When legendary So-Cal punk rockers the Urinals decided to retool their sound, and get a little artier, they realized that maybe the band name the Urinals didn't quite match up with what they were going for, and thus, the Urinals became 100 Flowers. This is their one and only full length recording, originally released in 1983, and now reissued by local label Superior Viaduct. To be fair, the Urinals were already kinda arty, their sound super minimal, not punk in the sense of so many punk bands at the time, more sinewy and tribal, the guitars sharp and jagged, the songs short and spare, and that arty minimalism was super prescient of much that would follow. And the fact that only a couple years passed between the Urinals and 100 Flowers, and really, it's essentially the same band, you might think that that sounds would be pretty familiar, but in fact, 100 Flowers was a pretty dramatic shift, the sound much more melodic, less minimal, the sound more full and more poppy, just check out opener "Without Limbs", total jangle pop blissout, with crooned vocals, bloopy bass, shimmery guitars, some kinetic drumming, and a main hook that's pretty tough to resist. But the band didn't ditch all their angular weirdness, follow up, "All Sexed Up" is angular, and actually sort of funky, with sung spoken vocals, and a main guitar part that wouldn't be out of place in a Minutemen song (a group HEAVILY influenced by the Urinals / 100 Flowers), but even that doesn't sum up the new sound, cuz "Our Fallout" gets a bit punky, snarly and intense, the vocals venturing into almost Jello Biafra territory, the guitars fuzzy, the temp frenetic, but then suddenly, there's the minute long "Horizontal", with its weird woozy synth solo, and Devo like vocals, and its stuttering start/stop arrangement.
And they're pretty tough to pin down from there on out, but essentially, the elements displayed in those first few tracks, make up the rest of the songs in different measure, the funky punky Minutemen vibe is present throughout, there's also a surf sound that pops up constantly, especially in the guitar, and their So-Cal hardcore roots shine through all over the place, some songs slipping into something more poppy and jangly, others getting buzzier and punkier, and still others, slipping into arty angularity, often some twisted mix of the three.
Catchy and quirky, punky and poppy, this stuff sounds pretty great even all these years later. And while we always loved the Urinals, we're now becoming pretty obsessed with 100 Flowers too, and after having only heard songs on comps here and there, are extremely grateful to Superior Viaduct for rescuing and reissuing this killer slab of post punk pop.
Includes a printed insert, and a download code as well.
Latest offering from Alexis Georgopoulos's outfit Arp, which this time around moves away from pastoral kosmiche electronics and leans toward Brian Eno-inspired full-fledged pop songs with vocals. In fact, on a surface listen, you might think More was a long lost recording from Eno's Before and After Science period dug up from the vaults. But those who are familiar with Georgopoulos's sonic aesthetics from his early work in Tussle and The Alps know that his influences are played up in loving and dedicated homage and not as easy hipster pastiche. Nowhere was that more apparent than with his RVNG collaboration with Anthony Moore a few years back. He's well aware that if you are going to channel inspiration from important music that you need to make your own efforts stand apart and More succeeds in being a great pop record. And while the spirit of Eno looms large, what More really taps into is a zeitgeist of exuberant '70s art rock from the likes of John Cale, Judy Nylon, Anthony Moore, Robert Wyatt and Chris Cutler. It's a sound that has seemingly gotten little retreading with as much attention to detail as Georgopoulos lays down here. The songs are both beautifully lush and light as air. One might call it baroque-pop minimalism. So good!
No, not the same Bad News which offered up a British version of Spinal Tap's heavy metal stupidity and awesomeness; although there is a certain incredulity about this Bad News as well. Of course, styles come and go with each season, and many of the sounds that defined the '60s, '70s, and '80s have eventually come back around through whatever cultural zeitgeist is spurning them on. So, this Bad News is one of several bands currently at the forefront of a minor movement that is pushing beyond the minimal wave aesthetic out of the early '80s and into the more aggressive, blustery sounds of industrial uttered by Wax Trax, PIAS, and Nettwerk from 1986 to 1990. Yeah, think Vivisect 6 era Skinny Puppy or Twitch era Ministry. Bad News is the work of Alex Lucas and Sarah Bernat, the latter being renowned for her work in the chairkickingly punk-as-fuck noise trio 16 Bitch Pile-up; and her bad-ass swagger on vocals and guitar is amply matched by the heavy sequencing and blister-popped electronics from Lucas. "Decay" sports a Missing Foundation / Skullflower guitar churn amidst a slow dive bomb squalor of electric noise and Bernat's gray-colored monotone vocals, with the rhythms and electronics embued with a heavy, machined plod. Sweaty. Smelly. Greasy. The title track throws a monophunk basskick into the foreground with hypnotically aggressive intentions matched by what could only be seen as an industrial strength / megaphone raga in which Bernat chants those titular words. "Typical Illusion" is Bad News' finest moment of post-hardcore riffage affixed to militantly double-timed rhythms and cluster bombs of heavy noise, electronic confusion, and ill will. If anybody remembers when Controlled Bleeding released a couple of really ho-hum records on Wax Trax in 1989, THIS is what Paul Lemos, et al. should have been doing.
We had this on cassette briefly, and we gotta say that the vinyl mastering job renders a truly superior product. Fucking rad.
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.
With the breakup of Sonic Youth, we have Kim Gordon's vision and voice coming through her new project Body/Head, a duo with Bill Nace - a New England improviser whose run of collaborators also includes Michael Morley, Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano, etc. Nace's freeform strategery of low-impact, buzzsaw guitar blur met with stompbox feedback-dinosaur roar dynamics is equaled by Kim Gordon's intergenerational channeling of Patty Waters and Jandek, in separate but equal parts. The songs are decidedly atonal, zombified, anti-blues numbers, following what Gordon brought to the experimental portion of the Sonic Youth equation, especially, her songs from those obtuse SYR albums. Anybody hoping for "Kool Thing" should know better, as she's long passed out of her pop-tune phase. Small two note phrases waft in and out of the minor-chord slumping strum, occasionally punctuated by squalid scratchiness, purposefully wonked cable hum, and "I just shit my pants" bursts of guitar excitement.
This local San Francisco duo of heavy shoegaze witchery had us smitten with a way too limited tape awhile back, that we described as the fuzziest and loudest side of My Bloody Valentine, the haziest, most washed out and dreamy side of Bardo Pond, and the white noise of Flying Saucer Attack all somehow coming together. Sadly that tape quickly went of print and left us wanting more.
