As heavy-ish late sixties psychedelia from the garage goes, this one-off 1969 album from Long Island's Morgen is a worthy contender. The b&w Edvard Munch "Scream" on the cover is perhaps a clue that this will be fairly dark and tripped out, and it is, with druggy lyrics like: "Come take a bite from my gingerbread house, and let your troubles fade away...". That's from the album's first (and we think bestest) track, a definite fuzz psych classic, "Welcome To The Void". The fuzz is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. The singer (who's a better guitarist) delivers some turned on tales of popular nursery rhyme characters, but mainly you'll be hearing fuzzzz. And there's lotsa wild guitar and more fuzz as the album goes on. For fans of Electric Prunes, Plastic Cloud, The Litter, etc. If you haven't found a previous reissue of this already, we now have this limited numbered edition put out in the UK by Phoenix.
It's been a little while, but finally time to all out another complement of o's. That's right, UK doomlords Moss return with their latest batch of ultra mega doooooooooooooooom. And like their last record, Tombs Of The Blind Drugged, Horrible Night is another collection of slo-mo-sludge, sub-Sabbathian swing, glacial downtuned creep, and churning, lumbering low end heaviosity. The weird thing is, considering how heavy and sludgy these guys are, we only just now discovered they don't have a bass player, and the singer ONLY sings. We always assumed they were a proper three piece, guitar, bass, drums, with one of those blokes singing. Kinda insane that just guitar and drums can conjure up such a thick, blackened oozing sound. But we digress.
While much of the sound on Horrible Night is essentially a continuation of their multiple o'd ultra doom, there is one thing that has changed, and that's the vocals. There are in fact still some throat shredding howls, but the bulk of the vocals are clean, soaring proper singing. Suddenly Moss have a twinge of true doom to them. Vocalist (just vocalist) Olly Pearson does a decent Ozzy-ish wail, which most definitely changes the tenor and tone of the Moss musical universe. The opening title track eventually settles into some old style Mossiness, replete with the howled anguished vokills, there's even some super weird tripped out psychedelic leads at one point, but the whole first half is total old school true doom, slowed down to a crawl, Pearson belting it out. Not sure if we're imagining it or not, but with the clean vocals, even the music seems to swing a but more, sounding a little bit more Sabbathy and stonery. Hard to say if true ultra doomlords will be disappointed, but we're digging it a lot. Definitely adds some melody and musicality to the group's otherwise minimal but massively crushing dour dirgery, and it's interesting too, that the music hasn't changed all that much really, so it's still droned out and doomy, lumbering and trudging, funereal/funeral ultradoom, but now with proper vox. We can't help but feel like the sound's gonna explode into a galloping classic metal groove at any point, and it feels like that expectation imbues the music with a weird dark tension, cuz it never does, Moss have it locked down, keeping their BPM to a minimum, and tuning down as low as they can, unfurling thick sheets of undulating, crumbling, super distorted buzz, the riffs serpentine and slow motion, it's the sort of metal that doesn't inspire headbanging so much as a sort of swaying back and forth, hypnotic, mesmerizing, a many o'd dooooooooooom, given new life, and transformed into the world's slowest, and most abject, blackly psychedelic true ultra doom. And we DIG it.
Our favorite queen of the cassette - Rachel Evans / Motion Sickness Of Time Travel returns! Oust is her most recent release, just released by the German imprint Sic Sic; and yet again, Evans unfurls a gorgeous collection of bleary-eyed electronic abstractions. This time she tilts in an austere direction, reducing the bubbling percolations in favor of oceanic undulations and woozily sung lullabies all dunked in the reverb pool. The opening track "Black Umbrella" pulls her breathy vocalizations to the foreground above her darkened Schnitzler-inspired syncopations. The second track "Row Of Peach Trees" (certainly an allusion to the native Georgian countryside) begins with a similar vibe through her cybernetic arpeggiations and taut filter sweeps, but over the five minute piece, Evans deftly transitions the austere electronics into a twinkling kosmische sound topped with one of those lovely tone-bent melodies that have become an occasional yet beguiling recurring motif in her work. Again she focuses on the vocalization toward the end of side one of this cassette, reprising those melodies found elsewhere. The second side of the tape waltzes around her bright swells all crystal clear, slow melodies that never sound as cloyingly sweet as some of the new age copyists as of late, but there's much more of a sparkling austerity going on here than at the beginning. Lovely as ever. Very limited stock as with all of the Motion Sickness tapes we get in! Just 100 were pressed.
We've long been proponents of the idea, that any sound man can make, using technology and engineering and electronics, nature can make too. And it will be just as mysterious and interesting. Made even more so, that those sounds occur, well, naturally. And in most cases, especially in electronic music, many of the sounds we discover and create using synthesizers, mimic sounds already produced in nature.
Countless field recordings have proven this, and this latest disc - a recording of the ice on a lake in France, slowly melting - does so once again!
By now, regular readers of the list, have been exposed to plenty of unique field recordings, drag races, life support machines, frogs, applause, monkeys, cowbells, barking dogs, rutting deer and of course the sound of water and ice. Ice and water seem to be particularly interesting sonically, as they always seem to be in motion, whether at the microscopic level melting and cracking, or on a more physical level, the sound of rushing rivers, pouring rain.
The sounds here, like many of the other field recordings we are so fond of, sound NOTHING like what you would imagine ice would sound like. Apparently, the layer of ice on the lake, acts like the head of a drum, transmitting the various cracks and crackles and vibrations across the expansive sheet of ice, producing strange tones, some very electronic sounding, all of them mysterious.
This record was woven together the sounds of the ice covered lake on a single day. Hours of recordings edited into one hour, but no other work has been done on these sounds, this is the actual sound of the ice. It begins with the sound of birds, the ice producing tiny little streaks of sound, that do sound like synthesizers, strange space-y FX, suspended in an expanse of murky murmur. The intensity and the frequency of those space-y streaks increases as the day warms up and the ice begins to fracture and melt, the barrage of bleeps and bloops begin to sound like a Star Wars laser battle, and sound like it couldn't possibly be the sound of ice. Eventually, the laser like streaks get deeper, and more resonant, as if someone was adding reverb or delay, until it's just a cloud of fuzzy bleeps and warbly tweets, underpinned by the actual staticky crackle of the ice cracking.
It's hard to explain much better than that, try listening to the sound samples, you will be amazed. It truly is a rare glimpse of some impossible and mysterious soundworld. A peek into how nature works, or at the very least, a chance to overhear the magic of nature, the sounds the exist in the wild, even if most of the time we're unable to hear them. Magical.
A rare live recording from uber-obscure early Tangerine Dream worshippers, Nightcrawlers, a three piece out of New Jersey who released cassettes of their "cosmic floating space music" between 1979 and 1992. Recorded in a church in 1985, these two 30 minute tracks take full advantage of the reverent resonance of the live cathedral environment with beautiful bowed drones, glacial organ and intensely meditative flourishes of futuristic kosmiche. Super-Limited to 50 copies, this group presaged the new age krautrock revival by about 20 years and are long overdue for rediscovery.
Finally, a new record from one of our favorite modern noise pop shoegaze outfits, No Joy, whose first two releases were both HUGE aQ faves, and it looks like this new one won't be any different. We'd like to say No Joy just keep getting better, but they were already pretty goddamn great in the first place, so we'll just say, this new one is just as good as both Ghost Blonde and Negaverse. All of the elements are still in place, huge blown out distorted fuzz guitars, swirling FX heavy atmospheres, dreamy ethereal angelic voices, we basically knew from song one here that there was no reason to resist, but then we wouldn't have wanted to anyway, the simply titled "E" is a monster, churning, soaring, epic and majestic, noisy and distorted and heavy, but somehow simultaneously dreamy and melodic and washed out and woozy, psychedelic and shimmery, we almost wish the track was 40 minutes long and the whole record was just that track. Eventually, the song gets swallowed up in a squall of distorto guitar that is so divine, even the outro noise jam we don't want to end.
But like the other records, No Joy strike a good balance between swirling tripped out shoegaze heaviness, and shimmery jangle pop, although we're happy to report that this time around, they seem to be leaning toward the heavy shoegaze psych side of their sound, with even the prettiest songs here rife with blasts of thick guitar chug, and clouds of lysergic psychedelic swirl. All that and hooks too, the songs' catchy cores wrapped in a protective layer of guitarnoise and gloriously crumbling distortion. Imagine the prettiest, jangliest girl pop you can, and just dip the whole thing in an ocean of buzz, and then roll it in fields of hum and thrum, and then supercharge it and send it careening into the heart of the sun, and that's essentially No Joy.
The new record is definitely more varied than past outings, with moments of gloom pop murk, some drum machine driven electro-pop, some swirly dubbiness, and all manner of variations on minimal twee pop and jangly shimmer, but all of those are woven together by the thick patina of buzz and swirl that seems to surround the whole record, and while nothing quite reaches the ferocity of the opener, there's plenty of noisiness lurking throughout this fantastic collection of fuzz pop bliss!!
Vinyl version includes a digital download!
The return of Obnox, aka Lamont Thomas of psychedelic garage punks Puffy Areloas, and this double 7" is chock full of surprises, none more so than the A side, a weird, noisy, lo-fi garage hip-hop jam, that's right, hip hop, and it's KILLER, the groove is funky but fuzzy and damaged and perfectly lo-fi, soulful and so good. a killer flow over a blown out dirgey groove, with some seriously super distorted bass. But fear not, flip the record over and Obnox take on two short sharp punk as fuck covers, one by the Urinals, the other by Gaunt, both noisy, and chaotic, and distorted and buzzy kick ass.
The second single starts off with a cover of the McCoys' "Hang On Sloopy", plenty sloppy and garagey and chaotic, but plenty groovy and soulful as well, which leads right into the final track, a killer cover of the gospel soul classic "He's Forever" by The King James Version, and Obnox basically just roughs up the edges a bit, retaining much of it's soulful gospel groove, but here wedded to distorted guitars and wrapped in a lo-fi production. Kick ass stuff. Some seriously ruling soul punk from this Puffy Areola gone rogue!
