Do you ever wish classic hardcore was more, well, you know... Satanic? Well, then this is for you. A tribute/homage to legendary straight edge hardcore heroes Minor Threat, with those short/sharp paeans to punk purity reimagined as something much more sinister, transformed into blasts of blurred sonic blasphemy, but really, as usual, we were sold before we heard a single note. The original black sheep / Out Of Step cover art, here features the black sheep as an evil black ram with glowing red eyes, retitled In To Hell, with a printed sticker price of $6.66 (of course), and song titles like "Guilty Of Hating Christ" (original: "Guilty Of Being White"), "Satanic Threat", "Small God, Big Cross" (original: "Small Man, Big Mouth"), "Cursing At The Cross" (original: "Screaming At A Wall"), you get the drift.
The back cover is also adorned with a super metal looking Jesus, tongue out, flashing the devil horns, upside down cross in hand, stigmata dripping blood, what's not to love? But don't be expecting super metallized version of hardcore songs, other than the new lyrics, the sound here is straight up old school hardcore, furious and frenzied pissed off and punk as fuck, yowled vox over blasting, galloping hardcore heaviness, just way less positive, and WAY MORE EVIL! The super short album proper is filled out by a live show, with mostly the same songs, this time including ST's version of "Steppin' Stone" (which Monor Threat also famously covered), as well as some pretty hilarious stage banter, and plenty of excellent heckling!
The LAMC series of 7"s features tons of our favorite bands (Fuzz, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees), delivering an exclusive track on the A side, while the B side features one of THAT band's favorite new artists. A pretty cool concept for sure and we're reviewing 3 of our favorites in the series.
Number 7 features a killer A side from Ty Segall, who lays down a super funky drum track, swaddles it in organ, then some super distorted percussion, bongos maybe, a wild rhythmic freak out, that gets more and more wild and distorted as it goes, bursts of psych-squall noisiness, ultra distorted leads, all somehow wound up into a dense slab of cinematic psychedelic groovery!!
Segall's choice for unknown up and comer on the B side was totally unknown to us, still don't know much about them/him, other than they have a super goofy band name, and that they kick out some serious jams, a psychedelic garage rock din that is very reminiscent of Thee Oh Sees, scrappy and rambunctious, soaring harmony vocals, plenty of ooooh's and aaaah's, wound around gristly, rumblingly distorted crunch, even some almost metallic riffing and harmonized guitars, some chugging heaviness, and some crazy catchy poppiness, not to mention some weird high vox. Oh Sees fans will flip for these guys for sure. The bandname is definitely not doing them any favors, but odds are, if you can get past that, these guys could be a garage rock next big thing. You heard it here first!
And as you probably figured out already, EXTREMELY limited!!!!
These irrepressible SoCal stoner skate punks come ripping and raging back with their 2nd album for Tee Pee. Not unlike the self-proclaimed "primitive blast" of their debut, it's again an explosive concoction of high energy rock 'n' roll, sure to catch your ears and show 'em a good time, even as these tracks speed by in full on party mode. Part metal, part punk, The Shrine are both heavy and hooky, mixing up some Kill 'Em All era Metallica riffage with SST/Black Flag 'tude too (and in fact, one song features lyrics by Chuck Dukowski originally written for an unrecorded Black Flag tune from '83). Lest we forget, some other longhairs named Soundgarden got their start on SST, and The Shrine probably say, Ultramega OK to that.
Among this album's highlights, we'll single out the remarkably poppy shred of "Tripping Corpse", you just gotta love lines like "he combs his hair / he doesn't care / he's living free / acid casualty", as sung over some suitably tweaked Voivoid-esqe chords. The sheer no-fucks-gven rock power of that track is fairly representative of the whole dang disc.
No sophomore slump here! No slump of any kind. Indeed, this is pure anti-slumping music for sure. It's get up, get going, skate and destroy music!
Another fantastic lost score rescued from obscurity by Trunk Records, this one a fantastic batch of flute driven jazziness, the score to The Small World Of Sammy Lee, a British classic we're told, but also one that's fairly racy, receiving an 'X Certificate', which is maybe similar to an X rating in the US, we haven't seen the movie, but the liner notes tell us it involves lots of pimps and strippers and thugs. Although the music is actually anything but racy, instead, it's dreamy and melodic, soft focus and serene. We had reviewed another Kenny Graham release on Trunk, which we described as sounding like Moondog recorded by Joe Meek, but this is much more traditional. Playful at times, lilting and lovely at others, occasionally tense and brooding, once in a while with a bit of an exotica vibe, those moments rife with wild percussion, tangled guitars, wild drumming (check out "Four O'Clock Hop"), definitely the most overtly soundtracky number here, one track has some melancholic violin, which gives that song a sort of gypsy folk vibe, but the bulk of the record is slow and smokey, lots of flute, and vibes, skittery percussion, understated bass lines, plenty of horns, subtle strings, all woven into some dreamy, sixties jazziness, that besides getting played on repeat quite a bit, has us really wanting to check out the film!
