We continue to dig into the Chinese underground, as we do with every list lately, tapping into what has become a surprisingly vibrant scene as of late, and one of our recent favorites is this group called 10, whose sound is super tripped out and abstract, psychedelic, spacey and swirly, rife with drifting voices, glitched out electronics, shifting textures and mutant rhythms. Where lots of the Chinese stuff we've been digging has owed a great sonic debt to classic American indie / college / noise rock, 10 definitely move way beyond all that, maybe closer in spirit to another recent aQ fave White+, but unlike the psychedelic krautrockiness of White+, 10 seems to fall somewhere closer to Japanese weirdos the Boredoms, or maybe even Gang Gang Dance. Their songs are super rhythmic and effects heavy, with driving beats, motorik grooves, and truly strange female vocals, witchy and shamanic. 10's music is way less pop, or even rock, than a lot of those other Chinese bands, and way more experimental, almost industrial in some places, noisy and chaotic and psychedelic in others. Raw, lo-fi, primitive but also ambitious, lots of rhythmic texture, haunting ambience, dronescapes bleed into hazy ambience, which blossom into spaced out avant free-rock freakouts, which in turn devolve into tripped out minimal dirge pop, or FX drenched drifts, or sprawling textured noise, or abstract vocal mantras, draped over Nurse With Wound like sound design. Super cool, weird and wonderful, and way recommended.
Got a handful of these left, a super cool, super limited silkscreened poster for the recent A Minor Forest reunion show at Bottom Of The Hill with Barn Owl, Andee and Co.'s first show in fifteen years! The poster is printed in purple, yellow-y green and metallic gold, featuring eye popping weirdo-wizard forest-orb magic-staff art by Alan Forbes.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered and signed by Forbes himself! These are really nice and cannot be folded, so if you order one, they'll have to ship separately in a poster tube, and will thus incur a separate shipping charge...
The Chinese indie rock / noise pop keeps coming. A handful on this week's list, including this, the first we've heard from After Argument, who have quickly become one of our favorites of the bunch, and who, like many of the Chinese bands we've been digging, are fully channeling American nineties indie rock, but unlike a lot of those bands, After Argument seem to be leaning toward the weirder side of that spectrum. Just check out the opener - if you're like us, you're hearing lots of Polvo and Pitchblende, and those sorts of bands, twisted chords, mangled melodies, angular and atonal, mathy and almost proggy, After Argument adding some cool but strange vox, multitracked or dueling in places, some sweet stop/start arrangements, but infusing this angular crunch with plenty of hooks, not to mention, furious bursts of psychedelic noise, streaks of feedback, the songs generally frenetic and energetic, but some, like the closer, are super creepy dirges, the sound tense and intense, brooding and moody. Fantastic stuff. This gets played in the store like crazy! For fans of angular math/post rock, as well as the weirder side of classic indie rock.
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Only four albums in and Arcade Fire already seem like an institution, but far from predictable, Reflektor is a welcome 180 for these quirky Canadians. Almost entirely absent is the earnest tweeness of their earlier records, and in its place is a sprawling double album of opaque lyrical mystery, throbbing cosmic disco and ethereal sparkling funk (a change that is in no doubt at least partially due to LCD Soundsystem/DFA mastermind James Murphy's place at the production helm). The record's funkier moments bring to mind The Talking Heads sucked through a shining glittery vacuum, while the echo drenched druggy dub of "Flashbulb Eyes" recalls The Clash's more experimental flourishes during their Sandinista phase. Elsewhere the jangly guitars and girl group bass of "You Already Know" conjure some kind of swirling technicolor Smiths, and the primitive stomp and erratic guitar leads of "Normal Person" seem to be the work of an extraterrestrial Stooges. But even at its most straight forward there is a constant sense of mystery and intrigue to Reflektor - the warped ambient glitches, indecipherable background whispers, soaring strings and pulsing synths seeming to imply that there's some sort of code underlying just waiting to be cracked. And yet even during its most confounding moments there's an ever present bittersweet tinge of nostalgia that Arcade Fire have always been so adept at subtly injecting into their songs. It's sort of like a coming of age record, only a thousand years into the future and on the other side of the galaxy, with its head in the stars and its eyes impatiently fixed on the dancefloor.
We were admittedly confused by the simultaneous releases of Russian composer Eduard Artemiev's scores for Andrey Tarkovsky's iconic film Solaris on both the Miurimir and Superior Viaduct labels (not to mention Invada's upcoming lp release of Cliff Martinez's score for the Soderbergh remake). We made the Superior Viaduct reissue Record of The Week a few weeks ago, and that record was from the original score, recorded in 1973. We understood the Russian label Muirimir's reissues (which also include a separate Stalker/Mirror soundtrack release also reviewed here), to be Artemiev's late eighties re-recordings of the original scores. Artemiev wanted to have his soundtrack music available and the original tapes were supposedly lost, so he re-recorded the scores using modern equipment, as the original synths used for the film scores were no longer available. We usually tend to frown on such re-workings, as often the new recordings pale in comparison to the original, but in this case, particularly with the Solaris score, these are tracks that have never before been released on vinyl and they sound amazing. While there is some crossover between the Muirimir and Superior Viaduct releases, the Muirimir focuses mainly on music in the original Solaris film that was not included on the Superior Viaduct release. These tracks have a much more pulsating sci-fi quality to them that differs from the alien concrete droniness of the original score, and paints a more complete picture of the film than just the Superior Viaduct release alone.
Music from Tarkovsky's later films, Stalker and Mirror also get a conjoined release with re-recorded tracks from each film filling up an lp side. The Stalker score might just be our favorite of Artemiev's recordings. A mix of epic alien ambiance and pastoral psych melodies of flutes, and guitars. It evokes a more intense version of Popol Vuh's iconic scores for Werner Herzog. A perfect accompaniment to Tarkovsy's existential and brutalist spiritual journey that seemingly borrows from The Wizard of Oz's dual worlds of black and white and color, but suggests a more creepy pre-Chernobyl vision of a toxic colorized environment. The two long tracks that cover the music from Mirror, (a film we can't even begin to explain, you must see it for yourself) are collages of themes that mix nostalgic classical melodies with intense squalls of industrial ambient noise. The sound ebbing and flowing in dreamy, hazy patches like beautiful yet painful memories. Both scores come highly recommended!
We were admittedly confused by the simultaneous releases of Russian composer Eduard Artemiev's scores for Andrey Tarkovsky's iconic film Solaris on both the Miurimir and Superior Viaduct labels (not to mention Invada's upcoming lp release of Cliff Martinez's score for the Soderbergh remake). We made the Superior Viaduct reissue Record of The Week a few weeks ago, and that record was from the original score, recorded in 1973. We understood the Russian label Muirimir's reissues (which also include a separate Stalker/Mirror soundtrack release also reviewed here), to be Artemiev's late eighties re-recordings of the original scores. Artemiev wanted to have his soundtrack music available and the original tapes were supposedly lost, so he re-recorded the scores using modern equipment, as the original synths used for the film scores were no longer available. We usually tend to frown on such re-workings, as often the new recordings pale in comparison to the original, but in this case, particularly with the Solaris score, these are tracks that have never before been released on vinyl and they sound amazing. While there is some crossover between the Muirimir and Superior Viaduct releases, the Muirimir focuses mainly on music in the original Solaris film that was not included on the Superior Viaduct release. These tracks have a much more pulsating sci-fi quality to them that differs from the alien concrete droniness of the original score, and paints a more complete picture of the film than just the Superior Viaduct release alone.
Music from Tarkovsky's later films, Stalker and Mirror also get a conjoined release with re-recorded tracks from each film filling up an lp side. The Stalker score might just be our favorite of Artemiev's recordings. A mix of epic alien ambiance and pastoral psych melodies of flutes, and guitars. It evokes a more intense version of Popol Vuh's iconic scores for Werner Herzog. A perfect accompaniment to Tarkovsy's existential and brutalist spiritual journey that seemingly borrows from The Wizard of Oz's dual worlds of black and white and color, but suggests a more creepy pre-Chernobyl vision of a toxic colorized environment. The two long tracks that cover the music from Mirror, (a film we can't even begin to explain, you must see it for yourself) are collages of themes that mix nostalgic classical melodies with intense squalls of industrial ambient noise. The sound ebbing and flowing in dreamy, hazy patches like beautiful yet painful memories. Both scores come highly recommended!
Man, Matt Baldwin just seems to get better and better, taking his already wonderful celestial spaced out guitar playing and constantly pushing his sound further and further out. This super limited self released outing finds Baldwin positioning one short track inbetween two epic 15 minute sprawls which evoke the spirit of Robert Fripp playing a Terry Riley composition or Michael Rother and Steve Reich teaming up for some hypnotic psychedelic kraut guitar drift. Exploring cosmic guitar explorations similar to folks like Mark McGuire and Phil Manley, this is such a wonderful record of truly tripped out and densely dreamy solo guitar. We could go on and on about how much we love this, but considering these are the very last copies left of this cd-r we should probably just say act super fast as we only have ten of these left!
Very little has changed in the Bardo Pond camp, even after all these many years, and nearly as many records. And we're grateful for that. Peace On Venus is another collection of stunning, sprawling, spaced out heavy psych bliss out, with skies full of swirling distorted guitars, anchored by laid back drumming, and minimal basslines, and as always flecked with ethereal fluttering flutes, and those super distinctive, wasted, female vox. Just give a listen to opener "Kali Yuga Blues", with its thick, super distorted, crumbling riffage, blown out and laid back dream-psych heaviness, that builds to a truly intense coda, with FX drenched guitar swirl, drifting atop swaths of swirling flutes, the vocals buried in the mix, loping and lilting, moody and melancholic, and seriously druggy and dreamy. And so it goes, "Taste", is a brooding dark psych ballad, the flute providing much of the melody, with a kick ass midsong psychedelic freakout, but otherwise drifting drowsily, while "Fir" is nearly metallic in its heft, the riffing massive and blown out, the vocals witchy and bewitching, a dirgey psych lumber, equal parts blissed out space rock shimmer and churning downtuned doom, maybe one of our favorite BP tracks ever!
The record finishes off with two 10+ minute epics, first, the folky "Chance", which begins just acoustic guitar and flute, before the psychedelic guitars drift in, the song another loping midtempo brooder, sounding almost like a more psychedelic druggy version of classic Silkworm (which is most definitely a compliment), but again, the flute provides most of the melody, the bulk of the song spent drifting lazily, until the big build, and final few minutes freakout, where wah wah guitars get all tangled and intense, the flute following suit, total psych-prog bliss. Which leads directly into closer "Before The Moon", which as a sort of seventies UK acid folk vibe, albeit cranked up a bit and distorted, lurching, and drowsy, the guitars again crunchy and crumbling, buzzed out and droney, maybe the mathiest of the bunch, the prog vibe blurred into the group's zoner psych drift, the flute drifting in and out, the whole thing getting seriously metallic for the last minute or two, sounding a bit like a more witchy doomy version of Bardo Pond, one that might just appeal to fans of Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, The Devil's Blood, Sabbath Assembly, Loon and the like!
