Holy moly, this is quite a discovery. A hitherto unknown album of wonderful Sgt. Peppery (flower) power pop, that ought to make fans of the Beatles, early Bee Gees, The Kinks, Big Star and so forth very, very happy indeed.
We admit were a bit skeptical when we first heard about it, 'cause there's so many reissues and whatnot these days that claim to be lost classics, but as soon as we put this on we were hooked! And more amazingly, while we'd certainly consider this a lost classic, it isn't even technically a reissue (despite the blurb saying "Original 1967 Release" on the back). Except for two songs here that appeared on a 7" single, this material was never actually released to the public, until now! Recorded in 1967, yes, but the tapes languished forgotten all these years, which is hard for us to understand - how could this gem stay unknown for 46 years?! These songs are so great! As always, makes you wonder what else is out there... And, at first, it also made us wonder if this was even really a group from the sixties - we suspected it could be a more modern-day band (a really good one!) emulating the sounds of yesteryear, a la The Dukes Of Stratosphear, The High Llamas, or Jellyfish. Especially since the production job, while vintage-sounding, is also so top notch (even though the liner notes tell us the whole thing was recorded and mixed in merely a weekend). Heck, a modern band trying to put one over could have added the analog tape hiss. But no, our skeptical conspiracy theories are all wrong, we have it from trusted sources that this is indeed for real, from 1967, the work of a bunch of talented, Anglophilic youngsters from Louisiana. But the vocals here are often (but not always) delivered in a lilting faux English accent, a common practice amongst the paisley-clad syke popsters of the day, wherever they were from, wanting to sound like they too were a part of the British Invasion. So, definitely Beatles-esque; as with Peru's We All Together, there's quite a few tunes here, like "Marigold", that sound like they were written by Paul McCartney - and the band name is an obvious homage to a certain Sgt.'s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Though this is sometimes more White Album than Sgt. Pepper's, really, the band even pushing into edgier sounds like the rather manic "Have You Been To The Light" - that's a weird one, and great. "Hope" is another of the album's harder, garage rockin' tunes.
But so much of this just delightfully sunshiney stuff, sometimes quite melancholic too. There's super melodic, energetic toe tappers and dreamy blissouts both, stuff that will get stuck in your head immediately, sounding so lovely and familiar right from the get go. There's the gentle, hushed intimacy of "Merlin", the lively, layered "Alexander Graham Bell", the heartfelt grandeur of the ELO-ish "Walk Out With Your Heart", the sweet & mellow soft pop of "Common Attitude" (which reminds us of Curt Boettcher's Millennium), and so many, many more highlights, that we can't possibly detail them all (and deciding which ones to make sound samples of was tough!). Oh, and the album's final track, a brief "outro" of druggy, tape-manipulated studio trickery, is titled "Dream Me Up Snotty"!!!
The only real complaint we have at all about this is that it's kind of too bad the prolific reissue label Gear Fab got to be the lucky ones to put this out, 'cause their attention to detail in terms of the physical product borders on shoddy. The crappy graphics they came up with for the cover of this digipack don't do justice to the music within; the quasi-informative liner notes (printed on the inside cover, there's no booklet) were written by someone who couldn't decide (or care to be consistent) between using all caps, bold face, or quotation marks to set off the various proper names mentioned; some proofreading could have helped in other areas too; and there's a strange one page, one sided insert with a thanks list on it that you don't really know what to do with once you've torn off the shrink wrap. Well, at least there ARE liner notes (from which we did learn, that the group's guitar prodigy Richard Orange went on to write music for the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Jane Wiedlin and even Terry Bozzio!). But there's many labels out there that would have done this a lot better, oh well.... perhaps someone else will eventually get to do a vinyl release...
We just hope this album isn't overlooked as a result of its Gear Fab-ness, it would be a shame if after 46 years it still went unnoticed. If people HEAR it, though, it won't - another reason we're doing our part by making it a Record Of The Week. So please grab this and get in on the ground floor with the first ever release of an unheard, utterly obscure '60s artifact that ought to be way up there in the psych power pop pantheon!!
Latest from this LA sludge pop duo finds the guys sounding a bit more polished and spacey than before. The opener "Weird Oasis" reminds us a bit of the Meat Puppets, or even an alt rock Allman Brothers, which is not a bad thing at all. In fact, they always had a bit of that vibe to their sound, but fear not, it's soon right back into the usual Tweak Bird churning riffage and drawled vox, all groovy and psychedelic, but still a bit twangy and spacey. Plus, as always, there's an element of Weezer / Jeff The Brotherhood power poppiness to TB's sound as well, super simple hooky, heavy pop, a little bit stonery rock, but liberally doused in crumbling distortion, and warm, blurry guitar fuzz, the arrangements slipping into a little progginess here and there as well, but at its core, Any Ol' Way definitely has the feel of a classic rock record, or at least the sort of record that might be considered classic rock in 30 or 40 years, but for now, this is just a seriously satisfying slab of primo, hook heavy, psychedelic fuzz pop, that we can't seem to stop listening to...
