Another fantastic compilation from the Dust-To-Digital label, this one focusing on the golden age of the Moroccan record industry, curated and produced by David Murray, who also put together the incredible Luk Thung collection (reviewed here recently), which gathered up rare 78s from Thailand. Kassidat chronicles a period in the sixties that found labels in Casablanca flourishing, releasing thousands of 45s, at the time, a new and inexpensive format, which created an incredible document of Moroccan music at the time. The booklet is massive, and offers a super well researched and in-depth history of Moroccan music, this era in particular, as well as the provenance of these songs and the various artists.
Instead of summarizing all that info though, as interesting as it is, in this case it might be better for us to just describe the music, cuz even with all the weird new world music labels popping up, and the hundreds (maybe thousands) of reissues, the music here is incredible, and incredibly unique. Our favorite track has to be "Kassidat El Hakka (The Poem of the Truth)" by Abdellah El Magana, which is super rhythmic, darkly hypnotic, the song drifting from tranced out tribal drumming and snake charmer flute, to chanted, almost rapped vocals, in fact, it almost sounds like some mysterious strain of Moroccan rap, if there even is such a thing, it's so good, one of those tracks we found ourselves listening to so much, it took all we had to move on to the rest of the comp. But as you might imagine, there's plenty more to dig here, soaring dramatic vocals, wildly melodic fiddles, complex harmonies, intricate melodic counterpoint, the sound raw and intimate, the recordings super live and intense, with the vocals often peaking, creating a cool sort of distortion, hand claps and groovy rhythms, call and response vox, strummed and plucked strings, the vibe on a lot of these tracks very reminiscent of Klezmer music, slithery woodwinds, echoey percussion, some tracks with cool natural reverb, rhythmic and hypnotic and so totally mesmerizing. Incredible stuff. And really, anyone who's been digging the various releases on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Teranga Beat, Sahel Sounds, Sham Palace, etc. will dig this like crazy, and should probably prepare themselves to track down everything on Dust-To-Digital. SO GREAT!
Kilo finds our man Mika Vainio returning to the rhythm and noise once again, and very few people have ever done that combination as successfully as this Finnish electronic artist. Vainio's career, as you probably know, began in the early '90s through the project Panasonic (which later had to be rechristened as Pan Sonic for obvious reasons), with slippery grids of pure-tone bleeps and clinical atmospheres haunted a swaggering techno that aligned in equal parts with Plastikman, Suicide, and Throbbing Gristle. The monumental 4cd set Kesto by Pan Sonic from 2004 marked one of the most exhaustive statements of experimental electronica EVER produced; and the resulting world tour led to the collapse of the Pan Sonic. Vainio remained steadfast in his solo productions since the demise of Pan Sonic, alternating his major albums between the rhythmic workouts and sleepless landscapes of drone-splattered electro-acoustics. Even on an off day, Vainio's rhythmic explorations are at the top of the heap... And on Kilo, Mika Vainio is in top form. His post-techno, breakbeat rhythms have always enjoyed a bad-ass swagger, and those grooves persist on Kilo through an industrial barrage of jackhammered sequencing, Martin Rev-esque pulsations, and cyclotron velocities spun from his analogue noiseboxes. Another very impressive album from Mr. Vainio!
There must be fluorescent paintings of ladybugs, dancing mushrooms, and the beaming smile of an anthropomorphized sun adorning the walls of Crystal Dorval's bedroom, where she's been dashing off charmingly, disheveled bliss-pop tunes as White Poppy, which eventually caught the sympathetic ears at Not Not Fun. If not, her bright psychedelia oozes with acid-kissed warmth would be well served by such confines. It's definitely a vivid, touchy-feely and eye-dilating psychotropic drug that is Dorval's choice and not really the opiated stupor her moniker alludes to. The swirling spaced-out pop songs that drift through her eponymous album are graced with titles like "Skygaze," "Dizzy," and "Joyride" all of which are nearly onomatopoetic in describing what you'll hear. Although it does have to be said, she pens a track called "Existential Angst" which is anything but. Oh well. On some of her tracks, she adopts the drugged out, loop-station hypnosis that wouldn't stray far from the orbit of Motion Sickness Of Time Travel's electronic miasma; but Dorval is at her best when she deconstructs the bittersweetness of girl-group, fuzztone pop into a deliriously catchy and happily acid-damaged version of the Cocteau Twins. Yup, hypnogogic pop at its finest, right up there with Peaking Lights, if you ask us.