It could be a madman ranting to himself in the shower as heard through a thin wall of a squalid East German apartment; or it could be a cryptic piece of mangled sound poetry in the transgressive vein of Otto Muehl or Henri Chopin. Given that Stapel. Efeu-Faehrten comes by way of Tochnit Aleph, it really could be either. This is the same label that is run by Schimpfluch's Raionbashi and has released work by Masonna, Runzelstirn & Gurglestock, and G*Park; but there's a plethora of semi-outsider sound art and aktionist based tape wrangling that stems from the European traditions of arte povera, musique concrete, and/or pharmaceutically tainted method acting; and then there was A r t u r Zm i j e w s k i 's S i n g i n g L e s s o n , which featured chorales sung by a deaf children's choir. Uncomfortably atonal and profoundly touching at the same time. Such is the way of things for Tochnit Aleph. This album is a compendium of recordings from the German artist Michael Barthel, who seems to be situated more toward the conceptual ends of the Tochnit Aleph spectrum, but then again he could very well just be fucking insane. The process seems to involve recording various utterances of Ursonate / Jaap Blonk styled sound poems of repetitive, nonsensical syllables as something of primal building block of language or perhaps it's simply absurdist stuttering. He whispers and quietly groans these poems into a shitty tape deck that captures all of the room noise; and then he plays these tapes back with the volume cranked so that all of the environmental ambience becomes a wash of grit and white noise with distant mumblings. Upon repeating this process multiple times, it's a similar process as Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room, but the failing technology aggregates the noise and hiss instead of any kind of resonant frequency. In the midst of Barthel's softened, antiquated noise, his muffled sound poetry is interrupted / augmented by police sirens, radio static, and what sounds like it could be a really bummed out sheep. In other words, weirdo brilliance.
We've been digging this recent wave of super minimal electronic music like crazy, whether it's the stripped down house and dark moody techno of Shed or Terrence Dixon, the post industrial gothic beatscapery of Vatican Shadow, the dour blackened brutalism of Silent Servant, the murky avant electronica of Haxan Cloak and Prurient, the field recording flecked minimalism of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, or recent outings from new aQ faves like Shifted and Ron Morelli, it's almost like the techno/house haters have had their whole world turned upside down, with all of these gothy, gloomy, murky, grim variants on house music and techno, stripped down to the bare minimum, transformed somehow into something blackly psychedelic and woozily abject, total blunted comedown minimalism, that is easily some of the darkest and most mesmerizing music we've heard in ages. None more so than Oats, from Basic House, aka Stephen Bishop, the man behind the Opal Tapes label, who as Basic House, has created something more than that moniker might imply, sure it could be considered 'basic house', but a basic house constructed from crumbling distortion, and chunks of static, weird field recordings, woozy loops, disembodied melodies, you can hear hints of Andy Stott and Demdike Stare and the Caretaker, but Basic House is something else all together, a sort of decaying hauntological dance music, that seems to be cobbled together from sonic detritus, one could almost imagine this as electronica as envisioned by Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck, it has that same sort of warped warble, and grey, washed out abstraction. It's one of those rare records that is truly difficult to describe, which is precisely what makes it so utterly mesmerizing.
Breaking down the first two tracks should give you a rough idea of what you're in store for, beginning with a weird field of stuttering static, shards of tape hiss, and what sounds like gristly analog crunch, all pulsing hypnotically over a backdrop of woozy looped melody, and slow shifting textures, a barely there rhythm seems to be forming, it's not until nearly two minutes in that a proper beat surfaces, a monotonous 4/4 pulse, adding a strangely skeletal framework to the proceedings, before that beat blossoms into something almost electro, adding some distorted dubsteppy bass wobble, but the whole thing remaining super wasted and washed out and ultra minimal. Eventually, multiple melodies swoop in, as do auxiliary beats, the sound a dense swirl, dizzying and weirdly psychedelic, and in a weird way, almost poppy sounding, before devolving in a field of spaced out crackle and hiss, all tangled up with layered loops, and mysterious, almost easy listening sounding samples, before lurching directly into the second track, a churning murk-march of pounding Teutonic throb, and looped ominous whisper, everything wreathed in thick swirls of record crackle / tape hiss, the sound quickly and repeatedly transforming, at one point sounding like alien elevator music, rife with churning, chugging low end thrum, and fields of insectoid click, while elsewhere unravelling like a heaving sprawl of avant industrial noisiness. And while that may give you an idea of what Basic House is all about, the rest of the record does its best to continually confuse and confound.
Short stretches of mangled field recordings wrapped around barely there beats, give way to super spare soundscapes of glistening crackle, and mutated textures, jagged shards of caustic digital crunch are sculpted into corrosive rhythmscapes that seem to melt into droned out Wolf Eyes style drones, all high end skree, and scraping digital crunch. Some tracks are whispery latticeworks of groaning and creaking ambience, short wave transmissions drifting through fields of hushed thrum, and barely there chordal swells, sometimes blossoming into garbled grooves, all hazy and bleakly blissed out, other times unfurling mysterious swirls of digital stutter and looped vocal whispers, those alien sounds seeming to collect melody and texture as they creep through landscapes of shimmer and hum. Here and there, the record does return to something more overtly rhythmic, like on the balearic "C-Beat", which is like modern minimalism by way of Pole's granular digidub, but recast as some ghostly trance, all whispery stutter, wreathed in warbly wooziness and glassine high end shimmer, but the record eventually settles into a haunting hushed finale, the meditative, minimal drone of "L-Wave And Combo", which is one long sprawl of buried melody and tranced out thrum, but instead of smooth and shimmery, the sounds are rough and raw, crumbling and crunchy, but in no way does that detract from the track's enthralling mesmer. So fucking great. And just in under the wire, in the nick of time to make it onto plenty of top ten lists, and for some of us here, quite possibly a contender for the top spot!
To quote ourselves, prepare again to "feel the embrace of the purple-hued, witch-haunted horror that is... Blizaro!"
Yup, in reviewing this double disc journey into the violet cosmos of the prog/doom/soundtrack obsessed, mostly-one-man-band Blizaro, we would find it hard to top what we said about 'em before, in our review of the album we made a Record Of The Week back in 2010. That disc, City Of Living Nightmare, we likened to a mad scientist's lo-fi, DIY mashup of Goblin and Black Sabbath - a hybrid of psychedelic doom metal, synthesizer prog, and Italian giallo soundtracks that totally blew us away. That was followed by a split with female-fronted occult doom-deathsters Wooden Stake, also really great.
But what came before? Well, several homebrewed cd-r's worth of Blizaro music preceded the compact disc debut we had made Record Of The Week. Some of us here had tracked down copies of those, and ever since we've been hoping they'd get reissued so we could share 'em with you. In fact, we liked 'em so much, we got in touch with the man behind Blizaro, John Gallo (guitarist for Rochester, NY doom metallers Orodruin), and were "in talks" with him to re-release the these cd-r's together on a proper cd, via aQuarius, like we did with our White Hills and Carlton Melton Record Store Day discs! But then the Italian label I, Voidhanger stepped in and snatched Blizaro away from us - which is perfectly okay 'cause they really did such a great job putting together this nicely appointed package, which they expanded to two discs, not just one, incorporating not only the material from Blizaro's three pre-City cd-r's, but also a more recent recording we hadn't yet heard, plus a whole bunch of unreleased bonus tracks too.
Disc one of Strange Doorways consists of the tracks from Blizaro's The Old Wizard Of Winter (2009) and Black Magicians (2012) cd-rs, along with three extra unreleased tracks. Disc two's got the Horror Rock (2006) and Blue Tape (2008) cd-r's, and five extra cuts. 40 tracks in all! It's quite a varied array of material, all of it proving how amazingly talented and creative John Gallo is as a musician and songwriter. The music here ranges from creepy groovy stuff in the Goblin-y realm, to full on '70s hard rockin', to quirky prog epics, to strange synthesizer experiments, to classical guitar styled fantasias, and even echoed-out synthbass bunkurfunk. Lots to listen to, lots to like. The Old Wizard Of Winter stuff is heavily synth-based (originally recorded as a Christmas gift for relatives!!), mostly all Moog and organ, whereas elsewhere Gallo puts his electric guitar and quite a few other instruments to good use, his voice too, and gets a bit of help from friends, including his bandmates in Orodruin, and members of Revered Bizarre. BTW, Blizaro now has a membership of three, Gallo plus a drummer and bassist, so here's hoping they go on tour and we get to see 'em!
The thick cd booklet features pages and pages of track-by-track liner notes from Gallo himself, discussing his ideas, inspirations and equipment, how each track came together. Kinda writing his own review, he namechecks everyone from Goblin and Paul Chain to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream to Atomic Rooster and Arthur Brown. We can hear it all, for sure. Wow. We've heard plenty of bedroom recorded indie pop and electronica, black metal too, but eccentric progged-out proto-metal? Blizaro does that - and more - quite convincingly. Highly recommended of course.
Come, come to the sabbat!! It is now upon us, The Eldritch Dark, album number 3 from one of our top favorites amongst the burgeoning new wave of female fronted occult rock bands, Toronto's Blood Ceremony. And there's a LOT of good bands in that "scene", a bunch of 'em on the same label(s), Rise Above/Metal Blade. Blood Ceremony are a bit heavier than their UK compatriots/competition, Purson, reviewed last list, but a heck of a lot more folky and Comus-y than The Devil's Blood (RIP - that band's final release comes out next week).
While vocalist/flautist/keyboard player/witchy woman Alia O'Brien is once again the star of the show, there are evocative male vocals on here too, from bassist Lucas Gadke, first noticeable on track 3, the semi-acoustic "Lord Summerisle" - that's right, a reference to the Wicker Man movie there, hardly a surprise, considering their inspirations. All the songs are about black masses, dark woods and witchery, dontcha know. And capture a '70s Britfolk, Wicker Man vibe for sure, being both catchy and atmospheric, total progged-out pagan hoedown material, full of not just flute but fiddle too. Plus synth and Hammer Horror organ as well, and of course some seriously doomy guitar riffage, that you can dance a reel too (but you'll halfway expect to get a sacrificial dagger in your heart at some point in the fun). Obviously recommended without reservation to fans of the aforementioned bands, also Jex Thoth, Jess And The Ancient Ones, and their non-female fronted psych-folk-doom godfathers Pagan Altar. We should also mention Jethro Tull and Black Sabbath here just to be complete!
We have VERY few copies of this, so we won't get too in depth. Sadly, as always, it seems, Mondo made way too few of these, so we got as many as we could, which was not nearly enough, so all you soundtrack nerds, grab one while you can, cuz this is a super amazing version of Carpenter's classic score to his 1978 horror classic Halloween. Many arguments can be made as to which of Carpenter's soundtracks are his best, Escape From New York, The Fog, They Live, but few could argue that Halloween is by far his most iconic, if not just for THAT theme, you know the one, that creepy, instantly recognizable, dread inducing refrain, and while that theme pops up all over the score, in different iterations, like all Carpenter soundtracks, there's so much more. Carpenter is a master at evoking fear through simple sonic soundscapery, and never was his mastery more on display than right here.
