Ski Patrol was a shortlived British post-punk project, formed in 1979 by vocalist Ian Lowery, guitarist Nick Clift, Peter Balmer on bass, and a revolving door of drummers. They crafted an angular, paranoiac sound which equally mined the dub-inflected manic jitteriness of Gang of Four, The Scars, and Killing Joke. After the band self-released their first single, they garnered the attention of Malicious Damage, which had actually released the first handful of Killing Joke singles. By 1981, the band had undergone considerable changes with Balmer splitting to join Fad Gadget and Clift moving into the more business side of things by taking a gig at Rough Trade. The band members who found themselves around Lowery rechristened themselves as The Folk Devils.
Versions Of A Life is an abridged collection of Ski Patrol's recorded output including the band's first two singles, previously unreleased mixes of their third single, and some unreleased songs from their final studio session. "Agent Orange" was the lead track on their second single and featured Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke on synths. This track with its slow building death-disco rhythm section of dub-punk basslines and motorik drums is simple, effective, and super catchy in a deathrock kind of way, complete with macabre / socially critical lyrics. "Everything Is Temporary" was the A side to the band's first single, holding court with the sparse art-punk leanings of Essential Logic or maybe In Camera (the pre-Wolfgang Press project). The whole collection is an eye-opener, introducing us to a band that had escaped our knowledge almost entirely and made us more than curious as to what Lowery, et al had done in Ski Patrol's wake. Another gem from Dark Entries!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Only got one left of these. And it's incredible. Andee ordered a copy direct from the label the SECOND he heard about it. We managed to get just two for the shop, sold one, and now have just one left. It's now out of print too, so this could be your last chance.
What is Spiderland? It's an iconic indie rock masterpiece, a record that if you haven't heard it before, well, it means you're missing out on what might be one of the best records ever made. Moody and mathy, brooding and epic, intense and introspective, catchy and melodic, noisy and abrasive, emotional and majestic. So many bands you love owe everything they do to this band, and this record. A $175 boxset might not be the place to start or the version for someone just discovering Spiderland, but we think maybe it IS. If there was ever a record deserving of this sort of lavish treatment, it's most definitely Spiderland.
So you get the record proper, on both cd AND vinyl, the holy grail here being a BUNCH of unreleased tracks, rehearsals and stuff, all of which, are worth the price of admission alone. But you also get a huge book, packed with rare photos from the Spiderland era, as well as the dvd of the Slint documentary Breadcrumb trail. All housed in a big beautiful box. Needless to say, the HIGHEST recommendation. One of you lucky aQ customers is about to get even luckier...
RELEASED ON VINYL FOR RECORD STORE DAY! Just a few copies remaining. Here's what we said about the cd version of this when we made it a Record Of The Week in 2010:
We'll admit, we're a sucker for Sublime Frequencies, they've yet to release a record that didn't totally blow our minds. Which says as much about SF's curating as it does about the unheard music worldwide. Treasures everywhere, amazing and passionate and personal and far out sounds, being made in homes and yards, on street corners, in bars, at picnics and parties, not conceived for public consumption, meant for a small audience, and often for a specific purpose, getting a glimpse into these magical musical moments is what Sublime Frequencies is all about, and we feel lucky to get to experience these sounds.
This is the third record from Omar Souleyman on Sublime Frequencies, and just might be the best one yet, which is saying A LOT. A collection of live recordings culled from nearly 15 years worth of cassettes, these tracks are incredible, energetic, passionate, so full of life, effusive and emotional, funky and celebratory, and to Western ears, seriously far out. There's almost a wild Bollywood vibe (even though this is from the Middle East, not India), in the vocals, and the rhythms, and with the crazy tangled synthesizer melodies, the propulsive drumming, and Souleyman's distorted, wailed vocal delivery, it all sounds just so perfect, even listening to this music on record, it sounds sweaty and exhausting and cathartic, it's easy to imagine a big crowd of people dancing and bouncing along, freed from all cares and concerns letting the music just carry them away.