And now with this new single on new local upstart label Sleep Genius, run by our pal Brad from Tied To The Branches, we have just a little more, but it's so good!! Heavy and slow crushing swells of guitar churn and dark dream pop bliss, a heady mixture of early A.R. Kane's violent swooning feedbackdrift and Slowdive's gothic melancholia. The B side, a remix of the A side by Brad, stretches out the original into a witch house-y excursion of sustained hollowed out keys and slow motion creep. Featuring Marc Manning on keyboards, all we can say is: MORE, MORE, MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Latest from these local fuzzed out jangle pop shoegazers, and it's the perfect mix of classic twee pop, and something a little bit more distorted and dirty. At its core, the sound seems very indebted to classic nineties indie/college rock, especially Unrest, just check out opener "White Flag", with its urgent jangle, and crooning echo drenched vox, but whereas Unrest was often all stripped down earnestness, Cruel Summer occasionally pile on layers of distorted guitars, some dreamy background 'oooooh's and 'aaaaaah's, not to mention some cool sinewy post punk sounding basslines. The rest of the record though, does deliver some serious dreampop minimalism, the female vox over the spare jangle and psychedelic shimmer of "Silent Star", that at times sounds like a more subdued Sleater-Kinney, or the hazy jangle of "Venetian Blinds", which occasionally blossoms into warm swirling squalls of soft focus guitar noise, before slipping right back into chiming jangle, or the weary, distortion drenched "Strange Fruit" which reminds us of the late great Scrawl. Definitely recommended for fans of other local outfits like Grass Widow, the Mantles, etc.
LIMITED TO JUST 250 COPIES!!! Cool die cut cover too!
Longtime readers of the aQ list no doubt remember Aussie heavies, Fire Witch, who released a barrage of often way too limited released before calling it a day. Well since then FW drummer Jem has resurfaced with Dead, a two piece, just drums and bass, and a sound that while maybe still a bit beholden to his old group, definitely has honed a pretty unique sound, one that definitely transcends the limitations of the bass and drums duo. The opening few minutes delivers a strange bit of percussion driven ambience, all cymbal shimmer and tinkling chimes, subtly rhythmic, abstract and space-y, laced with little curlicues of FX, before the bass comes in, and comes in hard, super distorted, grinding, chugging, then the drums, totally off kilter, and seemingly at odds with the bass riff, dizzyingly mathy, then the vocals, a distorted monstrous bellow, the band channeling a little bit of that classic AmRep noise rock sound, but though something much more minimal. Eventually, the song explodes into something more melodic and metallic, the vocals cleaner, a sort of dramatic howl, the drums wild and chaotic, the bass spitting out thick distorted chords and dense textures, the song constantly shifting gears, erupting into full on frenzied metallic math rock, and then switching to some serious metallic pummel and back again. The first song along is intense and energetic, relentless and dense, and brutal and intricate, and it's the sort of song that makes you exhausted just listening to. Hard to imagine just two guys kicking up this sort of racket, but holy shit, Dead are a fierce sonic beast.
The rest of the record follows suit, straddling the line between minimal metal crush and punked out mathy freakout, "Couldn't Keep His Mouth Shut" finds dead sounding like a dead ringer for the Melvins, while "Up!" is all bass driven noise rock sludge, "Murder Hollow" is some darkly atmospheric doomic churn, which leads into the progged out "Bed Bugs" which had us thinking Nomeansno! Stick around for the 11 minute closer "Lego Men", which lets the band unwind a slowburn punk-sludge epic, that again, harkens back to classic Melvins, which is no bad thing at all.
Super swank packaging, an elaborate gatefold inner sleeve, full color printed, in a plain white jacket, so the gatefold is partially visible through the hole, full color sticker on the jacket, label stickers inside and a download code as well.
When we travel, record shopping plays a huge part in our planning. We're guessing the same is true of many (most?) of you. Not only do we typically have various stores we want to check out, we also have a list, with all the stuff we've been looking for forever, and while we may have scoured our local stores looking for stuff on that list, in the hopes that something might pop up, it's when we go someplace new, when we really expect to get lucky. When Andee went to Finland a few years back, he was lucky enough to have Jussi from Circle as his host, who is legendarily obsessed with record shopping (and who on his last visit to San Francisco, went record shopping EVERY SINGLE DAY!), and Jussi was tasked with helping Andee find two things at the top of his Finland-specific list, a single from Finnish dirge rockers Worms, and any or all of the three singles from legendary Finnish punks Death Trip.
Thus, this is pretty exciting - here we have the COMPLETE recorded works of Death Trip, released on Jussi's Ektro Records, and barring a trip to Finland and much crate digging, this is the only way you're gonna get to hear this stuff, and even then, besides the six songs from those three singles, there are EIGHT bonus tracks, available only here: six rare live recordings and two unreleased demos! And while Death Trip were punk, they weren't necessarily 'punk rock', their sound was almost more Stooges-y, all sludgey and dirgey, with a crazy lead vocalist, Laja Aijala from Finnish punk legends Terveet Kadet, and who slips from guttural yowl to hysterical shriek, it's easy to see why Jussi would be obsessed with these guys, heck, why anyone would be. Their namesake song "Death Trip" is total swaggery glam blues slither, with some wild shredding guitars and those twisted vox, it's from 1988, but the sound is total nineties noise rock. Albeit a weirdly minimal punky proto-noise rock. "We're Gonna Die Tonight" begins with weird synth buzz and twisted weirdo vocals, which goes on for a whole minute before the band kicks in, sounding a bit like Hanoi Rocks, but still with those bizarre vocals. Here's where we pause, and say, if we didn't know better, and didn't know for a fact that Death Trip were a real band, we'd be tempted to think it as another Jussi / Circle project, like Steel Mammoth or Mercedes Hell or something. At the very least, it's easy to see where Circle and Co. got much of their inspiration.
"Chainsaw Goddess" is all Loop / Spacemen 3 guitars wedded to punk rock beats, swirling synths and more feral vox, while, "Deep Red" is total tripped out punk doom, with even MORE unhinged vox, dirgey and noisy and super heavy. "Please Skin Me Alive" is total noisy post punk / noise rock crush, with wah wah guitars, a seriously Stoogesy main riff, and finally "Something" is all low slung bass, another dirgey groove that reminds us of Green River or Skin Yard more than proper punk rock, which is probably why we love this stuff so much. Those of you who remember the band Smack, who were sort of a glammy, trashy rock band from Finland, there's actually a surprising amount of sonic overlap, with much of Death Trip's sound verring into the almost grungy/glammy. It's only six songs, but most bands would kill for a body of work half this ruling.
Then there are the live tracks, which are super blown out and lo-fi, noisy and chaotic, one of 'em an altered Stooges cover in fact, with some of the tracks getting stretched way out into sprawling dirges, and the two demos are great too, for tracks which were never properly recorded, and while super raw and lo-fi, still sound just as kick ass as the singles tracks proper.
Gorgeously packaged too, with a huge booklet, filled with loads of rare photos, track notes and old reviews (all in Finnish).