Not sure if this has been on vinyl before, certainly not this expanded 28 track version, and even then, it definitely wasn't this deluxe. A super swank, double lp (pressed on Halloween orange wax), the lps 180 gram vinyl, the records cut at 45rpm as well, all housed in an eye popping heavy gatefold sleeve, the cover art a super creepy close-up of Michael Myers' mask, and if you look closely at the detail, the mouth is actually a painting of the Myers' house, complete with glowing jack-o-lantern, and Myers' shadow. Open it up and the inside gatefold is yet another painting of the house, with Myers carrying a body onto the porch, and flip it over, and there's Myers again, lurking ominously in the darkness amidst the clotheslines. So cool. And again, SO LIMITED. Already out of print, so these are the last copies we'll ever get. Fans of Death Waltz, Waxwork, and Mondo of course, who have been collecting all of these deluxe horror vinyl reissues, will want this one BAD.
Whew! People were starting to panic 'bout this, cause it seemed that this desirable Death Waltz release was so terrifically limited that none of 'em were gonna make it across the pond from the UK. But thankfully the label relented and pressed some more, so now we have some - but still not very many, so act fast if you want one!
And you DO probably want one, 'cause of the many awesome soundtracks that John Carpenter composed for his movies, this is one of the best. The film The Fog itself may or may not be among his best - there's a difference of opinion at aQuarius about that, we'll argue about it offline - but we all agree about the soundtrack. Of course, whether 1979's The Fog is for sure worth the rental if you haven't seen it lately, after all (spoiler alert!) it's got ghost pirates in it (undeniably a cool concept, if perhaps not the scariest idea ever), and Jamie Lee Curtis, and of course the titular fog. Fog is always spooky.
But the soundtrack, that's what we really remember from the movie. And it's not actually as typically John Carpenter-y as what we usually mean when we call something John Carpenter-y in our reviews. It doesn't have the groovy '80s disco-synth beats, not so much. Really, it's more of a drone record. Slow and low stuff, y'know. Inspired, no doubt, by fog horns! But played on electronic synthesizers, of course. At times, it's not unlike what what a lot of today's experimental drone artists might come up with - if they were scoring a horror film, that is. Distorted whooshes of sound, ponderous piano plinking, crushing church organ chords, subsonic detonations, ringing electronic pulses forming into slow building, nerve-wracking rhythms... just imagine the best Umberto album ever.
This soundtrack has a creepy ambient quality that's really engaging, completely apart from the story or visuals. It's beautifully ominous, and also in a way quite HEAVY.
Furthermore, the eerie, melodic main theme, a few notes tinkling in sinister sequence, reprised of course throughout the album, is a classic, up there with our faves from Goblin. By itself it would keep the hairs on the back of our necks up all night.
Well we could go on, but we suspect there's no need. Get it while you can, and we apologize in advance if we run out.
This Death Waltz version is an expanded edition of the soundtrack (also recently made available in the States as a double cd by the Silva Screen label, which we will list soon too), featuring 33 tracks over four sides of 180 gram gold vinyl, including a large number of cues from the movie not found on earlier versions. Also, of course, course, Death Waltz provides brand new artwork by Dinos Chapman for this release, along with new liner notes by John Carpenter, Dinos Chapman, and Randall D. Larson.
As much as we love all the indie rock and noise pop that's been coming out of China, and we do, hell, check elsewhere on this list for a couple new Chinese bands, we tend to become super obsessed with the more out there, experimental groups and records that have also been coming from the same scene. We made the latest record from White+ our Record Of The Week a while back, the sound like Yellow Magic Orchestra crossed with Neu!, or so the label suggested, to our ears it was way more far out and psychedelic. Out latest discovery / obsession comes from this Beijing based experimental four piece called Chui Wan, who according to the label, count Beach Boys, Arthur Russell, Les Rallizes Denudes and the Sun City Girls among their primary influences, but as always, there's no way a band could possibly sound like that, and Chui Wan, to our ears at least don't really sound like what we imagine that band math would produce, but that's not to say we don't dig it, we do, a LOT, in fact this is one of our favorite of all the Chinese records we've gotten in recently, but the sound is a bit harder to pigeonhole, the opener is a sort of loping, instrumental jangle pop jam, all blooping basslines, shimmering guitars, and motorik rhythm, surrounded by burbling cascades of swirling melodies, and chiming spidery guitars, so we were kind of prepared for a whole record of that, but then the second track swoops in, all distorted guitars, and driving drums, not to mention some strange echo drenched vocals, lots of swirling psychedelia, the track veering from spaced out mesmer to heavy, chaotic freakout, with brief bits of mathy angular pop, it's a weird mix, but it somehow works, at times sounding like a warped WTF version of Television, maybe with a little Boredoms mixed in, with plenty of spaced out psych jamming, and hypno-kraut grooves.
And amidst all this krautgroove and psychedelic drift, the band add swoonsome viola melodies, soaring ethereal vocal harmonies, plenty of almost proggy arrangements, subtly deployed samples, Eastern melodies, swirling electronics and FX, with some tracks sounding like psychedelic ragas, others blossoming into horn flecked almost-klezmer, and still others field recording laces tribal dirges. The record finishes with a nearly eleven minute closer, that's like some sort of doom-prog / kraut-folk, epic and majestic, weirdly recorded so the sounds are all blown out and crumbly, the arrangement strange too, in constant flux, the whole final half of the song peeling back all the noisiness, leaving just a gorgeous sprawl of processed horns, pointillist pianos, swirling synths, layered electronics and strange samples, super heady and hypnotic, tripped out and utterly mesmerizing.
WAY recommended, for fans of space rock, psych rock, experimental avant pop, and the weirder side of the new wave of Chinese indie rock...
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Ultra limited release from local label Flenser, of the debut from this mysterious Bay Area trio, featuring members of Sutekh Hexen, Necrite and Swampwitch, and while that pedigree might have you imagining some sort of blacknoise blackbuzz blowout, this is actually something else altogether. Three long tracks of creeping, ambient ritualism, if you had to classify it as some sort of metal, it would definitely be doom, but only barely, there are thick, coruscating guitars, crumbling distortion, but they're not riffs so much as atmospheric smears of black sound. It's more a sort of blackdrone creep. The vocals a demonic bellow, the sound creeping and oozing over a backdrop of distant shimmer and muted rumble, the result like some sort of demonic ritual, performed by firelight in some mysterious cavern. The guitar erupting occasionally into wild tangles of noisy skree, but quickly settling back down into a more haunting tranquil drift. In fact the two tracks on the B side pretty much forego the downtuned slo-mo riffage entirely, instead, weaving spidery guitars, and hushed ambient shimmer, growled and mewled vox (sounding like more demonic Eugene from Oxbow), the sound much more spare and sparse, cinematic and soundtracky, the whole tape like some oozing black mass (both meaning intended), a gorgeously tripped out blackened sonic mystery that will probably appeal to the ambient doom set and weird drone fans more than metalheads, even though at it's core, this is some sort of super abstract atmospheric ethereal metal. Regardless, we dig big time.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
It's been about 3 years since we last heard from these avant black metallers, whose first record, Nouveau Gloaming, we described as sounding like a black metal Interpol, and whose second, Resplendent Grotesque, managed to take everything we dug about that first record, and hone it into the perfect hybrid of croony, gothy gloom rock and furious blasting grim blackness. And while we talked a lot about the poppier, gloomier side of their sound, sonically they were and are definitely beholden to the first wave of truly avant/post black metal outfits like Dodheimsgard and Borknagar, the bombastic almost symphonic arrangements, the clean vocals, all wound up into a framework that at its core is classic buzzing black metal, made for a pretty revolutionary sound back in the day, and while that sound might be passe at this point, we're pretty sad that bands don't make music like that anymore, although apparently these guys still do.
This time around, the sound is definitely even further removed from the black metal that, at least partially, defined Code's sound in the early days, sure there's plenty of black buzz, and sick vokills, even blast beats, but much of the record is spent in a strange black-prog gloom metal netherworld that make their sound tough to classify, for true grim metalheads, Augur Nox is likely too all over the map, too poppy, and not nearly metal enough, but for folks into gloomy poppy heaviness, who can handle sounds seriously fucking fierce and frantic, there's so much to dig here, which is precisely what makes this record so appealing, even when the band are in full on goth pop mode, they'll bust out with a grinding tangle of buzzing blackness, or a furious flurry of insectoid riffing and mathed out drum pound. And by the same token, songs buzzing and blasting full bore will suddenly splinter into weird poppiness, or some crazy catchy melody or guitar line, will suddenly transform the song. To our ears, this time around there does seem to be a bit more moody, dramatic dour poppiness a la Katatonia, but it's supercharged and revved way up, and some of the proggier moments like "Harmonies In Cloud", sound a bit like a black metal Marillion, which sounds weird, but is actually pretty goddamn great.
Like the last two Code albums, Augur Nox is quickly turning into one of our most listened to new records, and with every listen, the songs reveal themselves more and more as avant black gloom masterpieces, masterful arrangements of dark, psychedelic hookiness, churning, buzzing crush, and epic sonic majesty. Another record that swoops right in, just in time for year end top ten lists, and we can guarantee this will be on ours!
Here at aQuarius, we've sure got a soft spot for ugly, noisy Australian punk, much of it swaggery and swampy and fucked up, and sometimes kinda poppy too - such varied bands as The Scientists, Radio Birdman, feedtime, Grong Grong, Venom P. Stinger, The Lime Spiders, The Birthday Party, Lubricated Goat, and (more recently) the likes of Slug Guts and Cuntz - amongst MANY other excellent rawk acts from Down Under. And one of the softest spots we've got, is reserved for Melbourne's Cosmic Psychos, whose earliest efforts have recently been reissued by the fine folks at Goner, yah!!
It's been forever since this band's crucial late '80s output has been available Stateside, so those who haven't eBay'ed a precious Sup Pop pressing of Go The Hack, for instance, are now in luck - if your idea of lucky is the opportunity to have your ears peeled back by a drunken trio of Aussies, with amps and attitude both cranked to 11, pounding out rough hewn garage punk! Primitive, badass rockin' that's part Motorhead, part Black Flag. Some Stooges and Ramones in there too. These blokes bring it when it comes to widdly wah wah guitar distortion, walloping rhythmic thump, mean gravely vocals, and nasty feedback... all good things, eh? And better yet, the songs are all catchier than the most popular of venereal diseases. The tracklisting of each of these records is just gnarly gem after gnarly gem. Maybe there's the most singalong potential with the hooky material on Go The Hack (1989), while debut mini-lp Down On The Farm (1985) features a couple of the band's lengthiest, most spaced out/wasted tracks (like the FX laden jam "Crazy Woman"), and the self-titled album (1987) perhaps finds 'em at their most, uh, psychotic, but we strongly recommend picking up ALL of these reissued releases, done as 3 separate vinyl 12" records, or two compact discs.