Packaged in a full color gatefold sleeve, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Wow, What a nice and welcome surprise for early electronic music fans! This 2cd anthology is the first re-issued work from one of the most important and unsung heroes of electronic music, Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop. Beginning her career in the forties with the BBC as a "music balancer" (an arduous task of syncing recorded taped music with a live performance feed so that broadcasts would remain uninterrupted in case of war-time blackouts), Oram spent most of her nights fascinated with synthetic sounds and experimenting with oscillators and tape machines, as well as composing unperformed orchestral works and sound pieces for film and play commissions. Promoted to music studio manager, she campaigned for the BBC to provide electronic music facilities for composing music and sound effects using electronic music and musique concrete techniques for use in its programming which led to the founding of the Radiophonic workshop in early 1958. However, her desires to compose music and further her studies and development of synthetic music theory, caused her to leave the BBC a year later. Working off two grants from the Gulbenkian foundation in the 1960's, and supplementing her income through advertising work, she developed her most unique contribution, the Oramics composition machine and the drawn sound technique, an elaborate mechanism that allowed her to create pure sound through the transcription of drawn lines. For being the first woman to direct an electronic music studio as well as the first woman to design and construct an electronic music instrument, her legacy remains largely unnoticed in this male-dominated field. She lectured extensively and wrote one of the most philosophical books on electronic music, called An Individual Note of Music, continuing her developments with early Apple computers until a series of two strokes forced her to retire. She died in 2003. Culled from an extensive archive of compositional pieces, film and play commissions, early sound experiments with the Oramics machine, and advertising jingles, this anthology covers material from the late fifties to the early seventies. Fans of Delia Derbyshire, Raymond Scott and early electronic music enthusiasts of all sorts will find lots to love here. Highly Recommended!!!!
The first we heard from this Chinese noise rock duo was via a self released cd-r/dvd-r sent to us by a friend who was traveling in China. And we were immediately obsessed, their sound equal parts lo-fi punked out pop, swaggery UK style new wave infused post punk, and wild noisy shitgaze indie rock radness. Rumor was these guys were a big deal over there and it's easy to see why. We sold a ton of those cd-r's and then recently, the band got in touch to let us know there was a proper full length coming out, a double lp in fact, and here it is, the awesomely titled If This Cockroach Doesn't Die, I Will, and much like the cd-r, it's another killer collection of raw, distorto garage punk indie noise crunch and jangle, that the band describes the record like this: "Some pretty good tracks. Songs about frustration, cock suckery, idiots being in positions of power and a heap of other worldly themes." The inside of the gatefold features liner notes which are essentially a casual letter to the listeners, a pretty funny conversation about the internet, and what it's like being a band now versus then, even offering you the record for free, at least offering to see what they can do, inviting other bands to come to China to tour, and finally, apologizing for the vocals, saying simply "they can be rough in parts". And yeah, they can be, but it's part of their charm, and a big part of the sound, slipping from yowl to howl to a sung/spoken thing that reminds us of the Fall or maybe Art Brut. The music this time around is similarly noisy, the drums dense and tribal, the guitar super distorted, the riffs pretty simple, but woozy and jagged, Pairs locking into some seriously tranced out passages, that almost sound like caveman This Heat.
But there's plenty of noisy, angular noise pop too, which is mainly what Pairs traffic in, and they definitely sound more and more British every time we hear them, the vocals have a lot to do with it (pretty sure the singer is a British or Aussie ex-pat), and that aforementioned sung/spoken delivery, all wrapped around raw, urgent primitive post punk pound, it's not hard to imagine these two blowing up in the world of NME and Rough Trade, cuz anyone who digs bands like Arctic Monkeys, Art Brut, Franz Ferdinand and all those groups. But Pairs are WAY more punk, their sound way more raw and DIY and noisy, the rough production, not to mention the seriously twisted experimental bent making their sound way more of an underground proposition, but that's also exactly what makes it so good. And you wouldn't hear a band like Franz Ferdinand lock into a super long stretch of noise drenched, angular, minor key, hypno rock pound, but when Pairs do, it's pretty much totally irresistible, and seems to be a good balance to their noise-poppier side.
Here's hoping these two make it over here to play shows, they're definitely one of those bands, as we mentioned in our other review, who sound like they'd be nuts live, wild, sweat soaked, bloody and bruised, the vibe emotional and passionate and seriously intense. And thus WAY recommended.
Comes packaged in a nice thick full color gatefold jacket. No download, but check the liner notes, we're sure you can email them and work something out!
Mark Nelson began recording under the Pan American moniker back in 1997, overlapping his contributions in the seminal slowcore, post-rock trio Labradford. He continued on with Pan American after Labradford called it quits a couple years later, and even as Pan American's catalogue has now eclipsed that of Labradford, much of Pan American's sound stems from the Labradford ethos -- spacious melodies, an electronic dubby minimalism, the whisper of a song, and a world-weary miserablism. Here on Cloud Room, Glass Room, Nelson has rechristened Pan American as a full fledged band with avant-drone percussionist Steven Hess (On, Haptic, etc.) at his side and former Labradford bassist Bobby Donne returning to the fray once again. Throughout Cloud Room, Glass Room, there are plenty of slumping passages of restrained guitar drones and layered electronic wash that are as contemplative and open-ended as the night sky. Pan American puncture spells of this ambience with some far more structured pieces when Hess grounds Nelson's guitar drifts with a sense of rhythm, even on the quietly locomotive skitter of "Project for an Apartment Building." Add Donne back into the mix, and it's easy to hear the ghosts of Labradford once again. "Virginia Waveform" could almost be a Codeine instrumental with those slow descending basslines and washed out, blurring guitars, and the opening cut "The Cloud Room" with its weightless flutter from guitars and electronics hovering above the earthbound rhythm section with its decidedly American-frontiersman slow pacing.
Vinyl-only (with download), limited to 300 copies, on Utech, beautifully packaged, complete with obi, with a gorgeous cover painting depicting a scene from ancient Chinese mythology that's referenced by the band name. Oh, and the music? It's pretty fantastic too, if hard to describe, being an improv session featuring Leslie Low (The Observatory, Arcn Tmpl) and Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkammer) doing a chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter routine, Leslie working with loops of acoustic guitar and voice, gauzey and droney and soft, that meld with the extreme washes of crackling distortion and electronic glitch dished out by Lasse. And it works, the harsh high end insectoid skree sounds and the lovely mesmeric moody looping ones achieving an intriguing harsh/moody synthesis, separately and together quite satisfying to adventurous ears. Imagine, say, something gorgeously drifting and droney on Time Released Sound, remixed by Merzbow. Very nice indeed!!
We really weren't sure what to expect from this, a reissue of a lost collection of 'musique concrete' from warped pop weirdo Ariel Pink, when he was in fact, still Ariel Rosenberg, and long before he would perfect his damaged pop-out-of-time style, fusing lysergic seventies beholden FM radio damage to classic pop music tropes all filtered through some woozy drug addled WTF/ADD sonic experimentation. That said, on first listen, these early tracks, from when Ariel fancied himself a "20th century composer", don't sound all that far removed from what would later become his signature sound. Which is not a bad thing at all. The whole 'musique concrete' tag just smacks a bit of pretentious artworld bullshit, lots of comparisons to Pierre Schaeffer and Xenakis and Luc Ferrari, and sure, some of the techniques here are definitely borrowed from those masters, much of Thrash And Burn assembled from varispeed tape loop experiments, abstract collages, processed primitive loops, home made electronics, all fashioned into a sprawling twisted minimalism, but one that to be fair, definitely looks forward to the warped outsider pop in Pink's future. In fact we'd opine that most ambitious underground music makers tend to employ musique concrete techniques, having grandiose ideas and a limited budget with which to realize them. Fucked up 4-tracks are the modern equivalent to the 20th century composer's tape machines. And if this is Ariel Pink's musique concrete record, then hell, 20th century composer Lou Barlow should get some serious kudos for his musique concrete masterpiece The Freed Weed! Cuz there's some seriously warped, tape damaged, fucked up avant garde sound art experimentation going on all over that record...
But really, fans of Ariel Pink, ourselves included, will find much to dig here, a sprawling collection of damaged, minimal lo-fi abstract art pop, much of it in sketch form, as it seems these were culled from piles of busted up old tapes and scratched cd-r's, recorded in the nineties, only recently found on the floor of Pink's Beverly Hills bedroom, the detritus of a crazy prolific composer, and it's easy to see how some of these could have become proper AP tracks, but here, in their super raw and skeletal form, they definitely display another side of Pink, and they perhaps do reflect his interest in 20th century composition, but it's all all filtered through his funhouse mirror warped pop aesthetic. Many of the tracks are really gorgeous, minimal and rhythmic, layered and textured, psychedelic and hauntingly austere, others are like AP pop songs, stumbling programmed rhythms, warbly organs, wavery crooned vocals, everything wreathed in hiss and hum, and still others definitely display an early form of that VHS tape/retrokitsch/eighties Z-movie score sound that folks like Pink and James Ferraro among others would transform into a modern genre. So yeah, all pretension aside, this is a fantastic glimpse into the early years of one of our favorite modern outsider songwriters, it's woozy and warped, dreamily druggy and fantastically fucked up, it's also abstract and minimal, and experimental enough, so that perhaps to certain ears, it could be cast it in a different light, less a weird pop record with experimental tendencies, and more an experimental record with pop tendencies. Either way, whichever you prefer, we like it a lot!
Hard to believe it's been five years since Pretty & Nice's twisted pop masterpiece Get Young. Not only was that hands down our pop record of that year, it's pretty much remained an all time favorite ever since, in our Pop Pantheon for sure. We were pretty geeked when we found out there was a new record on the way, we had sort of given up, assuming the band had called it quits, and even without hearing it, had prepared for an immediate top spot on our year end list. And these boys did not disappoint. Fans of the last record, and we know there are a lot of you out there in aQ land, you might was well just stop right here and toss this in your virtual cart, and count the days til it shows up in your mailbox, cuz it's everything Get Young was, but somehow even more. The band doing the impossible, and making a record that is somehow EVEN catchier, while being more weird and warped. Holy shit. We literally can barely stand to listen to anything else.