The great Public Information label releases another incredible collection of archival Library tracks, this time from the British archives of The Standard Music Library, recorded between 1970 and 2010. While many famous people recorded for Standard Library, including Delia Derbyshire, Tony Visconti, Michael Chapman, Sven Libaek, as well as Brian Eno and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), this anthology focuses on the more obscure composers and electronic output released for industrial films, sci-fi television and commercials. You get the full range over 30 tracks from bloop-bleep abstractions, cosmic kosmiche and new age as well as eighties VCR funk and John Carpenter-like horror-synth jams. If you liked the last library survey Public Information offered, Tomorrow's Achievements - Parry Music Library 1976-86, then you'll certainly dig this. Top notch collection!!! Limited, import.
Hard to believe the Hyperdub label has been going for a whole decade now, and what better way to celebrate than with this double disc, with one disc focusing on new stuff, and another on classics from the life of the label. In addition to commemorating 10 years, this comp is also meant to focus more on the label's dancefloor focused sounds, but even then, which is what's so great about Hyperdub, is that even the mainstream dance stuff, is still inherently experimental, sometimes to the point that it's hard to believe the level of popularity they've achieved, putting out some seriously challenging music, and for dance music, a lot of this definitely does NOT sound like it was designed to dance too.
The first disc starts with a new jam from DVA, which pretty much sets the template, a dizzying, constantly shifting groover, that flits from bass heavy electro skitter, to dubbed out jungle, to weird clipped vocal metallic beat driven hip hop, to warped dubstep, even dipping into what sounds like some cheesy eighties proto-hip hop, before lurching right back into more skitter and stutter. The sound on disc one is heavy on the footwork, a sound we've championed here big time, infuriatingly repetitive and totally mesmerizing, but amidst the new footwork tracks, there's plenty of other weirdness, from experimental dubbed out electro, to string-laden grime, creepy electro-soul, wild jungle-y exotica, to boomin' system bass music. And the footwork jams, so good, a whole bunch of new names, and potentially new records forthcoming.
The second disc is like a bad ass Hyperdub mixtape, starting out with Burial's classic "Spaceape" and hitting all the high points, killer jams from Ikonika, Cooly G, DVA, DJ Rashad, Terror Danjah, LV, and more, and even on the 'classics' disc, there are a handful of new (to us) tracks/songs, which had us scrambling for all the releases we missed...
Skweee! It's been a little while since we've been able to use that word in a review, but we're always super happy when we can, because it usually means we're listing a new release of "skweee" music. Skweee! You know, the mostly-Scandinavian DIY electro subgenre, characterized by bleep-bloopy videogame-y synth sounds and freaky, fractured funk grooves, all very stripped down and homebrewed. Still pretty much an underground cult thing, despite being the some of the most charming, fun stuff that all of electronica has had to offer, ever. Just check out this, the latest import compilation of skweee bangers from one of the form's leading purveyors, Sweden's Flogsta Danshall label. Fans will already be salivating, with cuts from top skweee artists like Randy Barracuda, Limonious, Claws Cousteau, Daniel Savio, and Joxaren, appearing alongside lots of new names we're not familiar with. 20 tracks in all, spread over four sides of vinyl, housed in a sleeve bearing black & white brick wall artwork in keeping with the earlier entries in this great series (volumes 1 and 2 were cds, vol. 3 was download-only), graphics we love so much.
It'd be too much to go track-by-track in this review; we're not even sure if we should bother calling out highlights - like, the slinky, stuttering funk of Randy Barracuda's "Black Belt", or the herky-jerky blurble of Vurado Bokoda's "Hunchback Blast", or the head-bobbing 'attract mode' keyboard jam that is Grizzler's "Orangutan Sizzle", 'cause we'd have to keep going, and mention Easy & Center Of The Universe's Eastern glitch grooves on "Bosporus Raver", as well as the spacey, swaggery chopped up blip-hop of Claws Costeau's "Sichuan Tongue", and on and on, 'cause it's all good stuff, skweee at its best - that's the point of the Museum Of Future Sound series after all. So, very recommended. If you're just gonna buy one skweee release this year (and you should, every chance you get) then make it this one!! Skweee!!!!