Like all Sublime Frequencies releases, the liner notes offer up so much information, on Souleyman, his life, the history of Syria, on Syrian folk music, etc, but even without all that info, if it's just about the music, these are some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear. Frantic Eastern melodies, frenetic percussion, analog synths wound around Souleyman's vocals, this is party music, dance music, but not like party or dance music the way we normally think about it. The music of Souleyman is transcendent, spiritual, psychedelic, transformative, a folk pop known as Dabke, rarely heard in the West, perhaps not at all if it wasn't for Sublime Frequencies, and we'd imagine these sounds might be overwhelming for casual world music listeners, it is after all wild and frantic and relentless, the melodies complex and twisted and tangled, there are some moments that verge on folky for sure, the final track is a gorgeous haunting lament, just vocals and buzzing synthesizers, but barring that track, even on the folkier jams, those strange synths, the unique melodies, the repetitive tranced out rhythms, those all transform Souleyman's folk into something much more, and in most cases, it's not long before the band explodes into yet another super intense sweat soaked psychedelic Syrian folk pop workout. So great!
Another exclusive Record Store Day release, that we managed to nab enough of to properly review/list, for all you folks out there sans a local record store to raid on the big day. That said, as with most RSD releases, these will likely go fast, and once they're gone, that's IT.
J. Spaceman from Spacemen 3 teams up with Kid Millions, from Oneida, White Hills and a bunch of others, for two extended improvised jams, captured in 2013 in NYC, the A side, is weirdly Necks like, a looped, circular piano phrase, wreathed in reverb, while Millions fills the surrounding sky with flurries of tom fills and clouds of cymbal shimmer, it builds an builds as if heading for something explosive, but instead, the sound resolves into a hushed psychedelic drift, all softly billowy guitars, and barely there percussion, hazy and hypnotic, over the course of the piece/side, the sound does slowly build, but not to something bombastic, instead it blossoms and expands, like the soundtrack to a time lapse film of a slow motion supernova, all prismatic and crystalline. The Necks vibe is actually huge, if that band was a bit more psychedelic, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
The second side/track is more rhythmic, immediately opening with a sort of abstract krautrock style groove, spastic drum splatter, some crunchy guitar skree, the sound soon exploding into some sort of abstract heavy free-psych, the guitars distorted and blown out, the drums wild and octopoidal, the arrangement super dynamic, dipping back into some hushed drift, before a killer finale, a chugging, churning heaviness, that sounds like a super charged ultra distorted Spacemen 3 outtake!
Also included is a bonus 7", which features a couple shorter tracks, both offering up moments of tranquility, but each erupting into what is essentially near Fushitsusha style heavy psych free jazz freakout. Killer!
As mentioned above, these are likely the last copies we'll see of this, so grab one before they're gone. Includes a download code too!
NOW REISSUED ON VINYL!!!
While everyone here loves the Swans, we all have our favorite era. Pretty much all of us are WAY into the harsh, metal bashing pummel of the early years, on albums like Filth, Cop, Greed, but at the same time, we all also seem to love the group's later, more epic brooding folk flecked sound, one that hinted at Swans frontman Michael Gira's post Swans outfit Angels Of Light. That sound was first foreshadowed on the group's 1987 album Children Of God, which while still heavy and industrial, began to flirt with a much less harsh musical palette, one that was fully explored on the following year's The Burning World, their sixth album, and their only major label release, now finally reissued after many years.
At the time, the shift may have seemed more organic, but years later, it definitely like a crazy dramatic sonic shift, the band having shed pretty much all vestiges of their industrial past, and instead, embracing a dark swoonsome string laden psychedelic folk, the songs a mix of dark classic balladry, seventies UK acid folk, and low slung gothic gloom pop, a sound that fans of groups like King Dude, Hexvessel, Der Blutharsch, Cult Of Youth, Comus, Woven Hand and the like, will find surprisingly familiar, and we would imagine much to their liking.
Their continued post-industrial sonic trajectory definitely suited them, the abject metallic pummel and industrial crush of those early records replaced by a lush songsuite that seems to have more in common with Scott Walker, and Nick Cave, and other dark pop troubadours, the songs bleak and almost folky, often driven by an Eastern sounding percussion, giving some of the tracks an almost Muslimgauze vibe (due in no small part we'd imagine to input from producer Bill Laswell). Gira's croon ominous and dramatic, Jarboe's dreamy angelic background vocals the perfect foil, the backdrop a lush expanse of simple spare rhythms, lush, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, layered drones and lovingly layered soundscapes, fiddles and strings nestled alongside darkly pointillist pianos, the sound slipping from doomfolk creep to seasick waltz, to strange old time gypsy folk to strange almost angular pop, with some tracks that even bear hints of new wave, indie rock and post punk, but the band deftly weave these sounds into a haunting dark folk gem, that sounds as good now as it ever did.