Check out the first sound sample, if that doesn't convince you nothing will, and we'll likely have to revoke whatever pop cred you've accumulated, cuz we have not heard a jam this fun and frenetic, hooky and twistedly catchy in ages (since the last P&N record??), not to mention plenty of WTF production, and an arrangement that borders on the downright prog, again, without losing an ounce of energy, or a teensy bit of its insane catchiness. Strummy and fuzzy one second, stuttery and wildly distorted the next, soaring falsetto vox, plenty of jangle and crunch, and hooks everywhere. And unlike most bands who save the big hook for the chorus, these guys spread it out over the whole song, so not only is it unclear which part IS the chorus, you end up getting stuck in your head, a part of the verse, or a bridge, or a weird little outro, it's almost like they came up with a killer chorus, and just blew it up, splattering the rest of the song with residual catchiness. So good. And it's not just that one song, but it's the one we're currently crushing on HARD.
Back to the beginning, opener, "Stallion & Mare" starts out some old timey baroque pop, before bursting into full on noise pop bliss, slippery, and slithery, groovy, bouncy, falling somewhere between Queen, and Sparks, and maybe Phoenix, with a hint of Ween at their catchiest, quirky and warped, stop start, strange squiggly melodies, it's like math rock transformed into pure pop, and when the bass drops, it's a thick distorted almost-sludge, when strapped to P&N's prismatic pop, it's the most headbangable slab of fuzz pop pretty much EVER.
Follow up "Mummy Jets" is no slouch either, a brilliant blast of new wave pogo-worthy stop start jangle pop, with handclaps, swirling psychedelic guitars, and more falsetto, and again, a twisty turny structure that has no place in a pop song, at least your run of the mill pop song, but these guys manage to make twisty and turny crazy catchy, and you'll find yourself humming these impossibly convoluted pop gems endlessly.
Years back when we reviewed Get Young, we described their sound as sounding like the "classic pop sounds of groups like XTC, Devo, Gang Of Four and folks like Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello, supercharged, then mashed all up with more modern pop masters like the Cardiacs, the New Pornographers, Maximo Park. Angular propulsive, kinetic, rambunctious, wild, energetic, SO SO SO SO catchy!" And as far as all that's concerned, nothing has changed, the popisms are classic, with certain melodies and turns of phrase, reminding us of classic power pop groups, that Yellow Pills sound, early new wave, but here, it's all tangled up and twisted into crazy, but impossibly catchy sonic shapes. We also hear the Dickies, the Sweet, Jellyfish, all stripes of killer pop warped, wrangled and recontextualized into something impossibly weird and wonderful. If we were sold before even listening to Golden Rules For Golden People, now after about 50 listens in a matter of days, we are completely and ridiculously obsessed. And we can guarantee, that once this week's list is put to bed, reviews all done, posted and sent, some of us are going to listen to NOTHING ELSE but this record for the foreseeable future. So totally and utterly and wholeheartedly recommended. ANYbody into quirky catchy pop, will be in absolute heaven.
We're also sorta tickled that these guys found their way on to the Equal Vision label, who tend to specialize in emo/metalcore/Warped tour rock, but do historically have a thing for pop and melody, and as such, Pretty & Nice aren't such a bad fit after all, and heck, would love to see a crowd full of Falling In Reverse and Black Veil Brides fans get a load of these guys...
Offene Turen (Open Doors), Roedelius's little known fifth album from 1982 and issued on cd for the first time, is definitely not like the others. Often considered his "experimental" record, Roedelius completed it shortly after the last major Cluster record, Curiosum, and it sometimes seems as if he wanted to make a record through the eyes of his more taciturn partner, Moebius. While it doesn't quite have Moebius's way with mechanical musical calibrations, the vibe is more stark and atmospheric and the closest we've heard any of the Cluster clan come to sounding cinematically proggy in the vein of John Carpenter and Goblin. Lots of church organ sounds and bell tones with an occasional glimpse into Roedelius's classical romantic side, but less so than on other releases. Definitely one of the worthier weirder records in the Cluster canon, perhaps not the place to start with, but for fans who are looking for something more unusual, there's lots to love, from songs that are seriously spooky and almost Oneohtrix-like, to other tracks that are charmingly naive experiments with the newest (at the time) digital tech. Recommended!
After a handful of gorgeous drone releases under the name Berber Ox, David Rutledge returns with his new trio, Roger Nova Twelve, and a killer disc of experimental krautrock. The opening track here wouldn't have been out of place on a Berber Ox records, a dark, pulsating sprawl of kosmische low end, a softly undulating dronescape wreathed in squiggly high end filigree and underpinned by a hushed warm thrum. But the sound soon shifts gears, a strange swirl of collaged radio broadcasts and mysterious shortwave transmissions gradually gives way to a simple motorik rhythm, the surrounding sounds building momentum, the drums and what sounds like either a bass or a keyboard, locked into an endless hypnorock loop, while all around it, FX swirl and squirm and shimmer. Eventually guitars swoop into the mix, chugging out a trancey psychedelic riff, while another wraps the proceedings in layers of sonic swirl, and suddenly, we're in total space-psych bliss out, sounding like a dreamier more laid back Heads or White Hills, building to a serious heavy psych blowout, a dense squall of guitarnoise, that gradually fades leaving just a sky full of echo drenched delay and the tracks and traces of fully faded out riff.
But that's just part one. Part two begins with a strange muted whirl of percussive murk, peppered with chiming harmonics, everything blurred and bleary, like some strange underwater symphony, burbling and shimmery, voices chopped up and looped into strange textures, laid over the liquid sonic swirl, wreathed in organ and fuzzy soft focus drones, all manner of strange reverbed melodies fragmented and sent spinning off into the ether, all building to a thick billowing cloud of low end, which is when, about 14 minutes in, the first sign of rhythm appears, surfacing gradually, wreathed in the thick swaths of layered loops, finally becoming a proper space jam with about five minutes remaining, droney and tranced out, this blissed out pulsing psychkraut groove fading out way too soon, when it easily could have stretched out for another 35 minutes and filled up the whole rest of the cd-r.
Fantastic stuff, and definitely recommended for fans of the current crop of psych/space/kraut rockers, a la White Hills, Wooden Shjips, Carlton Melton, The Heads, Lumerians, Moonrises, Mugstar etc.
LIMITED TO 30 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered, and housed in a cool clear coat printed envelop made out of magazine pages, each one different. And each one accompanied by a printed postcard/insert.
Debut full length from this Aussie Duo, who traffic in a primitive strain of old school thrashing blackness. Raw and ragged and loose, midpaced riffs and lurching drumming send these tracks galloping through eerie atmospheres, evoking the classic era of old school death metal, but definitely blackened, with a unique take on old school metal. Much of the record is spent thrashing and furiously bashing away, but then on tracks like "Victory Of Withdrawal", the band slow things way down, almost balladic, with shredding, super emotional leads, woozy, gloomy basslines, the sound moody and melancholy, underpinning gruff vokills, a weird combo but it makes for a weirdly powerful one, and when the song does finally kick into gear, it's not blasting or thrashing, it's a strange chugging, super melodic churn, that's downright groovy, accompanied by chiming distorted guitar melodies, pretty cool, and definitely weird, and not much like other metal you hear these days.
Even at it's most furious, these guys add lots of melody, and a hauntingly mournful mood to the proceedings, not to mention lots of classic metalisms, crazy catchy riffs and melodies pop up throughout, the middle portion of "A.J. Shout VC" is about as catchy as music like this gets! The sound too is odd, murky and sorta lo-fi, with clean crooned choruses popping up now and again, spidery guitars wrapped around woozy riffage, everything hazy and gauzey, reverby and echoey, which gives everything a strange feel, a little bit timeless, but also sorta psychedelic. The whole record seems to be a sonic struggle between fierce furious heaviness, and plodding melancholia, the sound seeming to constantly return to super melodic dirges, and achingly miserable melodies. Apparently, the whole record is a rumination on war, which then makes the melancholic musical thread that runs throughout make more sense. Definitely cool stuff. Maybe not brutal enough for some metalheads, but it's pretty atmospheric, with lots of killer riffs, and sprawling, progged out arrangements, woven into moody doomic dirges, and old school classic metal shreddery, all sort of washed out into a hazy psychedelic death metal that we're digging a lot.
This is the most recent issue of this NYC zine, the first one we've carried, but it's a great one to start with. This issue is entirely about the making of the very first proper Black Flag full length album, 1981's Damaged. And while it may be in zine form, all photocopied, hand written, cut and pasted old school style, the writing is fantastic, super smart, and the research extensive, with interviews with all the key players, there's even footnotes, that are expanded upon in the back. It's as much about the band and the record, as the scene at the time, and the political and social climate that contributed to the energy and anger of that record, that band, and that scene - including a lot about chief of the LAPD at the time Daryl Gates, the Rodney King riots, and the polcie versus punks mentality that was prevalent at the time. In many ways the mag reads like an excerpt from a bigger, more comprehensive book, and yeah, we know there's been much written about Black Flag and this era, but Scam mainman Erick Lyle does a fantastic job of condensing it all down to a very readable, 50 or so pages. Lots of photos and flyers, as well as a cool introduction by Lyle about why this record means so much to him. All in all an awesome read, and definitely has us wanting to check out the other eight issues we missed...
Years ago we fell in love with Gunter Schickert's Uberfalling, a 1980 late-krautrock guitarscape epic. The cd reissue of that is now sadly out of print, but we've recently been turned onto Schickert's first lp from 1974, Samtvogel, which at last has been reissued on vinyl courtesy of the Spanish Import label Wah Wah, who have also recently reissued Heldon, Vainica Doble, Inner Space and other international psych gems. Sure, they're a bit expensive, but everything we've heard from the label has been amazing, so they're pretty much worth it.
