The Holy Mountain label has been forging a new trajectory as of late into the kosmiche realms of new composition. We last reviewed M. Geddes Gendras' Modular synth solo debut, Test Leads, and following that we now have local San Francisco composer, Henry Plotnick, channeling the big three of minimalist composition, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich, in his delightful debut release Fields, a composition in nine parts. Plotnick, using digital synthesizer and piano, begins with a piece built from simple repeating melodic phrases that bloom into interlocking repetitive and exploratory filigrees, sometimes with orchestral strings or tinkling bells and gamelan sounds, rising in terrifying intensity or diluting into gorgeous gaseous clouds of vapor. The whole collection exploring the boundaries and limits of a simplified strategy, but one done with an intuitive sense of play and structure that is both hypnotic and tantalizing.
An auspicious debut - oh, and did we mention that Plotnick is just 11 years old??
We'd been hearing about this record for ages, the guys in the Ovens and Violent Change constantly asking us if we'd heard these guys, and of course we HADN'T, cuz it seemed to be another one of those local SF underground post punk records that surfaced briefly and then disappeared, much like those Sopors records we were finally able to track down. But thankfully, this angular post punk / noise pop gem was rescued from obscurity from the fine folks at Blast First, and while we were a bit surprised that some weird super obscure band nobody had ever heard of would merit a big label reissue, once we finally got our ears on this stuff it was easy to see why, and then had us wondering how the hell this had slipped under the radar, and how had we missed these guys completely? Hell, they even did a split with aQ faves Grass Widow that flew right by us apparently.
Well it doesn't really matter now. What really matters now is that you all don't miss out this time around, cuz holy shit is this stuff killer. Dark, brooding, angular, crunchy and fuzzy, moody and broody but bristly and kinetic, catchy as fuck, but also raw and tense and urgent exactly the kind of stuff folks into Iceage and similarly hyped new post punk combos should be flipping their shit over. And thankfully will now have the chance. Noisy and intense, swaggery and frenetic, the guitars sharp and crunchy, swirling into wild squalls as often as locking into crunchy riffage or unleashing shards of gnarled noise, the drums and bass locked into tightly wound grooves, loping lazily one second, driving and punk as fuck the next, the vocals a snotty snarly feral yowl, nervous jittery energy harnessed into jangle pop shapes but run through with Wire-y slivers of melody, as good as we had hoped and then some!
It's hard not to get a bit obsessed with perfectly curated labels, and few do it as well as UK horror soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz - every release stunningly packaged, with super interesting liner notes, amazing new artwork from incredible artists, and the soundtracks themselves, running the gamut from must haves like all the classic Carpenter soundtracks (They Live, Halloween III, Escape From New York), to super obscurities (Living Dead At Manchester Morgue) to modern soundtracks (The Devil's Business, Let The Right One In). We find ourselves anxiously awaiting every new Death Waltz release, whether we've seen the movie or not, heck, whether we've even heard of the movie at all. We have actually heard of Twins Of Evil, from 1971, set in nineteenth century Europe and starring Peter Cushing as a witch/vampire hunter, who is tasked with caring for orphaned twin girls, who may or may not be EVIL! A classic Hammer Horror for sure, produced right when the age restriction for British films was relaxed a bit, which means like many movies of the time, Twins Of Evil is more violent and sexually explicit than many Hammer films. We have yet to see the movie, but the stills look pretty amazing, Cushing as the dapper, troubled witchhunter, a gaggle of scantily clad, nubile vampire witches, what's not to like!
The music itself was recorded by Harry Robinson, who had written songs for the Eurovision song contest, the Children's Film Foundation and even Nick Drake! He had some pop chart hits, but for Twins Of Evil, not his only Hammer horror score incidentally, he looked to the spaghetti westerns for inspiration, and it's easy to hear in Robinson's compositions, with some of the tracks sounding like they could have been plucked from some obscure Morricone score (sans twang and whistling of course), the score is bombastic and dramatic, swirling strings, martial snares, booming timpani's, those strings are sawed ominously and almost violently in places, leading to stretches of the soundtrack that dip into a sound more traditionally sinister, with more obvious horror score moments, ominous drones, tense minor key strings, a good balance for the more orchestral movements. Again, it's hard to say how the score matches up to the visuals, but on their own, it's pretty fantastic.
