Life Cycle Of A Massive Star is a pretty ambitious title for a record from post-dubstep beat junkie, but if Roly Porter's last record, Aftertime, which we made a Record Of The Week, was any indication, a lot has changed since Porter's time in the dubstep duo Vex'd. Not that we didn't love Vex'd, we definitely did, their brand of dubstep was way out on the fringe, dark and dour, warped and skeletal, washed out and hazy, but none of this is to imply that Porter's post Vex'd output would in anyway be classified as dubstep, BUT some of the soundscapery that made Vex'd so interesting is definitely in full effect, even more so on this new one.
Aftertime was a sprawling experimental epic, more sound design than anything, abstract and ambient, like the score to some mysterious abstract art film, reminding us of another aQ fave, Ben Frost, and like Frost's albums, it was most definitely a record that had us wondering why this guy was not in Hollywood, crafting music for big budget sci-fi blockbusters and twisted art house flicks. So we were actually expecting more of the same, but Life Cycle Of A Massive Star threw us for a loop, the opener "Cloud" does actually sound like a Vex'd jam, a pulsing, pulsating Field like melodic stutter/loop, with some clipped vocal fragments, you can almost imagine the drop coming at any time, a barrage of rib cage rattling bass wobble, and percussive machine gun stutter, but it never does, instead, it locks into a super hypnotic cycle, that has a bit of a kosmische vibe, a sort of synth-age mesmer, but the main pulsating melody is surrounded by dark swirls of keening minor key shimmer, giving the whole thing a super tense, and intense vibe, at least until the last couple minutes, when the loop peels back, revealing an ominous, majestic symphonic score, that could have been lurking below the surface the whole time. And even then, slowly devolves into a creepy stretch of abstract ambience, and post industrial soundscapery.
The rest of the record tends toward the sound design of Aftertime, but with some of the newly revisited Vex'd audio of the past. Deep subsonic rumbles, buzzing Eastern melodies, groaning and creaking machine like clatter, clouds of crumbling static, soaring swirling strings, moaning cellos, operatic vocals, that track, sounds like a Vex'd opera, melancholic strings, deep dramatic vocals, peppered with little bursts of percussive skitter, and a 'beat' of sorts, that's more like the opening looped stutter, again a la the Field, but here, wed to the stately operatic majesty, the result is like some post modern electro-opera symphony, super ambitious, and absolutely epic. After a gorgeous track of hushed ambience, the final track gets seriously cinematic, opening with some ominous drones, some blurred barely there melodies, a little bit of orchestral shimmer, creepy chordal swells, distant clang and clatter, like the sounds of an abandoned space station, lovely and cosmic and subtly harrowing, a fantastic bit of sound design evoking images of being lost in space, trapped millions of light years from home, in a huge metal obelisk, floating in starless black, all complete with a gorgeously intense symphonic score.
During the fall of 2004, I (Jim) had the privledge of travelling to Australia for a month or so. Well, I guess that technically makes it *spring* of 2004; anyway, I met a lot of great people who had some amazing record collections, including a bunch of Australian post-punk and new wave stuff that probably never made it outside of Melbourne or Sydney. Of everything that I heard, there were a few bands that stuck in my memory: the Laughing Clowns, Microfilm (which happened to be the first band of Lisa Gerrard who later went on to found Dead Can Dance), and then there was the Primitive Calculators which was by far the best thing I heard. After asking around about those recordings, it became clear that I was probably going to be out of luck or out of a ton of money. So, I simply filed those band names away in hopes of coming across them somewhere, sometime, somehow. You could imagine my surprise when I discovered a compilation from the Primitive Calculators in a box from one our distributors. It's sort of like Christmas when you get that cool gift that you forgot you asked for, instead of the ugly sweater or pair of wool socks from Grandma. Anyway, The Primitive Calculators were Melbourne's answer to the Screamers, although I'd be hard pressed to believe that they actually heard that legendary techno-punk ensemble. It was more likely that The Primitive Calculators came to their sound through Suicide and the No New York compilation, in particular DNA and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Their intense, throbbing post-punk songs centered around the raw electricity of twin synthesizers and drum machines hammering out noxious arppegiations whilst the lead singer / guitarist Stuart Grant screamed, grunted, and scraped up and down his guitar in short, sharp blasts of epileptic energy. This CD documents their one and only LP, which was a live recording in which the audience appears to dwindle despite the fact that their set gets more and more intense, culminating in a ridiculous cover of Lloyd Williams' soul standard "Shout." Fortunately a bunch of their studio recordings round out the CD, giving their exceptional songs a much fuller sound. Even without the serendipitous experience of re-discovery, I'd still love this record!
We made the debut lp No Visitors from these Texas drugged out psych/doom/noise/kraut/sludge weirdos a Record Of The Week back June, and well, since these tracks were culled from the very same recording session that produced that record, you could very well consider this a sort of Record Of The Week part two, and really if you dug No Visitors, this is more of the same, blown out psychedelic heaviness, that sounds like a mashup up of the Butthole Surfers, Hawkwind and Shit And Shine, all filtered though AmRep nineties noiserock and Texas knuckle draggers Rusted Shut. Which if you're anything like us, is about all you need to know. But if you're new to Quttinirpaaq, or just need a reminder, give a listen to the first couple samples below. The brief sort-of intro, the sweetly titled "Diary Of A Pig Keeper's Wife", is all detuned trudge, crumbling slo-mo riffage, death march drums, weird, slowed down chant like vocals, this is some sort of wasted, psychedelic ultra doom, but it's on "Chinese Hercules" that Quttinirpaaq really get to flex their musical muscles, locking almost immediately into some seriously tranced out, heavy hypno-rock riffage, that weds super distorted drum pound to churning looped riffage, garbled vox and swirls of noise and effects into some heavy, space, psychedelic noise rock that takes everything we love about White Hills, The Heads and all the rest, cranks it WAY up, and drags it through the filth, resulting in some seriously next level kraut-sludge space-psych heaviness that KILLS.
And while it doesn't necessarily get better from there (not sure how it could really), it stays pretty epic and psychedelic, heavy and warped, tripped our and trancey, most of the tracks some weird sort of hybridized psychedelic krautrock and noise rock crush, the band locked into endless grooves that roil and churn mesmerically, while all around sounds swoop and swirl, streaks of feedback, blasts of FX, constantly shifting textures, buried melodies, all blurred and smeared into heaving, noisy, heavy psych weirdness.
Some of the tracks here get downright out there, some surprisingly beautiful, still noisy, but infused with surprising melodies, and crafted with a delicate touch, while others are just pure skull caving crush, and still others are almost electronic sounding, seemingly dabbling in the same warped outsider electronics as Shit And Shine.
Needless to say this RULES. Everyone who bought and loved No Visitors, is gonna want this too. And if you've yet to check these guys out, Let's Hang Out might just be your new favorite heavy / noise / psych / space jam. You have been warned.