Another fantastic lost score rescued from obscurity by Trunk Records, this one a fantastic batch of flute driven jazziness, the score to The Small World Of Sammy Lee, a British classic we're told, but also one that's fairly racy, receiving an 'X Certificate', which is maybe similar to an X rating in the US, we haven't seen the movie, but the liner notes tell us it involves lots of pimps and strippers and thugs. Although the music is actually anything but racy, instead, it's dreamy and melodic, soft focus and serene. We had reviewed another Kenny Graham release on Trunk, which we described as sounding like Moondog recorded by Joe Meek, but this is much more traditional. Playful at times, lilting and lovely at others, occasionally tense and brooding, once in a while with a bit of an exotica vibe, those moments rife with wild percussion, tangled guitars, wild drumming (check out "Four O'Clock Hop"), definitely the most overtly soundtracky number here, one track has some melancholic violin, which gives that song a sort of gypsy folk vibe, but the bulk of the record is slow and smokey, lots of flute, and vibes, skittery percussion, understated bass lines, plenty of horns, subtle strings, all woven into some dreamy, sixties jazziness, that besides getting played on repeat quite a bit, has us really wanting to check out the film!
One of our favorite Heavy Metal bands from the '70s and '80s, the underrated British outfit Spinal Tap, were surprisingly enough the subject of a documentary film, or 'rockumentary' if you will, back in 1984, entitled This Is Spinal Tap, when their career was, let us say, not at its zenith. If you can find a VHS copy, and a VHS player, it's worth checking out. Kind of like the more recent Anvil: The Story Of Anvil documentary you may have seen.
A little while ago, we discovered that the soundtrack to that Spinal Tap documentary had been reissued on vinyl, and ever since, it's been a steady seller in the shop - perhaps there's more Spinal Tap fans out there than we supposed. Also, the soundtrack, which serves as a 'best of' the band, is the ONLY way you can get any of Spinal Tap's music these days, as their actual albums are inexplicably out of print and seemingly impossible to find - even on the internets. Thankfully, this soundtrack lp contains the most essential of their greatest 'hits', as well as a smattering of rarities going back to the late sixties when they were more of a twee flower power psych rock band than the metal juggernaut they later became.
This album goes to 11 - that's how many tracks are on it. You get such Tap classics as "Big Bottom", "Tonight I'm Gonna To Rock You Tonight", "Heavy Duty"," Sex Farm", and "Hell Hole", that originally appeared on, respectively, the albums Brainhammer (1970), Intravenus De Milo (1974), Bent For The Rent (1976), Shark Sandwich (1980), and Smell The Glove (1982). But then, for the deep cuts, this collection delves way back to 1967 to dig up the title track of the band's debut single, "(Listen To The) Flower People". And there's also a great garagey freakbeat nugget, "Gimme Some Money", too. Oh, and who can forget Spinal Tap's almost parodic prog rock epic "Stonehenge"?
Yeah, for some strange reason, this band is often considered a joke. Ok, so some of their lyrics aren't exactly Shakespeare, and can even be construed as sexist (not to be confused with sexy!). And musically too, Spinal Tap sometimes stumbles across the fine line between clever and stupid. But we maintain that they're in fact good songwriters. These tracks, with all their heavier than thou bluster or portentous proggy synthiness, are also full of catchy hooks that will stick in your ear, big riffs and majestic melodies. They deserve recognition alongside some better known bands of their era, like Zeppelin and Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult and KISS� indeed, you can almost hear their influence on those acts and others. Or perhaps it was the other way around.
Seriously - this not only is this one of our favorite soundtracks, to one of our favorite movies (and one of the funniest movies), of all time, but it really IS also one of our favorite heavy metal albums, of all time, too!!
First time on vinyl since 1984, comes in deluxe gatefold package in black on black cover (echoing the "none more black" graphic design of Smell The Glove), with original liner notes from the authoritative Rocklopedia Brittanicus. (By the way, it's also still available on cd too, with their "Christmas With The Devil" single as a bonus.)
After five self titled releases, Kalamazoo Ramones/Black Flag worshipping mongoloid sci-fi garage punks the Spits offer up Kill The Kool, not a new full length obviously, cuz then it would be self titled AGAIN, but instead, KtK is a reissue of a super limited tour only release, now all gussied up, with a whole mess of bonus material, the vinyl a double lp cut at 45rpm, but both the cd and lp versions overflowing with the Spits's twisted mix of knuckle dragging caveman space punk and creepy synthy weirdness, a collection of singles, B-sides, outtakes and demos, and as always, even a collection of odds and sods from these guys is totally and impossibly catchy, playing like a record proper. Opener "2018" sets the stage, the band playing what is essentially three chord punk rock, but something about it transforms dumb punk into something twisted and warped and catchy as fuck. "Atom Age" is another gem, all droney and sorta psychedelic, but ultimately just a pounding punk rock anthem. Oh yeah, then in swoops one of the most retarded/genius 'solos' ever, and you sort of get what these guys are capable of. Sure they may sound like classic punk rock on the surface, but it's all just sort of tweaked and off kilter, enough that even the simples blast of bash and pound is something sorta next level. And as mentioned above, lots of the tracks are laced with weird sci-fi synthiness, often just buzzy tripped out intros, but just as often woven into the fabric of the song, and then there are the true oddities, which tend to be our favorites. The lo-fi psychedelic freakout of "Take Pleasure In Someone Else's Pain" that sounds like it could be Simply Saucer, the druggy, dirgey "Chem Trails", the whole song laced with coughing, and weird heavily effected alien vox, the synth heavy "The Liars", which sounds like Gary Numan by way of the Ramones, and then there's the ridiculous freaked out final track, "Spend The Night In A Haunted House w/ The Spits, which is essentially a drum machines, some synth buzz, weird swirling psychedelic ambience, and what sounds like super distorted field recordings of an actual haunted house, people screaming and freaking out, but also 'characters' growling and shrieking and trying to scare the regular folks. Makes for some seriously genius WTF weirdness, which is pretty much why we love these guys as much as we do!
