With this recent vinyl resurgence / renaissance, all sorts of classic hip hop records have been getting reissued, which has had us listening to lots of old favorites, and debating which are the best classic hip hop records. Sure Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions was mentioned, as was De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising. Scott suggested Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders. We even got to discussing more obscure selections, the D.O.C.'s No One Can Do It Better, Son Of Bazerk's Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk (remember "The Band Get Swivey On The Wheels"?), Allan even suggested Kwame, which got us talking about the Black Sheep, the Dream Warriors, anyway, we were deep in one of these debates, when what should show up in the shop, but The Cactus Album by 3rd Bass. And at least for one of us, the decision was made.
Two white Jewish kids from Brooklyn, who somehow made one of the coolest, hookiest, funnest and funniest records of that era. All it should take is a quick listen to "Sons Of 3rd Bass", the whole song built from samples of Blood, Sweat And Tears' "Spinning Wheel", and holy shit it's so good, the bleating horns, the ominous piano, the way they take the horn part, loop it and turn it into a crazy stuttery melody, and the flows of both MC's, Serch and Prime Minister Pete Nice, Serch is the goofy one, but with a crazy nimble tongue, while Pete Nice's deliver is darker and more serious, perfect foils, and the lyrics are equal parts clever wordplay and cutting disses, and the music, no surprise it's so good as it's produced by both Prince Paul AND the Bomb Squad.
You've probably heard "The Gas Face", which was the big hit, it's a goofy jam, but it's also pretty great, another meticulously arranged sample heavy jam, with some sweet disses (the whole song is essentially a dis), but beyond the goofiness of that track, and the various skits, there's some seriously classic hip hop going on, the loping, jazzy, almost LL Cool J sounding "Monte Hall", the drum heavy stutter of "Soul In The Hole", and then there's the other 'hit' single, "Wordz Of Wizdom", the other classic on the Cactus Album, with samples of "Dream Weaver", even some Steely Dan, the whole thing (like a lot of hip hop of the time) wound around the 'Amen' break by The Winstons, then there's the horn flecked, woozy bass driven groover "Product Of The Environment", we could go on, but pretty much every track here is killer. And while they sample all the usual suspects, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the Commodores, the Meters, Kool & The Gang, they also get pretty weird, nabbing samples from Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, the Doors, even Steve Martin!
So yeah, so many great records from that era, but for now, we've voting 3rd Bass, and giving all those others the Gas Face!!!
Shinichi Atobe is probably best known (and weirdly, also least known) for releasing a single 12" on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction label, and consequently disappearing completely. That record became a bit of an obsession for some folks, including the Demdike Stare guys who eventually somehow tracked down Atobe, only to discover an entire record of unreleased archival material, which is this one right here.
For fans of Demdike Stare AND Chain Reaction this is some seriously holy grail stuff, and it's easy to see what all the hubbub was (and is) about. The opener is a gorgeous stretch of glitchy digidub murk, distorted chordal swells weaving a dreamlike melodic backdrop beneath a skittery, skeletal groove, before the second track opens the sound up into some hazy house, a softly pulsing four on the floor beneath jazzy chords and fluttery faux Japanese flutes, a second rhythm swoops in eventually, adding a strange, psychedelic off kilter vibe, the mix too is quite strange, with some sounds swooping to the foreground, while others blur into the background murk. The rest of the record careens schizophrenically from grinding glitchiness, to strangely distorted samplescapes fusing more Japanese melodies with crumbling, sputtering squelches, to haunting carnivalesque soundscapes, all woozy synths and strange space-y FX, tripped out industrial dronescapes, with warped, throbbing, barely-there rhythms, all wound around fields of grey noise and blurts of wild chaotic noise. There are a handful of straight up Kompakt style Euro-house groovers too, but those tracks are plopped between softly swirling, looping stutterscapes and weirdly trippy, freeform electro-jazz jams, finishing off with a super psychedelic, beautifully noisy, ultra creepy outro, that's a jumble of distorted alien vox, chopped and looped into a lumbering rhythm, wreathed in wisps of dreamlike thrum, somehow impossible gristly and gauzy AND hauntingly hypnotic.