And we had completely forgotten about Swans' version of Steve Winwood's "Can't Find My Way Home", with Jarboe on lead vocals, the original transformed into a timeless darkfolk lament, that manages to sound harrowing and otherworldly, but hushed and dreamily lovely.
And of course there's the immediately recognizable Robert Mapplethorpe cover photo...
Ough!!! Let's get that out of the way right off the bat. It only takes 30 seconds into the first track to get that trademark verbal expulsion, courtesy of metal's most uncompromising (and often misunderstood) artisan Tom G. Warrior. And that's worth the price of admission alone! But luckily there's plenty more bleak metal greatness to be found here as well. After already cementing himself a Metal Legend status with his early works in Hellhammer and Celtic Frost (not to mention 2006's superb CF reunion record Monotheist), Tommy G is back with the second full length of his most recent passion project Triptykon, and man oh man it does not disappoint. Sickening, slithering grooves are bent to their breaking point. Riffs seem to go in and out of tune even in the middle of a single note. The riffing is simple yet compelling - hypnotic and enveloping, like some musty lightless cocoon. Tom Warrior's vocals are as commanding as ever. He seems to be hurtling dogma from a pulpit with the passion of a mad zealot - his influence on vocalists like Satyricon's Satyr or Immortal's Abbath never more apparent. The drumming, freeform and almost jazzy at times, nicely offsets the vocals and the guitars, bringing something a bit more organic and human into the fold, but they still get very tribal and seriously heavy when they need to be. It's a rotting alien obelisk of an album. Even the brooding gothic balladry of "Boleskine House" with its ethereal female vocals, or "Aurorae" with its drifting reverbed guitar and lazy drum shuffle, seem to lurch and twist on a nauseous alien wave. And although occasionally we'll be assaulted with a thrashy downbeat pummel, Melana Chasmata is almost entirely a downtrodden affair - wallowing in the pits of mid-paced despair and dreadfully doomy inevitability. But for all its forlorn pallid squalor and slimy dissonance, it's still a bewilderingly catchy record - the chorus from opener "Tree Of Suffocating Souls" almost guaranteed to earworm its way into your psyche, whether you want it there or not! At over an hour, it's an exhausting, all encompassing experience, more akin to something like Swans' The Seer than your average metal record. And like that album, while it may not always be the easiest listen, it's more than worth the effort if you're willing to follow the dark corridors and shadowy labyrinthine passages of Melana Chasmata.
Records like this come along so rarely. The sort of record that immediately reveals itself as something so more then just another disc to add to your collection, or the sort of record you play once or twice and then file. The second we heard this, we knew we had to hear more, and hear it over and over and over again. We discovered these guys online, heard a few songs and immediately bought a copy, and then set out to order them for the store (one of us was so obsessed, he even ordered all the records by the True Widow mainman's OLD band).
Not sure what it is exactly about True Widow, it could be that after hundreds of records of rumbling dronemusic and blasting grim buzz and hushed ambient shimmer, that a band that writes songs, incredibly catchy and melodic and heavy songs, is exactly what our ears craved. Not to take anything away from the band, even if we were immersed in straight up pop and heavy rock (which we sort of are also), these guys (and gal) would most definitely shine. This is the sort of music we rarely hear anymore. We originally expected this to be metal, maybe some sort of heavy post rock metal hybrid, and while it is heavy, it's way more indie rock, or maybe slowcore, more like some haunting mix of the two, the guitars are thick and distorted, but not metallic, and they drift into slow drifting creeps as easily as they do pounding majestic roars. Other reviewers have described True Widow as 'sonic noir' and 'stonegaze', both of which are fairly appropriate, it's definitely dark and moody, certainly shoegazey, and a little bit stonery, but it's really just some sort of perfect gloomy heavy postrock. We hear Codeine, Low, Seam, the vibe is laid back and disaffected, weary and washed out, but still somehow completely rocking.