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, clear with 'blood red spray'. Comes with a full color insert, and it's LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
If you never heard of this obscure eighties female fronted world-pop outfit, get in line. An unlikely mix of Teutonic new wave and dubby balearic dance pop created in Bremen, Germany, Saada Bonaire only released one single in their lifetime. Now Captured Tracks, through its new imprint Fantasy Memory, has brought to us the complete recordings of this short-lived outfit, and it's pretty amazing, especially if you are into lost post-punk disco rarities as much as we are. Created by Bremen DJ Ralf Behrendt in 1982, and recorded in Kraftwerk's studio by legendary dub-punk producer Dennis Bovell (The Pop Group, The Slits) featuring an array of jazz and world musicians hired from the local immigrant center, Saada Bonaire was fronted by Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfield, whose sultry but blase delivery make their sound a sort of hybrid between the domineering dance music of Gina X and Grace Jones and the breezy dub of Brenda Ray. The aforementioned single "You Can Be More As You Are" is an infectious post-disco club classic, that probably had a lot more traction in southern Europe than in the west. Their music, with its exotic flourishes and dreamy tropical rhythms, seems tailor-made for warmer climates, and we can easily see these tracks being played in sunrise dance sets after a long night of clubbing. Definitely a band that should have been a lot bigger than they were, their lack of success the fault of EMI's A&R man who notoriously went over budget with the acts he developed. After going over 5x the budget for Tina Turner's Private Dancer, EMI pulled the plug on Saada Bonnaire and they were rarely heard from since. This anthology covers everything the band recorded between 1982 and 1985, but still remains surprisingly modern sounding for being 30 years old.
Hey guess what? It's a sequel to the first Sax Ruins record, 2009's Yawiquo on Ipecac, which we had kind of assumed was a one-off. But nope, they're at it again, sax and drums to the max! In Sax Ruins, Japanese drummer extraordinare Tatsuya Yoshida, who (in Ruins) normally teams up with a bass player, is instead accompanied by the saxophone stylin's of Ryoko Ono. She's got a set of lungs on her, all right. Squealing and bopping like John Zorn hopped up on happy pills.
Of the 13 instrumentals here, four are improvs (all in a row at the end of the disc), two are brand new Yoshida compositions, and the rest are interpretations of pieces from previous 'real' Ruins releases, some of their most 'mathiest' in fact, the songs being mostly drawn from Vrresto, Pallaschtom, and Refusal Fossil, though our resident aQuarius Ruins nerd (Allan!) was particularly happy to hear a much older fave, "Bighead", from 1990's Stonehenge.
As before, hearing these Ruins tunes with saxophone rather than distorted bass, they are less heavy but no less intense. The complex structures remain, and the melodic content becomes more pronounced. Some of this is really lovely - but hectic hyperactivity is always, like, a nano-second away. Of course! So, if you forget what you're listening to, it's a little bit like the jazzy theme music to some old TV variety show GONE CRAZY. Or, as we said about their first effort, "Imagine a stripped down, pepped up marching band playing really wild Carl Stalling / Raymond Scott style cartoon music". Also, just think of the sort of sounds the saxophone/peacock collage creature on the back cover might make. Recommended to serious fans of Ruins, Zorn, and all crazy math/jazz crossovers.
By the way, we noticed that along with the array of saxophones Ono plays (alto, baritone, soprano, and tenor), she also is credited with flute. But not enough of it. That's what we want for their next album together, please - Flute Ruins!
FYI, Blimmguass vinyl version upcoming in January 2014.
Another lost gem from the fine folks at EM records in Japan. How do they do it? We're having trouble even discerning a pattern other than the fact that pretty much everything they release totally rules! This disc is called Ten Dubs That Shook The World and we weren't actually sure it was even a dub record until we threw it on, but it is, and no surprise here, it absolutely rules! Just the fact that one of the tracks is called "Grossly Overweight Dub" pretty much guaranteed that this would be a winner. The interesting thing about Sherriff Lindo & The Hammer is that it is actually the work of Anthony Maher who just so happens to be a member of sound experimentalists the Loop Orchestra. Which makes a bit of sense, when you realize that the Loop Orchestra utilized only analog tape machines and spliced tape to produce their Jeck like dronescapes. Exactly the sort of musical mind and old school approach that would lead someone to be into folks like Lee Perry, King Tubby, Prince Jammy and the like. So when Maher wasn't meticulously plotting out collaged soundscapes with his loop buddies he was holed up in his home studio concocting a vast array of tripped out psychedelic dubs. We're huge proponents of effects, especially in dub, take that snare, hit the delay and let it repeat forever and ever and ever, better still, change the speed and pitch while it's going and create a stuttering wall of dizzying sound. The Bush Chemists are still the champions when it comes to pushing the limits of FX common sense in the quest for the ultimate dub, but Sheriff Lindo comes close. But this isn't gimmicky or anything, this is true dub, but just with an extra helping of delay, so snares stutter and hiccup, huge swaths of melody get buried in sonic murk before drifting higher and higher in the mix, dreamlike dubs floating in a psych swirl of careening rhythms and subtle simple melodies, so awesome. Definitely one of our new favorite dub records (well, new OLD records, as this came out on lp years ago, only 250 copies pressed, but youknow what we mean). Definitely worthy of a place alongside the Perry's and Jammy's and Tubby's in your collection for sure.
As with all EM releases, super deluxe liner notes, original album cover art, lots of photos, and this time liner notes in English too!!!
Not '80s metal, not '70s metal, this is '60s metal. Or at least, heavy hippie psychedelic garage rock to be more precise. The Shadow Kingdom label, who seem to go for cult current metal bands and even more obscure reissues, reached pretty far back for this one, all the way back to the late sixties (the recordings collected here date from between '65-'70 as far as we can tell). Stone Garden were from the Pacific Northwest, predating the Seattle grunge scene by a couple decades... But if they'd been born later, we could almost imagine 'em on Sub Pop, playing shows with Mudhoney and, uh, Soundgarden, yeah.
Pounding drums and bass, wild jamming organ, and plenty of throbbing distorted guitar, that's what you get from Stone Garden. No, it's not Black Sabbath (it never is) but this ought to appeal to heavy psych, proto-metal heads into Blue Cheer, Bubble Puppy, Sir Lord Baltimore, Iron Butterfly, Fraction, Negative Space and the like. For the era, and considering their age (in the pictures here, Stone Garden are really young looking, though shaggy-haired, teenage kids still in high school), this was on the HEAVY side of the blues rock spectrum most definitely. Not all of it, but enough of it. "Assembly Line", ferinstance, is an appropriately grim lament, laced with acid guitar soloing. They were into Cream and Hendrix, you can tell.
Throughout these 15 tracks, production quality varies, some material was recorded in a real studio, others in a basement home studio, still others in a living room, or live on stage. So this collection has got a patchwork production vibe for sure, but that doesn't stop Stone Garden from rockin'. And when they did make it into a studio, they took advantage of it, you gotta love the freaky tape speed manipulation studio shenanigans that make "Grayworld Forest" an even weirder place to wander than the title suggests.
