We loved the Public Guilt label, who brought us so many amazing releases - from the occult rock of Aluk Todolo, to the glacial avant doom of Habsyll; from the noise-jazz of Zu, to the spaced out dronescapery of Destructo Swarmbots; from the experimental turntablism of Strotter Inst, to the alchemical folk of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, and so much more. We were bummed when Public Guilt decided to call it a day, but were super excited to discover that PG mastermind JR was back with a new label, one that maybe surprisingly is focused entirely on underground / outsider hip hop and club music, all 45rpm 7"s, and all pretty goddamn great.
First up is this blast of crunchy, distorted B-more noise-hop, courtesy of Abdu Ali, whose sound is all club music drum skitter, big distorted bass throb, some dubsteppy bass wobble, and a wild flow that had us imagining him toasting over a Bug track, and really, The Bug is not a bad reference, this is futuristic club music, hints of old school DHR, a little dancehall, definitely noisy, but groovy and funky as fuck, the sort of bangers that must send the dancefloor into a frenzy, and even if you're averse to actually making it out on the floor, strap on some headphones, and dig into the twisted, avant production, sounds swirl, beats fracture, melodies crumble, grinding, frantic, electro freak-outs that lurch from noisy funky stutter to almost cinematic sounding big beat bombast. Killer stuff. Definitely wanna hear more, and super duper psyched on JR's new label!!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Never heard of the oddly monikered Ama-Dots? Neither had we. But apparently this experimental post punk outfit from Milwaukee, having formed in the seventies, releasing their only proper single in 1980, were poised for greatness, having opened for Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, Gang Of Four, even the Talking Heads, but somehow these guys were WAY weirder, just check out "Luxury With Her" the first track on this lp reissue of everything the group ever recorded. It's a filthy, grimy, loping bass driven creep, all low slung bass, woozy riffage, a lurching stop/start arrangements, some angular guitar scrape, some sample baby cries (?!) and some of the coolest, creepiest female vocals EVER, a raspy sort of growly croon, it's dark and weirdly groovy, sinister and seriously tense/intense. But Ama-Dots weren't all doom and gloom, their 'hit' "Hit Girls" is all angular and frantic, with super dramatic vox, over spidery guitar melodies, and a frenetic rhythm, a super distinctive call and response chorus, the sort of female fronted punk that was in short supply, and definitely struck a chord with the girl punks.
Frontwoman Boolah Hayes has the craziest voice, the music is pretty cool and weird, but when coupled with her deep raspy vocals, sometimes swopping into something super dramatic, putting on all manner of made up accents, but just as often slipping into a demonic growl or a feral bellow, transforming some of the sounds here into near metal, like some crazy female death metal vocalist found her way into an eighties post punk combo, making for some seriously kick ass, and super unique post punk, weird that this stuff has taken this long to get a proper reissue, but holy shit is this stuff great. And did we mention weird?
This collects the group's only 7" release, a lost EP, as well as unreleased demos and some live material, the studio stuff recorded by the legendary Ian Burgess (Big Black, Ministry, Effigies, etc.), pressed on swirled gold vinyl, housed in a super striking jacket, and includes a full color printed insert, with rare photos, liner notes and accounts of the group from friends, fans and writers.
Ahhh, how nice is it to see the name Beyond Dawn again? One of the great unsung heroes of the '90s Norwegian metal scene, Beyond Dawn never quite got the accolades they deserved . Maybe because even in their early heavier days they were a hard band to pin a genre to. Maybe because they were one of the first metal bands in Norway to abandon metal altogether for more experimental territory. Maybe because every record sounded so drastically different than the last. Maybe it's because they almost never played outside of their native country. Or maybe it's just because they had, like, A TON of trombone. Whatever the reason, a band who should have enjoyed a career as illustrious and respected as their countrymates Ulver (who the band played some of their earliest shows with in 1993) instead dissolved over a decade ago with the most cult of followings. But thankfully Duplicate Records has done all fans of heavy downer weirdness a great service in releasing this retrospective. But in classically unpredictable fashion, this isn't a greatest hits package so much as it is a two cd chronological collection of odds & sods: album demos, alternate mixes, outtakes and live recordings. Despite how that may sound, it works surprisingly well as an introduction to this band's surreal shadowy world, touching neatly on everything that made them interesting. Even in their earlier days of brooding gothic doom there was a touch the modern and avant garde, a somber and mournful dirge in the tradition of early Anathema complimented perfectly by Espen Ingierd's vocals, deep and commanding but strangely emotionless and distant, at times a dead ringer for Michael Gira. And like we mentioned earlier there's that trombone, which is never far away, and man, if Beyond Dawn don't make a good argument for the trombone being the saddest sounding instrument of all time (in fact this release inspired this topic of conversation in the store the other day: Why don't more metal bands use trombones???), but at the same time it lends a certain regal timeless quality to their music that really sets it apart. The second disc tackles the 2000's when the band left metal behind entirely, and began flirting with downtempo electronics, nocturnal dub, post punk and melancholy pop. While it's aesthetically a much quieter approach, it was no less emotionally captivating, engrossing and at times devastating. And while the band certainly evolved drastically as they progressed, this collection provides a nice way to follow the threads that ran through the band's sound, especially the general mood they always seemed to conjure up no matter what genres they were experimenting with: a sort of lonely distinguished elegance. Nocturnal and shimmering, depressive yet strangely proud, like putting on your best suit in preparation for the gallows. Highly recommended for fans of Vaura, Swans, Beastmilk, Ulver, and all things strange, sad and loud.
We've been diggin' some killer late '70s, early '80s French punk rock lately, or "paink" as the as the recent compilation of that name has it, discovering some new obscure faves from the scene we hadn't known of before, bands to file alongside Soggy and Metal Urbain in the realm of Stooges-y, snotty, sometimes synth-laced underground French-speaking rawk from the new wave era. Here's a good example, reissued for the first time on cd (and also on vinyl too, backordered at the moment - but the the cd has 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks anyway).
C.O.M.A., aka Clinik Organik Musak Anatomik (great name, whatever it means exactly!), originally unleashed this way weird and super rare full-length, their only album, in 1979. It's some intense & experimental, minimal wave synth punk, manifested with shamboblic precision, their odd "musak" loaded with blurting synthesizer, noisy guitar, mechanical drumbeats, distorted disembodied vocals (often a gravelly croak), and electronic FX galore. Some tracks are more abstract, like the soundscapey segue of "Consequences", consisting of about 50 percent feedback, while others, like "Demain", are more groove-oriented, dark and dancey new wave numbers, still loaded with synth strangeness, to which we can totally imagine stylish French punks doing some kind of robo-pogo.
Yup, it's a diverse disc, wherein a moody, sparse piano piece like "Coma" could be followed by the hard-charging mechano-aggro beatdown of "Assaut", complete with wiggly wild guitar/synth solo.
The sporadic mad scientist's laboratory bleep bloop of "La Valse A Mutant" kinda has a Francophone "Hardcore Devo" vibe, and definitely Devo were an inspiration on this groop, along with the likes of Kraftwerk, Wire, and The Residents. Think Devo meets Metal Urbain, you're on the right track. Great stuff. C.O.M.A. didn't appear on that Paink comp, we don't know why, they shoulda been, though maybe just a bit weirder than the others. Fans of stuff on Medical and Dark Entries ought to check it out...
UK horror soundtrack vinyl reissue label Death Waltz might crank out the releases, but US label Waxwork has steadily been giving DW a run for their horror vinyl money, most recently with the vinyl release of the soundtrack to the 1986 techno-horror-schlock thriller Chopping Mall, and while we can safely say, before this reissue, we didn't remember AT ALL what the soundtrack was like, we can wholeheartedly say we LOVE the movie. For those who somehow missed out on this classic, the plot revolves around a handful of kids who work in a hi-tech shopping mall, who one night stay after hours for a party, only to be trapped when the mall goes into lockdown, and then all hell breaks loose when the futuristic security robots malfunction and become murderous killbots and try to eliminate the kids! Besides being hilarious and ridiculous and over the top, it also features some notable stars, including Barbara Crampton, probably best know to horror nerds from her roles in Re-Animator and From Beyond, as well as Mary Woronov who starred in Eating Raoul (as well as plenty of other horror movies including Silent Night, Bloody Night and Death Race 2000) and was a member of Andy Warhol's Factory and a one time go-go dance for the Velvet Underground, along with frequent Woronov collaborator Paul Bartel, a Roger Corman protege who directed Eating Raoul (and Death Race 2000) and starred in Eating Raoul along side Woronov.
Hearing the score again after all these years though brought us right back, cheesy and super eighties sounding, but futuristic and robotic, a sound that had us immediately thinking this could be some lost synth wave obscurity that could get reissued on Medical or Dark Entries, but it's still plenty soundtracky, with some John Carpenter like chase music, some shreddy guitar licks, stuttery drum machines, the vibe tense and claustrophobic, easily conjuring up the image of wild robots hot on your trail, with some tracks getting seriously avant, pulsing and pounding ominously, minimal and tripped out, brooding and psychedelic, with some tracks using primitive sampling to chop up vocals, and create crazy hiccuping melodies, and still other moments, sounding almost like it could be video game music transcribed for analog synth and drum machine. With a lot of these soundtracks, a lot of the appeal is pure nostalgia, and for the film mostly, not the music, but Chuck Cirino's score is pretty amazing, dense and dizzying, and noisy, and wildly chaotic, and is some seriously fantastic listening even removed from the visual. Although this has us really, really wanting to watch Chopping Mall again, which is likely what we're gonna do!
Pressed on 180 gram transparent pink vinyl, housed in super heavy, glossy stock, full color jackets, with killer, cool new retro-modern artwork by art collective We Buy Your Kids, and a 12" x 12" full color printed insert, with more artwork, and new liner notes from Cirino and Chopping Mall cowriter Steve Mitchell.
