This eponymous cassette from Sunken Cathedral is a reverential swath of transcendent West Coast minimalism. The principle architect is Oakland's Ryan Jobes who has recently matriculated from the hallowed halls of Mills College. Whether or not there is an intentional aesthetic from those graduates of Mills, a number of recent students have employed the overtone rich strategies of long-stringed instruments and alternate tunings upon sustained / extended techniques in composition. The recent wunderkids outta Mills would include Marielle Jakobson, Ashley Bellouin, Zachary Watkins, and Ben Bracken; and Jobes' compositions via his Sunken Cathedral project are another example of this trend. Much of Jobes' other work slants heavily toward the doomdronemantra side of things with a smattering of cassettes of blackened heaviosity released through his own Vestige Recordings; but for Sunken Cathedral, he's eschewed pretty much all of the darkness in favor a radiant lilting exploration of elongated shimmer and tone-float. He's employed the talents of Evelyn Davis on pipe organ and Kimberley Sutton on amplified cello & electronics, with his own miasma generated through guitar, piano, violin, harmonium, harpsichord, and electronics. The graceful swells and excursions from Sunken Cathedral speak of the Terry Riley colorings and chromatics, whose psychedelic expressionism is muted through Pauline Oliveros deep listening strategies. Beautifully done. Nicely printed offset artwork on opalescent paper in an edition of just 100 copies.
For those of us who came of musical age in the nineties, especially lots of you avid aQ list readers, odds are you were way into noise rock, labels like Amphetamine Reptile, Touch And Go, Homestead, and bands like Jesus Lizard, Chokebore, Unsane, Vertigo, Lubricated Goat, the God Bullies, godheadSilo, Hammerhead, Jawbox, Killdozer, Arcwelder, Janitor Joe, King Snake Roost, we could go on and on, but if that either looks like your record collection back in the day, or reads like a current iTunes playlist, odds are you're also probably familiar with Tar. Tar were a band from Chicago, who existed from about 1988 until 1995, and not only made some amazing records, but also released some of the most kick ass singles of that era. And for some reason, never hit it big like some of those other groups. Like another favorite of ours, Arcwelder, Tar toured like madmen, made record after record, and while attaining a pretty decent cult following, remained pretty solidly underground.
So in swoops Henry at Chunklet, to wake folks the fuck up to what they may have, and most likely DID, miss back in the day. And like it says in the liner notes, and as mentioned above, as great as Tar albums were, their best songs seemed to end up on singles, which makes this singles collection arguably the best Tar record there is, which is saying something for sure.
The sound will no doubt be familiar to fans of all the above mentioned bands and labels, the feeding back, wildly distorted guitars, the tight muscly drumming, the yowled vox, indie rock infused with some serious punkiness and noisiness, thick jagged riffs wrapped in sinewy basslines, some tracks crazy catchy, like a pop song in noise rock's clothing, others obtuse and aggressive and fierce and fucked up. Lots of mathy tension, post rock sprawl, these guys were so goddamn good, and listening to this chronologically, it's crazy how they transformed from a feral noise rock beast, into seriously killer songwriters. Just listen to the clips below. We made sample of our favorites, but even those were tough to pick, cuz pretty much every song here KILLS. And that AC/DC cover is a doozy!
The packaging is of course over the top, colored vinyl, with a huge 12"x12" booklet with tons of liner notes, lots of famous folks you know reminiscing on how great Tar were, notes on each track, and each single, lots of rare photos, a ticket stub and more. Also includes a download code for the record proper AND for a bonus collection of rare live tracks. Absolutely and totally essential!!!
The first two records from this UK psychedelic space rock combo were primo examples of the current space/psych sound that we can't seem to get enough of - huge lumbering Hawkwind beholden sprawls of epic kosmische heaviness and tranced out kraut jams and blissful FX drenched atmospheric drifts. The band seemed to align themselves with the usual suspects: Carlton Melton, the Heads, White Hills, Mugstar, the Hills, etc. Those earlier Teeth Of The Sea records took that spaced out psychedelic sound and twisted it all up, adding near metallic heft in places, cheesy eighties soundtrack music, sci-fi electronics, swirling synths, raga like drones, heck even horns, so this new one came with lots of high expectations, but somehow, even as weird as those other records were, we weren't prepared for this.
