Back in 2011, Dark Entries released a great comp, vinyl-only, called BART: Bay Area Retrograde. All Dark Entries style stuff - vintage minimal wave / new wave / punk electronics - from the SF Bay area. (For those who don't live around here, BART also stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the local commuter train system.) Just today, we just got a 2nd volume of Bay Area Retrograde, on vinyl, which we'll review as soon as we can, AND also this, a compact disc containing both volumes, yay!!
So, we're listing this cd now, though we can't say much yet about the stuff on here from Vol. 2, other than what we've heard spinning it so far has been great, and it seems maybe a bit more raw and punk and experimental, with tracks from the likes of Factrix, Chrome and Red Asphalt. So, more on that Vol. 2 when we get a chance to properly review it next time, but here's what we said before about Vol. 1, and by itself it means this cd is quite recommended:
A few years back, Minimal Wave offered some choice crate digging collections of nearly forgotten darkwave and post-punk electronics through their Lost Tapes and Found Tapes collections, highlighting the differences between the European and American models of underground new wave. Dark Entries produced this anthology in that same tradition, focusing even more tightly on the geography of the Bay Area. As Johnny Ray Huston so rightly points out in the liner notes, San Francisco in the '80s had its own unique crucible of local events that shaped the Bay Area's particular sound (e.g. the assassination of Harvey Milk, the growing AIDS epidemic and the fear surrounding the disease, etc.). While there's none of the art-damaged abstraction filtered from The Residents, Snakefinger, or Tuxedomoon in an obvious lineage to the artists featured here, BART (named after the subway that connects Oakland, Berkeley, and other parts of the East Bay to San Francisco) is a great collection of quirky minimal wave electronics, with a fair amount of unreleased material from obscurant Bay Area new wave bands.
Nomimal State opens the compilation and was from the suburban hamlet of Danville, recording this demo 1983 with a militantly uptempo drum machine and urgent synth lines. It's a track that easily fits next to the likes of The Units and Nervous Gender in terms of manic, punkish use of electronics. Speaking of The Units, they round out the compilation in contributing their sci-fi pop anthem "Mission," which is still bitchin' after all these years! Voice Farm is the other 'big name' to appear on this compilation, contributing a sinewy darkwave number from their 1982 album "The World We Live In." Batang State, Quiet Room, and Necropolis Of Love offer more Joy Division / Wire / Kraftwerk atmospheric post-punk number with considerable panache. The Wasp Women were a crossdressing trash-punk outfit, whose demo featured a wastoid lo-fi number and had appeared in the 1982 film "What Ever Happened To Susan Jane." Danny Boy & The Serious Party Gods offer a fabulously campy disco number with suitably over-the-top raunchy lyrics that ramble on and on against anthemic synths. If there's one track that you need to hear from this compilation it's this one! But the whole collection is very well done, and comes highly recommended as with everything that Dark Entries releases.
Here's the vinyl of Volume Two from the BART: Bay Area Retrograde series, which was included with Volume One on a single cd we listed last time (and are relisting now, to add this info), also released on the inimitable Dark Entries. Like Volume One, this collects vintage minimal wave / new wave / punk electronics from the SF Bay Area. (For those who don't live around here, BART also stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the local commuter train system.) The line-up for the second installment includes some fantastic obscurities from Factrix, Chrome, Tuxedomoon, and Indoor Life; and there's plenty of great new discoveries of forgotten Bay Area outfits like Zru Vogue, Red Asphalt, Timmy Spence and more. The Factrix piece was taken from an old Subterranean compilation, with the trio entertaining more of a sprightly goth-synth vibe instead of their signature industrial murk through tinny drum machine patter and strangle-choked guitar riffs. Chrome's throbbing motorik synth-punk number "Meet You In The Subway" was taken from their 1979 album Subterranean Modern, released through the Residents' Ralph Records. Red Asphault is up next with a squalid torrent of No Wave inspired fire-alarm mania. Both Tuxedomoon and Indoor Life (the latter including Patrick Cowley on synths!) adopt a disjointed, art-damaged theatricality to their warped, all-thumbs tracks. Baby Buddha's "Little Things" proves to be one of the synth-wave gems on this comp, with its spiky electronic sequencing, haunted house chord progressions, and grimly monotone vocals, followed by the equally strong "Human Dub" by Human Being Men peddling streamlined electronic anxiety of minimal wave perfection. The dour "Nakweda Dream" with its chimingly Cure-ish guitars rounds out the comp, which is considerably darker than the first but is just as recommended!