Record number two from the new project of Chris Spencer of late great NYC nineties noise rockers the Unsane, and while the sound of The Cutthroats 9 is maybe a bit less metal, it still retains much of the negative sonic energy of Unsane. Skull caving riffage, thick, corrosive bass buzz, pounding drums, and maybe most notably, some bad ass slide guitar (peep the cover photo, a close up of said slide guitar happening) which adds a definite distinctive sound, CT9's down tuned grooves laced with slippery melodies, the band locked into explosive churning heaviness, Spencer's slide guitar woven throughout, adding some surprising melody to the proceedings, a nice balance to the unhinged ferocity that oozes from pretty much every other part of the record, with Spencer's throaty bellow, cracking into more unhinged near-shriekiness on tracks like "Trouble", which sound essentially, like a groovier, more melodic Unsane, which is most definitely not a bad thing at all. The AmRep noise rock vibe is pretty huge too, hugely beholden to that label, and that era, fans of eighties and nineties pig fuck heaviness will dig this stuff like crazy, but then the band whip out a track like "Dissension", where the slide is right up front, and suddenly it almost sounds like a more metal Raging Slab, sort of, cuz really, the blood that adorned most of the Unsane records seems to still flow through Spencer's veins, and thus through his amp, dripping all over these jams as well, so fans of Spencer's old outfit will feel right at home, but really, any one whole likes it heavy and groovy, step right up...
Includes a download code too!
We've long championed the work of Joel Phelps, an unsung hero of the indie underground, beginning with his stint in Silkworm - he was the group's secret weapon, with an aching, about to break voice that could soar into a powerful howl, his songs tense and intense, delicate balances of hushed brooding shimmer and explosive angular crunch, his wild guitar wrangling the perfect match for that utterly distinctive voice. Then came a clutch of solo records, all stunning, and almost all completely under the radar. And then, nothing. He seemed to have disappeared. Stopped making music. Until now.
There's a new Phelps solo record, which is fantastic, and we'll review that one soon too, but this new project is something else entirely.
We often talk about bands or records that seem custom made for aQuarius, and this definitely seems like one of those. Joel Phelps, teamed up with Stuart Dahlquist, of Burning Witch, Asva and SUNNO))), the result very much like you might imagine, and like we would have hoped, the best, creepiest, Silkworm songs, fused to the slow, droned out creep and crawl of Dahlquist's previous bands, ultra-doom torch songs, indie rock fused to Arvo Part, avant drone meets intimate songsmithery, a difficult combination for sure, but one that rewards patient and deep listening. Fans of either/both Phelps and Dahlquist will marvel at this haunting soundworld the two have conjured, from the brief opening, with Phelps, crooning over simpler percussion, and slow shifting layers of chordal shimmer, aching and heartfelt, bittersweet and melancholy, seemingly setting the stage for something much more like Phelps' previous works, but instead, the sound shifts, the second track "Stravinsky" unwinding as a dense layered drone, and when the vocals swoop in, they explode into strange harmonies, those harmonies woven into thick bass tones, the result some sort of alien chorale, downcast and stirring, even sans vocals, it would be a gorgeous sprawl of bass driven droned out dirgery, at once ethereal and atmospheric, dense and down tuned, but the song, like the whole record is rife with dramatic dynamics, long stretches of airy organ, drifting weightless, other movements bordering on avant doom, and still others dreamlike and choral, which is a sonic microcosm of the rest of the record.
Dahlquist delivering some breathtaking sound design, field sod digital glitchery, wound around glimmering soft focus swirls of sound, heaving low end thrum, soundtrack like melodies, all wound into tense slow-builds, sometimes transforming into some hushed Phelps like downer slow core pop, othertimes blossoming into something even blacker. On tracks like "The Chant", simple percussion underpins Phelps' harrowing vocals, which are soon joined by keening organ drones, the vibe intense and sinister, until another cascade of thick bass buzz swoops in, and Phelps' vocals explode into incredible and alien harmonies, the sound mutating into drowsy, sun dappled doom, laced with twinkling electronics, and buried dreamlike melodies. And without going track by track, the rest of the record continues to expand, prismatically, slipping easily from strangely psychedelic indie pop, albeit fractured and flecked with weird steel drum like percussion, to field recording laced dronescapes, to quietly broody stretches of moody agent pop, psychedelic slowcore drift, to minimal, almost liturgical ambience.
Dizzying in scope, stunning in execution, a practically perfect, and perfectly IM-perfect, hybrid of haunting avant indie rock and modern composition, brooding, downer folk minimalism and expansive sound designed dronescapery, dreamlike torch songmithery and outsider, cinematic ambient bliss.
Barely a month has passed since volume 5 in Demdike Stare's series of Test Pressing 12"s, and along comes number six, and like the previous installment, it finds this hauntological duo moving even further from their gloomy electro creep, into a world of alien dancefloor avant electro. The A side almost sounds like two different club tracks playing simultaneously, with looped pitch shifted vocals, over a skittery breakbeat, and wreathed in swaths of thick buzzing noise, and dense swells of ominous rumble, a sort of industrial hip hop hybrid, all tangled up into some post-dubstep noisiness, with the second half getting totally wild, the production splintering into all sorts of strange shapes, before finally jettisoning the beat, and finishing with a killer sprawl of thick, crumbling, almost blackened dronemusic, before unexpectedly, the beat re-surfaces right at the end, for one final beat heavy flourish.
The B side manages to somehow get even more dense and noisy, brutal and bombastic, a sort-of rhythm constructed from skipping static and throbbing bass gristle, less dancefloor and more floorcore, not hard to imagine hearing some weirdo noise dude spitting out this sort of caustic crunch, that is until part way through, when those blasts of static coalesce into a super dark, dubbed out beat, that's thick, and heavy, and darkly groovy, fiercely minimal, but ominous and sinister and seriously sick. Here's hoping the upcoming Demdike full length continues to explore similarly fierce and fucked up sounds. Might just be the best of the Testpressing so far, most definitely the meanest...
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Otherwise known as The Cackle Sisters, this Depression-era barn-dance duo charmed the hearts of rural America with their sweet vintage country songs and incredible vocal acrobatics. Raised on a farm in Royalton, Minnesota, the sisters, Carolyn and Mary Jane DeZurik became excellent mimics of barnyard animals (as well as trains, harmonicas, slide guitar and other instruments and noises) and began incorporating these sound effects and yodeling into their performing repertoire. Starting off first at local talent contests and state fairs, the sisters gained wide enough attention to tour the country. They recorded many sides for the Vocalion label in the '30s and even made it to Hollywood to star in Barnyard Follies, eventually picking up sponsership from Purina Mills for a sponsered weekly radio show called Checkerboard Time, to advertise Purina chicken feed and other products, which they did off and on for nearly 30 years. There is an otherworldly almost Lynchian quality to the DeZurik Sisters sound, an effervescent wholesomeness and zany quirkiness that allowed them to elevate themselves from their poor rural roots and allowed others to forget the sadness and desperation of the era. Not your typical vintage country act, these sisters' incredible vocalizations need to be heard to be believed. So Sweet!
Comes with a detailed booklet about the DeZurik Sisters career and history which includes a recent interview with Carolyn DeZurik, who is still alive and well.
Jam. Jamming. Jammy jamming. Jam jam jam jam jamming. Man!! This is EXACTLY what you think it would be, the instrumental psychedelic power trio Earthless, featuring guitar hero Isaiah Mitchell, jamming with another instrumental psychedelic power trio, Heavy Blanket, featuring guitar hero J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. And it was recorded live at the Roadburn 2012 festival, in Holland, so they are indeed "in a Dutch haze" if you know what they mean.
One looooong track, about an hour, jamming hard from start to finish (does it ever?), wild and wailing, they NEVER let up, it's kind of crazy impressive (although anyone familiar with Earthless will not be surprised!). So just imagine the longest, most howling-est, heaviest, stoned-to-the-max Earthless jam EVER, but times two. Twice as much guitar anyway (Mascis and Mitchell killing it). The rhythm section is actually the drummer from Earthless and the bassist from Heavy Blanket, the remaining guys kicking back somewhere we assume. Heck, if we'd been there, we're not sure we'd have been able to stay on our feet the whole time, it's pretty overwhelming... but at home, ensconced in the comfort of one's own easy chair or bed, perhaps, yeah, it's a nice trip! Seemingly endless infinite jammage, outer space exploring / inner mind expanding psychedelic SHRED. Kawabata Makoto, eat your heart out!!
Seriously, for the most stoned fans of Earthless, Heavy Blanket, Acid Mothers Temple, Fuzz, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Golden Void, etc. etc. Great cover art by our pal Tim Lehi too, by the way.
We reviewed an amazing album on the Dead-Cert label (the boutique subsidiary label of Finders Keepers and Demdike Stare) a while back by musical couple Kat Epple and Bob Stohl called Sanctu Spiritus, a proto-new age document of early recordings utilizing synthesizers and flute with tape-loops to be used in planetariums and space documentaries. That release is now sadly out of print, but that was just the beginning. Between 1978 and 1982, the couple would later form the group Emerald Web, a mixture of space and fantasy music with proggy new age leanings and release 5 recordings (1 lp and 4 cassettes) on their own imprint label Stargate from which the tracks here are compiled by the fine freaks at Finders Keepers/B-Music.
Hailing from Florida, the duo recorded their music at night utilizing the studio they used for their day jobs as synth-programmers, music consultants for computer technology labs and TV and film soundtrack work. Named after a laser show formation and combining elements of dungeons and dragons fantasy and cosmic ambience, the group released their vinyl debut, Dragon Wings And Wizard Tales in 1979, a heady post-prog synth epic of tripped out soundscapes and ethereal female vocals that was recently featured on the Record Store Day compilation Monster Skies. The subsequent tape releases were less proggy and more spacey, filled with field recordings, dueling flutes, and ambient electronics that have more of a minimal composition focus than your typical new age music does. The couple would go on to record music for Carl Sagan's Cosmos series and hopefully that will get released soon as well. So great!
There is an import lp version of this, but it's been very hard for us to track down, so for now we only have the cd.
Exit In Grey's impressionist driftscaping continues to broadcast darkly beautiful, animistic apparitions from the taiga of Mother Russia. As we've mentioned before, Exit In Grey is the work of one Sergey [S] Suhkov who sometimes works under this moniker with an enigmatic character granted with the name (S), though it seems that (S) has parted ways with [S] for reasons unknown. The mystery to the authorship of Exit In Grey is by design as their may be many forces, elements, dimensions, psychic energies, and parapsycological reverberations that are communing with Exit In Grey to achieve the emotionally resonant dronemuzik found in their ongoing body of work. Perception slowly unfolds over two lengthy tracks, each clocking in around 27 minutes flush with ghostly loops, harmonic wash and analogue drone girding the ebb and flow of various cycles from guitar chords delicately generating melancholy melodies all bathed in reverb, tangles of forest-born sound objects which might as well hail from the overgrown ruins at Chernobyl, oceanic field recordings of ominous tidal churn, and shortwave receptions of hiss, electric hum, crackle, and disembodied voice. The slow pacing of Exit In Grey's poetic electronics reminds us of that Motion Sickness Of Time Travel series of Moon Ballades. Yeah, beautiful stuff.
