The Mausoleums are back with a new collection of hypnosis-inducing riffs and sonorous tape-saturated grit transmissions in tow. With this, their fourth outing, The Mausoleums continue to refine the ball-lightning-like blown out energy of their earlier missives' psychedelic black metal into a somewhat more dynamic nuanced approach consisting of heavy doses of fried amp guitar buzz, churning organ, bass and percussion. Even with the feeling of simplicity achieved via elemental reduction and experiments in fidelity shift, the result is equal parts fist-pumping and cerebral, like a foggy haze trapped in a perpetually ascending NASA shuttle. This album retains the feeling of claustrophobia and paranoia of earlier ones; yet, more than before, production accentuates mood, providing just enough space for the sounds to breathe and create texture and depth, particularly in the buried yet aggressively melodic, occasionally double-tracked, vocals. There's a strange sense of reassurance in the music; the knowledge of plant growth overrunning remnants of civilization, perhaps, while Hawkwind riffs warble on the last Victrola. While the Mausoleums have always felt like an unearthed, organic compost of sound, elements of rural black dirt psychedelia and even Appalachia drape like a shrouds of mist on this record more heavily than before, alongside wafting echoes and half-remembered dreams of other distinctly domestic traditions: Detroit Rock, Southern Blues, metal, and hardcore, among others. And the Mausoleums' dirt-under-the-nails approach extends beyond the sonics; in spite of the diversity of influences and implications of cross-pollination, the Mausoleums seem to exist wholly on their own terms, offering a compelling statement in support of the simplicity of homegrown songcraft, production, and maintaining a singular vision in an era of hyper-aware referential complexity.
This might be one of the weirdest (and coolest) records we've heard from Dan Melchior, which is saying a lot, considering how twisted and cool most of his records are, but this one just might take the cake, seeing as what is essentially a full lp, is really only three or four 'proper' songs, filled out by some seriously twisted sonic weirdness, which in some cases we dig even more than the songs themselves.
The record opens with buzzing synths and garbled processed vox, a lurching distorto creep, all murky and warbly, which soon adds some acoustic guitar strum, and some weird samples, the sound constantly on the verge of blossoming into a 'real' song, but it's not until track three, that a 'proper' song coalesces from sonic murk, and even then, it's still pretty fucked up, skeletal programmed drums, jagged guitars, distorted bass chug, echo drenched vocals, a seriously lo-fi dirge, the vocals getting deep and dramatic, the song culminating in some wild, tripped out murk guitar shred. After that there's some minimal hushed shimmer, a sort of ambient interlude that leads directly into another weird dirgey jam, this one a bit more propulsive, but still plenty muddy and tranced out, psychedelic and trippy, laced with some awesomely twisted backwards vocals.
The B side opens with some abstract, psychedelic drift, distant chordal shimmer peppered with weird synth blurts, which bleeds into some creepy minimal drone/thrum, sounding like whipping wind over distant barely there riffage, which erupts into another song, this one cool fuzzed out drum machine driven gloom pop, heavy guitar buzz, droney, noisy and super hypnotic. There's a brief crumbly lo-fi ballad, all Faxed Head production, dreaminess beneath squelch and glitch and hiss and hum, before the final jam, a detuned Beefheartian creep, angular and atonal, super noisy, ultra murky, the whole thing eventually devolving into some super cool, and seriously demented free form sample laced drift. Wow. So fucked up, and twisted and dementedly amazing!
Lubomyr Melnyk is one of our favorite modern composers. The inventor and master of the Continuous Music technique, which has made him the Guinness-recognized fastest piano player in the world. But was we mentioned in other reviews, this speed and mastery is deftly employed, to create lush clouds of billowing chordal shimmer, the sort of dreamlike divine sound that should have Melnyk spoken about in the same sort or reverential tones reserved for legends like Reich and Riley and Palestine. Melnyk's method involves keeping the pedals on the piano depressed, allowing notes to ring out, bleed into each other, creating lush expanses of constantly shifting overtones, sounds layered and bleeding into one another, creating huge swaths of organic sound, a sound that seems to be alive, full of energy and emotion, not just Melnyk's technique, but his compositions as well, a true master who has created some of the most amazing modern piano music we've ever heard. The sad thing is that his records are quite difficult to find, and the fact that he has composed so many pieces, and his interest is in allowing people to hear as much of his music as possible, most of those records exist only as cd-r's. But gradually, it seems, interest in Melnyk has been growing, we've certainly been doing everything we can, constantly proselytizing, telling everyone we know about Melnyk and his music, reviewing them on our list, and getting as much of his music as we can into the ears of folks we think need to hear it, which we think is many of you.
So we're super excited whenever one of his records gets a proper worldwide release, and thus, we were thrilled when we first heard about Corollaries. Which besides being one of the few non-cd-r Melnyk releases, is also of note as it's the first collaboration we've heard from him. Even on past records where multiple pianos were used, Melnyk played all the parts. But here, Melnyk is joined by Peter Broderick and Martin Heyne, who give Melnyk's music an interesting, sort of washed out gauzy production, which really suits the sound, but beyond that, also contribute synthesizer, violin and vocals! We weren't at all sure what to expect, but were actually quite pleasantly surprised.
The opener here "Pockets Of Light" finds us in familiar territory, with Melnyk laying down a lush landscape of swirling notes, and lush chordal shimmer, and as we (and many of you) know by now, that's all we really need, Melnyk and his Continuous Music method are more than enough to fill the speakers, and your headphones and your ears with a wild field of sound, one that is so easy to get lost in, but here, the addition of violin, adds a fantastic element, a bit of a drone, and a melodic counterpoint, also complimented by the dreamlike production, we were pretty skeptical about the vocals, but when they come in, the sound is transformed into a gorgeous, shimmery sort of slowcore, Broderick's vocals high and clear, warm and emotional, drifting atop, Melnyk's lush landscape of chordal swirl, the more we listen, the more we realize we actually might have liked more of the songs to have vocals. Imagine Low with clouds of piano shimmer and you might be close. Divine and dreamlike and utterly mesmerizingly lovely.
"The Six Day Moment" is Melnyk solo, and is a delight of course, a dense, intricate classical music, that almost sounds like multiple players, but it's never too busy, or too chaotic, it's instead lush and lovely, melodic and moving, lyrical and haunting, we could listen to Melnyk play forever, and listening to this, we begin to wonder why someone hasn't asked him to score their film, the sound so evocative and cinematic, epic and intense. "A Warmer Place" finds Broderick returning again, this time playing violin, Melnyk's playing spare and minimal, demonstrating, that it's not just about speed or notes, lots of space, ambient and ethereal, Broderick's minimal melodies perfectly underpinning Melnyk's delicate crystalline arrangements, wintery and wonderfully melancholy.
"Nightrail From The Sun" might be the biggest surprise here, with its casual conversation laced false start, to the hypnotic piano/guitar interplay, some serious Reich/Riley style melodic mesmer going on here, Broderick adding some heft and background color via synth, but for the most part, it's the interplay between Melnyk's piano and Martyn Heyne's guitar that makes this so stunning, and like the other tracks, we find ourselves wishing for a whole record of this. And when Broderick amps up the synth, the sound becomes super dramatic, almost Godspeed-like in its brooding intensity. In many ways, it's like an even more intricate avant version of the recent collaboration between Melnyk and James Blackshaw. And finally, the record finishes off with another Melnyk / Broderick duet, this one with a distinctly mournful almost country feel, the violin unfurling an aching minor key melody, while Melnyk underpins Broderick's violin, with sweetly understated piano, the sound building to something extremely emotional and moving, again, evoking all sorts of images and emotions, and again making us wonder why Melnyk and Broderick aren't scoring films, the closer so cinematic, and expressively cinematic, lush and so so lovely.
Like everything we've heard from Melnyk, and absolute treasure, and a fantastic collaboration, that we hope will inspire many more, and will finally get the rest of the world to discover what we already know, that Melnyk is a genius. This record is simply more proof of that.
The Root Strata label hasn't been as active as they used to be, what with main founder Jefre Cantu-Ledesma living in Europe and then moving back to San Francisco temporarily and now heading to New York to stay awhile... Hopefully they'll get back to a more regular release schedule real soon.
But until then, we got this to deep primitive drone record to tide us over and it's a stunner. Messages is the New York duo of Taketo Shimada & Tres Warren. We never carried their previous recordings, but are now kicking ourselves for not tuning in sooner. Even though Mirage is the third full-length release, this was recorded in 2008 before their first two albums and has remained unreleased until now.
Four long-form excursions with a lyrical pastoral focus using an array of acoustic and electric drone instruments reminding us of like minded wayfarers Taj Mahal Travellers, Deep Listening Band, Date Palms and Portraits. Limited to 500 copies.
We recently reviewed an lp on the Pan label from Mohammad, a Greek trio specializing in long form acoustic drone music. It was a stunning collection of modern minimalism created from just cello, contrabass and oscillators, the group conjuring up a rib cage rattling thrum in the form of huge organic expanses of low end sound, we still have a few of those limited lps left, anyone into dronemusic, from the modern minimalism of Phill Niblock, to the crushing dronedirgedrone of SUNNO)), should absolutely grab one before they're gone (& we also have ONE copy of a super limited triple lp Mohammad box set, check the instock not yet reviewed section!). We dug that Pan lp so much, that we got in touch with the band to get copies of this, their first cd release, and like the lp, it's incredible. But unlike that lp, it's much more rooted in classical music, slightly less abstract, with the opening track sounding a bit like some haunting chamber music, albeit all lower register, but it's so haunting, and stately, and strangely majestic. The tones rumble and reverberate, melodies play out in slow motion, a funereal threnody that creeps and drifts until the final few minutes when the sound seems to blossom into something much more psychedelic.