Every song here is practically perfect, and each one segues seamlessly into the next, the sort of record where you don't just remember the melody or the lyrics, but which songs comes next, and how long the pause between songs is, the sound just so hypnotic and mesmerizing, a sort of lyseric doom pop, a druggy post rock, but the thing is, none of that really explains how addictive these songs seem to be. Literally, from the moment we first heard this record, we have not been able to stop listening to it. We've found other reviewers elsewhere who had the same reaction. Which speaks to the power of the songs, so well crafted, brooding, yet incredibly catchy. Just check out opener "Aka", with its strange mesmerizing main riff, the mysterious pause, and then when the band kicks in, it give you chills, and it's 40 seconds into the record.
The second track, "Duelist", is one of the few tracks that features vocals from bassist Nicole Estill, her warm purr draped over big drums and a simple minimal bass throb, before the band launches into a slow burning minor key lope, only to crank up that opening part, infusing it with just a bit more muscle, and peppering the proceedings with a cool woozy chorus. Then there's "Sunday Driver", a gorgeous hazy reverby almost ballad, skeletal guitars, the drums still solid and loud, the vocals laid back and drugged out, the main melody so catchy, and a chorus that kills. Just writing this now, we've skipped back to the beginning of that song 3 times!
This isn't really new, it came out last year, but we only just discovered it, and it had such an impact on us, we figured it was worth sharing with the rest of you. Cuz even if only a fraction of you have the same sort of response to True Widow that we did, it was well worth it. This has immediately leapt to the top of our year end best of list, even though it didn't come out this year, and hell, for some of us, True Widow immediately made it onto our best EVER list. And yeah we know, we traffic in hyperbole a lot around here, we can't help it cuz we love music so much and are excited to turn people on to the music we love, but there's no denying the empirical evidence, we can't seem to listen to anything else but this record. And that doesn't look like it will be changing anytime soon.
Just listen to the sound samples, the first two tracks alone should do the trick. So goddamn good.
On both cd and 2lp, the vinyl version is super deluxe (hence the price, sorry), 180 gram vinyl, full color ultra thick gatefold sleeve, two printed color inserts, pretty fancy, and very limited.
Every year, we like to have a band play on Sunday after Record Store Day, as part of the festivities. We'd have 'em play ON Record Store Day, but it's just too crazy busy for that. Plus it's nice to keep the RSD party vibe going all weekend. This year, it was the turn of Twin Trilogy, the new power trio headed by fave local guitarist Sean Smith, whom we originally got to know via his guitar soli work, like on the Tompkins Square compilation Berkeley Guitar, where he appeared alongside Matt Baldwin and Adam Snider. But he likes to rock out, too, and Twin Trilogy is his vehicle for indulging in heavy, spacey, proggy jams!
And in addition to doin' the instore, TT also provided us with a RSD exclusive - the first in a series of limited edition, one-sided 12" vinyl releases from the band, this installment featuring two lengthy instrumentals. The multipart suite "Descent To The Pounding Surf/Strings Of The Sea/Flood Of Moonlight On The White Sea" is an epic exercise in lumberingly doomy, mathy surf rock psychedelia, full of 'seasick' woozy parts, dramatic crescendos and majestic metallic riffs, while 2nd track "Surreal Tilt" is an even heavier, fist pumping number, gloriously massive and rollicking. We got to hear these tracks and more at the instore, they were great, though in deference to our upstairs neighbors they toned down the volume a bit (go see 'em on Sunday April 27th around the corner at the Make Out Room if you want to hear them at their facemelting usual). For fans of Mammatus, Stinking Lizaveta, Earthless, Lesbian, Nels Cline, Hedvig Mollestad�
We sold a bunch of these on Record Store Day, and a few more at the instore (which we understand if you missed, it was Easter after all, and also we later realized they played at approximately 4:20 on 4/20, so all the stoners that would have been into 'em were otherwise engaged). But being the exclusive vendor so far, we still have copies left for out of towners and others not around last weekend.
Limited to 330 copies, in reclaimed, hand painted/printed jackets, with download code!
