Finally, a full length from these Finnish post punks, fronted by none other than Mat 'Kvohst' McNerney, who also fronts aQ beloved avant black metal weirdoes Code, as well as apocalyptic psych-folk combo Hexvessel. Fans of those Code records no doubt dug the many Interpol-isms, woven into the group's black buzz, and for us, it's what made that band so weird and special, and that brooding, post punkiness takes center stage in Beastmilk, whose sound falls more in line with groups like the Holograms, Iceage, Grave Babies, Cold Showers and yeah, Interpol. Fans of that sound, that sort of modern, Joy Division beholden, gothic gloom punk, will flip their shit over Climax, which is chock full of noisy guitar squalls, angular minor key melodies, angsty, dramatic vox, pounding drums, angular riffage, all woven into tight, taut, tense, Wire-y jams that push all those same buttons. There's even a sort of Woven Hand vibe happening, McNerney's vocals a dead ringer at times for David Eugene Edwards, and Beastmilk's sound not that far removed from WH's more rocking apocalyptic swampy swagger. Noisy, punky, sinewy, hooky and still pretty heavy, Climax is a pretty perfect chunk of modern post punk gloom rock that we can't seem to stop listening to, although we haven't been trying all that hard either!
We won't go into too much detail with this one, cuz like everything else we've ever had from this Aussie dronescaper, this is extremely limited (just 50 copies total, of which we got 10), which is a shame, cuz as we've mentioned in past reviews, the music of Berber Ox is pretty goddamn fantastic, and is definitely the sort of thing that deserves to be heard by more than just fifty people. Needless to say, act fast if you want one of these, cuz like the two tapes, and two cd-r's we've had before, Private Everywhere is another stunner, melding field recordings with strange psychedelic ambience, abstract percussion, buried rhythms, shifting textures and tangled melodies, heaving swells of chordal thrum underpin fields of high end pulses, and mysterious echo drenched rhythms, skeletal and spare, all drifting above hushed expanses of truncated voices, of crumbling chords, of swirling electronics. In places, the sound blossoms into fierce fields of blackened buzz, the sort of dronelord dirge that could give SUNNO))) a run for their money, while in others, the sound swings all the way to the other end of the spectrum, unfurling slow blossoming field of bell like chimes and gamelan like melodies, blurred into meditative sprawls of dreamdronedrift.
Long tracks that build slowly, weaving their way through daily life, the sounds of cars, bicycles, footsteps, loudspeaker announcements, all hover in the ether, while modern minimalist dronescapes pulse ominously, emitting arcs of subtle overtones, constantly shifting and mutating, slipping easily from ominous, sinister rumble, to crystalline cosmic shimmer and back again, finally culminating in the strangely out of place closer, that adds to the Berber Ox sound, a skittery Kompakt like techno beat, sounding like it could end up as a 12" on UK label Trensmat, which is not a bad thing at all...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in a cardboard sleeve, with full color, paste-on artwork affixed to the front and back.
These keep flying out of here, but we finally have enough (at the moment) to list... For the first time perhaps since his early Palace Brothers days, Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham is self-releasing and self-distributing his latest record on cd, lp and cassette. Like our favorite Bonnie Prince Billy records, like the great Master and Everyone, this new release is beautifully intimate and spare. Using just his guitar and voice to get to the core of heartbreak and lament, his plainspoken delivery world-weary yet hopeful, getting right under the skin and close to the bone, like no one else can. Our new favorite BPB release in quite awhile.
Death Waltz alert! John Carpenter alert! Awesome soundtrack alert! Death Waltz finally gets to this Carpenter soundtrack, at last. And they've put it out on compact disc (in stock and being reviewed now) as well as of course on vinyl, which we're told should be here next week possibly. Heck they even did a cassette version, sadly much too limited for us to get.
Assault On Precinct 13, a low budget action thriller from 1976, is one of our favorite Carpenter flicks - and film scores. Like so many soundtracks, this mainly consists of variations on a theme - a pretty damn cool theme, though, simple and effective. You'll probably remember it as soon as you hear it... dah dah de dah dah dum dum duh de dum, sorta sounds like it could have been used as the triumphant theme for some Rocky-like boxing movie, except that it's way too sinister for that. Just a few fat distorted synth notes, over a drum machine driven rhythm. The whole soundtrack is drum machine driven, sometimes nothing BUT drum machine, very atmospheric and "old school", sounding like Schoolly D ought to be rapping over it. Which totally fits in with the "urban jungle" race-riot paranoia of this suspenseful, violent movie, which as you may remember is about an enraged street gang attacking an isolated police station in the ghetto of South Central LA. The plot and vibe were inspired by George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, as well as the western Rio Bravo.
Composer/performer Carpenter crafted a taut and minimal synth based score (recorded in just 3 days) that has come to be regarded as a classic. Among the memorable sonic elements found on it are a melodic electric piano motif, and, of course, an ice cream truck jingle, also laid over the usual creepy drum machine tick tick bip bap, for the crucial, shocking scene early in the film involving said ice cream truck.
The Death Waltz edition of this previously hard-to-find soundtrack is remastered, boasts excellent new artwork as per DW tradition, and comes with plentiful liner notes in the swank digipack.
Now that Death Waltz has done this, clearly the next one up has GOT to be the soundtrack to Walter Hill's The Warriors, are we all agreed? Let's hope!
For every ecstatic high, there often needs to be a soul crushing descent, a dark, dark comedown. San Francisco electronic music pioneer Patrick Cowley is best known for his trailblazing signature sound which helped spawn a whole dance music genre (Hi-NRG), as well as his amazing production work, not to mention guest spots on many of our favorite Sylvester tracks. But we always knew there was another side to Patrick Cowley's musical genius. His life ended way too early, as one of the first victims of the AIDS epidemic (before they even understood what AIDS was), but in the short time he was on this planet he recorded hours and hours of electronic music light-years ahead of its time. Most of those recordings have never seen the light of day.
In recent years it seems a whole genre of "space-disco" has emerged out of the influence of the Sylvester track "I Need Somebody To Love", produced by Cowley, who almost single handedly created the cut's distinctive minimal spacey/sensual sound. And within the many solo Cowley releases, there were hints of this darker sonic side, a whole part of his music making beyond the greatness he created for disco divas and sweaty dance floors. Tracks like "Mutant Man" and "Sea Hunt" gave us an intoxicating glimpse into a much weirder and way more abstract world of synth-sounds, that had us hungering for more...
Enter School Daze, a Dark Entries collection of previously unreleased tracks, which showcase that warped and dark side of Cowley's music. These tracks were originally commissioned by the LA-based Fox Studios, makers of gay porn, and as we listen to this over and over, we can only imagine what kind of hazy, foggy, fucked up, beyond high, drug addled state of mind that folks must have been in to watch pornography set to these dark & dizzying sounds!
The opening track is the outlier here, a chunk of classic Cowley Hi-NRG, but it's certainly a misleading introduction, as throughout the rest of School Daze, there is hardly a trace of Cowley's typical dance floor production, instead these songs much more concerned with capturing a mood and vibe that evokes melting and dripping trippiness, seemingly designed for late, late nights long after the party has ended. Tracks like "Tides Of Man" take us on a harrowing dark voyage, the listener losing control and spiralling deeper and deeper into the empty void. "Seven Sacred Pools" displays an epic side of Cowley's sound, the track drifts drowsily from underwater warble and woozy spaciness into shimmering and tranquil soft wave shimmer, the sort of soundworld we wish could get lost in forever. The title track reveals Cowley reigning over his own majestic prog sci-fi fantasyland. Whatever the sound, Cowley somehow makes it his own! And we love it!
Traces of Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Harmonia, Cluster, The BBC Radio Workshop and even musique concrete are woven throughout School Daze. We're also reminded quite a bit of some of the proto-dark techno records that Moebius was making in the early '80s with Conny Plank and Gerd Beerbohm, on albums like Double Cut, Strange Music, Material, and Zero Set. What's even more astonishing is how so many of these sounds predate by several decades the sound of so many of our favorite contemporary electronic artists. In fact, we might go so far as to call the sound on School Daze "proto-IDM", as these tracks contain blueprints to the more spaced-out sides of artists like Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, The Orb, Seefeel, Bola and Isolee, as well as some of our more recent faves like Glitterbug, Actress, Reuber, Gatekeeper, Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom.
It's unclear exactly how many of these tracks actually made it into the films, but we can safely say this is still some of the most fucked up, avant-garde porn music we've ever heard. In fact we wonder if Matmos took inspiration from some of these Cowley tracks when they were asked to create their own soundtracks to some underground kinked out porn...
While the circumstances of these songs being commissioned for porn makes for a fascinating and intriguing story, there's certainly no shortage of lost reissues with wild stories behind them. Sadly, it's often the case, that many of those super hyped releases, are way more interesting to read about than actually listen to. But in the case of School Daze, these are truly subversive and trance inducing sounds that still hold up after all these years. In fact, some of this stuff actually sounds way more damaged and avant than almost any new left-field electronic release that comes our way. For an artist so known for taking his listeners higher, School Daze plays out like the sonic version of what happens afterwards, the wasted aftermath of staying up all night, awake for days, smiling, sweating, arms in the air, it's the sound of bodily displacement, the dreadful coming down. When you can no longer dance, or even stand, but instead are left gliding, sliding, swirling, reaching, caressing, wishing, hallucinating, and grasping for one last chance of ecstatic bliss. This is the dark, drifty, drugged out record of the year!
HUGE kudos to Dark Entries not only for releasing this amazing artifact, but for donating the proceeds to Project Open Hand and AIDS Housing Alliance, two wonderful San Francisco nonprofits who do important work helping those whose lives have been impacted by HIV and AIDS.
***Prude Alert*** The inside sleeves of this gatefold double lp contain LOTS of explicit still images from the pornos that many of these songs were featured in!! You have been warned!