What the Cosmic Psychos do isn't rocket science (in fact, part of their charm is being brilliantly dumb, check out the chorus to Go The Hack's "Back In Town", also you gotta love the '80s pop culture references of songs like "Rambo" and "David Lee Roth", both found on the s/t album) but they do it with, shall we say, an ample amount of gusto. And certainly some humor. These hooligans have got a special something all right. They're called the Cosmic Psychos after all, they've gotta be good.
Psychos? No doubt. Cosmic? Well, it for sure ain't krautrock. But there is plenty of sick FUZZ, so we think folks into the garage psych of the The Heads, ferinstance, could dig this stuff big time, especially after a few beers. Heck, there's even some unexpected "arty" bits like the various spoken samples (including a Hitler speech) inserted amidst the miasmic mayhem of Down On The Farm's "Gangrene Dream".
Hopefully their '90s AmRep records will get reissued sometime too - we'd love to hear "Dead Roo" again... And if you haven't seen it yet, there's a Cosmic Psychos documentary too, that's AWESOME, check out the trailer here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7CbDQ2ZryA
Here at aQuarius, we've sure got a soft spot for ugly, noisy Australian punk, much of it swaggery and swampy and fucked up, and sometimes kinda poppy too - such varied bands as The Scientists, Radio Birdman, feedtime, Grong Grong, Venom P. Stinger, The Lime Spiders, The Birthday Party, Lubricated Goat, and (more recently) the likes of Slug Guts and Cuntz - amongst MANY other excellent rawk acts from Down Under. And one of the softest spots we've got, is reserved for Melbourne's Cosmic Psychos, whose earliest efforts have recently been reissued by the fine folks at Goner, yah!!
It's been forever since this band's crucial late '80s output has been available Stateside, so those who haven't eBay'ed a precious Sup Pop pressing of Go The Hack, for instance, are now in luck - if your idea of lucky is the opportunity to have your ears peeled back by a drunken trio of Aussies, with amps and attitude both cranked to 11, pounding out rough hewn garage punk! Primitive, badass rockin' that's part Motorhead, part Black Flag. Some Stooges and Ramones in there too. These blokes bring it when it comes to widdly wah wah guitar distortion, walloping rhythmic thump, mean gravely vocals, and nasty feedback... all good things, eh? And better yet, the songs are all catchier than the most popular of venereal diseases. The tracklisting of each of these records is just gnarly gem after gnarly gem. Maybe there's the most singalong potential with the hooky material on Go The Hack (1989), while debut mini-lp Down On The Farm (1985) features a couple of the band's lengthiest, most spaced out/wasted tracks (like the FX laden jam "Crazy Woman"), and the self-titled album (1987) perhaps finds 'em at their most, uh, psychotic, but we strongly recommend picking up ALL of these reissued releases, done as 3 separate vinyl 12" records, or two compact discs.
What the Cosmic Psychos do isn't rocket science (in fact, part of their charm is being brilliantly dumb, check out the chorus to Go The Hack's "Back In Town", also you gotta love the '80s pop culture references of songs like "Rambo" and "David Lee Roth", both found on the s/t album) but they do it with, shall we say, an ample amount of gusto. And certainly some humor. These hooligans have got a special something all right. They're called the Cosmic Psychos after all, they've gotta be good.
Psychos? No doubt. Cosmic? Well, it for sure ain't krautrock. But there is plenty of sick FUZZ, so we think folks into the garage psych of the The Heads, ferinstance, could dig this stuff big time, especially after a few beers. Heck, there's even some unexpected "arty" bits like the various spoken samples (including a Hitler speech) inserted amidst the miasmic mayhem of Down On The Farm's "Gangrene Dream".
Hopefully their '90s AmRep records will get reissued sometime too - we'd love to hear "Dead Roo" again... And if you haven't seen it yet, there's a Cosmic Psychos documentary too, that's AWESOME, check out the trailer here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7CbDQ2ZryA
Here at aQuarius, we've sure got a soft spot for ugly, noisy Australian punk, much of it swaggery and swampy and fucked up, and sometimes kinda poppy too - such varied bands as The Scientists, Radio Birdman, feedtime, Grong Grong, Venom P. Stinger, The Lime Spiders, The Birthday Party, Lubricated Goat, and (more recently) the likes of Slug Guts and Cuntz - amongst MANY other excellent rawk acts from Down Under. And one of the softest spots we've got, is reserved for Melbourne's Cosmic Psychos, whose earliest efforts have recently been reissued by the fine folks at Goner, yah!!
It's been forever since this band's crucial late '80s output has been available Stateside, so those who haven't eBay'ed a precious Sup Pop pressing of Go The Hack, for instance, are now in luck - if your idea of lucky is the opportunity to have your ears peeled back by a drunken trio of Aussies, with amps and attitude both cranked to 11, pounding out rough hewn garage punk! Primitive, badass rockin' that's part Motorhead, part Black Flag. Some Stooges and Ramones in there too. These blokes bring it when it comes to widdly wah wah guitar distortion, walloping rhythmic thump, mean gravely vocals, and nasty feedback... all good things, eh? And better yet, the songs are all catchier than the most popular of venereal diseases. The tracklisting of each of these records is just gnarly gem after gnarly gem. Maybe there's the most singalong potential with the hooky material on Go The Hack (1989), while debut mini-lp Down On The Farm (1985) features a couple of the band's lengthiest, most spaced out/wasted tracks (like the FX laden jam "Crazy Woman"), and the self-titled album (1987) perhaps finds 'em at their most, uh, psychotic, but we strongly recommend picking up ALL of these reissued releases, done as 3 separate vinyl 12" records, or two compact discs.
What the Cosmic Psychos do isn't rocket science (in fact, part of their charm is being brilliantly dumb, check out the chorus to Go The Hack's "Back In Town", also you gotta love the '80s pop culture references of songs like "Rambo" and "David Lee Roth", both found on the s/t album) but they do it with, shall we say, an ample amount of gusto. And certainly some humor. These hooligans have got a special something all right. They're called the Cosmic Psychos after all, they've gotta be good.
Psychos? No doubt. Cosmic? Well, it for sure ain't krautrock. But there is plenty of sick FUZZ, so we think folks into the garage psych of the The Heads, ferinstance, could dig this stuff big time, especially after a few beers. Heck, there's even some unexpected "arty" bits like the various spoken samples (including a Hitler speech) inserted amidst the miasmic mayhem of Down On The Farm's "Gangrene Dream".
Hopefully their '90s AmRep records will get reissued sometime too - we'd love to hear "Dead Roo" again... And if you haven't seen it yet, there's a Cosmic Psychos documentary too, that's AWESOME, check out the trailer here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7CbDQ2ZryA
Here at aQuarius, we've sure got a soft spot for ugly, noisy Australian punk, much of it swaggery and swampy and fucked up, and sometimes kinda poppy too - such varied bands as The Scientists, Radio Birdman, feedtime, Grong Grong, Venom P. Stinger, The Lime Spiders, The Birthday Party, Lubricated Goat, and (more recently) the likes of Slug Guts and Cuntz - amongst MANY other excellent rawk acts from Down Under. And one of the softest spots we've got, is reserved for Melbourne's Cosmic Psychos, whose earliest efforts have recently been reissued by the fine folks at Goner, yah!!
It's been forever since this band's crucial late '80s output has been available Stateside, so those who haven't eBay'ed a precious Sup Pop pressing of Go The Hack, for instance, are now in luck - if your idea of lucky is the opportunity to have your ears peeled back by a drunken trio of Aussies, with amps and attitude both cranked to 11, pounding out rough hewn garage punk! Primitive, badass rockin' that's part Motorhead, part Black Flag. Some Stooges and Ramones in there too. These blokes bring it when it comes to widdly wah wah guitar distortion, walloping rhythmic thump, mean gravely vocals, and nasty feedback... all good things, eh? And better yet, the songs are all catchier than the most popular of venereal diseases. The tracklisting of each of these records is just gnarly gem after gnarly gem. Maybe there's the most singalong potential with the hooky material on Go The Hack (1989), while debut mini-lp Down On The Farm (1985) features a couple of the band's lengthiest, most spaced out/wasted tracks (like the FX laden jam "Crazy Woman"), and the self-titled album (1987) perhaps finds 'em at their most, uh, psychotic, but we strongly recommend picking up ALL of these reissued releases, done as 3 separate vinyl 12" records, or two compact discs.
What the Cosmic Psychos do isn't rocket science (in fact, part of their charm is being brilliantly dumb, check out the chorus to Go The Hack's "Back In Town", also you gotta love the '80s pop culture references of songs like "Rambo" and "David Lee Roth", both found on the s/t album) but they do it with, shall we say, an ample amount of gusto. And certainly some humor. These hooligans have got a special something all right. They're called the Cosmic Psychos after all, they've gotta be good.
Psychos? No doubt. Cosmic? Well, it for sure ain't krautrock. But there is plenty of sick FUZZ, so we think folks into the garage psych of the The Heads, ferinstance, could dig this stuff big time, especially after a few beers. Heck, there's even some unexpected "arty" bits like the various spoken samples (including a Hitler speech) inserted amidst the miasmic mayhem of Down On The Farm's "Gangrene Dream".
Hopefully their '90s AmRep records will get reissued sometime too - we'd love to hear "Dead Roo" again... And if you haven't seen it yet, there's a Cosmic Psychos documentary too, that's AWESOME, check out the trailer here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7CbDQ2ZryA
The first proper, non-bootleg reissue of classic material from this seminal SF punk group came in the form of a demos collection released on John Reis from Rocket From The Crypt's Swami label, and in that review, we offered this concise description of Crime: "Crime proclaimed themselves to be San Francisco's 'First and Only Rock and Roll Band'. That hyperbole of course ain't quite true but indicates the level of punk attitude you're in for. Hard rocking, fast, and snotty, Crime were violent and stylish - they kicked out the jams in SFPD uniforms and shades! This definitely belongs on the same shelf with your Iggy & the Stooges and Dead Boys discs�"
And now finally this long in the works, OFFICIAL singles collection sees the light of day, gathering up the groups iconic first three (and only) singles, along with what is essentially a whole record of previously unreleased studio tracks! Up first is there debut single, "Hot Wire My Heart", which was famously covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!! "Terminal Boredom" is a furious blast of nihilistic punk rock, laced with plenty of poppiness, a killer main guitar melody, and some mush mouth vocals, that perfectly capture the titular mood. The flipside of that single starts out loose and sloppy, and practically falls apart, before they launch into "Dillinger's Brain", which manages to sound nearly as loose and sloppy, somehow without actually falling apart!