Housed in a hand stamped, hand numbered, card stock sleeve.
New split LP from guitar wizards and warriors Bill Orcutt and Sir Richard Bishop. Strangely enough, the first album these two have done together (although they have toured together, which we assume was the catalyst for this release).
On the "Kali" side, Sir Richard Bishop unleashes his usual brand of psyched-out guitar elegance, constantly drifting between hypnotic strums and chaotic stabs, always returning to a common melodic line, a sort of chorus that keeps the 17-minute piece cohesive and, dare we say, structured. Like an internationally-trained and DMT-dosed John Fahey, Bishop deviantly picks apart, plays with, and stitches together all sorts of traditional music schools, all while playing a style so uniquely himself. Echoes of his Sun City Girls days are always present; the whole piece is constantly on the precipice of falling apart and devolving into harsh nonsense (we mean this as a complement), but stays together enough to make it to the end.
What Sir Richard Bishop does with an electric guitar is mesmerizing, and what Bill Orcutt does with a 4-string wooden guitar is shocking (again, a compliment). While Bishop lives in a world of technicality and proficiency that occasionally dips into free-form noise, Orcutt lives in the opposite world. An assault of acoustic stabs and possibly some atonal singing (?), the five pieces on his side only occasionally give you a hint of something melodic, and it's only for an instant, before it once again falls apart into cacophony. The climax here is "Always Already Reissued," an unrelenting assault that finally settles into an almost peaceful ending that shows that Orcutt has a little bit of peacefulness somewhere inside him.
A beautiful release physically and musically, act fast and get these before we run out!
Hail! It's the return of '90s math rock revivalists Broughton's Rules. This Pittsburgh, PA quartet have the pedigree all right, with ex-members of Don Caballero and Blunderbuss in their ranks. We loved (and sold a ton of) their debut a couple of years ago, Bounty Hunter 1853, and if you liked that, you'll like this! They seem to be entirely instrumental on this one, with eight songs that are moody, majestic, and melodic. Mathy, too, of course - we bet there is a lot of careful counting going in the heads of the musicians as they play these compositions. But it's not too tricky to listen to, quite the opposite, it's almost soothing, and in fact they go in for gorgeous spacey post-rock atmospherics as much as they do hectic tangle. The heavy parts are HEAVY, and there are lots of effective loud-soft moves, with precise chiming guitars and big thumping time keeping.
All in all, another deliciously, deliriously impressive effort from these guys, that we can file with all our old faves of the math/post rock persuasion like Rodan, Bastro, Polvo, A Minor Forest, Butterglove, et. al. Dunno if we said it before, but Broughton's Rules RULES.
We've always wanted to list something by Italian occult doom metal master Paul Chain (ex-Death S.S.), he's a true underground legend in the realms of magickal violet-hued heaviness and improvised downer psychedelia. We've referenced him in several reviews, when discussing the likes of Blizaro, Black Hole, and Tony Tears, but never before have we had any of Paul Chain's own stuff available to list - until now. A whole bunch of his rare '80s and '90s albums have just been reissued on the Minotauro label, and so we finally get to review 'em, starting with this sought-after classic, 1995's Alkahest. Out of print for years, it now makes a welcome return on both cd (in a miniature lp-style gatefold sleeve, with obi) and limited edition double gatefold vinyl.
Alkahest is a good entry way into the master's extensive discography, as it possesses much of his unique, weird vibe while not being nearly as experimental and abstract as some of his other albums. Instead, Alkahest functions as a solid, spooky slab of traditional doom metal, offering up plenty of plodding, heavier-than-thou riffage that any fan of Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus or Cathedral ought to happily bow down to. We mention retired UK doom gods Cathedral in particular 'cause their frontman, Lee Dorrian, who's a HUGE Paul Chain fan, happens to sing on about half of this album (a thrill of a lifetime for him), Dorrian's gruffer guest vocals quite a contrast to Paul Chain's own strange, haunted, higher register croon, and not just because there's actual lyrics to the songs Dorrian sings, while Paul Chain's vocals are, as is his wont, all purely phonetic, not in any language at all (see what we mean by him being experimental?). Dorrian's gravely gargle mellows out a bit for the mournful ballad "Lake Without Water", quite lovely with medieval lute and acoustic guitar, sort of in the vein of Sabbath's "Solitude"...