Wot is the first proper solo record from Mike Donovan, aka Sic Alps, and as is often the case with bands that are really essentially one man shows, at first it's not entirely clear what exactly made this set of songs a Donovan solo record, and not just a new Sic Alps record, cuz really, on the surface, and with the first few listens, the songs really does sound like Sic Alps, how could they not, and had it been presented as such, we probably wouldn't have batted an eye. But it IS different, the songs themselves are actually much more stripped down and folky, channeling the classic sixties psychedelia that no doubt informs Sic Alps, but here that sound is much more straight ahead, no fucked up recording, no lo-fi his, no tripped out WTF weirdness, in fact barring a few moments, nothing on Wot is at all as overtly psychedelic, freaky and fractured as Sic Alps. In fact, this could totally be some lost sixties rarity reissues, it's got that same sort of vibe, sunshiney, California hippie, dope smoking grooviness, think Moby Grape, Have A Nice Day, those sorts of Sixties Fillmore bands, there's harmonica, trumpet, bongos, lap steel, the songs are laid back and dreamy, Donovan's vocals sound as good as they ever have, the songs too are pretty, and softly psychedelic. The typically fucked up song titles ("Baroque Ass", "Sexual Reassignment Surgery Blues", "MP3 Farm", "New Fieldhand Bop") and occasional twisted lyrics are really the only things that point to Donovan's more warped sonic past in Sic Alps, with most of Wot sounding like Donovan seemingly strapped on an acoustic guitar, and pulled songs from some lost American songbook, some of the songs swampy and bluesy, reminding us of Railroad Jerk or even the Rock*A*Teens, others remind us alternately of Dylan or Skip Spence, we hear a little Kinks here and there, some seriously dreamy, and darkly delicate ballads, some lush horn flecked Appalachia, some garage-y folk, and some slithery blooze. Sic Alps fans will definitely dig, but so will folks who maybe found that group a little too far out. And who knows, this could be the sort of record that lures those folks over to the musical dark side. Here's hoping...
With a name like Dope Body, at first we kinda expected this Baltimore band to be some kind of sludge metal thing. But as we learned a while back from their split lp with NYC's Orphan, they're something else entirely. A very hard to define, WTF?, but totally enjoyable, something else indeed, that reminds us of everything from the mathy spazzcore of Lightning Bolt and USAisamonster to the DIY electronic ethno grooves of freakin' Konono No.1, wow. While some of this, their debut studio full-length, is stoner rock heavy (and one song is called "The Shape Of Grunge To Come"), it's more of a crazy melange of all sorts of wild, loud, uber-distorted, rhythmic good times! Quite catchy too.
One thing that we can't help but notice is that part of the Dope Body equation, beneath the noise-rock chaos, is a good dose of punk-funk. We get a whiff, in a good way, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, somehow (the rubbery bassline of "Bangers & Yos", c'mon). And heck, the band in fact claim Rage Against The Machine as an influence... but we think that Dope Body themselves would appeal more to fans of Cave, Melt Banana, Health, old Boredoms, Geronimo, Shit & Shine, and Rusted Shut. Not that any of those bands sound like Dope Body either exactly, but they might if they all jammed together. Though, that would be a mess, while Nupping isn't actually as messy as it might initially sound, 'cause what Dope Body manage to do is turn all their crunching looping riffs, damaged breakbeats, skronky guitar noise, R-rollin' vocal holler, and weird dude energy, into songs - songs you could dance to! Songs you WILL dance to, furniture and small breakable objects be damned.
Bringing a sweaty warehouse party to your stereo, Dope Body deliver. We loved 'em on that split, and this full-length does not disappoint. Crank it!!
FYI, we were shorted on our order of cds, so we're listing just the vinyl now, the cd hopefully next time, though we might have a couple cds in stock now.
We first heard Irish indie rockers on a split with Japanese heavies Boris, and even then we were a bit flummoxed, Boris delivering their usual monstrous slab of downtuned psychedelic Japanese fuzz rock, and The Dudley Corporation countering with some sweetly melodic indie jangle, not that we were complaining, we'd always rather hear lots of different sounds, on records, at shows, 5 bands playing sludge metal, are not nearly as entertaining as a weird metal band, a catchy pop band, a cool synth outfit, you get our drift, anyway, beyond the strange juxtaposition, we ended up digging these guys a lot, and it's been a while since we've heard from them, but here on their fourth full length, much of what we dug about the old DC sound is still present and accounted for, jangly guitars, hooks galore, bouncy rhythms, crazy catchy melodies, but actually, it does seem like their sound has darkened, grown a bit more intense and complex, with the songs more intricate and almost proggy sounding, with some electronics, some serious heft, crunchy guitars, and lots of moody, broody intensity, in fact, the vibe these days is almost more Radiohead or Cave In (during their Radiohead phase) - check out opener "DLQ", with its shuffling minor key main riff, its dense driving moodiness, proggy pound fused to almost new wave sounding crunch, maybe also reminding us of Franz Ferdinand or Maximo Park, not the sound we remember, but one we dig, a LOT, and one that seems like it should have these guys poised for some serious mainstream success.
And in the past we described DC as sounding a bit like Pinback, but now, along with this heavier sound, and more dense and complex arrangements, while that resemblance is still present, it almost sounds more like pre-Pinback outfit Heavy Vegetable, not nearly as tangly and super mathy, but with the vocalist still often sounding like a dead ringer for Rob Crow, and some serious mathiness creeping in, it's definitely closer, and pretty goddamn great (check out "Under The Lamb")! WAY recommended for folks who like their pop dark and complex, proggy and melodic, which we're guessing is a whole lot of you...
When we reviewed the Gnod record Dwellings & Druss a while back, at the time we didn't realize that Dwellings was in fact an entirely separate project. We described that record as diverting from the group's usual psychedelic space rock heaviness and into a twisted dark strain of electronica, which makes sense when you realize Dwellings is in fact the name used by the bass player of Gnod, when he's making, yup, you guessed it, twisted electronic music, which is exactly what you'll find here. Shouldn't be too much of a surprise as a handful of the recent Trensmat releases seem to have been exploring a sound well removed from what had become a sort o 'Trensmat' sound. Here, Gnod's bass player weaves a dense landscape of minimal Kompakt percolations, swirling stuttery rhythmic skitter, that explodes into driving, pulsing, noisy, psychedelic electronica, wild tangles of beats, swirling atmospheres, buried heavily reverbed vocals, looped melodic fragments, the opening track begins sort of chaotic, but for the last few minutes locks into a seriously tranced out, murky hypno-groove, that we kinda wish would go on forever. "Drone Invasion" follows a similar pattern, starting out more rhythmic, but gradually, the surrounding sounds building to a dense pulsing drone, blown out and super distorted. "Holographic Mirror" is a lot more skeletal and brittle, super mesmeric and hypnotic, but the final track, "Wave Propagation", is a dark pulsating gem, sounding like Vatican Shadow crossed with some dark Kompakt jam, thick swaths of swirling low end, skittery beats, minor key melodies, all blurred into a murky, moody, motorik haze. So good.