My coworker Cup, whose tolerance for musical sweetness I can only admire and envy, thinks this new Stereolab album displays a lot more thought and effort, and is more intriguingly organic than their recent slick muzak leanings. And certainly the tracks featuring Jim O'Rourke at the controls are very nice. However, in my opinion (and I'm not Cup), this new album sees Stereolab
ALSO ON VINYL!!!!
This one's been in the can for a while now, apparently recorded live some years back, a pretty monumental meeting of the musical minds, Norwegian post black metal experimentalists Ulver, and our very own masters of the dronedoomdirge, SUNNO))). Perhaps this collaboration speaks well of both groups, as it's nearly impossible to peg which outfit's sound came out on top. In fact, it seems like both SUNNO))) and Ulver created something entirely new for the occasion, touching on sounds from the past, but mostly conjuring up some truly collaborative musical magic in the moment.
Three long songs, the opener, a slow symphonic build, all shimmering, pulsating guitars, dark sonic swirls, and most surprising horns! But they sound perfect, and the result is something haunting and stately, the guitars gradually build momentum, and soon, it's a cloud of tangled guitar buzz and horn bleat, a cosmic black jazz maybe? Regardless, it's nearly nine minutes before the drums come in, and when they do, the song doesn't explode into something more metallic, instead, it somehow blossoms into something even more majestic and epic, the horns soaring alongside the buzzing guitars, it's almost like some sort of metallic court music, you can almost imagine, some mysterious leader, being led in on a litter, carried by hulking hooded figures...
The first track bleeds right into the second, another sprawl of layered guitar buzz, and moody ambient murk, laced with thick bass thrum, and soaring melodic swells, the mostly guitar driven buzzscape, growing ever more tense and intense, almost like some minimal Godspeed jam being spun at the wrong speed, ominous and sinister, and hauntingly beautiful, all culminating in the 14+ minute closer, that really does sound like dark jazz, the opening few minutes sounds like a super sinister Martin Denny, vibes draped over twang flecked Earth-worthy guitarscapery, woozy, and Morricone-esque, very filmic, those sounds gradually giving way to a dark symphonic drift, laced with some twisted cosmic synthery, the final movement, more like some spaced out avant prog, the vocals coming in a it of a surprise for sure, transforming the sound into some sort of dark prog balladry, the sound aching, minor key and melancholic, with distinctly (gypsy) folk vibe, the last few minutes, a gorgeous sprawl of dark drone psych folk, ominous and darkly dreamy.
Super striking understated red and metallic gold cover art courtesy of SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley as well...
Bow before the might of Behemoth... 'cuz they're on the cover and that's what it says. In this new issue of the UK's premier monthly metal magazine, you'll also find stuff on Grand Magus, Slough Feg (yay!), Kampfar, accapella metallers Van Canto, Amon Amarth, sweater-wearers Alcest, Indian, Cradle Of Filth, Mayhem, and more, including a label profile on our pals at Pesanta Urfolk (Ash Borer, Hell, Merkstave...).
Also included, a cd sampler stuck to the cover, with tracks by a couple of the aforementioned and bunches of unknowns too.
The conception for Spirals Of Everlasting Change began in 1982 for Robert Turman - best known as the founder of NON with Boyd Rice and to a lesser extent within the obscurant noise project Z.O. Voider. He envisioned two separate cassettes to be played simultaneously on two decks with the languid ambient tones of one cassette lashed across the harsher industrial-klank rhythms of the other. By 1987, he reworked all of the material into a single mix again sprawled across two cassettes, with the dreamy, zoner tracks corralled onto one tape and the more dissonant pieces on the other. He released Spirals Of Everlasting Change in two formats in the late '80s, once as a cassette inside a 5" reel-to-reel tape box and again as part of the Chapter Eleven anthology comprised of eight cassettes that documented all of the recorded output up to 1988. So far, only the seminal Flux album (which got reissued on Spectrum Spools a couple years ago) and Spirals Of Everlasting Change have been resuscitated from the dustbin of terminal obscurity, as Chapter Eleven is downright impossible to find. We can hope that a reissue campaign of all of those recordings will eventually materialize; but until that happens, we'll definitely jump at the chance for another archival Turman recording.