Especially this one, a three track epic of cavernous space guitar extrapolations and buried lysergic vocal incantations that sounds like an alternate soundtrack to Fantastic Planet. The first track, "Apricot Brandy" gently introduce us into Schickert's sound world, a spacy lyrical repetitive commune riff with murmured vocals and spindly multi-layered guitar percolations that gently float in an echo-y atmospheric chamber. The second track, "Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle" is nearly 17 minutes of space-echo, belltones and strange echo effects that slowly build into more intense repetitive and multi-layered motifs, sometimes urgent and cinematic, and other moments more billowy and sinuous, reminding us of Achim Reichel and Manuel Gottsching, and even obscure krautrock band Temple. The final twenty-one minute track, "Wald", brings the intensity to the fore, with a buzzing guitarscape that sounds like John Carpenter, but soon gives way to a more lilting spacey bubbling and exploratory improvisation before the intense riffs return and interject and subside in strange surges, finally dissipating in little clouds of helium. A beautiful piece of outsider kosmiche! Highly Recommended!
Even though we have yet to review anything on the aQ list from this deep listening black ambient drone technician, most of the drone lovers at aQ were already big fans, how could we not be? Sleep Research Facility, aka Scottish soundscaper Kevin Doherty, specializes in an ultra minimal, spaced out black ambience, weaving sprawling landscapes of hushed thrum and sinister murmur, often manipulating field recordings and processing them beyond the point of recognition, assembling them into bleak, epic, haunting, somnambulant drifts. We were particular taken by this most recent missive, which finds Doherty working exclusively from a selection of field recordings, samples collected from a B-2 Stealth Bomber, at a US Air Force base in the UK, and if there was ever a more appropriate sound source for this sort of hushed sonic mystery, it's the military's most mysterious aircraft.
And while these recordings are obviously not the sounds of the aircraft in flight, it's easy to imagine that this modern marvel of technology was in fact THIS stealthy, emitting just a strange series of hushed rumbles, a deep shimmery thrum, laced with the telltale sounds of radio transmissions, tinny voices from the ether that sound almost like EVP recordings, ghostly and wraithlike. Doherty's manipulations are subtle, weaving the original sounds into gentle pulsations, layering multiple recordings into lush textures, weaving strange sine wave tones and staticky gristle into the proceedings, blurring and smearing everything into hazy, darkly psychedelic sonic shadows.
The mix of abstract low end ambience, and strange transmissions, can't help but remind us of all time aQ fave the Conet Project. It definitely has that same vibe, the clouded provenance of these sounds, the pure musicality of the distinctly non-musical, but Doherty does work his magic, adding subtle swaths of melody, and giving the tracks here, no matter how minimal, a sense of propulsion, beneath the murk and the droned out whir, a barely there rhythmic pulse, while at the same time sculpting the various sound sources into sprawling fields of moody mesmer, a tranced out minimalism that is at once, soothing and darkly tranquil, this record quickly becoming one our favorite records to drift off to in the evening, and yet at the same time, crackling with energy, infused with not just the sounds themselves, but the implied weight of those sounds, borne of this strange machine, one that was devised to inflict violence, the ultimate delivery system for our collective bloodlust, the sounds of which, when at rest, are strangely lovely, albeit rife with a tension implicit in the source, and speak to an alternate purpose, one where this machine, even in repose, becomes less a means of destruction, and instead is involved in the creation of something beautiful and darkly transcendent.
The record proper is accompanied by a second disc, which is the 'source' material Doherty used to create his dark droney vision, and the most interesting thing is how musical that material already is. And while these aren't the raw unedited recordings, they are the 'pre-mix' versions, which are meant to represent those source sounds, and while they are definitely much less processed, they still possess a dark musicality, with much of the grit and gristle of the finished record stripped away, leaving just deep tones, and long shifting layers of thrum and hum and whir, like the record itself, occasionally the true source sounds do reveal themselves, whether it's the clang and clatter of work in the hanger, or the squelched blurts of radio static, but ultimately, the source disc is simply another version of Stealth, one that we actually find equally enthralling. Essential modern dronescaping from this master of the dark sonic arts!
A few lists back we reviewed the recent reissue of the only full length from gothic West Coast punks the Sleepers, on local reissue label Superior Viaduct. As a companion to that lp reissue comes this, the group's 1978 7" debut, reproduced right down to the original cover. And unlike the full length, the 7" finds the band sounding way more punk, sure the deep dramatic vox are present, but they had yet to evolve into what Joe Carducci hyperbolically described as "What Joy Division Might have developed into had they had the balls." It's a little gloomy, and a little gothic, and a little psychedelic, but mostly punk, and it's a heady mix, one that may foreshadow the tribal drum driven gloominess of the lp, but also displays a feral punk rock energy that was less present on the lp. Five killer tracks that we've been listening to like crazy!
We first heard from Irish psychedelic electronic space synth duo Solar Bears via their 2010 debut She Was Coloured In, which we made Record Of The Week, and it remains one of our favorites, a tripped our collection of prismatic dream pop, mysterious vocodered vox, woozy retro psychedelic grooves, Carpenter / Goblin like synthscapes (well, before it was such a THING), string swept slowcore drift, and hazy washed out psychedelic ambience, and here we are three years later, and these guys have finally returned with a sequel of sorts to She Was Coloured In, and in some ways, their M.O. remains unchanged, although the sound has certainly shifted a bit.
After a haunting collaged symphonic intro, which seems to be preparing us for something much darker than we might have expected, the sound explodes immediately into a swirl of cascading minor key synth melodies, tense and moody, their Goblin / Carpenter obsession obviously still in full effect, but SB add had claps, squelchy bass, and soon when the song kicks in proper, they reveal a sound that's more poppy, sounding a bit like a more sinister Phoenix, a dark electro groove slithering beneath that swirl of kosmische synths, and it still sounds pretty goddamn great. Be prepared for the next track though, one of the records' sonic missteps, a bit of cringeworthy electro pop, which on its own might be a little light, but with the dreamy female vox, it becomes something way too twee and fey. But it does signal a sonic change, which is further reflected by the next track, which sounds like the High Llamas gone sci-fi, a sort of Steely Dan retro pop vibe, all woozy electric piano groove, some soulful backup vox, it definitely sound like some classic rock B side transported to the future.
The rest of the record seems to strike a balance between songs like "The Girl That Played With Light" and "Komplex" which channel the dreamy kraut-lite grooves of Stereolab through Solar Bears' warped sonic prism, sounding darkly soundtracky, but simultaneously dreamily psychedelic, and more far out kosmische shimmer, minimal pulsing sprawls of future drift and cosmic psychedelic swirl, with the only other duffer being "Our Future Is Underground" which finds that band returning to that folky female vocal driven twee electro pop, which sounds just a tad out of place.
The best track here is probably the epic (and epically titled) "Happiness Is A Warm Spacestation", a totally killer slab of futuristic psychedelic spaced out synth pop, sounding like the chase scene from some eighties B movie, or the end credits from some lost seventies television show, dreamy melodies tangle around strange sound effects, lazer blorps and pulsing sequenced synth churn, all driven by a dense driving programmed beat, the main 'riff' doused in FX and constantly mutating, sounding a bit like a more avant Daft Punk, stripped down and sinister. Too bad the whole record wasn't this good, but still a pretty enjoyable psych-pop electro-synth ride!
Record number two from these dreamy UK psych pop drifters, who we discovered via a split single with aQ retro pop faves The New Lines, and like on their debut Creatures Of An Hour, Still Corners continue to weave a lush folky dreaminess. But unlike that debut, which seemed to channel Stereolab and Broadcast as well as the various Girls (Dum Dum, Vivian, etc), Strange Pleasures slows things down considerably, positioning itself less as a sort of retro kitschy kraut-psych, and more like some hazy, softly psychedelic slowcore, reminding us mostly of a space age Mazzy Star, if that was even a thing, but judging from Strange Pleasures it most definitely is, and a good thing at that. The gorgeous combination of lush futuristic ambience and warm swirling synths, with acoustic steel string strum, reverb drenched slideguitar, and of course those gorgeous vocals, is pretty tough to resist.
And when things do get weird and electronic, like on the second track "Beginning To Blue", it somehow manages to sound perfectly organic, and meshes perfectly with the rest of the record's gauzy folkiness, the weird stuttery start of "Beginning To Blue" flowing seamlessly into what sounds like a more ethereal, modernized Kate Bush, which is also most definitely a good thing. And that Kate Bush vibe surfaces throughout, in different measures. Strange Pleasures as much about songs this time around as sound, the songs darkly haunting, and beautifully brooding, but the sound too, soaring strings, lush textures, there's definitely some new wave and kosmische elements too, much of the record could pass for some lost 4AD rarity, so essentially, imagine some strange hybrid of Mazzy Star and Kate Bush, melded to woozy space age psychedelia and synth soaked dream pop, and it suddenly doesn't seem like such a -strange- pleasure after all...
Fans of Emeralds and Oneohtrix, here's another fine slab of spacey cyclic synth throb that ought to be right up your alley - the Thrill Jockey debut from Stygian Stride, aka Jimmy SeiTang of AQ faves Rhyton and Psychic Ills. On this solo effort, SeiTang offers up seven tracks of mesmeric electronic pulsations and zoned-out 2001 space odyssey atmospherics, created via vintage analog machines, all very krauty & kosmische, a la Cluster and Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in the '70s, and also very much beholden to Jean-Michel Jarre (whom we should probably name-check more often, really almost as much as we do John Carpenter!).
It's good stuff, definitely up there with the aforementioned Emeralds and OPN, and Steve Moore and Majeure, also reminding us a bit of Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury's rejected Judge Dredd soundtrack Drokk, the more rhythmic parts anyway, while elsewhere Stygian Stride's machine-based improv does the does the ambient drifting-in-space thing, sometimes slightly sinister soundtrack-sounding, quietly creeping but quite pleasant too. Very much recommended!!