The rest of the record is equally fantastic, "Skora" is even more minimal, nearly inaudible sans headphones, but strap some on, and you're submerged in a strange subterranean sound world, a sort of ultra spare slowcore drift, softly undulating barely there tones, that seem to grow more gristly as the track progresses. Deep foghorn moans wreathed in crunchy swirls of soft focus static, and near the end, the sound suddenly gets LOWER and BASSIER, not sure how it's possible, but suddenly, your speakers are on the verge of blowing, the bones in your ears vibrating at an alarming rate. Amazing.
"Lamane Kradoj" is still even MORE minimal yet, reminding us of those old Restgeraeusch records, which were sourced from the industrial noises in an office, the whir of the air conditioning, the rumble of the elevator down the hall, this is just a barely there field of low end static, that doesn't really build until the last minute or too, where it coalesces into the sound of some strange churning machine. "Lentzen Tranen" is like an acoustic version of that Nurse With Wound creaking ship record, all groans and rumbles, the sound of being in some rickety structure, which reacts to all of the vibrations outside, cars whizzing past, buses, subtle shifts in the earth's tectonic plates, all somehow woven into a gorgeously hypnotic thrum.
And finally, the closer, sort of bookending the record, with a dark jazzy creep, starting out as a barely there drift, but soon morphing into some haunting doomjazz, the cello laying down woozy melodies over contrabass rumbles, and distant oscillator hum, jaunty by comparison, a truly strange coda, to a wonderfully mysterious drone record...
This is a weird one, the latest from local reissue label Superior Viaduct, who have so far reissued recordings from Factrix, Black Humor, German Shepherds, Noh Mercy, and the Sleepers, and even still, amongst some seriously weird company, this might outweird them all! We had never heard of Monitor before (although we just learned Scott is a big fan!), apparently the musical offshoot of a seventies LA art collective called World Imitation Productions, who fused modern technology with more archaic influences, and whose music somehow struggled to sonically represent that hybrid.
The group was part of a loose group of like minded outfits, know as the Associated Skull Bands, which included Nervous Gender, NON, among others, but even amidst a weirdo Hollywood punk scene, Monitor proved too much for the not so weird weirdos. And hell it's easy to see why listening to this now.
The record opens with queasy synths and ominous rumbles, from which emerges a minimal rhythm wrapped in primitive synths, peppered with burst of drum freakout, and angular fuzz guitar, super hypnotic and darkly dirgey, the vocals are breathy and reverbed, dueling boy girl voices, trancey, and woozy, the guitars seem to grow more detuned, the sound seeming to fray at the edges, super psychedelic and crazy creepy cool. That's the core sound of the group, the drums driving most of the tracks, the guitars and synths doled out a bit more judiciously. The track "Mokele-Mbembe" lays down a sinewy bassline, and some tribal drumming, and then over the top, the group deliver some very straight ahead sounding African high life style vocals. "In Terrae Interium" drapes distorted guitars, over a dirgey rhythmic stumble, tangled vocals croon and moan over the detuned dirge, super trippy and abstract.
And so it goes, the group unfurling twisted ditties, rhythmic and playfully synthy one second ("Herb Lane Theme"), distorted and and almost carnivalesque the next ("Amphibious"), replete with weezing organ and angular guitar skronk, cold wave twee pop one second ("Pavillion"), minimal washed out drone-psych doom creep the next ("Phosphorea"). And when they came up with a song that required more rocking than they were equipped to do, well hell, they just hired it out, in this case, to the Meat Puppets, who kick out the jams on "Hair", a fierce staccato punk rock blow out, all howled vox, swirling sci-fi synths, noisy buzzy guitars, serious drum pound, squiggly Black Flag like leads and some seriously harsh vox! Almost wish Monitor had written a whole record for the Meat Puppets.
The reissue tacks on a handful of bonus tracks to the nine from the original 1981 album, which like the record proper are all over the place, from murky rhythmic minimalism, to wild squiggly angular electro-punk to tripped out backwards recorded noise experiments.
There was a time in the mid-to-late nineties where Brazil psych-prog-pop legends, Os Mutantes ruled supreme at AQ. Their first three records came to define one of our store's focus areas in finding cool obscure Latin psychedelia especially from Brazil's Tropicalia scene of the sixties and seventies. While a large part of the band's back-catalog remains temporarily out of print on cd, we did just come across this mind-bending vinyl-only compilation of obscure rarities from the band's early days. The Sixth Finger was originally the intended title of the band's second album, which their record label refused. So it's apropos that this collection shows the band at their most primal, raw and rebellious, even featuring the Shell spots they did for radio adverts of their most experimental tape collages. Most of the music is taken direct from masters of longer alternate versions of some of their most well-known tracks including "Bat Macumba", "Panis Et Circensis" and "Ando Meio Desligado", but it also includes some raw live festival recordings featuring Caetano Veloso. The cover is even taken from one of the cancelled photo sessions for their second album. A really cool collection even though the price may keep unfamiliar but curious folks from taking a listen. Still a worthy addition for Mutantes fans!
On the recent aQ Record Of The Week For Ostland, by mysterious NY electro-rock alchemists Nihiti, they started things off with a fantastic cover of Marisa Nadler's "Ghosts And Lovers", which ended up being one of our favorite tracks on that record, and which we described like this: "The already dark original transformed into an even darker lament, all swirling churns of mumblecore drift, heaving swells of black blurred fuzz, over skeletal rhythms, and moaned barely there vox, smeared and subtly processed, a plaintive whispery croon becomes a lush landscape of layered drones drifting dreamily and druggily, a ghostly and spectral electro-ambient threnody, that builds to a near squall of roiling riffs and tangled black melodies, the result still somehow warm and soft and utterly trancelike."
This new 12" offers up four remixes of Nihiti's Nadler cover, and all of them are pretty excellent. National Park Systems (whose Lo Bit 12" we still have in stock), add some rhythmic propulsion, and some swirling noise, processing the vox a bit, transforming the song that sounds more like some lost M83 jam, all prismatic and big beat-y, while Mark Verbos give Nihiti's version a skeletal electro makeover, with a bit of a house-y twist, drenching the vocals in reverb, and stripping away most of the rest of the song, and draping those vocals over their own beats, and giving the whole thing a sort of retro-futuristic sci-fi vibe to boot, especially the second half, that definitely reminds us a bit of Majeure or Zombi.
The flipside starts off with Hrdvrsn, who strip the song down to something very Kompakt sounding, chopping the vocals and creating a haunting stuttery melody, over a simple handclap rhythm, and wreathing the whole thing in glimmering swirls of synth, eventually letting the beat take over, before fading out and leaving just a pulsing ethereal swirl. And finally, Zebrablood adds some step sequencing and adds some robotic melodies, and transforms the song into something way more cybernetic, a super minimal electro-pulse minimal-house groover, that's both spare and skeletal, but also weirdly melodic and impossibly lush and layered. Super cool. And the perfect sonic addendum to Nihiti's amazing For Ostland...
Here's some more of that funky stuff, that funky African stuff to be precise. Secret Stash, who previously unearthed such gems as, well, the band Afro Funk among others, bring us a reissue of the first album from this Nigerian outfit, originally released in 1973. Kind of hard to argue with a record like this: super groovy, JB's meet Afrobeat / high life stylings, and it's called Destruction, yeah! With lots of jubilant singing, hand percussion, rhythmic wah-wah guitar, joyful jazzy horns, and awesome breaks, it's guaranteed to make you dance or at least -consider- dancing, if you're not the type to actually dance. Many of the songs are in a Nigerian dialect, but there's some English lyrics too, not always easy to make out - on the song "Jungle Beat" we could swear he's singing "Ride that rhino", perhaps he is.
Secret Stash has produced this first-time-ever reissue in cooperation with bandleader Chief Vincent Okorego and original London-based record label Orbitone. Vinyl version comes with download, both formats include plenty of liner notes and vintage photos. It's a good one.
The second track from OM's recent Advaitic Songs gets the dub reworking, again by Alpha & Omega, who redid Addis for the first 12", and like that, this new one doesn't need to stretch to far to transform OM into straight up dub, since OM's sound is essentially a doomy dub to begin with. But here, that doom is shed in favor of some old school classic dub sounds. Upstroke guitars, simple grooving rhythms, bass for days, in fact, the bass, and the vocals are really the main thing thee new version retains, the bass driving everything, the sound warm and and hypnotic, a little mellow, but with just a hint of sonic shadow. The vocals translate perfectly, although they're a wee bit more cringeworthy stripped of the supporting sonic heft of the original. And like that first 12", if you weren't familiar with OM, you might not even know this was a remix/reworking, it sounds pretty genuinely old school dub. That said, not all OM fans will dig. A quick look online and seems like lots of folks didn't really get it, or like it, which is surprising considering how dubby in spirit at least OM's actual sound already is.
The B side amps up the dubbiness even more, dousing the vocals and rhythms in echo and delay, words and snare cracks careening into the ether, wreathed in warm swirls of melodica melody, everything dreamily druggy and delightfully hazy and washed out.
We'd recommend spinning this at 33rpm though, if you want to get some of the doom back, at that speed, it's a dirgey doom-dub creep, the vocals a demonic bellow, the music tarpit thick, the rhythm a droney dubby dirge. Either way, cool stuff, fans of the first 12" will want this one too, and open minded OM fans, give this a try, cuz you know these days it seems like dub, more than metal is the sound that influences OM's sound, see also OM frontman Al Cisneros' dub solo singles for more proof of that!