NOW ALSO HERE TO LIST ON CD!
Minus a few singles and compilations, it's been FOURTEEN YEARS since we last heard from stoner sludge legends Eyehategod, and all it takes is a couple seconds of the first song with its instantly recognizable solid state feedback skree to get those warm, sonic junkie fuzzies, but after a few seconds, like a sonic fuck-you, instead of a return to doomy, stoner sludge glory, and unfurling some sort of epic, slo-mo Sabbath riff, the band explode into some furiously thrashing metal punk, frenzied and vitriolic, certainly Eyehategod in spirit, and they're no stranger to ripping it up, but for the first record in ages, it's a pretty bad ass move. But fear not, they're quickly back to their old, sludgier tricks, and quickly slip right back into the drug addled dirgery of old, churning downtuned heaviness, lurching, slithery, swampy brutality, throat shredding, glass gargling vokills, the songs dense and almost proggy, "Trying To Crack The Hard Dollar" displaying bordering on prog-sludge, while the awesomely titled "Robitussin And Rejection" lays down some seriously cough syrup thick riffage, bloody, oozing sonics that pour from the speakers like some viscous black tar sound, the track lurching into something a bit more frantic, but always slipping right back into that black hole tarpit groove these guys still do better than pretty much anyone else...
Limited stock on this one; and it's unfortunately already out of print at the source. So allow us to be brief. Fejhed is the guttural noise collaboration between Frederikke Hoffmeier (aka Puce Mary) and Jesse Sanes (yes, that Jesse Sanes from Hoax). Hard to say when, where, how these two came into each other's orbit and recorded this cassette, but it aligns more with the Puce Mary end of the spectrum - power electronics / death industrial vibes with sicktone squalor, cancerous machined clatter, subterranean metal bashing, guttural frequency broadcasts. Seance-channelled vocalizations of the disembodied ghosts, ectoplasm, demons, etc. add a crusty layer of scabrous noise to the whole thing, so here's one hell of a cassette that would get worthy comparisons to early Lustmord (e.g. the first album on Sterile Records and the Lustmordekay tape).
You might not know the name John Gallow. How 'bout John Gallo? Doesn't ring a bell? BLIZARO, then? Hopefully you do recognize that name. We've previously listed a bunch of Blizaro, making their cd City Of The Living Nightmare a Record Of The Week a few years ago. Blizaro's a BIG fave of ours. And multi-instrumentalist John Gallo(w), also of trad doomsters Orodruin and blackened thrashers Crucifist, is the talented/demented mind behind Blizaro! Now he offers up this solo disc, using a slight variation on his own name. Of course, we wondered immediately just what the difference would be between Blizaro and John Gallow solo; the answer is, while Blizaro plays some strains of '70s sounding psychedelic doom, as heard through the kaleidoscopic lens of proggy, electronic cult Italian horror cinema soundtracks (i.e., "Sabbath meets Goblin"), John Gallow is a bit more deliberately doom metal, sluggish and chuggish, not *quite* so bizarre as Blizaro. Definitely Gallow takes a lot of inspiration from the weird works of Italian psych/doom mastermind Paul Chain - these tracks are imbued with the maestro's preferred occult violet hues, as the disc's title indicates. And apparently a lot of it is improvised, also in the manner of Paul Chain. But additionally we're hearing A LOT of the epic doom metal of classic Candlemass - and it's not just us, Gallo says as much in his liner notes, citing Candlemass as an influence alongside "all the purple-tinged doom metal from Italy", meaning Paul Chain, Black Hole, and other obscurities.
On a few of the tracks here, Gallow even does an amazing job of emulating the haunted wail of classic Candlemass frontman Messiah Marcolin with his own melodic, mournful cries, and that can't be easy. We're impressed. Elsewhere, he sounds more like Paul Chain, or channels his inner Ozzy. His guitar playing is also, as always, impressive, often going OFF into a tripped out psychedelic blues zone, his multitracked leads conjuring multiple Iommi's jamming together. Yet this is can be a very lonely, late night, solitary sounding disc, the moodiness of the material perhaps in part due to the one-man-band factor; furthermore, the title Violet Dreams also refers to the fact that many of the songs here have lyrics drawn from the surreal contents of strange dreams and nightmares that Gallow has actually had; we suspect that if he talked in his sleep he could give Dion McGregor a run for his money. Then there's all the evocative, vintage-sounding synthesizer and droning organ that ornaments this disc as well, sometimes taking center stage, as on the somber synth interlude "Ancient Tears", quietly creepy, its atmospheric keyboard melodies straight out of an Italian horror soundtrack for sure.
This journey into John Gallow's Violet Dreams is over an hour long, an almost claustrophobic concoction of heavy doom riffery and more abstract ambience, Gallow's song structures taking some strange turns; 'tis a dense slab of what we'll call depressive progressive doom metal, indeed.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
We were so psyched to see Mississippi Records release this collection of recordings made by these two little known Louisiana musicians whose beautifully melancholic contribution to early American Cajun folk music is as indelible as it is mysterious. If you were a fan of HBO's True Detective this past year, you may recognize the title song that opens this record, "Sur Le Borde De L'Eau", a spellbinding Cajun ballad sung by Gaspard featured on the soundtrack of that series.
Gaspard, blind at an early age, sang and played guitar, and is known to have formed a string band with both his brothers who grew up in the rural parishes of Louisiana, but we're not sure if they ever recorded. He also played backing guitar for cajun fiddler Delma Lachney who recorded for the Vocalion label in the 1920's. During those sessions, Gaspard recorded four solo tracks, and the pair's combined recordings make up the entirety of this here release and is about all we know of the two.
The duo's instrumental, "La Danseuse", featured on Volume 2 of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, is absolutely one of our favorite old-timey songs ever, a song we could easily see being used in a period film like Heaven's Gate or Days Of Heaven. And similarly the other Lachney instrumentals follow suit quite sweetly in Cajun bluegrass form. But also heavenly are the songs where Gaspard sings. In a high French patois, Gaspard reminds us a bit of John Jacob Niles or Roscoe Holcomb, as well as early Devendra Banhart, but the sentiment behind the songs, full of romantic old country longing and nostalgia is wonderfully heartbreaking. Like the great Mississippi comp, I Don't Feel At Home In This World, there is a weary pain to these sweet songs. We were hoping to learn more about these two with this release, but sadly no extra info is provided, only some of the most haunting and lovely early Americana we've heard. Highest Recommendation!
Previously reissued via the RVNG label in 2011, Bureau B reissues this kraut-synth rarity once again with its original cover. Here's what we wrote about it previously:
Before 1979, Harald Grosskopf was mostly known as a percussionist for Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers and Klaus Schulze. But during one bleak summer where his longtime girlfriend left him, he fortuitously met up with two musicians who he would later collaborate with in the band You (whose 2 releases have also been reissued on Bureau B). One of them lent Grosskopf his flat for the summer and a mini-Moog and sequencers to work on a solo record. With a reel to reel and eight track recorder he received from Schulze as compensation for his contribution on some recordings, Grosskopf then had to teach himself how to use all the new equipment, which was no easy task. But his perseverance paid off as the result is one of the finer synth outings we've heard from the era. There is a nice percolating exuberance to the tracks aided with the forwarding momentum of percussion that keeps things moving along, while other tracks show a deep space ambient side. Definitely a precursor for what much of what Jonas Reinhardt and Zombi are doing nowadays. Highly Recommended!!!!
Bureau B has also reissued Grosskopf's more new agey follow-up, Oceanheart, which we also have in stock, and will review soon too, probably when the cd versions of both show up...
Wow, now someone's done a first-time-on-vinyl version of this interesting Bruce Haack artifact. It came out on cd about 13 years ago, that's now out of print, and this is what we said then:
This is the previously unreleased 1979 sequel to Bruce Haack's 1970 Electric Lucifer LP, perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere. The robotic voices and mechanical rhythms that made the first Electric Lucifer such a cult kitsch classic are still present on Book II, although it's perhaps more poppy and goofy and less disturbingly weird than its predecessor. Aside from that one (not-too-successful) major label release, Haack's career from the '60s through the early '80s focused on self-released electronic children's records, which while certainly amusing (and of interest for his innovative home-built synths), of course don't come close to the trippy electro-rock and serious religious themes of the Electric Lucifer concept. Book II is a definite treat for Haack fans, nice to have it on vinyl, and lookin' good.
It's been over 4 years since we last heard from these guys, having raved about a stunningly handcrafted cd release back in 2010. Their sound, at the time, described as "black rituals for the vastness-appreciative", which essentially amounted to haunting black ambience and dark, minimal dronescapery, and their M.O. hasn't changed too much on this new tape via local label Black Horizons. Three tacks of creeping sonic malevolence, and brooding sinister soundscapes, if anything, their sound has developed into something a bit more industrial, the opener all dark chimes and shimmering metallics, pointalist piano and soft swirls of FX, spoken word vocals, and motorik percussion, the black ambience seemingly blossoming into a sort of death industrial, a lumbering gloom rock, slowed way down, flecked with moaning horns, and thick rumbling bass, distorted synth blurt, smears of chordal shimmer, giving way to something almost like black jazz, a soft noise drenched drift that unfurls like a black fog, anchored by spare percussion, and twisted fractured anti-rhythms, culminating in the hazy, dreamy closer, a swath of distorted thrum, draped over more spoken word, glacial riffage, spread out into blurred drones, before letting all the distortion, grit and grim wash away, leaving just a stretch of hushed shimmer, woozy minimal buzz, and terrifying whispers, a gauzy, darkly psychedelic finale, a slow build/fade blackened, mysterious and otherworldly. Whew.
Like all Black Horizons release, the packaging is exquisite, a die cut six panel J-card, silver metallic ink on matte black, black and silver cassettes, and of course EXTREMELY LIMITED, only 100 COPIES!!