Includes a link to download the whole record, as well as a 17 minute bonus track not on the lp! Already sold out at the label, when we run out, not sure we can get more, but if we can, it might take a little while, so act fast, or be prepared to be patient...
Ultra limited cassette from Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle, 1/2 of Humboldt avant abstractionists Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. We've long loved the SW's sprawling rhythmic dronescapery, and on his own, Pyle explores similar sonic territory, but Pyle's approach sans partners seems to be more dense and dark, caustic and abrasive, the rhythmic element balancing the atmospheric elements, like here on the title track, which spreads out over all of the first side. A thick, swirling low end thrum oozes and undulates, it's a hazy blurred rumble, over which Pyle layers heaving shards of crunch, thick throbs, deep bell-like tones, rhythmic machine gun stutters, all of which pile up and overlap, creating a soft cacophony of clatter and crunch, chug and churn, a strangely haunting, and sorta noisy, almost industrial creepscape, that sounds like some weird hybrid of Wolf Eyes, Philip Jeck and Umberto performed by some strange robotic minimalist chamber ensemble. A swirling, heady, and darkly psychedelic barrage of loops and rhythms, layers and textures, mesmerizing and intense.
The flipside is another permutation of Pyle's abstract beat laden drones, another thick swirling morass of sitar-like buzz and sci-fi synth squelch, this time the beats buried, little flurries of stutter and shuffle, squalls of glitchy tangle, more coloring the proceedings than driving them. The last track is a tense soundtracky stretch of layered buzz, haunting melody, a sprawl of pulsing high end over deep ominous rumbles, like the music from the scariest moment in some lost Italian giallo, stretched out into minutes instead of seconds, all tension, no release, brooding and intense, haunting and mesmerizing, fantastic stuff.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! We only have a handful direct from Mr. Pyle himself when he was in town, and it's very likely that these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
We've been accused of being house music haters. And there's some truth to that. But is one certain obtuse branch of the house music family tree that had us the second we laid ears on it. A while back, the Chain Reaction label introduced a super stripped down, minimal house music, that was quickly dubbed "heroin house", for it's murky druggy laid back feel. It was like hearing house music through a drug induced haze. Or hearing the sound of throbbing four on the floor dance music seeping through the floor of your apartment from the late night dance club below. A super minimal throb. just a pulse really, a completely hypnotic, barely there rhythm, that just shifts and shimmers and works its way into your head, into your chest, into your soul. Hard to imagine people dancing to this music. It's a little like chillout music, but way more rigid and rhythmic. It sounds a little like the music that was created for those 3 o4 people still on their feet, after a night of serious imbibing, who are unwilling to stop dancing, but can't muster anything more than a druggy shuffle, or a barely visible shimmy. Playing on and on and on until the final one drops. For those of us who don't dabble in either drugs OR dancing, this music fulfills a function much like drone music, in fact, it is a sort of drone music, the beats and throbs and pulses are like a segmented drone, a completely hypnotic static sound that carries us into oblivion.
Fluxion's Vibrant Forms just might be our favorite of the Chain Reaction bunch, the most skeletal, the most monochrome, the most everything minimal, it's like techno music composed by Steve Reich. Slowly shifting subtleties and barely drifting overtones, over a framework of repetition. Loops that shift ever so slightly, creating the sensation of change, while keeping us suspended, drifting, in a state of dreamlike suspension. Maybe one of our favorite "techno" records ever. Fans of Gas and the more rhythmic end of the Pop Ambient spectrum NEED this. As might the more daring dronesters amongst you...
Latest from upstart UK import label MIE, who have been killing it lately. The recent reissue of Gate's Dew Line, which we made a Record Of The Week, the even more recent Pelt double lp, also records from Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and Pelican offshoot Chord, and now this, a vinyl reissue of Hallock Hill's debut, a gorgeous collection of layered slowburn psychedelia, acoustic and electric guitars, reverb and echo and delay, all deftly woven into sweetly smoldering, improvised soundscapes, that remind us alternately of Scott Tuma, Jack Rose, Steven R. Smith, Ben Chasny. Hallock Hill is a fellow named Tom Lecky, a name you probably don't know, but after hearing this, we can't imagine it will be too long before he's mentioned in the same breath as Tuma and Rose and Chasny and all the rest.
The tracks here all seem to bleed into one another, from echo drenched abstract psychedelic drifts, to dark brooding folk flecked shimmer, to lush dense intricate Appalachia. Haunting and hushed one second, loose and freeform the next, little flurries of notes wreathed in drifting harmonics, strings are scraped and plucked, the body of the guitar thumped, lots of buzz and hum and shimmer, but all wrapped around gorgeous bits of melancholic melody, notes allowed to ring out, swimming in swirling seas of overtones, the occasional backward studio swoop adding some subtle trippiness, but for the most part, it's Lecky's deft arrangements that drive these lovely landscapes of psychedelic folk, a hazy early evening, cloud cloaked sky sort of vibe that occasionally blossoms into something sunshinier, but utterly dreamy throughout.
Another essential addition to your modern psych / psych guitar collection.
Packaged in a super swank heavy gatefold, and includes a glossy book of photos and poetry (lyrics?).
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 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!
Kink Gong is the long running project of Laurent Jeanneau, a Sublime Frequencies contributor, who as Kink Gong uses some of the actual field recordings he collects to create a strangely avant experimental world music, virtual collaborations with the musicians he records, often manipulating the various songs and sounds, but just as often, he'll simply play an indigenous instrument, process those recordings and then combine them with the originals. The sound is pretty remarkable, in many cases Jeanneau contributions super subtle, to the point of seamlessly weaving his own sounds and manipulations into the unaltered recordings, resulting in what essentially could be a field recording proper, but here and there, the changes are radical, and the combination of computer processed sounds and organic acoustic recordings makes for some truly wondrous and mysterious 'world music'.
The liner notes on the lp sleeve are super explicit, describing the original recordings, and just exactly what Jeanneau did with which sounds, the remarkable thing being that even knowing all that, none of the magic is lost.
The record opens with a collage of 10 voices, from two women and a man, those voices are layered and blended over a slowed down mouth organ, resulting in something strange and lovely, and almost alien sounding chorale, with just enough of the original sounds to keep it sounding like some impossible indigenous music, the organ droning darkly in the background, the drones and the voices producing all manner of sympathetic overtones and strange sonic colorations.
The second track features a woman, reciting text over a 4 string lute, processed by Kink Gong, and eventually accompanied by two women singing, the sound laced with actual field recordings, chickens, and voices in the background, the lute transformed into a swirling drift of soft focus drones and blurred melodies, the singing voices tangled up in that droning drift. And finally, the A side finishes with a recording of a percussion ensemble, accompanied by Kink Gong on bronze cymbals, played and processed, all beneath the voice of a female vocalist. Super tribal and trancey, a definite No Neck Blues Band vibe, also a very doomy feel, glitchy and gristly, the electronically modified background a strange contrast, but one that creates a strange sort of psychedelia.