Some deep and heady devotional vibes from this unlikely dream collaboration of Sun Araw, M Geddes Gendras and reggae legends The Congos for the latest installment of the RVNG label's FRKWYS series. Reminding us of a more churning and lysergic exploration of Dadawah's long form Nyabinghi jams, Icon Give Thank as this disc in the series is titled, turns the standard dub-reggae expectations on their heads and instead offers a strange brew of soft swells, smoky psych drift and oceanic dub interludes, punctuated by the honeyed falsetto vocals of elder statesmen Cedric Myton and Roydel Johnson from Congos. This release has garnered the most divisive stance of the FRKWYS series among us at aQ so far, with some of us considering it one of the better collaborations and for others a squandered opportunity smacking of colonialism. Granted, the sound design relies heavily on the Sun Araw side of the coin, but his approach is hardly "the white boy playing reggae" criticisms this release has occasionally garnered. The sound, for one, hovers hazily in the air like swirling smoke while the grounding bass is pushed back way in the mix instead of anchoring it rhythmically. Each member of the collaboration has come together on the premise of praise and invocation of thanks, making this project a more spiritual concern than just a good-times-get-high-let's-jam together record. By the end of it, we're in a completely different headspace altogether, in reverent clouds of the Divine.
And along with the cd, you get an hour-long dvd disc, called Icon Eye, a travelogue/documentary all about the collaboration process.
A monthly metal must-read. Cover star: Lee Dorrian of doomsters Cathedral on the occasion of the release of their final album. Also: Repulsion, Uncle Acid, Carcass (new album coming soon!!), Nails, Meads Of Asphodel, Moss, Taake, and plenty more good stuff. Reviews galore, news too, and as always this comes with a free cd sampler stuck to the front cover.
Most of the underwater environmental recordings we're familiar with are of whale songs and Antarctic seals and penguins, but this one takes us to an even more unusual locale: the moat of a medieval castle! How cool is that? The ten tracks on this 55 minute disc consist of material selected by French sound artist Thomas Tilly from about five hours of hydrophonic field recordings he made in the murky green waters of the moat of Sanzay Castle in the west of France. These excerpts represent what Tilly, in his careful listening, found most interesting, a dense buzzing micro-sound world created by the aquatic insects and plants, apparently reacting to the intensity of the summer sunlight on the surface of the water. Aside from some "slight equalisation", he made no electronic treatments or altering edits of the raw recordings; weird as it is, this is what you'd hear if you dunked your head in the moat and gave a long listen! Yet, it SOUNDS quite electronic (something that other nature recordings have prepared us for). They certainly don't sound of organic origin. Buzzing, pulsing, chattering drones. Rhythmic, intriguing. Steady mechanical whirr. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. Constant clicking, like the ticks of a Geiger counter. Sudden sharp whines... decay... Even Morse Code like BLEEPS! (Is that a robot rusting away at the bottom of the moat, still emitting sounds? Did a mad scientist once inhabit this castle?).
It makes us think, Raster-Noton meets Sounds Of North American Frogs. Almost makes you wonder why the likes of Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, Nerve Net Noise, all the experimental electronica, digital glitch, clinical clicks and cuts types even bother, when instead of investing in a laptop computer and software, it seems you merely need to submerge a microphone in a suitable stagnant moat. Of course we're kidding. But the thought does occur.
The varied ambient textures of these tracks are mesmeric for sure, and surprising. The most fascinating Found Sounds / Field Recordings find we've run across in recent weeks (unless you count the new Thai Elephant Orchestra, but those elephants are playing instruments).
Along with the revamped Conet Project, here's another no-brainer for a Record Of The Week� We've listed it before, years and years ago, when there was a cd version on Akarma, but this is a much nicer, expanded, official reissue and it's good to give it a proper review for the first time (back then, we merely quoted The Seth Man from Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, waxing rhapsodic about this record, now we'll do it ourselves).
Oh boy. Do you like psychedelia? DO YOU HAVE THIS ALBUM? If not, you're in for a treat, a mindblowing treat. Think Pink was the brilliant solo effort from former Pretty Things drummer John "Twink" Alder, and it's an all-time aQ fave, an all-time underground psychedelic masterpiece, right up there with the essentials from the likes of Amon Duul II, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Sam Gopal, Kaleidoscope, and Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it's just been properly reissued on cd by the UK's Sunbeam label, with a whole bunch of bonus freakery added on. Not that this album NEEDS any bonus freakery, it's about as freaky as you can get to begin with, packed with droning chant, druidic prophecy, spaced-out psych jams, weird twisted pop, and acid-folk ramble. But, too much is never enough, right? So heck, we're happy to have the eight bonus tracks too. More on those later. First, let's discuss the original album itself. As we said, Twink played drums for The Pretty Things, but before that had his own sixties R&B outfit the Fairies. After that band, he was in Tomorrow ("My White Bicycle") with future Yes guitarist Steve Howe, around 1967. Twink then briefly formed a duo called The Aquarian Age, before joining up with The Pretty Things and appearing on their concept-album classic S.F. Sorrow in '68, another aQ fave. At that point, for some crazy reason (things were different/better back then) Twink was offered a deal by Sire to do a solo album, and Think Pink was the glorious, if at the time somewhat unheralded, result, recorded in 1969 with Mick Farren of The Deviants producing. Released in 1970 in the US & Europe, but not 'til '71 in the UK, it's been called the first Pink Fairies album, and in a way it is, as soon after making it, Twink did team up with several ex-members of The Deviants, most of whom played on this, to form that infamous proto-punk outfit. And several tracks here feature contributions from what's credited as "The Pink Fairies Motorcycle Club & All Star Rock & Roll Band".
Also participating are several of Twink's Pretty Things bandmates, his girlfriend Silver Darling, and Steve Peregrin Took, Marc Bolan's partner in Tyrannosaurus Rex and early T-Rex, who plays, among other things, "pixie horn". And one of the most crucial contributors to Think Pink, besides Twink himself, has to be guitarist Paul "Blackie" Rudolph, who really lets loose, earning a hallowed place in the annals of distortodelic guitar wrangling for his work on this album alone (though in the course of his career before and after, he also played with The Deviants, Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Robert Calvert, and Brian Eno).
Eastern-tinged opener "The Coming Of The Other One" sets the scene, pulling us deep into its trippy Aquarian Age fantasy zone, with a solemn voice reciting Nostradamic verses ("In the year 1999 and seven months, from the skies shall come an alarming powerful king...") accompanied by tablas and sitar. Then comes Think Pink's biggest "hit" as far as we're concerned, an utterly perfect slice of stonery psych called "10,000 Words In A Cardboard Box", just listen to it! That's followed by "Dawn Of Magic" with its raga-like vocal ahhhaaaaahh sounds as if Pandit Pran Nath were on the mic, which suddenly segues into the space-out sike-pop of "Tiptoe On The Highest Hill", a lovely pastoral song that eventually builds into a howling guitar blow-out of the highest order. Then the trippy "Fluid" chimes into being, with its sexy heavy breathing and slinky, springy grooves, making us think of the acid-fried hippy orgasms of krautrockers Brainticket's classic Cottonwood Hill (released later on, in '71, we should also note).
Side two (track six here) opens with the martial fuzz-freakout of "Mexican Grass War", all chanting freaks and wild FX like early Amon Duul and Edgar Broughton Band. The freaky vibes continue, quite weird and wonderful, with the glammed up jam of "Rock An'Roll The Joint", the mellow morbid acoustic strum of "Suicide" and the maniacal "Three Little Piggies", before the album ends with the intense edgy psych pop of "The Sparrow Is A Sign", a song with a malevolent, sinister side to it that reminds us a little bit of Comus - and strangely too of the Sun City Girls, perhaps due to the vocals, provided by Steve Took.
Then, there's all those bonus tracks, the first two of which are actually from the lone 7" single released in '68 by The Aquarian Age, the immediate precursor to the Think Pink project. There's the A side, being the original version of "10,000 Words In A Cardboard Box", and the B side, an amusing number called "Good Wizard Meets Naughty Wizard", which displays just the sort of twee, hippie British humor the title suggests. It's great to hear both of those, and the bonus tracks proliferate further with unreleased, alternate versions of more Think Pink material, somewhat heavier or rawer or definitely different, including two takes of "Fluid" and another version of "10,000 Words...", which we can't get enough of anyway.
All in all, a nicely done reissue, as this deserves, with pages and pages of newly-written, informative liner notes, plus lyrics, credits, vintage photos & graphics. Plus, unlike that previous Akarma version, this is a fully-legit release, done with the participation of Twink himself ("issued under exclusive license from Mohammed Abdullah John Alder, February 2013" it says here, and there's even a picture of him today too - apparently he's become a Muslim, and looks quite happy).
By the way... Nobody here at aQ can think about Think Pink, though, and not also think about our "customer" whom we call The Twink Think Pink Guy. We don't believe he's ever actually bought anything, but he's this older guy that comes in once in a while (and has for years) and always, always, ONLY asks about Think Pink, whether we have it in stock or not, and then talks at great length to anyone who will listen about how great it is. It's his favorite record apparently, but don't let that dissuade you, if you get this you probably won't end up like him. Probably.
Message for The Twink Think Pink Guy, if you're reading this: we expect to see you soon!
About the only bad thing we can say about a new issue of this great magazine of "wild sounds from past dimensions" coming out, is that it means we're all just a little bit older. Other than that, always a happy occasion. #35 is their 30th anniversary issue, so they know what we mean about getting older. Wow, editor Mike Stax started doing Ugly Things (aka "the fanzine that refused to die") back in 1983?! And it's still going strong, this 176 page issue is proof of that. As usual it's packed (in tiny print) with lots of interesting features and interviews on obscure and otherwise bands of years and years past, mostly in the psych/garage genre, also power pop, acid rock, hippie folk, early punk, etc. This time 'round there's stuff on The Seeds, The Nazz, heavy rockers Thunder & Roses, The Radiators From Space, The Paragons, and plenty more, including a piece called "The Secret Police Vs. Hungarian Rock", also a guide to New York Dolls collectibles. Plus of course tons of reviews, and the usual columns and such, like The Pretty Things page and Cyril Jordan of the Flamin' Groovies "San Francisco Beat".