After a weird bit of garbled vocals, the first proper track kicks in, with a pulsing, eighties sounding electro drum machine, then some percolating synths, reverbed percussion, weird electronics, processed horns, tinkling chime-like melodies, deep chordal drones, the band definitely dipping into the whole John Carpenter / Goblin sound, but making it totally their own. Immediately sounding like a WAY heavier version of our recent Record Of The Week from The Slasher Film Festival Strategy, and we were totally prepared for the whole record to unwind like some lost eighties soundtrack, but still in the first track, in come big, bombastic drums, some almost funky bass, the synths pulsing, a lumbering, loping cosmic soundtracky groove that's so good! All before the song EXPLODES into a wild, synth heavy, distorto guitar psych-prog blowout. Already worth the price of admission right there, and we're barely seven minutes in. Thankfully, it only gets cooler and weirder and WAY more far out.
Echo drenched horns are looped into a strange melodic cycle, sampled spoken vocals drift in and out, all over a skeletal electro groove, before the sound blossoms into some ultra creepy cinematic synthscapery, the synths buzzy and gristly, the vibe sinister and ominous, those looped, effected horns giving it a strange sort of almost Morricone gone Goblin vibe! From there, the sound devolves into a weird loose, super abstract almost-dub, reminding us of some old Adrian Sherwood record, via Muslimgauze or African Headcharge, but give a sort of heavy psych reworking, before in swoop swirling dizzying prog synth tangles and more spidery Morricone like guitars, the horns too, laying down a droned out brass backdrop, heady and hypnotic and really amazingly strange and original sounding. Pushing lots of our musical buttons, but turning those familiar sounds we love on their head.
At this point we're only halfway through, with the second part not letting up for a second, creepy atmospheric ambience, giving way to buzzing metallic crush, and blurred out slo-mo dooooom, laced with subtle synth and guitar filigree, shimmery outer space drift, ethereal and celestial that floats weightlessly, before some mariachi horns (!) bring it back to earth, gristly, grinding grey noise, and disembodied vocals, draped over a field of static, driven by buried pulsations, making for perhaps the most harrowing 2 minutes on the record, before launching into another psychedelic electro-dub excursion, all synth squelch and reverbed rhythms, which build to some seriously caustic crunch, before the record settles into the epic nearly 11 minute closer, a total eighties, soundtracky electro synth masterpiece, the perfect score for some lost horror art film, tribal rhythms, wheezing synths, tripped out vocodered vox, electronic beeps and trills, shimmery psych guitar, some driving propulsive grooves, and those horns, nearly driving the song at one point, and when matched to the grinding synth buzz, the swirling atmospheres, the fuzz guitar crunch, and the psych-kraut groove, make for something twisted and fantastically fucking far out. Masterful!
"Some things have to be endured, and that makes the pleasures so much sweeter!" So spoke the villainous Frank Cotton in Clive Barker's first Hellraiser movie. It is interesting to think back, and realize that Coil had their proposed soundtrack to that same movie rejected with some citing that Coil's themes were 'too frightening' or (more likely) 'not commercial enough' for a major studio motion picture. Anyone with ears who has listened to Coil's unreleased themes to Hellraiser will not find anything frightening or scary at all. In fact, Coil was quite reverential to somebody like David Shire, especially with his minimalist and maudlin score for The Conversation, with Coil composing everything on the Fairlight synthesizer, which itself had a distinct sound but one that didn't fall in line with the Goblin / Carpenter axis. Had Coil turned in to the film studio something like what they produced on their grand statement to the apocalypse in Horse Rotovator, it might have sounded close to where Theologian ended up on this death-synth industrial opus.