And like all Death Waltz releases, totally deluxe and over the top packaging, the lp pressed on red vinyl, housed in a printed sleeve, with notes from artist Eelus, who was responsible for the stunning new cover art, and who jokes that he thought he was being asked to design a poster for Twins, with Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and goes on to profess his undying love for horror movies. That's housed in a gorgeous spot varnish heavy jacket, with film specific liner notes on the back, as well as stills from the film. Also included a 12"x12" print of the cover art as well as a huge fold out poster. And as with all of these releases, SUPER LIMITED!!!
We'd been hearing about these guys for a while now, and from all sorts of folks, metalheads, popkids, all pretty adamant about how we had to check them out, we didn't realize it was one of the guys from Double Dagger, but as much as we dig DD, we were hardly prepared for THIS. A seriously kick ass blast of hooky heaviness, equal parts AmRep pig fuck noise rock, tangled old school math rock crush and vintage grunge, just check out the opener "Bait Car" (even sounds like a Tad song title), super distorted guitars, pounding drums, a breakdown verse that's all buzzing bass, drum crush, squealing feedback, yowled vox, and then holy shit a seriously Nirvana worthy chorus, and then a killer mathy breakdown, and then another Nirvana style part that's even more catchy. Holy shit, we had to listen to that first track 3 or 4 times before we could go on to the rest of the record, and to be honest we had a similar reaction to almost every song here, hooky and heavy, sludgey, grungy, poppy, the Nirvana vibe looms large, but filtered through old school Midwest heaviness and modern Torche style metallic pop, everything here totally hits the spot, the guitar sound is massive, crunchy and crumbly, the songs swing and bounce, groove and grind, every single one has a hook most pop bands would kill for, but it's set amidst some serious downtuned riffery and muscly metallic heft, think Helmet and Hum, Polvo and Drive Like Jehu, lots of nineties influence for sure, but all woven seamlessly together into what might be simultaneously our new favorite pop record, and new favorite heavy record, all at the same time. Obviously CRAZY recommended!
Nuclear Blast, after wowing us with the latest from Kadavar and the debut from Free Fall, not to mention the as yet un-aQ-reviewed new album from unabashed Sabbath appropriators Orchid, have just come out with ANOTHER catchy, killer album in the '70s retro-rock style, the debut full-length by a bombastic band from Austin, Texas called Scorpion Child. These guys list proto-metal & heavy krautrock acts like Pentagram, Hairy Chapter and Lucifer's Friend as influences, and yeah, we hear those for sure, but it must be admitted that they also have a bit of Sunset Strip swagger to 'em, if they were from LA in the '80s they'd probably have made it onto MTV. That's in part 'cuz the lead singer's raucous wailing vox are very Robert Plant-ish, and a lot of the '80s hair bands were trying really hard to sound like Led Zeppelin after all - so Scorpion Child woulda fit right in with the likes of Badlands or Blue Murder, ferinstance. They even throw in some Zeppish power ballady acoustic stylings on the album closing epic "Red Blood (The River Flows)". The singer also reminds us a lot of Dave King from Fastway, which we consider a plus. But Scorpion Child definitely sport a grittier, more vintage sound that all you '70s proto-metal lovers out there will dig, rocking out like a more party-hardy Graveyard or something, with muscular grooves, sticky choruses, and that aforementioned sensual yowl leading the charge. Just listen to tracks like "Kings Highway" or "Polygon Of Eyes"... one word (or is it two?) will do: badass.
Domestic vinyl version soon forthcoming. The gatefold compact disc includes a bonus track, that may or may not also be on the vinyl, however.
First new music in 17 years from the aQ beloved Scud Mountain Boys, whose records predated the advent of the overly verbose extended tomes that the aQ list reviews have become, so the reviews of those records that we did manage for the Scuds were only a couple sentences long, when in fact, those records, ALL of their records, were deserving of so much more. In those reviews we mention late great SF mope rockers American Music Club, Gram Parsons, even the Eagles (but as we clarify, only if the Eagles were melancholy, introspective nerds!), and those comparisons still most definitely ring true, of course fans of Bonnie Prince Billy, Fleet Foxes and other modern retro, country/folk sadsacks who have yet to discover the joys of the Scuds, will be in heaven, and will most likely find themselves needing to track down every Scud record they can.
