Rashad Becker is a name most folks are probably more used to seeing on OTHER people's records, he is, and has been for the last decade plus, THEE go-to guy to have your record cut for vinyl. A master of his craft, who is able to produce stunning results in the analog realm, massive bass, deep layered sounds, lush and spacious, gritty and grimy, Becker was often the last step in a meticulous process, resulting in some of the most incredible records of the last few years. Check your collection and we guarantee you a handful were cut and/or mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, where Becker has been plying his trade for the past fifteen years. And we'll be the first to admit that technical mastery does not necessarily translate into creative genius, but in the case of Traditional Music Of Notational Species, Vol. 1, an argument could definitely be made that Becker's talent is not limited to the mastering lab.
In fact, Traditional Music is far from traditional, and is quite difficult to describe, although a faithful long time aQ customer already proclaimed it his record of the year hands down, and we have to say we're inclined to agree. Split into two sides, the first, 'Dances', the second 'Themes', the record opens with a dense constantly shifting landscape of grinding textures, mutating electronics, synthy squelch, deep rumbles, skittery rhythmic pulsations, the vibe is almost playful, but that playfulness is definitely tempered by a dark shadowy moodiness, it's wild and loose, free and abstract, melodies blossom and fragment, collapsing into swirling tangles, it's just on the verge of noise, but instead, remains textural and atmospheric, almost like a modern day Perrey & Kingsley, deconstructed, the various elements recombined as some mutant modern minimal electroacoustic experimental electronica. That pretty much sets the groundwork for the first side, we're reminded of some past aQ faves like Roly Porter's Aftertime, or any recordings by Ben Frost, this sounds less like 'music' and more like some avant sound design, "Dances II" expands on the opener, weaving what sounds like fragmented vocals, and dark spidery melodies, into something strangely brooding, wreathed in a caustic cloud of flitting molecules of crumbling noise, and burbling underwater shimmer, all seemingly digitized and then corrupted, processed into something approaching a much more angular and aggressive Oval, overlapping layers, stuttering non-rhythms, it's expansive and cinematic, but at the same time dizzyingly dense, driven by thick rib cage rattling swells of low end thrum. The sound grows gradually more industrial, sounds slip backwards and swoop and swirl, a sea of squelches pinging from speaker to speaker, buried Morse code melodies, lots of hiss and hum sculpted into sheets of dark energy, and a blissed out barrage of blackened crumble, building to a near psychedelic squall, before closing out the side with a dark rhythmic sprawl, that touches on the hauntological electronica of Demdike Stare and the like, but so much more sinister, and woozily warped, a mad scientist reinterpretation, recasting the moody lope, as something feral and fracture, peppered with deep sub-bass pulsations, and drowsily fluctuating rhythms, it's like Stockhausen jamming with Demdike Stare, which is about as great, and as fucked up, as it sounds.
The flipside, made up of four 'themes', dials back some of the crunch and buzz, opening with a dreamy field of alien electronics, fluttering and flitting, still gritty and crunchy, the sounds organic and analog, rough around the edges, but deftly woven into choir of electro-chirps and woozy moaning chordal swells, laced with burst of laser beam FX, but then a super heavy bass crunch creeps in, and it's stunning, it's meaner, and more brutal, and more physical that most dubstep drops, but with a totally different effect in this context, adding some seriously sinister heft, but before you know it, it's disappeared, leaving just a field of electronic firefly flutter. The rest of the 'Themes' play out like some mysterious soundtrack to a documentary about alien life, you can almost imagine the camera panning over strange sprawls of gnarled landscape, or drifting through the bottomless abyss of some alien sea, the electronics often sounding like the chitter of insects, again like some twisted field recording captured elsewhere in the galaxy, slipping from hushed skitter to epic avant kosmische and back again, culminating in what sounds like some warped choral piece, a gnarled choir of 'voices', sounding like field recordings captured in some Victorian mental institution, and then processed into something even more warped, all laid over a roiling sea of electronic gristle and industrial clatter, all held together by sheets of blurred buzz and ominous insectoid thrum. Strange stuff for sure, but in its own weird way, hauntingly and confusionally lovely.
Cut and mastered by Becker himself of course. Pressed on 140 gram vinyl, and like all Pan releases, housed in a super striking, screen printed heavy plastic PVC sleeve.
The Birthday Party is, of course, that legendary ensemble fronted by a youthful Nick Cave with his full mane of hurricane shock hair and throat ripping vocals, method-acting his cautionary tales of booze, heroin, sex, and hate. Along with Tracy Pew, Mick Harvey, Phill Calvert, and Roland S. Howard (a criminally underrated guitarist), Cave redirected the pelvic thrusts of Elvis to their most abject and most lewd. Live, the swamp blues guitars of Howard matches the sexual grind of Pew's bass, all the while Cave epitomized all the fears that England had of Australia - a genetically-mutated criminal raping Victorian England of all of her morals. Yeah, it's a really good recording and they do a Stooges cover with Jim Thirwell (Foetus) on sax!
Cassette peeps, cool, check it out - we found some classic Earache titles on tape! We're listing two of 'em this week, this one, and also Godflesh's Streetcleaner.
At some point along the way, we got in a cd reissue of this 1991 album by UK grindcore masters Carcass, and posted the following brief but utterly enthusiastic one-paragraph review:
Allan's favorite Death Metal album ever (well, along with Morbid Angel's Blessed Are The Sick)! It combines the horrific rawness and insane medical lyrics of Carcass' first two albums (this was their third) with a newfound technicality and NWOBHM-derived catchiness. And they manage to make use of sound samples in a way that doesn't suck. Definitely their masterpiece (though Andee might argue for Heartwork). Rules.
Well, this album deserves a lot more raving from us that just that - for one thing, not only do they use the song-intro samples in a non-sucky way, it's the best use of samples EVER! In part 'cause to this day we don't know what they're from (not your usual cult movies) and they still give us the creeps and/or make us laugh. But of course even without those eerie atmospheric samples this would be amazing - the riffs are to die for, the leads are songs unto themselves, it's brilliant all around.
Even it you aren't into death metal, give it a chance. That's how good it is.
This cassette reissue look to date from 2011, and includes 3 songs from the Tools Of The Trade ep as bonus tracks!
Now we're all revved up for the reactivated Carcass's upcoming new album, Surgical Steel, their first in 17 years, due out any day now!! Dunno if it will come out on cassette though.
(Okay, we just did a Google search about those samples, here's a link to the interestin' answer, from the 'Ask Earache' blog: http://askearache.blogspot.com/2011/02/where-did-intro-samples-on-carcass.html)
Whew! People were starting to panic 'bout this, cause it seemed that this desirable Death Waltz release was so terrifically limited that none of 'em were gonna make it across the pond from the UK. But thankfully the label relented and pressed some more, so now we have some - but still not very many, so act fast if you want one!
And you DO probably want one, 'cause of the many awesome soundtracks that John Carpenter composed for his movies, this is one of the best. The film The Fog itself may or may not be among his best - there's a difference of opinion at aQuarius about that, we'll argue about it offline - but we all agree about the soundtrack. Of course, whether 1979's The Fog is for sure worth the rental if you haven't seen it lately, after all (spoiler alert!) it's got ghost pirates in it (undeniably a cool concept, if perhaps not the scariest idea ever), and Jamie Lee Curtis, and of course the titular fog. Fog is always spooky.
But the soundtrack, that's what we really remember from the movie. And it's not actually as typically John Carpenter-y as what we usually mean when we call something John Carpenter-y in our reviews. It doesn't have the groovy '80s disco-synth beats, not so much. Really, it's more of a drone record. Slow and low stuff, y'know. Inspired, no doubt, by fog horns! But played on electronic synthesizers, of course. At times, it's not unlike what what a lot of today's experimental drone artists might come up with - if they were scoring a horror film, that is. Distorted whooshes of sound, ponderous piano plinking, crushing church organ chords, subsonic detonations, ringing electronic pulses forming into slow building, nerve-wracking rhythms... just imagine the best Umberto album ever.
This soundtrack has a creepy ambient quality that's really engaging, completely apart from the story or visuals. It's beautifully ominous, and also in a way quite HEAVY.
Furthermore, the eerie, melodic main theme, a few notes tinkling in sinister sequence, reprised of course throughout the album, is a classic, up there with our faves from Goblin. By itself it would keep the hairs on the back of our necks up all night.
Well we could go on, but we suspect there's no need. Get it while you can, and we apologize in advance if we run out.
This Death Waltz version is an expanded edition of the soundtrack (also recently made available in the States as a double cd by the Silva Screen label, which we will list soon too), featuring 33 tracks over four sides of 180 gram gold vinyl, including a large number of cues from the movie not found on earlier versions. Also, of course, course, Death Waltz provides brand new artwork by Dinos Chapman for this release, along with new liner notes by John Carpenter, Dinos Chapman, and Randall D. Larson.
While we totally dig tapes, we don't often find ourselves in anxious excitement over a soon to be released cassette. But with this new ep by Chasms that's been in the works for a while we found ourselves giddy with anticipation, and we're happy to report that the pay off is well worth the wait!
Riser finds the San Francisco duo at their most focused and effective, starting the A side off with flashes of hot white light, tapping into that classic shoegaze sound, with Chasms aiming and reaching so much higher then most of their peers. The first two songs have an almost dark industrial vibe to them, which had us imagining Coil remixing Cocteau Twins or Slowdive!
The second side starts off what may very well be their most beautiful song yet "Not In This Dimension", a shimmering gem that we had to play over and over after the first time we blasted this on our headphones. And each subsequent time we do, we close our eyes and let the song engulf us, gliding through a soft and swirling sonic sensations that we haven't felt since maybe Slowdive's masterpiece Pygmalion.
The tape's closer "Soft Opening" has a haunting and mesmerizing quality that brings to mind Labradford or Flying Saucer Attack teaming up with Julianna Barwick!
Needless to say we've been giving our Walkman's (Walkmen?) a workout flipping this tape over and over and over. It's that fucking good!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Along with the cd reissue of CoO's awesome Eleven Fingers album reviewed nearby on this week's list, comes this brand new, vinyl-only record from Finland's post black metal gloom pop weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus, whose sound really was barely ever actually all that black metal to begin with, but has continually been drifting further and further away, finally arriving here, at a sound that at this point is one distinctly their own, still subtly informed by black metal, but essentially pop music, a gloomy, occasionally buzzing, dour and darkly depressive pop music, but pop nonetheless. And with this record, that sound has mutated once again, taking their low fidelity a step further, and somehow wreathing it in a sonic murk, this new record impossible muffled, and muddied, womblike might be more accurate, the music is all soft focus, the sharp edges smoothed, the notes and chords, the various instruments, blurred and smeared into something more like an abstract chordal drift, the songs less songs, and more like impressions of songs. The only elements seemingly exempt are the vocals, still a haunting deep croon, and the drums, which occasionally stumble, occasionally pound, the combination is pretty stellar, and definitely bizarre, but it most certainly suits the group's dour blackened pop.
The vibe here extraordinarily woozy and warped, washed out and slurred, at times gauzy and nearly meditative, and when the band crank up the intensity, the hazy murk is dragged along as well, and instead of sounding heavy or rocking, it just sounds slightly heavier, but only really slightly. The songs tend toward the midtempo, and the dirge, but do occasionally erupt into some punky pound, but it's all behind a sheet of muffled murk, which again changes everything. The coolest moments are when the band introduce dueling vocals, clean and crooned, croaked and metallic, making for some strange harmonies, which are the perfect match for CoO's depressive blackened jangle pop, which throughout the record sounds alternately melty, detuned or oozing, often all three, a darkly and deliriously druggy songsuite that we're digging just as much as we did Eleven Fingers, which is a whole lot!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! The lps pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank textured card stock jacket, with a 7" x 7" booklet, printed on nice heavy paper, with illustrations and lyrics!