Here, Theologian - the project of a cold-hearted character simply given the name Leech - has employed the talents of a host of female vocalists from the darkwave and noise underground. The conceit has a similar feel to Lustmord's recent album The Word As Power; and thankfully, both albums transcend any notion of female tokenism. Furthermore, both albums do not suck. Far from it for Theologian; as this album triumphantly extends the M83-produces-Swans analogy that we posited regarding the 2012 epic The Chasms Of My Heart album. After a garbled, witchy cackle that introduces the album's first track "Black Cavern Myopia," Leech uncorks a dark-minded, power techno rhythm, crunched through distortion, echo and sinister atmospheres featuring the deep-in-the-catacomb vocalizations of Hecate's Rachael Kozak. A more familiar militantly bashed rhythm keeps with a Swans-styled corporal beatdown on "The Conjoined Deviant Procession" with the monotone chanting delivered by Kristen from Sewer Election. The vocals never really come to the foreground throughout the album, instead they swirl and commingle amidst the metalgaze hiss, powerdrone murk, and audio sickness from Leech's decomposing productions. Even when he employs the talents of opera singer Melissa Kelly (the only vocalist not hailing from noise culture), her voice is cacooned in billowing reverb as it flutters throughout the ghastly synth melodies and blackened industrially crushed doom plod on "Ectothermism." Aside from Sewer Election and Hecate, we've not encountered any of the other vocalists, but their legion is Rachel Maloney (Tonikom), Nikki Telladictorian (Prometheus Burning), Patricia Benitez (Fetish Drone), Gillian Leigh Bowling (Teloahqaal), Christiana Key (Delphic Oracle), Joan Hacker (Factoria), and Shari Vari (Void Vision). Leech has crafted monstrous, ghastly album of lurching rhythms and totally downer melodies - think the Cure's Pornography remixed by Vatican Shadow. So good!
This Chilean band holds the distinction of being the first band to get an Aquarius CASSETTE Of The Week award. Their Bestias Solares tape on Black Horizons so blew everyone here away, we couldn't not make it thus. And we later reviewed their double cd on Beta-Lactam Ring too, both of those records displaying this strange group's sound, a sound which found us describing the group, not at all succinctly, as an "occult prog-metal / angular post-punk / psychedelic free noise / black ambient orchestra". That's a pretty crazy and over the top description, but the this is a pretty crazy, over the top outfit, and we're happy to report, that they haven't gotten any less crazy this time around, in fact, to these ears, they keep getting weirder and weirder. The brief opener is all chanted monk-like vocal harmonies wrapped in warped, woozy electronics, hand-clappy drum machines, witchy female vocals, garbled speaking in tongues, strange FX, and while you might think it was just a weird intro, the next song continues down into the sonic rabbit hole, murky bass squelch, a pulsing almost techno beat, more swirling electronics, grunted demonic vocals, accompanying atonal piano pound, that piano exploding into wild psychedelic squiggles, while the rest of the track sounds submerged in fields of static, the result is a sort of warped, woozy, blackened, electro avant techno chamber music? Or something. It's sort of gothic, definitely freaky and fucked up, sort of electronic, whatever it is, we dig it, a LOT!
The third track is a creaking, crumbling drone, that sounds like it could be some lost Nurse With Wound outtake, all deep dirge-y tectonic thrum, sounds like recordings of motorcycles or moaning docks, blurred into dense sonic swells, shot through with distant minor key melodies, dark and meditative, and a bit haunting as well. And finally, things finish off with another brief blast of WTF weirdness, deep drone-y thrum, under spacey synths, plucked pizzicato melodies, swirling wind like whirs, bizarre glitchy percussion, and near the end, primitive drum machine, and glimmering fields of sci-fi planetarium show electronics. So twisted. And so good.
And like all Black Horzions tapes, super fancy packaging, four panel J-card, offset silver printing on bronze metallic paper, purple tapes, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
A fantastic compilation of amazing French cosmic prog-tronic jams that is blowing our minds! An incredible survey of experimentation and rhythm that shows us that while the French may not have invented prog or disco, they certainly had the most fun taking those genres to their outer limits in exciting combination. Practically everyone is represented, including cinematic gems by Jean-Michel Jarre, Alain Goraguer (La Planet Sauvage composer!), Patrick Juvet and Serge Gainsbourg; Moog workouts by Jean-Jaques Perrey, Quartz and Pierre Bachelet; and cosmic disco reveries by Bernard Fevre, Space, Droids, Space Art and Cerrone. But there are also plenty of rarities from groups we know less about: Atomic Crocus, Rene Roussel, and Universal Energy amongst many others. Dig the Mobius-style cover art too. So Killer!