Death Waltz strikes again. And again! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the Death Waltz release of the killer soundtrack for the modern documentary Room 237, a fantastic study of the crazed conspiracy theories that have surrounded Stanley Kubrick's classic The Shining, since it was first released, the soundtrack an homage to classic scores by Goblin, John Carpenter, etc. And then there's this one, the score to director Lucio Fulci's infamous 1982 Italian giallo The New York Ripper, aka Lo Squartatore Di New York, famously banned in many countries (in fact, to this day unavailable in the UK, where it is still considered a video nasty!), a story set in a pre-clean up Times Square. There's of course a serial killer, who has a weirdly Donald Duck like voice (!), a burned out police detective, a repressed psychotherapist, plenty of prostitutes, and loads of gore and seedy sex. Decried for its purportedly misogynistic tone, and often accused of pandering to the lowest common denominator, The New York Ripper does a pretty good job of conjuring up the filth and depravity of the city and its inhabitants. A classic exploitation slasher flick for sure, De Masi's score is a strange one, which much of the soundtrack being not all that scary at all, from groovy eighties funk, laced with sax and aching electric guitar, to cheesy jazzy ditties that sound like variations on the theme from the Love Boat, to wild, sweaty Latin Jazz jams, to dark slowjazz drifts, all fluttery flutes and muted trumpets, amidst all this pops up brief moments of creepy ambience, of seriously haunting John Carpenter-isms, reminiscent in places of Carpenter's They Live soundtrack for sure, but it's the way these ominous undertones creep into the otherwise UNscary soundtrack, that make it so insidious, and the perfect score for the depravity taking place on screen!
Like all the Death Waltz records, fancy pants packaging, the vinyl 180 gram and a sick greenish color, housed in a heavy casebound tip-on style jacket, includes a 4 page insert with liner notes, as well as a huge poster of the new cover art, oh, and killer new classic comic book style cover art by artist Nick Percival.
This band's most recent album, Feathers, was one of our favorites of last year so it's nice to get this opportunity to revisit their first record which has been out of print for quite a while, the label (Joe Lally's Tolatta) that released it originally went out of business and the record was sort of lost in limbo. Their stoner-psych-rock prowess can be found here in its full glory connecting the dots between Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, Bardo Pond and Kyuss. One of Dead Meadow's best attributes is their ability to make records that totally grow on you and seep into your skin listen after listen. This has been hitting the spot for us so much as of late that literally not a day has gone by that this hasn't been blasting out of our speakers here in the store! Such a welcome reissue, and for sure a must-have if you missed it the first time around in 2001, when we said the following about it:
Dead Meadow are a retro stoner psych rock power trio playing fuzzed out space-jams in a heavy and rollicking yet still kinda mellow mode. For fans of Blue Cheer and their fellow Tolatta act Spirit Caravan. They're also reminiscent of a more jammed-out, psychedelic Sleep, but with some gentle touches -- there's even interludes of acoustic guitar indie-pop. This one grew on us! [See!] It's definitely more "out-of-time" than most other stoner rock efforts, harking back not to the arenas of the '70s but to the garages and hippie pads of the late '60s. As such it stands apart from the current legions of Kyuss / Fu Manchu clones. The one weak point, the slightly whiny vocals, hardly matter amid the instrumental majesty of the electric fuzz guitar and bass action that dominates this album!
Xemu should soon be reissuing Dead Meadow's 2nd Tolotta album Howls From The Hills as well, also a must for those working backwards from the band's excellent Matador output.
Here's the much needed reissue of Death And Vanilla's first ep, which was originally released in a tiny edition of just 100 copies a couple years back; and truth be told, this reissue will suffer the same fate, as the vinyl has also sold out amazingly fast. Death And Vanilla are a low-profile Swedish duo that triangulate themselves in the forgotten futures of Duophonic era Stereolab, the Focus Group's curiosity shoppe of library music electronics, and Broadcast's avant-pop anachronisms. Given how well D&V manage to operate in this context, it is a bit surprising that a Thrill Jockey or a Matador hasn't banged on their door. But for us, it's all fine and good for the duo to remain in their perch above the largest cemetery in their hometown of Malmo, continuing to produce a Spartan catalogue of spellbinding, sublime albums. Like all of those more contemporary references, Death & Vanilla's impeccable taste in pop music telescopes back to the late '60s with French new wave films, sultry Cinecitta psyche pop, Italian horror grandiosity, and the tried and true motorik rhythms of Neu! The arrangements are baroquely set with fuzzed out / vibrato guitars, slinky basslines, theramin, moog, glockenspiels, vibraphones, and harpsichords, with vocalist Marleen Nilsson breathily crooning like an opiated but just as dreamy Brigitte Bardot. Brilliant stuff this Death & Vanilla; and this expanded version of the original ep features three exquisite bonus tracks, including one based on the work of Daphne Oram and sporting an unsettling extracted piece of dialog from the film Marathon Man. Oh, you know which one.
Doralice is a local chamber music duo specializing in instrumental acoustic music, their sound touching on Americana, gypsy folk, Flamenco and tangos, inspired by film and world music, the interesting thing being that the two members of Doralice, hail from another band recently featured on the aQ list, Ventid, whom we described as sounding like classic nineties math/post rock a la Rodan, Shellac, June Of 44, A Minor Forest, Rumah Sakit. One half of Doralice also plays in the Pickpocket Ensemble, which makes Doralice not seem like such an unlikely musical vehicle, treading some of the same sonic ground, but definitely doing their own thing, utilizing guitar, violin, banjo and toy piano, and joined by a handful of guests, creating the sort of sounds that fans of Tin Hat Trio, Calexico, Ennio Morricone, Nino Tora, Astor Piazolla, Rachel's and similar outfits will no doubt dig. Quite lovely!
Earlier this past year we reviewed (and Record Of The Week'd) a crushing slab of druggy psychedelic space doom sludge called Ghost In The Fire, from a band with the VERY unlikely moniker Drug Honkey. Initially we sorta assumed they must be a joke band, but there was nothing funny about the head spinning din these guys whipped up on that record. And as much as we loved Ghost In The Fire, for us it all started with this disc, Death Dub, which we had hoped would be some sort of impossible dub / death metal hybrid, and while it wasn't quite that, it was still seriously warped and fucked up, like a sludgier more metallic Butthole Surfers, sort of. Dirgey, and noisy, and crusty, sludgey and actually in fact, kinda dubbed out. We managed to get a handful of these finally (as well as DH's Hail Satan cd-r, if you want one of those too, just ask!), and now everyone can revel in Drug Honkey's glorious sonic filth, a constantly shifting metallic sound world, that's all churning riffage one second ("The Devil Lasts Forever"), tripped out dubby doom the next ("Death Threats"). The Butthole Surfers comparison is pretty apt, these guys just unfurl these sprawling epics, low slung bass throb, tribal caveman drumming, weird FX heavy vox, bellowed demonic howls that can easily transform into hysterical shrieks, everything wrapped in sheets of crumbling distortion, clouds of swirling effects, total tripped out heaviness, that as the title promises does get dubby, check out the vox on "Death Threats", throat shredding vokills disappear in a field of echo and delay, and go spinning into the blackness, while underneath the band continue to pound out a spacey psychedelic dirge. Or there's "Communion", the vocals sick and hellish, but seemingly being real time processed, so each bellow, launches little flurries of sped up shrieks or garbled grunts, all tether to the bands lumbering, monstrous, downtuned crush.
The sound constantly gets super psychedelic, and sort of krautrocky and motorik, spacey and heavily tripped out, like some weird mutated hybrid of the Psychic Paramount, Terminal Cheesecake and Painkiller, some tracks almost sound like hip hop, albeit some sick, distortion drenched industrial strain (Techno Animal, Ice, God, etc.). In fact the Pathological Records vibe looms large over pretty much all of Death Dub, the whole record an electronic flecked, FX heavy, metallic mindfuck of the highest order. Which obviously means ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!!
Hey, it's just like old times! Jay Hinman, former editor/publisher of the music fanzine Superdope (1991-1998) has jumped back into the 'zine game with this new dead tree periodical. He does a Dynamite Hemorrhage podcast too, and Dynamite Hemorrhage was originally birthed as a blog, but it's great to see this new off-line, in-print 'zine happening. The debut issue is full-sized, with a color cover, b&w interior, 64 pages, in the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it, tried-and-true fanzine format of olde. Desktop publishing, baby.
As with Superdope, Jay's focus here is on the garage/indie underground pretty much, old and new. The cover story is on The Flesh Eaters (appropriately enough, since "Dynamite Hemorrhage" is the name of one of their songs). Jay interviews frontman Chris D., specifically and in-depth about the 1977-1980 era, discussing the LA punk scene, his Upsetter label, Slash magazine where he worked, the Masque, etc.
More obscure punk history is unearthed in an interview with '90s Scottish all girl garage group Sally Skull, and recently reissued on Captured Tracks DIY popsters Bona Dish. There's also interviews with current-day bands too: Columbus Ohio lo-fi garage scuzz unit Sex Tide, and NYC minimal postpunk duo Household. Perhaps best of all though, is the contribution here from the folks who do the Fuckin' Record Reviews blog on tumblr, a retrospective feature about all of their favorite underground music fanzines from back in the day - Butt Rag, Crank, Opprobrium, Bananafish, and more. Ah, the nostalgia. We still treasure our back issues of all of those 'zine mentioned, and now know about some others we wish we'd read/collected back then.
Oh, and there's plenty of music (and book) reviews of course, in fact, the reviews section takes up almost half the page count! They're informed, amusing, and either enthused or acerbic as appropriate. That Sunfoot review, ouch!
Basically, Dynamite Hemorrhage #1 is a damn good example of just why we read 'zines. Looking forward to #2.