For those of you who missed out on the first two solo singles from Al Cisneros, formerly of stoner metal heavies Sleep, and currently of heavy trance-lords OM, you might be forgiven for expecting this to fall somewhere right in the middle, maybe some minimal metallic heaviness, or droned out downtuned dirgery, and while Cisneros' solo sound does share some sonic similarities, this is not metal, nor not really even heavy, at least in the traditional sense. Fans of OM, no doubt hear the influence of dub on that group's sound, and if there was any ever doubt, well, all you need to do is give this a listen. Cuz it is DUB. Not 'metallic' dub, or 'doom' dub, just deep bass heavy old school reverb drenched minimal darkly psychedelic classic dub. Like the 7"s before, these two tracks find Cisneros creating his own strand of dubbed out musical DNA, one which while sonically similar to the dub that came before, also reminds us of other dub influenced outfits, in particular African Head Charge and Muslimgauze.
Murky and minimal, these two tracks are heady and hypnotic, with thick, deep basslines, simple percussion, drums doused in echo and reverb, everything hazy and spacey and druggy, the melodies kind of washed out minor key, a whirring organ unfurling a 4 or 5 note melodic refrain, very mantra like, the whole thing looped and cyclical, in fact, both sides/tracks seem to be essentially the same song, which is more than fine, cuz this is the sort of hypno-dub space out you want to go on and on and on and on and on and on...
Like his earlier 7" singles, housed in a plain white sleeve. And probably pretty limited!
Clayton Noone, aka CJA, has a long and varied history in the New Zealand underground free-rock scene. He's been making an unholy racket for years, is also one half of Armpit as well as a member of avant new wavers the Futurians. But Ironclad, a reissue of a long out of print cd-r, is probably his prettiest, and quietest record. And probably our favorite! A stumbling, shambling, purposefully strummed, sun dappled, reverb soaked, warbly voiced slab of simple and simply lovely bedroom folk. The guitars quiver and waver, barely in tune, creating shimmery folk rock frameworks, which in turn support subtle distant melodies, occasional flanged electric guitar, slurred emotional vocals, all hushed and mournful, dreamy and minimal. Notes climb warily from the strings and assemble themselves into repetitive figures, pulsing and drifting tentatively earward. CJA sounds a bit like Alastair Galbraith after a night of hard drugs and too much drink, holed up in the corner of his living room on a sweltering summer day, with the shades drawn tight, shafts of sunlight sneaking through the blinds, every mote of dust illuminated like a tiny musical note drifting to the ground. The guitar, the hiss of the four track and the murky remnants of the night before becoming one drifting dreamy dolorous set of notes, picked carefully one by one, becoming a sublty sleepy soundscape of bliss and beatitude.
After months and months of trying to track down releases on UK label Cardinal Fuzz, a few weeks ago, we managed to get copies of lps by two Swedish outfits, the Hills and the Janitors, both of which we could barely keep in stock (although we lucked into a few more copies of the Janitors, revisited elsewhere on this week's list, most likely the last ever!), so this week, we have two more Cardinal Fuzz jams, which by the title might give you an idea of what sort of sounds to expect. Heavy psychedelic space rock seems to be Cardinal Fuzz's mission statement, and this reissue (originally released on cd by another UK label, Paradigms) from Glasgow psychedelic space-kraut kosmonauts Cosmic Dead is very much in keeping with that, unfurling four epic tracks (one that clocks in at nearly 40 minutes and takes up both sides of the second lp!), of slow burn kosmische drift, that explodes into heavy heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind style space rock mega-jam blowout. The 19 minute opener "The Black Rabbit" is pretty much all you need, a long stretch of glimmering FX and smoldering kraut-age drift, explodes into pounding motorik heaviness, a Circle like groove wreathed in clouds of swirling effects and keening guitar melodies, like a revved up Spacemen 3, the band somehow keep building the sound getting more and more dense, driving and hypnotic, squalls of psych guitar freakout are smeared into chordal washes, while the bass and drums continue to get wilder and more chaotic, shades of early Monster Magnet for sure, the sort of endless drug fueled hypnorock jamming that even at 19 minutes is not nearly long enough.
And that's pretty much it, all four tracks here are built for maximum trance out. whether it's the relatively brief "Spice Melange Spectrum" (clocking in at 6:47), that is heavy on the drums, a driving chunk of druggy dirgery that manages to transform the sound into something transcendent, or the 13+ minute "Infinite Death Of The Godhead", which locks into a more krautrocky groove, all low slung and motorik, murky and mesmeric, but then explodes partway through into some serious dense heaviness, again traversing a landscape of soaring swirls and cosmic shimmer. There are even some vocals here too, a sort of OM-like chant, that suits the sound perfectly, a sort of trancey, ritualistic mantra that only adds to the the track's murky mesmer.
And of course, there's the aforementioned "Father Sky, Mother Earth", that starts at the beginning of side 3, and doesn't let up 'til the very end of side 4, vinyl limitations be damned, an epic sprawl of freeform drug-drone space-psych drone-drift hypnorock majesty, each part given plenty of time to develop, slow sloooooow builds, and when the band is locked in, it's the sort of endless ur-psych jammery that we never tire of. But it is 40 minutes after all, so there's lots going on, the sound drifting into some almost doomy dirgery, some slowed down druggy dream-psych, some thick riffy crunch, some bass heavy almost noise rock, and yeah, of course, a total blown out super psychedelic megajam. Needless to say WAY recommended, especially if you dig stuff like The Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, Gnod, Hookworms, Moonrises, the Hills, Bardo Pond, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Telescopes and the like.
We got a bunch of these, but if the Janitors and Hills records were any indication, this is EXTREMELY LIMITED and won't be around for long!!! Packaged in a swank orange and silver gatefold jacket.
One of two new releases from UK psych/space rock label Cardinal Fuzz, who released the Cosmic Dead 2lp, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, as well as killer lps from two Swedish psych combos, the Hills and the Janitors, reviewed a few weeks, back, and like all of those, the oddly monikered Dead Sea Apes & Black Tempest, which is in fact a collaboration between a UK post rock outfit (Dead Sea Apes), and a space kraut synth wrangler (Black Tempest), who together traffic in the same sort of druggy psychedelic drift as their labelmates, their sound spending much of its time on the spacier side of the sonic spectrum, but full capable of space rocking with the best of them, which they do here. But it's a gorgeous, hypnotic slow build to get there, the three lengthy tracks here unfurl epic Necks-like landscapes of mesmeric shimmer, of minimal hypno-rock minimalism, brooding chordal swells, softly pulsing synths, streaks of feedback, and abstract drumming, the first half of the 12 minute opener "Grey Alphabets" is spent unfurling a lush swath of hazy, druggy, shadowy dreaminess, very epic and cinematic, shades of Godspeed for sure, the drums gradually more driving, the sound blossoming and expanding, building to a noisy climax, but instead of exploding into full on rocking, it sort of hovers there, churning ominously, before dialing back the rumbling guitars and soaring chords, leaving just a wash of shimmering electronics, and keening chiming guitars, all beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer, and some gorgeously atmospheric ambience.
The second track finds the Dead Sea Apes taking the lead, getting all Mugstar, unwinding a sprawling, hypno-rock space-prog epic, while Black Tempest adds all sorts of sonic colorations, the vibe is tense and intense, the sound lush and layered, the drums driving and propulsive, the whole thing tranced out and super psychedelic, building to some seriously howling heaviness, the drums super chaotic, the guitars in wild tangles, the synths swirling ominously, this track too has a sort of Circle / Necks vibe, mostly a single part in different variations, looped and circular and totally hypnotic.
The final track is way more spaced out, a woozy bassline drifting beneath a sky full of smoldering rumbles and arcing shards of high end, feedback and FX, a heady kosmische swirl, anchored by that low slung minimal groove, the drums eventually come in, but super sparse, a crash here, a pound there, the vibe sort of slowcore, washed out and wasted. It does eventually gain momentum, the sound getting super dubbed out, the bass and drums locked into something seriously groovy, still wreathed by the constantly shifting cloud of sound, and culminating in a final blast of blown out psychedelia, before settling into one final stretch of drowsy drift.
Essential listening for fans of druggy drifty abstract psychedelia, odds are if you dig the usual suspects: Carlton Melton, White Hills, Spacemen 3, Moon Duo, Bardo Pond, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, you're gonna dig this too, big time!
Like the Cosmic Dead (and all the other Cardinal Fuzz releases), this is EXTREMELY LIMITED, and will be sold out and gone for good before you know it, so don't dawdle. Housed in a swank psychedelic black and silver jacket.
After originally surfacing on a very limited hand xeroxed cassette back in 2010 (kvlt!), Deafheaven's first and only demo is now finally widely accessible on beautiful vinyl for rabid blackgaze enthusiasts the world over! Beautifully and minimally packaged (looking a bit like some long lost Smiths single), the recordings found herein - though a bit rougher around the edges perhaps than their most recent 'Sunbather' LP - showcase one of those rare groups that entirely skipped that awkward gestation period that even the best bands typically go through. There's no finding their footing going on here, no beginner's mistakes - Deafheaven's signature sound was already as fully formed and realized as most bands could hope for after years together. If you've heard any of Deafheaven's more recent recordings then you know what to expect: Epic post rock and shoegaze tinged black metal. Equal parts forlorn and life-affirming, aching and jubilant. Endlessly beautiful cascading melodies to get lost in, perfectly juxtaposed with anguished venomous vocals. Wonderfully bittersweet but without ever sacrificing an ounce of fury. Being a demo, this finds the band a bit looser and (comparatively) more stripped down. The drumming is more raucous and off kilter than on Sunbather - the blastbeats imbued with a manic, almost uncontrollable energy - while likewise the guitars are less awash in layers and effects, a bit more traditionally black metal if you will! But it only adds to urgency and raw emotion on display. Deathwish snatched up Deafheaven in the blink of an eye after this demo started making the rounds originally, and it's not hard to see why. The origin point for a totally unique vision in heavy music - one that hopefully lasts a good long while. And did we mention they're from right around the corner from us too? ...Not that we're bragging or anything!
Love the cover on this one! An homage to those Sisters Of Mercy singles on Merciful Release back in the mid '80s, in particular the bleakest Sisters release The Reptile House EP. That's about as Goth as you get for a reference, and the druggist mania from Ensemble Economique touches on the existential void and the spatialized darkness that the Sisters Of Mercy crooned on that EP. Yet, EE bends the Goth into an unhinged, fractal-spinning universe that plays equal parts to ritualized psychedelia, autodidactic electronica, misremembered '80s pop hits, and drone-splattered horror scores. This 'Ensemble', as many of you will know, is the solo work of the Northern California mad-genius Brian Pyle, who's mostly been recording and touring solo in recent years but has an extensive back catalogue through the epic collective The Starving Weirdos and the animist hypnogogia of RV Paintings. Here on The Fever Logic LP, Pyle layers disheveled heaps of melodic synth loops on top of reverb-soaked drum tracks, with his pleading vocals and occasional strums on the guitar breaking into the mix. While the production is very much in keeping with Pyle's everything-at-once approach, the atmosphere he crafts dwells in that realm of the pharmaceutical miserablism that the Sisters Of Mercy brought to that aforementioned Reptile House EP as well as those Cure style introspective interludes that dot Faith and Seventeen Seconds. When we were playing this in the shop, an astute customer commented that this was like a goth version of Broadcast! Well said!