The flipside begins with a vocal choir, and a collage of three recordings from another ensemble, as well as an electronically modified lute, the alterations here so subtle, it's quite difficult to tell what's been done, we're guessing it's mostly the collaging, but it's done so deftly, that it sounds untouched, but even in its seemingly unaltered form, it's dense and layered and lovely. Then two lutes and a woman's vocal choir are merged into a rumbling, skittery tangle, a droned out low end swirl beneath which gorgeous vocals drift and soar. And finally, Jeanneau takes traditional Chinese instruments, and processes them into a lush sprawl of dreamlike shimmer, all smeared into a soft swirl of almost synth sounding ambience.
Gorgeous stuff, and fans of Ghedalia Tazartes' invented world music and imagined sonic rituals should check this out as well...
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 Sahel Sounds label (responsible for Music From Saharan Cel Phones, Harafin So, and many more great lps of music from the Sahel region of Africa) strikes again with this amazing reissue of an uber-rare vintage cassette, the lone album circa 1978 by Nigerian "electronic music pioneer" Mammane Sani Abdullaye. We're told that if you live in West Africa, you'd likely be familiar with Mammane's instrumental music to some extent, as his tunes have apparently been used frequently in the background on radio and TV broadcasts over the past three decades. For us though, his sounds are an exciting discovery! Mammane plays the electric organ, in a fairly minimalistic and repetitive style, his music full of charming, simple melodies; it sounds very live and intimate, recorded with hardly any overdubs (it was done on a 2 track machine) and pleasingly lo-fi, with a little bit of tape hiss (just like we like it).
Some of the songs are woozy, sweetly dreamy sound paintings, others are more uptempo and percussive, with tick-tocking rhythm backing tracks, and Mammane joyously tickling the keys over top. Chiptune/skweee fans might enjoy the more video-game-y blip blip bleep of the calm yet jaunty "Bodo", while the laidback grooviness of the likes of "Tunan" should appeal to fans of the Ethiopiques series, even though this is from a completely different region of Africa.
Many of the melodies are based on traditional Nigerian folk music - as the label's notes say, "Mammane electrifies the nomadic drum of the tende, the polyphonic ballads of the Woddaabe, and the pastoral hymns of the Sahelian herders". Others are entirely original. And all are quite lovely indeed. Such a find.
Highly recommended in particular to fans of Francis Bebey and his African Electronic Music 1975-1982 collection that we also made a Record Of The Week a while back. An absolutely delightful record!
It's a limited vinyl-only edition of 500 (for now, but we can hope that they'll do a cd too).
First ever legit vinyl reissue of the only record, circa 1973, from this fairly obscure '70s British rock band, best known 'cause their lead guitar player was none other than Ray Russell, the cult free jazz/fusion/psych rock guitarist who did session work as well as a few albums of his own, his fans include Alan Licht and Jim O'Rourke, who put out a double cd Russell anthology on his own Mokai label a while back. In Mouse, Russell definitely goes more rock than jazz, in fact venturing pretty heavy territory at one point. The record is really all over the place, with stuff we love about '70s rock - from groovy, glammy honky tonk to poppy Beatles-y soft rock balladry to full on proto-doom riffery.
The festivities begin with a jolly good time of a song called "Going Out Tonight", a glam rockin' number with campy lyrics, that nicely transitions into an extended, spaced-out psych section which features Russell coaxing some strange sounds from his guitar, fading out eventually, making way for "You Don't Know", a quite pretty & melancholic pop ditty with wistful vocals. Following that, "Electric Lady" finds Mouse cranking up their amps for more of a riff rocker, but one that still has a pop sensibility to it. Next, "All The Fallen Teen Angels" is a cover, and good one, of a song by Medicine Head. Then the side closes out with the mostly instrumental and suprisingly doom-ridden "Asher Besher", the song's lengthy intro of heavy guitar chords and plodding drums being shockingly Sabbathy, what vocals there are closer to croaking crow-cries, before an urgent, burbling bass line kicks in and the track takes off into gnarled psychedelic guitar soloing - followed by a brief acoustic coda. Nice one, that, especially for proto-metal obsessives.
And if you thought that somehow side one had covered all the bases, not quite. Side two starts off with another excellent pop rocker, "We Can Make It", but that's followed by the spooked-out "East Of The Sun", a droning string-laden psych track that mostly sounds like 20th century avant-garde classical music! And then they start in with fuzzy proto-metal riffery again, with "Its Happening To Me And You", with wailing acid rock guitars and lyrics like these: "Waiting for the candy man / wondering who I really am / do you really need to care / if you're here or if you're there / why why why / why don't you try / gotta get high / it's happening to me and you / changes that you're going through / doing what you wanna do / moving like a movie queen / drifting through a purple dream". Druggy, eh? And so it goes, Mouse mixing lovely orchestrated pop with drug addled hippy trippiness and lashings of distorted guitar.
This record is the kind of thing that we'd imagine John Peel would have played a lot, but even if so, probably nobody else did and thus it was Mouse's only release. Still, a bit of a gem nice to have reissued, not just for fans of Ray Russell but also proto-metallers Steel Mill (whose ex-bass player was a member of Mouse), and early '70s UK prog, glam, and pop rock in general.
Remastered, 180 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve, includes liner note insert, etc.
Killer collection of demos and outtakes from arguably THEE only grunge band that mattered (Nirvana who?), sure we love Tad and Soundgarden and all the rest, but Mudhoney are one of the few bands who always ruled and somehow STILL rule, swaggery and heavy, and punky and bad ass with some of the catchiest songs EVER.
Head On The Curb goes way back, to when original bassist Matt Lukin was still in the band, a bunch of tracks that would mostly go on to make up Piece Of Cake, although a few jams here went on to be B sides, or never went on at all, which is enough to make this worthwhile. Besides the fact, that this is Mudhoney at their fiercest and heaviest, the sound varies, but for the most part, this is super distorted, ultra heavy, raw and urgent, caustic and chaotic, that Mudhoney sound you know and love, just a bit less polished, the guitars muddy and murky, everything fuzzy and blown our, Mark Arm's yowl in fine form, there's an acoustic jam, a super obscure cover, but for the most part this is prime vintage Mudhoney.
Absolutely essential for fans, newbies might want to try Superfuzz Bigmuff first, but then again, what the hell, if these jams, in all their raw unpolished glory, don't convince you of Mudhoney's rulingness, then hell, nothing will.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, and housed in heavy old school black and white jackets.