Scud frontman Joe Pernice has been plenty busy since the dissolution of the Scuds, recording a bunch of records under his own name and in groups like the Pernice Brothers, Chappaquiddick Skyline and the new Mendicants, and the return to the Scud Mountain Boys is really not that much of a sonic shift, most notably, shedding some of the classic pop-isms that defined Pernice's post-Scud projects, and returning to a stripped down, hushed, melancholic country music, most tracks just an acoustic guitar, super minimal bass, stripped down drumming, some reverby lap steel and vocals, and it's really all about Pernice's delicate dreamy vocals, which sound as perfect as they did back in the day, delivering aching laments in a voice that's so distinctive, and melodies that immediately take us back to the early Scud records, the opening two tracks set the stage with some of the most hushed and haunting Scud loveliness we've heard, the opener sounds like it could have been recorded for one of the old records, pitch perfect Scuds, adding some lush impossibly perfect vocal harmonies, while the second track is a gorgeously wistful twang flecked lament that totally tug at the heartstrings. And so it goes, gorgeous country ballad after soft psychedelic country rocker, some of the other Scuds take their turns at the mic, but for the most part, this remains Pernice's show, and pretty much every track here is a total stunner, we can't even remember a time when a band reformed after so long and made a record this good, and this much like records from the group's classic era, without sounding like a tired rehash, in fact, Do You Love The Sound pretty much sounds like it could have been recorded right after the group's 1996 swansong Massachusetts.
Welcome back Scud Mountain Boys, oh how we missed you.
Attention all headbanging nerds!! Look out, here's a brand new song from San Francisco's weird metal lords Slough Feg, a propulsive sci-fi themed rocker entitled "Laser Enforcer", sounding, especially in this rough-and-tumble demo version, a heck of a lot like some long lost NWOBHM single. We've heard it played live as well, it's a good one! It's slated to appear, in re-recorded form, on their upcoming studio album Digital Resistance, due out sometime next year on Metal Blade, but why wait? This raw rendition was originally intended for a split with cult Canadian doomsters Funeral Circle, but somehow that fell through, so here it is, self-released by the band on 7" vinyl, and paired instead with another, older recording from their vaults.
We're especially taken with the groovy instrumental breakdown, with brief drum break and chicken scratch guitar pattern, that happens at about the 1:30 mark of "Laser Enforcer" and then recurs again a bit later on, both times segueing into emotive twin guitar leads, with lots of zip-zip-zap-zap sound FX swirling 'round. Elsewhere, the superbly melodic verse/chorus vocal parts find Slough Feg mainman Mike Scalzi's distinctive tenor in fine form, as he tells you the fantastical facts about what metaphysical effects his regime of laser enforcement will bring about. Despite the song's driving groove, it also has a sort of moody, melancholy vibe to it, interestingly enough. Definitely makes us look forward to the upcoming album, as if we weren't already.
Then, for something completely different, the B side, from a previously unreleased 4-track recording that dates back to the Atavism era, is a Government Issue cover! Yep, the '80s DC hardcore band. Slough Feg do a dead-on job with their raging version of GI's "Blending In" from the 1984 album Joyride. It's a nod to Scalzi and fellow Slough Feg guitarist Angelo Tringali's roots in the punk scene back then; after all they've always cited the likes of Black Flag as an influence alongside Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy.
Limited to 500 copies.
Full length number three from these Midwestern jangle poppers, whose fuzzy bubblegum garage pop has changed a lot since their 2009 debut. No band wants to hear how they've 'matured', but since these guys were barely out of high school when they released that first record, it's not surprising that 4 years, and 2 records later, that their sound would have blossomed into something more fully realized, Soft Will is sonically much more lush, and the songwriting this time around finds SW's taking classic popsongsmithery and making it their own. Just check out opener "3AM Spiritual" and see if you're not smitten. Cuz really if you're not, that pop music heart of yours must be shriveled and gnarled, cuz this might be some of the most perfect pop we've heard in ages. Lilting, super melodic, swathed in swirling synths, summery guitar strum, sweetly crooned vocals, busy but understated drumming, and then halfway through, the song blossoms into chiming, shimmering, softly psychedelic dream pop bliss out, suddenly cranked up, even louder, more full and lush, the gang vocals drifting over layered guitars, more synths, dreamily dramatic, with a cool lead guitar breakdown before swooping right back into it.