Another gloriously noxious dose of grim, raw blackness form LA trio Harassor, the group's newest proper full length. Like their recent split lp with Glass Coffin, and another recent split with Author & Punisher, this recent barrage of new material is some of the best stuff we've heard from these guys. And even removed from their dramatic live shows, the music here is pretty compelling, fusing the sort of raw Venomish black metal churn with something more tranced out and droney, not to mention a fair bit of melody in the mix, that makes some of this stuff surprisingly catchy. But it's all relative, and the catchiness here is subtle when compared to the groups grim black din, frenzied, furious riffing, and lose limbed rapid fire drumming, no bass, but really, you generally can't here the bass in black metal anyway, and it's not really missed here. And the vocals are a killer mix of guttural demonic grunts and hysterical shrieks, all wound up into furious, hellish heaviness, the sort of blurred blackness that's almost more trancelike than metallic, that is when not devolving into more punk metal pound, which the band do often and well, but even then, they'll lock into a looped sounding riff/blast that often into a totally mesmerizing blackblastdrone, before eventually devolving right back into that blackened punkiness. And like that split with Glass Coffin, some tracks are crazy catchy, sounding almost post rocky / shoegazey (check out "Winter's Triumph", which sounds like some sort of blackened post punk), hinting at the kind of band these guys could so easily be, but that element only adds to the groups twisted blackness, which in turn is only further enhanced by their blood soaked ritualistic live performances, which you should check out if you ever get the chance...
Includes a download code too.
The Lee Hazlewood reissue train keeps a rolling with three new previously unreleased reissues from his early days: His second and third albums, The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) from 1965, and Friday's Child from 1966, as well as his ninth album Love And Other Crimes from 1968.
The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) and Friday's Child are both full of quirky songs and song stories about eccentric folks and down-and-outers and their often surreal downfalls. These records have Hazlewood's trademark twisted take on popular songforms like country-folk and Tin Pan Alley-ish novelty tunes with his uncanny knack for sublime production and wry humor.
Love And Other Crimes was recorded after the two Nancy & Lee albums he did with Nancy Sinatra, and the songs have a groovier almost psych-pop quality, even though there is some novelty schtick happening as well. Love and Other Crimes does however have some of our all time favorite Hazlewood tracks, especially the Byrds-by-way-of-Johnny Cash number "Pour Man" which is a gorgeously dark and groovy murder ballad, that we once thought referred to the relationship of Nancy Sinatra and Billy Strange, who arranged many of Nancy & Lee's signature songs. But their love triangle was merely played up for the press and didn't really exist, so we're told. Still a great record in a slew of great reissues!!
The Lee Hazlewood reissue train keeps a rolling with three new previously unreleased reissues from his early days: His second and third albums, The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) from 1965, and Friday's Child from 1966, as well as his ninth album Love And Other Crimes from 1968.
The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) and Friday's Child are both full of quirky songs and song stories about eccentric folks and down-and-outers and their often surreal downfalls. These records have Hazlewood's trademark twisted take on popular songforms like country-folk and Tin Pan Alley-ish novelty tunes with his uncanny knack for sublime production and wry humor.
Love And Other Crimes was recorded after the two Nancy & Lee albums he did with Nancy Sinatra, and the songs have a groovier almost psych-pop quality, even though there is some novelty schtick happening as well. Love and Other Crimes does however have some of our all time favorite Hazlewood tracks, especially the Byrds-by-way-of-Johnny Cash number "Pour Man" which is a gorgeously dark and groovy murder ballad, that we once thought referred to the relationship of Nancy Sinatra and Billy Strange, who arranged many of Nancy & Lee's signature songs. But their love triangle was merely played up for the press and didn't really exist, so we're told. Still a great record in a slew of great reissues!!
The Lee Hazlewood reissue train keeps a rolling with three new previously unreleased reissues from his early days: His second and third albums, The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) from 1965, and Friday's Child from 1966, as well as his ninth album Love And Other Crimes from 1968.
The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) and Friday's Child are both full of quirky songs and song stories about eccentric folks and down-and-outers and their often surreal downfalls. These records have Hazlewood's trademark twisted take on popular songforms like country-folk and Tin Pan Alley-ish novelty tunes with his uncanny knack for sublime production and wry humor.
Love And Other Crimes was recorded after the two Nancy & Lee albums he did with Nancy Sinatra, and the songs have a groovier almost psych-pop quality, even though there is some novelty schtick happening as well. Love and Other Crimes does however have some of our all time favorite Hazlewood tracks, especially the Byrds-by-way-of-Johnny Cash number "Pour Man" which is a gorgeously dark and groovy murder ballad, that we once thought referred to the relationship of Nancy Sinatra and Billy Strange, who arranged many of Nancy & Lee's signature songs. But their love triangle was merely played up for the press and didn't really exist, so we're told. Still a great record in a slew of great reissues!!
Hive Mind is the long running project of Greh Holger, the rust-belt exile now basking in Los Angeles sunsets, smog, and Scientologist horror. Following his ancestry back to Michigan, Hive Mind situates somewhere between the monstrously virile industrialisms of Wolf Eyes and the doped-up synth worship of the earliest incarnations of Emeralds. Recently, Holger (and his cult imprint Chondritic Sound) has been dabbling in the synth-pop / minimal-wave ethos to considerable aplomb; but here on Beneath Triangle And Crescent he's returning to the roots of noise. In fact, this is a reissue of a super limited cassette that was released on Fag Tapes back in 2008. The A side lingers on suicidal synth chords cycling over beds of smoldering noise, with the aptly named "Detritus" channelling the same amphetamine goth-suffocation of downer melodies that opened the titular track to The Cure's Pornography. The side-long title track is a Cronenbergian meditation on psychic violence as played out through the structure of the machine, in this case the skeleton of a junked car festering at the bottom of Lake Erie. Whatever connotations to melody found on the A side are dropped in favor of zombified rhythms smothered in neurotic, black noise and a nihilist venom spewed often by those malcontent Italians (e.g. MB, Murder Corporation, Mauthausen Orchestra, etc.). Bleak shit, for sure.
First thing you'll notice about this 'new' record from LA psych punks the Icarus Line, is that the title is very similar to their last full length Slave Vows, and apparently, that's cuz this ep is a companion of sorts, a five track addendum to that record's furious swagger, and if anything, these extra jams are even darker and more sinister, sounding like the Stooges fused to Einsturzende, with wild, blown out psychedelic freakouts bookended by some almost industrial sounding creep.
Opener "Leeches And Seeds" almost sounds like Woven Hand, with 'testifying' vox over distorted bass throb, wreathed in tripped out FX, a brooding sprawl of sonic tension, peppered with wild bursts of wild psychedelic swagger, those blowouts wrapped in wild squalls of dense psych guitar shred and shards of screeching feedback. Fierce as fuck for sure. And the rest of the ep follows suit, the band adding tons of space, and dynamics to their sound, "Junkadelic" is almost glammy, swagger and brooding in equal measure, while "Raise Your Crown" is all loping psychedelic blooze, sound like the bastard offspring of the Rock*A*Teens and the Swans. But it's "Salem Slims", an apparent live favorite, that blows the roof off, a heavy guitar wild psych blow-out, again heavy on the glammy swagger, the guitar blown out and in-the-red, a furious, freaky glam-psych garage punk stomp that KILLS. Finally, things finish off with "The Father / The Priest", a sprawling 13+ minute epic, a smoldering slow burn that spends the first ten minutes grooving ominously, swampy and slithery, before the finale, a heavy as fuck blow out, that sounds like what Jack White must be trying for, heavy, psychedelic blooze, that's fierce and furious, noisy and twisted and the sort of damaged psych weirdness that we could imagine stretching out long enough to transform this ep into a full length. If only...
Here's one of those albums that we KNEW we'd make Record Of The Week - IF ever it was reissued. And now it has been! Here's a fully legit reish of this cult '70s hard rock rarity, a record by one of those bands who seem simultaneously to be both testosterone-tanked young men and wizened ol' wise wizards. Yeah, a Record Of The Week easy, on account of it not only being an old fave of some of us here, but something that immediately caught on with the AQ staffers who hadn't heard it before, this reissue getting played in the store quite steadily (and loudly!) since it arrived. Let's listen in, as Jerusalem's vocalist belts it out, in an emotive yowl a bit like Robert Plant but with Ozzy Osbourne's paranoid feelings: "Hey girl, will you never learn? Who d'you think you're fooling with your lyin' and your cryin'? You'll only be happy the day you see me dyin'!" But then, in more of a normal speaking voice, we get the casual aside: "Oh yeah, that's the way it happens sometimes. Ha."
Right on, brilliant. That's from "Frustration", the first of nine fantastic tracks on the one and only album by this English band, recorded in 1971, released in '72 on Deram/Decca, produced by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Why Jerusalem didn't get big is a mystery, though the liner notes give some clues as to why they disbanded. Heck they're even fairly unknown (or a well-kept secret) among connoisseurs of '70s heavy psych and hard rock, with this being its first ever official, non-bootleg reissue on compact disc. Now, there's lots of great obscure heavy rock rarities from the early '70s. We've raved about reissues of many of them (Dust, Leaf Hound, Toad, Bang, T2, etc.). But as far as unheralded proto-metal goes, this belongs pretty much at the top of that longhaired, bellbottomed heap, as essential as any of 'em anyway. Pentagram, Bedemon, Blues Creation, Budgie, Night Sun, you name it.
Allan here first heard Jerusalem a few years back when a friend who shares his taste for proto-metal passed along a cd-r copy of this otherwise unavailable album (thanks, Glenn!). Killer stuff indeed, damn it was good. One of the heaviest things from the era he'd ever heard, Jerusalem took it to an extreme that most of their peers didn't approach. With elements of both biggies Sabbath and Zeppelin, but more frenzied and frantic on one hand, more plodding and suicidal on the other.
Crashing, fuzzed out guitars. Energetic hectic riffage. Doomy, thudding blues. Wicked stinging, sliding soloing. Punkish attitude (competitive with contemporaries Crushed Butler). The vocals often hoarse, on the verge of screaming, or gone over that edge. Yeah, pretty heavy for '72! This is rough, raw, proto headbanging mania mixed with mystical, melodic proggy interludes, of course we love it. Plus it's got a genuine dark, occult, despairing vibe, with poetic lyrics about madness, murder and death... And you can't get much more "downer rock genocidal" sounding than the truly, uh, primitive bludgeon what might be the heaviest track here, "Primitive Man".
Pretty darn metal when it comes down to it, forget the "proto". In their own way though, Jerusalem sounding halfway betwixt '60s garage rock and '80s New Wave Of British Heavy Metal... which on balance puts them a bit ahead of their time. In fact, since what's old is new again, this actually sounds like if could have been made now, not because it sounds modern (it doesn't) but because it's so line with certain stonery retro-stylings popular today, particularly in Sweden. In other words, if you like Witchcraft, you'll love Jerusalem!! We always thought that of all the obscure '70s bands that are their forebears, Witchcraft sound most like Jerusalem (well, next to Pentagram). Remember what we said in all caps about Witchcraft's debut? "PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER!" Well the same would go for this, except that it's the real deal, which makes it even better.