Way back in 2010 we made the debut from this UK outfit our Record Of The Week. This awesomely named outfit, with an equally awesomely named record (This Beat Is Necrotronic) delivered what was at the time, and really still is, one of the weirdest sonic combos we could imagine, churning downtuned drone-doom heaviness, and wild programmed electronics, a crazy collision of metal ambience and electronic beats, that had the potential to be a modern Judgment Night soundtrack (and by that we mean AMAZING, but reviled, hate mail welcomed). And while rap and metal never made the best mix to some ears, there was no arguing with Necro Deathmort's musical math, which resulted in the sort of dancefloor heaviness that just didn't exist, and perhaps some would argue shouldn't. We however flipped out, this was like dance music for metalheads, electronica for dronelords, big beats and brutal blackness fused into something spaced out, hypnotic, fucked up and seriously dementedly genius.
So after raving endlessly about three records in a row from these guys (This Beat Is Necrotronic, Music Of Bleak Origin and The Colonial Script), EP1 marks NdM's first ever vinyl release, and we're happy to report that everything we loved about these guys is still in full effect, after a creepy ominous synthed out intro that sounds like the beginning of some druggy planetarium show, the record really kicks off with "Titan", which sounds like dubstep at 16rpm, the beats doused in echo, dubbed to high heave, the tempo a lumbering, lurching lope, and all around that beat, thick swaths of gristly glitched out low end, dense swells of crumbling thrum, thick synth bass throb, we'd have been perfectly happy to just listen to that creeping droned out pound endlessly, but instead, the sound blossoms into something nearly house-y, a little bit Carpenter/Goblin too, pulsing synths, twisted minor key melodies, only to collapse into something a bit more introspective, as "Probe" starts out all kosmische and shimmery, before a driving beat surfaces, and the sound becomes more a sort of psychedelic space rock, the sort of thing you might expect to hear on Agitated or Rocket, a spacey groove, surrounded on all sides by strange electronics and atmospheric swirls.
"Kingdom" is where things darken again, a smoldering creep, thick washes of buzzing synth, a pulsing 4/4 throb, lots of churning, roiling low end, and then surprisingly, things get downright dance-y, sounding like some fucked up Kompakt release, maybe remixed by James Plotkin or Stephen O'Malley, the core sound skittery and electro, but the sounds themselves, thick and buzzy, blackened and crunchy, again, a seriously dancefloor darkening jam for sure. "Void" sounds like SUNNO))) run through Dom Fernow's new Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement project, spare and murky, moody and atmospheric, blackened and bleak, with buried beats barely audible through the sonic murk, while close "Scanner" finishes things off on a surprisingly upbeat note, with some blown out glitch-step, the beats super warped and fragmented, and set amidst a backdrop of billowing serene synth dreaminess, a strange juxtaposition that results in a sort of new wave draped electro-glitch, that sounds like our favorite classic IDM gone haywire. Which is most definitely a good thing.
Includes a download code as well!
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!
What would happen if the Shaggs had found god before recording their seminal LP? We've found the answer and it is The New Creation. Recorded in 1970, a year after the Shaggs' "Philosphy of the World" was released, one wonders if the group may have been inspired by the Shaggs D.I.Y. attitude. Hailing from Vancouver, B.C. The New Creation were the most unlikely blend of Christian evangelism with a flower-power hippy outlook which propelled their unique vision through an extremely off-kilter musical vehicle pieced together with leftover body parts: the Velvet Underground taped to the side of the Shaggs chassis with a rebuilt Pat Boone engine under the hood. Ramshackle and tentative, but so earnest and heartfelt and surprisingly catchy. And the lyrics aren't as positive as the music and the presentation might lead you to believe, focusing more on damnation, and fire and brimstone and b
Biblical tales of God's might and power. The biggest surprise is the opening track 'Countdown To Revolution', an epic, acid fried, unstructured freak out with strange effects, 'trippy' reverb, and all manner of TESTIFYIN'!! Creepy but cool!
From the same folks who brought us the amazing Teen Dance Music From China And Malaysia compilation.
Newest album by this experimental string composer combining Eastern tuning with Western compositional structures. Using a variety of exotic string instruments (cumbus, mandolin and ukelin) with computer and electronics, Pitre along with a cello and a soprano saxophone player create two side-long suites that embrace a soundworld both contemporary and ancient. Similar in feel to the spatial string composition of his last full-length Feel Free, where the performers were given only loose instructions to create a more open compositional approach, this time around Pitre removes that randomizing element and exerts more compositional control, touching on sonic elements of accumulation and dissipation for a fluid composition that breathes with a light touch and a beautifully heavy resonance.
Latest from these NY noise rockers, and like their last record, The Horror, the awesomely titled Imps Of Perversion is another killer collection of dark, rhythmic noisiness. In our review of the The Horror, we compared these guys to everything from Aussie knuckle draggers Lubricated Goat, to fellow NY noiserockers The Men, imagining then that they would be way more at home on AmRep circa '95, and all of that definitely still applies. Some things have changed though, Imps is not nearly as raw and lo-fi, less noisy too, and the Cop Shoot Cop style junkyard percussion that peppered the Horror seems to have been ditched too, but all a fair trade off for a sound that's much more confident, better songs, better production, and while some of the raw energy might be missing, this is still and awesomely fierce and broodingly heavy and noisy blast of gloomy noise rock swagger. And there's plenty of sonic weirdness going on as well, between the blasts of organ driven stomp and pounding downtuned crush, there are spaced out swaths of FX heavy psychedelia, sounding a bit like some sort of Hawkwind / Clockcleaner hybrid, or the super blown out Pussy Galore-ish intro to "Population Control", that sounds like it was recorded on a handheld tape player, the drum set sounding like a pile of rusty old trash cans, when the sound suddenly attains high fidelity, the song now a drum machine driven noise rock new wave, that almost sounds like a super charged alien Devo. There's the synth heavy "Do The Anglerfish", which pairs some punk swagger and stomp, with some psychedelic synthwave, or the creepy slo-mo FX drenched blooz jangle of closer "Riding Shotgun", and hell, even the less far out songs are peppered with random weirdness, all of which would be pointless if the songs didn't kill, but they do, and they'll end up getting lodged in your head like crazy, every twisted little blurt, just give "Lights Out" a listen and see if you don't find yourself wanting to listen to it over and over, or even humming it to yourself days later...
Doom. Vinyl. Die Healing. Need we go on?? Doom metal fans, probably all you need to know is that this album by LA godfathers of doom Saint Vitus, never before on vinyl, and long out of print on cd, is now here. However, we will go on...
Nobody could have guessed it back in 1995, when this album was first released, but 2010 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for ol' Saint Vitus. Not just one reunion show, but an extensive, well-attended tour! Vinyl reissues of their SST era records (we've got some in stock, getting more soon)! And this, a lovingly crafted vinyl version (first time on wax!!) for what was their 7th and final full-length studio album before calling it quits! We also hear rumors of a NEW album being made. However, as much as we'll be excited to hear it, there's no way they can top THIS.