Tons and tons of stuff here you maybe didn't know you'd care about, but the stories are so in-depth that they end up always being interesting on a historical, human-interest level even if you never have heard a note of music by the artist in question, though of course the likelihood is that you'll soon want to�
So as always, a recommended read - set aside some hours or weeks to fully delve in!
Uncle Acid's debut came out of nowhere to be the runaway heavy rock hit of last year. And like the last Electric Wizard album, it was one of those rare records that seemed to leap all genre lines. Quickly becoming one of the most played records at aQ, with metalheads and non metalheads alike. Similarly, we sold TONS of them, and not just to heavy music folks. And it most definitely IS heavy. But like Ghost, and Goat, and other heavy bands people flipped for recently, the group's heaviness was tempered by heaping helpings of poppiness, that transformed what at first blush might seem simply like more Sabbath worship into something else entirely.
Originally released in such tiny numbers that initial pressing disappeared before most anyone got a chance to grab it, that and the weird band name, and of course the 'mystery' surrounding the group and its members, resulted in the sort of hype most bands would kill for. But once we (and everybody else) got an earful, we were sold. Heavy and groovy and hooky, super psychedelic, totally rocking, with a very Ozzy-ish vocalist, killer songs that would have translated seemingly just as well to a non metal band, but metal it most definitely was, but the kind of groovy hook filled metal they just don't make so much anymore.
Our first taste of this highly anticipated new record, Mind Control, came in the form of first single "Poison Apple", which pretty much takes up right where Blood Lust left off, sounding like it could have been a deep cut plucked from the first record, a woozy, slithery main riff, that kills, the vocals sing-songy and crazy catchy, lots of swirling psychedelic organ, if anything a little bit darker than the first record, but that's most definitely not a bad thing at all. When we finally did get Mind Control, we were initially convinced that in fact it was much darker and more woozily psychedelic, opener "Mt. Abraxis" is a smoldering slither, all fuzz drenched minor key Sabbathian grooviness, and we were LOVING it, and were totally prepared for a whole record of dark, minor key, psych-metal doom, but then BAM, the song explodes into some seriously catchy, and almost proggy sounding poppiness, still fuzzed out and heavy, but crazy groovy and rocking and sorta FUN sounding if that makes any sense, but then before you know it, they slip right back into another classic doom-ic dirge. Which is pretty much the magic of Uncle Acid, balancing epic Sabbathy true doom groove, with what is essentially heavy popsyke, which results in what will no doubt be lots of folks fave heavy record of 2013, which it's fast becoming for us too.
And it seems a strange coincidence that the new Uncle Acid would come out around the same time as the new Ghost, cuz the two bands definitely share some sonic DNA. Check out tracks like "Evil Love", which sounds exactly like Ghost's modern channeling of Blue Oyster Cult, but of course Uncle Acid crank that sound WAY up into something more lysergic and metallic, but at its core, it's still essentially classic hard rock for sure. Or there's "Follow The Leader" that almost sounds like a more metallic Spacemen 3, super droned out and psychedelic, and laced with slide guitar and a bit of twang, wrapped in clouds of hazy heady buzz, but seriously fuzzed out and dreamily druggy. And while we talk about how hooky and poppy Uncle Acid are, they do deliver the doom, it heaping sludgy spoonfuls, with plenty of tracks unfurling like long lost Sabbath B sides (the whole record way better Sabbath than the new ACTUAL Sabbath song we just heard), and it all culminates in the epic closer "Devil's Work", which seems to be the best fusion of all of the group's disparate influences, a droned out main riff, a dense metallic chug, that churns beneath some super poppy seventies classic rock sounding melodies, and eventually mutates into a hushed, dreamy, drifty, slow burn psych jam fade out.
So fucking great. With this AND the new Ghost, it's a wonder we've managed to listen to anything else at all lately.
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find our review of the new full length, Mind Control, from UK psychedelic stoners Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, but this right here is the teaser single that came out a few months back. We got a bunch and sold out, and just managed to get a handful more, most likely the last copies we'll be able to get. We won't go into too much detail, as a single like this is mostly for the rabid fans, seeing as it's $15 for two songs, one of which is on the new full length. So basically you're paying for one exclusive track, but it's a doozy, and as we've discovered, Uncle Acid fans are an obsessive bunch, so if you are one, might want to grab one before they're gone.
The A side is "Poison Apple", from the new record, which pretty much takes up right where the last record Blood Lust left off, sounding like it could have been a deep cut plucked from that first record, a woozy, slithery main riff, that kills, the vocals sing-songy and crazy catchy, lots of swirling psychedelic organ, if anything a little bit darker than the first record, but that's most definitely not a bad thing at all. The B side even more than "Poison Apple" sounds like it could have come straight off Blood Lust. swaggery and swinging, groovy and stonery, a wicked main hook, and a kick ass almost classic metal sounding riff. And unlike much of the new record, that does tend toward a sound that's darker, and slower, and more laid back, "Under The Spell" sounds like what Mind Control could have sounded like if the band just made a Blood Lust part two, a poppy heaviness that few bands can pull off as well as these guys, and the more we listen to this track, the more we think it just might be worth the $14.98. Obviously recommended, mostly for fans, but odds are if this ends up being the first thing you hear from Uncle Acid, you'll end up wanting everything else as well!
Here the latest of the warehouse finds we've been able to dig up stock on Unsound - the seminal underground San Francisco magazine from the '80s focusing on the amorphous regions between punk, industrial culture, the performance-art world, and outsider shock tactics. Volume Three Number One begins Unsound's final year of publication in 1986, with a lead feature / interview with the devilishly funny German noise performance outfit Die Todliche Doris, the journalist / musician / tape-dealer Vittore Baroni, the psychically sexual / sexually psychic duo Audio Leter (sic) with a lengthy critique of their little known work as well as an interview. There's also a suitably bizarre 'interview' with members of the Church Of The SubGenius, the subversive collective of crackpots and giggling conceptual artists that developed into a quite a cultural sensation by the early '90s. Zine reviews, music reviews, and networking contacts galore! A vintage collectible, hence the price.
Here the latest of the warehouse finds we've been able to dig up stock on Unsound - the seminal underground San Francisco magazine from the '80s focusing on the amorphous regions between punk, industrial culture, the performance-art world, and outsider shock tactics. This issue has some serious heavy hitters providing interviews: Nurse With Wound, Chris & Cosey, John Duncan, The Haters, Nocturnal Emissions, Club Moral, and Graeme Revelle. Plus, there's an interview with John Zorn, who by the late '90s had embraced a near complete media blackout... so here's some very rare insight into his work from the jazzman himself. This is an extra thick issue with 128 pages in total, chock full at the end with loads of zine and record reviews, and tons of cool old ads (including one for aQ!). A vintage collectible, hence the price.
Here the latest of the warehouse finds we've been able to dig up stock on Unsound - the seminal underground San Francisco magazine from the '80s focusing on the amorphous regions between punk, industrial culture, the performance-art world, and outsider shock tactics. Volume Two designates the year being 1985 for Unsound with the typically wonderful array of underground miscreants in this issue including interviews with Controlled Bleeding, a young Karen Finley (well before her 'controversy' from receiving grant money from the NEA for making 'obscene' art... and there's a transcription of her "I'm An Ass Man" performance as well!), Negativland right when they were on the verge of seriously fucking with the San Francisco media with their Escape From Noise pranks, and the lost performance artist Ellen Zweig. Reviews galore from records we could only dream of getting to hear, plus all the networking one could need to begin one's own industrial culture in the pre-Google days. A vintage collectible, hence the price.
*MISSISSIPPI ALERT*
Another awesome vinyl compilation of amazing sounds from the golden era of Ethiopian music, this time culled from Ethiopiques Vols. 24 and 25.
The second you put the needle on the record, you'll be transported, and in fact, the sounds you hear may sound strangely familiar, as legendary Ethiopian vocalist Seyfou Yohannes croons over a track we've definitely heard before, on Ethiopiques 2 we think, but it hardly matters, Yohannes' vocals transform the song completely, still smokey and sexy, but reimagined and reinterpreted. And fantastic!
The bulk of Ethiopian records were produced in a single 10 year period, 500 singles, 30 lps, all produced between 1969 and 1978, of those, the tiny Amha label released 103 two song 45's and a dozen lps, between '69 and '75, collecting various tracks that were attempts to modernize traditional Ethiopian music, without radically altering it. Folk music, wedding songs, nursery rhymes, traditional melodies, songs that have been passed down and passed on over generations, some musics and melodies so revered that they have been officially elevated to the status of "musical modes of reference" by official doctrine(!), all borrowed and reinterpreted by various singers and ensembles over the years.
The tracks here are almost all acoustic, utilizing traditional instruments, as well as piano, mandolin and accordion, but to these ears it sounds fantastic, as good as ever, that sound that is so immediately recognizable as Ethiopian, horns and drums and percussion and handclaps, and of course the voices, it's so much about the vocalists, especially here, soulful croons, female back up vox, lots of call and response, deep and rough, smooth and silky, but always so expressive and emotional and powerful,
But they are all incredible, of course, most of the names are new to us, no Mahmoud Ahmed, no Getatchew Mekurya, a track from Mulatu Astatke, but more folks like Seyfou Yohannes, Ayalew Mesfin, Getatchew Kassa, Tamrat Molla, the sound though is so distinctly Ethiopian, warm languid horns, moody minor key piano, simple shuffling rhythms. and of course the vocals, lush crooning, the perfect compliment to the music's dark sultry mystery. There seem to be two distinct styles represented, the soulful funky slow burning grooves, haunting, late night, sexy, and the more festive and funky, a sort of Ethiopian reinterpretation of American rhythm and blues, with soaring sunshiney melodies, acoustic guitars, and more horns, both are irresistible, and anyone who has even been dabbling in this series or the other Mississippi vinyl reissues, will dig this big time. Just perfect for the impending warm summer days, and lazy summer nights...