The titular tracks are the more abrasive pieces, with the ready-made loops sounding very similar to what Boyd Rice delivered on his infamous Black Album of delirious repetitions for tape-gyrating dervishes and maddeningly insistent phrases that may have been culled from thrift store belly-dancing records. "Lonesome Echo" and "Lower World" are eerily prescient of the work that William Basinski became famous for - lilting melodic passages generated from simple overlapping loops that have a ghostly recollection of a forgotten past, smudged in a kirlian glow of distressed chromium oxide and industrial dub debris. This double lp set of Spirals Of Everlasting Change is super limited, coming out of Luxembourg in an edition of 289 copies, of which we only have a few!
Hard to believe we never reviewed this massively influential set of archival recordings of American folk music when it was first reissued as a 6cd box set back in the late nineties. Perhaps they preceded our list, or we simply just relied on the fact that these sets so easily sold themselves at the time. Compiled by the one and only Harry Smith, a famously eccentric figure of American bohemia both as an experimental filmmaker, and collector and archivist. this set released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1952 in 3 volumes (the 4th volume was planned but never released until the early 2000's) reintroduced to the world some of the brightest stars of early folk and country music recordings of the twenties and thirties and lending significant influence to the folk music revival of the fifties and sixties. We're even quite positive that the cd reissues in the nineties influenced the next wave of folk music in the early 2000's. The Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Furry Lewis, Charlie Poole, The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, and many more lesser known musical figures are to be found in these collections, exploring the full range of regional American musical forms from Hawaiian guitar to Cajun music, blues, reels and gospel. Mississippi Records has gone to great lengths to reproduce the original albums all on 200 gram vinyl. Each volume is a double lp, housed in a cloth bound super thick cardboard gatefold sleeve with a tip on print on the front.
Volume 4 was planned and collected at the same time as the first 3 volumes but not released. This shorter volume focused on rhythmic changes in folk, blues and country music that occurred from the late twenties to the early forties. John Fahey's Revenant label had released this volume in the late nineties, but it has long been out of print ever since. This is the only volume without liner notes as Smith didn't prepare any for this release. It includes Lead Belly, The Carter Family, Robert Johnson, The Monroe Brothers, Uncle Dave Macon, the Memphis Jug Band, and many more.
Sure they are pricey, but you won't see these around for long, such an amazing mind-boggling collection and all so worth it!
Hard to believe we never reviewed this massively influential set of archival recordings of American folk music when it was first reissued as a 6cd box set back in the late nineties. Perhaps they preceded our list, or we simply just relied on the fact that these sets so easily sold themselves at the time. Compiled by the one and only Harry Smith, a famously eccentric figure of American bohemia both as an experimental filmmaker, and collector and archivist. this set released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1952 in 3 volumes (the 4th volume was planned but never released until the early 2000's) reintroduced to the world some of the brightest stars of early folk and country music recordings of the twenties and thirties and lending significant influence to the folk music revival of the fifties and sixties. We're even quite positive that the cd reissues in the nineties influenced the next wave of folk music in the early 2000's. The Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Furry Lewis, Charlie Poole, The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, and many more lesser known musical figures are to be found in these collections, exploring the full range of regional American musical forms from Hawaiian guitar to Cajun music, blues, reels and gospel. Mississippi Records has gone to great lengths to reproduce the original albums all on 200 gram vinyl. Each volume is a double lp, housed in a cloth bound super thick cardboard gatefold sleeve with a tip on print on the front. In the gatefold there is a pouch with a reproduction of the original liner notes (at least in the first three volumes).
Volume One is Ballads with focus on traditional songs handed down from generations that often originated from British and Scottish Folk balladry, but also includes murder ballads, songs of love and death and great tragedy. An Essential Collection!
Sure they are pricey, but you won't see these around for long. Such an amazing mind-boggling collection and all so worth it!
Hard to believe we never reviewed this massively influential set of archival recordings of American folk music when it was first reissued as a 6cd box set back in the late nineties. Perhaps they preceded our list, or we simply just relied on the fact that these sets so easily sold themselves at the time. Compiled by the one and only Harry Smith, a famously eccentric figure of American bohemia both as an experimental filmmaker, and collector and archivist. this set released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1952 in 3 volumes (the 4th volume was planned but never released until the early 2000's) reintroduced to the world some of the brightest stars of early folk and country music recordings of the twenties and thirties and lending significant influence to the folk music revival of the fifties and sixties. We're even quite positive that the cd reissues in the nineties influenced the next wave of folk music in the early 2000's. The Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Furry Lewis, Charlie Poole, The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, and many more lesser known musical figures are to be found in these collections, exploring the full range of regional American musical forms from Hawaiian guitar to Cajun music, blues, reels and gospel. Mississippi Records has gone to great lengths to reproduce the original albums all on 200 gram vinyl. Each volume is a double lp, housed in a cloth bound super thick cardboard gatefold sleeve with a tip on print on the front. In the gatefold there is a pouch with a reproduction of the original liner notes (at least in the first three volumes).