Overall, Alkahest is brimming with doomed, despairing, druggy atmosphere, the Sabbathic riffs and psychedelic soloing supported by strains of doleful church organ and hints of synth, an Italian prog/soundtrack influence definitely present. Really an excellent album all doom hounds (especially those into early Cathedral) should have in their collection! And in a way, strangely uplifting for something so hopelessly dark and doomy.
Ok, next up, Detaching From Satan by Paul Chain's Violet Theatre...
Got two new releases this week on the Ge-stell label, run by aQ pal Cameron, who before this also masterminded the Merzbild and Merz Tapes labels, one of which is this new 12" from Dalglish, aka Chris Douglas, formerly O.S.T., a big aQ fave back in the day, and whose last lp on Pan we reviewed not too long ago on list #442. Like that lp, Dorcha Aigeann continues to move away from the Douglas's old beat oriented sound, toward a more sound designed ambience and layered layered textural atmosphere, the opener here sounds like Oval, the same sort of orchestrated glitchery, but where Oval created smooth, almost liquid sounds, here, those glitches remain rough around the edges, a bristled, tangled landscape of keening longform tones an dense metallic shimmer. But the sound of Dorcha Aigeann is not so easily defined, stretches of grinding, sci-fi plunderphonia dissolves into cascades of crumbling static, and garbled alien transmissions, soft noise drift blossoms into haunting, field recording flecked dubbiness, sliced and diced into wild stuttery pulses, and clouds of truncated melodies, wound tight into ping ponging blurts and squelches, woozy kosmische thrum evolves into wild skitters across some alternate universe FM band, staticky squiggles and fractured samples, crumbling loops and malfunctioning FX, all woven into surreal, lysergic landscapes of damaged, disembodied electronica.
Both sides also finish with some killer locked grooves, which, if you're not paying attention, you might find yourself listening to for quite a while before realizing they are in fact not a weirdly repetitive track proper...
Pressed on 150 gram transparent vinyl, mastered by Rashad Becker, housed in a silkscreened PVC plastic cover, with die cut slit, along with a printed transparent insert.
Yet another record from Mark Deutrom, previously and probably still best known for playing bass in the Melvins once upon a time. But for a while now, Deutrom has been cranking out incredible solo records, most on the Rock Is Hell label, and somehow remaining well under the radar. We'd say something like "this one will change everything", but we're guessing it probably won't, and who knows, perhaps he's content to be right where he is. We sure are if it means we keep getting more and more records like this.
With every record it's sort of hard to know what to expect, the last couple were sort of matched out proggy pop, and super catchy sooner rock heaviness, but this new one, begins with an epic 20 minute side long jam titled "Dick Cheney", which spends its first 4 minutes droning ominously, lush layered textures, slowly shifting, finally some buzzing metallic guitar drifts in, as does some percussion, it feels like the song is about to explode, but then instead, transforms into a lurching minimal avant doom creep, spaced out chugs, loads of space, the vibe very Harvey Milk-ish actually, and then the vocals come in, and the song is somehow transformed into something way catchier and popper than it has any right to be. Especially near the end, when the guitar swoops up into a super catchy melody, before devolving into a weird little chug flecked, industrial noise outro. Phew. Most bands would be content with that 20 minutes, but there are three more sides here to dig, all of which display Deutrom's mastery of whatever the fuck he wants to do, from the brooding slow burn psych of "Winter Haystacks At Twilight", that almost sounds like the intro to some doom metal jam, to the very Melvins-y "Sky Full Of Witches", which also displays a seriously poppy vibe, a woozy, lurching stoner pop groove that sounds like it could have been plucked right off some Kyuss B-side. And that pretty much sets the tone, the sound lurches from groovy, mathy, prog-sludge, to groovy stoner pop, to dreamy almost jazzy psych, to super trippy avant abstract space-doom, to twang flecked, reverie balladry, often with several of those bleeding into each other.