Finally! The wait is over. The final 4 releases in what is now a nearly complete reissue collection of all 9 demos from mysterious Swiss black metal horde Paysage D'Hiver. By now, most folks are probably more familiar with Swiss sci-fi black metallers Darkspace, whose mainman Tobias Mockl, aka Wroth, was the sole force behind the frosty, grim, wintry Burzumic blur that was Paysage D'Hiver. Calling himself Wintherr in Paysage, over the course of nearly a decade, Mockl crafted 9 full length demos, and two split releases, each one a stunning landscape of frostbitten buzz and buried blasting beats, of shrieked vokills, and haunting windswept interludes, of creepy footsteps and crunching ice, of lilting blackened folk and of totally epic black metal mastery.
Paysage trafficked primarily in sprawling wintery epics, up to 20 minutes in length, rife with trancelike riffage, and long stretches of haunting ambience, the sort of black trance-inducing monotone mesmer that we can't seem to get enough of, although occasionally, Mockl would unleash something totally different, a record of Tangerine Dream like kraut synth drone ambience, or in the middle of a squall of furious black blasting, a strange lurching lumbering clean guitar lope, or long stretches of almost orchestral soundtrack like drift, but always the atmosphere was grim and cold and grey, the production blurred and buzzy and murky and lo-fi, but not shitty 4-track lo-fi, instead, that low fidelity was a part of the sound, just adding to the miserable freezing chill of the proceedings, casting a patina of dour despondency, evoking the shadow of dead trees and their skeletal branches, of epic expanses, buried in snow, inhospitable, barren, forlorn, of loneliness and sorrow, emptiness and death. Easily some of the most intense, otherworldly, creative and evocative black metal ever made, and one of our all time favorites for sure...
Einsamkeit was the final release from Paysage D'Hiver, originally released on cassette in 2007, but the 'band' never officially 'broke up', so who knows, there could be a new Paysage some day, but for now, Einsamkeit was the band's last missive, three sprawling tracks, all right around 15 minutes, the first, a warm swirl of abstract krautdrone, deep murky pulses beneath shimmers of glimmering melody, all woven together by a strange barely there machine like whir, the track a sort of cinematic ambient drift, wheezing rumbles bleed into strange field recordings, almost industrial sounding clatter and creak underpin the barely there whisper of brushed percussion, and mysterious music box melodies, gorgeously creepy and abstract. As is the next track, another stretch of dreamlike ambience, but this time around it's hardly wintery, instead, the sound is warm and lush, almost sun dappled sounding even, warm wisps of melody, long languorous streaks of blurred chordal drift, it almost sounds like something that could be on Root Strata or Type, far removed from most black metal, even more black metal ambience. Drifty and hazy and gauzy and washed out and lovely.
Finally, the first epoch of Paysage D'Hiver draws to a close, beginning with the whirling winter wind, then some seriously filthy distorted guitar buzz, laid over ominous minor key synths, droney and buzzy and blissed out, only to dissipate nearly right away, leaving just a strange militaristic drum beat, and a deep rumbling thrum, and some glimmering ethereal synth shimmer, the squiggly bits of sci-fi melody, reminding us a bit of Oneohtrix or Innercity, that same sort of retro-futuristic vibe, but here the sound is rendered as something much more grim and foreboding. The guitar eventually returns, more filthy black buzz, and vocals surface for the first time, harsh and hellish, but way down in the mix, like another layer of hiss, suddenly the drums drop out, and for some reason the tension ratchets WAY up, and the buzzing guitar and mewling vokills drone on and on, riding an undulating low end swell, before dropping out completely, leaving nothing but the wind, and the blackness beyond. Totally amazing, and essential!
Like all the Paysage reissues, Einsamkeit comes in a gorgeous oversized A5 style digibook, with a cool super abstract starscape on the front, and inside a fold out booklet, with beautiful winter landscapes and minimal text. The whole thing sealed in a black envelope, the band name and album title printed in black ink, on the black background.
At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kerker was originally released on cassette in 2000, and is essentially a single piece, split into movements, and of all the reissues so far is the murkiest, all of the requisite parts are present but the fidelity is so low, the recording so strange, that all of the constituent parts are rendered one swirling muted organic whole. Bands like Wold, Amocoma, Yoga, Paysage take it to a whole 'nother level. Beginning with a rumbling ambience, the main riff soon surfaces, barely audible over the din of the intro, and very little changes when the vocals and the drums join in, the sound becomes a bit more frenentic, headphones reveal more details, but even then, the sound is a swirling churning roiling black sea of buzz and blur and hum and rumble and whir occasionally coalescing into discernible black metal before seemingly blurring before your very eyes and slipping back into the abyss. So incredibly haunting and mysterious and beautifully fucked up. The second movement is all ambient, thick swaths of keyboard, and pounding industrial drums, a gurgling blackened drift, like trudging through some underground cavern populated with demons and monsters, huddled by firepits, trying desperately to escape the blizzard that lurks above. Here too the sound is incredible, lush, yet lo-fi, muddy and indistinct, but within that muddy swirl all manner of subtle details and slow shifting colors reveal themselves. Voices too, demonic, ominous, bubbling up from below. The third movement continues the descent, the ice melting, soon the rocks themselves liquefying into viscous black pools, the sound of this approach to hell is one of deep low end buzz, a blown out distorted rumble that seems to swirl malevolently beneath a haze of blurred whir, until finally a keyboard enters, adding a glimmer of light to the pitch black sprawl.
Finally, the cycle is completed with another super distorted, murky blast, this time with synthesizers adding demented shards of melody, the drums an avalanche of pound and crash, the guitars a maniacal frenzied buzz, the vocals a subterranean gurgle, and again all blurred and smeared into a gorgeously hazy washed out smear of abstract buzzing blackness, dark and dramatic, haunting and enigmatic.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a grim looking dungeon (Kerker means Dungeon) and a swirling black hole, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kristall & Isa was originally released on cassette in 2001, and is another blast of frostbitten brilliance, a furious buzzing trek across snow choked tundras, and right out of the gate, this is one of the fiercest of the Paysage discs, the guitar a furious buzz so in the red that it's blurred into a near static streak of sound, the vocals are harsh and hysterical, buried in the mix, the drums a motorik pound, and within the swirling chaos there seems to be strange melodies lurking, what sounds like flutes or keyboards surfacing and then disappearing in the blink of an eye, definitely lending a strangely psychedelic vibe to the proceedings.
The record quickly shifts gears and transforms into lo-fi bedroom ambience, sounding like it was recorded on a boom box, all manner of clatter and clunk, the music and the vocals super low, it almost sounds like someone held up a microcassette recorded to the speaker of their stereo, super intimate and creepy. The follow up is much the same, only this time the music is a whooshy soft focus blur, but still the shifting microphone can be heard, as well as lots of tape hiss, a truly creepy ambience, like listening surreptitiously from afar.
"Der Kristall Ist Eis" explodes into a bleary eyed buzzy black blast similar to the album opener, and again the sounds are so blurred and blown out that the track seems to gradually shift into some spaced out buzz drenched dronemusic, hypnotic and mesmerizing. A near static blast, that pounds away while all around it clouds of static and buzz swirl, and eventually, beautiful warm melodies surface from the din, and it suddenly sounds like two records playing at once, but in a really good. really strange way.
After one more extended stretch of bedroom lo-fi field recordings, this one the most ambient and abstract of the bunch, a series of hushed whispers and some barely there shimmer, the final track explodes once again in a relentless frenzy of buzzing high end, machine like jackhammer pound, and a wall of blown out static rrrooooaaar. This track is the most varied of the bunch, slipping at one point into a lurching Burzumic lope, but only briefly before returning to the relentless wintery black onslaught. The band pause for breath, while cold winter winds blow through, the band offer up a tangled convoluted off kilter outro that sounds almost Deathspell-ish, before darkness falls once again and all that is left is the sound of the windswept wintery night.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a beautiful winter forest and a snowy stream, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
Finally! The wait is over. The final 4 releases in what is now a nearly complete reissue collection of all 9 demos from mysterious Swiss black metal horde Paysage D'Hiver. By now, most folks are probably more familiar with Swiss sci-fi black metallers Darkspace, whose mainman Tobias Mockl, aka Wroth, was the sole force behind the frosty, grim, wintry Burzumic blur that was Paysage D'Hiver. Calling himself Wintherr in Paysage, over the course of nearly a decade, Mockl crafted 9 full length demos, and two split releases, each one a stunning landscape of frostbitten buzz and buried blasting beats, of shrieked vokills, and haunting windswept interludes, of creepy footsteps and crunching ice, of lilting blackened folk and of totally epic black metal mastery.
Paysage trafficked primarily in sprawling wintery epics, up to 20 minutes in length, rife with trancelike riffage, and long stretches of haunting ambience, the sort of black trance-inducing monotone mesmer that we can't seem to get enough of, although occasionally, Mockl would unleash something totally different, a record of Tangerine Dream like kraut synth drone ambience, or in the middle of a squall of furious black blasting, a strange lurching lumbering clean guitar lope, or long stretches of almost orchestral soundtrack like drift, but always the atmosphere was grim and cold and grey, the production blurred and buzzy and murky and lo-fi, but not shitty 4-track lo-fi, instead, that low fidelity was a part of the sound, just adding to the miserable freezing chill of the proceedings, casting a patina of dour despondency, evoking the shadow of dead trees and their skeletal branches, of epic expanses, buried in snow, inhospitable, barren, forlorn, of loneliness and sorrow, emptiness and death. Easily some of the most intense, otherworldly, creative and evocative black metal ever made, and one of our all time favorites for sure...