Volume Three is Songs and focuses on the individual expression of various artists as well as beautifully intense and personal songwriting. This includes Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and other classics of early blues and country. Incredible!
Sure they are pricey, but you won't see these around for long. Such an amazing mind-boggling collection and all so worth it!
Hard to believe we never reviewed this massively influential set of archival recordings of American folk music when it was first reissued as a 6cd box set back in the late nineties. Perhaps they preceded our list, or we simply just relied on the fact that these sets so easily sold themselves at the time. Compiled by the one and only Harry Smith, a famously eccentric figure of American bohemia both as an experimental filmmaker, and collector and archivist. this set released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1952 in 3 volumes (the 4th volume was planned but never released until the early 2000's) reintroduced to the world some of the brightest stars of early folk and country music recordings of the twenties and thirties and lending significant influence to the folk music revival of the fifties and sixties. We're even quite positive that the cd reissues in the nineties influenced the next wave of folk music in the early 2000's. The Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Furry Lewis, Charlie Poole, The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, and many more lesser known musical figures are to be found in these collections, exploring the full range of regional American musical forms from Hawaiian guitar to Cajun music, blues, reels and gospel. Mississippi Records has gone to great lengths to reproduce the original albums all on 200 gram vinyl. Each volume is a double lp, housed in a cloth bound super thick cardboard gatefold sleeve with a tip on print on the front. In the gatefold there is a pouch with a reproduction of the original liner notes (at least in the first three volumes).
Volume Two is Social Music and focuses on music from both sacred and secular social gatherings. Dance songs, bluegrass fiddle tunes, gospel, and cajun songs, sacred harp singing and street preaching. This has some of our favorite folk songs ever including Delma Lachney's and Blind Uncle Gaspard melancholic cajun fiddle tune "La Danseuse" and Blind Willie Johnson's "John The Revelator". So great!
Sure they are pricey, but you won't see these around for long. Such an amazing mind-boggling collection and all so worth it!
Sacred Bones have their work cut out for them, if they wanna catch up with the Killed By Death series. That blatant bootleg series compiled collectible/obscure punk singles from all around the world, pressing them onto crappy vinyl and kickin' them out the door at a blazing pace. The numbers affixed to Killed By Death were a red herring; there were only a couple dozen released in the late '80s and early '90s but had volume numbers like #41, #77, #33, #202, etc. We're hoping that Sacred Bones will keep things sensible, but not too sensible, as they should continue to delve into the dustbin of the catch-all term "deathrock" for more and more and more compilations from back in the day.
Of the eleven artists on this album, we had only ever heard/heard of a few - Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons being one, which also garnered a Dark Entries reissue of their weirdo-synth theatrics, and Glorious Din, only cuz they were from San Francisco way back when.
As for what "deathrock" means, the obvious references to goth do apply as in the poppier veins of Christian Death or X-Mal Deutschland; but it can also be rather punky and snarly (as in Taste Of Decay's full throttled take on the Damned). It can also relate lyrically as well. "I Wanna Be You" by Your Funeral is a bouncy, jangly number that wouldn't be out of place next to The Clean or The Bats or any of the ecstatic DIY popsters on Flying Nun; but lyrically the band utters a raw, suicidal desperation. Both Twisted Nerve and Afterimage dissect Joy Division's classic single "Transmission" with the former wholesale lifting the bassline from that track, and featuring a crooner who sounds exactly like Julian Cope, while the latter adopts Bernard Sumner's pop-hook panache. Screaming For Emily (not to be confused with the equally goth-tastic Screams For Tina) explode with a hi-hat frenzy of death-disco rhythms, Teutonic melodies, and deepthroated vocals for one of the many high points on this album. The aforementioned Glorious Din lay down an archetypally gothy bassline swimming in liquid flange, with an almost nonexistent guitar scratch and pummeling rhythms that lie somewhere between Crispy Ambulance and Savage Republic. The Naked And The Dead reprise Sex Gang Children's uncanny ability to seem feral and freaked out in their unhinged guitars, randomly tumbling percussion, and sexpot/deathwish vocalizations, while strangely maintaining a grounded sense of compositional control. It is true that all of these bands on Killed By Deathrock have their references and antecedents, but the quality in all of these genetic mutants is top fucking shelf.
Thanks for killing us with deathrock, Sacred Bones. Let's do it again sometime!