Goddamn, this guy is a genius, and a seriously unsung one at that. Fans of the Melvins, Harvey Milk, Prizehog, Kyuss, and just twisted abstract heaviness, and moody metallic avant-gardery, get this and every other thing you can find. You'll thank us later!
OMG! Automatic Record Of The Week. Hands down. Such a nice surprise, that Ipecac has just reissued this all-time aQ fave on vinyl, originally released back in 1992. Great Phone Calls lives up to its title, it's one of the funniest prank call albums ever made, up there with Kathy McGinty and the best of Longmont Potion Castle. Heck, it's one of the funniest records we've EVER heard, period. Then again, maybe something is wrong with us. In any case, stuff from this album has entered our personal lexicon, catch phrases, you know, like they way people pick up on stuff from SNL.
When Great Phone Calls came out so many years ago (1992) it quietly marked the first appearance on record of the now-infamous Neil Hamburger, sad sack comic who has since gone on to great heights of "humor" (or perhaps the term is anti-humor) recording for the Drag City label.
The collection of calls here ranges from the aggro bass player who answers a musicians-wanted ad (and insists, "I'm in your band!"), to a fat guy who went to college at "Yaoo" (not Yale) trying to order a low-fat pizza, to a computer giving away tickets to a Bette Midler movie called Hijinx (and its sequel, Hijinx II: Sodom). Some of the calls are borderline offensive, and some jump right over that line, so be forewarned, but it's so worth it anyway. The Hamburger-as-Hamburger tracks are among his best stuff, 'cause unlike later recordings of his live paying-gig performances, here on Great Phone Calls he's trying so desperately just to get a gig, calling comedy clubs and harassing the bookers with his "jokes". The unique brand of comedy on display here really takes things to a demented, ridiculous level, Hamburger essentially delivering extemporaneous monologues to the poor saps on the phone more akin to performance art than anything else. The shaggy dog story of a joke Hamburger tells on the track "A Nationally-Known Comedian" goes on for, like, six minutes. Why his victims don't hang up sooner, we'll never know. He's brilliant, if you've ever doubted it, this is the proof.
Originally out on Amarillo, this was reissued on cd - and now on lp - by Mike Patton's Ipecac label, and he makes an uncredited sneak appearance on the record too.
Ti West's 2009 homage to classic horror/slasher flicks, in which a babysitter discovers her clients have plans to sacrifice her in a satanic ritual, a la Rosemary's Baby, is the latest modern motion picture to get the deluxe Death Waltz treatment, more often reserved for horror classics from yesteryear. But it works, since House Of The Devil is in fact modeled after the horror classics that came before, right down to the score, by Jeff Grace, whose scores for Trigger Man and the Roost we reviewed and raved about back on list 423. For HOTD, Grace goes all out, even down to the cheesy eighties style rock groove that opens the proceedings, a theme that sound like it was plucked right from some lost '80s VHS tape. The rest of the score is appropriately spare and creepy, haunting and moody and minor key, the most striking compositional element being the use of prepared piano, to add an even stranger vibe to the proceedings, the piano parts almost percussive, the notes almost metallic, ringing out in fields of hushed shimmer, slow, smoldering sprawls of sinister sonic malevolence alongside hazy, haunting drones, delicate chamber music amidst swirling strings, and dense atonal orchestral swells. A very classic sounding score for sure, that manages to sound both modern and classic, and more importantly, conjure up some serious heebie jeebies.
And like all Death Waltz releases, the label went all out, killer new artwork from Tom Hodge, liner noted from Grace himself, a big full color poster, and a Japanese style obi, with still more notes about the music itself. Oh, and pressed on blood red vinyl!