"Frustration" is up next, and the group inject some power poppiness into the aggro punk stomp, with a super catchy main riff, as well as more kick ass guitar melodies (sort-of leads?), before they finish off the singles proper with the B side that gives this collection its name, a Black Flag sounding doomy dirge (SF's doomed for sure), all churning creep, before things crumble into chaos halfway through, only to explode into some serious almost surf punk sounding crunch, that quickly devolves into some snarly, sonic swagger.
And if that weren't enough, the cd tacks on NINE extra tracks, most of which sound like classic Crime, except maybe for the weird electronics flecked "Gangster Funk", but stick around for the crushing alternate version of Crime's classic "San Francisco's Doomed"!
New liner notes, including some from Thurston Moore, as well as a few rare photos and reproductions of the original 7" sleeves!
Maybe our favorite record from these Victorian indie rock troubadours, remastered and reissued. Here's what we had to say about this record WAY back in 2003 when we heard the Decemberists for the very first time...
Andee seems to always find one thing on the list to rave about. This week is no different, here's
Andee raving about this Decemberists album:
I can't figure out why we like this record so much. On first listen it really doesn't sound like our kind of thing at all. Yet it just sort of grabbed us and now we can't stop listening to it. Which is pretty exciting considering how much music we hear everyday and how seldom something just completely takes our breath away. Especially when we're not expecting to like it at all! The Decemberists play a sort of mutant hybrid of indie pop and folk. And it is a bit twee, which would usually put us off right away. But for some reason, this record manages to claw it's way out of the twee-pop ghetto. The singer has a very affected, sort of British air which reminds us a bit of Belle And Sebastian, but way less wispy and more gritty and world weary. A bit like Robyn Hitchcock or Dan Bejar of Destroyer (and the New Pornographers) The music though sounds a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel, all strummed guitars and belted-out vocals, but mixed with the dreamy and pastoral popscapes of Belle and Sebastian and even a little bit of the Pogues sort of Celtic campfire stomp/gypsy street music vibe. Lilting and dreamy, but also really sharp and emotional. The lyrics are very bookish and the subject matter is very Dickensian, evoking cobblestone streets and gas lamps and hungry street urchins and idealized Victorian romance. Heartbreakingly bittersweet and once in a while even sort of funny. Like Edward Gorey drawings set to music. A lot of that has to do with the instrumentation, wheezing almost Parisian sounding accordions, ominous rumbling cellos, ghostly theremins, and droning warbling organs that effortlessly create that sort of late night, empty streets, drunk and bitter, wistful and sort of hopeful, broken hearted aura that so much of this sort of music strives for.
From loping waltzes to bouncing pop to crawling dirges, the Decemberists weave a totally magical spell that totally envelops you and transports you to wherever it is the Decemberists are plying their wares. It's all just so beautiful and catchy and melancholy and absolutely fucking great!
Yet another blast of FX heavy, gloomy, psych rock stomp and swagger from these Philly bruisers, and this time around they sound even more droned out and depressive, that whole gloom pop thing they dabbled in on the last record now pretty much defines their sound, and it totally works, and has them sounding like a way heavier, way druggier, and way more dirgey and distorted Crystal Stilts, which is most definitely a good thing. Sounding a bit like classic Aussie post punk via more modern heavy psych rock, these guys kick things off with "Bow Your Head", all swirling squalls of wah guitar, and tribal drum pound, the vocals a snarling yowl, hooks galore, buried in the mire, some cool harmony vocals, but for the most part, low slung and swaggery, noisy, swampy psych blooze of the highest order. Some of the other tracks get a bit krautrocky, but even then, the sound remains gloomy and gothy, dour and darkly depressive and woozily psychedelic, like the wasted zoner krautdrift of "Mother Nature Fetish", or the hazy, druggy dirge of "Beyond Your Bones". There's also plenty of garage rock crunch, not to mention some seriously wasted gothic post punk miserablism, a sound that has us imagining this band playing the Scream club in LA alongside Kommunity FK or the Abecedarians back in the day, in fact maybe our favorite track here "Admit It" is one of those, the perfect mix of old school post punk, and swirly psychedelic goth rock. So great! Includes a download code too...
On this release for this year's Back To Black Friday Record Store Day (a sort of mini second part to April's big RSD extravaganza), the Flaming Lips offer up their song from the Ender's Game soundtrack, and it's classic Flaming Lips, at least the more modern iteration, bombastic, cotton candy megawatt orchestral psych pop, swirling FX, martial drumming, lots of shimmering synths, keening vocals, aching harmonies, lilting melodies, twisted sci-fi production, everything gauzy and reverby and prismatic. The rest of the tracks get a bit weirder, but unlike past B side excursions, they don't drift to far from the polished sympho-pop of the title track, there's the broody, pulsing sci-fi synthiness of "If They Move, Shoot 'Em", that eventually blossoms into some weird horn driven future pop bliss out, the aching heartfelt ballad that is "Is The Black At The End Good", that sounds like it could have been plucked right off their Yoshimi record, the minor key synth swirl cosmic ballad "Think Like A Machine, Not A Boy", and the loping, prog-pop of "Wolf Children, which is maybe the darkest and most dramatic of the bunch, until finally, the record winds down with the sprawling 10 minute closer, "Assassin Beetle - The Dream Is Ending", which starts off sounding like their recent full length the Terror, sort of krauty and spacey and creepy, before gradually morphing into a strange bit of orchestral exotica/cosmica, swirling faux strings, skittery, stuttery rhythms, robotic synth blurts, the vibe super cinematic and epic, building to a wild, noisy, grinding, distorted psychedelic coda, and more than the title track, sounding like music that could have accompanied one of the big battle scenes in the aforementioned big budget sci-fi blockbuster...
Very few copies left, and it was meant to be a Black Friday / Record Store Day release, so when we run out, we may not be able to get more...
'Tis a big day for everybody into the legendary free-rock unit Fushitsusha, lead by Tokyo's dark lord of psych and improv, Keiji Haino. Not one, but TWO new discs have just been released! They're on the same Japanese label, Heartfast, that put out the trio's two previous albums, back in 2012. When those discs came out, several months apart, they were welcomed by fans as the first new Fushitsusha's in over ten years. And, they were brilliant. Fortunately, it hasn't been as long of a wait for these two new discs, this time released simultaneously, and also excellent, staggeringly so. Fans are already hitting the "add to cart" button, but we'll go on with some details...
First off, these two, Namaewo Tsukenaide Hosii Namaewo Tsuketeshimauto Subetede Nakunattesimaukara (unofficial translation of title from the unofficial Keiji Haino webpage: "Please don't name it. If you name it, it will cease to become all"), which we'll refer to as the silver one, and Madaatatakaiuchino Konoimani Subetenonazowo Sosogikondeshimaou (unofficial translation: "In the now, while it's still warm, let's pour in every mystery"), which we'll call the gold one, both feature a NEW lineup, different from the previous discs on Heartfast. Now on bass, is Chiyo Kamekawa, a Tokyo psych scene veteran (Yura Yura Teikoku, The Stars, Cosmic Invention). The newcomer on drums, is Ryosuke Kiyasu, from the prolific underground Japanese noise/grindcore band Sete Star Sept. Interesting. Kamekawa is not as 'busy' as previous bassist Nasuno Mitsuru, while Kiyasu brings a LOT of youthful energy to his percussive attack when required. Indeed, with Kiyasu on board, it's no surprise that some of this gets FIERCE. Wouldn't be much of a surprise anyway. But there's also lots of contemplative passages as well on these discs, which are both varied, exhibiting a similar range of 'typical' Fushitsusha sounds... there's moody pieces, with percolating bass and drum skitter and guitar skree and sudden silences, converging and diverging in impossible patterns, Haino tearing his heart out with his lungs over top... some tracks even moodier, quieter and more restrained, like the absolutely lovely penultimate 15+ minute track on the silver album, wherein Haino alternates his chiming guitar strum with gentle (really) vocals, singing what sound like isolated syllables of his lyrics in mesmerically haunting fashion, or the second song on the gold album, all muted rhythmic thump and hushed vocals in the shadows. The finale of the gold disc is another, so stark and gorgeous and intense and emotional.
Speaking of emotion, then there are the tracks that blast with beyond-hardcore punk intensity, utter over the top freakery, sounding more like something a grind band like Sete Star Sept would do! You'll find a couple totally Napalm Death-ing it in under a minute, with insane inhuman vokills from Haino that make Khanate's Alan Dubin sound like a contestant on The Voice.
And, then there's the ones that find a middle way, like the first track on the silver disc, which erupts with staggering "big rock" chords, in a manner that's both chaotic and precise, with an almost melodic progression. We're reminded of US Maple's confusional no-wave here and elsewhere.
We're not gonna lie, we think if you're a Fushitsusha fan, you should of course buy BOTH discs. (If you're not a fan, why are you still reading? 'Cause you're curious? Well check out a sound sample and see what you think!). However we realize that two $28 import discs at the same time might be tough on the wallet. So if you decide to get just one (presumably, planning to get the other later on), then which to get? Well, we can't tell ya. Both are great, and we have equal quantities of both, so the best thing to do is just flip a coin. Or, like we said, get 'em both. Of course, with the 7 tracks on the silver one clocking in at 32:48, and the 8 tracks on the gold one running to 42:42, we can't help but notice that music here coulda fit all on one (long) disc, which would have saved everyone some money. But we're sure there's cryptic artistic reasons why that wouldn't have worked. And they certainly look nice, side by side, in their metallic-colored miniature lp style jackets.
'Tis a big day for everybody into the legendary free-rock unit Fushitsusha, lead by Tokyo's dark lord of psych and improv, Keiji Haino. Not one, but TWO new discs have just been released! They're on the same Japanese label, Heartfast, that put out the trio's two previous albums, back in 2012. When those discs came out, several months apart, they were welcomed by fans as the first new Fushitsusha's in over ten years. And, they were brilliant. Fortunately, it hasn't been as long of a wait for these two new discs, this time released simultaneously, and also excellent, staggeringly so. Fans are already hitting the "add to cart" button, but we'll go on with some details...
First off, these two, Namaewo Tsukenaide Hosii Namaewo Tsuketeshimauto Subetede Nakunattesimaukara (unofficial translation of title from the unofficial Keiji Haino webpage: "Please don't name it. If you name it, it will cease to become all"), which we'll refer to as the silver one, and Madaatatakaiuchino Konoimani Subetenonazowo Sosogikondeshimaou (unofficial translation: "In the now, while it's still warm, let's pour in every mystery"), which we'll call the gold one, both feature a NEW lineup, different from the previous discs on Heartfast. Now on bass, is Chiyo Kamekawa, a Tokyo psych scene veteran (Yura Yura Teikoku, The Stars, Cosmic Invention). The newcomer on drums, is Ryosuke Kiyasu, from the prolific underground Japanese noise/grindcore band Sete Star Sept. Interesting. Kamekawa is not as 'busy' as previous bassist Nasuno Mitsuru, while Kiyasu brings a LOT of youthful energy to his percussive attack when required. Indeed, with Kiyasu on board, it's no surprise that some of this gets FIERCE. Wouldn't be much of a surprise anyway. But there's also lots of contemplative passages as well on these discs, which are both varied, exhibiting a similar range of 'typical' Fushitsusha sounds... there's moody pieces, with percolating bass and drum skitter and guitar skree and sudden silences, converging and diverging in impossible patterns, Haino tearing his heart out with his lungs over top... some tracks even moodier, quieter and more restrained, like the absolutely lovely penultimate 15+ minute track on the silver album, wherein Haino alternates his chiming guitar strum with gentle (really) vocals, singing what sound like isolated syllables of his lyrics in mesmerically haunting fashion, or the second song on the gold album, all muted rhythmic thump and hushed vocals in the shadows. The finale of the gold disc is another, so stark and gorgeous and intense and emotional.