Oui, apparently French people pronounced the word punk like "paink" when it first erupted circa '77, and you can hear just what "paink" sounded like, on this tres killer comp, kind of a French Killed By Death. Who better than the Born Bad label to hip us to the who's who of the best '70s and early '80s French punk? It was a pretty darn underground scene, with some pretty crazy and hard-edged bands that seem somehow more dangerous and perhaps less potentially commercial than many of their contemporaries over in New York and London. We had only previously heard (or heard of) a handful of the bands on here, but the ones we recognized we knew as being really badass, especially the mindblowing Soggy, so we had high hopes for the rest, and they indeed deliver. Soggy's song here is their devastating, more-Stoogesy-than-thou, almost metallic "Waiting For The War" - so awesome to have that utterly heavy track on cd (and/or on vinyl, for those who missed out on the now out of print and expensive Soggy vinyl reissue some years back). It's not just Soggy, The Stooges (and the MC5) are definitely a big influence on a bunch of these Frenchies, most of whom traffic in totally revved up rocknroll, anarchic freak action, riffing and snarling. There's variety - some have female singers, some provide lashings of new wave synth, some are buzzier, some popper, but all definitely have an edge. You may never have heard any of these bands or songs before, but it's pretty clear with just one listen that this IS all classic punk material. Besides the mighty Soggy, the other bands found here are: Les Nouveaux Riches, Strychnine, Electrochoc, Gasoline, Sexe A Pile, Soggy, Marie France, Ruth Elyeri, Coronados, Dogs, Warm Gun, Gloires Locales, Guilty Razors, and Les Olivensteins (themselves the subject of a great Born Bad anthology a while back). Get this, crank it up, and paink out en Francais!!
Are not from Vermont. Give it a listen, maybe you'll guess... they're from Cologne, Germany.
And Vermont's debut release comes to us via our fave techno/electronica imprint, Cologne's Kompakt. It's the first collaborative project from experienced producers Marcus Worgull and Danilo Plessow (Motor City Drum Ensemble). This duo has also enlisted some friends to help 'em out - among them, Can's Jaki Liebezeit, who drums on two of the cuts, along with one of Jaki's bandmates in his '80s Phantom Band. So no surprise that this has got a satisfyingly, slightly krautrock-ish vibe, shades of Cluster and Kraftwerk; these moody, melodic instrumentals all arising out of the Vermont duo's relaxed jams on vintage analog synth gear, augmented on a few of the tracks by guest guitar, violin, drums, and theremin. There are 14 varied pieces, with Teutonic names like "Ruckzug" and "Ubersprung" and "Katzenjammer". Self-descriptive names too, like "Dynamik", "Majestat", and "Macchina". Some have atmospheric, "incidental" music feel, others are more active and insidious. All are constructed from a quite pleasant palette of sounds that include sundappled electronic blippery, gently chirping melodies, headnodding beats, and whooshing soothing synth textures. As befits a release on the label that brought us the "Pop Ambient" concept, there's moments here that sound like the mellowest video game theme music you could ever imagine!
It's nice stuff, very nice. We're happily transported by this music to the mountains of an imagined idyllic Vermont (that's somehow right outside of Cologne), the temporal location of which is also oddly imprecise - could be just yesterday, or deep in the '70s.
Vinyl version (tracks spread over an lp and a 7") also includes a cd of the whole album, which is what you get when you get the cd version, obviously.
Anyone who saw the great 2008 Scott Walker documentary, 30th Century Man, may recognize this final Walker Brothers album from 1978 as the musical bridge that connects Scott Walker's early over the top orchestral balladry from the sixties and seventies to his bizarrely dark and doomy sonic explorations of the past 25 years. The rare, much sought after Nite Flights is a strange brew indeed. The Walker Brothers started out in the mid-sixties as the British equivalent of The Righteous Brothers. Even though all the members were American and not brothers, they had a much bigger following in England. Nite Flights is their last hurrah and much like the Beatles' White Album, it feels like a suite of the various members solo leanings, rather than a cohesive band effort. Though it's brought together production-wise by everyone's attempt to follow a more modern rock direction, so it's got a more driving and rather darkened vibe that unfortunately includes some era (in)appropriate rock sax, and electric guitar solo riffery. But it's the Scott Walker songs (the first four on the record) that are worth the whole price of admission, especially the title track which has a noirish night drive David Bowie feel (in fact Bowie covered it, but Scott's is better!). "The Electrician" with it's foreboding tense beginning is the biggest premonition towards what he would later attempt on Tilt, The Drift, and Bish Bosch, even if it includes some lush big pop orchestrations of strings and harps that looks nicely back to Scott 4. A curious rock record that has some weirdly great songs that every fan of Scott Walker should have.
Light In The Attic continues its deep search into the Vanguard vaults and unearths this long-awaited gem, the second Vanguard album by hippie gypsy guitarist Peter Walker. His first album, Rainy Day Ragas is one of our favorite solo guitar records ever, and we never imagined it would take so long to reissue this excellent 1968 follow-up. The Second Poem of Karmela Or Gypsies Are Important sees the Cambridge guitarist who orchestrated musical events for Timothy Leary's Celebration Festivals expand his instrumental range into all kind of exotic instrumentation of sitars, tambouras, sarods, violins, flutes, and tablas. Ranging from raga jams to gypsy reveries, there is an open-ended beatnik quality to the music that seems to lend itself to all kinds of imagined visual accompaniment such as trippy projections or interpretive dancing, the romantic raga forms circling around an undefined center of plaintive guitar explorations. Resonant and devotional, the swirling freeform chaos of sound gives way to some incredibly beautiful guitar excursions. The amazing final track, "Mixture", with its backward phasing and organ drones is like hearing Terry Riley and Henry Flynt playing on some unearthly psychedelic jam. Highly Recommended!