Originally released as a super limited tape on Digitalis back in 2010, Sonic Within, from Iranian sound artist and electronic composer Ata Ebtekar (aka Sote) finally gets a proper reissue on vinyl, via local label 333 Recordings, and it's a beautiful collection of modern electronic flecked chamber music, Ebtekar teamed up with pianist Mazdak Khamda and cellist Betty Wu, the core of the sound, Khamda's delicate, crystalline piano, plaintive and haunting, the piano ties every track here together, with Ebtekar working around the soft clusters of chordal thrum, and darkly pointillist melodies, conjuring up deep swells of metallic buzz, adding a subtly ominous vibe, weaving in Wu's moaning cello creating gauzy clouds of sonic shimmer. Some track are warbly and woozy, as if someone had their finger on the record, manually changing the pitch and tempo, like chamber music via Philip Jeck, lilting and lovely, but just slightly twisted. The piano drifts resolutely through fields of crystalline glimmer, and is draped over distantly churning backdrops of low end swirl and blurred abstract FX, all applied with a deft hand, so often, sans headphones, it sounds like solo piano, but deep listening here is definitely rewarded.
The flipside however is definitely more traditionally classical, at least on the surface, with the production tricks and studio affectations dialed back, once again letting Khamda's lyrical playing take center stage, but Ebtekar is still there, lurking in the background, subtly tweaking the sound, swaddling Khamda's piano in soft cottony clouds of ambient thrum, the B side building to an almost Hermann Nitsch style cacophony, before setting back down for a brief, playful and melodic outro. So nice.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
Along with the new Gnaw reviewed below, there's another despairing dose of heaviness from the Seventh Rule camp this list, the debut of Portland, Oregon's Ephemeros, a band playing "funeral doom metal" to strict perfection. They definitely know what they're doing, Ephemeros featuring members or ex-members of such bands as Graves At Sea and Uzala, among others. The two word review would be thus: UTTERLY CRUSHING. To elaborate further, this disc is super slow and dirgey, deceptively simple but well-crafted, the guitars generating moments of morose melodic beauty, the guttural vokills a sorrowful, anguished roar. Ephemeros employ effective loud-soft dynamics that see utterly crushing (there's those two words again) riffs obliterating, over and over, all before them - all life, all hope. Those in the mood for this sort of thing will appreciate just how good Ephemeros is. They really nail it, being more musical than you'd expect at first, their performance also very convincing on an emotional level as well. The disc contains three long songs clocking in at 40 minutes total - and they may as well be ONE long song, but it never gets boring. Bravo.
For fans of other excellent Seventh Rule sludge like Atriarch, Stoneburner and Batillus. Also, such like-minded doomlords as Samothrace and Thou.
First we've heard from Kiwi producer FIS, even though he apparently released a couple super hyped 12"s over the last year, but we can definitely see why folk are digging this, or at least folks like us! Preparations is a twisted bit of murky minimalism, that while definitely fitting pretty well amongst other Tri Angle outfits (Balam Acab, Vessel, Holy Other, Forest Swords, oOoOO, Haxan Cloak), is really way more grim and claustrophobic, we can't even imagine the sort of dancefloor DJ who would subject the heaving throngs to this hiss drenched creep - actually we can, OUR kind of DJ. Imagine any of those other Tri Angle artists, doing that sort of blurred, smeary slo-mo-soul, dubbed out and dark, and pull it apart, douse it in FX and slow it down even further, the results are fantastically gristled and grim, dubby pulsations buried WAY beneath fields of abstract thrum, a barely rhythmic sprawl of near static (well, actual static!), a field of hiss and hum, sculpted into dark shadowy clouds of sound, shot through with high end streaks, shards of muted crackle, pulsing loops that occasionally coalesce into abstract stutter-step beats, but more often seem to just hover on the verge of total collapse, a blackened electronic drift, skeletal, stripped down and minimal, a gorgeously gloomy, avant electro-creep that oozes ominously over the whole of the first side.
The flipside, though, is a bit more musical, a sort of gloom-house, swirls of synths, buried beats, the vibe soundtracky and sinister, sweeping and ambient, with just enough rhythmic heft to give the sound a dark motorik energy, anchored by some rib cage rattling bass throb, and blurred into still more mesmeric swaths of lumbering slow-dub creep.
Newly reissued by Superior Viaduct, Brigitte Fontaine's debut album from 1968 is a beautiful anomaly in the career of one of France's most groundbreaking artists. Produced by Jean-Claude Vannier, this is the closest Fontaine gets to a mainstream French pop record, even if it's hardly mainstream. Coy and alluring with a sultry mystery that gives the arrangements an artful sheen, Fontaine sounds like the best parts of Serge Gainsbourg, Francois Hardy and Nico combined. There are a couple of tracks that go into a goofy cabaret mode, but that was so indicative of the time, Fontaine could be forgiven for it. Especially considering the avant territory she would later explore with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and her longtime percussionist partner Areski on Comme a La Radio (also reissued on Superior Viaduct and reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). But for a fantastic French pop record with incredible production, this album comes highly recommended!!
Newly reissued by Superior Viaduct, this is an amazing collaboration between two totally incredible musical explorers, French chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine (with percussionist partner Areski) and avant-jazz greats Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded during the Art Ensemble's stay in Paris in 1969. Though coming from very different backgrounds, each artist's idiosyncratic approach, commitment to experimentation, disregard for genre boundaries, and keen sense for improvisation and working collaboratively yields an album that pushes each performer to new heights. The blend of Fontaine's vocals, Areski's understated percussion, and the Art Ensemble's horns is really seamless, evoking the mysterious, intriguing sounds of lounge jazz in a dada cafe, or, well, an intellectual French chanteuse melding avant-folk with free jazz, which is exactly what it is. Brigitte Fontaine is becoming more and more cemented as one of our absolute favorite artists ever. So great, so recommended!
Here's another record from these Chinese indie rockers, and like their self-titled debut which we reviewed a couple lists back, The City of Burning Identities offers up more of the same, shimmery swoonsome jangle guitars wound up in a little bit of noise poppy crunch, just check out the opener, that starts off all wistful and washed out, before some big crunchy guitars swoop in and adds some shoegaze heft, the song swinging back and forth between noisy indie crunch, and more straight ahead fuzz pop. The rest of the record leans more toward shimmery dream pop, aching heartfelt vocals, melancholic melodies, brooding almost balladic pop, but here and there, the band kick out the jams, with dense angular guitars, squalls of blown out almost psychedelic fuzz, some wiry almost Joy Division style bass, and some big RAWK riffs.
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A couple weeks ago, we reviewed the debut album by Aanipaa, a new experimental glitch-drone-doom project headed up by Mika Vainio and Stephen O'Malley. One of the most abject and significant elements of Aanipaa's sound was the vocals (or shall we use the term vokills) contributed by Alan Dubin. We've been fans of Dubin since back in the OLD days (OLD being his '90s grind/electronica/WTF? band with James Plotkin), and you probably also know him from Khanate, the doomic supergroup that also included both O'Malley and Plotkin. In the pantheon of anguished, extreme vokills, there's naught that can compare to Dubin's tortured throat - well maybe Keiji Haino, and possibly also the guy that sang on Bethlehem's Dictius Te Necare. They're sort of kokills that make the listener want to curl up in the fetal position, and it sounds like the singer already has.
Well, here's some more Dubin for you, in the form of the sophomore album from his own experimental doom band, from the bowels of NYC, known as Gnaw. It's another discomforting dose of avant-garde audio terror, the four other guys in the band making utterly harrowing, heavy music that manages to hold its own alongside Dubin's vocalizations, and it's not an easy task to be so extreme.
Track one, "Humming", eases (slightly) the listener in, Dubin quietly accompanied by a simple bell-like, plink-plonk motif on a keyboard, and background industrial atmospheres. Dubin makes use of maniacal, mantric repetition in his creepy lyrics, a method used throughout the album to suggest a sick state of psychological compulsion. Here repeated lines like "you left your window open / nice lady / nice lady / window open / open" make him sound like Jerry Lewis as a psychopathic prowler. But then on track two, "Of Embers", look out, 'cause the full band kicks in, to devastating effect, with crashing drum pummel and massive riff plod. And on and on and down and down it goes, Gnaw's hellish trudge laced with weird noise-damaged effects and other disturbing details. Basically, it's like a more twisted and occasionally ambient version of Khanate. Yikes!
Gnaw's first album was called Your Face; now they're doing their gnawing on the inside of your skull instead. If they ever were to do a remake of Gummo, we'd expect Gnaw to appear on the soundtrack. Vinly version includes download.
The third beautiful lp of sublime guitar instrumentals from local luminary Danny Paul Grody. Grody has a rich history of intricate musicianship with bands The Drift, and Tarentel and his side-projects Believer and Moholy-Nagy, but it's with his deeply introspective solo records that Grody shines the most. He tends to be lumped in with the American Primitive scene, and he can play with the best of them, but his music draws from deeper wells, such as Eastern mysticism, ritualistic drone music and the timbre explorations of influential composer Lou Harrison. Grody uses chiming guitar figures and sonorous synth drones that build slowly into vast mountains of sound then cascade into fluid filigrees and rapturous waves. We've loved all of Grody's solo records, but this one may just be our favorite.
Download code included!
The latest release on the Pan label comes from UK producer Steve Warwick, aka Heatsick, and continues to make the label hard to pigeonhole, with the last handful of releases running the gamut from experimental avant electronics, to minimal acoustic dronemusic, to Japanese psych, to weird non-jungle jungle, to ethno-experimental modern composition, to... well, to whatever Heatsick is. It's definitely electronic, maybe IDM, but even within those genre parameters, Heatsick's woozy eighties exotica, campy Euro-house Italo-disco and murky minimal techno hybrids confound and confuse in equal measure, fantastically we might add!