Speaking of emotion, then there are the tracks that blast with beyond-hardcore punk intensity, utter over the top freakery, sounding more like something a grind band like Sete Star Sept would do! You'll find a couple totally Napalm Death-ing it in under a minute, with insane inhuman vokills from Haino that make Khanate's Alan Dubin sound like a contestant on The Voice.
And, then there's the ones that find a middle way, like the first track on the silver disc, which erupts with staggering "big rock" chords, in a manner that's both chaotic and precise, with an almost melodic progression. We're reminded of US Maple's confusional no-wave here and elsewhere.
We're not gonna lie, we think if you're a Fushitsusha fan, you should of course buy BOTH discs. (If you're not a fan, why are you still reading? 'Cause you're curious? Well check out a sound sample and see what you think!). However we realize that two $28 import discs at the same time might be tough on the wallet. So if you decide to get just one (presumably, planning to get the other later on), then which to get? Well, we can't tell ya. Both are great, and we have equal quantities of both, so the best thing to do is just flip a coin. Or, like we said, get 'em both. Of course, with the 7 tracks on the silver one clocking in at 32:48, and the 8 tracks on the gold one running to 42:42, we can't help but notice that music here coulda fit all on one (long) disc, which would have saved everyone some money. But we're sure there's cryptic artistic reasons why that wouldn't have worked. And they certainly look nice, side by side, in their metallic-colored miniature lp style jackets.
Second in a new series of live records from John Dwyer's Castle Face records, the first being the recent live White Fence set captured just a few blocks down from aQ at the Amnesia (formerly the Chameleon), and now this, a kick ass smoker of a set from Ty Segall's -other- band Fuzz, whose debut we made our Record Of the Week recently, and whose sound is more like sixties psych meets seventies proto metal, super Blue Cheer-y, all fuzzed out, heavy, and spacey. There's lots of wild and chaotic drumming (courtesy of Segall, who mans the kit, while somehow handling vox too) along with some insane guitar shreddery, courtesy of Charlie Mootheart of the Moonhearts and Segall's band proper, who somehow melds classic rock crunch with blown out, cosmic, brain melting Hendrixian Hawkwindian howl. Live they're even MORE fierce, caught here in the act at local leather-daddy dive the SF Eagle, and on Segall's birthday too (the crowd sings happy birthday, and Segall gets a cake and blows out the candles mid-song!!).
Needless to say, if you dug the Fuzz full length, odds are you're probably gonna want this too, the songs way more loose and raw, stretched WAY out (only four songs!), the sound noisy and fuzzy and in your face, the band are on fire, it's the sort of sweat drenched, blood soaked blowout that deserves to be preserved for all of eternity. Dig it! And if you get the chance, don't miss these guys next time they play in your neck of the woods. Give this a listen and you'll understand why...
Still more indie rock from China, this one the debut from a band called Gar, who we actually got to see play when they were in SF with Car-Sick Cars and White +. Gar's sound is more traditional indie rock jangle, with a little Sonic Youth style noisiness mixed in. The opening track here is all dreamy clean guitar jangle, before fuzzed out guitars swoop in, and things get a bit more crunchy and angular, wreathed in echo and reverb, straight up nineties US indie rock worship, but these guys do it so well. The other side of Gar's sound comes to the fore on the second track, which is a bit more dreamy and jangly, with spidery guitar melodies, soaring vocals, and super minimal instrumentation, but even here, bursts of noise pop crunch, and weird almost mathy start/stops pepper the otherwise straight ahead pop. And so it goes, most of the songs here just on the edge of mainstream poppiness but laced with enough old school indie rock experimentation, and shoegaze buzz to keep it interesting. Fans of other Chinese indie rock like Car-Sick Cars and Streets Kill Strange Animals will definitely dig.
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It's hard not to love these guys, their sound less and less metal with every passing day, sounding like some alternate universe Blue Oyster Cult, more hard pop, or psychedelic rock than metal, which is evidenced even more here, on this EP, collecting all of the group's cover versions. Most fans already have their Abba cover, as it was a bonus track on the US version of their most recent record, which was ironically the most metal song on that record! But unless you got the Japanese import of the first record, you probably don't have their Depeche Mode cover, a KILLER version of "Waiting For The Night". But even if you DO have those, this is the only place you'll get to hear their cover of Roky Erickson's "If You Have Ghosts" and maybe most surprisingly, Army Of Lovers' "Crucified", both of which could be Ghost originals. And to finish things off there's a pretty great live version of "Secular Haze" recorded live in NYC...
We've long been fans of weirdo murk merchants Net Shaker, a duo who traffic in twisted Starfuckers style abstractions and echo drenched downtempo 'electronica', but of a sort you've likely never heard. Warped, and woozy, fractured, and gloriously fucked up. Well, Ernest Gibson, one half of Net Shaker struck out on his own, and delivered two cd-r's, both equaling the balls out weirdness of the Net Shaker mothership, but definitely digging a little deeper, although as we mentioned in our review of the most recent cd-r, the sound is not that far removed from Net Shaker, so much so, that at one point it had us mistakenly assuming Net Shaker was in fact just Gibson anyway. Apologies to the other half of Net Shaker! But fans of Net Shaker, and either of those two cd-r's will not be disappointed with Island Records, which begins with probably the most 'rocking' jam we've heard from Gibson or Net Shaker, all churning loping rhythm, detuned swamp guitar, mumbled FX drenched vox, and reverby twang, it sort of sounds like a more minimalist Woven Hand, it's got a similar swagger, a creepy apocalyptic vibe, but it's way more smeared and blurry and indistinct, the krautrock vibe is huge, super motorik and mesmerizing, it's the sort of thing we could listen to forever. It actually also reminds us of that Tony Conrad / Faust collaboration, but again, a bit more druggy and warped.
And while we'd like to say the rest of the record follows suit, it really doesn't, the sound does remain echo-y and swampy, reverby and darkly psychedelic, but the songs themselves seem to deconstruct before our very ears, sprawling into oozing expanses of jittery skitter, and moaning guitar thrum, bleary, baffling, slo-mo blooze-y stomp. There's lost of abstract drift, like disembodied pop songs via Nurse With Wound, all creaking and shimmering, crystalline sonic structures seemingly melting and crumbling in slow motion, the songs like time lapse recordings of these psychedelic implosions.
That krautrock vibe does surface throughout, "Groupwork" is like Moon Duo on thorazine, and "All Of Us Together" is like a slightly souped up Suicide, but in-between, rubbery basslines billow into clouds of slo-mo thrum, thick, twang guitar hovers over garbled vox and dense textural swirls and chordal swells, with some tracks delving into full on dub territory, but then it's like some sort of Spacemen 3 via the Scientist as re-envisioned by the Climax Golden Twins, warped and woozy and seriously sonically wonderful.
Includes a download code!
Two years ago, we made Swedish voodoo-psych act Goat's debut, World Music, an aQuarius Record Of The Week. But it was more than just a Record Of The Week, 'cause 2012 turned out to basically be the Year of the Goat, and not just here of course. Much of 2013 too - the insanely popular World Music was followed by a couple remix 12"s Record Store Day back in April, and two new Goat songs surfaced on a Sub Pop 7" single as well. But folks are of course still hankering for more Goat! Preferably a new studio album. This isn't that, as you can guess from the title, but it's still got the Goat fans here (which are ALL of us here) pretty darn excited. We haven't been lucky enough to get to see 'em play in person ourselves (unfortunately, San Francisco is a bit far from Goat's home village of Korpilombolo and their touring hasn't brought 'em out this way, yet) but we know Goat have a reputation as an amazing live act. Listening to this, we believe it, even though of course it's lacking the visual component, as apparently Goat on stage is a riot of colorful costumes and masks (where's the DVD version?!!?), but the powerful sonic aspect of their "live ritual" is certainly captured here, on this performance recorded in front of a 1000+ crowd on July 27, 2013 at Camden's Electric Ballroom in London, England. It's rawer and looser than Goat in the studio for sure, even more out there and wild. Goat's uniquely groovy, catchy, Afro-beat meets fuzz psych sound is as infectious as ever, as they do all the tracks from World Music, plus both sides of the Dreambuilding 7" too, jamming 'em all out a bit.
At first we thought, hmmm isn't it a bit premature for a band with only one album to their name to do the double live thing already? But with Goat it makes sense, giving fans who haven't seen 'em a taste of what they've missed - and those that have, a reminder of that experience. (Heck same goes for the live Fuzz disc too for that matter.)
Soundwise, this is pretty good, we mean, it does sound "live" but that's the idea; the only thing that really suffers is the vocals, they sound a bit better in the studio. Other than that, no real complaints. Well, a new song or two would have been cool. But the main thing is that Live Ballroom Ritual is super groovy, and now we REALLY can't wait for their next album...
This isn't what we normally expect from Austrian label Rock Is Hell, who in the past have brought us all flavors of weirdness/heaviness, from folks like Shit And Shine, Burmese, Nate Denver's Neck, Mark Deutrom, Ocrilim, Thee Oh Sees, XBXRX and more, but here we have some serious jazz, obviously on the noisy side still, but it's legendary saxophonist Gustafsson, here teamed up with Austrian drummer Didi (aka Dieter) kern, and the two engage in some serious skitter and skronk. A 20 minute blast of wild, chaotic, octopoidal drum splatter wound around a fantastic cacophony of bleats and blorps, the two constantly locking into some serious grooves, sort of avant free jazz funk at times, but always splintering back into something super free and abstract, the whole jam a constant push and pull between free from outjazz and dense freejazz groove. Killer stuff, essential modern free jazz for sure, and only an excerpt of a much longer jam!
This is a single sided lp, LIMITED TO 222 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in a silkscreened jacket, with full color paste on cover art.
Latest from this Beach Fossils side project, and another dreamy disc of eighties style new wave poppiness. And if the last few Heavenly Beat records were twee and precious, this new one might be the most yet, twee and precious that is. The opener "Lust" pretty much sets the template, all hushed wistful sad boy vox, chiming crystalline guitars, swirling ethereal synths, skittery programmed drums, all blurred into a sort of gauzey new wave jangle pop, that sounds like it could / should / would have been on Sarah or Postcard or one of those labels back in the day. We always seemed to mention the Style Council in our reviews of other Heavenly Beat records, but this time, the sound is even more delicate and soft focus, thinking that more apt comparisons might be Orange Juice, the Fire Engine, the Field Mice and the like. Really, this stuff sound so genuinely of that era, that we would have easily believed that this was in reality a long lost rarity, reissued from some super obscure Scottish twee pop band from back in the day. Which, if that's your cup of tea, makes this a seriously sweet slab of ultra-twee, new wave-y jangle pop dreaminess.