Yes! Rarely has a collection of four songs captivated us as much as this welcome reissue and first-time vinyl release of Weekend's '81 demos. When it was released on cd for the first time back in 1995 on Vinyl Japan, we couldn't stop listening and now hearing the tracks on vinyl nearly 20 year later, we are smitten all over again. Weekend was Alison Statton's band formed shortly after the demise of beloved British post-punk minimalists Young Marble Giants (whose Colossal Youth was a former ROTW, and one of our favorite albums ever!). Weekend ended up having more of a breezy jazzier vibe than YMG, closer to Marine Girls, Antena, Durutti Column and The Field Mice, putting out a sole full length, La Variete in 1982. While we loved that record (though not everyone here did, as the inclusion of saxophone in anything but a strict jazz context can be a real deal-breaker for some), the real discovery was the demos that featured 4 songs from La Variete, but much more stripped down (read: no sax!) and bittersweet, sounding probably close to what YMG would have sounded like had they continued. With Statton on voice and bass, and supported by chiming guitar, drum machine, violin and percussion, these songs are exquisitely executed and allowed ample room to breathe. The stunner being the 9 minute "Red Planes", which is given a beautifully slow instrumental build before the vocals come in and break our hearts. "Drumbeat" and "Nostalgia" are barely more upbeat, but carry the same sense of cool detachment that made Colossal Youth so damn charming. The final track "Summerdays" is an instrumental in the sunny pastoral vein of Durutti Column or the recently reissued Maurice Deebank. For fans of all of the above bands as well as Low, Galaxie 500, Heavenly, and Beach House. It may seem short, but trust us, you'll be playing this over and over and over again!
The power of gloom and doom!! And the glory! It's all on full display here, yes indeed, as rolling waves of doomed out, fuzzed filled riffage emanate from this, the latest slab of slow and low heavosity from the UK's epic doom mongers The Wounded Kings. Ahhh, the sound of overdriven vintage tube amps! With occasional atmospheric embellishment from sad acoustic guitar and church organ keyboards when they want to indulge their more proggy and introspective inclinations (as on the moody interlude "Space Conqueror" for instance).
To top it off, The Wounded Kings' generals are gathered in their masses like witches at black masses by the commandingly creepy, husky and haunting vocals of Sharie Neyland, who initially stepped up to the mic on The Wounded Kings' previous album, In The Chapel Of The Black Hand. Now fully integrated into the band and their writing process, she's an even more crucial presence this time. Imagine a Jex Thoth who's lived the life of Ozz, doing drugs and drink, biting bats and doves, having visions. Or, Mark "The Shark" Shelton of Manilla Road, with a sex-change. Or, hopefully you've heard that Darkscorch Canticles compilation of '70s proto-metal we made Record Of The Week recently - specifically, you know the track "Warlord" by the band Wrath, with the girl singing who sounds like brainwashed cultist? 'Cause we think Neyland sounds kinda like her, but all growed up, even more certain in her beliefs, her voice aged deeper and dronier. It's a weird, wicked, wailing warble, enhanced by effects, that incredibly suits the hypnotically stretched-out Sabbath/Vitus sludge of The Wounded Kings.
'Tis true, female-fronted occult rock and doom acts are quite thick on the ground these days, it's kind of the in thing, many of them quite good (Blood Ceremony, Purson, the aforementioned Jex Thoth, etc.). If we now count The Wounded Kings as part of that scene, they still stand apart, sounding "old" but not "retro", if that makes sense, and also being so much HEAVIER than most. Their closest competition would probably be the mighty Windhand, but Windhand generally doesn't have "clean" vocals, so that's a big difference. Besides, we figure that The Wounded Kings, who originally had a male vocalist, hired on Neyland not 'cause they just wanted a "female singer" but because they wanted HER unique vocals, sounding like a witness to the abyss, so synergistic with their preexisting epick aesthetic.
Once again, a success, from one of the best in the realm of the oh so gloriously doomy and gloomy.
Xiao He, aka He Guoheng, is a legendary musician in the Chinese music scene. Not just a musician, he also works in movies, does scoring, performs plays, is an actor, he also runs his own record label that helps support innovative folk and ethnic musicians in China. Xiao He performs a style of music he calls 'free folk' which involves just him and an acoustic guitar, but unlike the usual strum and croon of most folkies, Guoheng's music is much more far out and abstract. Mostly improvised, the guitar playing is impressionistic and flits from blues to folk to totally freeform abstraction and pretty much every stop in between, his vocals are even more far out, a lush, hushed croon one second, a weird Muppet like mewl the next, sometimes his voice is a rumbling Tuvan style throat singing, and suddenly without warning, he'll swoop into a wild dramatic falsetto, and the will begin yodeling wildly, before slipping back into something more traditional. Wild and unpredictable, imagine Bill Orcutt if he was a vocalist and not a guitarist, mix in a little Dan Higgs, some serious cabaret, and somehow make it even more loose and abstract and free and unfettered by any sort of normal musical restrictions. It's super intense and strange, but also liberating and inspiring. Some folks will definitely find it quite difficult listening, but adventurous musical lovers will dig this outsider free folk weirdness, and will marvel that something so strange could be so popular in the mainstream.