Nacht was originally released on cassette in 2004, and features 4 looooong tracks, all between 12 and 18 minutes longs, and like most of the other Paysage records, the tracks are introduced, and separated by long stretches of wintery ambience, whipping winds, cracking branches, howling wolves, the opening track here introduces creepy deep organ drones, swirling synths, all super dramatic and atmospheric, perfectly woven into the howling winds, croaked demonic gurgles, a super haunting atmospheric black winter drift, that leads right into an extended stretch of mesmerizing black metal buzz, the riffing relentless, the drums machinelike and buried in the mix, the melodies epic and majestic, the vocals a sick alien gargle, the track shifting from blast, to doomic lumber, to buzzing black ambience and back again, underscored by barely there swaths of synth, before finally fading back out into the wintery ambience. The next track is more a sort of blackened buzzy drone, the riffs stretched into streaks of melody, layered into undulating sheets of frosty buzz, the vokills a constant creaking rasp, building in intensity, eventually becoming a super melodic dirgescape, all coruscating high end melodies and crumbling distorted low end, finally finishing off with just a single buzzing guitar, unfurling its riffage over the ever present winter wind. And finally, the record finishes with a gloriously epic chunk of freezing black buzz, relentless and intense, frantic riffing blasting beats, shrieked demonic howls and soaring synths, all gradually fading into the distance, as everything is swallowed up by the swirling snow and the bleak endless winter. Fucking incredible!
Like all the Paysage reissues, Nacht comes in a gorgeous oversized A5 style digibook, with a super creepy, ultra minimal cover image, where you can just see a corpsepainted face in the light of a burning torch, inside is a foldout booklet, with another creepy image and some lyrics, all sealed up in a black envelope, with the band name and album titled printed on the front, black ink, on black background.
Finally! The wait is over. The final 4 releases in what is now a nearly complete reissue collection of all 9 demos from mysterious Swiss black metal horde Paysage D'Hiver. By now, most folks are probably more familiar with Swiss sci-fi black metallers Darkspace, whose mainman Tobias Mockl, aka Wroth, was the sole force behind the frosty, grim, wintry Burzumic blur that was Paysage D'Hiver. Calling himself Wintherr in Paysage, over the course of nearly a decade, Mockl crafted 9 full length demos, and two split releases, each one a stunning landscape of frostbitten buzz and buried blasting beats, of shrieked vokills, and haunting windswept interludes, of creepy footsteps and crunching ice, of lilting blackened folk and of totally epic black metal mastery.
Paysage trafficked primarily in sprawling wintery epics, up to 20 minutes in length, rife with trancelike riffage, and long stretches of haunting ambience, the sort of black trance-inducing monotone mesmer that we can't seem to get enough of, although occasionally, Mockl would unleash something totally different, a record of Tangerine Dream like kraut synth drone ambience, or in the middle of a squall of furious black blasting, a strange lurching lumbering clean guitar lope, or long stretches of almost orchestral soundtrack like drift, but always the atmosphere was grim and cold and grey, the production blurred and buzzy and murky and lo-fi, but not shitty 4-track lo-fi, instead, that low fidelity was a part of the sound, just adding to the miserable freezing chill of the proceedings, casting a patina of dour despondency, evoking the shadow of dead trees and their skeletal branches, of epic expanses, buried in snow, inhospitable, barren, forlorn, of loneliness and sorrow, emptiness and death. Easily some of the most intense, otherworldly, creative and evocative black metal ever made, and one of our all time favorites for sure...
Steineiche was the very first Paysage D'Hiver demo, originally released in 1998, and over the course of four tracks, the shortest 11:34, the longest 24:27, pretty much every side of the Paysage sound is introduced, opening with a creepy intro, clean guitar, plucking out a mournful minor key melody, swirling winter winds, a croaking creaky vocal, like stumbling upon some reanimated skeleton in a cave on the side of a mountain, and having it begin to speak in some strange language, until finally, and quite abruptly, the track explodes in a frenzy of furious blasting, the guitars frantic, the buzzing woozy and warped, the vocals a continuous demonic shriek buried way down in the mix, almost an alien squeal, the whole track the musical equivalent to a raging snowstorm. Eventually, the track sputters to a halt, the drum machine skittering into a stretch of creepy drift, with more clean guitar, only to immediately burst into frenzied action again, listen closely and you'll here some super creepy deep voice intoning some mysterious passages WAY down in the mix, before taking off again, finally, the riffage grows weirdly angular, mirrored by strange choir like voices, the drums a half tempo pound, the vocals getting more and more garbled, before fading out with a tolling bell laced lumbering chug.
The second track is an odd one, even by Paysage standards, huge downtuned chugging riffs, a guitar that almost sounds like a banjo, more tolling church bell, total grim frostbitten doom, but with that guitar/banjo, it sounds almost like some strange doomfolk Appalachia, the track does occasionally grow more dense, swirling warped synths, gurgling vokills, the riffage super thick and distorted, the whole thing almost dronelike, and so it goes slipping back and forth between the strange folky doom chug, and the churning garbled black grind, only to finally finish off with some haunting campfire folk, all moaning sorrowful fiddle, all wrapped in reverb, draped over the distant howl of the whipping wind.
The longest track, is all ambient, lush synths over murky percussive pulses, a soundtrack like dronescape, laced with mysterious voices, fragments of minor key melody, deep rumbles, and distant shimmer, the tolling of bells, haunting operatic vocals, super atmospheric and cinematic, which leads directly into the final track, a seemingly super minimal drone / field recording, the whirring of winds, a distant low end pulse, a hushed bass rumble, it's not until about 6 minutes in, when what sounds like a radio broadcast of choir like voices, and they sound backwards too, tinny and mysterious, so creepy when paired with the rumbles and wind, and with the little bits of crackle, that give way to a murky washed out black metal buzz, wrapped wound those same voices, a strangely shoegazey sort of drift, that peters out quickly leaving just the wind, and tinkling chimes.
So goddamn weird and amazing, and still more than a decade later, better than nearly any other black metal out there!
Like the other reissues, Steineiche comes packaged in a gorgeous oversized A5 style digibook, some mysterious gnarled shapes on the cover, with a fold out booklet revealing winter scenes and lyrics, the whole thing sealed in a black envelope, with the band name and record title printed in black ink, on the black background, subtle, and nearly impossible to read.
Finally! The wait is over. The final 4 releases in what is now a nearly complete reissue collection of all 9 demos from mysterious Swiss black metal horde Paysage D'Hiver. By now, most folks are probably more familiar with Swiss sci-fi black metallers Darkspace, whose mainman Tobias Mockl, aka Wroth, was the sole force behind the frosty, grim, wintry Burzumic blur that was Paysage D'Hiver. Calling himself Wintherr in Paysage, over the course of nearly a decade, Mockl crafted 9 full length demos, and two split releases, each one a stunning landscape of frostbitten buzz and buried blasting beats, of shrieked vokills, and haunting windswept interludes, of creepy footsteps and crunching ice, of lilting blackened folk and of totally epic black metal mastery.
Paysage trafficked primarily in sprawling wintery epics, up to 20 minutes in length, rife with trancelike riffage, and long stretches of haunting ambience, the sort of black trance-inducing monotone mesmer that we can't seem to get enough of, although occasionally, Mockl would unleash something totally different, a record of Tangerine Dream like kraut synth drone ambience, or in the middle of a squall of furious black blasting, a strange lurching lumbering clean guitar lope, or long stretches of almost orchestral soundtrack like drift, but always the atmosphere was grim and cold and grey, the production blurred and buzzy and murky and lo-fi, but not shitty 4-track lo-fi, instead, that low fidelity was a part of the sound, just adding to the miserable freezing chill of the proceedings, casting a patina of dour despondency, evoking the shadow of dead trees and their skeletal branches, of epic expanses, buried in snow, inhospitable, barren, forlorn, of loneliness and sorrow, emptiness and death. Easily some of the most intense, otherworldly, creative and evocative black metal ever made, and one of our all time favorites for sure...
Winterkalte was originally released in 2001, and begins with the sounds of screaming winds, and strange footsteps, and various random sounds, in fact it almost sounds like field recordings, or lost tapes from some doomed winter expedition, finally recovered after years and years, the sound buzzy and lo-fi, finally the guitars come in, sharp and harsh and brittle, the drums a machinelike skitter, exploding into a super raw and ultra intense blast of frosty blackness, the vocals so distorted and lo-fi they almost sound like white noise, the blasting is relentless, and trancelike, until finally some synths drift in, adding some super creepy texture and melodic counterpoint, and then with about 7 minutes left, the buzz and blast drop out, leaving just acoustic guitar, over the same whipping wind, and the lonely crunch of footsteps in snow, which trudge right into the next track, a very Burzumy plodding trudge, the guitars thick and buzzy, the vocals again blasts of near white noise, the melodies haunting and mournful, the vibe super intense and dramatic, the swirling synths in the background adding even more gravitas to the already abject winter miserablism of the doom drenched black dirge.