Electronic soul music pretty much begins with Sly Stone. In a year-long period of introspective but intensely prolific productivity that would ultimately transform his main band, The Family Stone, from upbeat soul poppers to deep socially-conscious funk groovers, Stone took a break from his main squeeze and had his hands in many pockets. Holed up in the studio with a a newly required Maestro Rhythm King drum machine and his trademarked wah'wah'd electronic organ in low key tempos, Stone not only recorded solo demos for what would become the most influential Family Stone record, There's A Riot Going On, but he also started a label, Stone Flower as well as a production team and released 4 singles. Two of them from Little Sister, which was a vocal group led by Stone's little sister Vaetta Stewart, one from soul singer Joe Hicks, and one from a funk group called 6IX, all of which featured Stone' organ and drum machine combo as well as production.
On the surface, 4 singles doesn't sound like very much for a label, but their sound transformed soul and funk music into something more deeper and minimal, influencing not only more well known performers such as Timmy Thomas and Shuggie Otis, all the way up to Prince, but also lots of private press artists as well, who did not have the resources to hire full bands and recording studios to create their music. One of our very favorite compilations from the past few years, Personal Space, documents this trend in private press electronic soul from the seventies, and fans of that comp will find tons to love here.
There have been previous comps of the Stone Flower output, but Light In The Attic dug a lot deeper (as they always do!) and included not only some of Sly Stone's demos, but plenty of unreleased material and alternative versions of the singles as well. The low key gospel spook of Little Sister's "Somebody's Watching You" has been a favorite song of ours for a long time, but it's also cool to hear the full band version where we can decipher the lyrics a lot more clearly: "Shady as a lady with a mustache", or "The nicer the nice/ the higher the price". I'm Just Like You is a fantastic intermediary look into the world of Sly Stone during a transformative period which also includes lots of photos and liner notes as well as a recent interview with the reclusive genius himself. Highly recommended!
This is the first in a series of Bureau B releases, designed to shine a spotlight on the kinds of music the label specialize in, a sort of reissue sampler, highlighting tracks from various reissues on Bureau B. On each compilation, a modern musician curates a collection highlighting some of their favorites, and for the inaugural installment, the choice of Tim Gane from Stereolab seems like a no brainer, since Stereolab essentially trafficked in unabashed krautrock (especially Neu!) worship, thus, for Kollektion 1, Gane digs deep into the archives of legendary seventies krautrock label Sky Records, just check out the artists: Hans Joachim Roedelius, Moebius, Cluster, Gunter Schickert, Eno, Michael Rother, Beerbohm, Asmus Tietchens, Riechmann, it definitely has aQuarius written all over it. And the song selection is pretty ace too, there's the woozy, melancholic pulsating space music of Asmus Tietchens' opening track, the motorik guitar-groove of Michael Rother's "Feuerland", Eno's oozing psychedelic kraut-pop epic "The Belldog", Moebius' jaunty and playful "Conditionierer", the hushed kraut folk of Schickert's "In Der Zeit", a skeletal ballad wreathed in birdsong, Roedelius' swirling prismatic synths cape "Geradewohl", Riechmann's "Himmelblau" a soaring kosmische kraut symphony, and on and on and on. Every track here a gem, and in some ways, a pretty perfect krautrock primer. Can't wait for future installments, with the next few curated by Lloyd Cole, Richard Fearless from Death In Vegas and Holger Hiller. Includes notes on each artists, as well as liner notes by Asmus Tietchens.
On a single cd, or split between two volumes on vinyl.
This is the first in a series of Bureau B releases, designed to shine a spotlight on the kinds of music the label specialize in, a sort of reissue sampler, highlighting tracks from various reissues on Bureau B. On each compilation, a modern musician curates a collection highlighting some of their favorites, and for the inaugural installment, the choice of Tim Gane from Stereolab seems like a no brainer, since Stereolab essentially trafficked in unabashed krautrock (especially Neu!) worship, thus, for Kollektion 1, Gane digs deep into the archives of legendary seventies krautrock label Sky Records, just check out the artists: Hans Joachim Roedelius, Moebius, Cluster, Gunter Schickert, Eno, Michael Rother, Beerbohm, Asmus Tietchens, Riechmann, it definitely has aQuarius written all over it. And the song selection is pretty ace too, there's the woozy, melancholic pulsating space music of Asmus Tietchens' opening track, the motorik guitar-groove of Michael Rother's "Feuerland", Eno's oozing psychedelic kraut-pop epic "The Belldog", Moebius' jaunty and playful "Conditionierer", the hushed kraut folk of Schickert's "In Der Zeit", a skeletal ballad wreathed in birdsong, Roedelius' swirling prismatic synths cape "Geradewohl", Riechmann's "Himmelblau" a soaring kosmische kraut symphony, and on and on and on. Every track here a gem, and in some ways, a pretty perfect krautrock primer. Can't wait for future installments, with the next few curated by Lloyd Cole, Richard Fearless from Death In Vegas and Holger Hiller. Includes notes on each artists, as well as liner notes by Asmus Tietchens.