Stone Garden's music has been reissued before, originally on a limited edition (long out of print) vinyl by Rockadelic in the '90s, and also on compact disc by Gear Fab, but this Shadow Kingdom cd edition is the best, with a bunch of previously unreleased bonus tracks and a nice booklet full of liner notes, vintage photos and, on the back, what we're guessing was the b&w flower power sleeve of their sole 7" release, circa 1969, with the boys looking really REALLY young on it. Which means you can flip the booklet around and have it as a the cd cover instead of the crappier looking "Stonehenge" cover inherited from the Rockadelic lp version, if you like.
Never fails. This is the umpteeth time we've listed the always-fab Ugly Things fanzine when the new issue has shown up at aQ on pretty much the day of the list. And it's not any easy 'zine to skim through - this issue's a thick 184 pages between two glossy covers! We WISH we had time right now to sit down and delve into this issue's many lengthy features, and huge section of reviews, but that will have to wait until the weekend. We look forward to it. But what we can tell you is, there's lots of good stuff in this issue for anyone into what Ugly Things covers: "wild sounds from past dimensions".
Actually, we already started to get sucked into one of this issue's big feature articles, all about the mysterious saga of golden boy/acid casualty Craig Smith, aka Maitreaya Kali, who made the very collectable and freaky psych-pop album(s) Apache/Inca. As Mike Stax puts it in this issue's introduction: "It's without a doubt the darkest, deepest, saddest and strangest tale I've ever worked on." And it took Stax 13 years of research to bring Smith's story to print.
Also we're excited to delve into the latest installment of Cyril Jordan (of the Flamin' Groovies) regular column about, basically, why we all wish we had been living in San Francisco in the '60s and into rock n' roll like he was. Yeah, everybody's full of stories about how things were so much better back when, but he's pretty convincing. As he puts it, aside from the fact that bands still use electric guitars, pretty much everything else has changed. "You know, things like roots, chops, talent, looking good, and let's not forget the most important ingredient: knowledge of classic rock'n'roll music - has all been washed away by BULLSHIT!"
Also in this ish: Andrew Loog Oldham, The Motions, The Haunted, The Dream, The Radiators, British beatnik writer Royston Ellis, and tons more. Plus all those reviews already mentioned. Yep, we know what we're doing this rainy weekend, curling up with this magazine and a cup of tea.
Uncle Acid's debut came out of nowhere to be the runaway heavy rock hit of last year. And like the last Electric Wizard album, it was one of those rare records that seemed to leap all genre lines. Quickly becoming one of the most played records at aQ, with metalheads and non metalheads alike. Similarly, we sold TONS of them, and not just to heavy music folks. And it most definitely IS heavy. But like Ghost, and Goat, and other heavy bands people flipped for recently, the group's heaviness was tempered by heaping helpings of poppiness, that transformed what at first blush might seem simply like more Sabbath worship into something else entirely.
Originally released in such tiny numbers that initial pressing disappeared before most anyone got a chance to grab it, that and the weird band name, and of course the 'mystery' surrounding the group and its members, resulted in the sort of hype most bands would kill for. But once we (and everybody else) got an earful, we were sold. Heavy and groovy and hooky, super psychedelic, totally rocking, with a very Ozzy-ish vocalist, killer songs that would have translated seemingly just as well to a non metal band, but metal it most definitely was, but the kind of groovy hook filled metal they just don't make so much anymore.
Our first taste of this highly anticipated new record, Mind Control, came in the form of first single "Poison Apple", which pretty much takes up right where Blood Lust left off, sounding like it could have been a deep cut plucked from the first record, a woozy, slithery main riff, that kills, the vocals sing-songy and crazy catchy, lots of swirling psychedelic organ, if anything a little bit darker than the first record, but that's most definitely not a bad thing at all. When we finally did get Mind Control, we were initially convinced that in fact it was much darker and more woozily psychedelic, opener "Mt. Abraxis" is a smoldering slither, all fuzz drenched minor key Sabbathian grooviness, and we were LOVING it, and were totally prepared for a whole record of dark, minor key, psych-metal doom, but then BAM, the song explodes into some seriously catchy, and almost proggy sounding poppiness, still fuzzed out and heavy, but crazy groovy and rocking and sorta FUN sounding if that makes any sense, but then before you know it, they slip right back into another classic doom-ic dirge. Which is pretty much the magic of Uncle Acid, balancing epic Sabbathy true doom groove, with what is essentially heavy popsyke, which results in what will no doubt be lots of folks fave heavy record of 2013, which it's fast becoming for us too.
And it seems a strange coincidence that the new Uncle Acid would come out around the same time as the new Ghost, cuz the two bands definitely share some sonic DNA. Check out tracks like "Evil Love", which sounds exactly like Ghost's modern channeling of Blue Oyster Cult, but of course Uncle Acid crank that sound WAY up into something more lysergic and metallic, but at its core, it's still essentially classic hard rock for sure. Or there's "Follow The Leader" that almost sounds like a more metallic Spacemen 3, super droned out and psychedelic, and laced with slide guitar and a bit of twang, wrapped in clouds of hazy heady buzz, but seriously fuzzed out and dreamily druggy. And while we talk about how hooky and poppy Uncle Acid are, they do deliver the doom, it heaping sludgy spoonfuls, with plenty of tracks unfurling like long lost Sabbath B sides (the whole record way better Sabbath than the new ACTUAL Sabbath song we just heard), and it all culminates in the epic closer "Devil's Work", which seems to be the best fusion of all of the group's disparate influences, a droned out main riff, a dense metallic chug, that churns beneath some super poppy seventies classic rock sounding melodies, and eventually mutates into a hushed, dreamy, drifty, slow burn psych jam fade out.
So fucking great. With this AND the new Ghost, it's a wonder we've managed to listen to anything else at all lately.
A fantastic compilation of amazing French cosmic prog-tronic jams that is blowing our minds! An incredible survey of experimentation and rhythm that shows us that while the French may not have invented prog or disco, they certainly had the most fun taking those genres to their outer limits in exciting combination. Practically everyone is represented, including cinematic gems by Jean-Michel Jarre, Alain Goraguer (La Planet Sauvage composer!), Patrick Juvet and Serge Gainsbourg; Moog workouts by Jean-Jaques Perrey, Quartz and Pierre Bachelet; and cosmic disco reveries by Bernard Fevre, Space, Droids, Space Art and Cerrone. But there are also plenty of rarities from groups we know less about: Atomic Crocus, Rene Roussel, and Universal Energy amongst many others. Dig the Mobius-style cover art too. So Killer!
One of two new Medical Records releases on this week's New Arrivals list, this one the first ever Medical compilation, gathering up a collection of extremely rare singles in conjunction with the like minded Crispy Nuggets blog. Electroconvulsive Therapy gathers up five rare singles, both the A and B sides and tacks on two super obscure compilation tracks. Fans of Medical Records will no doubt be thrilled by these obscure gems, and like most Medical releases, we can safely say we'd never heard, or even heard OF any of these. Up first is The Electronic Circus, who hail from the UK and feature Chris Payne, who played on Gary Numan's Pleasure Principle. The sound here is much more synth poppy though, female vocals and swirling synths over pulsating rhythms and pulsing percussion, the B side though is much more strange, at least contextually, just stately solo piano, wreathed in reverb, and laced with subtle synthiness. Up next is Psychic Youth, from Boston, both sides of their only single, originally released in 1982, the sound is more cold wave, frosty female vocals over minimal synthwave, the B side featuring male vocals, but otherwise sonically similar, arpeggiated step sequenced synths and stripped down programmed rhythms. Then there's another UK band, this one going by the strange moniker Aaaah...!, their sound classic eighties synth pop, moody and minor key, with dramatic crooned vocals, the B side warped and woozy and squelchy, and definitely the more twisted of the two.