The opening title track sets the scene with a big banging beat, wreathed in lots of sonic detritus, some looped breathing, plenty of squiggly squelch and disco handclaps, peppered with some Kompakt style skitter, wreathed in soft focus cascades of kosmische shimmer, groovy and psychedelic, over the top a female voice recites lines, cold and clinically, giving the song a sort of cold-wave vibe, but the music itself, replete with some spidery psych guitar, is warm, and lush, and lustrous. Laid back and chilled out, but with some serious rib cage rattling thump. But really, that's just the first track, and while there is a sonic thread that runs throughout all these songs, it's very loose, allowing the sound to drift all over the place, from the stuttery alien disco of "E-Scape", rife with chiming melodies and wobbly bass swells, to the almost calypso sounding "Mimosa", that even adds horns, making it sound like some twisted James Ferraro pastiche, but instead of being tongue in cheek, Warwick seems to be conjuring some other world, and some other time, a smokey late night, in some seedy club, in some alternate past, on some other planet. Again, the sound manages to sound exotic and psychedelic, as does most of the rest of the record, with "Clear Chanel" getting all washed out and drowsily house-y, while "Speculative" recasts Right Said Fred as something much more sinister and ominous. "Emerge" channels classic eighties pop, through a warped alternate universe discoteque, before the record winds down with the tripped out experimental coda "Accelerationista", a collage of tangled bird song, distant loudspeaker broadcasts, the rumble of wind on microphones, truly creepy, and mysterious.
Like all Pan releases, the packaging is fantastic, the record housed in a clear PVC plastic sleeve, the artwork an artful arrangement of typography and iconography, over an inner sleeve adorned with a full color image of texture metal grillwork.
Years and years ago, a handful of cd-r's showed up in the mail, obviously black metal, it took us a while to figure out what or who it was, the group's logo, fantastically illegible, the artwork abstract and black and white, shapes and skulls, altars and shadows, and the music, woah, dark and ritualistic, buzzy and blackened and pretty goddamn weird, we eventually discovered it was in fact a 'band' called Homunculus, but were never able to get copies for the shop. We've been fans of Texas industrial noisescapers and black drone technicians Husere Grav for a while now, and only just discovered, that the man behind Homunculus is in fact also Husere Grav. But don't be expecting black metal here, HG traffic in a bleak, blackened, post industrial ambience, huge heaving swaths of Lustmordian rumbles, sprawling bleak soundworlds that are equal parts Wolf Eyes at their most minimal, and the grim, kvlt ritualism of Abruptum, all blurred and smeared into hazy expanses of black sonic murmur, and abstract metallic shimmer, abject soundworlds of blunted blacknoize and crumbling squalls of static, most of the tracks here surprisingly tranquil, heady, meditative soft noise minimalism, which sounds at times quite a bit like The Caretaker, albeit a bit noisier and low fidelity, or Caretaker offshoot The Stranger, sculpted static, and buried murky melodies. While folks into black metal, and black ambience, and ritualistic dronemusic will of course dig, the sound here is shot through with a buried beauty, that casts You Are Transparent, as something almost more aligned with Philip Jeck, Tim Hecker or Leyland Kirby, which is most definitely a very good thing.
Super deluxe packaging, the disc, housed in a dvd case, with a sixteen page black and white art zine, wrapped in a Japanese style obi, with a sticker and a button. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
The latest from Illinois one man black metal band I Shalt Become bears the strange title Louisiana Voodoo, not sure if this some sort of bizarre concept record, but sonically, it does pretty much start up right where 2010's Poison left off, the muddy, Burzumic, Xasthur-like murk of the earlier releases, transformed into something twisted and symphonic, the sound more strings and orchestra than black buzz, but fear not, ISB's finest moments, are when the two collide, creating a sort of symphonic black doom creep that fuses washed out murky guitar buzz, and buried barely there drum plod, to swirling symphonic strings, dramatic piano, even some Carpenter like synths, all topped with raspy, demonically croaked vokills. It's strange stuff for sure, but as much as we loved Poison, we're digging Louisiana Voodoo even more, all of the twisted symphonic elements, and the newly expanded sound palette, are even more expansive and wonderfully warped this time around, Louisiana Voodoo sounding like some sort of Broadway black metal production of Phantom Of The Opera, all bombastic and dramatic, creepy chamber music wrapped in swaths of grim black buzz, it's almost like a more lo-fi home brewed version of Dimmu Borgir or Fleshgod Apocalypse, but somehow even less metal, or at least less buzzing and blasting, instead more creepy and loping, lumbering and muddy, sweeping and soundtracky, it's not difficult to imagine these sounds accompanying some twisted big budget art film, the arrangements are intricate and epic, the sounds majestic and soaring - think Xasthur via Arvo Part, or Make A Change Kill Yourself performing with a symphony. Although it's obvious that ISB is not just cramming some fake orchestra sounds into a black metal template, this stuff is meticulously crafted, and the results are stunning, and while there's still plenty of metal going on, metal references definitely don't do this justice, instead, think of some blackened hybrid that's equal parts Devil Doll, Death SS, Jacula, Gnaw Their Tongues, Xasthur, Seirom and Dimmu Borgir. Awesome.
The Iron Dogs are a Stratocaster-wielding power trio playing '80s inspired denim n' leather, punked out speed metal, that sorta sounds like a hybrid of Speedwolf and Slough Feg. They hail from the far northern climes of Ottawa, Canada, where it's not that hard to find husky sled dogs to pose with a naked bloody warrior woman in the snow for the cover photo of your album, apparently! That somewhat cheesy cover pic and the band's fairly generic name (they're on a label whose roster includes at least two other "Iron" bands, Iron Kobra and Iron Curtain, by the way), while piquing our curiosity, had actually kept our expectations low; little did we know that Iron Dogs would become one our our favorite new metal bands once we actually heard 'em - indeed Allan here has become a little bit obsessed, proclaiming this to be his fave metal album of the year thus far, though technically it came out in 2012, but definitely hasn't been widely distributed or reviewed. Seriously, as you can imagine, we listen to so much new music here all the time that if something winds up in actual heavy rotation, garnering repeat play, can't wait to go home and listen to that disc again and AGAIN status, it's something pretty special.
Their name provides a few clues. First off, it clearly references two of their biggest influences, namely Iron Maiden and the English Dogs. With Maiden, we're talking first two albums, short haired singer Paul di'Anno era, and English Dogs, they were an '80s punk band who just happened to do a couple of amazing heavy metal albums - so yeah, think NWOBHM at its closest intersect with '77 punk. Also, "Iron Dogs" was a song from the first album by Canadian speed metal pioneers Exciter, so they're named after that too. And they live up to it all, totally back alley punk, totally fist waving metal, plus they possess their own special, undefinable X-factor that just puts this over the top.
Vocalist/guitarist Jo Capitalicide is no Paul Di'Anno but his rushed, rough vocals still possess yobbish punk charm and sound both sincere and spirited, and totally works with this music, which is soooooo energetic and catchy, played with sloppy, off-the-rails abandon. The lo-fi garage production is totally PERFECT for this too. The combo of their rollicking riffs and the raw sound is just killer, Iron Dogs rockin' like excited, inspired kids.
Lead off cut "Razors Of Doom" gallops into view riding a riff that's straight up Iron Maiden Paul Di'Anno era. Ooooh-yeah. Then the magnificent "Dragon Chord" appears, a song that's somehow a punk rock version of mystical Manilla Road metal. Literally fantastic. Next up, "Wrath Of The Barbarians" has got another one of those classic Maiden-ish riffs to it, it's (again) quite a stormer� but heck we could go on and on talking about each and every one of the nine tracks on here, they're all great, full of hooks and feeling, it was friggin' tough to pick which ones to make sound samples of, or maybe it was easy since we couldn't go wrong with any of 'em.
Basically, THIS is metal at both its purest, and punkest. It's practically joyous. Probably not for everyone, but if you "get" this you'll really really love it.
By the way, anybody who might be worried that the aforementioned cover or album title is (however quaintly) not that PC, should be comforted by this note from inside the cd: "Iron Dogs is fiercely anti-fascist! Homophobes, sexist idiots & bigots: F.O.A.D.!!" They also proudly state: "Only Fender Stratocasters were used in this recording! Total Strat-metal!" Maybe that's the X-factor?
After two 7"s, Sublime Frequencies has released the final four tracks recorded by Tuareg guitarist and vocalist Koudede Maman, the last ones recorded shortly before his tragic death in a car crash while traveling to Niger from Burkina Faso last year. Koudede was a rising star in the nomadic community, a powerful performer and voice for the plight of his people against both the suppression of their ancient traditions and the rise of modern nation-states that usurp the natural resources of the land which the nomadic people desperately need. Most of Koudede's music was created in strife, but sought to create unity in a tumultuous region that saw very little of it. Though listening to him perform, one can only truly sense pure joy. A beautiful and heartbreaking release.
Brand new music from German outsider sci-fi pop weirdo / visionary, whose "particle accelerator pop" positions somewhere between a sort of naive, alien Gary Numan, and a time traveling Brian Wilson cyborg, his pop music meticulously crafted from the detritus of classic pop music past, fused into some impossible space aged future pop, Kubin a Joe Meek like studio mad scientist, transforming pop music into something strange and wondrous, even when working with someone else's music, just check out the opening track, a killer and fantastically confusional cover of Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes", which turns the original into a near operatic robotic future funk, channeling the spirit of Klaus Nomi (who also does a killer version of the song), but Kubin has no shortage of his own mini masterpieces, beginning with "Atomium Vertigo", which sounds like Serge Gainsbourg played by an all robot band, a krauty drum machine kraut-groove beneath fields of FX and static, while Kubin delivers his sultry spoken word, oh yeah, and of course there's the bleepy bloopy vocodered chorus. And so it goes, every track here a twisted future pop gem, from the avant electro-kraut exotica of "Nachts Im Park", to the 8-bit skitter of "Flies Without Memory", to the garbled electronic jazz collage that is "Restez En Linge", to the banging synth hop of "Piscine Ressonenzi", which has us envisioning Kubin as a producer and beat maker for the current crop of pop stars like Ke$ha, or Beyonce, or Britney... if only! And Kubin never lets up, the second half of Zemsta Plutona as chock full of electro future pop weirdness as the first, flitting from plunderphonic style forties jazz to maniacal alien electro, and from murky minimal avant-kraut weirdness to Perry & Kingsley style electronic experimentation, and beyond!