Anyway, to return to our story, after Allan got that cd-r dub, he knew he had to find a proper cd. There HAD to be one, this was too good not to have been reissued, right? But, after looking and looking, no luck. Then, one day, Allan came to work at Aquarius and lo and behold what did he hear, but Jerusalem blaring from the store stereo! No, it wasn't this reissue. This was still a few years ago. Turns out, Andee had found a used copy of a bootleg cd someplace, and had bought it simply 'cause he thought the cover looked cool (he's like that), without knowing anything about the band. Life is so unfair, thought Allan. But he was able to eventually guilt Andee into giving him the cd for a birthday present (thanks, Andee! You can have that one back now). Later on, we discovered a Japanese reissue that may or may not have been a boot but in any event was way too expensive and hard to get, nothing we could easily stock and sell for a reasonable price. But NOW, we happily are able to share Jerusalem with you thanks to this nicely done reissue on the Rockadrome label's Vintage imprint! Yeah!
In addition to the nine songs from the original LP, this cd comes with five bonus tracks, including non-album single "Kamakazi Moth". The thick booklet is filled with lengthy liner notes, complete lyrics, vintage photos, all that good stuff you want in a reissue. Once more, yeah!
We've dipped our toes in the extensive catalogue of The Legendary Pink Dots and Edward Ka-Spel from time to time; and here we have one of the true gems from both bodies of work in Ka-Spel's 1991 solo outing Tanith And The Lion Tree. The Pink Dots have long been a baroque ensemble of goth portent, psychedelic wooziness, Victorian theatricality and kosmische adventurousness. With Ka-Spel's lilting lisp picking up right where Syd Barrett left off, it's interesting to ponder where Pink Floyd might have gone under Barrett's direction instead. Nonetheless, the Ka-Spel / LPD aesthetic is always an eclectic patchwork of sound collage and oblique songwriting as the backdrop to Ka-Spel's lyrical invocations. The opening track "O From The Great Sea" is driven by a John Carpenter / Halloween set of horror-synth arppegiations and staccato piano lines that counterpoint the languid pleas from Ka-Spel, who leads into the black lullaby found in the title track which features a memorably melodic phrase that spotlights the allegorical imagery found in his enigmatic / mythological poetry. Droning loops, slumping organ chord passages, chemical playschools, and washes of musique concrete expressiveness tumble through much of the album, only to coalesce into a homunculus of a song here and there complete with structured tension, balladeering croon, lyrical obtusion, and mutant tales of love, death, and misery. Long out of print, it's very good to have this one available again!
It all started with a video on YouTube. Odds are one of your music nerd friends sent it to you already, or maybe you WERE one of those music nerds, sending it to everyone you know. Check it out: KHUN NARIN ELECTRIC PHIN BAND [http://youtu.be/IYGl-l0Toig?list=FLCuwmGlbaOAStwXMiPVY5Kw] A mysterious video with very little in the way of description, but really, it hardly needed a description, the sound was incredible, a wild, percussive, effusive, droning psychedelia, like a Thai version of Konono No.1, all buzzing distorted melodies, hypnotic rhythms, we, like many of you, must have watched that video a hundred times. And the visuals too, a group of musicians, relaxing in plastic chairs, in a town square, all in matching red vests, presumably from their jobs as taxi drivers, the sound pumped out through a wheeled, home built PA, all manner of instruments, double necked guitar style lutes, hand cymbals, drums, percussion, while all around them, people mill about, seemingly oblivious, to the psychedelic genius going on right before their strangely averted eyes!
Well somehow, some fella got in touch with the band in the video, and organized a proper recording for the group, which we discovered was in fact, Khun Narin Phin Sing, or Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, the name taken from the group's use of an electrified, double necked version of a traditional Thai instrument, the lute-like phin. As for the folks in the video that seem to be ignoring the music and the musicians, apparently this sort of music is pretty commonplace in Thailand, even former aQ staffer Byram, who lived there for the last few years, told us he'd wander past bands like this playing all over, all the time, but for the rest of us, this stuff is a revelation, and Khun Narin Phin Sing crazy new Thai psych rock stars that we're totally obsessed with.
The record itself was recorded in a way to as closely as possible replicate the YouTube video, no fancy studios, no expensive mics and multi-track recorders, no overdubs, instead, the band set up in a field right outside their town, in the mountains on Thailand's Northern border, and the music was captured field recording style, live, one take, the group made up of multiple generations, from kids in high school, to men in their '60s, the band running their instruments through chains of guitar pedals, using home built instruments and amplifiers, and of course that custom PA system, a visually and sonically striking behemoth made of 8 loudspeaker horns mounted atop a huge bass cabinet, with wheels of course, and the group just let loose, unfurling a glorious sprawl of droning, buzzy, heady, hypnotic Thai psychedelia, spidery distorted guitar melodies over motorik rhythms, minimal percussion, loping sinewy basslines, the sounds growing more urgent and frenzied, the wild phin shredding drifting atop a roiling bed of constantly swirling and shimmering buzz and thrum, gloriously mesmerizing, and totally transcendent, so utterly amazing, and absolutely recommended to anyone into weird and wonderful sounds, but especially fans of Sublime Frequencies style desert psych, who will be in heaven!!
Vinyl version comes with a download card, btw.
Not sure why we didn't review the recent full length from Killing Sound, a trio of producers which includes aQ fave Vessel, but this remix of the opening track from that record has us thinking we better right that wrong, although here, that track gets reworked as something way more fierce and fucked up and brutal. The more chilled out original, here recast as some dark, dark jungle, all droned out ambience, brooding sonic malevolence, laced with haunting vox, that devolves into some seriously grimy, dubbed out drum and bass, all oozing low end throb, echo drenched skitter, the whole thing laced with all manner of creepy sound FX, what sounds like a power drill, stretched out into a keening tone, plenty of crunch and crumble, a slow build to a seriously bombastic finale, rib cage rattling bass and pounding beats, all wreathed in a swirl of grim atmospheric ambience. Killer!
Years ago, we were introduced to the genius of the "James Brown of Afrobeat", Fela Ransome Kuti through a massive cd reissue campaign of his '70s albums, many with 2 albums on one cd. While we never managed to review any of them for the website, our three favorites releases he made with his band Africa 70 (Live! With Ginger Baker, from 1971, and Expensive Shit and He Miss Road, both from '75) have just been reissued on lp and they are definitively some of the best and essential Afrobeat we've ever heard.
Expensive Shit and He Miss Road were originally reissued on one cd (still available) collecting the five sprawling tracks of both albums together. But the two tracks from Expensive Shit, in particular, were some of the most politically charged grooves recorded. A little background: Africa 70, a band consisting of two large choruses (male and female) around a core of over a half-dozen musicians on horns, guitars, and percussion from the world over, was formed in the wake of a visit to Los Angeles and Kuti's exposure to the Black Panther movement. Changing his musical focus from love songs to social justice, he returned to Nigeria where he set up a commune like residence where his band could record and play and declared it independent of the Nigerian government. Singing in pidgen English so as to connect with the diverse populations of Africa and practicing Yoruba religion, as his music grew in popularity, he was subject to regular injustices by the government and military including illegal searches and seizures, travel restrictions and beatings.
Expensive Shit refers to a legendary incident where soldiers tried to plant a joint on Kuti, which he managed to eat, prompting the soldiers to take him in custody and wait until he shat out the evidence. Legend has it, he was eventually freed after he was able to swap his feces for another prisoner's and thus the police had nothing on him. But the song and the B side, "Water No Get Enemy" in their epic lengths and ecstatic rhythms also serve as a call and response indictment of authoritative corruption and the counterproductive means in which governments wield power over its citizens.
He Miss Road runs along a more communal trajectory across three tracks, but the sound is moodier and more hypnotic. Produced by Ginger Baker, who contributed and recorded regularly with Kuti throughout the 70's when Baker moved to Nigeria from England after the breakup of Cream and Blind Faith. The grooves are longer, jazzier and at the same time more abstract, punctuated by swelling organ riffs and Tony Allen's full-burn percussive rhythms.
Live! with Ginger Baker is a scorcher of a set with Ginger Baker as guest drummer alongside regular drummer Tony Allen and since it was recorded earlier than the others, it has a tighter feel. You really feel/hear the James Brown comparison on this one. All three pretty damn essential!!
Years ago, we were introduced to the genius of the "James Brown of Afrobeat", Fela Ransome Kuti through a massive cd reissue campaign of his '70s albums, many with 2 albums on one cd. While we never managed to review any of them for the website, our three favorites releases he made with his band Africa 70 (Live! With Ginger Baker, from 1971, and Expensive Shit and He Miss Road, both from '75) have just been reissued on lp and they are definitively some of the best and essential Afrobeat we've ever heard.
Expensive Shit and He Miss Road were originally reissued on one cd (still available) collecting the five sprawling tracks of both albums together. But the two tracks from Expensive Shit, in particular, were some of the most politically charged grooves recorded. A little background: Africa 70, a band consisting of two large choruses (male and female) around a core of over a half-dozen musicians on horns, guitars, and percussion from the world over, was formed in the wake of a visit to Los Angeles and Kuti's exposure to the Black Panther movement. Changing his musical focus from love songs to social justice, he returned to Nigeria where he set up a commune like residence where his band could record and play and declared it independent of the Nigerian government. Singing in pidgen English so as to connect with the diverse populations of Africa and practicing Yoruba religion, as his music grew in popularity, he was subject to regular injustices by the government and military including illegal searches and seizures, travel restrictions and beatings.
Expensive Shit refers to a legendary incident where soldiers tried to plant a joint on Kuti, which he managed to eat, prompting the soldiers to take him in custody and wait until he shat out the evidence. Legend has it, he was eventually freed after he was able to swap his feces for another prisoner's and thus the police had nothing on him. But the song and the B side, "Water No Get Enemy" in their epic lengths and ecstatic rhythms also serve as a call and response indictment of authoritative corruption and the counterproductive means in which governments wield power over its citizens.
He Miss Road runs along a more communal trajectory across three tracks, but the sound is moodier and more hypnotic. Produced by Ginger Baker, who contributed and recorded regularly with Kuti throughout the 70's when Baker moved to Nigeria from England after the breakup of Cream and Blind Faith. The grooves are longer, jazzier and at the same time more abstract, punctuated by swelling organ riffs and Tony Allen's full-burn percussive rhythms.
Live! with Ginger Baker is a scorcher of a set with Ginger Baker as guest drummer alongside regular drummer Tony Allen and since it was recorded earlier than the others, it has a tighter feel. You really feel/hear the James Brown comparison on this one. All three pretty damn essential!!