The cliff notes version of Invisible Hands might read something like "spaghetti-western cow-punk from Cairo with one of dudes from the Sun City Girls." The dude in question is the curmudgeonly Alan Bishop (aka Alvarius B.) here working with four Egyptian musicians, two of whom had been in the Egyptian rock band Eskenderella. As we mentioned before in the previous review about Invisible Hands' first album, this is a remarkably sensible project for Alan Bishop, known for his confrontational fuck-you-in-eyeball attitude and discordant avant-folk splutter. Where the first album had a sand-blasted alt-rock prettiness about akin to Giant Sand and Calexico, Teslam finds Bishop pushing more of the insidious, diabolical aesthetics for which he is known. "Eyes In The Back Of Your Head" is a blackened, sardonic waltz with Bishop and Co. alternating between languid Morricone-esque melodies and harshly plucked Brechtian venom, all in the steampunk time of three. When Bishop and fellow Invisible Hands Aya Hemeda sing in tandem as on "Slaughterhouse" and "The Great Implosion", it's akin to the unkempt harmonies that Exene Cervenka and John Doe delivered in X.
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.
The band with the best/worst name that we've ever had a Record Of The Week by (next to, perhaps, that cd-r by King Kong Ding Dong) is back! When we made this cosmic garage psych rock band from Down Under's previous release (or should we say, releases, 'cause it was two albums in one package) our Record Of The Week just a few months ago, we compared 'em to Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall, said they fit in with that scene, and they do - this new album is on Castle Face, ta da! Right where they belong. But King Wizard And The Lizard Wizard (still love typing that name!) mostly defy easy categorization. Clearly they've listened to a lot of records (while smoking a lot of weed) from the '60s and '70s, blenderhybridizificating all sorts of classic psychedelic source material, so you get stuff here that's part Pink Floyd, part Captain Beefheart, part T-Rex (especially on "Empty"), part West Coast Pop Experimental Band, part Status Quo... There's blues harp and underwatery vocal FX; flashes of glam pop and krautrock rhythms; spacey boogie jams, with a dash of Eastern exoticism. Often all in the same song. One track, "Cellophane", comes across like Can meets Canned Heat! A little later on, the use of flute in "Hot Water" nods to early Kraftwerk. And always, trippy as they are, these tracks are hella catchy too, like we said, right in there with Ty Segall et.al., thinking King Tuff too when it gets more glammy. Meanwhile, the mellow groove and gentle vocals of "Slow Jam 1" remind us a bit of ol' Olivia Tremor Control. And finally we should mention the fantasy castle music of the awesomely titled "Satan Speeds Up" (well, it's a better title than "Slow Jam 1" anyway), the audio equivalent of the album's equally awesome cover art. Yeah! One more time, ladies and gentlemen: King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard!
Latest from these sci-fi garage-kraut weirdos, and it's another heady collection of zoned out, synth heavy psychedelia, and woozy electronic kraut-pop, pop being the key here, as this might be the most poppy thing we've heard from these guys yet. Not on the first track, that one might have you convinced that you're in for something more sort of John Carpenter-ish, or maybe Trans Am-y, percolating synths, drift over tribal percussion, and layered drones, then vocodered vocals swoop in, drifting atop swirling streaks of hush end shimmer, getting briefly all krauty and kosmische, before building to a super heavy synth psych blow out. But then in comes track two, which uses essentially the same elements, but the results fall much closer to Animal Collective or Gauntlet Hair, electronic pop wreathed in synth swirl and anchored by motorik krautrock-like grooviness, but with soaring vocals, and hooks galore, the band managing to embrace a warped outsider poppiness, without losing any of their kraut-psych weirdness, which is a feat for sure. Over the course of the record, the band go full on prog ("Seven Spirals"), creepy and soundtrack ("Tetrahedron"), murky downer pop ("reT 120813") and bombastic pop-syke ("Geodesic Lines"), but all held together by the super distinctive vocals and this new found poppiness, and it totally suits them. Be sure to stick around for the nearly 15 minute closer, a track that reminds us of aQ faves and former ROTW-ers Jaill, albeit a way more droned out, repetitive kraut-drone version, all instrumental, a pop song stretched way out, and embellished with all manner of cosmic synthiness, not to mention a long stretch of hazy, droney dreaminess, before returning, and finishing off with a fierce burst of heavy kraut psych crunch. Killer!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a swank gatefold jacket.