Like all Omni releases, Zemsta Plutona is beautifully appointed, there's a big full color booklet, with liner notes and plenty of photos!
Dig this killer blast of blackened slo-mo industrial death metal, from these Italians by way of Japan. We were pretty much sold already, they're called Legion Of Andromeda, they have song titles like "Cosmo Hammer", "Overlord Of Thunder" and "Fist Of The Galaxy", and the cover's a grim black on black band logo, a giant axehammer, and goddamn if the music doesn't live up to all the nonmusical promise. Four tracks of minimal, reductionist blackdeath brutality, almost like a black death version of Dutch instrumetallers Gore, each track mostly a single riff, hell, at times it sounds like a single chord, chugging hypnotically, driven by a programmed robotic rhythm, occasionally shifting into a sort-of-chorus, but really it's just a noisier version of THAT ONE riff. All the while, some seriously throat shredding demon grunt, grindcore style belched vokills, gurgle and growl over the top. Total knuckle dragging blackened bliss out of the highest order. Opener "Cosmo Hammer" is definitely the dirgiest of the bunch, just total slo-mo headbanging chug and churn that could (and should, and sort of DOES) go on forever. "Overlord Of Thunder", stretches out a bit, but just a bit, with a kick ass main riff, that's sort of like a stoner rock riff but way more blackened, the distortion crumbling and blown out, and while it seems like it's setting things up for some proper black buzz and blast, it's NOT, instead, LoA just lock it down, loop that riff, and unfurl a tranced out sprawl of motorik riffage, that in different hands could probably be a Pharaoh Overlord song, but here, becomes some sort of blackdeath musical mantra, modern minimalism by way of hair spinning, amp worshipping neanderthals and we LOVE it. And so it goes, the other two tracks delivering still more of that monstrously monotonous riffing, head caving, soul shearing, one-riff, drone-dirge heaviness that is totally mesmerizing, absolute hypno-death, industrial, black buzz trance out genius.
And yeah, it's a REAL cd, and it's only five bux, and it totally fucking RULES.
Teban Slide Art collects a body of work from the industrial pioneer Maurizio Bianchi that has long been a point of controversy in the history of noise music. At the very beginning of his career, Bianchi had 'signed' a contract with Whitehouse's William Bennett for the release of two albums on Bennett's Come Organisation label. There were rumors that Bennett and Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound drafted a completely daft contract that assumed all of the rights to Bianchi's work, which Bianchi signed. Here is where the story splits, as Bianchi claimed that he never consented to the additional overlay of Third Reich speeches found on these recordings, nor to rechristening of his nom de plume from MB to Leibstandarte SS MB; where Bennett asserts that the albums were released as Bianchi intended, and his latent religious conversion a few years later around 1984 sparked his discontent. Regardless of which of these stories is the actual truth, those early Leibstandarte SS MB albums quickly became the stuff of legend and myth, with very few ever actually hearing any of those recordings. What prompted Bianchi to agree to reissue these recordings is also a bit of mystery, but here they are - Triumph Of The Will and Weltanschauung (the two Come Organisation albums) and Lebensraum (an unreleased album that was unofficially issued as a cassette by Murder Release). The cancerous sounds that Bianchi produced are sinister echoes of bone-chilling vibrations, throbbing rhythms, deranged anti-melodies, and horrifying atmospheres that drip through Bianchi's frigid electronics which are not too far from the material he produced on albums like Menses and Neuro Habitat around the same time. Not all of the tracks are laced with Nazi speeches, but when they are, the mastering pushes Bianchi's cold synth-noise into the background. All this said, it is impossible to escape the context of those speeches; but the intent of lacing these two becomes unclear. Is this the simulacrum approach to the modern society as being so corrupt that the crimes of the Third Reich are still within the capacity of the human condition? Or was this something akin to a very British form of black humor (especially if this was in fact Bennett adding the speeches later) in poking fun at all of the 'transgressive' references that punk and industrial culture were appropriating? The verdict is still out. Limited to 413 copies.
Following the release of the Teban Slide Art collection of Maurizio Bianchi material that dates back to early 1981 of the infamous Leibstandarte SS MB recordings released on William Bennett's Come Organisation, we find ourselves at the end of 1984 with Telemediggo. Bianchi's final official album was the self-released Armaghedon - a soundtrack to an unfinished film that would have been really interesting to have seen. Unfortunately, Bianchi destroyed more than half of the pressing of Armaghedon, with the film probably suffering the same fate. All of this was spurned by his religious conversion, becoming a Jehovah's Witness, causing him to eschew many of the ties he made with the industrial / experimental community for well over a decade. Telemediggo would have been the follow-up to Armaghedon, and is a continuation of the free-floating almost psychedelic dronework that shows a considerable amount of maturity of Bianchi's compositional prowess. Gone are the almost meandering attempts at melody and gone are the panzer division rhythms found on albums like Symphony For A Genocide. Instead, the gasping environments from Bianchi's final period could be considered placid in comparison to his more suffocating works, as if he's allowing for slivers of light to seep through the vast darkness. Don't worry, Telemediggo is a heavy piece of refined minimalism! There were a handful of private issue cassettes of this album that made the rounds, eventually getting bootlegged under the title "Extreme Man 2" in 1990. Another bootleg made the rounds of some sketches that Bianchi was working on, and that had the title "Extreme Man 1." This cassette is reprised as the second disc here, rechristened as Baterhabitat. For some reason, this second disc is a professionally duplicated cd-r, where the disc of Telemediggo is a properly replicated cd. Hmm. These recordings are considerably rougher than Telemediggo and do expose some of Bianchi's process, as he began to layer sympathetic synth sounds that he describes as a "mixture of bacteriological wall of noise." He indicates that the recordings date back to 1982, but seem to have been left unfinished. Packaged in a really cool metal box that solves the problem of those Chain Reaction metal boxes with a soft-felt case that holds both discs. Limited to 208 copies.
For some reason, we always thought Mind Spiders were from Australia. They definitely have that Aussie post punk vibe, but they are in fact from Denton, Texas, and our description in our review of their last record, still pretty much applies:
"Imagine Thee Oh Sees via Gary Numan, or the Ramones if they were on Captured Tracks, or maybe even Bare Wires covering Snowy Red..."
If anything, this new one is more stripped down, more old school power pop, with swirling synths, and drum machines augmenting the group's kinetic garage pop crunch. Just check out "Suicide", which doesn't sound so much like Suicide as it does Cheap Trick or the Cars. And in fact, those two bands are pretty good reference points, although some of the record gets more buzzy and fuzzy and punk, but even at its most revved up, the songs here are still CRAZY catchy, hooks galore, these guys tossing off timeless popisms that most bands would kill for.
But the record IS kinda all over the map. "City Stuff" sounds like it was plucked from a different record, even down to the production (and volume!), with its Casio-core rhythm, wheezing synth swirl, and Wall Of Voodoo guitar, but then it slips right back into almost Ramones sounding punk stomp, still shot through with plenty of Yellow Pills power popisms, but then a song or two later, and the sound blossoms into a sort of FX heavy psychedelic space garage, a little bit Moon Duo, a little bit T-Rex, a killer slice of kraut-glam, garage-synth, fuzz pop that KILLS. And then like the last record, the band deliver the coup de grace, another record defining jam, this time around sounding like a modern fuzzed out garage rock Gary Numan, swirling and sci-fi and psychedelic and swaggery and crazy catchy to boot. Goddamn we wish we hadn't already finished our 2013 top tens, cuz had we known, you can bet this would have definitely made it, and probably been right near the top!
This is not at all what we were expecting, but holy shit, is it cool. Moin is actually a side project / offshoot of Raime, whose gorgeously murky and bleak exercise in creeping, claustrophobic, electronic minimalism, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, was a HUGE favorite around here, but as Moin, that sound gets recast as something less electronic, and more, well, sort of noise rock, for lack of a better descriptor. If it's at all possible, and judging from this, it most certainly is, Moin is like a weird noise rock version of Raime, the programmed beats, replaced by dense, motorik, muscly drumming, the various loops and layers transformed into spidery minor key guitar melodies, the vibe propulsive, hypnotic, tranced out, and still very very dark. Imagine an even more stripped down Laddio Bollocko, the 'band' locked into seemingly simple hypno-rock grooves, and just churning out totally mesmerizing, shadowy heaviness. Opener "Murphy" almost sounds like a Sling outtake, fused with a little Rapeman, with some Godspeed ambience mixed in. And if that sounds like impossible band math, well, we would have thought so too. "Stacie" (all the tracks have people names, a la the first Slint record too, hmm), is much more stripped down and low slung, arranged more like an electronic track, brooding and slow building, more about the vibe, and the mood, and the rhythm, and the texture, the guitars crumbling and crunchy, but spare and sparse, melancholic and haunting. And finally "Clancy" lays down a mathy stuttery beat, beneath sheets of feedback, before the main riff rolls in, another strange sample layered over the top, the guitars jagged and percussive, very Albini-esque for sure, but even more restrained and textural, all with a sort of post punk / industrial feel, and like the other two tracks, totally trancey, minimal noise rock nirvana!