This marks the second reissue of these recordings from Andrew Chalk's early noise-junk project Ferial Confine. The Full Use Of Nothing was originally a cassette self-released back in 1985 and was most likely one of the recordings that piqued the interest of Broken Flag to eventually release some of Chalk's more gnarled constructions. While the Ferial Confine records are definitely noise albums, there is a thread which ties these into the drone-centric work for which he's best known, in the gradual evolution of the compositions that shift from one set of demolished sounds into another. The process seems to find Chalk beginning with metal-bashed percussion recorded at very slow speeds on a 4-track then bounced to a different track at very high speeds with swarming synth / reverb saturated dronescraping draped beneath the volatile squeaking and dissonant klanking aktionism. One can hear some of the early Merzbow and / or Yeast Culture noise-junk recordings and most certainly the frenzied clamour of The New Blockaders (who had in fact worked with Chalk around this same time period), but it's that phasing, slippery drone miasma suspended as a backdrop to all of the tactile noise that gives this a very Andrew Chalk feel. Even working with noise, Andrew Chalk proved himself much better than many of his contemporaries! The cd reissue of The Full Use Of Nothing is the first in a triology of Ferial Confine recordings which will include the Broken Flag cassette Meiosis (1985) and a second pressing of the First, Second, And Third Drop (1986, unreleased until a cd version came out in 2008).
Ecstasy And Refreshment is the latest from these psychedelic new age kraut worshippers and might just be their weirdest yet. It's sonically all over the map, although you might not immediately realize that from the openng track, all swooshy and washed out, airy vocals drifting over pulsing minimal krautock, sorta like Can crossed with Stereolab, but then the second track immediately mixes things up, a little more cold wave, all icy electronics, and steely female spoken vox over a sort of electro new wave vamp, laced with swirly FX and synth throb, still managing to be sort of shimmery and psychedelic but definitely something we haven't really heard from these guys before. And from there on out, while the record does dip occasionally back into swirly krauty psych, it spends much of it's time way more far out. Like the spaced, slowed down, tribal electro jam that sound like an even more psychedelic Omar Souleyman (!), echo drenched vocals wrapped in tons of FX and swirling swath of thick billowing synths, and then things get even more African sounding, like we're suddenly listening to one of those Saharan Cellphone comps, groovy, and propulsive, before the sonic gears shift again, and suddenly the vibe is almost disco-y, total dancefloor throb, and yet, still peppered with some noisy crunch, and glorious cascades of dubbed out FX.
Finally, the band slip back into more tripped out krautrocking motorik shimmer, but this time with sultry witchy vocals that end up making it sound like it something that would be right at home on the Italians Do It Better label, before getting even more blurry and dreamy, super blissed out and ethereal toward as we near the end of the record, returning to the washed out kraut-age of the opener, but instead of ending like that, they toss in one more sonic curveball, with a closer that gets a bit funky, adding a deep bassline, some more chantlike vocals, that again remind us a little of Omar Souleyman, as well as some trippy FX and some turntable squiggles, all in all a heaping dose of serious slinky grooviness transforming what would otherwise have been a dark dubbed out swirl into a woozy groovy electro-dub slow-jam.
Cool!
It's weird to think that amongst the legions of fans out there who LOVE Jesu, there are probably loads of folks who don't realize that Jesu was born out of the mighty behemoth that was Godflesh. Justin Broadrick, who started off in grind pioneers Napalm Death, made a quick pitstop in Head Of David, and eventually struck out on his own in Godflesh. These days, drum machines and metal are not strange bedfellows, but back in the day, this was some seriously what-the-fuck action. Metalheads and punk rockers alike were confused, but got over it pretty quick once they realized that Godflesh might just be the heaviest fiercest thing they had ever heard. And Godflesh at their heaviest was to be found right here, on Streetcleaner, adorned with the now iconic image of crucified men on crossed in front of a cascade of burning lava (a frame from the genius movie Altered States), this record, originally released in 1989, still sounds as fearsome as ever. And now that we have a handful of Jesu records to reference, it's easy to hear that some of the seeds that would eventually blossom into the dreamy shoegazy metallic bliss of Jesu, were present even back then, albeit buried beneath a black hole crush of churning downtuned riffage and blistering skull rattling programmed beats. Our old three sentence, 14 word review of this still says it best:
"One of the heaviest, scariest "metal" albums EVER. Drum machine doom death. Godflesh's best."
NOW ON VINYL!!! And holy crap if that cover doesn't look even more amazing all blown back up to its proper lp size!!
Holy moly, at long LONG last a proper reissue of this should-be-much-better-known vintage rock classic! Seriously, this is one of those albums, where it's like, how come this hasn't been reissued before?! Why aren't the band's chief songwriters Chick Newman and Tommy Moonlight famous? Ok, it's been bootlegged previously, but not even as much as it "should" have been. You can hear these songs for the very first time and they'll sound like comfy old favorites. Hitherto lucky collectors only were hip to this (Allan here thanks Tim Ellison from the 'zine Rock Mag for tuning him on to Hackamore Brick years and years ago - we shoulda asked Tim to write this review, come to think of it, but we'll try to do it justice).
Hackamore Brick was a New York City band playing a special brand of laidback urban folk-rock / power pop, super catchy songs with jangly guitars, that are also very moody and bittersweet sounding. Their biggest influences seem to be both the Velvet Underground and The Byrds, and they live up to 'em on this, their only full-length, released in 1970 on bubblegum label Kama Sutra - though while sometimes sunny (through clouds) this sure ain't bubblegum. What this is, is a feast of great songs. They're all really good, it was tough for us to pick which ones to make sound samples for. One Kiss Leads To Another (a lyric from the track "Oh! Those Sweet Bananas" - they have a thing for quirky song titles) provides plenty of wonderfully melancholic, nostalgic earworm action, full of acoustic strum, hovering electric organ, clever if curious lyrics (with some unusual rhymes), and lovely, roughhewn vocal harmonies.
Of course, Hackamore Brick never made it commercially - you can hear maybe how this was a bit too REAL and raw and a bit too weird for the Top 40 pop charts of the day - but they belong in the Top 40 of anyone who appreciates offbeat brilliance. The Byrdisan West Coast element to their sound definitely means that folks who liked another recent reissue of a long-lost-obscure-gem, the Anonymous album, should also check this out. Also for fans of The Modern Lovers, Big Star, and plenty of latter day lo-fi indie pop.
Remastered, with new liner notes, this also includes bonus tracks, one on the vinyl and three on the cd, both formats including their pretty rockin' cover of Leiber & Stoller's "Searchin'" from their lone post-album single. We are so stoked on this!!! Buy it, you might find yourself a new favorite, formerly long lost album.
Terence Hannum is one of the founding members of Locrian, an aQ beloved black ambient project from Chicago; and Hannum's solo work doesn't stray all that far from ominous dronescaping of Locrian, but one could say that Spectral Life is a bit more abstract in nature. "Invocation Of Deities" is a lumbering horror-score with slashed cymbals and washed out drones giving way to a persistent duotone, sub-bass synth-pulse that lends itself to the Wolf Eyes / Factrix / SPK axis of grim industrialisms. The sparkling tone constellations that Hannum constructs as a counterpoint to that brooding synth pulse eventually get sucked into the gravitational pull of Hannum's hefty thrum. "Total Dissolution" has a scabrous beginning with a mechanical noise-junk miasma that grinds in parallel to Organum's acoustic obliteration. A majestic, sci-fi ambience interjects itself into this grizzled tumble, gradually blossoming into a gorgeously unfurled swarm of buzzed guitars and chanted vocals extended and stretched into luminous, ceremonial drones and all blurred into a shoegaze smear of billowing, cinematic psychedelia. Certainly fans of Locrian will find plenty to meditate blankly and blackly on, but this album enjoys similarities with Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Limited to 400 copies on the Belgian art-imprint label Shelter Press.
A strange split between the stalwart Japanese noise artist Hiroshi Hasegawa (of C.C.C.C. and Astro infamy and also half of the Hasegawa-Shizuo duo with a couple of exceptional albums on Utech) and the dreamy ambient composer Sasha Darko. The Hasegawa side is a monster of a piece as oceanic grey chunks of hissing noise with crumbled distortion dramatically build through an intensity of dense layering and compressed noise chomp augmented with pulsar-driven oscillations and industrial ventilator churns. More Prurient than Merzbow, landing on the dynamic, theatrical side of noise construction. Great stuff we should add. The Sasha Darko half is a drifting excerpt of pretty twinkling electronics graced with kosmische overtures. Some of Darko's previous albums retain overt allusions to deep-sea imagery complete with dolphin and whale tones (eek!), and it's seagulls he's going for on this tape of lulling patterns and sea-green serenades. This one clocks in at just 10 minutes, and the artwork from Black Horizons is top-notch, with offset silver printing on black linen paper.
It was really only a matter of time before Finnish stoner-sludge noise rock weirdos Hebosagil found their way to Jussi from Circle's super eclectic and equally weirdo Ektro label, we're sort of surprised it took this long actually. The metalheads around aQ have long been fans of Hebosagil, whose sound in the past touched on lots of our slo-mo sludge favorites (Sleep, Bunkur, the Body, Monarch, etc.), but who here on their most recent, ditch much of that glacial tarpit crawl for something a bit more high energy, a punked out metal that borrows from classic old school heavy metal as much as modern day pigfuck noise ruck crush, the songs almost proggy in their arrangement, slipping easily from blasting almost blackened blasts, to woozy stonery sludge, to wild noisy churn, to swaggery, almost Stooges-y hard rocking, the most distinctive thing the vocals, which sound really Finnish to us, if that makes any sense, it's not hard to imagine Hebosagil as some twisted Jussi side project, super dramatic and way up in the mix, a raspy gravelly bellow that sounds more like Turbonegro or Scissorfight or Fucked Up than any vokills that might be more appropriate, but it's that strange mix, that makes Lahto so appealing. And while the band may be more rocking these days, they can still lay down some seriously sludgy downtuned heaviness, the band constantly locking into churning caveman riffage and Neanderthal drum plod, but then those vocals come in, and it's transformed into something much more strange, and really, much more fun. Not to say this is a 'fun' record, it's still plenty heavy and dark, noisy and chaotic and metallic, but it's also Finnish, which means it's geniusly fucked, totally batshit rocking weirdness that you can add to your Finnish whatthefuck collection, which by now includes (or really SHOULD include) Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Ride For Revenge, Undor, Stench Of Deacy, Will Over Matter, Arkhamin Kirjasto, Billy Boys, Death Trip, Dead Reptile Shrine, Steel Mammoth, Uton, Cardinals Folly, Keuhkot, Lurk and we'd imagine a whole lot more.
We imagine the master sleeps soundly, if THIS is the music loudly vibrating in his dreams! He may never wish to wake up. Here's the 2nd album from (to be sibilantly alliterative) this spacey Swedish psych band, the first we've listed - though if this proves as popular as we think it really should, we'll try to get more of their self-titled 2009 debut to review as well. Plain old Hills are not to be confused with WHITE Hills, though they almost could be - their brand of mantric, mesmeric, FX laden, krautrocking groove is definitely in the same druggy realm as White Hills, and that of other AQ faves like Circle, Salvatore, and especially Wooden Shjips. No doubt they all share many of the same influences, from Can and other krautrock to Hawkwind to Spacemen 3. So if that sort of stuff is your bag, Hills comes highly recommended!
While mainly instrumental, there's more singing here than on the debut, but the echo-effected vocals are just another part of the throbbing wash of sound, riding waves of heavily phased guitar, motorik drums, and insistent organ (that specifically reminds us a bit of Circle relatives Itavayla). While we KNOW we're always saying stuff is repetitively hypnotic, Hills really do it to perfection, locking into to inescapable, all-encompassing grooves you never want to end. They also delve into instrumental electric, folky passages with melodies that perhaps draw upon their native Nordic traditional tunes, a la Kebnekajse back in the '70s, though they can sound somewhat Eastern-inflected as well. And final track "Death Shall Come" is a spaced out droning ritual, getting into OM territory there...