It seems like only yesterday that Virginia's Windhand first emerged on the scene seemingly from out of nowhere, announcing their arrival with an enormous earth-splitting debut that left doomheads the world over cavorting in slow motion ecstasy. But in the year and a half that's followed their acclaim has only grown (thanks in no small part to an immense split with Cough) and now their second full length has arrived with some serious expectations in tow. But never fear! Because it's another overwhelming stoned monument of blown-out moss-specked DOOM. The first thing you'll notice about Windhand is just how damn HEAVY they are, and in the graveyard realm of doom metal that's no small feat. But just the very tone and weight of Windhand's music seriously puts most other supposedly "heavy" bands to shame. The guitars are lumbering funereal paced black magic incantations - all overdriven and decayed, but unfathomably huge, with the occasional dreamy affects drenched lead swimming out from under the murkiness. The sound is so bottom heavy that it's hard to tell where the guitars end and the bass begins. Instead they simply congeal into one slithering black leviathan mass, while the drums plod underneath like slaveship percussion. The vocals seem to be crying out from the other side of a black hole, ghostly and buried in the mix, sounding perfectly forlorn and out of reach. They immediately bring to mind Electric Wizard's landmark Dopethrone, and really we'd be remiss in not mentioning that Electric Wizard is a pretty obvious touchstone for this band in general. But there does seem to be a more serious undercurrent running through Windhand's music. While Electric Wizard's music is often imbued with a kind of acid biker B-movie kitsch, Windhand instead trade that in for a sense of urban decay and personal dread that brings to mind Pallbearer or Strength To Dream-era Warning. There is very little reprieve from the claustrophobic heaviness. The only real exceptions are the sparse Americana twang of "Evergreen"'s acoustic folk noir (a song that really allows Dorthia Cottrell's haunting vocals to shine) and the lonely acoustic minimalism interspersed into the enormous slow-burn "Boleskine", which closes out the album with 30+ minutes of intense heaviness before fading out into the bleak sounds of howling prairie winds.
As a sidenote, we should also mention that the dudes (& dudette) from the band swung by aQuarius when they were in town last week - and we just happened to be playing the new record in the shop at the time, of course! Needless to say they were super nice and friendly, even going so far as to put us on the guest list for their show that night! And we're very pleased to report that when we arrived at the tiny Hemlock Tavern for the performance, we were subjected to literally one of the loudest, heaviest (and sweatiest!) live shows we've ever seen, and it really gave us a new appreciation for the band. Not that we needed another reason to recommend this record! It goes without saying, but if all things slow and heavy are what get your motor rumbling, then there's no way you can pass on this stumbling crumbling testament to relentless heaviness!
Gotta hand it to The Wire, it's pretty impossible to predict who their next cover star is gonna be. Definitely it's not based on record sales. This ish, we're being introduced to saxophonist/vocalist/composer Mantana Roberts. Some more familiar folks are also featured, however, including aQ faves Cave and The Necks. Plus, there's stuff like South African Shangaan Electro artist Nozinja doin' the Invisible Jukebox test, and an interview with forgotten Buchla Box virtuoso Charles Cohen, and plenty more, including tons of informative reviews, as per usual.
Much better than Zola Jesus' recent rebranding of old songs with a string quartet, is Chelsea Wolfe's Pain Is Beauty. These two records have emerged at about the same time, at summer's end of 2013, and these two personalities seem to share the headlines of whatever glossy blogspottumblffeedtweeterbirdpitchfulking thing you might frequent. Yeah, the goth subcultures have long enabled their ice queens to emerge as fashion icons of a cold hedonism and sexually charged detachment, all the while looking fantastic in smeared coal-eyed make-up and frost-white skin. For now, it's these two ladies who are holding court in the land of the gloomy; but when it comes to delivering the art, Chelsea Wolfe has stepped up her game on Pain Is Beauty, easily bettering Zola Jesus' tepid stringed album and producing what is probably the best album of her young career. Her last album of acoustically driven songs - Unknown Rooms - showcased her songwriting chops and an elegant quivering falsetto that wrapped around her plaintive death-folk ballads. In fleshing out these songs with drums, bass, electronics, and yes some strings, Wolfe's songs all amass into a delicious album of moody witchiness and haughty debauchery, while retaining the magickal aura of her unhinged apocalyptic howl that manifested out of some arcane blood ritual. The use of electronics on the album is particularly striking, to the point where we have begun to hope for a full album with just purely electronic minimal wave arrangements. The opening number "Feral Love" is engineered upon a hammering blastbeat although the volume is dialed down beneath the infernal guitar noises and her bleak siren song. "The Warden" is another electronic track that hypnotically cycles through chorale vocals, a taut dulcimer riff, and sparkle-clad rhythms. Yeah, it's brighter than anything else she's done, but there's plenty of doomified plod, bad-ass villain vibes, and ravenously empty folk tunes that haunt the rest of the album. Time to break out the black nail polish again.