Which pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record, a killer collection of delightfully hook filled sun dappled jangle pop that's catchy crazy, liberally doused with streaks of fuzz guitars, subtle psychedelic swirls, lush almost orchestral swells, equal parts old school eighties new wave, classic power pop and more modern garage pop jangle.
Latest full length from these SF psychedelic garage rockers, who unlike many of their more spaced out and droney compatriots, don't so much drift druggily as stomp bloozily, fusing modern day fuzzed out garage rock with classic sixties style jangle pop and seventies psychedelic blooz. In reviews of past records we mention the usual modern suspects, Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Moon Duo, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, and no doubt fans of any and all those groups are gonna still dig the Spyrals, but on Out of Sight, the band have pushed their already retro sound even further, again channeling the Stooges, the Doors, the Velvets, but now sounding like they could actually BE some lost sixties/seventies band, and like Out Of Sight could in fact be some obscure reissue, the sound echo-y and reverby, the guitars and drums simple and stripped down, the vibe a sort of groovy garagey stomp, with some cool psychedelic leads, lots of fuzz, even some harmonica!
Fans of the last self titled record will feel right at home, as it pretty much takes up right where that one left off.
Let's leap to the title track first, as it might be our favorite here, and it's easy to see why they chose that one to name the record, starting off like some vintage baroque pop, all backwards swirls and sitar like guitar buzz, the vibe promising an eventual blossoming into some early Bee Gees style lush pop majesty, but instead they get right back to rocking, more garagey fuzzy bliss, although throughout there's a definite Eastern vibe and that sitar like melody, which surface here and there, which helps make the track super distinctive. Crazy and catchy, and while this is the track we find ourselves returning the more we listen, the more new favorites emerge, "Now You Know What I Need", with its super fuzzed out main riff which sounds a bit like "Spirit In The Sky", or "Tell All The World" which sounds like some straight up skiffly sixties Beatles style rock, albeit with a bit of a noisier, garagier chorus. Then there's the slithery moody groove of "Down In The Hole", the twangy folkiness of "Easy Now", and "Such A Pain" which gets seriously Stones-y, with a gorgeous main riff, and some super emotive vox, not to mention a big fuzzed out crunchy chorus, and a heavy psych final almost-space jam outro, and garage rockers should definitely dig" Lying", probably the garagiest jam of the bunch, definitely one for the Ty Segall / Oh Sees set.
Killer stuff! Retro garage fuzz psychedelic jangle radness that we can't seem to get enough of!!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Pressed on red vinyl!!
This latest batch of tapes from local label Merz Tapes finds the label expanding and rebranding, now known as Merzbild, and no longer limiting themselves to cassettes. It is however this most recent batch of cassettes we're here to discuss. In this case, it's this collaboration between SF black metal / blacknoise outfit Sutekh Hexen, and long time Nurse With Wound collaborator Andrew Liles.
There would be a time when Liles remixing a black metal band would seem crazy, but the fact is that at this point, SH are really only tangentially black metal, as they spend much of their time weaving dense dronescapes, or sculpting bursts of feral ear splitting noise into tense and intense walls of blown out sound, granted, there's still plenty of blast and buzz, but it's often obfuscated and recontextualized. Each side of this tape seems to offer up both the original track, and then Liles' reworking. On the A side, SH unfurl a dense blurred rumble, peppered with muted bombastic thuds, and subterranean pulses, buried voices, and a tranced out sprawl of undulating layers, blacks and greys, haunting and harrowing, a sound that's bleak and abject, the perfect launching point for Liles, who takes that track and stretches it from a little under 6 minutes, to almost 18, making the focal point a haunting, reverbed piano, drifting in soft billowing clouds of what we take to be the original track, letting the occasional drum blat leap out, or spidery tendrils of industrial buzz, gnarled tangles of voices speaking in tongues, and then suddenly, at about 10 minutes in, the song is transformed into what sounds like a sort of industrial rock? Chugging metallic guitars, big drums, all over that churning Sutekh brood, there's even some psychedelic guitar leads, unclear if somehow those sounds were buried in the original track, or if Liles just went nuts and essentially turned SH, at least briefly, into a weird industrial metal band, but then suddenly, it all fades away, leaving the track to slither ominously to the end, trailing a cloud of buzzing detritus in its wake. Wow.