Brand new split from local heavies Monuments Collapse, whose debut lp was a big hit around here, fusing Neurosis / Isis style post metal heaviness, with brooding psychedelic slowcore a la True Widow. Their half of this new split finds them in equally fine form, opening with a gorgeous bit of psych folk ambience, before launching into some epic, majestic, crushing heaviness, all throat shredding howl, and blown out, lumbering doomic crush, but like that debut, MC's sound manages to remain rife with melody, the vibe melancholic, the sound laced with droned out, downtuned thrum, not to mention some extended space jam mesmer, chugging, churning, soaring metallic majesty. They close their side of the split with the 10+ minute "Pathos", that begins all meandering post rock drift, chiming melodies, subtle percussion, a stripped down rhythm, and thick, rumbling bass, totally tranced out and moody, the sound building slowly to some serious epic metallic mathiness, the sound blossoming into full on Godspeed style metallic epicry, that stretches out for the remainder of the track/side. So great. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on.
The flipside comes from Breag Naofa, a progged out doom sludge combo from the Pacific Northwest, who were a big surprise for sure, their sound equalling Monuments Collapse in terms of metallic heft and sonic majesty, the opening few minutes, super melodic and mathy, unwinding an epic instrumental jam, that sounds a bit like a way more metal Mogwai, until the vocals come swooping in, a monstrous bellow, the music following suit, thick downtuned riffage, massive drum pound, the song churning and roiling malevolently (but still melodically), before slipping into a washed out post rocky sprawl, all muted steel string strum, chiming chords, and sinewy, spidery bassline, eventually working its way back up to an epic and emotional coda, plaintive and melancholic, sounding a bit like Neurosis crossed with Alcest...
The second track is more of the same. Opening with a rumbling raga like buzz, punctuated by monster drum pound, thick sprawling guitar buzz, and some strange percussion, before exploding into a tarpit trudge, thick chugging guitars and keening high end leads, definitely reminiscent of Neurosis (circa Enemy Of The Sun), brooding and massive, like the first track, it winds down into some spaced out psychedelic drift, and once again works its way back to one final blast of pound and pummel, all dense guitar chug and churning double kick drumming, locked into a seriously crusty doom-ic groove, before gradually fading to nothing. Killer stuff from both bands for sure, and man do we want to hear more from Breag Naofa...
We've actually been meaning to review this for a while now, the debut full length from Swedish death metal weirdoes Morbus Chron, who obviously, being from Sweden, and playing death metal, are following in a grand tradition, but rather than rehashing what came before, these guys take that classic sound and twist it all up. The garish psychedelic cover art is your first clue that this is not your dimwitted big brother's death metal. It's more like your deformed-evil-twin-that-you-keep-locked-up-in-the-attic-dosed-on-hallucinogens-to-keep-him-docile's death metal. Right from the get go, Morbus Chron spew an unholy concoction of tangled atonal psychedelic melodies, ominous cinematic ambience, churning downtuned heaviness, occasionally laced with wah wah guitars, and driven by bellowed gruff vokills, the riffs are fantastically slippery and loose, the drumming too, a punkish gallop that seems right on the edge of the drummer's ability, which is most definitely a good thing, the band tight as fuck, but sounding constantly on the verge of collapse, the sound more lurching and lumbering than blasting, the vibe murky and muddy, old school heaviness infused with some warped avant garde experimentation, and executed like a horde of knuckle dragging zombie metalheads. Plus who can argue with a band who names one of their songs "Creepy Creeping Creep"? Yet for all the weirdness and psychedelic-ness, Sleepers In the Rift is still death metal, and sorta classic sounding (to a degree) DM to boot, so all you dabblers who don't actually dig old school death metal, this might not be QUITE weird enough for you. They're no Portal after all, but what they are, is modern masters of some damaged DNA strain of classic Swedish death metal, beholden hugely to the greats, but all warped and twisted and fucked up, and transformed into something sorta new, but seriously ruling.
Like clockwork (get it? sorry...) comes another gorgeous release from local label Time Released Sound, and another disc of pastoral ambient minimalism, but unlike many of the other TRS releases, which fuse electronic and organic sounds into lush and lovely blissed out driftscapes, Richard Moult and David Colohan conjure up something much more 'classical' sounding, merging a modern classical minimalism, with the hushed brooding post rockiness of groups like Godspeed, albeit with out the slow builds and bombastic crescendos. Although these two do have some sonic tricks up their sleeves, but more on that later. For the most part Hexameron is a stately, melancholic arrangement of mostly piano, with spidery minor key guitars, the sound fleshed out with subtle percussive flourishes, swirling strings, choir like voices, the sound sweeping and cinematic, but also hushed and intimate. Fans of James Blackshaw, Lubomyr Melnyk, Anton Batagov and the like will be in heaven.
The opener is dusky and balladic, pointillist piano stretched out over a rich, lustrous low end thrum, soft streaks of subtle guitar strums drift through the shadows, a definite Bark Psychosis vibe for sure, the second track is more of the same, but the duo employ some barely noticeable studio trickery to add some subtle psychedelia to the proceedings, the guitar swooping to the fore, unfurling emotive peals of aching guitar melody, all drifting over a lush bed of softly churning thrum. As the record progresses, the sounds seem to grow less distinct, the background sounds blurrier and more washed out, notes on the piano bathed in reverb, sounding almost dubby, arcs of gently distorted guitars, often coming together into soft focus squalls of dreamnoisedrift, other times, the piano struggles to stay above the surface, as the various ambient sounds grow crunchy, and buzzy and staticky, the final track adding more distorted guitar buzz, a little fragmented glitchery, and some echo drenched skronk, over the otherwise tranquil and somber pianoscape below.
As always, the packaging is stellar, and delivered in two versions, the standard, limited to 200 copies, which houses the disc in a nicely printed full color gatefold, and the deluxe, limited to just 75 copies, which pulls out all the stops, the packaging made from pages out of a 90+ year old book, wrapped in a collaged, inked and stamped envelope, itself also housed in a hand worked outer translucent envelope. Also included are medieval drawings, a banded cd sleeve made from a page of heraldic crests, and a large double sided insert!!
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Like clockwork (get it? sorry...) comes another gorgeous release from local label Time Released Sound, and another disc of pastoral ambient minimalism, but unlike many of the other TRS releases, which fuse electronic and organic sounds into lush and lovely blissed out driftscapes, Richard Moult and David Colohan conjure up something much more 'classical' sounding, merging a modern classical minimalism, with the hushed brooding post rockiness of groups like Godspeed, albeit with out the slow builds and bombastic crescendos. Although these two do have some sonic tricks up their sleeves, but more on that later. For the most part Hexameron is a stately, melancholic arrangement of mostly piano, with spidery minor key guitars, the sound fleshed out with subtle percussive flourishes, swirling strings, choir like voices, the sound sweeping and cinematic, but also hushed and intimate. Fans of James Blackshaw, Lubomyr Melnyk, Anton Batagov and the like will be in heaven.
The opener is dusky and balladic, pointillist piano stretched out over a rich, lustrous low end thrum, soft streaks of subtle guitar strums drift through the shadows, a definite Bark Psychosis vibe for sure, the second track is more of the same, but the duo employ some barely noticeable studio trickery to add some subtle psychedelia to the proceedings, the guitar swooping to the fore, unfurling emotive peals of aching guitar melody, all drifting over a lush bed of softly churning thrum. As the record progresses, the sounds seem to grow less distinct, the background sounds blurrier and more washed out, notes on the piano bathed in reverb, sounding almost dubby, arcs of gently distorted guitars, often coming together into soft focus squalls of dreamnoisedrift, other times, the piano struggles to stay above the surface, as the various ambient sounds grow crunchy, and buzzy and staticky, the final track adding more distorted guitar buzz, a little fragmented glitchery, and some echo drenched skronk, over the otherwise tranquil and somber pianoscape below.
As always, the packaging is stellar, and delivered in two versions, the standard, limited to 200 copies, which houses the disc in a nicely printed full color gatefold, and the deluxe, limited to just 75 copies, which pulls out all the stops, the packaging made from pages out of a 90+ year old book, wrapped in a collaged, inked and stamped envelope, itself also housed in a hand worked outer translucent envelope. Also included are medieval drawings, a banded cd sleeve made from a page of heraldic crests, and a large double sided insert!!
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The Last Hydronaut is the inaugural release on the Controlled Burn label, a collective of bands and artists, spearheaded by our pals in the Austerity Program, and including, obviously, these guys, who hail from Chicago, and totally sound like it. Although they actually sound like they could be from Chicago circa 1995. Total post punk / noise rock / math rock, thick fuzzed out bass, big Albini drums, crunchy guitars, yelped / howled emo vocals, all woven into dense driving heaviness and intricate arrangements, the kind of shit we always lament, like old rock men, that they 'just don't make anymore', but these guys DO, and man, do the do it well, and while for lots of people they might seem like a band out of time, we never get tired of that math/noise/post rock sound, think Jesus Lizard and Drive Like Jehu and Naked Raygun, catchy, heavy, noisy... Pretty much everything we like. This has been getting serious nonstop play around these parts, and Nonagon are one of those bands, that sound like they probably KILL live. Here's hoping we get to find out!
Includes a download code, features eye popping shark attack / wooden raft / sensible sweater woodcut style cover art, and LIMITED TO JUST 300 COPIES.
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!
Yay, it's the third album from this truly distorto-delic UK outfit, with much more of that 'trance-inducing throb' we love about 'em. We've been into the krauty hypno-pop oscillations of The Oscillation since we first heard their 2007 debut on electro label DC. They've only gotten darker and heavier since then . From Tomorrow is a killer collection of echoing dubbed-out grooves and moody coldwave pop, alternating electronically-treated, hushed vocal tracks with rhythmic FX-laden instrumental stretches that often evoke the motorik beats and tribal thump of Circle, given a late-night, neon-lit makeover. Fans of Moon Duo, too, will dig the shake/stomp of tracks like "No Place To Go", with its Suicide groove. The album has also got a tightly-wound post-punk vibe to it, as well as spacey moments of druggy drift.