Then there's Shazam, another obscurity, whose A side sounds a bit like Depeche Mode via Men Without Hats, swirling synths, and skittery programed rhythms, and a main melody that sounds lifted straight from another classic song you'll no doubt recognize, the B side more stripped down and spacey. Finally, the last complete single is from Claude Arto, he of another outfit recently reissued by Medical, Mathematiques Modernes, the A side another purloined classic melody, here wreathed in bleeps and bloops and squelchy synths, while the B side is all crunchy distorted synths and tangled melodies. The comp tracks come from N.A. Pop 2000, whose song is a moody slab of dark electro pop, complete with some really cool, weird female vocals, dramatic and affected, and Berliner Strasse from Yugoslavia, who adds some guitar jangle to woozy, bloop, bleep synths and some super icy, male vox, the whole thing fantastically woozy and warped.
Fantastic stuff for sure. Medical Records obsessives will definitely want, as will anyone into rare synth pop and vintage cold / new / synth wave weirdness. Super deluxe packaging as always, the vinyl pressed on 180 gram paint splatter transparent green vinyl, housed in a heavy, full color jacket, and like most things on Medical, very, very limited!
Paying tribute to one of the greatest musical beings of our lifetime is a pretty hefty challenge but luckily M. Ward, who put together this comp, did a really nice job of bringing together artists who have been greatly influenced by Fahey's guitar playing and legacy. You can hear in the these covers how deeply felt Fahey's music has been to the next generation of musicians who use guitar as their tool of expression. This is one of those rare tributes that doesn't feel like a haphazard hack job. Fahey's music is so spiritual and pure that there is no doubt everyone on here was honored to pay their respects and came through with excellent versions of Fahey originals. With people like Devendra Banhart, Lee Ranaldo, Howe Gelb, Sufjan Stevens, Calexico, Pelt, Cul De Sac, Currituck Co. and more all contributing covers, it's so nice to hear how they each came to a Fahey song with their own aesthetic at hand. Released on Vanguard who put out many of Fahey's classic albums, the packaging is really nice with each artist contributing a blurb about their relationship with Fahey's music. Tribute records aren't usually this thoughtful and well executed and we're so glad that for John Fahey it was done right because he deserves nothing less then excellence in his honor!
Dust-To-Digital does it again! With what might be one of their most impressive releases to date. Which is saying a lot, considering how much we love pretty much everything they release. A quick list of some of our favorite D-T-D releases should give you an idea of what we're talking about: those recent Lonnie Holley albums, Kassidat: Raw 45's from Morocco, Luk Thung: Classic & Obscure 78's From The Thai Countryside, Opika Pende: Africa At 78rpm, Pictures Of Sound, Excavated Shellac, Victrola Favorites, we could go on and on and on and on. Look up any of those on the aQ site and read our extensive and effusive ravings about all of them.
And this new one, a sprawling four cd collection of 78s from Southeast Asia, is yet another stunning release, in every way, the mysterious and lovely music collected here, the design, the research, it's a gorgeous object on top of being one of the best reissue compliations of the year. Curated by David Murray, who also assembled the Luk Thung and Kassidat collections, and who curates the Haji Maji blog, which explores 78rpm Asian music, Longing For The Past is like a class in early 20th century Southeast Asian music in a box, 90 tracks, four and a half hours, the music culled from the years 1905-1966, and offering up an expansive and varied sonic snapshot of music from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The temptation is to simply paraphrase the extensive liner notes, but there's just too much here to fit into a review. We're also tempted to describe this compilation song by song, but again, we could do a whole list just on this one release. All you really need to know, is that this is fantastic. The music is incredible, an breathtaking sampling of Southeast Asian music, fans of the genre, even those who consider themselves amateur experts, will be blown away, many of these tracks reissued for the first time, and the sonic breadth is stunning too, folk music, pop music, gamelans, percussion, strings, gorgeous vocals, so varied that it almost seems too reductive to even describe a handful of them, odds are lots of aQ-ers are gonna want this already, but check out the sound samples below too. Odds are you'll be smitten. And in terms of cultural import, that can't be underestimated, as much about the music of this era, from this region, has remained mostly unexplored before now.
And as with all Dust-To-Digital releases, the packaging is crazy. There's a huge nearly 300 page hardcover book, with tons of liner notes, about the record industry in Southeast Asia, music from each country, and a complete breakdown of each track here, with a description of the artist and the song, not to mention an extensive bibliography, as well as hundreds of vintage photographs, reproductions of record labels and sleeves, and so much more. The cds themselves are packaged in a massive 8 panel digisleeve, printed and embossed, and everything is then housed in a deluxe printed/embossed box. So gorgeous. And for world music obsessives, absolutely essential!!
MPEG Stream: VA N H I B A N W I T H T H E VA N H I B A N T R O U P E "Xu Toi Bang Qui Phi, Thu Nhi" [/audio/valngngftpst4cddtd1.m3u]
A pretty fucking choice compilation of wintery dronemuzik, post-classical bleariness, and somber variations on the pop ambient theme divided equally between the heavy hitters and the newcomers, with a couple of San Franciscan dudes making the grade (including our own Jim Haynes!).
The former Slowdive drummer Simon Scott opens the album with a blissful shimmer of amorphous shoegazing blur'n'drone pocked with echoing synth tones twinkling like satellites glinting the suns rays back to earth. A Winged Victory For The Sullen (one of the projects that blossomed from the ashes of Stars Of The Lid) twinkles a series of heartwrenching piano motifs laced with stringed orchestrations all bathed in a beautifully maudlin atmosphere. The lugubrious melodies from Black Swan reprise those hauntological strategies of Leyland Kirby's recontextualized 78s with equally emotive results. When it comes Haynes' track, Jim quipped that he tried to make something pretty but the colors of the rest of the album rendered his track much more ominous than anticipated. A stealth mode piece of shortwave drone, billowing noise, and scabrous textures, considerably darker than anything else on the compilation, but it's certainly a top shelf slab of isolationist griminess. Immediately following is En, who open their track with a bright strum across a koto, those plucked tones become the painterly gestures of a wintery landscape as seen from the comforts of a stone farmhouse surround by snow and frost. The Swedish outfit Pjusk slows down a monophunk bassline to an undanceably slow torpor, suspending deep-space ambient transmission pulses for a track that does remind us of the bleak atmospheres found on that fantastic Raime album Blackest Ever Black released in 2012. Noveller's take on the Durutti Column's guitar impressionism is a beautiful way to end this exceptional album. There is a very clear narrative arc that Ghostly International has scripted through these tracks, one that is evocative of the many moods of late autumn and early winter with grey skies and sheets of bonechilling rain giving way to clear sky nights for winter solstice dreams. (Also available on vinyl, but we're waiting for copies.)