We got two different records from the Medical label for Record Store Day, and got enough extra to list for all you far away folks who couldn't make it to aQ in person, a killer Alexander Robotnick collection, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this one, part two in the ongoing Electroconvulsive Therapy series, which collects rare new wave singles, this second volume focusing on a label called Fuzz Dance, gathering up 3 super rare, iconic Italo disco 12"s (along with a couple bonus tracks), from a handful of bands we had never heard before, Trophy, ZED, Mya & The Mirror, Mon Bijou and NAIF Orchestra, but that's kind of the joy of these sorts of comps, and Medical in general, who manage to dig up some crazy cool rarities.
So yeah, Trophy meld some classic eighties new wave pop with their Italo Disco, pulsing synths, strummed guitars, Teutonic vocals, plenty of squelch and echo drenched handclaps, offering up both versions, a vocal and a weirdly electro-dubbed 'instrumental'. ZED give us "Plastic Love" which sounds like it could have been a hit in the eighties, sort of Berlin meets Human League, pulsing synths, dramatic female vox, the instrumental version super stripped down, and sans vocals, sounding surprisingly like a slightly discoier Kraftwerk!! Mya & The Mirror offer up more of the same, sultry electro-disco new wave, the vocals heavily accented and sultry, with some weird horns (!), the "Reflex" version, essentially instrumental, but with way more horns and wilder eighties percussion. Crazy stuff. The extra tracks include Mon Bijou's "Just A Lover", which again, sounds like some could/should have been eighties new wave electro pop hit, while NAIF Orchestra's "Check Out Five" adds some funky guitar strum to pulsing synths, and some super loopy vox, the vibe playful, a little goofy, but super catchy, and like the rest of the tracks here, sounds like it was yanked straight out of some alternate universe eighties new wave hit parade.
No liner notes this time, but comes in a super striking, very Italo-disco looking cover, the vinyl on heavy 180 gram Italian flag colored vinyl (!), and as always, very limited...
***MISSISSIPPI ALERT***MISSISSIPPI ALERT***
Another one from the vaults, the vaults full of dusty but still vital 'world music', dug up by the discerning vinyl-lovers at the ever-expanding Mississippi label (and associates). This one's an lp of recordings made in the mid-seventies in Chiapas, Mexico. These 'modern Mayans' mix their indigenous, traditional folk music with some less-ancient, outside influences. There's folk guitar and trumpets, drums and flute, string ensembles and vocals... these varied tracks range from spiritual songs to lively dances. Another nice one for all you armchair travellers, courtesy of Mississippi. Comes in a "tip on" jacket with wrap around cover art/text, in the style of the old Folkways lps. And, there's liner notes.
A 2014 Record Store Day collaboration between two amazing obscurity-obsessive labels, Finders Keepers and Dual Planet, Monster Skies features a dizzy collection of damaged library sounds, far-flung private press pop and early electronic strangeness. We've carried some of the Dual Planet releases, but have yet to review them, like the Australian electric weirdo space-funk-rock of Steve Maxwell Von Braund, who provides the titular song to this collection as well as the reclusive Italian guitarist and electronic composer, Teisco, who may be the most marginally strange of the Italian Library composers leaning more toward Bruce Haack than say, Egisto Macchi. Suzanne Cianni, Lucien Goethals and Val Stephen provide some scintillating musique concrete and electronic composition, while Don Harper, Philippe D'Aram, and Andrzej Korzynski bring some wonderfully brooding cinematic horror vibes to the table.
Finally, Emerald Web, X-ray Pop, Clone and The Ultra Sonic Perception, give us some wonderfully sublime pop moments that buffer the oddities with wistful charm and eccentric groove. A fantastic collection and excellent introduction into a staggering undiscovered world of sound. Get one while they last!
One of two Sublime Frequencies vinyl reissues for Record Store Day (the other being by Omar Souleyman). This fave is out of print on cd, and also already out of print in the this new vinyl version, too. We didn't even think we'd be able to list it, but one our our suppliers got their copies late so we snagged a few post-RSD. But this is probably it. Here's what we said about this great comp before...