Dunno what else to say, if you like The Oscillation already you'll totally dig this; if you haven't heard 'em, tune in and turn on right here, now. Shoulda reviewed this before we all did our top tens for 2013, whoops! Woulda maybe had to make room for it...
Finally released on vinyl, Another Thought was the first posthumous collection of unreleased tracks by the great Arthur Russell. Released in 1994, shortly after he passed away and years before his wide-ranging musical genius would be recognized by a larger audience, it contains tracks spanning over a 10 year period, some in demo form documenting early versions of songs he was preparing for his next release after World of Echo. Yet of all the many Russell collections that have subsequently come out, Another Thought has the reputation of being the most difficult to digest. Long in length and minimal in economy (most of the tracks are just voice and cello, with the occasional addition of other instruments like bongos and horns), it is certainly the most intimate and unadorned of all of Russell's work. Which is why the vinyl release does this collection a great service by giving the songs ample space to breathe over four long sides. There is an incredible amount of nuance and grace in every one of these tracks, and for being so close to death, Russell remains unhurried in his approach. And unhurried is the way it should be listened to. Incredibly gorgeous, passionate and devastating.
C'mon, how can a record called Hard Blood Shock NOT be good? Especially when it's a collection of crazy punk rock music from the former Yugoslavia, all by this guy, a singer with the stage name of Satan Panonski (aka Ivica Culjak), who was about as alternative & subversive & punk rock as you can get, particularly in a communist dictatorship: a self-mutilating body artist, avowed homosexual, underground poet, painter, and asylum/prison inmate (he'd killed a man in a fight in self-defense and wound up in a state mental hospital for criminals for nearly a decade). Apparently, though, they'd let him out on weekends, so he could continue his punk rock career, playing live and recording several cassettes and lps with Croatia's top punk musicians.
Unfortunately for him, perhaps the only conventional thing he ever did was to join the army to fight against the Serbs when they invaded Croatia during the break up of Yugoslavia in the early '90s, that's how he died in 1992 at the age of 32, a victim of the Balkan Wars.
This lp-only release on S-S (no cd, no download) is a 'best of' this tragic Croatian punk legend, drawn from his rare late '80s/early '90s releases, transferred from original tapes. And as you might expect, it's hard, bloody, and shocking. Of the 18 tracks, only a few have titles in English, including one called "Kiss My Cock", which might give one an idea of the attitude on display. Satan Panonski's music blends snarling old school punk (a la Sex Pistols) with some ethnic Croatian folk bits and noisy, experimental weirdness. It's pretty wild and rockin'. A rager.
Included is a 16 page booklet with biographical essay, translated lyrics, drawings, photos, etc. Anyone with an interest in Eastern European punk ought to check this out.
Movements Of Night is the first lp (as far as we know) from these Canadian drone drifters, whose past releases (two tapes and a cd-r) we raved about in the past. As much as we loved those, this new one, released on the venerable Students Of Decay label, manages to take their sound even further. From the opening couple minutes, we were totally smitten - the sound a lush, swirling, psychedelic morass, of lush layered textures, of keening, heartwrenching melodies, buried beneath gristly fields of soft focus static, under which, a meditative pulse throbs hypnotically, so cinematic and majestic, haunting and stirring, it's the kind of part most bands spend half a record, or at least most of one long song building up to, but these guys start out, with this dense, cathartic soundscape, which really sets the tone for the whole record, aligning them sonically with Philip Jeck, William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Stars Of The Lid, a sort of darkened psychedelic take on Pop Ambience, a looped dreamscape of heady, hypnotic, blissed out dronemusic, that is so mesmerizing, it has us wishing it would never end.
And while we were prepared to explain that nothing else on the record manages to reach the same sort of sonic and emotional peak, it's actually somehow, not at all true. The next track, in fact, seems to effortlessly conjure up another deep, emotional soundworld, all slow shifting minor key swells, softly reverbed melodies, washed out strings, and lysergic chordal drift, the sound building and building, before slipping right back into a muted field of drifts and swells. And so it goes. Every track, a dark, moody, brooding, cinematic gem, some ultra minimal and abstract, wispy fields of lowercase sound, others bold and strident, emotional and expressive, some almost symphonic, majestic and epic in scope, bordering on psychedelic noise, others hushed and whispery, barely there, brief blurred smears of sonic color, but every single second, of every track on Movements Of Night, is stunning, moving, and utterly breathtaking.
Includes a download code!
Some early '70s vintage, groovy orchestrated French psych-pop sound good to you? Maybe even better if created by a very hip, mystic-minded musician (Skornik) inspired by LSD and the esoteric writings of a controversial Gurdjieff disciple (Louis Pauwels, author of counterculture bestseller The Morning Of The Magicians)? Well then have we got a reissue for you!! Guy Skornik's Pour Pauwels is a fantastic progressive pop opus, its symphonic, psychedelic sounds mixing together dramatic French vocals (both spoken and sung), romantic piano, moody melodies, jaunty horns, sudden curlicues of psych guitar wail, and more. A song-based soundscape, almost cinematic, it's for fans of the freakier side of the Serge Gainsbourg oeuvre for sure, a la Historie De Melody Nelson. Freakier than that, really - this was originally issued in 1970 by the Pathe label, who around the same time also released records by Igor Wakhevtich and Gerard Manset, and this fits right in with the likes of them. If you're like us, oui oui this sounds good, in fact it's pretty much irresistible.
The thick cd booklet, in both French and English, features very interesting and extensive liner notes, delving into the careers of both Skornik and Pauwels, including an in-depth, present-day interview with the former.
UK horror soundtrack vinyl label Death Waltz deviates again from their ongoing reissue campaign to offer up another modern soundtrack, but fear not, Room 237 stacks up pretty well against all the classics the label has been resurrecting recently, it would be really easy to mistake this for some classic slab of grimy cinematic sonic creep from back in the day. Jonathan Snipes and William Hudson channel the greats, John Carpenter, Goblin, equal parts sinister synth drones, twisted electronics, blackened ambience, seventies kosmische, haunting melodies, Italo-disco, groovy synth wave, the craziest part of all is that it's the soundtrack to a DOCUMENTARY! But then it's not any documentary, it's a 2012 film about Stanley Kubrick's classic, The Shining, or more specifically, all the crackpot theories folks have about the Shining, with interviews with various people, each presenting their take on the hidden meanings behind The Shining, and some of them are doozies, from the genocide of the American Indians, to the Apollo 11 moon landing, and yeah, even the Holocaust. The movie is twisted, and fascinating, hilarious and disturbing, some of the theories totally far fetched, others not so much, with plenty of visual evidence given for each. Watching the movie, we were actually struck by the score, which at times reminded us of the music from Phantasm (Death Waltz, reissue that one!!!), or Halloween, which seem like they wouldn't be suited to a documentary, but somehow, they add a sort of cinematic gravitas, even more so when this new score is coupled with original footage from The Shining. But hell, even removed from the film, Snipes and Hudson's score is fantastic, big bombastic percussion, darkly swirling synths, choir like vocals, haunting melodies, pulsing almost disco-y synthscapes, plenty of futuristic electronics, cascading keyboard arpeggiations, and shimmery chordal swells, fluttery psychedelic flutes, some of the music super tense and ominous, reminding us also of the incredible score for the recent Beyond The Black Rainbow (Death Waltz, do that one too!!), sort of cosmic prog, infused with a heaping dose of the sonic heebie jeebies. So goddamn good. And again, fans of classic old school horror scores, will likely flip their lids! As will anyone into the retro futuristic faux-soundtracks of Zombi, Majeure, Umberto and all the rest.
Like all Death Waltz releases, the packaging is super swank, the cd comes in an eye popping full color six panel gatefold digisleeve, complete with the cool pop up cd holder featured in other DW cds, the vinyl is 180 gram, red and yellow, cut at 45rpm, and housed in a big heavy casebound tip-on sleeve. The vinyl version also includes a cd of the complete score as well!!
Ruleth is the debut full length from Austin (via LA) goth-gloom synthwrangler Jose Cota and comes courtesy of the always impressive Holodeck label, who in the past have brought us all manner of electronic and abstract weirdness from outfits like Silent Land Time Machine, Good Stuff House, Smokey Emery, Survive and Thousand Foot Whale Claw. Ssleeperhold's sound is definitely a good fit, falling more toward the witch house / grave rave side of the Holodeck spectrum, a sprawling, claustrophobic world of alien synth-wave and eighties style electro-goth synth pop. The opener is dark, and clattery, distorted and darkly heavy, reminding us quite a bit of Soft Moon, all churning gristling synth squiggle, and brittle rhythmic skitter, wreathed in layers of noise and crumbling effects, but then the follow up track, transforms the sound into something much more akin to eighties MTV, pulsing bass buzz, glimmering synth shimmer, poppy and dreamily washed out, and the whole record seems to be a fantastically tense push and pull between the two sides of Cota's musical personality, minimal dystopian dissonance, a sort of sci-fi cyborg dark synth dirgery, and more blissed out (but still weirdly eerie) electro pop. The two part "Timeghosts" deftly balances the two, draping some lilting melodies over a churning field of pulsing industrial buzz, an chopped up vox, the first part a tranced out minimal loopscape, the second a super tripped out score to some alternate universe planetarium show, atonal and fractured, a twisted bit of avant synthscapery, that leads us right into the darkly dreamy brooder "Ashes", which again pairs a percolating melody, to some weird hissy noise, and wraps it in clouds of grinding hiss and static, the glimmering warmth of main melody just barely keeping the ominous noisiness at bay.