The next track is nearly nothing but wind and wintery ambience, all but for a brief bit of haunting choral music right near the beginning, ghostly harmonies drifting spectrally over the sounds of winter. And so the mysterious personage trudges onward through the wind and snow and the black night, the ambience laced with tinkling distant melodies, before once again the song kicks in, a loping woozy riff, a galloping beat, and those whitenoise vox, all wrapped in a whirring blanket of soft noise and blurred hiss, only letting up occasionally, allowing in the wind, delicate crystalline melodies, and the percussive crunch and boom of distant mysterious goings on, but always lurching back into the blast and buzz. And so it goes, one more track, a blurred monochromatic blast of frozen blackness, gives way to the final movement, still more blasting and buzzing, shrieking and blackened flailing, furious and frenzied, again leaving space for frozen winds, and melancholy acoustic guitars, before the final squall of wintery buzz, finally finishing with acoustic guitars and ethereal synths, fading into the cold black night.
Incredible, and as essential as all of the Paysage records. And like the other reissues, Winterkalte comes packaged in a gorgeous A5 style oversized digibook, the front adorned with a cool painting of some bleak winterscape, while inside, a fold out booklet, featuring lyrics. The whole thing sealed in a black envelope, the band name and album title printed on the outside, black on black!
Third (duh) issue of this fanzine done by notorious Nordic noisician Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkammer, etc.). Super nicely put together (it looks like a "real" magazine), but definitely a fanzine in its enthusiasms... Marhaug and a few friends go one-on-one in in-depth interviews with such interesting contemporaries/colleagues as Svarte Greiner, Pumice, Phill Niblock, Graham Lambkin (of The Shadow Ring), Moe, Will Guthrie, Carl Michael Eide (of Ved Buenes Ende fame!!) and more...
96 pages or so, squarebound, color cover, color interior (with lots of cool photos/graphics - the Pumice piece is actually done in the form of a comic strip), on a nice matte paper stock, kinda like a double-size, Marhaug-curated edition of The Wire, but the content is ALL interviews (well, and ads, which are interesting too - the back page is a full page ad for an upcoming Reynols 20th anniversary 7 cd box set on Marhaug's Pica Disk label!!!). And the interviews are quite interesting. And go in some strange directions, indeed...
Still new fave 'zine, heartily recommended to anyone into experimental drones, noise, black metal, cool artwork, and other weirdness. Only five bucks more than a copy of The Wire and well worth it.
At first we assumed this UK combo was gonna be another witchy female fronted doom outfit, they're on the same label as Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats after all, but have a lovely lady singer, and there's plenty of hype surrounding their debut (Pentagram meets Pentangle is the tagline), but folks looking for something truly heavy might be a bit disappointed, as Purson owe more to seventies British acid folk than they do any strain of metal, doom or otherwise. That said, for everyone else, there's a lot here to dig, it is sort of witchy, but also has a kind of medieval vibe, definitely some classic rock and vintage folk going on too. Seems like fans of Ghost's style of retro hard rock will be the ones most likely to dig Purson, their sound sultry and slithery, lots of acoustic guitars, swirling psychedelic organ, and to be fair, while it's not METAL, there are some heavy parts, some distorted guitars, plenty of buzz. Check out "The Contract", which might be our favorite track here. The verses driven by a thick fuzzed out bassline, beneath little flurries of folky steel string strum, and vocalist Rosalie Cunningham's sultry croon, but when the chorus kicks in, it's all buzzing guitars, swirling effects, the song splintering into some full on heavy prog, a hook to die for, the vocals soaring, the music following suit, the organ leaping to the fire, totally trippy and psychedelic, definitely hard rocking, and when the bridge comes in, the bass is wickedly distorted and thick and slithery, joined by FX drenched guitar swirl and wild tribal drums, and then it's right back to that killer chorus. We were definitely sound after that song, and while the whole record is not that hard rocking and proggy, there's definitely a sonic thread that holds it all together, and makes it a good fit on Rise Above / Metal Blade.
"Spiderwood Farm" is another exotic hard rocker, with some spidery wah wah guitar, over dense drumming, circusy organ, and when it shifts into the main riff, it's definitely a riff we could imagine in a Ghost song, the vocals sinister and intense, with Cunningham delivering her lines like some evil sonic sorceress, intense and sort of evil.
Tracks like "Sailor's Wife's Lament" are more folky and laid back, but those tracks are inevitably butted up against tracks like the oddly titled "Leaning On A Bear" which is total hard rocking seventies style prog, with a killer chorus of swirling organs and processed vox, and when the band lock into the mathy grooves on either side, it totally pushes all our old school prog buttons. We could go track by track, as we're writing this, we keep finding tracks we dig and want to describe, and with every listen we end up finding a new favorite, the deeper we get into the record, but really, if you like retro leaning modern heavies like Ghost and Uncle Acid, and love classic proto metal, hard rock and prog, odds are Purson will definitely end up a new fave...
Another gorgeous piece of kosmische electronica from the Quiet Evenings duo of Grant & Rachel Evans! For many years now, these two have embarked on an introspective take on the transcendent psychedelic electronics pioneered by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and Cluster. For the most part, these two tend toward channeling those sounds through their solo projects - Motion Sickness Of Time Travel for Rachel and Nova Scotia Arms (amongst others) for Grant - but when they find themselves working together as Quiet Evenings, it can be magical. Impressions is one of the best things we've heard from them in any context, sporting two sprawling pieces for electronics, voice, and guitar. The first side "Blue Dream" settles upon a hypnotic bed of synthetic tones, out of which the pair broadcast fizzling arcs of warm static and revolving beacons of melodic phrases. As Rachel's ghostly voice settles into a narcotized sustained melody about halfway through the track, Grant picks up the guitar picking up the bittersweet, sodden vibe that Mark McGuire would occasionally create in the darker Emeralds tracks. Telepathic Heart is much more of a sci-fi excursion with its slow revolution through the sweeping ambient oscillation and twinking arpeggiations, as if they were creating the imaginary soundtrack to a documentary film about travelling through the heart of deep space nebulae. There's a considerable amount of hand-wrought melancholy that comes through Quiet Evenings productions, and this has always separated the Evans' from many of their contemporaries who are just aping a crystal dangled New Age wishy-washiness. Yeah, there's some teeth to these sounds, and we're much better off for it. Limited to 200 copies.
Got a whole bunch of new releases from the Universal Consciousness label, a new lp of twisted experimental black noise from Kilt, the final release from shoegaze black metal one man band Wrath Of The Weak, and the latest slab of twisted blackened weirdness from Lord Time. And then there's this, some seriously fucked up outsider bedroom blackened doom folk from the Pacific Northwest, which is even more twisted than that sounds. Imagine intensely strummed acoustic guitars, fluttering flutes, cardboard box blast beats (or maybe it's someone slapping their palms on a table), add some raga like drones, and some seriously harsh blown out vokills, some weird samples, and holy shit, you've got the unpronounceable Quloelfi, whose sound is a seriously demented strain of blackened bedroom weirdness, the sound slipping from furious ACOUSTIC black buzz, to droned out ritualistic psychedelia, to distortion drenched 4 track folk, apocalyptic and menacing, the vocals are sick, a hellish monstrous shriek, that when draped over even the dreamiest folkiness, transforms the sound into something abject and demonic, but even with that shrieking, the band sometimes add a second clean vocal, a twisted counterpoint that only makes it all that much weirder and cooler. Some tracks the drums do sound real, and the guitar does sound electric, but even then, it's got this weird, stumbling low fidelity home brewed bedroom vibe, that makes it super twisted and super unique, especially when the band whip up some seriously majestic black buzz heaviness, using elements that are obviously not typical. We can honestly say we've never heard anything like this, and thus we're sort of obsessed, and think anyone into twisted outsider heaviness, and warped experimental weirdness, will likely be as smitten as we are.
Another collection of maddening footwork genius, this one from one of the big names in the jukin' scene RP Boo. We've reviewed two collections of footwork jams, a twisted offshoot of hip hop, very specific to a certain style of dance, called jukin', and the sound is crazy catchy, but also insanely repetitive, so much so, that in every review, we make it clear, that while some folks (us for instance) can't get enough of this stuff, plenty of other people can't handle more than a track or two. Which is kinda understandable. Every track is essentially a single skittery programed rhythm, generally a single melodic loop, and ONE sample, chopped up, looped and layered and repeated ad infinitum. For us it's sort of trancelike, super mesmerizing and hypnotic, almost like a single measure, looped and looped and looped and looped... you get the picture.
Some of our favorite tracks on the above mentioned comps came courtesy of RP Boo, so we were super psyched for this full length, and it's everything we hoped for, groovy, funky, dark, with a definite sense of humor and a serious flair for creative loopscaping. Give a listen to "Battle In The Jungle", which is probably our favorite jam here, where the main melody is a sliced and diced and manipulate sample of Tarzan's distinctive yell, here transformed into a woozy, stuttery melody, SO GREAT! Or check out the final track "Area 72", which is super cinematic and soundtracky, a dense layered loopscape of soaring synths, intoned vocals samples, and wild skittery beats. In between, there's all sorts of twisted variations, the crazy cartoon music of "Robotbutizm", the slow burn soul of "The Opponent, or the sinister string laden opener "Steamidity". Check out the samples, it'll only take a minute or two for you to figure out which side you're on, odds are, if you're regular aQ list reader, this stuff is probably weird and wild enough that its maddening insane repetition and endless loopage will only make it that much more appealing. We've been playing this like incessantly and driving people CRAZY! Love it!