Hot on the heels of the third volume, comes number 4, the second to last installment in this amazing 5 volume series collecting some of the most essential Italian Spaghetti Western soundtrack music, and at this point, we're not sure what else to say without repeating ourselves. Fans of the first three, we're guessing you'll probably want this one too. But for those who are only discovering this series now, odds are everybody knows Ennio Morricone, and his iconic Italian Western soundtracks (in fact the title of the series is a Morricone tune!), and while he may be the most famous, he was far from the only one, folks like Bruno Nicolai, Gianni Ferrio, Francesco De Masi, Marcello Giombini, Luis Bacalov, Stelvio Cipriani, Alessandro Alessandroni, Nora Orlandi, Nico Fidenco, Piero Umiliani and lots more (all represented here), were making equally stunning music for these amazing films. And here (and on previous volumes), you can get a taste of what they were whipping up: deep dramatic crooned vocals, swoonsome strings, lots of dusky twang, fluttery flutes, wild percussion, wheezing organs, some tracks jazzy and progged out, rife with wah and fuzz guitars, others brooding and minimal, haunting and balladic, and still others, sun baked and dusty, Mariachi trumpets over steel string strum, lots of sound effects too, super varied, and in places super psychedelic, this might be the weirdest and most varied of the bunch, and thus is as essential as the first three for sure - if not even more so!
Like the previous volumes, part 4 comes housed in a full color gatefold sleeve, adorned with various images from classic Italian Westerns as well as artwork from classic Spaghetti Western posters, and again, LIMITED TO 750 COPIES!!!
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The UK's Shock label, run by cranky aesthete Stefan Jaworzyn (an ex-member of both Whitehouse and Skullflower), was once our go-to source for top notch and occasionally transcendent underground noise/improv/freakery, back in the '90s. So we're stoked that a few of Shock's crucial compact discs from the era have just been re-released (though we rather suspect that these are NOT new pressings - more likely, Stefan found some boxes under his bed!), including two albums by his band Ascension, and two great compilations - the Deep Funnels Of Entry collection of Twisted Village weirdness, and this one, the oddly titled White Trash Motherfuckers. This classic comp of "psychotic sounds" (as it says on the back cover), with its Savage Pencil cover drawing of a crazed, repulsive-looking Edgar Winter, has been a longtime fave of several of us here since it first came out in 1993. There are comps, and then there are comps, this is one that stands up on its own as more than a 'sampler', with all the tracks exclusive to this release as far as we know.
It begins with three tracks of improv skree from an early version of Ascension (sans Stefan), including one titled "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" (bonus points if you remember what that refers to). That's followed by the blown out industrial noise rock ugliness of a mysterious unit called Beautiful Penis, who only ever appeared on this disc as far as we can tell. Fans of abject Swans/Godflesh style clank n' plod n' feedback will want this for their three tracks alone. (Anyone who can tell us more about Beautiful Penis, like if they had other recordings, please get in touch.) Next up, four transmissions from bizarre plunderphonic noisniks Cosmonauts Hail Satan. Very, very '90s sounding of course, with samples of Southern preachers and such, accompanied by isolationist drones and industrial rhythms. We loved stuff like this back then, and kind of miss it now.
Getting back to improv skree territory, the next four tracks are from Derv, the solo project of Ascension drummer Tony Irving. There's drumming in Derv, but also a lot of fuzzed out electric guitar, played percussively. Gorgeously splintery distorted stuff, that fans of Keiji Haino and Rudolph Grey ought to dig. Allan here was so taken by these tracks, back in the day, that he wrote to Irving and interviewed him for a 'zine he was doing at the time. They're still friends on Facebook (hi Tony!).
Already this is well worth the price of admission, but there's still two bands left... three tracks from The MikePostMortem, another clanking industrial noise unit with lots of loops and feedback (and again one that we've only encountered here), and then the finale comes in the form of one long track (11:35) by scumrock purveyors Splintered, a punishing noisy rhythmic attack that's the most 'metallic' thing on here, kind of in the vein of Skullflower, Godflesh, Terminal Cheesecake and the like. Good stuff, listening to all this now makes us want to dig into our collections to spend the rest of the night feasting on early '90s noiserock nastiness, stuff on not just Shock but also labels like Pathological, PDCD, Fourth Dimension, Noiseville, etc.
From whatever gnarly realm they inhabit, Vasaeleth have crawled forth (or maybe they've learnt to walk, but they ought to crawl - to make an H.P. Lovecraft reference we're sure they'd appreciate), to bring us this insalubrious ep, following up their 2010 debut full-length Crypt Born And Tethered To Ruin. While we had expected another full-length, this is actually just as effective at providing a sonic gateway to festering, sick cosmic scenes (a la the cover art, once again by Antichrist Kramer). With just five songs here, about 18 minutes, Vasaeleth don't hold back, taking a crushing, chaotic approach to their blackened, doomed-out metal of death. All uproarious darkness, indeed! Rolling and rumbling, strangely energetic and even almost upbeat a lot of the time, this sounds like the Cookie Monster getting a good workout - we can see him doing jumping jacks to this, grunting along as the drums beat and blast, and guitars howl and harmonically squeal. Often slashing for the throat, but sometimes slowing into sludgy torpor, the riffage here is perfectly putrid, as are the vokills. Once again, Vasaeleth prove themselves to be one of the most potent and original of the many would-be modern incarnations of old Incantation vying for today's underground doomdeath throne.
Dragging themselves upward from the moist earth of San Francisco's most dilapidated graveyard, local filth merchants Vastum have returned to expel upon the world another pungent platter of churning decrepit death metal. There's no technical wankery to be found herein. There's no prog fusion guitar virtuosity. The approach here is strictly no frills, strictly barbaric. Snaking nauseous guitar harmonies coil around Cro-Magnon drum plods and guttural vomitous vocals. The mood is doomy and grotesque. The guitars are such a thick nebulous mass that even the album's faster moments seem mired in swamp, like an intense dreadful vertigo or the inevitable swallowing horror of sinking into quicksand. But what sets this apart from the myriad other old school death metal bands who seem to have writhed out from the woodwork these past few years is the quality of playing and the quality of the sound. As primitive as this style of pummeling death metal may be, the playing here is tight and deadly, while the production is the perfect balance between cavernous and clean - all of the atmosphere of an empty forgotten mausoleum, but with none of the details lost. If at the altars of the old gods you still worship (translation: Autopsy, Incantation, etc. etc.) then this is an absolute must have.
When You Are Crawling is an ep addendum to the recent Remember Your Black Day full length from Vatican Shadow, aka Hospital Productions and Prurient mastermind Dom Fernow. Vatican Shadow's Middle Eastern gothic industrial techno gets a slight reworking here, with two tracks from Remember revisited, first the title track, which gets smoothed out a bit, its churning rhythm laced with looped breathing, and backed by minor key melodies, spare and skeletal, even more so here, the beats building throughout, until the final few minutes is transformed into something much more aggro and electro, all the while, the background sounds remain hushed and abstract. The other reworked track is "Not The Son Of A Desert Storm But the Child Of Chechnya", which is all girded industrial churn, and deep chanted monk like vocals, the sounds grimy and gristly, and once again, the beats seeming to transform over the length of the track, getting dirtier and murkier, the surrounding sounds this time following suit, a mesmerizingly propulsive industrial electro groove.