Years ago, we were introduced to the genius of the "James Brown of Afrobeat", Fela Ransome Kuti through a massive cd reissue campaign of his '70s albums, many with 2 albums on one cd. While we never managed to review any of them for the website, our three favorites releases he made with his band Africa 70 (Live! With Ginger Baker, from 1971, and Expensive Shit and He Miss Road, both from '75) have just been reissued on lp and they are definitively some of the best and essential Afrobeat we've ever heard.
Expensive Shit and He Miss Road were originally reissued on one cd (still available) collecting the five sprawling tracks of both albums together. But the two tracks from Expensive Shit, in particular, were some of the most politically charged grooves recorded. A little background: Africa 70, a band consisting of two large choruses (male and female) around a core of over a half-dozen musicians on horns, guitars, and percussion from the world over, was formed in the wake of a visit to Los Angeles and Kuti's exposure to the Black Panther movement. Changing his musical focus from love songs to social justice, he returned to Nigeria where he set up a commune like residence where his band could record and play and declared it independent of the Nigerian government. Singing in pidgen English so as to connect with the diverse populations of Africa and practicing Yoruba religion, as his music grew in popularity, he was subject to regular injustices by the government and military including illegal searches and seizures, travel restrictions and beatings.
Expensive Shit refers to a legendary incident where soldiers tried to plant a joint on Kuti, which he managed to eat, prompting the soldiers to take him in custody and wait until he shat out the evidence. Legend has it, he was eventually freed after he was able to swap his feces for another prisoner's and thus the police had nothing on him. But the song and the B side, "Water No Get Enemy" in their epic lengths and ecstatic rhythms also serve as a call and response indictment of authoritative corruption and the counterproductive means in which governments wield power over its citizens.
He Miss Road runs along a more communal trajectory across three tracks, but the sound is moodier and more hypnotic. Produced by Ginger Baker, who contributed and recorded regularly with Kuti throughout the 70's when Baker moved to Nigeria from England after the breakup of Cream and Blind Faith. The grooves are longer, jazzier and at the same time more abstract, punctuated by swelling organ riffs and Tony Allen's full-burn percussive rhythms.
Live! with Ginger Baker is a scorcher of a set with Ginger Baker as guest drummer alongside regular drummer Tony Allen and since it was recorded earlier than the others, it has a tighter feel. You really feel/hear the James Brown comparison on this one. All three pretty damn essential!!
The soundtrack reissue campaign of this Australian (by way of Norway) jazz composer keeps rolling along. A few lists back, we reviewed his score for Inner Space, a nature documentary made for television about the Ocean and its inhabitants (notably sharks!), and this week we got another knockout eco-jazz score about the Australian Outback. We have been in love with Libaek ever since the Trunk Records compilation of lost film scores came out a few years ago (now sadly out of print), and his music was also famously included in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic. Now that many of his film scores are seeing proper reissues, including The Set, Libaek's only non-documentary film score, and Ride A Pale Horse, from a film about about Australian Surfing, we'll try to review those as well.
Nature Walkabout opens with a fanfare of horns in a swinging reverie of flutes and drums. Libaek's trademark style is both pastoral and upbeat, mysterious and lighthearted. Comparable to composers such as John Barry, Henry Mancini and Vince Guaraldi, utilizing harmonicas, pianos and vibes in endearing melodies that seem to describe the delicate nuances, both beautiful and dangerous of the wild Australian landscape and the birds, mammals and snakes that inhabit it rather perfectly. Fans of library music, nature scores and cinematic pastoral jazz, take note!
We loved the Public Guilt label, who brought us so many amazing releases - from the occult rock of Aluk Todolo, to the glacial avant doom of Habsyll; from the noise-jazz of Zu, to the spaced out dronescapery of Destructo Swarmbots; from the experimental turntablism of Strotter Inst, to the alchemical folk of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, and so much more. We were bummed when Public Guilt decided to call it a day, but were super excited to discover that PG mastermind JR was back with a new label, one that maybe surprisingly is focused entirely on underground / outsider hip hop and club music, all 45rpm 7"s, and all pretty goddamn great.
The second release comes from a duo called Little Flowers, which has a seriously strange pedigree, one part former director for avant grade choreographer Merce Cunnigham, one part LA indie noise prog weirdos Upsilon Acrux, which really gives you NO clue as to what it might sound like, but then why should it, cuz even listening, it's hard to parse exactly what's going on - it's a noisy, wildly chaotic, buzzing swirl of progged out electro, with vocodered vox buried beneath thick throbbing synths, and what sounds like real acoustic drumming, and percussion, all draped in a psychedelic murk, the production super tripped out and experimental. The first side a dark, swirling collage of sound, the second more a sort of post hip hop groover, but both totally, and geniusly twisted, funky enough for the dance music crowd, but seriously freaked out and fucked up enough for everybody else. So good! And JR's new label two for two. Can't wait to hear more!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
The first pressing of this classic slab of modern minimalism sold out in a heartbeat, so we're guessing pressing number two will follow suit, and not surprising really, these archival recordings are fantastic. Rescued from obscurity by Gerard Malanga, this lp documents a handful of purely electronic recordings, a sound few knew MacLise had ever explored before, but listening to these now, has us wishing he had continued. The A side especially is a stunning sprawl of glimmering ambience, lo-fi, and full of ambient sounds, voices, room sound, chair scrapes and the like, but all of that is subsumed into the glorious field of shimmer MacLise conjures up. "Electronic Mix For 'Expanded Cinema'" does in fact live up to its title, the sound expansive and psychedelic, and yeah, very cinematic at points, sometimes devolving into wild little tangles are furious electronic squiggles, but just as often blossoming into something much more majestic and moving, long stretches of near silence too, at which point the ambient sounds seem to drift to the fore, as well as the sonic artifacts of the original medium, tape hiss and hum, but that hiss and hum only adds to the lush textures and constantly shifting sonic landscape. We'll admit that a lot of academic music and modern electronic minimalism can sometimes leave us cold, bleeps and scrapes and clicks, but the sounds here manage to feel lush and organic, the arrangements alive, the recordings raw and intimate, and definitely worth it for the A side alone.
But the B side is chock full of equally compelling stuff, murky expanses of drum driven (?) psychedelia, blurred, hazy ambience, looped and layered sounds, "Trance 1" especially is some sort of spaced out psychedelic jam, with Maclise joined by Tony Conrad and John Cale, with some of the other tracks moving back into purely electronic tonalism, the sounds gristly and in-the-red, flitting from pure tone phase to weird psych jam and back again.
Killer stuff. Here's hoping there's more lost gems like these still to be discovered...
Originally released in 1997 on the now defunct Iris Light imprint out of England, Emotion Engramm was the final album from Maeror Tri - the haunting, post-industrial drone trio that was the precursor to the equally haunting, post-industrial drone DUO Troum. This record - more so than any of the other Maeror Tri albums - engaged the complex structures that Troum would later push through their interlocking, shadowy melodies and slow-motion, effects-heavy drone. At the same time, the concepts that went into Emotional Engramm are more closely related to the clinical psychological themes of the Maeror Tri albums Multiple Personality Disorder or Language Of Flames & Sound, as referenced by the titular engram (purposefully misspelled in the title), a Scientology term for a mental image embedded into the brain by any type of trauma - physical, emotional, psychic, or otherwise. Far from prescribing the teachings of Scientology, Maeror Tri uses that concept as a jumping off point in conjuring "resonance of control, impact, fortuity, the randomly instigated yet inedibly etched emotional memory: Kodak ghosts." It's easy to read particular passages within the frozen din of washed-out guitar noise, spectral melodies, tectonic bass rumblings, and metallic slashes of grim electronics as the seizures within the psyche that might get caught in an infinite loop for the inner-mind. Some of those images provide an emotional resonance that's deeply sad and full of despair, while others are enraged with a blackened hostility. As we mentioned, many of the ideas and strategies that went into this album continued to develop through Troum; but even so, this stands as one of the best albums that either Maeror Tri or Troum had produced.
We sorta spilled the Mamaleek beans, mistakenly reviewing their forthcoming full length last time, when in fact, we were meant to be reviewing THIS, a four song 12", just out on local label The Flenser, the latest (not counting the NOT OUT YET full length) from this local black metal brotherly duo whose sound has mutated over the course of their previous records, touching on blessed out metal gaze, avant black jazz, and pretty much every warped stop in between, and nothing gets less twisted, or less difficult to describe this time around, but they do seem to continue to move ever further from the black metal that birthed them, although to be fair, they were pretty well removed already with record number one, but on He Never Said A Mumblin' Word, the sound once again exists in some nether region, fusing, lurching distort beats, crumbling atonal riffage, bizarre vocals, damaged production, twisted on-the-verge-of-collapse arrangements, the vocals this time around even STRANGER, sounding like a chorus of croaking frogs, but here fused to one of the prettiest things we've heard from these guys, a lilting noise-doom dirge, that constantly devolves into a sort of industrial lumber, a sort-of-chorus perhaps, with the sounds even more distorted and blown out and in-the-red, but somehow remaining weirdly lovely, which seems to be these guys' specialty, making beautiful ugliness or vice versa.
Here's where we usually say, oh the rest of the record follows suit, but with these guys of course it doesn't, track two is all whispering winds, and acoustic guitars, a slow building swell of crumbling buzz, sampled operatic vocals, before exploding into some sort of blackened electro, with a programmed beat, more crumbling riffage, and some seriously harsh processed vocals, but again, some impossible poppiness swirled in, and eventually some almost black metal, but really, the sound is more like some sort of malfunctioning, avant, noise drenched electronica, with some madman growling and bellowingly demonically along, maybe black electro karaoke? Whatever it is, it's fucked up and fantastic.
The third song manages to be even MORE distorted, which once having heard the other two songs seems impossible, but the weirdly processed, crumbling, peaking riffage, becomes something weirdly textural and droned out, hear drifting atop swells of synth swirl and more hellish vokills, another delicate balancing act between twisted beauty, and harsh ugly heaviness. Finally, the duo wrap things up with a loping crumble-pop black-gloom dirge, that plants drum machine skitter beneath cascades of ultra distortion, soaring female vox, bellowed demonic vokills, the whole thing managing to sound sun dappled and dreamy, even though it also sounds like the insides of your speakers must be melting...