As the distinct sounds of flutes, harps, bells, gongs, pianos and of course synthesizers fill the air, we realize it wasn't that long ago that we had to defend our love for early new age music as a kind of guilty pleasure. Basking in the soft-focus vibrational glow of long form minimal composition, packaged in naive hippie-ish spiritual conceits bordering on and often overstepping into cheesiness, it was hard to consider it a distinct D.I.Y. practice. In hindsight, new age music can be seen as an early form of the slow food movement or folk art. It was music meant for slowing down time, taking stock and increasing awareness, and we have since come to view it more influentially in terms of its antecedents in ambient and drone music. Yet, over the years new age music has made quite a revival inspiring a new generation of long-form music practitioners and spiritual outliers. Nothing proves that more than this incredible compilation of private press new age music from Light In The Attic that features some old faves and new discoveries across a 40 year span. We have written plenty on influential figures like Iasos, J.D. Emmanuel, Gurdjieff and Laraaji (all featured here), but there are many, especially women like Judith Tripp, Nesta Karin Crain, Constance Demby, Alice Damon and Joanna Brouk who are equally blowing our minds. Often pulled from rare cassettes and hard to find records, this is an incredible survey and the perfect primer for the uninitiated. Fantastic tripped out and dreamy stuff!!
Yet another killer collection of murky, Middle East obsessed gothic industrial slo-mo techno from Dom Fernow, who in addition to recording as Vatican Shadow, also does time in new wave combo Cold Cave, runs the Hospital label, and also has about a million other projects, including Prurient, Christian Cosmos, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and loads more.
As Vatican Shadow, Fernow weaves a murky, moody landscape of slow, skittering beats, zombie like lumbering grooves, primitive lo-fi synth melodies, whirring drones, everything washed out and grey, each track nearly a static loop, a core rhythm, and an abstract melodic component, locked into a tranced out mesmer, while all around, strange sounds drift in and fade out, soft washes of atmospheric shimmer, reverbed synth squelch, lots of echo and reverb, giving much of the sound a dubby vibe. Muslimgauze is definitely an apt comparison in places, as are outfits like Techno Animal, although Fernow's approach is much more reductionist, his soundworld more about the minutiae of the sounds, the mood, the texture, the vibe, a track like "Muscle Hijacker Tribal Affiliation", is super simple on the surface, a looped synth, a clattery bit of percussion, a crawling techno pulse, and what sounds like some processed heavy breathing, but somehow Fernow deftly transforms those constituent parts into something much more harrowing and haunting, making the over the top song titles sound like plausible descriptions of what exactly Fernow is trying to evoke with these minimal masterpieces. Some tracks do crank up the tempo, but even then, the skittery rhythmic jitter is often wrapped in heaving swells of crumbling blacknoise, or distant swaths of ominous chordal rumble, so instead of propulsion, those jacked rhythms, simply add more texture, the gristled skitter bleeding into the black sonic shadows surrounding them, and when the beat does fragment and explode as it often does, not only does it inspire a sort of music malevolence, and emotional dread, it also again harkens back to Fernow's gothic roots, sounding like the sounds could be emanating from some dank gothic bunker in the East Village, circa early eighties, from a mysterious dark room way in the back of the club. The same is true when electric guitars enter the mix, the weird metallic riffery often sounds a bit like a way more minimal Ministry, stripped down to its very essence, and once locked into the inevitable looped out trance, gradually transforms into something much more mysterious and mesmeric.
At long last the highly anticipated debut from VHOL is here, via Profound Lore. Highly anticipated 'cause VHOL, if you don't already know, are a "supergroup" of sorts. Actually, as far as we're concerned, in more ways than one. Firstly, VHOL (dunno if the name is supposed to be in all-caps, but it looks good to us like that) is formed by members of several other groups we like, band that might not be household names required of supergroup status, but probably ARE household names where people who read the aQ-list dwell. And on top of that, they're all amazing musicians so it's "super" that way too. VHOL consists of guitarist John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, ex-Ludicra, ex-Slough Feg, etc.) and his former Ludicra bandmate, drummer Aesop Dekker (also of Agalloch, Worm Ouroboros, etc. - and a noted blogger too), plus on bass Sigrid Sheie, who is also in Hammers with John. And making this more than just a San Francisco scene thing, on vocals is Mike Scheidt from Portland's mighty sludge-space-doomsters YOB. With these individuals involved, it sounded pretty good on paper, and now the proof is here, it actually sounds extremely good for real as well!!