Celluloid was always one of those prolific kitchen sink labels that you were never sure you could trust. Operating between the late seventies and late eighties, their releases were often hit and miss, mainly because they never consistently focused on any particular genre, gravitating bravely instead towards dynamically urban niche markets (no-wave, punk, hip-hop, future dub and eighties afro-beat) when most of the music industry at the time basked in a mainstream top-40 wasteland of monocultural white MTV blandness. Where else would you find a label with such diverse acts as Fab 5 Freddy, Snakefinger and Ginger Baker? Thankfully, the fine folks at Strut separate the wheat from the chaff and give us a killer introductory comp of the label's best and most obscure moments, serving as a historical record of this unique musical time.
Founded by Jean Georgakarakos, a French record shop owner who co-founded the BYG record label and managed at one time the bands Magma and Gong, Celluloid was born from a move to New York and recognizing a need to release socially resistant music that was growing in popularity at underground clubs and parties, but couldn't be heard on the radio or bought at record stores. Noticing trends in New York that were also happening in Europe, Celluloid released new wave music from French acts Mathematiques Moderne and Nini Raviolette as well as Americans, James Chance and Suicide, but eventually moved to hip hop and dub with Afrikka Bambata and Bill Laswell's Material. Laswell often produced most of the later releases especially as the label expanded into dub and African musical territory. The label folded as the mainstream finally caught up with them. MTV finally got on the hip hop train, and more DIY labels were sprouting after the rise of college rock, leading the way towards grunge and alternative rock. Though they weren't always consistent, Celluloid was pretty influential in opening up new genres of music to a much wider audience.
Here are all of the artists represented: Shockabilly, Massacre, Ferdinand, Mathematiques Moderne, Thomas Leer & Robert Rental, Snakefinger, Winston Edwards & Blackbeard, Lightin' Rod (with a posthumous appearance by Jimi Hendrix!), Future 2000 feat. The Clash, Timezone, Deadline, Bobongo Stars, Toure Kunda, Nini Raviolette, Modern Guy, Sapho, Ginger Baker, Last Exit, Mandingo Feat. Foday Musa Suso & Herbie Hancock, Manu Dibango, Material, D. St., B Side with Bernard Fowler, Fab 5 Freddy and The Last Poets. Wow!
When we think of Bollywood, our minds instantly go to the golden era of Indian film music from the '60s and '70s, with classical sitars and tampuras set to thriller and noir themes and exotic pop, often forgetting that Bollywood has of course never stopped making films, and the film music has continually changed with the times. Even with the discovery of other flourishing filmmaking centers such as Lollywood in Pakistan and the Tamil-speaking Kollywood of South India bringing in the influences of synthesizers and eighties pop, we still weren't prepared for the amazing modern sounds of another fertile film and soundtrack music scene, this time located a continent away in Kano, the capital city of Nigeria - thus their thriving movie industry is called Kannywood. This compilation, brought to us by the folks at Sahel Sounds and Mississippi Records who have previously brought us those Music From Saharan Cellphone comps, is a great introduction to the sounds of popular film music made by the dominant Hausa culture of Nigeria from the past few years.
Bollywood music became more popular outside of India as the industry moved from films to television and the music began to be heard on the radio. While the Muslim culture of the Hausa people frowned on Hindi cinema, they began to see the advantages of taking the medium of music and film and crafting their own cultural take on the genre, often lifting the music and plotlines wholesale into their own language and cultural tropes. The music, in the beginning was played with traditional instruments, but the invention of the Yamaha PSR keyboard and the switch from video to digital has increased production into thousands of movies and songs of strangely charming and fluorescent dance pop.
For anyone who loved the strange hybrid of new wave dance pop of that Shangaan Shake compilation, or the Saharan Cellphone comps, this compilation carries the same global hybrid of tradition and new technology with most of the music utilizing digital synthesizers and auto-tuned vocals (mostly to imitate the high pitch of Indian Bollywood singers) that emphasizes the exotic side of global pop but yet remains so insanely catchy and infectious.
Second volume of Yazoo's The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of series, 'The Return Of' as it says on the cover, another collection of fantastic and fantastically rare music from the twenties, blues, folk, bluegrass, all manner of American traditional music, in all their crackly glory. Unlike the first volume, which was literally a compilation of THEE rarest records that collector dreams are made of, the second volume focuses more on iconic performances and more famous recordings, tons of amazing stuff, including legendary tracks from performers like Charley Patton, Bukka White, Ernest Stoneman, Furry Lewis, Blind Blake, and loads more. But it's the unknowns (unknown to us that is) that are the most fascinating, including awesomely named groups like the Fruit Jar Guzzlers, or the Mississippi Possum Hunters, or George Edgin's Corn Dodgers. We could go track by track, but odds are if you dig cool collections of 78's, and old timey compilations, these Stuff That Dreams Are Made of collections are tough to beat. Two discs, 46 tracks, all housed in an oversized six panel dvd sized digibook, with a hilarious cover drawing by Drew Friedman, demonstrating the plight of the record collector, which is explored in great detail in the massive booklet, with liner notes detailing the trials and travails of searching out these rare records, from the folks who actually did, it's super fascinating, especially considering how different record collecting is today, and the relative availability of pretty much EVERYthing in the modern world. There's also notes on the music and the performers, as well as some cool photos of said performers, as well as a few super cool shots of old record stores!
We'd been hearing about this lp for a while, a very unlikely gathering of four black metal or tangentially black metal outfits, including two of our favorites, alchemical post rockers Aluk Todolo, and spaced out psychedelic black metal outronauts Nightbringer, along with Nihil Nocturne and Saturnalia Temple. And while all four bands explore dramatically different sonic territories, the disparate sounds and philosophies seem to merge into one mysterious and abstract whole.
Saturnalia Temple start things off in a decidedly UN black metal fashion, thick lugubrious riffs, spacey and druggy and woozy and sprawling, laced with soft psychedelic leads, Very early Earth sounding, until the riffs begin to gather momentum and take shape, and then suddenly it sounds like Kyuss at 16 rpm, some sort of sun baked desert rock, slooowed waaaaaay doooooown, lysergic and hazy, a sort of blackened and metalized slow blues, that just crawls and creeps until the drums finally kick in, and then it's some stoner doom, but with the groove dialed way down, a trancelike churn, peppered with bits of minor key melody and deep chanted monklike vocals.
Nightbringer step up, and explode in frenzy of whirling spaced out blackness, soaring frantic riffs, blasting black beats, the sound more astral and celestial than grim and frosty, the track constantly shifting, from lightning speed blast to warped midtempo moodiness, wild leads tangled up everywhere, haunting chanted vox, totally majestic and epic, even at its doomiest, the sound transcends, the guitars stratospheric, the arrangements lush and sprawling, a total heart of the black sun blast of galactic black bliss.
Nihil Nocturne offer up yet another black facet, theirs a midtempo blackness, digey and Burzumy, with just a little groove, giving their track a very Khold like vibe, a sort of modern Moonfog band feel, but with a surprising twist, the track shifting abruptly, into something much more abstract and un-metal, with glimmering clean guitars, electronic rhythms, the stereo super panned, the sounds swooping from ear to ear, speaker to speaker, major key melodies, until a super creepy processed voice begins to intone ominously, and the track begins again, a black metal Godspeed slow build epic, finally finishing off with a frenzied chaotic climax.
And finally the mighty Aluk Todolo, who do their own thing, and manage to evoke as much mood and mystery as any of the other bands, even working with a WAY more stripped down and minimal sound, that sort of post noise dark rock kraut drone they seem to have conjured in some strange ritual, and the sounds is indeed ritualistic, but also utterly hypnotic, and mesmerizing, all motorik rhythms, simple serpentine basslines, clouds of keening feedback, and abstract guitar crunch, swirls of effects, drifting fragmented melodies, but the drums driving everything, holding it all together, loose and tight at the same time, locked in, but drifting occasionally. Can, Faust, This Heat, German Oak, not black metal, not even remotely, maybe it's the vibe, or the mood, or the band pedigree, but it hardly matters, this is blackened and heavy totally enthralling dark and mysterious minimal hypno rock and it RULES.
Gorgeous packaging, super striking artwork and a massive 12 page 12" x 12" booklet, and yeah, SUPER LIMITED.
A very nice split release from Hooker Vision, who are introducing us to these two outfits from Asheville, North Carolina. Villages (aka Ross Gentry) actually had a release on Hooker Vision a couple years back and has a more recent LP on Bathetic. We can report that the 25 minute offering from Villages on this tape is pretty killer stuff. After a desolate piano interlude, the tape swells with a fuzzy, shimmering treated guitar drone akin to those wondrous blurred noises from Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz, gradually giving way to a somber interlude for plucked banjo and maudlin Appalachian fiddles. These moments locate the production as harkening from the south even with all of those digital pixel smears and melodic abstractions.
Divine Circles, we know even less about, but the opening melodies plucked on a violin are joined by complementary slow guitar riffs that do recall some of the more introspective moments of Godspeed You Black Emperor or even some of Aidan Baker's hypnotic dronework, before either party were to rip into a full-frontal, pathos laden crescendo. Here, Divine Circles keeps their sounds intimate and calm, slowly building the track in the round, with the violinist taking up the bow later on with gorgeous swells of arboreal melodies along with those slow dirgy guitars and some haunted female vocalizations. Definitely looking forward to more from both of these outfits. 50 minute in total for this cassette; and again with all those Hooker Vision tapes, this one is super limited to 100 copies.