"Atta's Apartment Slated For Demolition (Bouthayna Engineering)" appropriates its title from an older Vatican Shadow release, and unfurls a heady bit of minimalist skitter, draped over soft focus chordal swells, and shimmering distant drones, much more laid back than the other two tracks, and the longest at nearly 15 minutes, the sound shifts constantly, getting murkier and housier part way through, before once again splintering into something much more caustic and corrosive near the track's end, and again, it's just the beats being mutated, as the background sounds remain washed out and melancholic. Finally, "Al Qaeda" is another dark groove, Muslimgauze by way of Techno Animal maybe, a moody, murky sprawl, that in this case, grows MORE murky, shedding most of the surrounding sounds leaving just a stuttery beat, surrounded by sonic echoes and abstract shadows.
LP number three from these local psychedelic cosmonauts, and like the two previous ones (both of which we made Records Of The Week), the nearly unpronounceable weltraumruckfuhrungsubereinkommen, finds VH delving ever deeper into the cosmic ether, but unlike those past outings, this new one is way less raw, more polished and focused, the recording too, at least in places, much more high fidelity, the sound lush and layered and expansive, the closest they've come to capturing a majestic ur-drone / psychedelic raga bliss out. Still hugely beholden to their krautrock forebears, VH deliver an ever shifting soundworld of dense tangled drumming, flurries of murky rhythmic drift, wreathed in clouds of high end shimmer, which blossoms into straight up psych-kraut drift, all fluttery flutes and loose percussion, not to mention billowing clouds of sitar like buzz, while elsewhere, loping motorik rhythms, drift in and out of dense washes of electronic squiggles, distant melodies, blurred chordal shimmer and soft-noise ambience, all woven into a heady, hypnotic sprawl, anchored by slo-mo caveman drumming, not to mention occasional blasts of kosmische trip out, wedded to mysterious percussion, and woozy spaced out FX, not to mention swaths of keening guitardrone melody, scraped strings, buried tabla like rhythms, everything wreathed in alien electronics, and soft swirls of divine druggy ambience. As always, gorgeous, fantastically tripped out stuff.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! We have less than ten that we got direct from the band. If/when we run out, it'll take a little while to get more from the label overseas, and they'll likely be more expensive. So grab one quick while you can, or be prepared to be patient and to pay a bit more...
Packaged in hand screened sleeves, screen printed in two different colors. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 20 GUILDERS "New Songs And Wrong Songs For Patricia" (Gulden) cd 14.98 ABDUL-RAUF, LEILA "Cold And Cloud" (Saadi Saati / Pesanta Urfolk) lp 19.98 ANIMA MORTE "The Nightmare Becomes Reality" (Transubstans) lp 19.98 ANNIE GIRL & THE FLIGHT "s/t" (Calar Music) lp 14.98 APHEX TWIN "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" (Apollo / R&S) 2lp 29.00 AQUA NEBULA OSCILLATOR "Spiritus Mundi" (Tee Pee) cd 14.98 BEGGARS "s/t" (Lotus House) 2cd 13.98 BLACK FLAG "What The..." (SST) cd 10.98 BLOOD ORANGE "Cupid Deluxe" (Domino) 2lp 25.00 BOARDS OF CANADA "Twoism" (Warp) lp 21.00 BONNIE PRINCE BILLY "s/t" (Royal Stable) lp/cassette 15.98/8.98 BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, THE / TEENAGE MONSTER (WALTER GREENE) "OST" (Monstrous Movie Music) cd 27.00 BRAN (...) POS "Den Of Ordure And Iridescence" (Resipiscent) lp 15.98 BUDD, HAROLD "Budd Box" (All Saints) 7cd box 58.00 BURNING TREE "Lammergyer" (Utech) lp 19.98 CAIRO GANG, THE "Tiny Rebels" (Empty Cellar Records) lp 11.98 CALLAHAN, BILL "Dream River" (Drag City) lp 17.98 CARPENTER, JOHN "Assault On Precinct 13" (Death Waltz) cassette 9.98 CHATHAM, RHYS "Outdoor Spell" (Northern Spy) cd/lp 9.98/12.98 CHURCH OF MISERY "Thy Kingdom Scum" (Rise Above / Metal Blade) 2lp 32.00 CLOSED ROOM "s/t" (Valse Sinistre Productions) cd 12.98 CORYELL, LARRY "Barefoot Boy" (BGP) cd 11.98 COUM TRANSMISSIONS "Home Aged & The 18 Month Hope" (Dais) lp 22.00 CYBOTRON "Motor City Machine Music: An Exploration Of Cybotron" (BGP) cd 14.98 DAMNATIONS HAMMER "Disciples Of The Hex" (I Hate Records) cd 16.98 DANTESCO "We Don't Fear Your God" (Inframundo) cd 13.98 DAVIS, MILES "Kind Of Blue" (Columbia) lp 25.00 DAVIS, MILES & THENOLIOUS MONK "Miles & Monk At Newport" (Columbia) lp 25.00 DBUK "The Red Cross Is Giving Out Misinformation / Immaculately Warded Children" (Pesanta Urfolk) 7" 9.98 DE MEESTER, LOUIS "Alpha Recordings" (Dead Cert) lp 24.00 DEMENT, IRIS "Infamous Angel" (Plain) lp 16.98 DESTROYER "Five Spanish Songs" (Merge) 12" 13.98 DOT WIGGIN BAND "Ready! Get! Go!" (Alternative Tentacles) lp 14.98 ENDING PEOPLE "Fill Your Lungs" (Cash Cow Production) lp 14.98 ENTRANCE BAND, THE "Face The Sun" (Beyond) lp 19.98 ERICKSON, ROKY "Don't Slander Me" (Light In The Attic) 2lp 28.00 ERICKSON, ROKY "Gremlins Have Pictures" (Light In The Attic) 2lp + 7" 26.00 EXTINCTION DE LOS INSECTOS "Untitled" (Lupus / Chingaste La Confianza) lp 19.98 FALCON (EX-CIRCLE) "Beer & Ribs b/w Sunset Street" (Full Contact) 7" 8.98 FIGURE STUDY "Lesson One / Pirouette" (Dark Entries) 7" 6.00 FIGURE STUDY "s/t" (Dark Entries) lp 14.98 FLAMIN' GROOVIES "Shake Some Action" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98 FONTAINE, BRIGITTE "Comme A La Radio" (Superior Viaduct) cd 15.98 FONTAINE, BRIGITTE "Est... Folle" (Superior Viaduct) cd 15.98 FOUR TET "Beautiful Rewind" (Text) cd/lp 14.98/23.00 FUZZ "s/t" (Easy Rider) cassette 12.98 GENERALISSIMO "s/t" (Arbeit Macht Dinge) 3" + cassette 5.98 GHOST "Opus Eponymous" (Rise Above / Metal Blade) lp 25.00 GLAXO BABIES "Nine Months To The Disco" (Superior Viaduct) cd/lp 14.98/15.98 GOODBYE & AMEN (GUIDO & MAURIZIO DE ANGELIS) "OST" (Intermezzo Media) cd 29.00 GORGUTS "Colored Sands" (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98 GROUP RHODA "12th House" (Not Not