The flipside finds SH exploding right out of the gate with a blurred blast of black buzz, murky and swirling and dizzyingly dense, before settling into another long sprawl of black ambient drift, much more haunting, abstract and serene. And again Liles takes SH's 5 minutes and more than doubles it, the whole thing, a brooding blackened driftscape, the tones oozing and rife with what sounds like some sort of demonic chorale, a blurred black raga, laced with sheets of harsh noise, jagged shards of processed vocal hiss, building to an impossibly dense and noisy, speaker destroying crescendo, that sounds like multiple Herman Nitsch compositions playing at once, atonal, droned out, and weirdly mesmerizing, underpinned by what sounds like organ or calliope, the vibe very cinematic, the sound collapses into a cacophony of smashing bottles, before beginning the slow build again, this time to a blown out, smeary drone, seemingly constructed from the blast and buzz of the original, but here recast as something more Tim Hecker like, massive crumbling distorted swells, and granular sheets of sound rife with melodic murk, gradually collapsing into a strange stuttering digital freakout, and one final burst of smashing glass.
Super sweet packaging, printed silver-on-smoky-clear tapes, reflective silver on swirly green and black J-cards.
The Taj-Mahal Travellers double cd 'August 1974' has to be one of the most essential drone music documents of the 20th century. Our description of that record describes the Taj Mahal Travellers sound perfectly: "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas
Three extended tracks of sublime and transcendental musique concrete/drone. Sparse and spacious. With vocals and electronic trumpets augmenting the violin, contrabass, harmonica, sheet iron, castanet, vibraphone, guitar, percussion and radio oscillators. Dreamy and otherworldly, three epic tracks of hum and rumble, squeak and skree, clatter and tinkle envelop you in a completely new world of sound. So essential.
Here's a second pressing of this micro-edition release from the hermetic, British sound artist Darren Tate. For many years, we've been championing his strange wunderkammer of drones, field recordings, radiophonic synth meanderings, and slumped stasis; but even so, there seems to be a number of releases that we somehow missed. Small Worlds was one of those recordings that was originally released in such a small edition that it flew completely under the radar; but Tate has remedied that somewhat with a second pressing, but still only in an edition of 70 copies. Working under such monikers as Ora and Monos, Tate has collaborated alongside the likes of Andrew Chalk and Colin Potter off and on over the years, providing some triangulation as to where his aesthetic lies, but his solo recordings tend towards stranger waters so to speak. He populates the astringently barren album Small Worlds with an undercarriage of rumbling, nocturnal drones and deep space meditations. Subtle tonebent phrases quietly cycle through a downer melody at the onset of the album which gives way to spooked-out, sci-fi vibes and eventually some of Tate's beguilingly soft-focus guitar plucks and plonks, all of which barely poke out of the shadowy tones and drones that manifest through the entirety of the album. A very nice one for sure!
Shadoks somehow does it yet again, digging up an obscure, fuzzed out psychedelic gem from one of the far corners of the globe. This one must have really required some digging, as the disc is not even an actual full album reissue, but a collection of mostly unreleased tracks by three different but related groups from the jungles of Venezuela - late '60s / early '70s underground acts pretty much unknown outside of their home turf. Obscure indeed, but pretty dang cool, makes you wonder about all the even more obscure bands never documented at all. Shadoks has already brought us one classic Venezuelan psych record by Ladies W.C. and this stuff is in much the same vein of freaky high energy hard psych and fuzzy popsike.
These recordings, taken from 7" singles as well as unreleased tapes, date from roughly 1967 to 1972, and are all by these three bands that featured many of the same members, always including guitarist Josetio Romero. First came LSD, an acid rock act obviously, then they morphed into the Led Zeppelin influenced Tsee Mud (the name a reference to the bloodsucking, disease-bearing tsetse fly), and then finally the all-instrumental and super groovy Bacro. Romera was involved with some other bands too during this period, like one called Heavy Load, but none of the others left any recordings. He apparently even toured the USA (playing Madison Square Garden!) with the American R&B band The Del-Vikings, during the break between Tsee Mud and Bacro. As you might suppose, Romero was a pretty wild guitarist, starting off as a devoted Jimi Hendrix acolyte and going from there.