We'd love to see these guys (and gal) play live, do a US tour soon please please please! In the meantime, this disc will be in heavy rotation 'round here, and should be required listening for anyone into SF's Wooden Shjips for sure...
We first heard this Italian outfit on a split 7" with aQ faves Nuit Noire, whose weirdo 'faerical blasting punk' sounded pretty much perfect alongside the goth-stomp noise rock of His Electro Blue Voice. So much so that we found ourselves trying to track down everything we could. We were then thrilled to discover a His Electro Blue Voice track on this year's Sub Pop 1000 Record Store Day sampler, a track we described as "a gloriously twisted chunk of noisy, synthy, distorted garagey new wave weirdness that might be worth the price of admission alone" and which sadly is not included here, but that sound is in full effect, gnarly, gritty, crusty, swaggery, it's actually a LOT more aggressive and blackened than we remember, at least on opener "Death Climb", which adds some grim black buzz to their brooding, nightmarish punk wave gloom garage pound, but soon enough the band settle into something a bit more tranced out, check out the new wave krautrock of "Spit Dirt", a sprawling 8 minute motorik groove, that wraps spidery chiming guitars and thick low slung bass chug around a seriously hypnotic ultra propulsive rhythm, before exploding into the aggro noise rock new wave murk and howl of "Sea Bug", that reminds us of Iceage or the Holograms, but even more rough and ragged and supercharged, and infused with the sort of hookiness most proper pop bands would kill for.
After that, the band dip into some churning, thud rock pigfuck noisiness on "Tumor" (shades of Aussie thugs Lubricated Goat, as well as late great SF knuckle draggers Steel Pole Bathtub), with some super cool tripped out psychedelic weirdness part way through, then some super pop punkiness via P.I.L. on "The Path", with yet another psychedelic breakdown, this one all synthy and shimmery, but still driving and hypnorocky. "Born/Tired" might be the prettiest of the bunch, the chiming intro is a dead ringer for some classic indie rock song we can't quite put our finger on, but then the howled vox and gristly guitars swoop in, managing to rough things up without taking way any of the poppiness, and then ditching the buzz and crunch and slipping into some laid back space rockiness, totally mellow and mesmerizing. Finally, things finish off with "Red Earth", which begins as a softly glimmering drift, all washed out thrum and psychedelic spaciness, which is soon joined by some simple tribal drumming, hushed vox, eventually swirls of chiming guitars add a woozy minor key feel, as do processed synths, the song drifting into more of a dark jangle pop, before eventually fading out, leaving just a dark shadowy swirl of ominous synth thrum and some seriously sinister vokills, which also fade out before you can even figure out what's going on. So cool!
Killer 'ruthless sperm' cover art too!
A while back we reviewed a crazy limited tape from Horseback, aka Jenks Miller, called Stolen Fire, which was a crazy good collection of odds and ends, random demos, electronic experiments, weird warped pop songs, the sort of stuff that's slowly been finding its way on to more and more Horseback records proper. Sadly, we were only able to get ten copies of the tape, which disappeared in a flash. When we contacted Miller to get more, after informing us the tape was gone, he did let us know that it would be coming out cd eventually. And here it is, as part of a triple cd set! Including said tape, a whole disc of live recordings, and a disc of rarities, splits and singles, from splits with Voltigeurs, Pyramids, Locrian and other aQ faves. Might as well start with Stolen Fire since that's what got us all excited about this set in the first place.
The opening track is a super minimal, drum machine driven chunk of stripped down skeletal kraut-pop, woozy and laid back, spidery guitar melodies, a weary crooned vocal, darkly dreamy and subtly psychedelic. The follow up is a strange chunk of gristly industrial ambience, all hiss and crackle and high end skree, like an amp feeding back in the rain, with just a bit of those weird garbled vocals that were all over the last Horseback record, doused in FX and reverb. The rest of the side unfurls like the opener, looped rhythms, subtle shifting textures, a little bit tribal, sometimes sounding like recent aQ faves Silent Servant, a definite dark techno vibe to some of the proceedings, everything wreathed in a softly distorted haze, all kinda krauty and darkly hypnotic, with the occasional even poppier jams emerging from the murk, all Casio drum machine and shimmery eighties chords, one of those jams sounds a bit like the love theme from some mysterious B-movie, when the main melody comes in, it's almost like James Ferraro or Ariel Pink, which is not a bad thing at all, just unexpected. There's weirdly crooned vox popping up throughout, that suits the music to a T. There are brief bits of super distorted atmospheric heaviness, blissed out blackened, and in some cases quite dreamy.
The 'Destroyed Demo Version' of "North Star Struck", which we dug so much on the tape, is present, and still has us envisioning blown out crumble and in-the-red crunch, and while it's not quite that, it is pretty awesomely dirgey and fuzzy, a dark sprawl of tranced out hypno-rock, like Circle on downers, the whole thing wreathed in clouds of cosmic FX and wild sci-fi squiggles, woozy organ melodies, all around that churning kraut-drone groove, and it never lets up, the sound locks in and plays out until the rock begins to fade, leaving just pulsing electronics and a staticky cloud of gristly haze. So great! And "Transparency (Murdered Again)", another track from the tape we loved, is more of the same, a gauze-y, heady drift of psychedelic shimmer, wheezing chords and spidery twang, which is soon joined by a strangely looped rhythm, the sounds all coalescing into a strangely stuttering minimal zoner groove, another track that sounds like warped, zombified Circle, slowed way down, a seriously hypnotic sprawl of hypno kraut mesmer. In addition to the tracks from the tape, there are a bunch of extra unreleased tracks and previously unreleased versions, and even though they aren't proper Horseback songs, like we said in our review of the tape,they might be some of the coolest stuff we've heard from Horseback yet!
And heck, that's just one of the three discs! The singles and rarities disc is pretty stellar as well, and includes a bunch of tracks from singles we never knew existed, as well as tracks from a few we've reviewed, not to mention a Stooges cover!! The two tracks from the split with Voltigeurs are some sort of alien black prog. The first all buzzing guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, and lots of ELP style organs (!), which transforms the sound into something way weirder, and frankly way cooler. The organs swirl and pulse and buzz over murky drum pound and those blackened shrieks, those blackened sounds slowed down, like some bizarre mash up of Burzum at 16rpm and ELP at 33, the keyboards make the sound more psychedelic and spacey, and fuse perfectly into a gloriously twisted hybrid, one that is peppered with squalls of freaked out psychedelic noise, and culminates in a gorgeous Burzumic outro, all blown out drone riffage and buried anguished howls, mesmerizing and mysterious. The second track is soaring and epic and a little blackened, but sounds more static, more like a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone, draped over blasting beats nearly lost in the churn and swirl, harsh vox here too, the overall sound extra distorted, glimmery and glistening and downtuned and crumbling, as if the signal is way too hot for the speakers, which makes it sound noisier for sure, but also mesmerizingly psychedelic. The HB track from the split with Pyramids is a feral blast of black metal, a frantic blast beat beneath buzzing guitars that almost sounds more like blackened gypsy folk than black metal proper, until the vokills come in, and the demonic shriek clears that all up, before changing gears half way through and transitioning into a gorgeously decayed crumbling distorted dronescape. Then there's the track from their split 7" with Locrian, a hazy droned out raga, centered around a glorious high end drone, all shimmer and reverberation, the sound sun dappled and gloriously effulgent, very much like Sunroof!, mesmerizing and dreamlike, to which HB adds, some twisted gnarled vocals, all hissy and demonic, wreathing the whole thing in little melodic tendrils, the sound blissed out and gauzy, the blackness seemingly held at bay by this shining sonic light, the sort of track that we could listen to forEVER. HB's track from the 4 way split tape on Handmade Birds with Njiqahdda, Venowl and Cara Neir is also included, sounding like it could have come right off of their Half Blood record. Rhythmic and hypnotic, bass and drum locked into a sort of hypnorock groove, laced with fluttering flutes, weird electronics, swirling shimmering melodies, when the guitar comes in, it's sort of washed out and droney, giving the track an almost Earth-like vibe, the overall sound is like a super cyclical krautrock styled minimalism, with an epic second half, replete with those shrieked black metal vox. And there's of course more more more!!
Finally, the third disc features two long tracks, the first a 20 minute live performance of the first HB record, "Impale Golden Horn", recorded in 2007 in North Carolina, and it's a dreamy sprawl of softly smoldering burnished thrum and rumble, laced with dreamike psychedelic filigree and soft chordal swells, which leads perfectly into the previously unreleased 40+ minute "A Plague Of Knowing", which is a gorgeous sprawling Sunroof-style ur-drone, a dreamy psychedelic soft noise haze that swirls and shimmers and blurs into billowing clouds of blissed out drift!
Comes in a fold out 8 panel digipak style sleeve, withe some seriously extensive liner notes!!!
For ages now we've been trying to stock releases on the Cardinal Fuzz label, with no luck at all. UNTIL NOW! Finally managed to get a hold of a couple Cardinal Fuzz releases, one of which is this sprawling slab of psychedelic space rock from Swedish outfit the Janitors, whose two previous eps are compiled here (along with a couple of bonus remixes) into a single sprawling epic double lp. And all you space/psych rock freeks, everything about this will push ALL your buttons, buzzing tranced out guitars, driving motorik rhythms, echo drenched vocals, equal parts Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, the Velvet Underground, folks who have been digging recent records by Carlton Melton, the Spyrals, Mugstar and the like, add the Janitors to your space psych pantheon.
Droned out and dirgey, drifting and druggy, the tracks are smoldering slow builds, that float through a haze of lysergic shimmer, tranced out and mesmeric, often eventually erupting into some proper heavy psych pound, with blown out buzzing psychedelic guitar shred, clouds of wah guitar swirl, pounding drums, some tracks are laced with Eastern sounding sitar-like melodies, wreathed in clouds of softly swirling effects, others are slow slung and slithery, and still others have some seriously Stooges-y swagger to them, pounding and fierce as fuck, sort of noisy garage rock crossed with classic space rock, an echo drenched and wildly distorted, in-the-red, hypno-psych that KILLS. And while the songs are surprisingly varied, they're woven into a fantastically druggy and tranced out, psychedelic whole, one that definitely ranks as one of our favorite spaced out heavy garage psych releases in recent memory. The remixes are cool too, Al Lover transforms the Spacemen 3-ish slo-mo groover "Death Song" into something more akin to Moon Duo, with motorik programmed rhythms, and some extra psychedelic noise, while Strssmmnt turns the brooding space pop balladry of "Coming Down", into a weird bit of psychedelic electro, shimmery guitars, echoey vocals, warm buzz, and some skittery bloop-bleep rhythms. And the new track, "Nevererverism" (listen below), might be one of our favorites, and already has us hankering for more!
LIMITED TO 230 COPIES!!!!
It's hard to believe that some of the coolest and soulful new music we've heard of late is coming from this lanky British mush-mouthed teenager, but it's true. We've been floored by nearly everything Archy Marshall aka King Krule has done since we first heard the self-titled ep a couple of years ago, and even before that he was releasing rap singles under the moniker of Zoo Kid. You might also remember him from his elevating guest appearances on the last Mount Kimbie record. So after a bunch of singles and an ep that we were unable to get, we're happy to be finally able to stock his full length debut. In some ways 6 Feet Beneath The Moon is a trip back to an eighties college sound that has seen a little revival of late. Sparse arrangements of Durutti Column-ish guitar and moody electronic atmospherics and rhythms create a Bill Evans / Chet Baker late-night loner jazz vibe while Marshall's distinct vocal delivery, a thick mopey brogue laced with a doleful drunken elegance, gives the songs their emotional weight... Marshall's voice comes across like a less stridently political and more introspective Billy Bragg, but his singing style is more informed by rap and jazz, blithely stepping around complex clusters of wordplay, imbuing his songs with a late-night urban melancholy like a hoodlum poet. Recommended!