While it might have been their final record, a last hurrah, hardly noticed by an uncaring world, it was also one of their best ever. For one thing, it marked the brief return of their original and best vocalist, the amazing Scott Reagers. Apologies to Wino, who's fronting the band for their current reunion... Some will differ, Wino certainly has his fans, we like him a lot too, Born Too Late and Mournful Cries are great albums, but let's just say there's no other singer quite like Scotty Reagers. Vitus was lucky to have had him in the first place, and lucky to have had him back for this. His dramatic and dynamic delivery, gloomy and ghoulish, yet classic castle-metal through and through, keeps us spellbound. Guitarist Dave Chandler steps up with some great sludgy slo-mo Sabbathy riffs (of course) and wah wah'd out, psychedelic punk soloing (of course). The atmosphere is sooooo despairing. Opener "Dark World", later covered by Reverend Bizarre, is a classic, what a riff! But that's just the beginning... "One Mind", "Let The End Begin", "The Sloth", "Return Of The Zombie", heck all the tracks are awesome, any Vitus fan should agree. The entire album harks back to the feeling of their first few records in the mid '80s, really as if Reagers had never left the band. And again his singing is crucial here, over the top wailing with a wretched, grotesque edge to it. Emotive and eccentric. Perfect for the plodding, fuzz-filled creepy-crawls that fill this pestilent platter. He might be singing about sloths and zombies (he IS singing about sloths and zombies) but damn does it sound sincere and MEANINGFUL - ignore him at your peril. Drop the needle on this and learn what it is to be doomed!!
While we should also list the abovementioned SST reissues, many of them must-haves too, this seemed even more exciting 'cause so few folks ever got the chance to get it, the cds were imports and it was one of the last releases on the label (Hellhound) before it folded. And like we said, there never ever was vinyl. Now there is, and fairly deluxe vinyl at that, complete with embossing on the cover for the Vitus logo. And yeah, of course it's limited... even if it wasn't, though, you gotta get it, we'd just be telling you to buy two of 'em!!
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.
Latest cloud of smoked out dub psych damage from this one man band, a massive sprawling double lp, every song bleeding into the next, one epic druggy abstract sonic trip. The Sun Araw sound keeps drifting further and further out, and in the process, approaching something that sounds a bit like reggae, but filtered through a cracked Not Not Fun filter, and a bank of busted amps and malfunctioning effects pedals. Oh and pot smoke. Lots and lots of pot smoke.
Woozy, warbly, prismatic, sun baked (and just plain baked), stripped down, dubbed out, inner space drift. Wah Wah guitars hover over skeletal rhythms, reverb and delay coats everything in earshot, disembodied chantlike vox are draped over SA's twisted mutant lo-fi dub. The record drifts into some warped murk, still peppered with plenty of upstroke reggae guitar jangle, but wrapped in wheezing keyboards and some super distorted fuzz bass.
The second record begins all ethereal and new age, some hushed glimmering ambient drift, near static, before launching into some dubby krautrock, muted and muddy and minimal, flurries of keyboard tangle spray notes at the relentless motorik pulse, still more abstract vox and lots of gorgeously spidery guitars, all tangled up into minor key melodies that seem to fade into the background, the whole record sort of hazy and ghostly, while somehow remaining krauty and dubby. The sidelong final side strips everything away, or piles it all on, blurring and smearing and winding everything into a dense layered drift, looped and hypnotic and psychedelic, that wouldn't sound out of place on a Monopoly Child Star Searchers record. Rad stuff. Thick vinyl, full color gatefold sleeve, and yeah, probably limited.
For those that haven't heard the legendary Hungarian group VHK (aka Vagtazo Halottkemek, or the Galloping Coroners) before, how the heck to describe 'em? Well, this primal psychedelic punk ensemble has been around for years (their first album came out in 1988, but they had formed as far back as the mid '70s!) and they're for sure a band equally at home in a radical '80s punk squat, or on an ancient Indo-European battlefield, or out in space among the stars. As well as at home now on Ektro / Full Contact, the eccentric label associated with our fave Finnish space rock weirdos, Circle. They have put out previous albums on Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, and can certainly be considered one of the most significant, and definitely unique, Eastern European "punk" bands ever. Their sound is part pagan improv, part raucous gypsy-punk hoedown, part Hawkwind style blast-off. Their naturally "tribal" sound even reminded one person here, who hadn't heard 'em before, of Echo And The Bunnymen - but way more raw and wild and loose and heavy.
They've been on some sort of hiatus for quite a few years now (their last release came out in 1999), so it was a pleasant and exciting surprise to find 'em back again with this record, and at full force! The powerful, expressive voice of VHK's frontman, "Grandpierre Atilla", leads the charge, singing and screaming with passion in his native language. Yet, this album begins in a deceptively mellow mood, VHK conjuring a shamanistic campfire ritual on opening track "Handshake", at least at first, being acoustic, melodic, and in a way almost comforting. Those aspects persist, but as the album progresses, it builds and builds in intensity, always offering much compelling rhythmic drive and dark atmospheric vibes, culminating in a track, "Hun Testveriseg" ("The Hun Brotherhood"), recorded live at a festival last year called Black Noise, where we really can imagine these guys coming across as reincarnations of their ancestors, channeling their warrior spirit with electricity and amplification.
You want some "music review math"? Well, there's moments on this album that sound like the Sun City Girls jamming with Neurosis, and we'd further suggest that VHK are perfect for anyone who enjoys both Acid Mothers Temple and Rudimentary Peni.
Of course, if you already know VHK, you'll be happy they're galloping again! Old fans like us will love this. And for those who have yet to be trampled underfoot, this is a fantastic introduction to the mythology of this strange band. We realize that we we've never previously reviewed anything by VHK (we've only referenced them twice before on our site, in fact, in reviews of records by countryish space rockers U.S. Christmas and avant-folky black metallers Hollenthon). Glad we're able to rectify that now with this write-up.
Limited vinyl version available now, get 'em while you can. We also should hopefully be stocking a cd of this at some point in the future.