These modern day krautrockers (they are from Stuttgart, Germany) offer up a new 12", the first in a series of "palindrome" recordings, all about mirror-symmetry, very conceptual. The palindromic aspect extends to the date on which it was recorded, 21.02.2012 (February 2nd, 2012, using the European style of numerical date notation). Also, at 45 rpm, the playing time is 12:21. And of course, the title is a palindrome too.
So, what's Sus sound like? Well, it's a very soothing lovely abstract drone, we'll let them (or their label) explain their methodology: "The single sidelong track consists of one note on the vibraphone struck by a soft mallet. The same note is then bowed continuously on violin and the sound is processed with an envelope shaper, a narrow-band filter (tube-based) to accentuate some overtones, and some basic tape manipulation techniques like cutting/looping, speed/pitch alterations and change of playback direction. All rhythmic and harmonic processes result from the shifting of vibrato frequencies in the stereo panoramic field. No digital technology was used. The piece is designed to be played at any speed (mainly 33 and 45, but also anything from 16 rpm to 78 rpm). Side 1 plays from the standard outer grooves inward. Side 2 is Side 1 played backwards and plays from the inner groove outward..."
Like we said, very conceptual! But also a nice drone indeed. And fun to mess with if you've got a variety of speeds on your turntable. A good use of the vinyl format.
We reviewed a tape from Nick Millevoi a while back, released on local label The Flenser, and at the time, it was maybe the weirdest thing on the label, precisely because it was so little like anything else they'd put out, solo electric guitar, spaced out, super abstract dronescapes, looped and raga-like, a bit like a metal Terry Riley or Steve Reich, which obviously pushed lots of our buttons. So here we are a couple years later, and we've got more new music from Millevoi, a split with some improv jazz group called Onibaba, but first up, Millevoi unfurls a gorgeously languid sprawl of distorted guitars, delivered in waves, slow subtle swells, with long extended decay, the sounds crumbling and pulsing, over the opening track's 21 minutes, growing more and more noisy, swaths of feedback winding their noisy tendrils around the increasingly frantic riffage, which by now has transformed into thick squalls of buzz, a dense psychedelic noise, that manages to be textural and listenable, but also a bit caustic and chaotic. Millevoi's other two tracks get way further out, the first all wild squiggles, and woozy detuned strings, atonal and abstract, loose and noisy, and dizzying, the second taking the first and adding some Haino-esque freak outs over the top, dense tangles of high end squiggle and grinding, avant psych shred, blurred into a swirling dervish of psychedelic noise!
The Onibaba tracks, while ostensibly 'jazz', are similarly abstract and freeform, the first, a slow, smoldering expanse of buried rhythms, and moody murk, of distant clatter and industrial whir, all wreathed in soft focus clouds of keening feedback, the vibe loose and noisy and ethereal, sounding a bit like a more placid, tranquil Wolf Eyes actually, the sound growing more urgent and rhythmic, until the murk clears, leaving a sky full of chiming high end shimmer, and clouds of bowed metallic thrum. The second track is even more minimal, a hushed, lowercase dronescape, all groaning, moaning, barely there rumbles, pocked with bits of glitch and squelch, a sort of minimal industrial dub, but smeared into indistinct blurs, hazy, and heady, hushed and hypnotic.
Housed in an oversized purple and white, printed gatefold sleeve. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES.
We haven't gotten any of these in yet, but figured some of our weirdo music / obscure art-vinyl obsessives might want one of these, especially folks into the whole Trunk Records scene of strange lost audio from yesteryear. These are EXTREMELY expensive, but exquisitely handmade, so this is in fact a pre-order, cuz we'll only be getting as many copies as we get orders for, so if you want one, and order one, we'll charge you for it now, and ship it in a couple weeks when it comes in, either on its own, or with whatever order you have pending at the time.
So here's the skinny. The Trunk Records label is definitely a good reference point, as this record really does seem like it could just as easily have ended up on Trunk. Mary Millington was the most famous pornstar in 1970's Britain, appeared in all the most famous adult magazines, even had some film roles in proper non-pornographic films. Around the mid to late seventies, Millington began to record 'porn audios' which were included with many magazines at the time, which were, as you might imagine, Millington simply talking dirty, playful and casual and conversational, telling sexy stories, being nasty, stories about peeing on her suitor, and being peed on ("Lovely Little Tinkle"), giving blowjobs ("The Longest Tongue In The World"), and giving underwater wanks ("Come Play With Me"), laced with little aside ("Ooooh, it's hot!", "I've got pubic hair in my mouth!"), and all set to groovy, soft focus psychedelic jams, all remastered from the original tapes and some of the flexi-discs included with the above mentioned magazines.
If you were a fan of the Flexi-Sex release on Trunk, which collected some of Johnny Trunk's favorite sexy flexis, you'll have an idea of just what you're in for, sexy, goofy, funny, playful, weird, total outsider audio from a lost era.
And as mentioned above, the packaging is super super deluxe, pressed on 140 gram 10" opaque blue vinyl, housed in fancy gatefold sleeves using recycled card stock and conservation glue, hand pulled screenprint artwork by Walden Press on the front and back, as well as a saucy full length image of Millington inside, on 1970's style newsprint.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! We can probably only get a handful, so (pre)order now if you want one!
First new full length in two years from this French ultradoooooooom combo, the lineup now expanded to include SEVEN players, fronted as always by ultra-cutie Emilie Bresson, whose wholesome appearance and Hello Kitty obsession does nothing to dull her demonic bellow - although here, the opening track starts off hushed and dreamlike, with Bresson crooning dreamily, over a slow, smoldering doomscape, but it's only a matter of minutes before she lets loose with that banshee wail, doused in delay and reverb, allowed to slowly decay, and fade gradually into the whirling blackness below, the band quickly locked into a death march creep. The processed vocals get almost dublike at points, processed and layered, and that had us wishing they almost went all out, and applied some King Tubby action. While it's not quite that crazy, it does get pretty psychedelic, as all the while, the riffage churns and roils and thick swells of darkly melodic slo-mo sludge unfurl dreamily. The vibe at times is almost tranquil, less ferocious and furious and more mesmeric and hypnotic, especially when Bresson adds her sweetly shimmery croon, and when the guitars join along, it's like the Monarch version of 'classic' doom, but before long, the sound splinters and collapses, and we're right back into another stretch of downtuned demonic trudge, those heavily effected vocals swirling into crazy, blown out howls, blurred into thick vocal smears. And so it goes, the three songs here essentially part of the bigger whole, three movements bleeding into one singular ultradoom epic, laced with moments of hushed beauty, as well as abject sonic brutality, the band deftly navigating a slow moving psych-doom dirge, employing a new set of dynamics and subtleties that were maybe not so evident on past records, making much of Sabbracadaver sound downright subdued, some of it properly lovely as well, but those moments are more than made up for by many more moments of shrieking fury and skull caving, soul shearing pummel.
Super swank packaging too, a stark black and white digipak, with clear spot varnish printing, and a booklet with strange, shadowy, ritualistic photos inside.
When those of us here at aQuarius use the pronoun 'we', we're pretty sure you are all aware this usage is that of the 'royal we' - a singular voice taking on a plurality as a sake of anonymity. So when we say that we went to the Converse store in downtown San Francisco to grab yet another pair of Chuck Taylors, it should be obvious that not all of us were not trying on a single pair of shoes. But when we (in this case, the singular we), were in that store, we were flabbergasted and amazed to be hearing the druggy motorik sounds of Wooden Shjips wafting through the shop as the druggy, dreamy slacker sound seems designed to amplify the themed hipness to further the idea that Chuck Taylors have always been the cool shoes to rock out in. Ripley, the mystery man fronting Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, seems like a Chuck Taylor dude to us; and we gotta wonder if he were sporting a pair on his feet while rocking out with Moon Duo in Ravenna. This live album is a fantastically recorded document from one of the shows from their 2013 tour, during which Ripley and Sanae Yamada brought on John Jeffery as the drummer to flesh out their sound on stage. His Silver Apples meets Can motorik, psychedelic grooves work perfectly with the fuzzed out organ and trance-rock guitar riffs from the Moon Duo duo proper. Really? There's just 250 copies on blue and white vinyl? Get it while you can...
Record number two from these Northwest post punks, whose first record was a huge favorite with some of the aQ-ers around here, but sadly we seemed to catch on way too late to give the record its proper due on the list. Much like that debut, Television Man is a gloriously murky, dirgey, muddy, twisted gem, a lo-fi, urgent, tension filled garage punk blowout that's minimal, but super rocking, noisy, but super catchy, the kind of record that sounds like it was recorded on a busted 4-track on old melted tapes from the dashboard of your car, but somehow was transformed into some mutant strain of fuzzed out noise pop, given a damaged sort-of high fidelity makeover, and thus given some heft and some dark frantic energy, fused to the group's druggy dirgery, which is maybe why, somehow, all that sonic grime and filth is barely able to disguise the pure pop wonder that lurks beneath.
We're definitely reminded of former Record Of The Weekers Weed, who similarly took crazy catchy nineties style indie rock, wreathing it in loads of noise and feedback, and blown out psychedelic squalls, but Naomi Punk are something else all together, on the surface sounding like they're cut from the same musical cloth as outfits like Iceage and Holograms and all the rest, and they definitely sort of are, fans of either of those groups, or like minded outfits like Cold Showers, His Electro Blue Voice, Rank / Xerox, War, etc. will be immediately smitten, but the songs here take that post punk template and pull it to pieces. The groop is as happy crafting some catchy pound and crunch, as they are adding some unlikely 'oooooh's to a wildly angular anti-groove, or chopping a song up into an impossibly mesmerizing super dynamic, psychedelic dirge, one that somehow retains an impossible amount of poppiness. It's that innate poppiness that can't help but shine through, not to mention a weirdly experimental streak that goes beyond just the murky production, and minimal arrangements, with some of the tracks locking into strange almost looped sounding grooves, stuttery stop start workouts that somehow manage to be just as catchy, or weird little ditties like "Plastic World No. 6", which sheds all that murk, and instead pairs a jaunty little synth melody to a simple fuzzy strum, along with some buried eighties electronic percussion, whipping up a super cool sound that we wish was more than just an interstitial jam, but those weird little parts/songs work really well alongside jams like "Eleven Inches" which on the surface unwind as super tranced out, repetitive dirges, but gradually reveal themselves as still more deft hookiness, especially when it slows down, and gets sort of moody for a minute, only to lurch right back into it. "Eon Of Pain" is another track that sounds simpler than it is, but manages to take a little and do a whole lot with it, winding it all up into some fantastically tense post punk minimalism, that for all it's seemingly lacking in the first half, is more than made up for by the bombastic noise pop second half.