Everyone's favorite, um, "lesbros" from up north in the Cascadian woods are back, three years after their last effort, with a new album of epic heaviosity. And we do mean epic - perhaps it should come as no surprise since Lesbian's previous two albums were full of pretty darn long songs with lots of parts, but here they REALLY decided to go for it and do the one long song thing - there's just one track on this disc, and it's 44 minutes long. Not as groundbreaking as when Sleep did it way back when on Jerusalem, but like we said, it makes sense for 'em. Why write several 15 or 20 minute long songs when you can just cram everything into one non-stop barrage?
With that much time to kill, Lesbian opt for (as always, actually) a kitchen sink approach, mixing together a wide variety of metal styles: stoner-doom-sludge, post-rock/post-metal, black metal, and more... There's parts here that remind us of everything from Neurosis to Agalloch to Mercyful Fate! Also, there's "less metal" moments that bear some resemblance to their colleagues, the Master Musicians Of Bukkake (whose Randall Dunn produced this, and whose Timba Harris arranged the strings here), as well as the forest-y pagan ambience of stuff found on the Glass Throat label from the same neck of the woods too.
While we couldn't possibly give a comprehensive, blow-by-blow account of this lengthy composition, let's mention a few of the high points. Forestelevision opens ominously, like some sort of soundtracky black metal, lots of eerie / arty atmosphere, but a few minutes in gets a lot more sludgey, with heavier riffs and vokills. At about 10 minutes in, you'll find a fantastic folk-riffed segment, like a collaboration between Swedish '70s psych act Trad Gras Och Stenar and Neurosis!
By the 20 minute mark, Lesbian have worked themselves into a bit of a frenzy, getting all hectic and mathy, with lots of effects and a great deal of effort on the part of the drummer. This crazy chaotic section goes for a while, then at around 32 minutes or so they need to take a breather and so the song suddenly gets all mellow and moody, delicate and even kind of pretty. Lesbian could be mistaken for a ordinary, instrumental postrock band at that point - but not for long, because soon they launch into a triumphant metallic gallop (or maybe it's just a trot, but it's glorious) crowned with completely unexpected high pitched shrieking King Diamond style heavy metal vocals! WTF?! Rad!! If we weren't convinced we needed this already, we are now. They chug along like that for a while, while we make involuntary devil horn hand gestures. Not sure why they waited, like, 36 minutes to bust into this part, maybe it took the singer that long to get up his courage... This more metal than thou section proves to be the album's heroic climax, stretching out in an almost psychedelic fashion however, before it at last comes to the end. The End. And guess what? The excitement of that last section really makes us want to hit "play" again right away and take the whole trip all over again - so that's a recommendation!
Of course it also makes us want to go listen to some of our other favorite "one long song" cd metal cds, like Crimson by Edge Of Sanity and Key To The Gates Of Apocalpyses by Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra...
Digipak cd or double lp gatefold vinyl, the latter of which actually messes with the integrity of our review by adding on an exclusive bonus "outro" track!
Local psychedelic space rockers Lumerians started life as a more straight ahead psych rock band, exploring much of the same territory as groups like Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Spacemen 3 and the like, trafficking in a sort of druggy spaced out mesmer with lots of FX, heck, on their first single they even did a killer (if nearly unrecognizable) cover of the Osmonds' unlikely proto-metal classic "Wild Horses". Over the course of a handful of full lengths and 12"s, the band began to move in a distinctly different direction than their psych/space rock peers, for one, they had a percussionist, in addition to a drummer, and for another, they definitely had a funk thing going on, subtle in the beginning, but becoming more and more evident, culminating in the recent Transmissions From Telos tape, which was full on Bitches Brew, and their most recent, Horizon Structures, which mixed that Bitches Brew sound with something more wildly sci-fi and psychedelic.
So we were kind of expecting them to keep moving in that direction, but on the opener here, it's a total spaced out, motorik kraut-psych slab of Hawkwind / Spacemen 3 mesmer, fuzzy cyclical riffing, propulsive drumming, swirls of FX, plenty of synth swirl, hazy laid back vox, minimal percussion, the sound slipping from washed out and woozy, to a bit darker and driving. However, the second track finds the group slipping right back into the psych-funk of the last few records, with a groovy, funky bassline, driven by some cool busy drumming, more of those washed out vox, some reverbed guitar shimmer, that impossible combo of space rock and psych-funk yielding something pretty awesome, sounding a bit like Hawkwind with a bit more groove, which is absolutely not a bad thing. There's some serious progginess going on to, as evidenced by the sudden shift, to what is essentially lead bass, the bass handling the main melody, the rest of the band soon falling in line, locked tight, before slipping right back into the psych-funk groove that started things off.
Lumerians are definitely tough to pin down, their sound constantly shifting, but always ending up somewhere cool, whether it's the Stereolab-ish electro-kraut of "The Bloom", that has a definite retro pop vibe going on as well, or the full on funkiness of "Koman Tong", which adds some weird processed guitar and vocodered vocals, and ends sounding like the theme song to some futuristic cop show, or the heady psychedelic mesmer of "Smokies Tangle", which definitely harkens back to the Lumerians of old, or finally, the Goblin-y closer, replete with sexy female spoken word vocals, which soon transforms into full on buzz drenched space psych hypno-rock, and eventually lands somewhere closer to a brooding, epic, cinematic future exotica. As always, so cool!
It has to be said this is not the Lycia record that we would have picked get reissued on vinyl; but it is very interesting that the highly acclaimed label Handmade Birds has dug into the back catalogue of the dour doom-goth-pop outfit Lycia to publish their first ever vinyl release. Lycia was probably the best known band on the US goth label Projekt, originally a one-man project from Mike VanPortfleet which expanded to a trio with the addition of Tara Vanflower and David Galas by the mid-'90s. But the vision for Lycia was always that of VanPortfleet, through his funereally paced dirges draped with suffocating amounts of reverb, whispered vocals, and his signature, effect-laden guitar work. Cold was the band's fourth studio album dating to 1996, but was the only proper album that found that trio working in the studio together. The albums before didn't feature Vanflower, and the albums after didn't feature Galas. The chemistry between the three does make for a very consistent record, and that was something lacking even from Lycia's strongest album A Day In The Stark Corner which came out a few years earlier. The tracks uniformly float at a ghostly pace, occasionally swooning in step to a forgotten Victorian waltz, with Vanflower's ethereal vocals countering the whispered baritone of VanPortfleet. As is the case for all of Lycia's albums, they managed to craft a strongly recognizable sound that nonetheless draws heavily from the somber atmospheres of New Order's first album, the claustrophobia of The Cure's Pornography, and the black-trenchcoat theatricality of Fields Of The Nephilim.
The story behind this record is almost too outlandish to be believe. According to lore and the liner notes on the back of this album, David Neil was a Canadian acid-folk minstrel in the Gram Parsons mould, with an appetite for drugs as large as his capacity to churn out insightful, psychedelically tinged country tunes. During a four year period from 1970 to 1974, Neil squandered every penny of his advance from his deal with Anchor Records on drugs and various affairs with bored housewives in Hollywood and Long Island. Nevertheless, he and his band toured relentlessly, working out the material that never actually got released. During Neil's final tour in 1974, a young Steve Kilbey, the Australian bassist / vocalist who would later go on to form The Church in the early '80s, joined the band. This tour was cut short as Neil died an improbable death, according to the liner notes "the plane he was on crashed while at the time he was overdosing in the toilet while a jealous husband kicked in the door and gunned him down." Yes, those were the days before excessive TSA screenings. Jump forward a couple of decades, when Kilbey acquired the master tracks of Neil's unfinished album. Many of the tracks were just sketches but featured Neil's distinctive Marc Bolan styled falsetto; and others were lacking vocals altogether. Kilbey managed to piece together the missing vocal tracks from memory and from a long lost lyric book of Neil's. Kilbey and Ricky Maymi (of Brian Jonestown Massacre fame) went into the studio to flesh out these tracks, recording all to tape and using vintage equipment wherever possible to achieve as close to the original sound that Neil was going for way back when. The resulting album is a charming romp through Americana (or would that be Canadiana?) bittersweet, country-fried pop with bouncing basslines, gracefully rustic slide guitars, and a stoned-in-the-summertime vibe that's quite infectuous. Limited edition private pressing from Kilbey and Maymi, who put a lot of love and heart into these recordings... and it shows!
Ever since we first heard The New Lines, on a split 7" with UK dreampoppers Still Corners, we were totally smitten. And have loved everything we've heard since. We could barely keep their All That We See And Seem lp on The Great Pop Supplement label in stock, and their Witches' Milk tape on Moon Glyph went out of print WAY too quickly. So here we are, full length number two, again on Moon Glyph, and like those other records, a heady slab of hypnotic retro pop, fuzzy, synthy, lilting melodies, wrapped around jangly guitars, and shuffling rhythms, there's definitely a Stereolab thing going on, not to mention another retro combo we hold near and dear, the High Llamas, the vocals of Hewson Chen, warm and velvety, the sort of croon you'd expect to hear in some Sarah Records band from the eighties. The band slip easily from warm, lush classic poppiness, to electronics flecked kraut-pop, to the sort of classic baroque pop of the Zombies or the early Bee Gees, flurries of synth swirl constantly drift over landscapes of soft streaked jangle, lilting, achingly melancholy, faux strings swoop and swoon, chordal swells that sound like harpsichords or xylophones swell dreamily, flutes flutter, chimes tinkle, everything hazy and woozily washed out, Fall In Line is the perfect rain swept, late night, empty street wandering, mix tape listening heart break/ache soundtrack, it's the sort of music we generally complain that they don't just make anymore, or if they do, it's rarely this stunning. Easily a contender for retro-pop record of the year.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, includes a digital download!
When reviewing a record you've had and treasured and loved for years, or decades, the pressure to do it justice is immense, so much so, that it seems almost impossible. But once in a while you gotta try. So here we go. Two of the MOST essential punk rock / post punk records ever, recently remastered and reissued, which gives us the opportunity to not only gush about records that have been on constant rotation since we were in our early twenties, records that totally changed the way we listened to music, but to also hopefully turn on the few folks who may have missed out, or who may not have even been alive when these records came out.
Nomeansno, from Canada, most folks know the name, but not everyone has actually heard these guys, but almost every single person we know who has, was never the same. The sound is super rhythmic and mathy, punk rock, but totally proggy as well, the focal point is on the bass and drums, manned by two brothers, Rob and John Wright, one of, if not THEE, tightest rhythm sections ever, the bass lines thick and throbbing and distorted, the drums chaotic but so tight and precise, the guitar, handled by a member who always remained unnamed - "Someone (but we're not sure who)" credited with "other things" on one record, or "none of your fucking business" on another - which is ironic cuz the guitar playing besides being BAD ASS was also so integral to the sound, they were a punk rock band after all. And the vocals, super high in the mix, dramatic, howled, crooned and yelped, melodic but raw and rough, sometimes sort of spoken, but always sharp tongued, spewing some of the best and funniest and intense lyrics. And as always, none of that would mean shit if the songs weren't great, and these songs are GREAT, so hooky and heavy and weird, a testament to these guys is that even the most obtuse tangled whatthefuck jam will stay lodged in your head forever.
Then there's the funky aspect, which we had planned to discuss at length, but listening to this again, the funkiness is implied, subtle, based entirely on the fact that almost all the songs are bass driven, and some are weirdly stripped down to just bass and drums and vocals, but this is not bullshit funky, this is elements of funk used the way they were meant to be, mixed into a churning, super complex, angular, jagged set of songs that manage to be both heavy and crushing and confusionally complex while still being poppy and hook filled and so goddamn catchy.