Exploding once more from the furthest galactic reaches of our Eastern most solar quadrant (aka New York City), White Hills have returned via arcane cosmic pathways to deliver another trippy transmission of their self described "fuzzed out motorik space rock." And So You Are... is everything you could hope for from that descriptor: psychedelic, immersive, monolithic, mesmerizing. It's space rock, but thankfully with a serious emphasis on the rock! Heavy circular riffing, primitive yet spacious, drifts over driving hypnotic basslines, while ghostly vocals echo in the darkness like dying transmissions from Planet Hotbox. The disorienting sounds of Technicolor laser beams ricochet over a proto-punk groove, drums clattering, seeming to invoke the dizzying feeling of falling down a flight of stairs for all of eternity. Elsewhere things gets a bit more ambient. A warming synthetic glow gives way to fluttering static melodies over the weeping of slinking slow motion guitar. Snippets of conversation collide with robotic stuttering like the staggered rambling of a malfunctioning super computer. It's all very conscious altering, very mind expanding, maaaan - but without using that as an excuse to get too meandering or too jammy. So You Are... never overstays its welcome. In fact at a relatively brief 45 minutes this album seems to burst and fade in the blink of an eye like a sudden supernova! You know the drill: Tune in, turn on, drop out - collapse onto a beanbag and allow your astral self to be transported elsewhere, even if it's just for three quarters of an hour - you may find time becomes meaningless where you end up anyway!
And while they last, we have a very limited number of the deluxe vinyl version, pressed on green wax, housed in a fancy old school tip-on style gatefold jacket, which also just so happens to be bundled with a whole extra 12" record (sorry cd nerds, it's only with the vinyl) called Timeless Tracks For Aural Pleasure, featuring 30 minutes (3 tracks) or previously unreleased material, the bonus lp in its own bootleg style sleeve.
(FYI, mailorder folks, once we run out of the deluxe lp, we'll automatically ship the cheaper single lp version instead, unless you tell us explicitly you only want to order the deluxe edition.)
Sometimes the true test of a record, is how many times you can listen to it in a row, and the first time we threw on the new EP from East Coast dream folk duo Widowspeak, we ended up laying it nonstop for at least an hour. Every time it ended, all we wanted to do was start it over again. Like the Almanac full length before it, The Swamps, is dark and lush and luxurious, the opener, dirgey and swampy, stripped down and wreathed in weird FX and field recordings, but after that, it's back to that fuzzy, dreamy, drifty sound that has us so in love with Almanac. The vocals breath and ethereal, floating above acoustic guitars, minimal percussion, and soft swirls of gauze-y ambience. Hooks galore too, and impossibly lovely vocal harmonies. The slower tracks are definitely reminiscent of Mazzy Star, check out "Calico", all wasted and woozy, and darkly dreamy, a strummy, sun dappled dream-folk dirge. The rest of the ep splits the difference between jangly pop, and more laid back dirge-folk, culminating in the closing title track, which is a haunting backwoods ballad, lush and layered, the music a softly swirling, elegantly strummed backdrop for those angelic vocals. Dreamy. And we're gonna listen to the whole thing, again, right, NOW...
Back in 2011, we made Might Of The Planet Eater, the debut from weirdo minimal blackened power electronic one man band Will Over Matter our Record Of The Week. We initially discovered WOM via the fact that the 'one man' behind that one man band, was none other than Harald Mentor, mastermind of aQ beloved Finnish rhythmic black metal minimalists Ride For Revenge, who for some crazy reason, we just realized, have never nabbed Record Of The Week honors, cuz in retrospect, any/all of their previous records were more than deserving.
As we mentioned in our reviews of the other Will Over Matter records, if you thought Ride For Revenge were weird, then prepare theyself to be blown away, baffled, confused, frustrated, thrilled, unnerved, disturbed, most likely all of the above. Will Over Matter takes the dense rhythmic churn, already sort of spaced out and abstract, and replaces the bass and drums and traditional instruments, with what sounds like a battery of cobbled together electronics, home made machines and invented instruments, it's tough not to envision Mentor as some sort of mad scientist, in his murky musical laboratory, surrounded by walls of primitive electronics, old computers, blinking lights, blown speakers, a room full of towering obelisks of obsolete technology, harnessed into something otherworldly, and improbably next level. The sounds these machines emit glitchy and gristly, jagged and hiss-drenched, in some ways the template for WOM is the same as it was for Ride For Revenge, the 'band' locked into simple, lurching, lumbering motorik grooves, the 'beat' wrapped in dense sonic swirls, thick fields of static, everything glitched out and in-the-red. A head spinning sprawl of blackened kraut-noise synth-drone power-electronic minimalism, that RULES. Which brings us to the latest missive from Mentor, which is another psychedelic minimal electro-noise WTF doozy, the vocals kept to a minimum this time, the three lengthy tracks, spaced out and droney, slow shifting layers, constantly morphing textures, pulsing and pulsating, the sounds raw and gristly, the tracks maniacally repetitive and cyclical, in a way that to our ears is total tranced out bliss, but to less adventurous ears, might be just the opposite. The lack of 'song' and 'structure', not that there was that much of either on past WoM release, but even less so here, is precisely what makes Phenomenal Highways a whole different beast, at times, it's like past WoM records stripped down to their very skeletal essence, the opening track some sort of primitive kosmische ritual, a single synth locked and looped into a seemingly endless cycle of simple pulses, weirdly warbly and super distorted, a heartbeat like pulse wreathed in filthy, crusty synth squelch, that squirms and oozes, occasionally shaped into actual melodies, but more often than not droning and buzzing hypnotically, the final few minutes, finds the sounds transformed into weird lazer blast like blurts before suddenly blinking out.
The second track is even MORE minimal, a super spare soundscape that sounds like some mysteriously manipulated alien field recording, something you might here on Editions Mego, a field of crumpled low end crackle, muted and murky, peppered with little bits of percussion, the sound a weird bit of grinding muddy noise, it's not until 7 minutes in that the sound splinters, the background smoothing out into a whirring distorted drone, while Mentor delivers some demonic sermon over the top, his voice processed and doused in distortion, before the track explodes into a field of grinding electronics, tangled melodies, swirling tones, a robotic psych-noise freakout that manages to be more listenable than it has any right to be, a head spinning psychedelic churn that blossom into a final super blown out speaker shredding blowout, before oozing into the final track, a weird shuffling sprawl of rib cage rattling low end, dense subsonic tones delivered through what sounds like slow motion helicopter rotor wash, weirdly rhythmic and mesmeric, this minimal ooze and creep soon joined by strange curlicues of melody, the deep tone gathering all sorts of acoustic crunch as it goes, and once again, about seven minutes in, a super distorted blast of fractured blown out melody surfaces, giving the whole thing a seriously psychedelic vibe, those tones totally overtaking the rest of the sound, before fading out, and returning us to the slow-swell pulsations of the first half, only to fade out into a crackly sprawl of sculpted feedback, wreathed in hiss and hum, the sound smoldering and sinister, draped over a buried barely there rhythm, some echo drenched vocals in there too, everything sort of washed out and blurry, drifting beneath sheets of feedback and fields of staticky hum, all culminating in a final freaked out psych-noise squall, that does little to disguise the haunting melodic beauty that lurks within.
As always, amazing, bizarre and bafflingly brilliant, a dizzyingly abstract, twisted industrial psychedelic drone-noise masterpiece. That is of course also extremely limited...
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!