Fun) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 GUNN, STEVE & MIKE GANGLOFF "Melodies For A Savage Fix" (Important) lp 24.00 GUTTERIDGE, PETER "Pure" (540 Records / Xpressway) 2lp 28.00 HAZLEWOOD, LEE "Lee Hazlewood Industries: There's A Dream I've Been Saving 1966-1971" (Light In the Attic) 4cd + book + dvd + flexidisc 91.00 HIDDEN MASTERS "Of This & Other Worlds" (Rise Above / Metal Blade) cd/lp 14.98/32.00 HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER "OST" (Intrada / Universal) 2cd 27.00 HOT AND COLD "Any Monkey Is Dangerous" (Maybe Mars) cd 12.98 HUNX & HIS PUNX "Street Punk" (Hardly Art) cd/lp 12.98/13.98 HUSERE GRAV "You Are Transparent" (Crucial Blast) cd+zine+button 9.99 IKEDA, RYOJI "Supercodex" (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98 ILLUSTRATION SONORE "Undisciplined Strips Of Emotions" (Medical) lp INHALT "Occupations" (Dark Entries) 12" 11.98 JACUZZI BOYS "s/t" (Hardly Art) cd/lp 12.98/13.98 JANDEK "Athens Saturday" (Corwood) 2cd 12.98 KEITH, RODD "Black Phoenix Blues" (Roaratorio) lp 17.98 KINIT HER "Storm Of Radiance" (Pesanta Urfolk) 2lp 26.00 LARAAJI "Essence/Universe" (All Saints) cd/lp 15.98/23.00 LAUREL HALO "Chance Of Rain" (Hyperdub) cd 15.98 LEATHER STRIP "Teenage Demos" (Dark Entries) lp 14.98 LIVING MUSIC "To Allen Ginsberg" (Roundtable) lp 22.00 LORD NASTY "Phuck Em And Forget Em" (self-released) cd-r 11.98 LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE "Live In Mexico City" (Captcha) lp 17.98 LORNA DUNE "Miamisphere" (Lo Bit Landscapes) 12" 11.98 LOS SIQUICOS LITORALENOS "Sonido Chipadelico" (Sham Palace) lp 17.98 LOW / SHEARWATER "Stay / Novacane" (Sub Pop) 7" 5.98 MAGIK MARKERS "Surrender To The Fantasy" (Drag City) lp 19.98 MAJEURE "Romance Language" (Temporary Residence Ltd.) 12" 19.98 MANSFIELD, JOE "Beat Box Obsession" (Get On Down) book+cassette 70.00 MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKAKKE "Far West" (Important Records) lp 17.98 MAZZY STAR "Seasons Of Your Day" (Rhymes Of An Hour / Fontana) cd/lp 15.98/29.00 MCDOWELL, FRED & ANNIE MAE "My Home Is In The Delta" (Sutro Park) lp 14.98 MELNYK, LUBOMYR "Three Solo Pieces" (Unseen Worlds) cd/lp 16.98/23.00 MEN, THE "Campfire Songs" (Sacred Bones) 12" 16.98 MGMT "s/t" (Columbia) lp 31.00 MIMINOKOTO "Chofu, Ekoda, Koenji [Live In & Around Tokyo]" (Plunk's Plan) cd 14.98 MINOT "An Era Of Institutional Failure" (self-released) cd-r 11.98 MIRKWOOD "s/t" (Machu Picchu) lp 22.00 MITTOO, JACKIE "In Cold Blood" (Striker Lee / Ernie B's) lp 17.98 MOCKASIN, CONNAN "Caramel" (Mexican Summer) lp 22.00 MOORE, ANGELO "Sacrifice" (self-released) cd 8.98 MORBID / MAYHEM "A Tribute To The Black Emperors" (Warhammer) cd 10.98 MOTION SICKNESS OF TIME TRAVEL "Ballade For A Beaver Moon" (Motion Sickness Of Time Travel) cd-r 15.98 MR. WILCOX "s/t" (Self Released) cd 7.98 NEW PANTS "Boxset 1998-2011" (Maybe Mars) 7cd box 90.00 NILSEN, BJ "Eye Of The Microphone" (Touch) cd 15.98 NOCTOOA "Adaptation" (Owl & Troll) cd 11.98 NOSTALGIST "Monochromantic" (Nostalgium Directive) 7" 8.98 NOTHING "The Grey Subaudible" (Nostalgium Directive) cassette 8.98 NOVELLER "No Dreams" (Important) cd 14.98 O.RANG "Herd Of Instinct" (Sleuth) lp 24.00 OBSESSED, THE "The Church Within" (Columbia) cd 15.98 OOZING WOUND "Retrash" (Thrill Jockey) lp 19.98 OSCILLATION, THE "From Tomorrow" (All Time Low) cd/lp 14.98/17.98 PAINKILLER "The Prophecy" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 PENNY PENNY "Shaka Bundu" (Awesome Tapes From Africa) 2lp 29.00 QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE "...Like Clockwork (Black-On-Black Edition)" (Matador) 2lp 24.00 QUELLA VILLA ACCANTO AL CIMINTERO (WALTER RIZZATI) "OST" (Beat Records) cd 29.00 RADIOACTIVITY "s/t" (Dirtnap Records) lp 16.98 RAJATTTAJAT "Awopbopaloopop Alopbam Raja" (Ektro) cd 14.98 ROCKEY, PALMER "Rockey's Style (Movie Album)" (Trunk) cd 16.98 RUSSELL, ARTHUR "Another Thought" (Arc Light Editions) lp 28.00 SATAN PANONSKI "Hard Blood Shock" (S-S) lp 15.98 SAVAGE, JON & STUART BAKER "Punk 45: The Singles Cover Art Of Punk 1976-80" (Soul Jazz) book 39.95 SCHICKERT, GUNTER "Kinder In Der Wildnis" (Bureau B) cd/lp 17.98/23.00 SKORNIK, GUY "Pour Pauwels" (Lion) cd 14.98 SOUNDGARDEN "Screaming Life / FOPP" (Sub Pop) cd 12.98 SOUNDS OF THE CITY EXPERIENCE "s/t" (Jazzman) cd 17.98 SPACE LADY, THE "Greatest Hits" (Night School) cd/lp 14.98/21.00 SPINAL TAP "From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: This Is Spinal Tap" (The Control Group) lp 31.00 SSLEEPERHOLD "Ruleth" (Holodeck) lp 17.98 STARSKATE "Goodnight Nobody" (Goth Horse) lp 11.98 STEEL POLE BATH TUB "Tulip" (Boner) cassette 8.98 TALABOT, JOHN "DJ Kicks" (K7 Records) cd 15.98 TARTUFI "These Factory Days" (Southern) 2lp 23.00 TINDERSTICKS "Les Salauds (OST)" (Lucky Dog) lp 29.00 TOTALLY RADD!! "Shark Attack Day Camp" (Bad Idea Graveyard) lp 19.98 TURNER, MICK "Don't Tell The Driver" (Drag City) lp 22.00 V/A "Angola Soundtrack 2: Hypnosis, Distortion, & Other Sonic Innovations 1969-1978" (Analog Africa) cd 24.00 V/A "Classic Blues Artwork From The 1920's 2014 Calendar" (Blues Images) calendar+cd 19.98 V/A "Dead Good: Eternal Classics From The Grim Reaper's Jukebox" cd 10.98 V/A "Deep Funnels Of Entry : A Twisted Village Compilation" (Shock) cd 17.98 V/A "Hassaniya Music From The Western Sahara And Mauritania" (Sublime Frequencies) lp 25.00 V/A "Mobilisation Generale: Protest And Spirit Jazz From France 1970-1976" (Born Bad / Digger's Digest) 2lp 29.00 V/A "Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988" (Strut) 2cd 16.98 V/A "Paink: French Punk Anthems 1977-1982" (Born Bad Records) cd/lp 16.98/21.00 V/A "Punk 45: Kill The Hippies! Kill Yourself!" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 32.00 V/A "The Orchestra Of Futurist Noise Intoners" (Sub Rosa) 2lp 26.00 VENOM P. STINGER "1986-1991" (Drag City) 2cd 16.98 VILE, KURT "It's A Big World Out There (And I'm Scared)" (Matador) 12" 11.98 VILE, KURT "Walkin On A Pretty Daze (Deluxe Edition)" (Matador) 2cd 15.98 VOIDS "Burial In The Sky" (Popnihil Recordings) cassette 8.98 VON BRAUND, STEVE MAXWELL "Monster Planet" (Dual Planet) lp 27.00 WALKER, PETER "Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms?" (Delmore Recording Society) lp 21.00 WHEN PROPHECY FAILS "Baffling Configurations" (self-released) cassette 4.98 WHITE, EMILY JANE "Blood/Line" (Important Records) cd 14.98 WIKKID "The Intro (1 Man Black Metal Band Bay Area California)" (self-released) cd ep 4.98 WILDHONEY "Like Me" (Nostalgium Directive) 7" 5.50 YO LA TENGO "Fade (Deluxe Edition)" (Matador) 2cd 16.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "Calmont Breakdown" (Fourth Dimension) cd 17.98 ZABRISKIE POINT "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Double LP Expanded Edition" (Watertower Music / Warner Archive) 2lp 33.00