Prior to hearing this, we'd been informed that the concept behind VHOL was "psychedelic D-beat" music or something. Well... ok, sorta. Aesop's a punk drummer at heart, to begin with (remember Hickey?). And yeah, having Scheidt provide his unique soaring screaming vox, all spacey and wavery and effected, can't help but make this sound psychedelic, plus the preponderance of mindboggling guitar solo shred from Cobbett helps in that dep't too. Early reports that had VHOL being a full-on Dis-core Crust-Metal band were somewhat misleading, however. Just like Ludicra, Hammers, heck ALL their other bands, this is a hybrid of a whole bunch of different things. And ends up being its own special thing.
But if we had to say, sonically this perhaps aligns closest with John & Aesop's previous outfit, avant-black metallers Ludicra, and with the more black-metally side of Yob. There's some delving into doomy, post-rock depths at points, plus of course Scheidt's distinctive vocals. So a cross between Ludicra and Yob, perhaps. But with some of the grandiose artistry of Hammers too. And both hectic punkish attack and sheer rockin' NWOBHM-inspired old school metal moments as well. Lots of them. Which is really what makes this for us. What a combo - and it works. Both energetic and epic, with churning riffs, intricate soloing, pounding rhythmic chaos, and actual catchy songwriting too. Our knack for finding buried "pop" music in the most unlikely, ugly places is not to be thwarted here, especially ferinstance on track four, "Grace", where some very effective, very poppy hooks are hiding, amidst that track's dense ripping architecture that conjures the sci-fi spectre of old (and new!) Voivod - a connection also suggested by this disc's very Away-like cover artwork, done by Cobbett himself.
Crucially, Scheidt puts on quite a performance, varying his vocals in cleanliness, from clean-ish to unclean, layered over each other even, doing death grunts and blackened rasps and guttural screams as well as his trademark higher-pitched, but distorted wailings - even getting into almost '80s metal ballad territory on the album's closer, "Songs Set To Await Forever".
Favorite tracks are hard to single out, they're all good, but "Arising" really, really impresses - a rollicking tour de force that kinda reminds us of certain latter day Darkthrone efforts, a la some tracks on their recent The Underground Resistance. Some of the same influences at work perhaps.
All in all, VHOL lives up to expectations (whatever they were!), certainly quality-wise. And perhaps confounds some others. But definitely doesn't disappoint. In fact, we might be digging this more than some of the VHOL folks' "main" bands right now, and that's saying a lot.
We've previously reviewed a singles collection by these early '70s psych-popsters from Peru, but somehow never reviewed the reissues of either of their two records, despite 'em being longtime aQ faves. But, we just discovered that we could still get copies of their first, self-tltled album, on vinyl, so figured we'd do a little write-up. Basically, We All Together were responsible for some of the world's best ever Beatles/Paul McCartney worship, this side of Wings. In fact, they cover two post-Beatles McCartney tunes here, as well as a song by Beatles proteges Badfinger. But you'd think they'd written 'em, the way their originals are totally in the same style of dreamy pop balladry Peppered (ahem) with psychedelic studio effects. All ten tracks here on their 1972 debut are replete with sad piano melodies, sweet backing vocal harmonies, and oh yeah they bust out some fuzz guitar too on the likes of "Hey Revolution".
Brilliant, affecting stuff, given some extra charm by virtue of being from Peru and not England or the USA. Super recommended, something we'll always love, up there with any Beatles-y thing from anyplace (Emitt Rhodes, Aerovons, Rainbow Ffolly, what have you). It you haven't heard 'em before, you're in for a treat.
A while back we made a record by a Chinese duo called White+ our Record Of The Week. And folks flipped for it. So much so we could barely keep it in stock. A dizzying collection of droned out psychedelic krautrock style grooves and experimental electronic hypnorock. A drummer and a synth player with all kinds of weird FX and noisemakers. Originally described to us as sounding like Neu crossed with Yellow Magic Orchestra, to us it ended up sounding much weirder. Ever since that review, we'd been wanting to list this, an earlier record from these two, but only just now did we manage to get enough. Talking more to our friends in China, we're beginning to think this band is simply called White, and maybe that other record is titled White PLUS. But really, it hardly matters, we'll keep calling them White+, and keep digging their crazy sounds, which are even crazier here, processed vox, churning sheets of synth thrum, clouds of swirling FX, buried pulsations, shimmering strings, minimal percussion, some tracks dense and dizzyingly dark ("Space Decay"), others dreamy and almost raga-like ("Spring House"), some tribal and percussive, angular and abstract ("Conch Crunch"), some like kraut-age electro-pop ("Build A Link"), and some others minimal and rhythmic, rife with junkyard percussion, and mysterious vocals/FX ("Train Song").