Bureau B reissued the first two albums by Berlin School synth groop You a couple years ago - 1979's Electric Day and 1983's Time Code - amazing artifacts of late period electronic krautrock, previously unknown to us, that we, and a lot of you, loved. We made Electric Day a Record Of The Week, in fact. Now Bureau B has gotten around to reissuing You's fourth album, Laserscape, from 1986 (skipping over 1984's Wonders From The Genetic Factory, but maybe they'll eventually do that one too).
The title doesn't lie - this music was in fact all recorded as the soundtrack to the large-scale, open air "laser performances" of an artist named Horst Baumann, events that we can only imagine were like a bigger version (with better music) of one of those trippy planetarium laser light shows - like the late lamented Laserium shows once held at the California Academy Of Sciences here in SF's Golden Gate Park (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/S-F-Planetarium-Laser-Show-To-Fade-Into-2742326.php).
You's music for Baumann's Laserscape is suitably spectacular, spacey, dark, and droney. There's a lot of variety, though, in mood and flavor. There's synthetic beats on "Can You Tell Where I Am", a propulsive track that's totally something Emeralds or Umberto or Life Coach or Jonas Reinhardt or Steve Moore would be very happy with if they'd recorded. Elsewhere, You's cosmic electronics are accompanied by chamber string sounds, and even beautifully shredding classical guitar. There's Eastern-sounding moments, powerful cinematic build-ups, eerie drifty passages, and on "Travelling Hologram" a recurring choral "Ah-ah-ah" part that combines with the increasingly hectic and quirky rhythmic construction of the track to kinda remind us of, like, a computerized Magma, in a weird way. Very cool. Other tracks, more blissed out and melodic, remind us of the non-lame New Age music of Iasos. Man, we wish we could experience this with the laser visuals. But still it's good listening on its own, and you can close your eyes and try to imagine...
Perhaps needless to say, if you are already into those first two You albums, you'll dig this. It's decidedly darker, though, than Time Code, it feels to us. More of an ominous, Blade Runner vibe, as others have noted. Once again, thanks, Bureau B! (And please note, the cd version includes a 21+ minute live bonus track not on the vinyl.)
You can count on Scotland's Richard Youngs to make great records, whether he's in experimental mode, or folk troubadour mode, or both. Beyond that it's not always easy to know what to expect, though this new one seems comfortably familiar, falling into the melancholic folk zone, Summer Through My Mind being a lovely, lovely (and lonely) album of Youngs' voice and guitar strum. There's some harmonica and slide guitar twang giving this a down home, country-ish vibe, naturally channelling ancient Brit-folk balladry as well into its sad, sparse soundworld.
Youngs' singing is more about the emotive timbre of his wistful, high voice than rhyme or meter - he could probably sing the phone book, accompanied by his pensive, plaintive guitar, and it would sound hypnotic and heartfelt. However, his lyrics are in fact more interesting than that.
One track, "Story Of Jhon", is narrated in spoken form by special guest (and fellow lo-fi folkie) Simon Joyner, while Youngs sings the same words, echoing in overdubbed, overlapping fashion what Joyner just read. It's effective at somehow giving the story/song more weight and import, and a sense of timelessness. But, it's also a tad bit much after a while, the track being over ten minutes long, and so THAT particular piece might not bear repeat listens quite as much as the others on here, however. Many of which wherein Youngs also often doubles his own singing voice, and repeats phrases mantra-like, as on the even lengthier "Spin Me Endless In The Universe" - but there's, you know, nobody talking (sorry Simon). That one is lovely for the duration; and also, ferinstance, we could happily hear Youngs sing the record's title track over and over again, in blissful reverie, until summer does indeed roll around yet again!
"When in doubt - Front 242". Yup, that was the epithet Youth Code pasted at the bottom of their demo cassette which had been floating around over the past year. So, there's not much left to the imagination as to where this LA electronic duo situates themselves. Theirs is a sound which wholeheartedly reconstitutes the aggro-industrial and electronic body music of 1986 and 1987, when Ministry released Twitch, Nitzer Ebb produced Belief, Front 242 issued Official Version, and Skinny Puppy put out Cleanse, Fold, And Manipulate. Youth Code's electronics are those square waved sequencing, bass synth monochord stabbings, and LinnDrum emulation, with minimal amounts of melody cast through a jacked aggression and produced with a fright-show claustrophobia. The vocals from both Sara Taylor and Ryan George are virtually indistinguishable as throaty and blood curdling punk exhortations, hyper compressed and garbled with a tight distortion. As we mentioned in our review of Bad News, there are some aesthetics which we completely understand as needing to come back into the fold once again in the cyclical nature of musical trends; but this was one that we were pretty sure was gonna be just another glorious guilty pleasure. Nivek Ogre should be proud.