We tried to pick just one of these reissues to focus on, but eventually could only get it down to two, so both seemed like ideal candidates for Record Of The Week, especially considering that at least half of the folks here freaked the fuck out when we got these back in. We'll talk about each separately, but we have to suggest just buying both, you won't regret it, they're equally classic and timeless and heavy and catchy and far out and freaking awesome!
Wrong, from 1989, was the follow up to the life changing Small Parts album and The Day Everything 12" from the year before, and guess what, it too was life changing, managing to take the sounds and songs from the records before and make them heavier, more complex, more intense. The opener "It's Catching Up" is just so heavy and intense and brutal, the bass about as thick and distorted as it can get and still nail the flurry of rapid fire notes, the drums are devastating, not sure why this guy wasn't a drum god to all the aspiring drummers out there (although he was to Andee, who did get his autograph way back in the day), the guitars sharp and jagged, all wrapped around an insanely catchy hook, and somehow they manage to make it sound punk as fuck at the same time. "The Tower" might be our favorite here (amongst a record full of favorites), with its dirgey Black Flag vibe, more impossibly thick and distorted bass, and a weird staccato chorus, with one of the strangest and most anguished vocal parts ever, but so hooky, which leads right into a killer tangle of head spinning mathiness. Another favorite (like we said, they ALL rule), is "Rags And Bones", with easily one of the best bass lines ever, and some tangled complex drumming to go with it, some bizarre lyrics and a total pure pop chorus, of course doused in distortion and punked up a bit. "Brainless Wonder" is impossibly dense and heavy, like a skipping Black Flag record, before it slips into something a bit more groovy. "Two Lips, Two Lungs And One Tongue" is a short sharp blast of weird vocal / instrumental tangle, with the band locked into the repeated titular phrase. And then there's "All Lies" which is sort of the "Real Love" of Wrong, an epic punk rock prog rock sort-of-ballad, long sprawling moody breakdowns set between dense tribal math rock workouts, moving and emotional and dramatic, all building slowly to a killer super catchy stop start chorus.
Phew, we're just about gushed out. If you can't tell, we love this record A LOT, and The Day Everything Became Isolated And Destroyed, both are easily all time favorites, desert island discs for you list making nerds, essential listening for anyone into punk rock, post punk, pop punk, heaviness, hookiness, great music... as we were listening to this again, Allan asked me why bands weren't good anymore, and I couldn't really think of an answer. Absolutely and totally and utterly recommended.
This remastered reissued has two bonus tracks from a 7" released by Mr Wrong, aka NMN bassist Rob Wright, which sound a whole lot like the record proper!
A drop-dead gorgeous album of pure tone minimalism from two outstanding Danish composers. Jacob Kirkegaard is a familiar name around these parts, thanks to his impeccable recordings for Touch, channeling quite literally radioactive field recordings and even ear-piercing tones captured from inside his own ear; but Else Marie Pade is a figure who actually towers over her fellow countryman as she's been working with analog electronics and electroacoustic minimalism for close to 60 years. She was quite the bad-ass in her youth, fighting in the Resistance during World War II as an explosives expert (fuck, yeah!), ending up a prisoner of war from 1944 until the end of the war. During that time in the P.O.W. camp, she composed hymns to lift the spirits of the fellow prisoners. Upon release, she began studying piano; and by 1954, she quickly moved into the nascent realm of electronic music and musique concrete, becoming what many have cited as being the first Danish composer of both media. Her sensibility is one that is not dissimilar to that of Eliane Radigue in terms of long-form programs, although Pade seems more interested in tonal slippages akin to somebody like Roland Kayn. This collaborative work is a picture perfect example of what two great artists should create when given the chance to work together. The album is sourced both from Kirkegaard's 'otoacoustic' recordings (those aforementioned recordings of inner-ear frequencies) and from Pade's vault of analog electronic recordings. The six tracks of Svaevninger appear as portraits to cloud formations, an apt metaphor to the ephemeral slippages, crystalline phase-patterned hypnosis, and glassy-eyed suspended tone-floats these two produce. Think Chalk, Derbyshire, Oram, Niblock, Nilsen, Coleclough, and any number of the great electronic drone-artists / minimalists we've championed. A marvelous album!
Before we actually listened to this reissue, we didn't expect too much from these fairly obscure Swedish psychedelic underground rockers, having never heard them before, and knowing only that they were an earlier incarnation of another Swedish hippy rock
Listen on: Deezer
You might guess from the band name, the pink record cover, and the fact that it's on the Blackest Ever Black label, that this would be some sort of dark post industrial minimal techno, or avant hauntological house music, but in fact this is full length number two from NYC metalpunks Raspberry Bulbs, featuring He Who Crushes Teeth from aQ faves Bone Awl, and really, while Raspberry Bulbs is often touted as whole different sort of sonic beast, their sound is definitely cut from the same cloth as the raw black buzz and pound of Bone Awl. If anything, it's the sound of Bone Awl given a punk rock makeover, injected with a healthy does of poppiness too. Simple and stripped down, thick buzzy basslines, crunchy distorto guitars, practice space sounding drum pound, and some heavily effected vocal bellows, all wound up into a tense sort of post punk that is really not that far removed from more polished / popular groups like Iceage, Holograms or Lust For Youth. Albeit way more fucked up and fractured, noisy, chaotic, urgent and intense.
Even with that black metal lineage, and the basic sonic similarities, it's still curious that Raspberry Bulbs appeal so much to metalheads, these guys would be way more at home on a bill with the above bands than any proper black metal outfits, and we're guessing anyone into those groups, or Grave Babies, Rank/Xerox and the like, heck even Interpol or Cold Cave, will flip for these guys too. Fuzzed out noise-rock garage-gloom post-punk that swaggers and slithers, pounds and howls, revealing its surprisingly catchy side throughout, hooks surfacing from the din and lodging firmly, the brooding buzz punctuated by spidery leads and some surprisingly melodic moments. Even the yowly echo drenched vocals end up sounding more punk rock howl than black metal vokill, turning the whole thing into a strange blackened post punk pop that we're digging a whole lot.
From the dark minds of Sandwell District comes this impressive mix of motorik techno, bleak disco, and heroin house. Sandwell District is both the name of a label which collects some of the finer specimens of electronica (i.e. Silent Servant, Rrose, Surgeon, Regis, Function, etc.) and the name of the project for Karl O'Connor (Regis, British Murder Boys, etc.) and David Sumner (Function). It's pretty much just a semantic difference when it comes to this mix, as many of the artists that have contributed to the label are featured on this mix. Sandwell District envision themselves (both label and project) as a logical outgrowth of the British industrial culture (e.g. Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire), with ominous chords and controlling rhythms bounding through their body of work. We've long heard that O'Connor likes to toss in some of the more extreme proponents of early industrial noise in his DJ sets; and we do get a brief taste of Boyd Rice & Frank Tovey - whose metallic flanges are driven by a thumping 909 kick. Not exactly the infernal chaos of Whitehouse, but still a nice touch. Most all of the mix comes from various cuts and mixes from the past 12-18 months with recognizable selections from Raime, Vatican Shadow, Ike Yard, Function, and Surgeon - all of which enjoy skeletal structures of muscular rhythms, black atmospherics, and nary a melodic chord in sight. The closest thing to a melody could be found in the Chain Reactive stabs of metallic synths that glide in sync with the ride cymbal swagger of Mary Velo's "Detune" and the mid '90s acid trax from Plastikman's "Plasticine." Nice work, Sandwell District, nice work.
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.
We made the cd reissue of this a Record Of The Week back on list #265... then Too Pure let it go out of print again (twice)! But now, it's been reissued on vinyl by Modern Classics, a subsidiary of Medical Records, yay. Please read on to find out why picked it as a ROTW:
God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In the years since it was first released in 1993, it's never sounded tired or dated to us. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again... We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound.
So what is all the fuss about, you say?
Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges.
Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster.
Listening to Quique now, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one really really good record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So amazingly awesome!
We here at aQ hQ are kind of spoiled for great local music right now. It's no secret that San Francisco's been producing tons of great garage rock over the last few years and Mr. Segall's been one of the leading lights in that movement since the get-go. He's one of the most prolific too, with Sleeper being his third full length in just over a year. Ty is a man who truly never tires (or should we say Tyres? sorry!). And though he seems to split his time between SF and LA we still like to think we can claim him as our own! Compared to the reckless garage freak out of last year's Twins and other earlier recordings, Sleeper finds Segall at his most restrained - and dare we say at his most Bolan-esque! Sleeper is a gorgeous lo-fi dose of otherworldly glam-folk, immediately recalling T. Rex's mellower moments and even those late '60s records where they still went by Tyrannosaurus Rex (complete with the occasional bongo accompaniment!). But what makes this record work so perfectly is how none of the rough edges have been sanded away - it's glittery but gritty too. These sound predominantly like raw home recordings, mostly revolving around a single acoustic guitar and a bit of percussion. The vocals are what really make the album - fragile and warbly, but also ethereal and hypnotic. Like we said, Marc Bolan is a clear point of reference, especially in the way Segall manages to make his songs sound both totally personal and strangely distant at the same time. But there's also a bit of Perry Farrell there, especially on some of Sleeper's twangier more mystical segments, which definitely invoke the same drifting sun-bleached desert imagery of Jane's Addiction's mellower moments. There's a twinge of nostalgic melancholy to some of the songs as well, but it's subtle and never comes across as heavy handed. Mostly it's just one of those records that you want to wrap yourself up in - turn it on, close your eyes, and see what strange places it takes you to. It's a slow burn of an album, but before you realize it it's consumed your stereo entirely!
We've gone on at great length in past reviews of records by Gnaw Their Tongues and sister band Aderlating, about the sound of those groups being bombastic and strangely soundtracky, each trafficking in a strain of symphonic industrial cinematic blackened doom, the usual downtuned sludge crawl and murky black miasmas of like minded noisemakers, instead wrapped around soaring majestic arrangements, lush melodies, as well as strange bursts of brass, and sprawling atmospheric sonic vistas.
As Seirom, the same man behind both of those outfits, draws back the blackened curtain, revealing the lush sonic wonderland that lies beyond, a soaring, shimmering expanse of blurred soft focus ambience, lush layered drones, processed vocals, smeared into shoegaze streaks of spectral psychedelia, all it will take is the first 5 minutes of the first track to convince you, the sound falling somewhere between the gauzy ambience of Tim Hecker, the lush soundtracky drifts of Stars Of The Lid, the Pop Ambient haze of Gas, but listen close, buried beneath the washed out swirls, some black metal blast beats remain, but they're so indistinct, as to be less rhythmic, and more textural, adding a strange pulsing thrum, which oozes into the rest of the surrounding sounds, moaning melancholic strings, gristly soft focus textures, vocal fragments, all floating on a woozy wash of ethereal ambience. Another one of those cases, where had that one track spread out over both discs, we would have been perfectly happy.
And while some of the record does get heavy, the various strands of prismatic melody, turning black, and blossoming into thick heaving walls of downtuned blurred churn, a la SUNNO))) or Nadja, but way more blissed out and ephemeral, even those tracks finds that heaviness being pulled apart, the blackness fading to more of a dreamlike grey, that grey shimmer revealing all manner of voices and fragmented melodies just below the surface, at its most abstract, it's like the Caretaker, a symphony of slowed down orchestral drifts, and gloriously blissed out dream pop melted down into something much more freeform and amorphous.
The title track adds martial drumming, and the sound becomes a sort of majestic industrial M83, which is just as good as it sounds, while "As Hills" laces its dirgey drift with deep dramatic vocals, elsewhere almost black metal buzz, finds guitars soaring skyward and transformed into something much more epic and dreamlike, and when the blast beats do return, this time much higher in the mix, impossibly they don't make the music sound any more metal, but instead, adds a spectral propulsion to the shoegazy bliss, the sound churning and driving the ether, like black metal stripped down and run through some sort of 4AD/M83 filter.