The hype surrounding Savages has almost eclipsed the album itself. Here was a London quartet that erupted on the scene in 2012, hybridizing your favorite post-punk reference into a violent buzzsaw of Teutonic falsetto and martial rhythms, delivered with a sneering abhorrence of anything melodic. While it's easy to hear a riff from Wire, a plod from Joy Division, or a scream from Siouxsie in Savages, all of those bands had the potential to deliver an unforgettable pop hook; and that is something that these four lasses have no interest in delivering. Instead, these songs are built through jagged layers of propulsion, aggressive thrusts into guitar noise, and unconventional mathy structures that start-stop-start-stutter-then-stop-start-stop. In listening to Savages, we're really getting that sense of deja vu; but not for those bands we had already mentioned. Instead, Savages really come across as a re-incarnation of Bestial Mouths, the LA goth-punk outfit which matched an unhinged drumming with a caterwauling vocalist in the most inhospitable of atmospheres, and again nary a melody to be heard. While that LA band seems to be undergoing an re-invention themselves with their fantastic drummer leaving Bestial Mouths, Savages pick right up from where Bestial Mouths left off a couple years back on their LP for Dais. That record made a lot of sense coming out of the bowels of the underground, but Savages' campaign through the mainstream music press is all the more unlikely. If you were expecting Matador to deliver the next Interpol through Savages, that's not the case... but if you were hoping for a feral squallor of post-punk volatility, Savages will happily oblige.
Latest from Mr. Mike Donovan, aka Sic Alps, a short three song 45rpm 12", the A side of which might be the most high fidelity jam we've heard from him, a glammy hard rock stomp, swaggery with big crunchy guitars, pounding drums, and killer vocals that slip easily into a soaring falsetto, not to mention a wicked hook and kick ass chorus. The flipside is more of the same, another glammy, groovy, hi-fi jam, this one though more slithery than swaggery, all woozy and druggy with some killer psychedelic leads, and some seriously fierce crumbling guitar crunch. The second track on the B side is almost as catchy as the A side, a sweet slab of big rock power pop, the main riff a dead ringer for some other classic jam, but here it's all Sic Alps, lots of swing and swagger, another glam rock stomp that kills, and a super cool falsetto mathy breakdown that weirdly reminds us of the recently reviewed new record from aQ pop faves Pretty & Nice, but then it's right back into it. Definitely dying for the upcoming full length now!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of the Record Store Day releases we were most psyched on getting this year was this Flying Nun/Captured Tracks reissue of the first ep by NZ cult legends, Snapper. But they didn't show up in time for RSD like they were supposed to, thanks to a shipping snafu. Finally, however, our Snapper 12"s (along with The Bats' first ep, also reissued by Flying Nun via Captured Tracks for RSD) finally showed and we're so glad it's here now and we're able to share it with you, as we probably wouldn't have been able to write about it earlier, because we're sure they would have been all snatched up on RSD proper. So we only have about 7 of these left, and we're pretty sure they're gone for good, so act fast if you want one!
Released in 1989, Snapper was formed by Peter Gutterdige (The Clean, Chills and Great Unwashed) and featured Christina Voice on organ and vocals. The band would go through several lines-up but it is this ep that defined their sound for bands to come, a mixture of Suicide, Jesus and Mary Chain and a less campy B-52's with a farfisa driven hypno-psych vibe that predated Stereolab. Their drug-psych influence can be easily sensed in bands like Moon Duo and Psychic Ills today. Includes poster and original press release. So so good! Four songs. All killer!
First full length from this Bay Area guitarist, who we first heard on the Berkeley Guitar compilation back in 2006, which also featured Matt Baldwin (whose Psychic Arts label released this!) and Sean Smith. And like his tracks on the comp, Snider displays quite a knack for sweetly melodic, pastoral Appalachia, conjuring up warm chordal swells, wrapped in delicate fingerpicked melodies, the tracks peppered with some subtle slippery slide guitar. Snider's style is generally not super flashy, and isn't about cascades of rapid fire notes, or dizzying melodic flurries, instead he tends to gently coax a hushed melancholia from his guitar, obviously the shadows of Fahey and Kottke and the rest loom large, but Snider definitely sounds right at home amongst such esteemed company. Most of the tracks here are dreamy and wistful, but a few (like "Val Verde Nights"), do display a more shadowy side, giving those tracks a moody minor key vibe. Good stuff.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and packaged in an origiami style folded jacket, with pasted on cover art and a photocopied insert.
Killer cd reissue of the recent singles collection, Empyraisch, from local blacknoise/black metal outfit Sutek Hexen, which includes a bonus 3"cd-r with an exclusive unreleased 20 minute track! More on that in a second, first, here's what we had to say about Empyraisch when we reviewed the lp version:
Empyraisch is a compilation of sorts, gathering up all the tracks from Sutekh Hexen's super insanely limited and long out of print 7"s from the last couple years, as well as a rare compilation track or two. We'd imagine most of you were like us, and were unable to snag any of those rare 7"s, or perhaps only managed to track down one or two, so this should still be of interest to even the most obsessive SH fans, but fair warning to the folks who did manage to get em all. For the rest of is though, this is a godsend (devilsend?)...
This Bay Area black metal / noise outfit dig deep into the crypt for these grim blacknoize rarities, a gloriously dizzying mix of blurred noise drenched black buzz and haunting atmospheric ambience... The opening track introduces Sutekh Hexen at their noisiest, the initial stretch of washed out buzzing blackness giving way to pure face melting black noise, unrelenting and devastating. Which is a bit of foreshadowing, since this collection obviously represents the group at their noisiest and grimmest. The record continues to unwind with blasts of corrosive noise, this time underpinned by low drones and chant like vox, adding some melody and color, however subtle, to the proceedings, everything blurred into a Tim Hecker-ish haze. The first half closes with a blast of extremely harsh black metal, the buzz and any semblance of riffage, nearly buried beneath an avalanche of grinding psychedelic noise.
After that, Sutekh Hexen flex those soundscaping muscles, at least briefly, opening with a stretch of droned out thrum, a soft black swirl, drifting ominously, only to disappear in a squall of torrential blackness, a wild roiling black hole of sound, that eventually dissipates, allowing the harsh vokills to slip to the fore, then the buried rhythms, but again, it all bleeds into an extended sprawl of black metal murk, woozy and blown out, blurry and dense, trailing off into a cloud of grim black energy.
This reissue tacks on the 20 minute "The Power To Condemn", which opens with some seriously ominous abject ambience, swirling winds, some creepy scraping (bones dragged on stone?), creaking, rumbles, all laced with strange sonic shimmer, soon voices drift in, demonic whispers, in the distance keening feedback, we were steeling ourselves for the band to launch into some caustic black buzz, but it never happens, this is all ambient, although about halfway through, some deep low end thrum surfaces, pocked with strange pulsations, and eventually, some proper buzz swoops in, but it's way low in the mix, sounding off in the distance, not black buzz so much as glacial tar pit ooze, downtuned rumbles, slo-mo riffage bleeding into black blurs, a SUNNO)))-like dirge, which soon blossoms into something blacker and noisier, a swirling squall of harrowing, hellish howls and churning blackness, darkly psychedelic and hauntingly harsh, the sounds seem to melt and fade before our ears, gradually settling into a low level feedback drenched thrum, before finally fading out completely.
Swank packaging too, housed in an oversized black matte envelope, sealed with a printed sticker, inside, two printed inserts, and two printed clear plastic transparencies, probably SUPER LIMITED too, so don't dawdle...
Somehow this mag is already up to issue number lucky thirteen, and yet it's the first one we've carried, it's definitely a good place to start though, with the METAL issue! Tom Tom is a magazine about female drummers, and is super varied, focusing not just on drumming, but on touring and recording, featuring lots of reviews, of records, books and gear, not to mention some cool articles on different drumming techniques, suggestions for teaching drumming, advice columns, recipes, pieces on various cities and scenes, and loads more, plus of course, lots of features on tons of bad ass female metal (and some non metal) drummers, featuring plenty of names we knew, Cheshire Agusta from doom-jazz aQ faves Stinking Lizaveta, Becky Hawk from Amber Asylum and Laudanum, Chiyo Nukaga from Noothgrush, Sarah Sutter from funeral witch-doom quartet shEver, but a whole bunch we didn't, female drummers from all over the world, from bands big and small, all of the articles super interesting, most had us hunting down music by the bands and drummers featured. There's also the cover article, which is super cool and begins with a breakdown of the various metal sub genres of, as well as a handful of inspiring female metal drummers, including Risa The Reaper from Gallhammer, Denise Dufort from Girlschool, Sandrine from French death metallers Gorod, Mercedes Lander from Kittie, Ellen Mieczkowski from 13, phew, we could go on and on, there's so much more crammed into the pages of Tom Tom, but needless to say it's a kick ass read, whether you're a drummer or not. Now we're gonna be on the hunt for the dozen issues we missed...
For whatever reason, this Nashville psych rock combo got just a one sentence review on the aQ site for their self released self titled lp, which most of us here really dug. That sentence goes on to describe Ttotals as "scuzzy, bluesy and dirty" which to still definitely applies, but these songs seem a bit more polished, without losing any of their scuzz, the A side a brooding groover, with deep dramatic vox, and peppered with little blurts of wah guitar (which almost sound like electronics), the song a loping smoldering psychedelic sprawl, which explodes into a crunchy, heavy chorus, all thick bass buzz, and chiming distorted guitars, a killer for sure. The flipside is sonically similar, darkly dramatic, a little bit droney, driven again by some thick bass buzz, super gloomy and gothic, Stoogesy swagger woven into post punk churn, we're reminded of old Aussie outfits like the Scientists and the like, lots of moody atmosphere and swirling sonic texture, with some seriously heavy riffage going on, getting downright metallic, but the crooned vox and gothic atmosphere keep it firmly rooted in the realm of garage gloom psych rock. Mastered by Sonic Boom too which of course makes perfect sonic sense...