Fans of the other White+ will want this for sure, and really, anyone into tripped out electronic minimalism, psychedelic krautrock, experimental ambience, and twisted rhythmic hypnorock, this will definitely be a new fave. We have a bunch, but once we run out, we have to get more from China, which can sometimes take a while, so please get one quick, or be prepared to wait patiently. We also have a few copies in stock if the other White+, you can find it elsewhere on the site, or just ask if you want one of those too...
Live records are a strange proposition. We know folks who love live records, and just as many who don't. For some it's to commemorate a classic show they were at, and want to relive, for others, it's a chance to hear a band live, when they might not be able to ever actually see them in the flesh, and to be fair, bands generally are WAY better live. Recording is all about capturing that live energy, which any band will tell you, might be the hardest part of recording. For us, live records, are a chance to hear a band let loose, to tear it up, no worrying about the take, or certain parts, or subtleties, just rocking out, reacting to the crowd, with the best live records oozing blood and sweat, the live energy of not just the band, but the crowd as well, exciting in a way that sitting in a studio could never be.
So here we have local garage psych rockers White Fence, performing live in March of this year, right down the street from aQ at Amnesia (which used to be the Chameleon, our favorite venue from back in the day), kicking out the jams, and as described above, the sound is loose and wild, the band on fire, some of the psychedelic subtleties of the recordings lost, but in their place, one of the best performances we can remember from these guys, heavy, jangly, noisy, poppy, psychedelic, the crowd going nuts between songs, the songs we already loved supercharged, the guitars fuzzed out and crumbly, total psych garage bliss out, some of the versions here maybe even better than the recordings proper. If you've yet to hear these guys, this would be a great introduction, and hell, even if you have all the records, you probably dig them as much as we do, and are gonna likely want/need this one too...
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 the debut full length from this Canadian "pan-Asian cultural collective" our Record Of The Week. And for good reason. We spent the bulk of the review talking about how rare it was for us to be surprised and/or totally blown away by a new band or new record, chalking it up to the musical overload of working in a record store, but somehow this oddly monikered group did it for us big time. It helped that before we even heard them, they were described to us by referencing Taj Mahal Travellers, Deep Purple, the Boredoms and Flower Travellin' Band among others, and comparisons that good usually lead to disappointment, but not in this case. In fact for once, that hyperbolic over the top descriptor was pretty much right on the money. So that record has stayed in heavy rotation pretty much constantly ever since, just waiting for this to happen, a new Yamantaka // Sonic Titan (and yeah, both the slashes are part of the name), and that first record set the bar pretty high, so our hopes were equally high, and while Uzu is a totally different record, it's still pretty freaking great.
The description of the first record also mentioned J-Pop and Chinese opera, which for that album didn't seem nearly as applicable as prog-metal or noise rock or some mix of the two, but the opening two songs on Uzu DO actually play out like some sort of alien opera, haunting brooding piano, soaring dramatic female vox, bombastic percussion, fluttering woodwinds, gongs and cymbal shimmer, squelchy synths, the second of the two songs downright poppy, but with some crunchy almost metallic guitar, beneath the otherwise almost saccharine sweet pop hooks. It's not until the third track where things get truly tripped out and metallic, with crunchy metal guitars chugging away beneath soaring FX drenched vox, and pounding mathy drumming, but again, the pop quotient is pretty high compared to the first record. Which is pretty much how most of Uzu plays out, metallic moments here and there, but for the most part, the sound of Uzu is like some J-pop metal cabaret, infused with a healthy dose of cosmic prog, and some over the top brooding balladry, much of the chaotic bombast of the first record dialed way back, leaving something much more dramatic and musical, in fact like an actual musical, a lot of Uzu sounding like music from some bizarre experimental musical, a series of psychedelic show tunes from an alternate dimension, trippy, and poppy, freaky and far out!