There's a lot to take in, two discs, ninety minutes, too much to really adequately describe here, and yet it's still not enough, a gloriously immersive sonic experience, that manages to take fulfill all the non-metallic promise of Gnaw Their Tongues, the tracks here fully embodying some otherworldly alchemical inverse, an alternate dimension Gnaw Their Tongues, where a blackened burnished beauty is reflected back from the abyss.
That's Bay Area avant-garde icon Michael Gendreau working with a semi-anonymous Seitz who's asked to keep things hush-hush about his/her full identity. This collaboration is one that stems from Gendreau's long-standing use of the turntable as musical instrument. Back in the late '80s, Gendreau (in his project Crawling With Tarts) was composing turntable operas of surface noise and snippets of recontextualized sounds from the records themselves, very much akin to those Christian Marclay recordings from the same time period. By the turn of the millennium, Gendreau had honed his craft as an acoustician (scientifically analyzing the impact of environmental / industrial sound on a particular architectural / workplace system), and he applied those tools to composition, amplifying the tiniest of frequencies from a turntable motor, or the squeaks from a loose belt, or the haptic rumble from the needle scraping against inner label on the record itself. The clarity he was able to reproduce was such that these commonplace sounds became foreign and at times malignant. Here on the Seitz Versus Gendreau record, the turntable is is one of the sources, along with a distorted toy piano whose melodies come into the mix with atonal chops on the opener "Chorus After Rains." The two launch into a gnarled New Blockaders grunt of acoustic scapings and scabrous noise on the following track "Things Lost That Will Never Be Found", that dissolves into a crumbling low-frequency drone. The 18 minute "Trains Will Not Stop" enjoys an apt subtitle "Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 9" with a gradual unfurling of crackle and hiss joined by deep subharmonic hums that thrum ominously outside the relative calm of the surface noise / campfire mimesis. A great piece of sound art that lands on the more obtuse sonic sides of Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, and the aforementioned Christian Marclay. Limited to a stupidly low number of just 90 copies.
Japan's best black metal band (along with Sabbat) are back with their first US domestic release, having just been signed by big metal label Century Media. We've always been fans of their fucked-up genre-mangling horror movie soundtrack metal, and this might
Of all the early records by UK noise rockers Skullflower, 1990's Xaman is probably the most discussed, and yet least actually heard, at least in its proper form, as almost all of the copies suffered from a manufacturing defect, a sort of "disc rot", that caused the discs to oxidize, and thus be rendered to some degree unplayable. The Skullflower nerds at aQ purchased multiple copies over the years, looking for the one that against all odds would actually play properly all the way through (though Allan, it should be noted, LIKES the way the "disc rot" noise meshes with Skullflower's own noise on his copy, but we digress).
So we were thrilled that Xaman was one of the 4 releases in this new Skullflower reissue program, which also includes the first 12" BirthDeath, the debut album Form Destroyer (both reviewed on last week's New Arrivals list) and a kick ass singles collection called Black Sun Rising, which we made this week's Record Of The Week.
Xaman fits pretty perfectly alongside BirthDeath and Form Destroyer, Matthew Bower and crew laying down a sort of Swans / krautrock hybrid, most songs sprawling tranced out caveman dirges, all big booming echo drenched drumming super blown out psychedelic riffage, clouds of feedback, thick wolly mammoth basslines, everything hazy and droney and druggy, just give a listen to opener "Slaves", it's not hard to imagine a Michael Gira bellowing along, but instead, it just unwinds as an epic 11+ minute hypnorock pummel. There could be vocals, but if there are, they're buried deep, it's the sort of Teutonic psychedelic space jam that the new breed of space rockers aspire to, but few can math Skullflower's feral ferocity.
And while that track positions the record sonically right between Form Destroyer and 1992's IIIrd Gatekeeper, it's also a bit of an anomaly, there are some seriously surprising moments, the downright lovely "Sunset", with its lilting, keening melody, but even the, the song builds momentum, the drums whipped up into a Crash Worship like fury, wild gouts of tangled psych shred over a smeared blur of beautiful washed out noise. Or the strangely blissed out Butthole Surfers style psychedelic drift of the title track, the sky filled with arcs of soaring buzzing skree, while loose drumming lopes through fields of thrum and rumble, some seriously trance out heavy (yet dreamy) psych, that wouldn't have been out of place on Alchemy or PSF back in the day.
The second half of the records gets seriously blissed out on the droned out "What Did You Expect?", which drapes sheets of undulating guitar shimmer and Oxbow-like vocal howls, over splattered tribal drumming, never fully coming together in proper song form, instead remaining loose and gloriously free. Again, the sort of UK post industrial crush that Japanese psych nerds would do well to check out. From there on out, the band lay down some bass heavy chug and noise-blooz swagger in "The Shit Hits The Fan", which again sorta sounds like Butthole Surfers crossed with the Swans by way of Hawkwind, which bleeds right into "Barbed Wire Animal", which adds some wah guitar, and heaps of feedback, not to mention some muscly minimal drumming, before finishing off with the epic 26 minute "Wave", which is about as space-y and psychedelic as Skullflower get, loose, wild, free, noisy, tripped out, pounding, swirling head-trip heaviness that KILLS.
Like the rest of the reissues, Xaman comes in a slightly oversized mini-lp gatefold, with new Matthew Bower artwork, includes a booklet, with the original Savage Pencil cover art, some hilarious liner notes, as well as old reviews and other ephemera, the cd comes in a printed inner sleeve as well with still more Bower artwork!
This long in the works reissue campaign has had aQ staff and aQ customer Skullflower nerds freaking the fuck out. Four, count, em FOUR reissued rarities! On the last list, we reviewed reissues of both Skullflower's very first 12"ep Birthdeath, and their first proper full length Form Destroyer, both absolute psychedelic noise rock crushers. But that was only the beginning. Since most Skullflower fans were already super familiar with those records anyway, it was more a chance to revisit, as well as preach the gospel of early Skullflower to the uninitiated. But it's the other two reissues that might be the most thrilling. Elsewhere on this week's list, you'll find a review of Xaman, Skullflower's 1990 second album, one that due to a manufacturing defect found most copies eventually rendered unplayable, and thus essentially unheard for decades. And then there's this one, a singles comp, hopefully the first of many, gathering up three different singles, originally released on Majora, Forced Exposure and Shock, and the crazy thing is, even the Skullflower freeks here, had only ever actually heard ONE of em! So that alone made this totally essential. But in addition to those singles, there are also SIX previously unreleased tracks, as well as Skullflower's three contributions to The Portable Altamont compilation (which also featured such noisy luminaries as Coil, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, and Drunks With Guns), all of which add up to some of the filthiest, noisiest, most pummeling, tranced out, knuckle dragging, psychedelic krautrock-style dirgery you've every heard. Cuz really, for all the skree and crunch, all the noisy churn and caveman pummel, most early Skullflower jams are stretched out hypnorock sprawls, albeit constructed from crumbling superdistorted bass, wild tangles of angular melody and shards of noise guitar skree, and some surprisingly motorik drum bashing...
The only one of the three reissues that's sort of new, begins with the weird choice of starting not with any of the previously released 7" tracks, but instead, a double shot of unreleased rarities, the opener "Night Tripper" as good as anything SF was doing at the time, squalls of feedback, thick, blown out riffage, damaged drumming, yowled, buried in the mix vox, super murky and hypnotic, which leads right into "Kasso's Blues", which is loping and lumbering, a sort of detuned atonal main riff, and some garbled vox wrapped around tribal beats make it sound like some super obscure, super wasted Butthole Surfers jam. The aforementioned single, the only one we HAD heard, is the "Rift / Avalanche" single on Majora, and it's some of our favorite Skullflower, smoldering, brooding, dirgey, but sorta dreamy, a locked minimal rhythm, buried vocals, and then long arced tones, super mesmerizing and so epic, the 'flipside' though is a wild nois drenched heavy psych freakout that looks forward to groups like Rusted Shut. The Forced Exposure single delivers one part noisy Dead C style plod rock freakout, and one part billowing psychedelic space out, while the Shock single is super swaggery and dirgey, the recording muted and murky, total cave like rehearsal style sound, but it suits them, the second half getting downright rocking.
After that, there's the awesomely titled "Bo Diddley's Shitpump" , which might be the most bloozy of the bunch, as is hinted at by the title, but it's more like Pussy Galore style blues, tangled up with some Swans and some Hawkwind, and with a hint of mutated AmRep style bash and howl. "Against Everything (A Guide To Canine Foreskin Retraction)" sounds like a Crash Worship record on Shock, wild dense tribal drumming, wreathed in a cloud of flanged shimmer, wah wah splatter and spidery tendrils of tangled guitar melody, and girded by some strange industrial whirring buried in the mix. "March Of The Lemmings" is all garage blooz swagger, with echo drenched vocals and a thick chugging main riff, even some bleating horns, everything dubbed to high heaven, and then wrapped in a spider web of noise guitar skree, and finally closer "The Punk Rock Song" is about as punky OR poppy as SF get, but they manage to fuck it all up and douse it in just enough noise to keep it interesting...
Holy shit, so much amazing, twisted, noisy sonic genius. As far as we're concerned all four of these Skullflower reissues should have /could have been Records Of The Week, but forced to pick one, it had to be Black Sun Rising. But seriously, who are we fooling, you NEED all four!!!
Nice packaging too, mini gatefolds, printed inner sleeves, and a booklet with reproductions of the original 7" covers.
Finally available on vinyl! After a tape and a couple 7"s, comes the much anticipated debut full length from this new crew of SF psych rockers, who by now should be quite familiar to fans of other Bay Area psychedelic space rock and garage rock, cuz if you dig Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Sleepy Sun, Carlton Melton and all the rest, as well as Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees and the like these guys should be right there in your space/psych pantheon. And while the spacier of those other bands tend toward the more droned out and krautrocky, these guys are much more classically rocking, melding a love of Spacemen 3 and other dronier drug rock with the classics, the Velvets, the Doors, even the Stooges, their songs simple and trancelike, plenty of jangle and simpler stripped down drum stomp, the vocals wreathed in reverb, and nestled in the mix, the guitars alternately chugging and crunchy, chiming and melodic, transforming simple pop songs into something more mesmerizingly hypnotic. Even album opener, Lonely Eye on the surface is simple and spare, but over the course of its nearly 5 minutes, it gets to the point where it could go on forever, and we'd sit there glassy eyed and blissed out.
Some of the other tracks are more garagey, like "Disguise", which should totally have Oh Sees fans flipping their lids, although the sound here hews much closer to old garage classics like the Fuzztones or the Lyres, which is most definitely not a bad thing. In fact if anything, much of this new record definitely leans toward that more stripped down garage rock sound, with fuzzy guitar, wandering basslines and fuzzy organs, but here and there, like on "Calling Out Your Name" the band unleash a riff that KILLS, in the case of "COYN", it's a dead ringer for the Stooges, one that the band could have ridden hard, but instead of getting all swaggery, the band sort of blisses out, applying multiple layers of guitars and upping the psych quotient considerably, not to mention some cool rhythmic weirdness, which lurks throughout the record, and reveals itself on repeated and closer listens.
And so it goes, the whole record, a killer collection of super hooky, spaced out psychedelic garage pop gems, the sort of sound we can't get enough of, and the sort of sound that should definitely position these guys alongside other garage/space/psych rock luminaries, and again if you dig Crystal Stilts, Thee Oh Sees, Wooden Shjips, or any of the other above mentioned bands, and have not checked these guys out, do yourself a favor...