We find ourselves confused certainly by the sound, but it's also strangely addictive, and utterly wild and weird and fascinating. Totally inspired, ultra personal sonic expression like nothing you've likely ever heard before.
The second disc here is even weirder and cooler, more avant experimentation, this time Guoheng's vocals a bit more restrained, but accompanied by what sounds like lo-fi synth squelch, and short wave transmissions, strange FX and whirring industrial soundscapes, burbling electronics, with some of the tracks sounding like Bruce Haack mashed up with the Taj Mahal Travellers, meditative, noisy, textural, freaky and far out!
The packaging is incredible - a full color box, featuring a strange looking Xiao He on the front, wearing a hard hat, with a cat on his shoulder, the other side of the box covered with liner notes / stickers, inside, the cds are housed in super fancy printed diecut sleeves, there's also a big sticker of the cover image, as well as a huge fold out full color, multi panel insert!
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Scotland's Richard Youngs, besides being quite prolific (we have, like, two other new RY records in stock as well!), is also a true original. From release to release, you can sometimes predict what they might sound like - and sometimes not, not quite. While, as on the recent Summer Through My Mind, he's often in 'avant-folk troubadour with acoustic guitar and wistful voice' mode, his music can also take other, more difficult, droned-out and experimental paths - as it does here on Calmont Breakdown, a buzz/blip filled disc of lo-fi shimmering soundscapes and haphazard electronic rhythms, however one that's still generally blissful and occasionally graced with Youngs' gentle voice.
The album begins with the softly cacophonous broken-down beats of "Distress", sounding a bit like multiple layers of Morse code tapped out on children's toy instruments, a chittering instrumental with one brief dubbed-out vocal interjection. The next track, "Car Park", adds wordless, moan-like singing while the melodic buzz and bleep backdrop becomes less dense - someone hearing this for the first time, unfamiliar with Youngs, could almost construe it as a parody of Thom Yorke, like an extreme brain-damaged abstraction of an Atoms For Peace track or something.
Then, there's the off-kilter piano plink, "air-puff" electronic noises and sparse drum machinery of track 3, "In Containers", followed by "Theme From Pleasure Lands", which kind of continues in that vein; and really, each of this album's five tracks manage to flow nicely together, creating their own confusional sonic world, from an alternate universe of music making, for those who groove on WTF? albums like Sun Araw's Inner Treaty or Blues Control's Valley Tangents.
For Clamont Breakdown's grand finale, the glitchily epic 19 minutes of "Deep Inspiration Of Nothingness", some extra distortion fuzz enters the woozily repetitive rhythmic mix, and a simple four-note motif cycles endlessly as all sorts of FX blink around the edges. It's maddeningly mesmeric, and like the whole album, beautiful and strange.
Heck, we pretty much like anything and everything Richard Youngs does, so of course this is recommended, but we get especially happy when he finds that experimentally weird-but-not-too-weird sweet spot, like here (we think).
Limited to 300 copies only!
For those of you who already know and like Zombi, the appearance of this, their second proper full-length album, is pretty much a no-brainer purchase-wise, we can assure you. You've already had a pleasant taster for it in the form of the Digitalis cdep released earlier this year. But if you've never checked out Zombi before, an introduction is in order (and this album will do nicely...but we'll also write something here). You might assume from their name, and presence on mostly metal label Relapse, that they're some sort of metal band, into zombie movies. Well the later part is true. They love their horror flicks -- they're from Pittsburgh, home of George Romero after all. But they're not really a metal band. More of a post-rock or math-rock outfit, Zombi is an all-instrumental duo on drums and synth (and bass), heavily influenced by Goblin, the legendary Italian prog band responsible for scoring all those Dario Argento films back in the '70s and '80s -- including the Italian cut of Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, aka Zombi. Other film soundtrackers from that era are also inspirations for Zombi the band as well, in particular John Carpenter. Then there's all the cosmic electronic space music of the '70s too, like that of Klaus Schulze. And Magma, the bass player has got to be into Magma. All that gets stirred into Zombi's witch's cauldron (oops, is that a mixed metaphor?) and the resulting potent concoction could serve as the soundtrack to the most schlocky, suspenseful, arty horror film of your imagination... It's an elixir that exudes subtle menace without, for the most part, being overtly "scary music", much like those Goblin soundtracks. Really it's kind of New Agey... New Agey with tension!! MASSIVE tension on Surface To Air's spookiest track, the album-closing 18 and a half minute "Night Rhythms", filled with ominous drones that eventually give way to powerful bass-heavy grooves... it's an epic tour-de-force of tension and release and very very cinematic. But all the tracks here pulsate mesmerizingly and moodily, with bright n' airy synth tones, dominating bass, and repetitive Circle-like hypno-rock rhythms. If that sounds good, check it out. And if you're already a fan, like we said, you'll be well pleased with Surface To Air!!