By now, we're used to the idea of rock n' roll in its sixties heyday as a GLOBAL phenomenon, kids everywhere, East and West, North and South, rockin' to that crazy beat. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of quite a few internationally-digging DJs and collectors, the past few years have been especially fruitful ones for reissues of far-flung rock artifacts on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Now-Again, and Soundway.
We've heard groovy groups from Turkey, Cambodia, Ghana, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and seemingly every place else. Certainly there's been a few releases that have delved into the scene in Malaysia and Singapore, but this fabulous new collection on Sublime Frequencies is THEE one to get if you want to learn about the great electric beat music being made by and for teenagers in that part of the world, circa 1964-1970.
Despite the conservative nature of Malaysian society, the rock n' roll revolution took root among its youth too. This Pop Yeh Yeh comp proves it! (The term "Pop Yeh Yeh", by the way, referring to rock music sung in Malay, was apparently derived from the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus of The Beatles' song "She Loves You", though it may have been another British band, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, that was the bigger influence on the nascent Malay rock scene.) While the kids there didn't get as wild in the streets as they may have elsewhere, with drugs and sex and all of that, they were still happy to let their hair down (if only just a bit) to make some sweet rock n' roll records. 26 such tracks are collected here, full of catchy melodies, fuzzy guitars, warbling organs... There's energetic dance numbers, and lovely ballads both. Some have the twang of surf music, others the sultry singers and lush arrangements of Hindi movie soundtracks, which were another big influence on Pop Yeh Yeh, besides Western pop rock and traditional Malay folk music forms.
This compilation is an obvious labor of love, years in the making, and can't be faulted for any lack of thoroughness. The physical product and depth of research set the bar pretty high for future collections of this type! It's a big package all right, colorful and informative, with extensive liner notes (first, a general essay on the history of rock n' roll in Malaysia and Singapore, plus lyrics to the songs on the cd; second, detailed write-ups on each and every track) plus tons of vintage photos of the sharp-dressed young men and women who made this delightful music, which despite all the interestin' reading, is still the main draw here after all! Another winner from Sublime Frequencies, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
We're always happy to have a few of the Rough Guide vinyl releases left over after Record Store Day. They had a bunch this year - the Psychedelic Bollywood one sold out already, dang, but we do have a handful of the others. All of 'em fairly self-explanatory (that's the idea), this one, yep, a sampler of "African Blues", in the vein of the famous Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure - who leads off this comp with the first track on side one. There's others here from West Africa, including the Desert Blues of Tamikrest with a nice Saharan jam, along with bluesy guitar and singing from elsewhere in Africa, with Zambia, Mozambique and Madagascar, among other places, all represented. One track's entirely a cappela. Pretty lovely all around, though some of it's a bit more 'WOMAD' than we usually get into.
180 gram, limited edition vinyl, includes download card with a ton of extra tracks - including a full-length album by Alhoussenini Anivolla. And of course, there's informative liner notes.
The Rough Guides series goes deep for this one. Unlike most of their compilations, rather than featuring (relatively) famous names and classic tracks, this one goes for only obscure cuts, even a bunch of previously unreleased ones. Well, that's why they call it RARE groove, right?
So, get this and get into a wide selection of possibly new-to-you Latin soul/jazz, boogaloo, mambo, salsa, cumbia, and more. There's both vintage tracks and music from contemporary artists, also. Some names: Ray Lugo, Rumba Caliente, Los Po-Boy-Citos, Spanglish Fly, Gilberto Sextet, Los Kenya, Nelson Y Su Estrellas, and more.
Release on limited edition 180 gram vinyl for Record Store Day 2014. Includes a download with extra tracks, including a whole full-length album by Spanglish Fly.
One of this year's Rough Guide vinyl releases for Record Store Day, we have just a couple left. They did also did an African Blues one (see nearby) but his volume drills down to music from, arguably, the home of African Blues (and Desert Blues too), the ethnically diverse West African nation of Mali. The modern music of Mali often has a political dimension, in light of refugee-making conflicts along its borders and oppressive Al Qaeda incursions.
Ali Farka Toure appears here, as he does on the African Blues collection, along with some other names we know like Bassekou Kouyate, Terakraft, Toumani Diabate, Nahawa Doumbia... and more we don't. So it is a nice sampler for sure.