We made the 2012 Drag City reissue of Woo's 1989 album It's Cozy Inside, Record of the Week, but upon hearing this recent reissue of the group's 1982 debut, Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong, we knew with even MORE certainty that we had to make it a Record of the Week as well. We have been playing this constantly in the store for weeks, and with each listen becoming more enamored with its blithe mosaic of introspective soundscapes and quiet pop-jazz sensibilities. Reissued by Emotional Rescue a few months ago, we wanted to list this sooner, but the vinyl version had already sold out (it's being repressed, we're told), but we have the cd version while supplies last, so we recommend you act fast.
By the time It's Cozy Inside was released, the eccentric brothers Mark and Clive Ives' highly individualized method of making music using acoustic guitar, bass and clavinet processed through synthesizers to create strange hybrids of jazz and pastoral electronica was largely dialed in. But on their debut, with its compelling title and cover depicting a young child surrounded by the authority figures of religion, politics and academia all pointing in opposing directions and acting as a personal manifesto for forging ahead on one's own unique path, the sound is at once more open ended, searching and strange than the later record. Intermixing buoyant melodic passages with serpentine experimental sonic arrangements and rhythms, Woo sounds like a band made up of way more than just the two brothers. The opener, "Swingtime" is the perfect start. An intricate and bright melody punctuated by drum machine, labyrinthine bass and acoustic guitar, sounding like the crystalline guitar lines of Durutti Column, before suddenly dropping into the hot gurgling percussive ambiance of "Pokhara" with its Middle Eastern guitar sounds, made from sped up dubbed out rhythms. Each track melds into the next like an alien and otherworldly soundtrack, or more aptly, like aliens hearing the early jazz melodies of Django Reinhardt for the first time and trying to emulate that sound using modern technology. The sound is gentle, but never quite relaxing. Nothing stays at rest, but at the same time, nothing is rushed either. Moody and pensive, the layered acoustic guitar work is incredible, as it anchors the tenuous atmospheric backing of electronics and muddled loping rhythms. "Razorblades" channels the Brian Enoish side of David Bowie's Low into a dense and worried jazz deconstruction. The one vocal track, "The Attic" is a dreamy pop masterpiece seemingly transported from Factory Record's Benolux imprint or Les Disques du Crepuscule, two Belgian based labels that focused on the dreamier side of European new wave avant-garde pop in the eighties. Anyone who's a fan of those labels, and bands like Antena, early Thomas Dolby, John Foxx, Bill Nelson and later Tuxedo Moon as well as solo releases by Steve Brown, Benjamn Lew and Peter Principle, will find a kindred spirit in Woo's epic gentleness. We were playing this one day when ex-Yellow Swan Pete Swanson paid us a visit and he asked us what was playing. He had been told by many friends that he should definitely look into Woo, but listening to the track playing, he couldn't really understand why. But Woo is not a band you can just check out a track and get it right off. It's disarmingly soft in a way that may come off as wimpy at first, but it eventually gets under your skin in ways that are subtle and mysterious and then you can't stop listening.
A beautifully elastic and hard to pin down musical force. Limited!
We were pretty nuts for the first record from these UK indie rockers, whose self titled debut sounded like it was actually some long lost American indie rock record from the nineties, all indie jangle, and fuzzed out shoegaze shimmer, the vibe was Dinosaur Jr. big time, but also Mazzy Star and the Pixies and lots of other bands we dug from back in the day. We also compare some of the tracks to more contemporary garage poppers like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, but on this new one, Yuck have definitely pushed their sound, which is clear from the first track, which stretches out a lovely clean guitar figure, all chiming and minor key, and then laces it with lilting melodies, woozy low slung bassline, some warbly organ, and maybe most surprising of all, some horns! Sound weird, but it definitely works. But fear not, by song number two, we're right back in 1995, jamming this Yuck cassette into the tape deck in our parents' car, as we head out to pick up our friends and do whatever we did when we were young. Glow & Behold totally has that kind of vibe, much of the crunch and fuzz of the first record has been dialed back a bit, so this new one is more mellow and melodic, for the most part, but then on tracks like "Middle Sea", Yuck kick out the jams, and once again have us imagining vintage Dinosaur or even the Swirlies, especially with the gorgeous boy/girl harmonies, and blasts of mathed out shoegaze buzz. The horns resurface here and there, and yeah, for the most part, this record is way more 'mature', barring a song/part here and there, but it still pushes lots of our classic indie rock buttons, and we find ourselves listening to this a lot, and digging it quite a bit!