On a single cd, or split between two volumes on vinyl.
This is the first in a series of Bureau B releases, designed to shine a spotlight on the kinds of music the label specialize in, a sort of reissue sampler, highlighting tracks from various reissues on Bureau B. On each compilation, a modern musician curates a collection highlighting some of their favorites, and for the inaugural installment, the choice of Tim Gane from Stereolab seems like a no brainer, since Stereolab essentially trafficked in unabashed krautrock (especially Neu!) worship, thus, for Kollektion 1, Gane digs deep into the archives of legendary seventies krautrock label Sky Records, just check out the artists: Hans Joachim Roedelius, Moebius, Cluster, Gunter Schickert, Eno, Michael Rother, Beerbohm, Asmus Tietchens, Riechmann, it definitely has aQuarius written all over it. And the song selection is pretty ace too, there's the woozy, melancholic pulsating space music of Asmus Tietchens' opening track, the motorik guitar-groove of Michael Rother's "Feuerland", Eno's oozing psychedelic kraut-pop epic "The Belldog", Moebius' jaunty and playful "Conditionierer", the hushed kraut folk of Schickert's "In Der Zeit", a skeletal ballad wreathed in birdsong, Roedelius' swirling prismatic synths cape "Geradewohl", Riechmann's "Himmelblau" a soaring kosmische kraut symphony, and on and on and on. Every track here a gem, and in some ways, a pretty perfect krautrock primer. Can't wait for future installments, with the next few curated by Lloyd Cole, Richard Fearless from Death In Vegas and Holger Hiller. Includes notes on each artists, as well as liner notes by Asmus Tietchens.
On a single cd, or split between two volumes on vinyl.
When we first read about this new comp of underground music from Dunedin, we were pretty excited, wondering what sort of vintage Flying Nun and Xpressway rarities Ba-Da-Bing might have dug up, only to discovery that the rarities contained here, are all from the last 3 years. That is, it's all contemporary NZ bands mining similar sonic territory as this that came before. We were wary for sure, as we are with most comps where we don't recognize a single artist. Mavis Gary, Death And The Maiden, The Prophet Hens, The Males, Mr. Biscuit, Opposite Sex, Strange Harvest, Astro Children, Trick Mammoth, you get the picture. But all it took was a few seconds of the first track to make us feel right at home, murky lo-fi jangle, simple skeletal drumming, hushed sad boy vox, swirling synth shimmer, melancholic minor key melodies, all softly psychedelic, and sounding like it COULD actually be from back in the day.
Which is true with much of this comp, which while sonically is all over the map, is obviously heavily beholden to the sound of eighties and nineties NZ pop, from Death And The Maiden's low slung electro post punk, with chiming guitars, swirling FX and some moody witchy female vox, to The Prophet Hen's DIY jangle pop, hazy and liltingly dreamy, with endearing boy/girl harmonies, and from the Males' urgent fuzz pop, that sounds like it would be right at home on Slumberland, and featuring some super distinctive falsetto vox, to Mr. Biscuit's noise drenched, distorto noise-pop grrrl punk, all angular crunch and sonic snarl, with some almost metal moments. From there on out, the comp veers wildly from strummy bedroom folk, to new wave-y post punk, to horn flecked baroque psychedelia, to Wipers-esque post punk grunginess, to fey, downer, jangle pop, to hazy, murky, home brewed girl group garaginess, to Cleaners From Venus style anglo dream pop, and on and on and on. We found ourselves wanting to hear more from pretty much every band here, which is a rarity with comps and makes this one, very very recommended!