None of these bands (who played live a lot and must have been great on stage) ever made a full-length lp which is a shame but at least this collection brings together what they did record, and it really works as a cohesive set, basically a 'best of' one band with three names.
Our favorite tracks might be the instrumentals by Bacro, those are just killer grooves, no vocals needed. But ALL the tracks are pretty great, the ones with wailing vocals to go with the wailing guitar too. There's no duds, all the tracks are packed with hairy funk, primal prog moves and lumbering, heavy, Hendrix-y riffs out the wazoo. There's a few moody moments but things usually start swinging seconds later. Some of the time, Tsee Mud et. al. come across sorta like a South American James Gang, cool! Also for fans of Los Dug Dugs for sure, and even African psych stuff like Witch. Further proof that awesome, unknown bands lurked in garages the world over, back then!
The cd booklet includes lengthy liner notes in both English and Spanish, along with lyrics, vintage photos and graphics. Although, despite all the detailed information provided, the cd booklet doesn't do a very good job of identifying which of the eleven tracks on this disc were by which bands, though you can probably figure it out if you read carefully, if it even matters, which it doesn't really.
FYI, also available on vinyl, but it's hella expensive ($45), that's how Shadoks do, we can special order it though, just ask.
A midsummer's night motorcycle ride through the dystopic streets of Akira's cyberpunk Tokyo? Check. A steamy make out session beneath the glaring neon lights of Blade Runner's perpetually rainy Los Angeles? Check. A romantic slow dance with Snake Pliskin in one of New York's seedier abandoned warehouses? Check! If this plethora of strange images are what's springing to mind it can mean only one thing... Another After Dark compilation is upon us! It's been a full six years since Italians Do It Better last graced us with the first After Dark installment and, like any great sequel, the second volume is more than worth the wait. Anyone familiar with this excellent record label knows what to expect - and knows that these guys are the best at what they do. And what they do is beautiful nocturnal synth pop heavily indebted to classic Italo-disco. For the uninitiated, imagine vintage Giorgio Moroder, slinky Euro club music, maybe a bit of John Carpenter... Or look no further than the inescapable Drive soundtrack, which features a couple of the artists featured here. What's so great about this compilation is actually how unlike a compilation it feels. There's an international roster of musicians on display here (Canada, France, England, US are all represented), but there's also a serious feeling of unity and cohesion. If you didn't know better, this could easily be one artist's full length lp with a series of guest vocalists (and seeing as Italians Do It Better head honcho Johnny Jewel is in approximately 95 percent of the bands featured here, it kind of is.) That's not to say there's not plenty of variety on display though! Glass Candy's tracks recall '80s Siouxsie & The Banshees at their poppiest (the vocals in "Warm In The Winter" especially seem to be a bit of an homage to "Peek A Boo") but with a glorious, life affirming, coming of age hope to them. Mirage and Desire are both a bit more melancholy and bittersweet in comparison - the sparse minimal thud of Mirage coming off a bit like a supremely forlorn Chromeo (complete with robot vocals and everything), while the soothing synth pads and romantic vocals of Desire tug at your heartstrings even while you're still working the dance floor in the same way Sally Shapiro does. Meanwhile, Twisted Wires sounds like Ian Curtis singing over jazzy lounge piano, while Appaloosa's charmingly monotone vocals sound a bit like Nico singing electropop. There are some darker moments too, like the eerie quasi-religious spoken word of Farah or the minimal throb of Mike Simonetti's "The Magician" which might not sound out of place on NIN's Pretty Hate Machine! And then there's the sexy digital strut of Chromatics to round things out. But despite these myriad influences there's a real concrete mood throughout - nocturnal yet vibrant, sparse yet alluring, neon yet noir. But still never in danger of clearing the dance floor.