Another twisted electronic gem from Mr. Aaron Funk, aka Venetian Snares, and much like or favorite records of his, and there have been many, My Love Is A Bulldozer, is another dizzying mashup, this one, combining his wildly tangled drill and bass and frenzied jungle, with jazzy torch songs, and haunting Scott Walker like ballads. Sounds like a weird mix, and it is, pretty jarring too, but in a really cool way. All it should take is a few minutes of opener "10th Circle Of Winnipeg", which begins with swoon some strings, then jazzy drum skitter, then throaty female vox, then some thick dub step bass warble, the drums gradually cranking up, the sounds wreathed in weird little flitting fireflies of FX, before exploding into a gloriously chaotic drum and bass freakout, all wound around that swoon some torch song opening, veering wildly back and forth between buzzing droned out skitter, to wild cascades of spastic drum programming, to dark jazziness, and back again, often all of those edges blurring and bleeding into something confusional and downright mad scientist brilliant. And heck, that's just the first song.
The rest of the record is rife with strings, and choirs, the sound classical, baroque, folk, Flamenco, in equal measure, with long passages that could be mistaken for some lost Arvo Part piece, but inevitably, the sound explodes into some classic Snares drum programming.
The male vocals, presumably Funk's, are super emotional and distinctive, dramatic and over the top, sounding a little like Scott Walker, and when wound around dizzying drum programming, it's pretty stunning.
And those vocals definitely define much of this record, those tracks sounding like some weird seventies prog-folk record re-envisioned as modern warped electronica, while other tracks (like "Dear Poet"), are epic and cinematic, and sound like they could be the score for some Game Of Thrones style epic, or some steam punk space opera, the jungle perfectly meshed with the orchestral stapes, the droning synths, the strange chorales, the strings, totally over the top, confusing, and utterly and entirely addictive. Like every Venetian Snares record, we can't stop listening to this one, and feel compelled to proclaim it the best yet, at the very least it's currently our favorite, which is saying something, considering that the Venetian Snares catalog is pretty much all favorites. Needless to say, WAY recommended.
Another warped gem from the Tri Angle label, this one, a dark, brooding, moody bit of skittery slo-mo soul, in the tradition of other Tri Angle artists like Vessel, oOoOO, Holy Other, Balam Acab, How To Dress Well, etc. The weird bit being that this is no mysterious electronic producer, or bedroom misanthrope (well, okay, he could be that), but it's actually the side project of James Kelly, who readers of the aQ list might know better from his day job, playing in post black metal outfit Altar Of Plagues. And it's not like there was lots of stuff like this lurking below the surface in AoP. Or maybe it was, just WAY beneath the surface.
There's literally nothing metal about Kelly's Wife project, so metalheads steer clear. And really, we might expect a metalhead making a weirdo avant electronic soul record to come up with something seriously damaged and demented, but really, amidst the other above mentioned Tri Angle artists, Wife tends a bit more toward the mainstream. Sure the sounds are strange, the arrangements too, and apparently these songs are crafted from found sounds, filed recordings and homemade instruments, but the final project is surprisingly polished, very poppy, still murky and mysterious, but one of the few records on Tri Angle that has breakthrough potential. Fans of more mainstream fare like Portishead and Massive Attack and even to a degree Radiohead, will definitely dig a lot of what's going on here.
And we're not trying to downplay the weirdness. It's still plenty weird, it's just that the weirdness is deftly woven into songs and sounds that are much more accessible. We also hear a little Majical Cloudz (on tracks like "What's Between"), dark, crony electronic torch songs, with lushly layered vocals, dreamy gothic ballads, haunting and darkly lovely, the sound is utterly mesmerizing, and really quite gorgeous, and again, we'd never guess this was the work of a metalhead, but we're digging it a lot. And obviously, fans of other Tri Angle stuff will definitely dig, but for folks who have been thinking abut dabbling in weirder electronic music, this might be the perfect gateway record.
The Ty Segall produced debut full-length from LA trio Zig Zags is all about owning the term "kick ass punk/metal hybrid"! They hit the ground running, come out swinging, whatever metaphor you wanna use for rulin' from the get-go, the first few cuts compelling you to crank the volume up, up, up! "Brainded Warrior" (also available on a 7" single with cool cover art) is the leadoff jam, and quite a jam it its. Sorta like NWOFHMers Steel Mammoth mixing it up with SoCal stoner skaterockers The Shrine. Next, "The Fog" takes over, its crunchy neckbreaking riffage suggestive of Black Flag covering Sabbath's "Symptom Of The Universe", but with a catchy pop punk chorus, and an awesomely doomed-out finale. And so it goes from there, many of those elements remaining in play, Zig Zags bringin' the party to ya with tons of fuzzed out heavy guitar and high energy rock action galore. Part Sabbath, part Ramones, what's not to love?
This album is way more metal than we had expected, yet Zig Zags are totally punk too, their songs often over before they've barely begun, the tempos frantic, the singing sorta melodic but nicely gnarly. Lyrically, they revel in all sorts of cool hesher shit, singing about girls, partying, magic, and biker movies (one song's about Psychomania). Trashy, thrashy good times. An instant favorite!!!
Some records make you feel cooler for listening to 'em, this is one. Play this loud (in your car, if possible) and it's like you're suddenly the Fonz.