Includes a download for the single and a download for a label sampler too!
One of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases EVER, long out of print on cd, is finally available again, and on vinyl!!!! Here's what we wrote about this amazing record way back in 2004 when we first reviewed it on New Arrivals List #192:
The first recording in the Sublime Frequencies catalog to not focus on the noise people make, Broken Hearted Dragonflies gives a voice to our insect brethren in Southeast Asia, as recorded by Tucker Martine in Laos, Burma and Thailand in 2000. The disc starts off like any other "traditional" insect recording: lots of cicada-like whining and chirping, but gradually turns to sound unlike all the rest. As one particular insect in the field begins to slowly sweep up in pitch like an oscillator on a synthesizer. A short time later, the clashing buzz of insect varieties begins to grate against their own harmonies and sounds much like either a clever DSP patch or the aliasing sound of a poorly sampled instrument. In other words, it all sounds hardly organic. In fact, in the field recording genre, we'd have to place this one in the same bizarre category as Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings. The Raster-Noton sounds of nature. We're periodically reminded of our bucolic setting only by the steady hoots and coos of the native birds. You will undoubtedly share our initial skepticism regarding the purity of these field recordings, but it is emphatically stated by the recordist that "these recordings were not processed, the insects actually sound like this!" Absolutely amazing stuff! Features liner notes by none other than Hakim Bey.
Crate-diggers have long looked to Library music (anonymously created music cues made available for use in film) for obscure hip-hop and funk breaks. Back in 2000, Strut Records released this survey on the KPM library originally intending to create a series dedicated to mining the archives of UK's foremost music libraries. It has now been reissued in a deluxe format that includes a bonus cd of a live reunion concert at London's Jazz Cafe with KPM's top performers, Alan Hawkshaw (The Mohawks), Keith Mansfield, and Alan Parker, dubbed The KPM All Stars. The album proper also includes tracks by John Cameron, Les Baxter and a host of others focusing on funk, soul, Latin, jazz, and disco with a gritty seventies urban vibe. Break beats are plentiful, but what is most stunning is the solid session player chops being presented especially on the live disc, not to mention the stunning vocals by Madeline Bell on "That's What Friends Are For" (not the Dionne Warwick song of the same name, thankfully!). Fans of Gilles Peterson, or rare soul and jazz groove. take note! There's also a gatefold double lp version that includes both cds with it as well.
Record Store Day alert! Here's a 2013 RSD release that we thankfully managed to get enough copies of to list...
Please don't ask us to pronounce Theppabutr, but do ask us why this is so awesome - though the best answer is: just listen to it!
International vinyl diggers, seeking out vintage grooves in far flung parts of the world, have made Molam music from Thailand into something that's now definitely a 'thing' in our world music section - we've had some other great Molam collections on the Sublime Freqencies label, for instance, so of course it's exciting to hear from 'The Man Behind The Molam Sound', Theppabutr Satirodchompu, responsible for the production work on the 17 tracks collected here from a variety of Molam artists. It's Molam of the modern variety (modern circa 1972-1975 that is, in this case), a form of electrified vocal music from Northeast Thailand that combines traditional folk melodies and ethnic instrumentation with electric guitars and electronic keyboards. Great stuff, all of it, lively and rhythmic, emotive and ear-wormy. Even though we don't understand a word, it's still immediately captivating. We love the keening singers and warbly organs, groovy beats and exotic vibes. If you haven't yet given Molam and closely related genre Luk Thung a try, this would be a great place to start. Seventies Molam like this is mighty fine stuff, up there with those 'Ethiopiques' recordings and certain Jamaican reggae of the same vintage, though we'd imagine the vocal stylings here might work for some folks and not so much for others.
This limited vinyl version is a Record Store Day 2013 release - there is also a (presumably less-limited) non-RSD compact disc edition too, that we'll be stocking and will list next time, but we wanted to get this RSD vinyl listed now before they were gone! Especially since the double vinyl includes two bonus tracks not found on the cd version - as well as a 12"x14" poster, and download card for mp3s of all the tracks. Gatefold sleeve in faux woodgrain wrapper, liner notes, foldout poster inside.
We always love a good heavy psych/proto-metal mix, that's what you get here on this new comp, twenty tracks of fairly obscure heaviness circa 1968-1974 from the UK, USA, Holland, and elsewhere; as the subtitle says, "a lesson in devilish psychedelics", sure! Making it more of a lesson, they've thoughtfully provided some notes about each band/track in the full-color illustrated cd booklet. Now, what's interesting is that we used to get comps like this and everything was new to us, but now, we know a lot of this stuff, you might too, bands like Incredible Hog, The Way We Live, Armaggedon (the German one), Skid Row (the Irish one!), Rotomagus (with their punkiest tune, "Fightin' Cock"), Schizo (Richard Pinhas' pre-Heldon band, with 2 tracks from their rare 7", sounding like a spaced out Steppenwolf), and big aQ hits Jerusalem (represented here by their devastating "Primitive Man"). We've had full-length reissues from several of these acts, most recently the Francais Metal de Proto of Rotomagus. Great stuff, all of it, and so if you don't know 'em all, this would be a good introduction.
And then, there's actually, on the other hand, quite a few tracks here from band we DIDN'T already know, and thus are glad to hear. Seems that many of them were singles-only bands, so comps like this are one of the best ways to find out about 'em. Some names: The Hook (pretty dang wild and heavy for '68!), Sound Of Imker (both sides of their '69 single), Dickens, Spirit Of St. Louis, Bintangs, Henry Schifter, The Gallery, Inca Bullet Joe, Demian, Zendik, and Rapunzel. Some of those now we're gonna be on the lookout for more by - if there IS any more, 'cuz what's here might be all of it in some cases.
Definitely a expertly-curated dose of old school, fuzz-filled heaviness for folks who dug similar comps like Up All Night, White Lace & Strange, and Downer Rock Genocide. A good range of frantic garage, manic psych, & plodding prog, all proto-something, either metal or punk or both. And by the way, interesting to note that a good 40 percent of these tracks date specifically from 1971, once again THEE year for awesome rock music.
Rescued from the vaults of obscurity, this chunk of early '70s Midwestern religious hyper-paranoia is sure to appeal to those of you who like your sermons firebreathingly irrational and on the slightly scary side - if it weren't so damn funny. Nowhere near as transcendental as Elizabeth Clare Prophet and with none - absolutely none - of the out there hippie charm of Brother John Rygden, Dr. Jack Van Impe, who is still at it all these years later, albeit in a way more toned down manner, focuses his sights on that classic cause for all of the world's problems - Rock n' Roll! We are encouraged to go home and smash our Herman's Hermits records as rock is blamed for the explosion of illegitimate babies being born, the dumbing down of our youth, and the overall moral decay in the world. Oh, and rock was created in Russia as a communist plot to take over, if you can believe it. Operating out of Detroit, Van Impe singles out much of his rage on legendary shit-stirrer, leader of the White Panthers and one time manager of the MC5, John Sinclair. Yep, dope, guns and fucking in the streets, all the good stuff, comes into heavy criticism here as Van Impe spews out bile in his admittedly impressive preacher voice. A strange slice of forgotten history that has previously been sampled by DJ Shadow, Marked For Death is interesting for its reactionary agenda - which isn't too far from some of the moralistic, self-aggrandizing sleaze coming today, religious, political, or otherwise.
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American rock troubadour Kurt Vile continues his slow march back in time, as if he wants to actually be playing classic rock, instead of being a modern indie rocker just channeling that classic rock. His sound has always displayed hints of the old classics that came before, the magic being in how masterfully he made them his own, and essentially erased the border, real or imagined between modern indie rock and classic radio rock. Cuz really, if you removed all the non musical signifiers from Kurt Vile, the cool indie label, the punk rock pedigree, the cool underground rock royalty who guest on his records, the various high profile tour mates, the blog hype, the look, the shaggy longhair rock and roller, what you'd be left with, would be JUST the music, and really, it's absolutely the kind of music you could play for your Dad, not to say this is necessarily Dad-rock, but it IS sort of some modern mutant strain of classic rock. Not beholden to punk, or post punk, or new wave or metal, but to classic songsmithery. And it's all on display, the songwriting obviously, but the production too, the arrangements, the sonic palette as a whole. And sure, there are plenty of unlikely, and very UN classic rock moments, but somehow, Vile weaves them into something that DOES really sound classic. Check out the weird skittery programmed sounding beats at the beginning of "Was All Talk", at first it sounds like it's turn into some weird Ariel Pink outsider pop thing, but instead, that skitter is deftly woven into warm guitar strum, swirling synths, and Vile's laid back vox. Speaking of which, it's hard not to hear a little Dinosaur Jr in Vile's music, which makes sense, as Dinosaur's Mascis was an unabashed lover of classic rock, and was often compared to Neil Young himself. But if you can imagine Dinosaur minus all the incendiery guitar heroics, it might not be all that far removed from Kurt Vile.