We could easily break down the rest of the record, track by track, but needless to say, every jam here is a gem, one of those rare records where we have trouble picking a favorite song, and if we really had to, it would likely be a different one every single time...
Oh boy. Any Henry & Glenn fan is going to flip for this. The four issues of the Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever mini-comic, now compiled into one thick trade paperback book, with A LOT of extra material added on - over 100 pages of entirely new comics and art!! It's epic. So even if you already have each issue in the series, you might want to give those as a gift to an impressionable youngster and get this for yourself. Includes an amusing introduction by none other than Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford (!), as well as a six page essay about "The Secret History Of Henry & Glenn Comics", as if they were actual comic book heroes dating back to the WWII era.
If you AREN'T already familiar with Henry & Glenn, well, the comic chronicles the adventures of these two punk rock icons - Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig - who (in the comic) are in a loving, same-sex relationship. By turns, sweet and surreal, always quite funny (unless your name is Glenn Danzig - somehow we doubt he really approves of all this, while Rollins at least contributes a blurb to the back cover). You can find our reviews of the individual Forever & Ever issues elsewhere on the aQ site.
256 pages, mostly b&w, but there's a 30 page full-color gallery of covers and other art in the back. Wow. The ultimate H&G book for sure.
Richie Hawtin put his Plastikman in cold storage well over a decade ago following the vocoder-laced techno bleakness of his album Closer. A smattering of singles from 2003-2010 indicated that Hawtin wasn't quite ready to hang up Plastikman entirely (though he's long been active on the DJ circuit); and then in 2013, Plastikman was commissioned to reignite Plastikman as the center piece at a gala taking place at the Guggenheim. This album is the documentation of that performance, showcasing the cybernetic thump, 303-generated squelchiness, and sleek ambience that has long been the signature for Hawtin's project. The 10 year hiatus finds Hawtin picking up pretty much right where he left off - though he does eschew the vocals, which seemed to be conceptually linked to that aforementioned album. Acid threads from his trusted 303 (undoubtedly an emulator is replacing the classic Roland machine), somber synth lines, and overlapping waves of filter patterns are used spaciously around the gridded architecture of minimal techno. It's been speculated that Hawtin designed this album to work within the acoustically resonant echo chamber of the Guggenheim's unusual architecture; but empty space has long been something that Hawtin has painted his electronics with. The rhythmic patter is methodically clean and suitably precise; and if there's any criticism to be found, it's that Hawtin doesn't crank the bass whomp and crushing intensity that can come from many of his punishing DJ sets of teeth-grindingly abrasive techno trax. No matter, Ex is tantalizing album of classic techno, supposedly foreshadowing more to come. Bring it.
Fans of abject, chaotic, doomed-out noiserock/industrial heaviness a la Zeni Geva, early Swans, IIIrd Gatekeeper era Skullflower, old Godflesh, Splintered, and Lewd, you're gonna want to batten down the hatches and cuddle up with this!!! A super limited edition (300 copies only) double vinyl reissue of a cd originally released by this Dutch band in 1997 via the Supreme Tool Supplies label, pretty rare & obscure - we had never heard of it, and we were pretty into this sort of stuff back in the day. And it's really good. Six long tracks, each one a harrowing descent into feedback-laden, pounding sludge madness, with churning, clangorous rhythms, headcaving riffs, and anguished vokills that would give even the ultradoom stylings of Alan Dubin in Khanate some competition. On each song, a monster has been stirred from slumber, a nightmare given "musical" form, sorrowful screams coming from all throats and instruments all at once. So sickened, seasawing, distorted and distressed! The 1997 date almost seems too late, this really sounds like something that would have come out on Pathological in like, '89. Agonized, abrasive, cathartic, and car-crash compelling. Would you also believe catchy? Well, maybe, once you're in its dismal, lurching, heavy embrace!
Big thanks to the fine freaks at Israel's Heart & Crossbone label for bringing this black hole of intense industrial rock to "light". Remastered by, yep, Khanate's James Plotkin, who was probably thinking, damn, my kind of shit! Us too. Recommended!!
(Turns out, the singer/guitarist in this band, had also been in Lewd, who did a split with Zeni Geva once upon a time... see it all makes sense.)
It's been ages since we've heard from these groovy doom sludge Swedes, and very little has changed. The riffs are still massive, distorted, and Sabbathy, the vibe is still druggy, and groovy, and heavy as fuck. As always, harsh vokills are draped over surprisingly melodic riffage, there are swirls of feedback, squalls of tribal percussion, and the occasional soaring lead, the drums crushing and bombastic, the arrangements a bit proggy, especially on this new one, the songs much more varied and dynamic, their sound having definitely progressed from the early days, combining the caveman crush of those early records with something much more ambitious, with long stretches of slow build heaviness beholden to stuff like Godspeed and Isis as much as classic sludge and doom, with some classic metal-isms throughout. But really, these guys have managed to take downtuned, knuckle dragging sludge, old school true doom, and epic post rock drama, and fused it into something that manages to transcend what at this point is a very overcrowded genre. While we were expecting another disc of decent sludgy doom, Saga reveals itself as something a bit more, a sort of progressive doom, infusing all manner of non metal, or at least not so overtly metal, elements into their sound, without losing an iota of their bludgeoning brutality, which is a rare thing indeed.
Second full length from these twisted hip hop alchemists, fronted by one of the guys from nineties hip hop jazz-bo's Digable Planets, but Shabazz Palaces is something else all together, a twisted strain of avant hip hop that's deconstructed, and mutated, and all twisted up. The first SP record, Black Up, was heavy on the murky, woozy, and warbly, a futuristic Afro-psych woven into stuttery beats, lurching slo-mo creeps, and all manner of warped loops, but on Else Majesty, something strange has happened again, with the sound moving even further away from call sic hip hop, but somehow drifting a bit closer to the laid back jazziness of Digable Planets. Give a listen to the samples below and you'll see what we mean. The vibe is less dark and shadowy, less grim and ominous, but at the same time, the sound is still mysterious, and darkly psychedelic, but infused with a strange sort of hopeful glow, a positivity, it's like Shabazz Palaces 'feel-good' record, but even then, this is some weird, tripped out shit.
The vibe is mellow, dreamy, the beats are al over the map, from classic loping hip hop grooves, to wild dense skitters, the music is warm and lush, swoon some synths, cascades of kosmische shimmer, vocals are clipped and cut and looped into weird hiccuping grooves, disembodied riffage surfaces here and there, as do swaths of smooth jazziness, the record peppered with short sonic fragments, mutated electro-hop, carnivalesque baroque electronica, some smoldering broodiness, all processed guitar shimmer, and brushed, hushed percussion, theremin like melodies, old school funk all twisted up into weird sonic shapes, big beats blurred into dizzyingly avant electro-soul, the sound in constant flux, between tracks and mid-jam as well, it's almost like someone flipping the channels, flitting between various strains of mutant hip hop, some shadowy and drowsily druggy, but most of them, groovy, and funky and weirdly posi, like a more psychedelic, and way more demented De La Soul maybe, at least this time around, but who can guess what other weirdness the next record will bring. We can only imagine...
The return of the Shitty Listener, and as always, we feel obliged to comment on what has to be one of the best band names EVER, and as always, The Shitty Listener is Jason Honea, a one time member of the Jewelled Antler Collective, who's played in or with Teenage Panzercorps, Franciscan Hobbies, the Knit Separates, Child Readers and a bunch more, but as always, the Shitty Listener is a much more intimate, personal affair, in the past, hushed and home brewed, or recorded outside Jewelled Antler style, but for this new ep, Honea has expanded his sonic palette, with what sounds like a full band, and a sound that harkens back to classic eighties new wave and post punk, "No Thrones", is all tribal drumming, and waves of crystalline guitar shimmer, while Honea croons over the top, his vocals powerful and throaty and dramatic, but still it's The Shitty Listener, so it lasts barely 90 seconds before "Beautiful Same" brings things back down, some field recordings, clouds of cymbal shimmer, woozy synths, but the vocals remain upfront, and way up in the mix, like some lost obscure 'wave rarity from the eighties, but again, the song doesn't even reach two minutes, instead, Honea crafting a gorgeously faded sonic fragment, out of time, but also strangely timeless.
The flipside gets more Jewelled Antler-y, "Pool Of Light" is all music box melody over what sounds like a crackling fire, or maybe rain on the roof, the vocals super loud, and up in the mix, lots of reverb, as if Honea was singing right in your ear, hushed and haunting, super intimate, and mysteriously lovely. "Candle On Water" too is super lo-fi, acoustic guitar strum, tape hiss and field recorded ambience, the sound of windshield wipers maybe? Strange fragmented synths drift by, the vocals an ethereal falsetto, a gorgeous bit of swoonsome, wistful, dreamy bedroom 4 trackery to finish things off. Nice heavy full color covers, and probably super limited too!
First record we've reviewed from this weirdo Romanian black metal duo, whose sound is a gloriously lo-fi folk flecked blackness, that manages to be surprisingly poppy and melodic, while remaining raw and lo-fi. The record opens with a short sort of intro, that is barely black metal at all, an almost post rock lope, all melancholic melodies, and shimmering, softly distorted guitar shimmer, the vocals a growling rasp, the only really blackened element, and even when the record proper kicks in, the drums galloping, the guitars buzzing, the vocals a monstrous bellow, the sound remains brittle and shimmery and melodic, the sound infused with serious melody, when the sound shifts into the bridge or chorus, it's almost like some lost indie rock record, again, the vocals really the only thing tethering it to the metal world at all, fans of the new wave of metal gaze will definitely feel right at home, the same sort of blessed out shoegazey vibe pervades much of the sound here, but there's plenty of other weirdness going on, like the almost disco beat on "Lesben Allo", beneath some chugging metal, and some twisted growly vocalizations, not to mention a trippy psychedelic breakdown part way through, complete with maniacal laughter!
There are moments of more grim buzz, "Kozmikus Zuhanas" manages to crank up the black buzz and the sonic murk, but even then, the melody shines through, keeping the sound from slipping into pure black buzz, but the record is all the better for it, a sort of gloomy blackened pop, while elsewhere the sound slips into lurching blackened doom, but there too, laced with acoustic guitars, and haunting atmospherics, and lets not forget "Melankolikus Transzcendens" which add some bleating horns to the occasion, coupled with frantic double kick drumming, and weird monotone vokills, again, well removed from black metal, and instead, sounding, like some blackened noise rock, or gloom pop, but whatever you call it, we're digging it big time!