When we first heard about the collaboration, it sounded like a joke, like some internet meme. It did seem crazy, and on the surface, pretty hilarious, but eventually it was proven to be an actual thing. Then when we first heard a little snippet online, we weren't entirely sold, Walker sounded even more over the top than usual, and the title Soused seems to indicate that maybe Walker was in fact completely wasted when he recorded his vocals, cuz it definitely sounded like it. But when we finally got to hear the whole thing, it suddenly all made sense, Walker's vocals, while still insanely dramatic and over the top, were somehow perfect, and SUNNO))), instead of just doing the guitars-against-the-amps drone thing, really seem to be working way outside their comfort zone, and in fact, lots of this record sounds extremely, sonically uncomfortable. Fantastically so. We were so smitten by opener "Brando", we had trouble digging any deeper into the record. Right from the get go, opening with Walker crooning over a whirring organ, shimmery and sun dappled, and what sounds suspiciously like the Guns 'N Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" guitar lick, but then the thick, viscous drones creep in, accompanied by strange ticks and pulsations, as well as what sounds like a bull whip, as well as the occasional burst of distorto guitar, the combination of that low end creep, and Walker's vocals, as well as a cool feedback/high end that seems to echo the vocal melody, it's pretty powerful, and stunning, weird, but also weirdly beautiful. "Herod 2014" was our next obsession, with it's weird squelchy electronic rhythm, buried in thick rumbling thrum, it's Walker who carries the song, some sort of demented, and yeah, likely seriously soused, torch song, flecked with static, and driven by a slo-mo Sabbath riff stretched out into near static sprawl, Walker's vocals wreathed in lots of mysterious noise, the whole track peppered with what sounds like some strange banshee wail, or pterodactyl cry, but it's somehow so perfect, that it becomes as integral to the song as any other element.
"Bull" is downright balladic after the previous heaving monoliths, but not for long, the song exploding into some serious Swans like pummel, with Walker kicking it up a notch, some loose chaotic drum damage, some junkyard percussion, and a 'hook' that manages to be the catchiest bit on the whole record, the song slipping into slo-mo somnambulant creeps, before launching right back into that 'chorus'. We have to be honest, the first three songs are so perfect, it's not until maybe the 20th listen that we even made it to the last two, but they're similarly broody and bombastic, "Fetish" featuring some seriously buzzed out bass (assuming that's a bass), and like "Bull" before it, another killer 'chorus', that sounds like Swans gone haywire, dosed on some serious narcotics, a wild cacophony of elephant like electronic bleats, churning metallic riffing, monstrous drumming, before settling into what sounds like some sick, mutant strain of kraut-doom. And don't even get us started on Walker's INSANE lyrics, in this case, a refrain of "Choo Choo, Choo Choo mama", which sounds ridiculous, but in the context of the song, it sounds mad, maniacal, and like some sort of twisted genius, which we're assuming it is. Finally, there's "Lullaby", which is one, at least for a moment, until another blurt of atonal, moaning, keening, doom cabaret explodes from the murk, only to settle right back down, most of the track spent in hushed lowercase mode, finishing off super dramatically, a field of barely there guitar rumble, distant sonar like pings, ominous swells, mysterious insectoid clicking, and one final, haunting stanza from Walker. Most definitely a twisted outsider masterpiece, and considering how skeptical we were, it's even more surprising that this might just end up being a record of the year contender for some of us!
A beautiful object d'art from the Bay Area cottage industry Land And Sea, Mixed Raced is a rare document of the harmonically charged compositions of Zachary James Watkins. He studied at Mills College under the tutelage of Pauline Oliveros, Chris Brown, Alvin Curran, et al; and is now a professor at UC Santa Cruz in electronic music. Mixed Raced is one facet of Watkins' work for rarefied tonal perfection that is emblematic of many of the graduates who matriculate from Mills, though some of his other solo work does move into an angular dissonance of saw-tooth noise with all the right No Wave allusions. Here, we have two compositions with multiple movements involving guitars and strings respectively. "Positively Right On" is Watkins take on the Branca / Chatham guitar harmonics. Watkins's composition only calls for two guitarists, setting up a duality of the harmonic interplay of growling drones and rasping fundamentals; but the results expose the diminishing returns on the guitar symphonies from both of those aforementioned heavyweights of downtown minimalism. These pieces glide, drift, hum, and blur with the best that either of those had done over the years, though the 20 minute program in three movements (obviously a requisite for a vinyl release) is a bit limiting, where a much longer duration would have been thoroughly entrancing. Nonetheless, "Positively Right On" is quite a triumph for Watkins. "Movement III" for violin and doublebass is a more conventional piece of academic minimalism with rising and decline notes sustained upon those two instruments, played out over seven variations on that theme. Think Lucier, Curran, Ashley, and any number of the American minimalists who came to prominence in the '70s.