We were pretty blown away by the last White Fence record, a sprawling double album spread out over two lps (or one cd), which found one man band WF aka Tim Presley, spitting out a dizzying barrage of fractured jangle pop and warped garage rock, an already massive collection of songs, supposedly culled from more than 80 written for the record, which only confirmed what we sort of already knew, that White Fence was maybe the weirdest and most idiosyncratic outfit in the SF garage rock scene, which is full of genius weirdos (Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, etc.). On this new one though, Presley manages to both get even weirder, AND dip into much more traditional songsmithery. It's almost as if instead of working on songs in his garage, Presley assembled a rickety old time machine, which he used to travel back to the sixties, which is definitely where this record seems to find most of its sonic inspiration, but it's almost as if that rickety time machine only barely made it back, jumbling up all of Presley's perfect sixties garage pop songs in the process, so all the lilting melodies, fuzzy, strummy dreaminess, spidery psychedelic leads, hazy crooned vox, swirling acoustic guitars, came through the portal just a little bit fucked up, sounds that seem to melt before your ears, weird blurts of damaged effects, sounds swooping backwards, drums doused in delay, fuzz guitar cranked and jammed WAY above the mix. The mixes all over the place, raw and brittle one second, lush and lovely the next, drums loud, guitars howling, melodies muted and muddy, vocals barely there in the background, then cooing in your ear. In a way, it almost reminds us of Faxed Head, the way their caveman metal was defined by the recording, the tape drop outs, the weird varispeed pitch changes, everything woozy and crumbling and falling apart. Which is basically how Cyclops Reap sounds, BUT, all of that weirdness and fucked up damage, can barely disguise the sheer pop brilliance on display here. Total retro jangle pop garage fuzz genius. Total sixties hippie hookiness, hazy power pop shimmer, swaggery blooze garage stomp, all tangled into some of THEE best and catchiest pop songs EVER. Minus all the damage, this could have easily been some lost sixties artifact unearthed and reissued, in fact, the whole time machine thing above, could easily be swapped out for someone ACTUALLY discovering Cyclops Reap in an old dusty, moldy box, in the basement of some SF flat, the tapes warped and mildewy, that damaged translating into some of the more psychedelic sonics here.
Needless to say, we've loved every White Fence record, and this one's no different, in fact it's fast becoming our new favorite. And as hard as Presley seems to be trying to obscure his perfect jangly fuzz pop masterpieces, that sonic obfuscation only serves to make them that much more warped and wonderful.
Note: the vinyl version already sold out but is soon to be repressed, we're told.
It takes a lot for a doom metal record to knock us on our asses. Sure it's a sound we love, so even the most pedestrian doom pushes our buttons, and we tend to find it sonically pleasing, but as a genre, doom more than most metal subgenres has a tendency to become boring and ponderous. It's sort of unavoidable, it's slow and dreary and depressive, and so it takes some sort of spark to turn that sort of dreary sonic depression into something you want to listen to. So what is it exactly about this record, the debut from these Richmond doomlords (which weirdly features members of Alabama Thunderpussy) that has us losing our shit? In fact we'd been chomping at the bit to get this reviewed on the list, but our distributors continued to be out of it.
So here it is, finally, presented for your approval, and we can safely say that since we first discovered this record, we've listened to little else. It's slow, heavy, Sabbathy, hell it even starts out with the whole rain and thunder and whipping wind thing (which in fact pops up throughout the record!), but it's also seriously droney and tripped out, in fact listening to it now, it definitely reminds us of Electric Wizard a LOT, the same mix of classic churning doom, and witchy psychedelia, the vocals are doused in effects and soar majestically beneath heaving walls of blackened doomic crumble, the songs are peppered with squalls of wild wah guitar, the drumming is monstrous, the riffs KILL, and the songs are catchy as fuck. The band lock into these super tranced out almost mantra like workouts, that remind us of EW's "Supercoven", the sort of drug drenched heaviness that inspires a woozy lethargic swaying hypnotic headbanging, a sort of trancey worshipful reverence that only the truly exalted doom outfits command.
We're also reminded weirdly of Acid Bath, the band have a serious knack for apocalyptic psychedelic pop, but here rendered in shades of dirge and doom, just check out "Heap Wolves" which sounds like a doom band covering something off Paegan Terrorism Tactics. Heavy and psychedelic, doomy and droney, Windhand have most definitely made THEE psych doom record of the year, and a serious contender come year end top ten lists, metal OR otherwise!
FYI there's also a cd version, but our supplier wuz out, hopefully we'll have 'em soon...
Latest blast of twisted noise drenched otherworldly blackness from Moosejaw, Saskatchewan's Wold, fronted by mysterious sonic alchemist Fortress Crookedjaw, this mysterious duo offer up another slab of baffling brutality, that seems now more than ever to be almost completely loosed from the bounds of traditional metal, hell, any sort of metal at all, instead sounding like some sort of industrial / noise / power electronics blow out, the sound buzzing and hissing, looped churning squalls of white noise and grey thrum, the vokills an inhuman croak/whine, having just reviewed Sore Throat, and elsewhere on this list Anal Cunt, we'd posit that Wold's sonic orbit exists more in the realm of noise, it's not really until the third track here, "Free Goat Of Leviticus", the the sound takes on a shape even remotely resembling metal, and it remains REMOTE, the blasting and buzzing blown out completely, the sounds blurred and smeared into crumbling crusty murky swells, blistering blasts of buzz and hiss and rumble, even the vocals a garbled transmission from the depths, all wound into a churning caustic chaos.
"Inner Ire" offers a little bit of a respite, dialing back some of the distortion, letting a murky pulse surface, even some barely-there melody here and there, but over the top, is laid a Faxed Head worthy melted tape on the dashboard blast of damaged metallic noise. "Dragon Owl Didacticism" too hints at the metal that must lurk below the surface, but considering the surface is a roiling black cauldron of howl and garble, grind and shriek, all muddied and muted and twisted into dizzying blacknoise streaks, that metal remains just that, a hint.
The last four tracks though, change everything, sounding almost like a different record tacked on as a bonus, the almost cold wave sounding "Dry Love", with it's programmed beat, cold machinelike groove, buzzing clinical angular melodies and strange detached vox, or the new wave blacknoise of "Working Tools For Paris", with a bloopy electro beat buried beneath a swaggery snarly whining vocal and some hazy melodies, and when the super distorted vox drop out, what remains sounds almost like it could be some coldwave rarity unearthed. "Free Eyes" is crusty punk via black metal filth filtered through warped power electronics, with the main 'groove' downright mesmerizing, and then finally, the nearly 11 minute title track, seems to channel aQ beloved Will Over Matter, with another stretch of super distorted blackened murky electro-noize, replete with haunting spoken word vox, and another bloopy beat, one that becomes more and more blown out over the course of the track, until the whole thing is a thick undulating sprawl of rhythmic hypno-noise bliss.
As always, utterly confusing and totally whatthefuck, and as always, we can't stop listening. Baffling brilliant outsider electro-noise black metal genius for sure.
The latest issue of this long running aQ fave finds Yeti magazine making yet another big change. Several issues back, the companion cd comp was ditched in favor of the much cooler vinyl 7" single, and around the same time, the magazine changed shape as well, presumably to fit better with the new 7", the measurements now a sweet seven by seven. But now, Yeti magazine has finally taken the big step of going full color, and wow does it suit them. Their usual collection of weird music, strange photos, outsider art and underground comics, now look even better, beginning with the stunning eye popping fold out full color gatefold cover, which leads directly into a killer collection of rock posters from New Zealand in the seventies! Then there's songstress/soundscaper/artist/cartoonist Genevieve Castree (aka Woelv), it's her artwork that adorns the cover, then an amazing oral history of Slowcore legends Codeine, a piece that was originally intended to be included with the recent Codeine When I See The Sun box, which includes contributions from Codeine members past and present, our very own Andee, Rebecca Gates from the Spinanes, David Grubbs from Bastro / Bitch Magnet, Mac from Superchunk, Alan Licht and Brendan O'Malley from Love Child, Mike Galinsky from Sleepyhead, Lois Maffeo, Ken from Homestead Records, Richard Baluyut from Versus, Dean Wareham from Galaxie 500, recording engineer Mike McMackin, writer Ned Raggett, Bret Lunsford from Beat Happening, Tim Foljahn from Two Dollar Guitar and Gerard Cosloy from Matador Records. Also includes lots of old photos and flyers.
There's some stunning recent works from artist David Moreno, a collection of found photographs from the collection of Mark Sullo, an interview with Fursaxa aka Tara Burke, conducted by Iltas Ahmed, whose collages illustrate the interview, some gorgeous photos by photographer Sarah Meadows, a cool comic by Josh Brayer, photos of a spontaneous Mike Kelley memorial, recreated anonymously recreated a block from the artist's home, there's also a bunch of fiction and non fiction writing, a novel excerpt and more. As always, the ads are all in their own section in the back, but now in color, that section is almost as cool as the rest of the mag.
And let's not forget the accompanying 7", which this time around features exclusive tracks from Moon Duo, Karen Dalton, The Great Unwashed, and Trypes, and there's an mp3 comp as well, you can link from the mag to the website for the 7" tracks and loads more. As always, essential reading!!!
No need to belabor the point on this one. This is the first Zoviet France record in 13 years. It's a triple vinyl set with a 12", a 10", and a 7". This is the second pressing mind you, as the first sold out in less than a day when it was released back on October 7, 2012 (a fitting date for the format!). We can safely report that the droning loops are as good as anything that Zoviet France did during the latter part of the Robin Storey era (e.g. Shadow Thief Of The Sun, Shouting At The Ground, Look Into Me, etc.). Storey and Ben Ponton were responsible for the best work for Zoviet France from 1981 to the early 90s, producing beautiful hypnogogic sounds, looping passages, and ethnomusicologically unhinged instrumentation all cast through tape delay effects and time-lag accumulation. Storey left unceremoniously in 1992 taking with him Zoviet France's prolific work ethic, but never really achieved the full glory that Zoviet France once had. Ponton continued on with the project in fits and starts, but he never seemed to find the right chemistry... until now. If you know Zoviet France's work even in passing, you will NOT be sorry. At the same time, we are not all that confident we'll be able to stock this in the future. Delay picking this up at your peril.