The nine+ minute opener definitely sets the stage, pastoral and laid back, strummy and summery and breezy, reminded us a bit of the Woods at first, only to late learn that the guy from the Woods guests on this here record. As do folks from Beachwood Sparks, Warpaint, Royal Trux, and others, all of whom to be under Vile's thrall, aiding him in crafting this gorgeous slab of jangle and strum, the sound warm and comfortable, and just a tiny bit raw around the edges. That said, this is most definitely his least 'underground' and 'indie' sounding record. If labels and the radio and MTV still worked the way they used to or in some cases even existed, this is the sort of record that would be bandied about as Vile's 'breakthrough', and who knows, maybe it still will be. And it should be, cuz it's gorgeous. The songs are CRAZY catchy, it's a total top-down, cruising down the coast on a summer afternoon kind of record. The songs already sound timeless. There's no doubt Vile is a songwriter of formidable talent, one who just follows his own muse, and it just so happens that that muse is some strange hybrid of Tom Petty, Neil Young, Jackson Brown, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison, which to most underground music punks might sound horrifying, but the proof is right here in Wakin On A Pretty Daze, which might just be our favorite Vile record yet. Classic indeed!
The cd comes in a full color four panel digipak, with a full color printed inner sleeve, and a booklet with lyrics, but while they last, we have the ULTRA limited, already out of print, super deluxe blue vinyl version, which features the same cover as the cd (and regular lp), with Vile standing in front of a big wall, covered in graffiti, but on the deluxe vinyl version, there is no graffiti, instead, it comes with a special sheet of stickers, with which you can use to apply the graffiti yourself, however you want! How cool is that?
Latest from these aQ fave dreampoppers, and while on past records these guys have flirted with new wave, they haven't gone for it full bore until now. And we're digging it. The opener might be the only exception, a gorgeous short, sharp blast of prismatic fuzz drenched, piano laced, distorto pop, hooks galore, sweet crooned vocals, swirling strings, cool synth melodies, a little bit of an M83 vibe, but more sun dappled and dreamy, with some crunch too, and yeah, a little bit of new wave, the sound is more like something you'd hear on Merge or Slumberland. But then "Ocean Repeating (Big-Eyed Girl)" gets all angular, and super new wavey, reminding us a bit of The Fixx (!), but much more fuzzy and poppy, more swirling synths, angular melodies, handclap rhythms, and a main hook that will get lodged in your head like crazy. "On Guyot" might be our favorite track here though. A weirdly spaced out sort of psychedelic kosmische kraut-groove, all simple motorik rhythm, swirling processed vocals, and shimming, glimmering synths, super spacey and dreamy, thick swaths of synth drone laced with buried melodies and slow shifting textures, wish it went on for way more than its six minutes.
The rest of the record returns to WN's woozy jangly new wave, from crunchy, fuzzy propulsive synth pop, to caffeinated synth soaked garage pop, to tripped out, angular new wave grooviness, replete with processed horns and all manner of keyboard blurt, until the final track, another more abstract drifter, this one all hazy and washed out, bleary and blurry and dreamlike, a twang flecked drift, drenched in echo and reverb, a soft focus finale, that finishes the record on a surprisingly dreamy melancholic note.
Housed in a eye popping, full color slipcase.
A Brand new full length from these East Coast black blasters, and maybe their most black metal. Which is maybe a weird thing to say about a BLACK METAL band, but part of what we dug so much about Woe, especially when they were a he, and a one man bedroom black metal band, is that the black buzz was heavily tempered with lots of post rockisms, and noise rock elements, we mentioned in a past review that their sound was as much beholden to Bastro and Husker Du as black metal. Which was definitely true of their (his) debut, A Spell For The Death Of Man, but slightly less true for record #2 "Quietly, Undramatically", which while still black metal, remained super melodic and definitely still displayed hints of noise rock and other not specifically black elements. Which brings us to Withdrawal, which as we mentioned is maybe the blackest of the bunch. Sure there are moments of clean singing, acoustic guitars, super catchy major key melodies, but really that stuff isn't so rare in black metal, and the band were pretty melodic from the beginning, we even compared certain parts on past records to Alcest and Amesoeurs. But get an earful of the opener, it's frantic and frenzied, exploding immediately into some furious blasting and buzzing, and while the band are still heavy on melody, the buzz and blackness is definitely front and center these days, soaring and epic and majestic, slipping easily from heads down, grim blasting ferocity, to super soaring metal majesty, to galloping thrashing heaviness. There are definitely moments, the band slip into some doomy dirgery, or explode in a bit of mathiness, but it's much more integrated into the group's sound, a sound which is now firmly and solidly black metal, but it's definitely a strain of black metal that few can pull off, and even fewer who are this good. Making grim buzz this catchy, and making melodic blackness sound this fierce and furious, it's pretty incredible, as is pretty much all of Withdrawal, which seems like it wouldn't be nearly as appealing, sans the overt math/noise rockiness, but somehow, those elements remain, just subsumed into the blackness, which is making us dig this just as much, and maybe even a little more that the other Woe records, which is saying a lot!
This is the latest release from local black metal tape label Brotherhood Of Light, who have been moving well away from black metal on recent releases, never more so than here, the first we've heard from Worldscape:18, one of a handful of new BoL tapes (the rest are listed in the In Stock Not Yet Reviewed section if you want to take a flyer on any of those) that find the BoL crew exploring all manner of experimental soundscapery, power electronics, harsh (and not so harsh) noise and even techno, ALL of which find their way onto Hunter, a dizzying, constantly shifting sprawl of crumbling drones, blurred damaged loops, corrosive textures, and even some beats!
Hunter starts out in a grey sonic fog, sound a bit like Nurse With Wound doing power electronics
all blown out, decayed sonic detritus, the sort of cool warped sound that makes it hard to figure out if it's meant to be like that, or if it's the batteries dying in your Walkman, either way, it sounds amazing, a churning fractured dronescape, buried melodies and swirling looped samples underneath, sounding a lot like a noisier, more caustic Caretaker, all washed out and woozy.
The sound shifts into dense cascades of melting symphonic swirls, and wild squalls of demonic whispers and fractured psychedelia, again all jumbled and tangled into a swirling chaotic mesmer, harsh in places for sure, but smeared into something less brittle and brutal, and transformed into the sort of soft noise that's totally hypnotic and mesmerizingly tranced out.
We were settling in for a long sprawl of droned out zoner drift, when BAM, the sound splinters, and then explodes into a sort of killer distorto house music, blown out and super aggressive, like a jacked up Silent Servant, laced with all sorts of strange sci-fi bloops and bleeps, spacey melodies, wreathed in sheets of thick blacknoise thrum, pounding malevolently, total blackened dancefloor destruction for sure. That beat soon disappears in a cloud of staticky white noise, before devolving into a cool, slithery downtempo groove, all slowed down vocals, roiling looped rhythms, again all wreathed in gristly buzz, and drifting atop a bed of rumbling thrum. Haunting minor key melodies surface, again transforming the sound into something hauntingly beautiful, the beats still throbbing down in the murk, sounding a bit like a demonic lo-fi Boards Of Canada, sort of. All before another barrage of noise swallows the proceedings whole, and spews out an entirely different set of gnarled beats, monstrous vokill bellows, and swirling kosmische synth melodies, buried beneath layer upon layer of black noise buzz. And so it goes. A twisted sort of electronic noise record, fused to old school hardcore techno, woven into a beat driven chunk of psychedelic post industrial power electronics, and filtered through a damaged floorcore harsh noise combo, and the result might just be one of our favorite BoL releases yet!
Final release from one of our favorite one man black metal bands, who if you regularly read the aQ list, you may remember us describing as possibly THEE buzziest black metal band we had heard, so buzzy in fact, that the sound actually became LESS black metal and more sorta shoegazey and tranced out and trippy, which is obviously not a bad thing at all. So here is the final missive from WOTW, and it's exactly what we wanted, a huge swirling mass of blurry buzz and buried melody. After a bit of haunting organ drift, the sound explodes into a squall of swirling white noise, beneath which, lilting melodies drift and shimmer, there are some vokills too, but it's almost like a black metal Caretaker, dreamy and drifty, all of the caustic crunch and black buzz balanced by the haunting dreaminess beneath. And so it goes, each track here is dreamy and darkly melodic, it just happens to be swathed in crumbing distortion and swirls of black buzz. We're guessing that folk into Lovesliescrushing or Leyland Kirby or Tim Hecker, who aren't averse to some buzz, might be seriously smitten. This just might be the prettiest black metal record EVER. Sad it's the last. RIP WOTW...
We reviewed the Unseen Forces label vinyl reissue of this a few months ago, but for those of you who prefer cds, we just got in a few copies of the previous Stormspell cd version that we mentioned in that review, which went a lot like this:
Not long ago we listed a cool picture disc vinyl compilation that the Unseen Forces label put out, called Grave Command, featuring the likes of Orchid, Danava, Occultation, Deceased, Ghoul, Ride For Revenge and others from the realms of heavy metallic weirdness. Standing out amongst all those mostly evil & occult modern day acts was a band called XINR, actually a Christian metal act from the '80s, from up in Portland. Their killer track "All Hallow's Eve" was taken from this lp, consisting of demos recorded circa 1984. Devout Christians but also devout metalheads, XINR (pronounced ex-sinner, get it?) were obviously heavily influenced by Judas Priest and Accept, and come of sounding a lot like Cirith Ungol, with over the top screechy vocals and heavy, catchy riffs. A bit doomy, and pretty darn (excuse me!) rockin'!! Satan doesn't have all the best tunes it turns out. Sadly, the band's career was tragically ended (before it had barely started) by a motorcycle accident that took the lives of their singer and guitarist. However, their headbanging legacy lives on! If you like rippin' old school metal and don't mind if it's Bible believing as long as it's badass, then this is fer you!