Features hand letterpressed artwork in an edition of just 100 copies.
There is little doubt that the band behind James Brown from the late sixties to the mid seventies was just about the tightest unit around. Of course, Brown's habit of fining his players for missing beats would keep any band in check. But the band wasn't dubbed The JB's until after a legendary moment where most of Brown's band, including key figures Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, and Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, up and quit on him. Brown, in a pinch, quickly grabbed a young Cincinnati-based backing band, The Pacemakers, which included a young Bootsy Collins before he joined Funkadelic. With a new band, a new decade and a new sound, Brown pretty much singlehandedly created funk music, and the recently defected Wesley, Parker, and Ellis quickly returned to the fold. The JB's went under many different names and line-ups, including Fred Wesley and the JB's, Maceo and The Macks, Fred Wesley and The New JB's. The Last Word, and The First Family, but the core personnel were more or less the same except for the Collins brothers who were only on the first JB's 1970 lp Food For Thought which contained the hits "Pass The Peas" and "Gimme Some More". All of their records up until 1974 are solid funk staples with hits "Doing It To Death", "Same Beat", and "If You Don't Get It Right The First Time, Back It Up and Try It Again, Party" that would be endlessly sampled in hip hop for decades to come. Good to have these on vinyl again! Funk essentials!
Say revery shoddy, Blizzard Trifle fizz rack!!! Err... Sorry, what we meant to say is: Hey everybody, Wizard Rifle is back!!! Excuse us, it's just a very disorienting experience listening to this band, and things like logic and language tend to lose all meaning. But of course, anyone familiar with these Portland-spawned nutjobs first record Speak Loudly Say Nothing (which we rightly raved about when it came out) knows the sweaty shaky delirium that comes with Wizard Rifle's gonzo progged out noise rockin' math metal, and this record certainly shows the band in no danger of relenting in their sonic/psychological assault. In fact if anything, Here In The Deadlights might find them in an even more venomous, aggressive and ultimately metal mode. And possibly even a little more, dare we say... serious?? Sure, there are still song titles like "Buzzsaw Babes" and "Paul the Sky Tyrant", but there's also a consistent rumble of dissonant dread running across this record's five tracks, as well a genuinely frightening and twisted fury that brings to mind the aggro-avant-heaviness of early Mastodon and Today Is The Day (whose new album we've reviewed elsewhere on this list!). Across the album's relatively brief running time there are also hints of Sabbathian stoned out dirges, apocalyptic Neurosisian tribalisms, High On Fire-ish ale-soaked riffery, and Botch-esque teched out hardcore wizardry. But it's a blink and you'll miss it affair, as the songs seem to speed by in a whiplash blur of incomprehensible time signatures, while at the same time the band's use of repetition can induce a sort of hypnotic fever-trance, like being pumped full of morphine while someone shakes you by the shoulders and screams in your face for half an hour straight. Like we said... a disorienting experience! But one you'll want to experience again as soon as this record's over...
Vinyl version upcoming soon, btw.
Emotional Rescue returns with another obscure Woo reissue originally only released as a cassette in 1990. For some avid Woo fans, this one has been heralded as an all out favorite, and indeed it is a incredibly strong addition to their already reissued catalog which we can't seem to get enough of. Marked notably by a more ethereal atmosphere made with digital synthesizers along with the acoustic guitar and oboe that has trademarked their sound previously. The arrangements still acoustically rhythmic but with less of a restless rush, and there is a greater presence of vocals, but not overtly so. In fact the first vocal track "Make Me Tea" is one of our favorite tracks with a lilting female backup vocal and gentle lullaby delivery. Their Durutti Column meets Cluster meets Penguin Cafe Orchestra vibe remains in tact, but with greater nuance on the details. That may be because of its new remastering, but this is really aurally quite deep and beautifully delicate, becoming at times more about the spaces between sounds than the sounds themselves.
Their is a vinyl version of which we have a couple of copies (just ask!) but will wait until we can get more before we highlight here. One thing to note however is that only 18 of the original 22 cassette tracks are on the vinyl version, and annoyingly "Make Me Tea" was left off the vinyl version and released as a separate 7" that we haven't been able to get. All the tracks are included on the cd however. Regardless, this is an amazing release, and a great place to start with this remarkable duo as any!
Not a bad record; just not a good Zola Jesus record. And that's coming from this store's biggest Zola Jesus fan. Other ZJ fans who want to come in and argue with him, let us know, we'll set it up.