We just can't stop spinning this, the rockin' and rollin' new record from Sweden's wondrous Horisont, entitled Time Warriors. More like time trippers. It's another blast of their retro '70s proto-metal stylings, a la countryfolk Witchcraft, Graveyard, and Troubled Horse, but Horisont have a bit more of a "metally" sound to 'em, they're obviously big into the gallop of post-Sabbath '70s metal like early Judas Priest and Scorpions, when those bands were still sorta psychedelic though. We loved Horisont's previous two platters, and this one is hitting the spot just as much, or more!
Lotsa good riffs light things up left and right, plus the singer ain't afraid to really belt it out, letting loose with some high pitched screams as the need arises - reminding one aQ customer of the guy from Cirith Ungol! Singer and band both go at it with plenty of passion and power. You sure can tell they love what they do... and are damn good at doing it.
Most of the songs are sung in English, though a couple are in Swedish, including one called "Dodsdans" that lopes majestically in the vein of Thin Lizzy. Another one worth mentioning is epic (and aptly-titled) album-closer "All Must Come To An End, Part I & II", which gets super melodic and heartfelt, before a ripping and rollicking finale. Horisont can do emotive, and they can do ass-kicking. Yeah! In the running with Kadavar, Free Fall, and Hot Lunch for best heavy rock album of 2013 that sounds like it came out in, like, 1973. Well, this, maybe more like '76.
As we're sure you've noticed, over the past year, we've been reviewing tons of Chinese indie rock / noise pop / experimental music, and based on the response we've gotten, you're all digging it as much as we are. Even on this list, you'll find a bunch more cool weird Chinese stuff, including this one, from Hot & Cold, which oddly enough comes by way of Chicago label Moniker, but once you get an earful of these guys, it'll make perfect sense, cuz H&C are a perfect fit on Moniker, their sound a sort of zoner-psych, kraut-drone psychedelia, all programmed rhythms, loping stoned basslines, wasted Velvets vocals, and some blown out distorto organs, giving it all a kick ass lo-fi psych-garage vibe, that while not necessarily distinctly Chinese sounding, definitely hits the spot, falling somewhere between Moon Duo, Suicide, the Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3, and the like, all dirge-y, druggy outsider/weirdo mesmer. Border Area is killer blast of minimal, psych garage kraut-boogie that we have been digging like crazy!
Includes a download code too!
Back in 2007, this female Japanese singer-songwriter (and improvisor, too) made a cd with Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, called Slip Beneath The Distant Tree, that we really loved. Experimental pop/prog, which included covers of Genesis, This Heat, Soft Machine, and several classical composers. Eiko's multi-instrumental skills were impressive, and her sweet voice appealing - we said then we were curious to hear more from her.
Apparently the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke is a fan too, and probably had something to do with Drag City releasing this new Eiko Ishibashi solo outing, her vinyl-only domestic US debut, which he produced and also plays on. It's a dreamy set of songs, what Drag City calls "a progressive sci-fi pop album", and we can see why Eiko is apparently already kinda "big in Japan". Her gentle, whisper-ish vocals grace songs that swell with elegant yet jaunty piano melodies; there's tight chamber pop orchestration in back of it all, with rhythms that can get prog-propulsive, though this is definitely more light and airy of an affair than the more mathematically-minded music she made with Yoshida. Quite nice indeed.
Nine, yes nine, compact discs of Jandek ticklin' the ivories, and as always, Corwood Industries keeps this package at a very reasonable price. We probably don't need to go too much into the Jandek mythology, but we will mention that it is becoming clearer that Jandek is a self-aware artist and one who has a fair amount of knowledge of the world in which he exists. As is the case on albums like Blue Corpse and One Foot In The North, he can trade in the brutalism of atonal folk-strum for a rare declaration of urgent directness which still drips with utter sorrow. So when it comes to the piano, don't worry he doesn't just aimlessly plink and plonk around the piano for these nine discs (almost 700 minutes of music!). Just as he is very aware of the blues tradition when it comes to the guitar, he folds in the idioms of Satie's wallpaper music and Chopin's nocturnes within his own Jandekian vision. These meanderings are often pastoral and hypnotic; but occasionally, he gets into a manic, atonal frenzy that is maybe more what you might expect from a Jandek solo piano outing. What more do you want to know? It's 9 fucking CDs, NINE!! Of Jandek! JANDEK!!!
There was a highly dubious rumor going around that some sound ecologists boasted that they could identify the exact locations of water recordings based on the specific aural characteristics of mineral content, salinity, acidity, and whatnot. An obvious pile of bullshit, if we ever heard one; but we'd like to witness the ensuing debate of two blowhards making fools of themselves trying to argue that this sound of water came from Bangalore and not Brazil. Proof that two refined artists can hear totally different things from the same locations is found on Zones Portuaries. Here are two French modern-day concrete artists who use field recordings as the building blocks in composition; and both have done so for well over two decades having blossomed in the wake of the cassette culture of the '80s. Peyronnet may be better known as Toy Bizarre, whose prolific output clock in at over 200 compositions, all of which given the unwieldy and unknowable acronym "kdi dctb" followed by the corresponding number. La Casa did use the moniker Syllyk way back when, but probably nobody remembers that one. These two artists based their compositions on original recordings that were made in the same two cities (La Harve in France and Liege in Belgium) during the same year (2010, if you must know). La Casa's clamorous sounds from Le Havre give the impression of that city being a labyrinth of massive steel doors whose battleship resonance and squeaking hinges are constantly monitored by sensors and alarms. It's a very claustrophobic experience, and the Belgian recordings are equally as monolithic if more based on pneumatic motors and pressurized hissings, with a bit more of the environmental ambience (e.g. birds, foghorns, people yelling into walkie-talkies, etc.). Peyronnet's opening piece is a remix of La Casa's source material from Le Havre, reprising those same metal door bangings and oscillating alarm calls, although Peyronnet is far more likely to extract a particular frequency to build an alien drone suspended throughout the piece. His other two pieces adopt this strategy with compacted layers of hiss, grit, echo, and fizz that twist and bend with phase patterning undulations. Yeah, these are two totally different interpretations of the same locale; and both are riveting in their organic / synthetic amalgams of the urban environment.
This Dutch grind band boast one of the sickest singers EVER, in terms of lower-than-low guttural grunting ability. He's inhuman. And hilarious. So we love 'em for his "singing" (which in our review of the Dutch Assault comp they appeared on some years back, we said was a "rumbling drone instrument unto itself"), but the music is equally demented and distorted.
Here's a vinyl reissue of this band's debut cd from 1998. Definitely for fans of early goregrind style Carcass - which these guys definitely were! Twenty-six tracks here, with titles like "Entangled In Septic Gore", "Malignant Haemorrhage" and "Disembowlment Of Scattered Gastric Pieces" (just to cite some of the nicer ones!), you ought to know what you're getting into. Recommended wax for all perverted goregrind freaks. Don't worry we won't tell.
We'd been wanting to list this new Lightning Bolt for ages now, their first since 2009's Earthly Delights, it actually came out on vinyl last year, but sold out before we could get enough to list. Well, the vinyl remains unavailable, but we do now finally have the cd, and as you might expect, it's a doozy, Oblivion Hunter showing no signs of the group mellowing with age, in fact, there seems to be a lot of sonic experimentation going on. And folks (like us) who dug the recent Black Pus record on Thrill Jockey, Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale's solo project, will find much of Oblivion Hunter to be quite similar: murky and muddy, but poppy and weirdly hooky. Not that that doesn't describe LB in general, but really, just give opener "King Kandy" a listen, classic Lightning Bolt for sure, but in places it's SUPER melodic, and Chippendale's weirdly tuned snare, makes the drumming sound like there's all kinds of strange percussion happening, and much of the track is spent churning murkily, the drums a tribal flurry, the bass grinding malevolently, while the vocals soar over the top. Great stuff for sure, not too far removed from the sound we love, but pushing their sound enough so that the new LB is definitely different and exciting. Most of the rest of the record seems to veer a bit more into classic LB territory, although things stay pretty strange, tracks like "Oblivion Balloon" are crazy melodic and catchy, and tracks like "Fly Fucker Fly", sound almost like fuzzy garage rock sped up and super charged, while "Salamander" is a super progged out 'Bolt, frenzied and melodic, but sounding like it could almost be some classic psych/prog jam re-done, and finally, the record ends with the 13+ minute "World Wobbly Wide", which is easily the trippiest of the bunch, a sprawling psychedelic freakout, wild tangles of distorted melody, sounding almost like a raga or alien snake charmer music at times, while the drums explode wildly underneath, the second half of the track getting way more blown out, blasting, super distorted psych-noise trippiness, that reminds us just why we loved these guys so much in the first place!
Heavy Santa Cruz psychonauts Mammatus have always been big faves here at aQ. But good grief, has it really been six years since their previous platter The Coast Explodes?? Well we guess time flies (or, actually, doesn't) when you're way out in space like Mammatus must have been. From our perspective maybe it's been six long years, but thanks to the theory of relativity, space travellers Mammatus haven't been gone that long. What we're saying its, it's about time (apparently this lp's tracks were written in 2007/2008, recorded in 2009, and mixed in 2013). What we're also saying, is they're spacey. But, actually it's inner space they've been traversing. Judging from the album title, and the song titles here - "Brain Drain", "Main Brain", "Brainbow", and "Brain Train" - they've got brains on the brain, eh? But not the way zombies are about brains, they're not zombies, or at least, we've never seen an episode of The Walking Dead where the titular shamblers picked up instruments and churned out stoner psychedelic prog rock jams (though that'd be cool). No, it's all about inner space travels, being waaaaaay psychedelic in presumably the most druggy sense of the term.
This vinyl-only (drat say the cd lovers here) third Mammatus opus consists of those four (long) songs, two per side. Get ready for something that sounds like the shimmering droned out ritual ceremonies of OM and the Boredoms meets the martial discipline of fusion-wanked prog metal technicality. Mind blowing, yep. And that's just the first track "Brain Drain". The label brings up The Fucking Champs as a comparison, but also McLaughlin/Santana spiritual jazzrock, so less heavy metal than, uh, heady mental, yeah!
They've just played some record release shows for this one, and the band say they'll actually be recording another record next year, so thankfully it won't be a six year wait for more.
