fireball" into a heavy rocker that sounds a LOT like the fuzzed out '70s-sounding California catchiness of Golden Void, easily a highlight here any devout Golden Void fan (like us) is gonna need to hear. There's singing on that one, by Phil we assume though it sounds much like Isaiah does in GV, but otherwise this album is a mostly instrumental affair, the other notable vocal track being the uptempo "Mind's Eye", lots of electronics swirling around the propulsive beats while Phil sings of inner consciousness, his words floating up above, and beyond. Good times, high times. "Ohm" winds things up with a lengthy wash of cymbals and synthesizers, a wonderfully droned-out finale to this varied and vibrant album.
Big thumbs up to Life Coach's brand of uplifting synth-splorations and stoner rock jamz!!
We always wanted to like those Locust records that came out in the '90s, with their alluring 4AD-inspired visual aesthetics and matching moody atmospherics, the sound a darkly silken electronica. Even though Locust's principal technician Mark Van Hoen had worked on the best Seefeel albums (and the underappreciated side project Scala), his work in Locust never really hit the mark. The baroqueness of it all seemed a bit too contrived. The female vocals that he was so fond of seemed superfluous as well. So when Van Hoen resurrected his career last year with a record under his own name on Editions Mego, we approached it with some skepticism, but thankfully that skepticism was unfounded as he finally delivered an album of what we always hoped for. The strengths of that album - the spooky atmospheres, the hypnotic sequencing, and those breakbeats which align so nicely next to the best from Boards of Canada - are reprised here on You'll Be Safe Forever, the first Locust album in nearly 12 years.
A somber tranquility eases through You'll Be Safe Forever, with its heavily reliance on swelling ambient synths, languid samples, dark-eyed kosmische vibes, and deconstructed pop motifs. Even when Van Hoen revs up things up on a track like "Strobes," the punchiness of crunched rhythms and taut arpeggiation dissolve within the hypnotic patterning from his female vocal samples and bleary-eyed drones. "The Washer Woman" with its painterly sequencing, skittering rhythm track and tone-bent melodies has all of the tropes of a great Biosphere track. By the end of the record especially on "The Flower Lady" and "Subie", Van Hoen hits those blunted notes of low-slung basslines and slow-motion grooves that would have been right at home on Mo' Wax back in the day. One of the finest electronica records of 2013 for sure.
We already loved this Mexican duo based entirely on the name, even more so when we discovered that it wasn't just a band name. Lorelle sings, plays guitar, bass and organ. The Obsolete plays drums, percussion, bass, Casiotone, organ, synth, piano guitar and also sings. Not sure if they're a proper couple, but they should be, so we're just gonna assume they are. And they do in fact make beautiful music together. A sort of psychedelic krautrock, noise pop, garage rock. In a way, they remind us of another recent fave Liminanas, but where that band channeled French pop, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete seem to be drawing their influence from something much more noisy and raw, psychedelic and dark. Sure it's jangly and poppy in places, but they lock into seriously hypnotic grooves, fans of outfits like the Moon Duo will be utterly enthralled for sure. They also have a bit of swaggery twang, reminding us at times of Crystal Stilts, and at others a little bit of Stereolab, albeit a much rougher low fidelity version.
The sound here is lush and warm, woozy and hypnotic, druggy and dreamy, tracks like "The December Riots" sound like the Dum Dum Girls slowed down to a gloriously murky crawl, slo-mo girl group bliss out, while tracks like "Art For Free", add some new wave to the group's garage pop crunch. All the songs here though at their core are jangly and catchy, Lorelle and her partner delivering them in varying states of decay, and varying states of tranced out drugginess. At their poppiest, this is the sort of thing fans of Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and Mikal Cronin will flip over, and at their droniest and druggiest, it's a sort of lysergic dirge that should appeal equally to fans of old school drug drift mesmer a la Spacemen 3, and more modern psychedelic noise purveyors like Carlton Melton. Although really, this is just some noisy krauty fuzzy pop, and we LOVE it. A new favorite for sure!
Fact: the Melvins are one of the best bands ever, and continue to be one of the best bands ever.
Fact: the Melvins are always awesome when it comes to doing covers (their version of "Candy-O" by The Cars from Ozma being our favorite, closely followed by their version of KISS's "Going Blind" from Houdini), usually "making them their own" 100 percent.
Fact: they've just released a disc that's all covers, with some guest vocalists, and the song selection is quite eclectic to say the least, occasionally obscure too, including one that maybe only folks from San Francisco will freak out over - they do a song by the Pop-O-Pies!!! Cool.
Our only complaint about this, really, is that with the presence of the guest vocalists, some of the covers, while totally spot-on or otherwise interesting & well-done, maybe don't sound as much like the Melvins as we'd like - if Buzz woulda sung 'em all, we'd be even happier. But it's a quibble.
So, what more do you need to know? Well, the dang tracklist, perhaps. Here it is:
1. "Warhead" by Venom, featuring Scott Kelly of Neurosis
2. "Best Friend" by Queen, featuring Caleb Benjamin of Tweak Bird
3. "Black Betty" not by but as performed by Ram Jam
4. "Set It On Fire" by the The Scientists, featuring Mark Arm of Mudhoney
5. "Station To Station" by David Bowie, featuring J.G. Thirlwell of Foetus
6. "Attitude" by The Kinks, featuring Clem Burke from Blondie
7. "Female Trouble" by Divine
8. "Carpe Diem" by The Fuggs
9. "Timothy Leary Lives" by the Pop-O-Pies
10. "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" by Roxy Music, featuring both Jello Biafra and Kevin Rutmanis (formerly of both the Cows and the Melvins)
11. "Romance" by Tales of Terror
12. "Art School" by The Jam, featuring Tom Hazelmeyer of Halo Of Flies
13. "Heathen Earth" by Throbbing Gristle
Wow, quite a diverse & cool selection, eh? If you're a Melvins fan, you probably want this (unless, perhaps, you hated The Crybaby, which also featured a lot of unlikely covers/collaborations). 'Cause after all, heck, everybody does love sausages!
This long out of print chunk twisted black buzz now reissued and available again!
Debut from the awesomely monikered Moon Knight, the work of James Brown III, a member of LA black metal horde Harassor, who sometimes also releases sick sonic blackness under the name Lord Foul. But as Moonknight, Brown creates that sort of crumbling blown out blissy blackness we can never seem to get enough of, equal parts buzzy and super distorted, hazy and washed out and shoegazey, clouds of caustic buzz and caveman pound seem soaked in soft swirls of melodic shimmer, sweetly melancholic melodies are looped dreamily beneath a churning wall of roiling riffage and guttural demonic growls, the label describes it as Alcest and Amesoeurs mixed with Ildjarn and Bone Awl, and that does pretty much nail it, a sound that is both thick and corrosive, hateful and hellishly menacing, but also woozy, dreamy, and downright pretty, meditatively melodic while simultaneously buzz drenched and brutally black, two great tastes that have really never sounded better together. Might just be one of our favorite new black metal releases, too bad it's LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES, each tape housed in gorgeous letterpressed #'d J-card, printed on sparkly reflective metallic silver paper.