"F.I.S.T." is a fierce blast of Soft Moon style electro-goth synth buzz moodiness, the rhythms distorted and crunchy, draped over thick swells of buzzing bass, and peppered with FX drenched percussive splatter, less a song, than a chunk of tranced out sonic mesmer, eighties industrial by way of modern retro gloom punk. The record finishes with another two parter, "Dreamwaves", the first half all melancholy synth buzz and stuttery rhythmic skitter, loping and woozily washed out, distorted but sort of blissed out, the vibe super cinematic, evoking long brightly lit hallways, running endlessly through abandoned space stations, the galaxy sprawling endlessly outside the windows, a sort of spaced out witch house, that culminates in a more melodic, moody synth pop outro, sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the above mentioned lost in space, trapped in an abandoned space station art house flick, playing on as the credits crawl, wistful, and minor key, a little bit haunting, and darkly lovely.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Trensmat continues to deviate from their previously psychedelic/space rock focus, and delve deeper into obscure electronica, with this latest blast of rhythmic murk from Chicago producer Stave, who delivers a gorgeous bit of gristly rhythmatism, all hazy, synthy swirl wrapped around churning tangled skitter, and all sort of washed out and hazy, buried melodies drifting serenely beneath the roiling surface, all tangled clockwork beats, and mechanical grooves. In a way, it reminds us a little of the more electronic leaning outings from Campbell Kneale's Our Love Will Destroy The World, but where that stuff was total blissed out kitchen sink chaos, Stave is much more measured, sounding at times like classic Autechre dipped in a weirdly noisy psychedelic brew, just check out the opener, strip the beats away, and it's almost some serious Pop Ambient dreaminess, and the beats do drop out at one point to reveal just what's lurking below the surface, but only briefly, before the sound slips right back into more electro-crunch, IDM mesmer. The rest of the tracks follow suit, the sound dense and noisy, the beats wreathed in clouds of static, and fracture melodies, each track a swirling rhythmscape that skirts chaos, but instead of crumbling and fracturing, Stave somehow sculpts that chaos into something propulsive, and moody, and atmospheric. One track goes full on jungle, but Stave style, surrounding the classic break, with a barrage of auxiliary beats, that only add to the strangely psychedelic vibe of the whole thing, before things mellow out into a gorgeous field of muted pulsations, and hushed rhythmic skitter.
Includes a download of the whole record with two bonus tracks! The first of which sounds like it was plucked right from the record, another murky psychedelic chaotic banger, while the closer, sounds almost live, the drums pushed way up to the front, while hazy clouds of chordal thrum, and distant keening melodies, drift dreamily in the background.
This one seemed so unlikely, we figured that it couldn't be right. That maybe "Batillus" was the name of the track. Or that the Batillus in question here, being remixed by minimal electronic mastermind Andy Stott, was just another beatmaker/soundscaper with the same name as the Batillus we knew, but in fact, the Batillus here IS none other than the NY metal crew whose records Concrete Sustain and Furnace we've raved about on the aQ list in the past. Apparently, Stott and Batillus shared a bill, Batillus professed their love for Stott, and a collaboration was born. And it's a doozy. The opening few minutes sound like a slightly darker version of what we're used to from Stott, all hushed staticscapes, buried pulsations, slow shifting textures, warbly minimal thrum, a sculpted landscape of hiss and hum, but soon the buzz grows more sinister, the rhythmic pulse, more ominous and caustic, the sound growing more industrial and metallic, and then the vocals come in, super processed and slowed down, a raspy, mechanical demon bellow, doused in reverb and delay and FX, dubbed out hard, and draped over a blurry tangle of tones, and a slow motion stutter step rhythm. So goddamn good. And as always, with a remix like this, it mostly leaves us wishing there was actually a proper band, that just sounded EXACTLY LIKE THIS. Who knows, maybe Stott and Batillus will join forces and make a full length together. Here's hoping...
The first two eps by San Francisco's avant post-punk mutants Tuxedomoon get the reissue treatment by local (excellent!) reissue label Superior Viaduct. Both eps came out in 1979 before the band's Ralph records debut, Half-Mute in 1980. Formed by Steve Brown and Blaine L. Reininger who met in a City College electronic music class, they formed Tuxedomoon with the plan to be a band that sounded like no one else, and indeed they largely succeeded. Using a polymoog synthesizer, electric violin, guitar and saxophone, the duo enlisted a rotating line-up of musicians, filmakers and performance artists including Peter Principle on bass and Winston Tong on vocals, to make a weird hybrid of mutant jazz, goth-industrial atmospherics and noirish caberet styles with a live show that was both bizarre and highly theatrical. "No Tears" was their first hit and it remains today a classic Batcave goth-punk floor-filler, even if it may be somewhat of an anomaly in the band's overall sound, which leaned more towards an artier Throbbing Gristle than say Specimen or Alien Sex Fiend. They even do a subdued downbeat cover of "Nite and Day" by Cole Porter.
Their theater and avant-jazz leanings endeared them more to Europe than the states and they moved to New York and then Belgium shortly after their debut album was released. But these two eps are Tuxedomoon at their most experimental and exploratory and weird, fleshing out the dark corners of their sound with what Simon Reynolds called "an aura of jaded elegance". For fans of the SF underground, like The Residents, Sleepers, Noh Mercy, and Factrix. Both records come highly recommended!
The first two eps by San Francisco's avant post-punk mutants Tuxedomoon get the reissue treatment by local (excellent!) reissue label Superior Viaduct. Both eps came out in 1979 before the band's Ralph records debut, Half-Mute in 1980. Formed by Steve Brown and Blaine L. Reininger who met in a City College electronic music class, they formed Tuxedomoon with the plan to be a band that sounded like no one else, and indeed they largely succeeded. Using a polymoog synthesizer, electric violin, guitar and saxophone, the duo enlisted a rotating line-up of musicians, filmakers and performance artists including Peter Principle on bass and Winston Tong on vocals, to make a weird hybrid of mutant jazz, goth-industrial atmospherics and noirish caberet styles with a live show that was both bizarre and highly theatrical. "No Tears" was their first hit and it remains today a classic Batcave goth-punk floor-filler, even if it may be somewhat of an anomaly in the band's overall sound, which leaned more towards an artier Throbbing Gristle than say Specimen or Alien Sex Fiend. They even do a subdued downbeat cover of "Nite and Day" by Cole Porter.
Their theater and avant-jazz leanings endeared them more to Europe than the states and they moved to New York and then Belgium shortly after their debut album was released. But these two eps are Tuxedomoon at their most experimental and exploratory and weird, fleshing out the dark corners of their sound with what Simon Reynolds called "an aura of jaded elegance". For fans of the SF underground, like The Residents, Sleepers, Noh Mercy, and Factrix. Both records come highly recommended!
A couple years back, Vertonen began a series of compositions entirely based on field recordings of heavy machinery. This was truly industrial music glommed from the rhythms of pistons, turbines, pneumatic hammers, and any other thing that goes clank in the urban jungle. This series began as an homage to the classic French industrial sounds of Le Syndicat and Vivenza, with their brute recapitulations of an unwelcome man-machine hybrid. Of course, all the titles of these albums are French too, driving home the point. But as Vertonen (aka Blake Edwards) continued to work with the material, the pieces became refined into a metal machine music of acoustic noise more akin to something by Organum or more precisely Chop Shop. While the churning and grinding of those machines are ever present, Edwards dials in particular midrange frequencies from diesel engines, hydraulic motors, and the workings of a metal scrapping facility (to name a few of his sources) into a boiling mass of white noise. The effect is more hypnotic than aggressive, with Vertonen shifting and sliding these layered recordings in and out of focus in relation to the foregrounded sounds. The accompanying cd-r is a longform, yet thoroughly menacing collage of somewhat more droned-out recordings from HVAC systems, computer farm cooling vents, and the familiar whooshing sounds of BART - the San Francisco Bay Area train that connects the city with the East Bay. Again with the French, this disc gets the title Machines Domestiques. This is a really good looking picture disc, with a couple of vertiginous photographs from rust-belt sites of heavy industry. Limited to 300 copies.
The first physical release on Accident Prone in nearly five years is this killer split from two new to us cold / synth wave outfits, the first is Vice Device, who hail from Portland, and whose sound is dark and angular, caustic and chaotic, the music equal parts swirling psychedelic synthiness and buzzing clattery post punk, check out "Fractured Desire", which lays down shards of electro buzz, would in tight coils of sinewy bass, pelted by distorted squelches and clouds of FX, driven by a motorik pulsing, relentless rhythm, all beneath some super powerful, dramatic female vox. "Even Blind" adds some droned out moodiness, and introduces some super melodic male vocals, giving the sound an almost Interpol-ish vibe, with a hint of old school LA goth (Abecedarians, Kommunity FK). The rest of the Vice Device side unwinds similarly, tense and taut, distorted and darkly dramatic, hints of Depeche Mode surface on "Symmetry", a woozy brooder, and things get downright balladic on closer "Bound", which sounds like classic Berlin via Soft Moon!
Void Vision is a one woman cold/synth/new wave project from Philadelphia, whose sound is much more electro, opening with a beat that's a dead ringer for classic New Order, before in swoop ominous, buzzing, arpeggiated synths, underpinning, swirling sci-fi melodies, and some eighties style percussive flourishes. The female vocals much more girlish, and more down in the mix, the sound darkly distorted, with some buzzing post punk guitar crunch wound into the otherwise woozy, skeletal synthiness. The sound slipping from cold and clinical and robotic, to swirly and psychedelic and seriously tripped out. "Not Much Of Anything" sounds like a more robotic Gary Numan, icy vox over percolating metallic melodies, flurries of electronic drums, and some dizzying atonal music box melodies draped over the chorus. And VV closes with a killer cover of Queen's "Take My Breath Away", here re-envisioned as a brooding, psychedelic synth ballad, FX heavy vocals, witchy and sultry, delivered over plink/plonk music box synth lines, and swirling clouds of dubbed out shimmer!
THE LP IS LIMITED TO 330 COPIES!! Each copy hand numbered. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and includes a cd version of the record as well! The cassette version is limited to just 60 copies, and most copies were only available direct from the band at shows, and those include DL codes as well!