180 gram, limited edition vinyl, with liner notes and download card. The download has bonus tracks, including a full-length album by Ali Farka Toure's protege Samba Toure.
Even those of you already super hip to this stuff might find this could make a good gift...
A bit of a Record Store Day tradition at this point, it's the yearly Todo Muere lp, a sampler of sorts from the Sacred Bones label, featuring a handful of tracks, some exclusive, others from forthcoming releases. We managed to get enough so some of you mailorder folks can nab a copy too. And like every year, it's a pretty great listen, all over the sonic map, much like the label, starting off this time with Amen Dunes, from the forthcoming full length Love, a strummy psych folk drifter that's all hazy and dreamily druggy. There's also an outtake from the Zola Jesus record Versions, which found her teamed up with Foetus, aka Jim Thirwell, for some moody, drum machine driven string heavy goth. There's an outtake from David Lynch's The Big Dream, a creepy atmospheric sprawl of drum machines, and softly swirling atmospherics, all underpinning Lynch's ominous sung/spoken vocals.
This year's comp would be worth it just for recent Record Of The Weeker Marissa Nadler's gorgeous cover of Nick Cave's "The Kindness Of Strangers", delicate and haunting, and as good as anything on her most recent full length. Pharmakon deliver another exclusive track, a super trippy industrial-gloom cover of "Bang Bang", transforming the bombast of the original into a creepy, noise flecked torch song. Pop. 1280 kick out the jams on one of the comp's exclusive tracks, a pulsing synth driven garage-punk groover, all clanging jagged guitars, snarly vox, tripped out FX, and gloom-garage noise rock stomp. The spacey psychedelic drift of Follakzoid gets the remix treatment from someone called Oskreuz-Huidobro, and turns the original into a murky sprawl of softly pulsing minimal techno-psych mesmer, that sounds like Kompakt by way of Agitated. Nice! And finally, you get a teaser for the upcoming Lust For Youth full length, a shimmery, jangly, eighties style synth popper, that sounds weirdly upbeat after the mostly dour and downer vibe of the rest of the tracks.
Killer stuff as always. Only have a handful of these left, and once they're gone, they're likely gone for good! Includes a download code as well!
Not sure if the distinctive arrow-in-a-circle on the cover is meant to reference legendary label No U-Turn, but it had us expecting some sort of throwback jungle, some dense tech-step style drum & bass, but instead, Signals is a modern take on classic dubstep and grime, sounding a bit like a slightly less minimal Burial, if that makes any sense, it's still all slo-mo and murky, but the beats are a lot heavier, and there are a lot more vocals, mostly fragmented snippets, which are all over the brief intro, but when "Galactic" kicks in, it's a fierce fucker, all stuttery skitter, beneath weird monk like chants, a twisted little metallic melody, the various sounds and samples in constant flux, slowing down, speeding up, the whole thing a lurching, lumbering, woozy creep, that mysterious little Close Encounters melody will stick in your head like crazy, and then in swoop some strings, and suddenly it's some sort of symphonic dubstep epic, and it's so good. Listen to the sample, if that doesn't do it for you, we don't know what will.
Much of the rest of the record is a bit more low slung, more blissed out, the electro-drift of "Lunar", adds a sort of washed out kosmische vibe, while "You Know" adds some female vox to the mix, but then "Persian" kicks in, all electro-murk, laced with cool Middle Eastern melodies, the result is haunting and mysterious, almost like a dubstep Muslimgauze. A bunch of the tracks have a hip hop vibe, big beats and serious swagger, albeit run through a cracked techno/dubstep filter, but others, like "Time", remains stripped down and skeletal, laced with brief bits of vocals, and weirdly psychedelic atmospheres, or the title track which is straight up grime, wound around a seriously jungly groove, the vocals chopped up and swirled into a dizzying beat heavy mix, which reminded us how much we love grime! Speaking of which, record closer "Play Your Corner" is a serious sick slab of classic grime, with some killer vocals over a sinister bed of strings, draped over tangled rhythms and wound up with a dizzying production. Love it!