It feels like we start every Superchunk review with one of those 'what else is there to say about' intros, but really, what choice do we have. Superchunk are pretty much THEE ultimate indie rock band. They started off decades ago, their sound raw and feral and almost punk rock, the early songs already classics, they started their own label, one that still thrives to this day, the group's sound eventually matured, and while definitely less raw, lost NONE of its magic, the songs still rule, frontman Mac McCauhghan's keening vocals seem impossibly unchanged, even after all this time. The band sounds as tight as ever, as full of youthful energy, which is incredible considering they're closing in on middle age, and as we said in our review of their last full length, Majesty Shredding, which at the time, was their first in nearly a decade, the band continue to outpace groups half their age, who might not have even existed if it weren't for Superchunk.
So yeah, I Hate Music, as no doubt lots of reviewers will inevitably point out, seems to revel in just the opposite, an unbridled joy in music making, and an undying LOVE of music, that sort of positive energy infuses every note on this record. "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo" might be the 'hit', we reviewed the single on the last list, but it's a Superchunk record, so really, every song here is a gem, the biggest surprise maybe being the punked out 75 second blast of "Staying Home" that sounds like vintage Superchunk for sure, but really, pretty much all of I Hate Music is tough not to love, just check out the samples, and you'll be smitten. Fans will want this for sure, it's as good as (if not better than) Majesty Shredding, and while for newbies, we might recommend Foolish or Here's Where The Strings Come in, really ANY Superchunk is a great introduction to a band that has yet to make a bad record...
While they last, we have the super fancy deluxe lp version, that includes a bonus 7" with two unreleased tracks and a Superchunk stencil! Also check out the video for "Me & You & Jackie Mitto", and you might just see our very own Andee holding up his beloved copy of Comus' First Utterance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUxkZreYiQs
It feels like we start every Superchunk review with one of those 'what else is there to say about' intros, but really, what choice do we have. Superchunk are pretty much THEE ultimate indie rock band. They started off decades ago, their sound raw and feral and almost punk rock, the early songs already classics, they started their own label, one that still thrives to this day, the group's sound eventually matured, and while definitely less raw, lost NONE of its magic, the songs still rule, frontman Mac McCauhghan's keening vocals seem impossibly unchanged, even after all this time. The band sounds as tight as ever, as full of youthful energy, which is incredible considering they're closing in on middle age, and as we said in our review of their last full length, Majesty Shredding, which at the time, was their first in nearly a decade, the band continue to outpace groups half their age, who might not have even existed if it weren't for Superchunk.
So yeah, I Hate Music, as no doubt lots of reviewers will inevitably point out, seems to revel in just the opposite, an unbridled joy in music making, and an undying LOVE of music, that sort of positive energy infuses every note on this record. "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo" might be the 'hit', we reviewed the single on the last list, but it's a Superchunk record, so really, every song here is a gem, the biggest surprise maybe being the punked out 75 second blast of "Staying Home" that sounds like vintage Superchunk for sure, but really, pretty much all of I Hate Music is tough not to love, just check out the samples, and you'll be smitten. Fans will want this for sure, it's as good as (if not better than) Majesty Shredding, and while for newbies, we might recommend Foolish or Here's Where The Strings Come in, really ANY Superchunk is a great introduction to a band that has yet to make a bad record...
While they last, we have the super fancy deluxe lp version, that includes a bonus 7" with two unreleased tracks and a Superchunk stencil! Also check out the video for "Me & You & Jackie Mitto", and you might just see our very own Andee holding up his beloved copy of Comus' First Utterance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUxkZreYiQs
Now available on domestic PICTURE DISC vinyl!
Hell yeah, at last! When this now-semi-legendary album was first released by UK heavy psych doom metal specialists Rise Above in 2011, it came out in an ultra limited edition of just three hundred vinyl-only copies, which proved almost impossible to come by. That first edition sold out instantly and those lps started trading for seriously ridiculous amounts of money on eBay and elsewhere. Even though, really, who the heck were Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats? Well it wasn't just the cool band name generating a buzz, the music was awesome, as we later were able to ascertain. Eventually Rise Above did a repress, of which we were able to get a few, though those were expensive too and we were never able to get enough of 'em to actually list. But, we did figure out why this record was in such demand (as we'll discuss in more detail in a moment). We also learned that Blood Lust had also come out on compact disc, but oddly enough via a small Finnish label instead of Rise Above, and again we never were able to get enough of those to list, either. But we had hope that someday, somehow, we'd be able to review this for you, 'cause eventually most Rise Above stuff gets released in the USA by licensees Metal Blade, and while its been a damn long time, we're now pleased to, ta da, finally have Blood Lust on cd at a domestic price. Record Of The Week? You bet!
So, what we thought we were in for, way back when all we knew about band was their name & label, was some lysergic sludgey doomy jamming, like maybe Electric Wizard (another Rise Above band) or UFOmammut. Which we would have been perfectly happy with, of course. But, instead, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats proved to be a lot more song-oriented and more melodic than we expected, with a kind of poppy '60s garage psych rock side to 'em, amidst their heavy fuzz-filled riffage. The singer (that's ol' Uncle Acid himself, natch, also on guitar in this power trio, and mellotron and synths too) croons his twisted tales of witchburning, black magic, and murder, in a languid whine, his voice nasally pinched and reverb effected, reminding us a bit of Kyle Thomas of aQ faves Witch (and King Tuff and Happy Birthday too by the way). His delivery lends a delicate, decadent touch to the band's brand of both despondent plod and swinging catchiness, able to render lines like "I was born a bitter man, no hopes or dreams / I get my kicks from torturing and screams / I lust for womens blood, and their evil ways / I twist my words to what the good book says" with sick sincerity -and- showmanship, in a way that is surprisingly not very much metallic, instead staying (despite the music's undeniable heaviness) more in the pop realm, though one obsessed with vintage horror films.
These rollicking, but dread-infused tunes are further full of ripping fuzz guitar leads, and lumbering downer riffs. Without a doubt, doom originators Black Sabbath are a major factor in this band's sound, but they're doing something rather different with that particular inspiration than most do. And we're also reminded of some other British '60s/'70s proto-metallers like Stray, High Tide, T2, and May Blitz, who were quite heavy but psych-pop catchy as well. Perhaps very early, very psychedelic Alice Cooper could be added to Uncle Acid's roster of influences too, we're thinking of the way the song "Ritual Knife" marries a pounding tribal beat and urgently chugging ominous riffery with glorious bursts of shining melody come chorus time.
One much more recent band that these guys also remind us of, is Swedish occult rock sensations Ghost, another act whose "pop side" is so effective as to possibly threaten their "metal cred" among the more closeminded. We'd also recommend Uncle Acid to fans of that other recent, equally retro stunner from Rise Above, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. And, like last week's Record Of The Week by Golden Void, this has that laidback classic sounding '70s psychrock vibe, immediately familiar, though Uncle Acid comes across as much more dark and sinister to be sure. And lastly, fans of Witchcraft should pay attention - we'd rank this up there with that band's celebrated Rise Above debut, we're pretty sure this is gonna be considered a classic too. We're sooooooo glad they didn't just press only those 300 vinyl copies and leave it at that!! You will be too.
This cd reissue includes a bonus track not on vinyl, which provides a nice coda to the record proper, relinquishing the fuzz guitar for acoustic strum and hand percussion, Uncle Acid doing their doom-pop-psych in a more folky style a la, say, Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Another uber pricey 7" single from these much hyped UK psychedelic doomsters, their second from the band's most recent full length Mind Control, the A side here, "Mind Crawler", is a doozy (as is most of Mind Control really), a heavy psych, doom-pop groover, thick fuzzed out riffage, keening vocals buried in the mix, super tranced out and hypnotic, with a killer hook to boot. Not to mention a CRAZY video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW_GWB9VQCc
But the real reason to pick this up is for the exclusive B side, a cover of Charlie Manson's "Get On Home", which in the hands of Uncle Acid becomes a bit more psychedelic, but ultimately, other than some added volume and amplification, doesn't stray to far from the original.
Obviously SUPER limited, pressed on green transparent vinyl, and of course, ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
We recently reviewed the Superior Viaduct vinyl reissue of the first and only full length from So-Cal (post) punks 100 Flowers, and as we mentioned in that review, before they were 100 Flowers, they were The Urinals, and as we mentioned in that review, 100 Flowers and The Urinals were essentially the same band, although with the name switch, came a pretty big stylistic shift as well, with the group angling for something more arty and poppy. But truth be told, even as The Urinals, their sound was pretty poppy and arty, more raw, more lo-fi, maybe a bit more, minimal and rhythmic and new wave, But ultimately this collection of the Urinals complete recorded works plays as a sort of rough and raw 100 Flowers demo, which is not a bad thing at all.
So many amazing songs here, some serious pop genius on display, making the shift to 100 Flowers not all that surprising after all. "Black Hole" has a serious Yellow Pills power pop vibe, right down to the harmony vocals, and then there's "Sex", which is noisy and punky, but also poppy as all get out, or "Hologram" which might be our favorite track here, a strange bit of muted murky jangle, with tranced out tribal drumming, weirdly crooned vocals, the whole thing so weirdly minor key and mantra-like, and of course "Surfin' With The Shah", which is another surfy, jangly instrumental that for sure foreshadows the impending shift to 100 Flowers. And you might recognize "Ack Ack Ack Ack", frantic and frenetic, and not surprisingly later covered by the Minutemen, it's a strange collection for sure, sonically super varied, everything the group ever recorded, over the three years they were a band (1977-1980), from snotty snarly punk anthems ("I'm White And Middle Class"), to jangly, hook heavy pop punk ("Scholastic Aptitude"), to noisy lo-fi hardcore stomps ("Go Away Girls"), to twisted jangly sing-alongs laced with wild freakouts ("I Hate"), to angular post-punk crunch ("Presence Of Mind"), to organ driven surf-garage ("I'm Like You"), to reverby twang flecked jangle ("Orange Anal Sin"), and so much more.
There are a ton of live tracks too, including a Soft Machine cover (!), as well as an acoustic version of "Sex" which had us thinking of the Dead Milkmen! WAY recommended, especially if you dug that 100 Flowers reissue, odds are you're gonna love this too!
Includes download card too!
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.
Ecstasy Of Gold, besides being the name of an iconic Ennio Morricone track from the legendary Italian Western, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, is also the name of this incredible series of compilations, five volumes in all, this being part two, collecting classic and rare tracks from Italian Westerns. Sure, Morricone is probably the most well known, but like on the first volume, you'll find more amazing music here from some of the lesser known composers, some we knew and already love, like Bruno Nicolai Francesco De Masi, Alessandro Alessandroni, Riz Ortolani, Piero Umiliani, but plenty of unknown to us before now: Stelvio Cipriani, Vasco Vassil Kojucharov, Carlos Pes, Nico Fidenco, Marcello Giambini, Armando Sciascia, Guido & Maurizio De Angelis and loads more. But really, you don't need to know the names to dig this stuff. It's wild and psychedelic, twangy and atmospheric, all dramatic vocals, dusky guitars, exotic percussion, fluttering woodwinds, mariachi horns, groovy wah wah fuzzguitar, orchestral swells, playful xylophones, jawharp, loads of sound effects, explosions and gunshots, even some futuristic sound electronics, and yeah, of course, even some whistling. Haunting and cinematic one second, dark and brooding the next, slipping easily from jazzy and jaunty, to strident and tense, some tracks lush and orchestral, others fuzzy and psychedelic, and others ambient and atmospheric, we're digging this as much as the first volume, and like that one, it's got us wanting to track down more music from all of these folks, as well as a hankering to check out some of these films...
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES!! Like the first volume, housed in a super swank eye popping gatefold jacket adorned with more classic images from Italian Westerns, film stills, poster art and more.
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