Latest full length from this local cello driven indie rock outfit, and their most lush and accomplished outing yet, produced by Bay Area psychedelic guru Greg Ashley, the band have crafted a strangely catchy collection of driving, string laden indie rock, inspired by heartbreak, as all worthwhile rock records are, opening with a hauntingly cinematic intro, all soaring melodic swells, buzzing cello, wild psychedelic guitar, plink plonk piano, which leads directly into a heady slab of pounding fuzzed out jangle, that then splinters and transforms into something downright proggy, crooned vocals over busy swirling piano melodies and woozy cello, before the guitars swoop back in, the song seesawing back and forth between crunchy jangle and tense moody brood. The following track drapes softly distorted vocals over loping bass, spidery melodies and fuzz guitar, adding some cool slide, and wild little tangles of psych guitar, and that ever present cello, definitely giving the sound its own unique vibe.
The rest of the record unfurls darkly and dramatically, shifting constantly from sound to sound, each sound (and song) seemingly representative of a step in the grieving process, Merch mainman Joe Medina translating that grieving process into sound, minor key miserablist downer pop blurs into stripped down bluesy rock, fuzzed out indie rock blossoms into bombastic almost progginess, twang flecked drifts sprawl into propulsive hypnotic minimalism which in turn transforms into shimmery acoustic folk and back again, the sound rife with hints of Sparklehorse, Giant Sand, TV On The Radio, and other purveyors of dark indie pop and fuzzy psychedelic garage rock.
Special colored vinyl version just for aQ (marbled grey swirl), also includes a poster, and a download coupon for the whole record!
Two new releases on this week's list from Medical Records, both of which have us once again wondering, where in the heck do they find this stuff?? Paul Nelson was a Portland native, who was obsessed with analog synthesis, he was well versed in music and music theory, but was also into ELP and Brian Eno, and as the years went on gathered more and more synthesizers until he had the opportunity to record an album, which was Vortex, recorded in 1981. Limited to just 1000 copies and self distributed, over the years Vortex became quite the collector's item, and it's easy to see why. The opening track, the only non-instrumental track, is a primo slice of futuristic synth wave electro pop, complete with robotic vocodered vox, crazy catchy, and ultra poppy, it's not hard to imagine "Automated Man" as a could/should have been eighties hit.
But the rest of the record is way more spacey, the bulk of the album made up of the five part title track, which finds Nelson channeling Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter, swirling synths, pulsing arpeggiations, spaced out and sci-fi and cinematic, especially on the second part, where things get downright Carpenter/Goblin-esque, fans of Zombi and Majeure and Umberto will flip for sure. The rest of the "Vortex" movements drift from planetarium show style cosmic drift, to smoldering galactic Euro-synth shimmer, to ominous, brooding soundtracky synthscapery. The suite is interrupted by "Labyrinth", which is all eighties electro pop, pulsing rhythms, programmed drums, swirling ethereal shimmer, you can almost imagine the Human League like vox that would fit perfectly, but instead, it remains instrumental, blissed out and softly psychedelic.
As always, fantastic packaging, heavy full color jacket, the vinyl 180 gram white opaque splatter, with a printed insert featuring an in-depth interview with Nelson, and of course, it's also super limited...
Still Life is the first physical offering from former aQ-staffer Marc Kate. For a couple years now, he has run the digital imprint Untitled & After, which branded itself as wanting to be the 4AD of techno when it grows up. Deep house, minimal techno, and a smattering of ambient tracks ripple through his understated, yet finely curated catalogue. But that's not what you're gonna get with Never Knows or at least with this one-sided single. Here, Kate supplies a grizzled, minimal wave cut driven by his crooning baritone, which is uncannily similar to Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode. It was never a secret (at least to us) that Marc's youth was shaped by the dark romance of new wave; but we never knew (sorry, pun intended) that he could sing it too! Musically, Kate takes after the more angular arrangements of John Foxx and Fad Gadget all grafted with an ominous synth noise scab picked off of the scraped knee from any number of the old kids who grew up in Sheffield circa 1979 (e.g. Clock DVA, Hula, Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, etc.). Hypnotic, seductive, gritty, and transgressively groovy. The track foreshadows a full album that is slated for the spring of 2014; and if this single is any indication, that album should be a fucking corker! The flipside to the album sports of silkscreen of a splattered image of Marc suffering the consequences of having a bucket of black paint dumped on his razor shorn head. Limited to a mere 250 copies, and comes with a download!
We just can't figure out Superior Viaduct. They're quickly becoming one of our favorite reissue labels, but they're so all over the map. From Devo to 100 Flowers, from the Solaris soundtrack to Factrix, from Heldon to Sensations' Fix, it's like a label version of someone's crazy record collection, which is exactly how it SHOULD be, and probably why we dig it so much! The latest reissue from SV is the 1982 debut lp from legendary modern minimalist / dronelord Phill Niblock. Nothin To Look At Just A Record consists of two sidelong pieces, extended instrumental tones, recordings of both Richard Lainhart and Richard Kelly at SUNY in the mid-seventies, edited to tape and accompanied by trombone, the result is dense and layered and intense, thick swaths of sound, multiple iterations of the same note, in constant motion, fluid textures and rhythmic beating, drifting overtones, all blurred and smeared into organic fields of rich lustrous sound. It's the sort of sound, that when it ceases, creates a sensation like the air is being sucked out of your ears, it's a sound that's almost physical, its energy palpable. If there was ever any question as to the power of the drone, the answer is right here.
Folks into more modern drone music who have yet to delve into the roots of those sounds (Riley, Reich, Young, Conrad and yeah, Niblock) might just discover a whole new world of sound to get lost in.
Super heavy old school tip on style sleeves, with a printed insert that includes both liner notes and the musical score!
Brand new ep from these aQ beloved noise pop shoegazers, and we have to say, we were thrown for a loop at first, as the first 90 seconds of opener "Last Boss" was stripped down and minimal, low slung bass throb, clipped drum skitter, ethereal vox, a new sound, but one we were sort of digging, but then at about a minute in, there's a weird stutter step and in swoop the guitars, and suddenly we're back in No Joy's blown out, distorted drenched dreaminess, those angelic vocals soaring over the top, practically perfect. "Starchild Is Dead" offers up more of the same, slowing things down to something a bit more dirgey, the guitars even more distorted, crumbling through the speakers, and buried beneath that crumble, soaring arcs of melancholic melody, and after a weird drum break, the vocals drift in, the song immediately transformed into some heavy, heavy shoegaze, that could, and should go on forever. Closer "Second Spine" is another stripped down sprawl of minimal jangle pop, this time, the shoegaze is more implied, the wall of guitars never arrives, instead, the rhythms skitter, the guitars shimmer and drift, and multiple vocals are woven into utterly dreamlike harmonies. We love this band so much, and three songs is definitely not enough, especially, when all told, they add up to about 11 minutes, but it's a pretty fantastic 11 minutes, that will have to hold us over until the impending full length, that we can only hope is coming soon...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered, includes a download code too!
Singles collection number three from these local garage rock heroes. The first was a double lp, and while packed with rarities, collected a lot of the singles we already had, but this one, this one we were super excited about cuz it gathers up a ton of tracks, that we, and presumably many of you, were never able to track down AT ALL, including two jams from their split with David Shrigley, their track from the Bruise Cruise split with Ty Segall, as well as the tracks from a split with Quintron as well as a split with The Mallard. They also toss in their tracks from the two Group Flex comps, as well as one track from the Floating Coffin sessions and two unreleased tracks, so minus 2 or 3 tracks, if you're anything like us, this is essentially like a whole new Oh Sees record!
And since it's all singles, it's all over the map, even moreso than Oh Sees records proper. There's the goofy garage pop lope of opener "Ugly Man", there's the percolating, fuzzed out jangle of "Girls Who Smile", and the blown out, almost Redd Kross sounding "Crushed Glass", everything in the red and blown out, a sixties style psychedelic stomp that kills. There's a killer cover of Sonic youth's "Burning Spear" that we might dig even more than the original, "What You Need" is all tribal drumming, Dwyer's reverbed high pitched yips, and yet still more fuzzed out guitars, heavy on the effects and studio fuckery too. "FBI2" from the split with Quintron finds Dwyer and co. doing their own version of a Quintron jam, a seriously primitive swampy graveyard garage rock stomp, while "Wait Let's Go" is pure jangle pop bliss out. "Always Flying" from the second Group Flex is a cool broody, fuzzed out garage pop dirge, all spare and swaggery, which leads right into "Devil Again" from the Floating Coffin sessions, and it sounds like it could easily have made it on the record proper, all sci-fi organs and garagey groove, rollicking and rambunctious, and finally, two live tracks, the first from the SF Eagle, an extended psych-fuzz groove, with some seriously kick ass breakdowns and some wild guitar slinging, and an even more lo-fi / raw live track captured at Death By Audio, which captures the sweat soaked bloody knuckled energy of the band pretty goddamn perfectly.
Packaged in a cool eye popping reflective silver digipack (vinyl out in December), and features the latest in the ever changing Castle Face logos, this one maybe our favorite, a grimacing castle/turret/volcano with braces!
The fifth release in David Byrne's World Psychedelic Classic series for Luaka Bop (the previous ones being from Os Mutantes, Tim Maia, Shuggie Otis, and the West African funk comp, Love's A Real Thing) is a killer survey of Nigerian Afro-electro-funk by the elusive William Onyeabor who self-released records between 1978 and 1985, before apparently converting to Christianity and refusing to discuss himself and his music ever since. Long in the making after years of trying to negotiate licensing with the difficult Onyeabor, this compilation is a revelation of outsider analog synth and politically-tinged Afrobeat caught right in between Parliament/Funkadelic and Fela Kuti.
Having previously only heard the tracks featured on the Love is A Real Thing and Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970s Funky Lagos comps, it's amazing to hear a whole collection of Onyeabor's music, with songs that sprawl well over the ten minute mark, and like Fela Kuti's music, filled with call and response female backing vocals and pointed lyrics over an infectious funk groove. "Something You Will Never Forget" repeats that line between Onyeabor and the female backing group before revealing, "One day you'll be lying dead". Other songs denounce war and the atomic bomb. But what separates Onyeabor from Kuti is his astonishing analog synth skills that propel the music into much stranger psychedelic territory. Like that Francis Bebey collection we raved about a while back ago, this release is bumping and of course comes highly recommended.
Only here on cd at the moment, but we'll get the triple vinyl version back in hopefully real soon!
Released last week exclusively for Black Friday Record Store Day, here's a deluxe limited edition double vinyl version of this all-time Lee Perry & The Upsetters roots dub reggae classic. With one of the best album covers ever, a crazed giant super ape uprooting trees.
From 1976, recorded at Perry's famed Black Ark studio, it's an essential production from the man. Who is the Man. When it comes to dub production. Up there with other Perry-produced classics of the era like the Heart Of The Congos and War Ina Babylon.
You get three sides of dubbed out Scratch & The Upsetters groove - including 3 bonus cuts not on the original Island lp - with the fourth side featuring a custom etching. Also in the package, a 23" x 23" poster! One of the better Black Friday RSD releases in our opinion.
Like it says on the cover, Dub It Up Blacker Than Dread!