Another issue of this indispensable new music magazine out of the UK. Cover story this time is all about especially significant compilations, anthologies, lists, catalogs, web archives, etc., a very interesting 22 page section indeed. Also: downtown NY '70s synthpunks Jack Ruby, cellist Ikkyung Lee doin' the Invisible Jukebox, the early years of Sun Ra saxophonist Marshall Allen, Hype Williams singer Inga Copeland out on her own, and lots more!
Ah, the new Woods! This wasn't a Record Store Day release, though maybe it should have been, it's special anyhow. Like the new one from Thee Oh Sees, it actually came out on April 15th, a few days before RSD.
We loved loved loved Bend Beyond, the previous album from these wonderful lo-fi indie pop folk-rockers, and loved the many Woods records before that one too, so we're super excited about this, but what with Record Store Day and a million other things we haven't yet had time to write up a 'proper' in depth review like it deserves. But we really want to get this on the list anyway, so here's our quick attempt at a review, just basically saying "Yay, new Woods!" and that it's kinda like its predecessor, but more on their folky side, with less in the way of the heavy rock jammin' that they got into there, still sounding very '70s and timeless too, softly psychedelic. The songs are maybe not as immediately catchy (there's no perfect pop "Cali In A Cup" this time) but are definitely sweet and lovely, full of soothing sunshiney strum and uplifting melodies, some mellow moments of darkness too, and the vocals, as always, tremulously high and fragile and falsetto, reminding us of Jeff Lynne a bit, Neil Young of course too.
Ok, those are just the notes to the review we should have written if we had more time, but ought to indicate that this is well worth checking out!
Not sure how we managed to sleep on this record when it came out last year. Had we heard it then, it doubtless would have made it into the year-end top tens of many of the metalheads here for sure. Fortunately, we did eventually get a clue - we realized we had to check out this Greek one-man-band after reading the interview with Zemial in the latest issue of Chips & Beer, 'cause any supposedly 'black metal' outfit that name checks Karlheinz Stockhausen*, John Cage, and Magma drummer Christian Vander, amongst others, sure sounds like something we'd dig here at aQ! And dig we do.
So, here's Zemial's 2013 opus, Nykta. Majestic, propulsive, spacey, epic, catchy, hella weird, yeah, Nykta is right up our alley. Zemial has actually been around since 1989, but this is still only the band's third full-length album - and it's a doozy if you like extremely original 'extreme' metal music. The guy behind Zemial, multi instrumentalist Archon Vorskaath, is into modern composers and prog/jazz fusion drummers, but he's also big into Bathory. So this has got to be one of the only 'progressive metal' albums we've heard that's chock full of raw, dirty riffing and gruff vocals that sound right off a Venom album. But there's also out-there spacey synthscapes, Eastern-sounding exoticism, esoteric lyrics, suddenly prominent prog rock keyboard parts, and tons of uber talented and effective percussion from Vorskaath (that's his specialty, having played percussion professionally in an orchestra). And, he's pretty impressive in the vocal department, too, doing some semi-melodic, 'clean' but not too clean singing, with heaps of gusto and strangely effected weirdness.
Zemial really manage thee perfect, hithero unattempted synthesis of savage, driving riffage and tripped out experimentation here. We don't think we've ever heard a metal band that sounds so 'old school' and yet so avant-garde and original at the same time. We fear we can't do this album justice in this review, it's one of those that we just gotta say, trust us, it's brilliant and weird and kickass and totally recommended to open-minded metallers (and non-metallers too), especially fans of Absu, latter-day Darkthrone, and Enslaved (circa Mardraum). Blizaro too - the moody, bombastic synth instrumental "The Small", at least, sounds a lot like something they would do.
By the way, there's nothing wrong with your stereo - the final track here is an homage to Cage's famous composition 4'33", and has thrown a lot of unknowing metal reviewers for a loop, being of course (almost?) totally silent. Hey, it could have been on that Sounds Of Silence lp we made Record Of The Week a while back! (Note to Vorskaath, however: placing the silent track at the end of your album is less effective than if you'd put it right in the middle!)
*In that Chips & Beer interview, Vorskaath talks about how he's played with Stockhausen's jazz musician son Markus, in a piece that involved the musicians fasting and meditating for, like, two straight days before getting on stage to improvise - now that's extreme!