Framework is a radio broadcast wholly dedicated to field-recording, and its use in composition. The tagline to the show is "Field-recording, phonography, the art of sound-hunting; open your ears and listen!" Each quarter, the show's producer and host, Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) has been commissioning composers, sound ecologists, dronologists, and noise technicians for work to be included in a parallel series of limited edition cd-rs for subscribers to the show. None of these discs have been made available to any shops, except for aQuarius; and now, McGinley offers us the fourth installment in that series. As before, McGinley offers some heavy hitters intermixed with some emerging artists. Here, the former includes Francisco Lopez, Yannick Dauby, and Maile Colbert; with the latter including Terje Paulson, Flavien Gillie, and Luis Antero. These recordings demonstrate considerable manipulation of the sounds and / or engagement with the environment, even if that's just through the deliberate choices of context.
Flavien Gillie's placid recordings of the winter birds from a nature reserve in Brussels speak to the contextualization approach, while Yannick Dauby & Olivier Feraud's manhandling of a fallen tree trunk, render its fibers all of the squiggliness of a theremin. Stefan Paulus' collage of farm-built bells that jangle from the necks of meandering cows and deep thrumming subharmonics from nearby shipping docks makes for one of the more compelling compositions from this edition. France Jobim's liquid drones were sourced from surreptitious recordings made at the Morongo Casino in Southern California, with the racket of the slot machines and the controlled carnavalesque cacophony inverted into ephemeral wisps of minimalism. Francisco Lopez proves once again why he's been one of the most respected artists using environmental sounds over the past two decades. His eerie reverberant tones and elongated slashes of razor sharp frequencies bend and curve along an amorphous surface that is both organic and synthetic, akin to the latter day works from The Hafler Trio. Maile Colbert laces her ecological portraits with a series of slow, maudlin melodies that points to the grandiose, dreamtime pieces of Stars of the Lid. Really beautiful!
Finally, a remastered vinyl reissue of the Blade Runner score sees the light of day. It's funny that most people know the music of Chariots Of Fire far more than they know the actual movie, but with Vangelis's other big soundtrack, for an undoubtedly more famous film, the original score has been somewhat difficult to secure. It did not get an official release until 1994, 12 years after the film debuted, and over the years multiple versions have become available that either added to or subtracted from the original material. The movie itself has multiple versions, and with the 1992 Director's Cut arguably becoming the definitive version of the film, the Vangelis score finally became available as well, a version so intertwined with the film that it also includes snippets of dialogue from this futuristic noir masterpiece. The score, a mix of mystical exotica, dark electronic minimalism and sadly romantic themes, is marked by heavy electronic treatments and classical instrumentation evoking a hazy twilight dreaminess and melancholic longing that serves the film exquisitely. Easily a touchstone for a lot of modern day synth-worshippers, get this score on vinyl while you can, as it is already out of print awaiting a repress apparently. Like all limited things, eventually "all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain" (sorry, we had to fit that line in here somewhere!).
Two and half hours of a continuous, unedited recording from Chris Watson, the field recordist who should need no introduction! The Sukau rainforest is found in Borneo along the Kinabatangan River and is a dense primary forest with little access to the forest floor with the exception of a decaying boardwalk that meandered from the lodge where Watson was staying deep into the heart of the rainforest. One morning in October 2011, Watson followed this path several kilometers to the furthest point and lashed his microphones to a tree in order to record the growing dawn chorus of the birds, monkeys, and insects as their activities increased with the rising sun. At the beginning of the recording, Watson gives a brief description of the environment around him before he quietly retreats and lets the forest do the talking. He is quick to point out that the watery sounds are not of rain but of the huge amounts of moisture captured on the vegetation, tumbling down on the forest floor. As daylight approaches, the frequency of the cicadas and buzzing insects seems to increase ever so slightly and the bird calls tend to become more vibrant if a bit more spread apart. It's so easy to get lost in these beautifully rendered sounds of the forest; and Chris Watson's trademark of quality is stamped all over this recording.
If you might be balking at the price of a dvd-r, the Framework Seasonal discs are only available to the donors supporting the Framework Radio series and Resonance FM. Patrick McGingly - the producer of Framework - made one exception in allowing aQuarius to be the only shop carrying these discs. So, yes they are expensive, but they are certainly going toward a worthy cause and Chris Watson's recording is well worth the price of admission!