The grimy and oozing, sludgey and slimy, sonic apple does not fall far from the musical tree, as Harvey Milk bassist Stephen Tanner turns an aborted attempt at writing a new Harvey Milk record into his own solo record, the evocatively titled, and ultra personal Music Blues, a droning, dirgey, downtuned rumination on Tanner's life, from birth all the way up until right goddamn now. With a heavy focus on a recent spate of blues-worthy bad times, heart break and homelessness, death of friends and depression, Tanner crafts a brooding sprawl of epic slo-mo heaviness, that really could have been a new Harvey Milk record, with long stretches of murky churn butted up against impossible metallic majesty, soaring and epic, dirgey and doomy. At time it's actually a little bit difficult to not imagine HM's Creston Spiers bellowing over the top, but even sans those distinctive vocals, Tanner's soundscapes of tarpit riffage, knuckle dragging drummige, churning, crumbling low end, and tripped out, droney, abstract, almost psychedelia, make for some sweet, and sweetly abject heaviness.
Peppered amidst all the low slung sludge are brief bits of weirdness (or maybe more accurately, weirder weirdness), woozy stretches of pitchshifted ultra lo-fi downer country strum, transformed into some twang flecked murk, or moments that sound like intros to some Fucking Champs-like shred, but which instead just lock into stretched out stasis, minimal and metallic and mesmerizing.
But the songs themselves, for being as minimal as they often are, are pretty riveting, and hypnotic, heavy for sure, but also textured and strangely nuanced, with varying levels of fidelity, the sound slips easily from massive crush, to home brewed heaviness and back again. Many of the sounds here are obviously beholden to the 'Milk mothership, and channel the sound of classic metal (Kiss, Priest), and like HM turn it into something that sounds like it's being played by someone with serious head trauma, and spinning way too slow on some old busted up turntable (check out "Trying And Giving Up). But there are also moments of monochromatic mesmeric metal trudge ("Great Depression"), murky, hazy, atmospheric soundscapery ("Failure") and surprising poppiness ("It's Not Going To Get Better"), which perhaps not surprisingly at all, does not stay poppy for long.
This will definitely tide over Harvey Milk fanatics until the next HM full length (assuming there ever is one), but really, anyone into droned out, melodic minimalism, and droney, doomy heaviness, will dig these here Music Blues.
Woah, nice grotesque, stretched flat flesh-face cover art, doods!! Brought to us by the esoteric rock gurus at Holy Mountain, what does this Musk sound (or smell) like exactly? Well, it's not metal, even though the cover art could be, and some of the vocals veer into almost guttural death metal territory, too. It IS hella noisy, a real reverb-damaged noiserock overload of an album, with much drum kit bashing, guitar/amp smashing, vocal spit splashing, you know, sheer deranged rockin' madness, bathed in distortion - part pigfuck noise, part blues rawk thwump, part fuzzed out garage punk (this wuz recorded by a guy who has twisted knobs for Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, as Holy Mountain helpfully points out). So imagine the drunk, bad-trippin', evil twin to one of those acts, crawlling C.H.U.D.-style out of the sewers of downtown NYC or somewhere Down Under (though they're from right here in the Bay Area, and feature a former member of a band called Tractor Sex Fatality from up in Seattle or someplace.)
These eleven killer cuts are remarkably catchy considering the chaos in which they are couched. Cool!! Lives up to the awesome, unpleasant cover art. Includes download.
Heck yeah. This nasty-named, evil-sounding Chicago metalgrind trio dish out the raging headbangables here, following up their so very appropriate split with Providence's Black Pus from earlier this year with this, their second totally sick album. 'Tis blackened and brootal, pounding and thrashy, with extreme, anguished vokills - the singer probably spends a lot of his income on throat lozenges. Speed-wise, there's plenty of 1,000 mph blasting and shredding along with some slo-mo sludge parts too. And, additionally, there's enough in the way of avantgarde noisy textures and trance-inducing use of repetition to make 'em possibly the grinding metal band of choice for fans of Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes, and Zs fans, as well as Slayer, which along with the geographical point of origin, helps to explain why these guys are on Thrill Jockey (home too of minimalist, mathy, "transcendental" black metallers Liturgy, of course).