Totally awesome breezy lo-fi garage pop from Los Angeles, that we just can't seem to get enough of. While many of WF's lo-fi counterparts these days are all about fuzz and feedback, White Fence is so much more about infectious songs and deep running melody. Like some lost early recording of Chris Knox covering The Kinks or The Zombies, or imagine The Art Museums if they were a little more washed out and blurred and blissy. Also reminds us a bit of a more focused Ariel Pink, as WF are able to tap into such golden pop tones yet give them a nice warped and lysergic twist. While it's for sure going to get lumped in with a lot of our favorite recent garage pop faves like The Fresh & Onlys, Woods, Hanoi James, etc., there is something very timeless about the songs White Fence create. They could just as easily be lost nuggets from some obscure pastoral psych band out of the UK in the late '60s as it could be a Cherry Red band from the Paisley underground in the '80s, or a young Robert Pollard merging with the Elephant Six collective. For sure a strong outsider pop sound, with hints of Syd Barrett and Bobb Trimble. Bottom line is that this is top quality songwriting delivered in such a satisfying way. So damn good!
Don't think that Make-A-Mess pressed a ton of the vinyl so better act fast. But fear not, there's a cd on Woodsist too.
Another issue of this fine magazine all about much of the music we like, or would like to learn about. This one has Chicago jazz guy Rob Mazurek on the cover, also Marisa Anderson, noiserockers Terminal Cheesecake (now that's a surprise reunion!), vocalist Meredith Monk, Danish electronic music pioneer Else Marie Pade, and more, including an 'Epiphany' from Asmus Tietchens, an Istanbul scene report, and best of all, our pal Jussi from Circle taking the 'Invisible Jukebox' test!
Also you get a free sampler cd with this issue, Wiretapper #32.
Latest chunk of breezy, fuzzy, sweet psych jangle pop from these aQ faves, featuring a re-recorded track from their Sun And Shade full length from 2011, here featuring their new drummer, and revamped to sound more like the live version, and like the original it's pretty lovely, all high keening vocals, chiming melodies, whirring organs, softly blooping bass, hazy and dreamy, laid back and breezy, a soft twang flecked pop that's just so warm and catchy. The B side though might be the reason to pick this up, with Woods tackling the Kinks' "God's Children", from the 1971 film Percy, which sounds like it could be a Woods original, a shimmery, summery, crystalline slab of classic sixties/seventies psychedelic jangle pop.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
From our pals at Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin comes an Italian import of this minimal masterpiece, available on tape for the first time ever. Composed in 1962, recorded in 1984, The 2nd Dream Of The High Tension Line... is classic LMY, a sprawling longform field of tranced out, spiritual dronemusic, single notes stretched out for ages, a softly and subtly shifting field of overtones and microtones, drifting textures, an epic expanse of super intense, innerspace, deep listening, zoner, psychedelic, minimal drift bliss of the highest order, so simple, yet so sonically rich and deeply and melodically complex, seemingly static for long stretches but surprisingly dynamic and utterly and totally mesmerizing. Music to get lost in, to let carry you away, anyone into modern dronemusic who has yet to experience the music of the master, this is the perfect place to start.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! Nice full color J-card with minimal liner notes.
The resurgence of the cassette as a viable media may provide an additional context for the work of Jason Zeh, as his gritty drone-noise constructions are entirely based on the contact points between magnetic tape and the tape heads that read / translate that magnetic information into sound. His approach to sound often deals with the dislocation of this contact point, which is akin to the way that Christian Marclay, Gum, or Phillip Jeck approach the turntable. Zeh might wield sandpaper to abrade the tape itself, magnetized razor blades to slice the tapes, leaving irradiated coronas of electrical hum near the edit, and even smearing globs of dirt into the gears and mechanics of the tape deck. All of these very tactile methods impart very tactile results, and as such, A Vacant Lot To Be In is much more akin to Chop Shop's obliterated tape saturation than the somber self-immolation found on William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. Both tracks on this vinyl only release rise through scabrous crumplings into a steady arcing mass of high-voltage dronework whose phase shifting patterns give the impression of an electrified sea of ferric oxide churning through tidal forces. One of the sides builds towards an intense crescendo of turbulent, boiling, junked noise, while the flip eerily navigates an insectoid minimalism. Zeh's work is very strong and deserves as much acclaim as we can muster, especially given his relatively low profile. Highly recommended for fans Joe Colley, Hive Mind, Mike Shiflet, and the more industrially slanted aspects of contemporary sound art. Oh yeah, limited to just 300 copies. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