By the way, here's a (dumb) idea for these guys - how 'bout next time, they simultaneously release two albums called Ooze Your Illusion I and II?
Latest slab of pummeling, punishing industrial power violence from this local one man band, who also just so happens to be 1/2 of another band we love, Iron Lung, but unlike Iron Lung, BHT, aka Jon Kortland, creates twisted blurts of caustic noise, grinding, distorted power electronics, and brutal metallic churn. This latest is split into 28 tracks, each 44 seconds long, each a sonic stunner, from skull cleaving blown out crush to sculpted static over stuttering jack hammer rhythms, it's a hard sound to swallow, difficult listening for sure, and it's likely most metalheads might find this a bit too brutal, and too abrasive, and probably not metal enough, which is saying a lot, but for folks into twisted avant noise, industrial and power electronics, outfits like Ramleh and Skullflower, Whitehouse and Swans, Brighter Death Now and Bastard Noise, PHT definitely fits somewhere amongst all their equally sonically twisted brethren!
Some tracks are strangely atmospheric, others purely rhythmic, the sounds themselves blown out and in-the-red, plenty of sonic gristle, crumbling feedback, hiss and hum and skree and squalls of feedback, metallic clang and clatter, with sounds often exploding into wild gouts of white noise, but just as often evolving into murky pulsations. Heady, heavy and hypnotic, the vocals a wild bellow, the only really link to the group's punk/metal roots, otherwise, the sounds is more experimental, and avant, and even with the vocals, the vibe is more like some lost industrial outfit from the eighties or nineties. There are plenty of surprise too though, moments of unlikely melody and beauty ("1970"), gorgeous bits of grey ambient drift ("Scum"), and a bunch of tracks that almost play out more like some warped variant of minimal techno, all skeletal crunch, and stuttery throb, and yet, it all somehow works together as this bizarre, noise drenched hydra-headed, 28 part psychedelic, power electronic noise-crust epic. And it KILLS.
Awesome orange and black minimal cover art too.
Latest batch of lo-fi '60s style retro-psych paisley-jangle garage-fuzz from these Philly phreaks, although this time around, the sound is actually a lot less lo-fi, and while we thought up until now, Purling Hiss was a one man band, this time around, they sound more like a proper group (which according to the liner notes they indeed now are). In fact, where past records often sounded like super stoned bedroom 4-track jams, or wasted zoner-psych via old school power pop, the new record almost sounds more like a weird mix of early Sebadoh and Guided By Voices, some mutant version of the British Invasion via the early American indie rock underground. But there's still plenty of seventies style Yellow Pills-y power popisms, loads of fuzz and buzz, jangle and crunch, hooks galore, but the sprawling jammage of past records is definitely dialed back a bunch, minus the occasional slow psych smolder or wild shreddy blowout, shifting into something more like some druggy strain of downer power pop, or maybe some outsider indie-psych gem that could have come out on Homestead back in the day, although these guys occasionally let loose and do some hard rocking, peppering their fuzzy jangle and psych garage thrum with bursts of swaggery, garage pop crunch.
Some will miss the murk, we do a little, but with all that noisiness, all that hiss and hum, stripped away, these guys reveal themselves as an indie rock force to be reckoned with, maybe a group out of time, who could be beaming these sonic transmissions from some alternate universe, where it's always 1992, or heck, maybe even 1978, and all the bands come from the Midwest, armed with 4-track recorders, big amps, beat up old vans, long hair, lots of weed and a clutch of killer jams, and until someone can actually find that glorious place, Weirdon might just be about as close as you can get...
Huh, now this is a pretty cool, totally unexpected collaboration! Austria's Radian, longtime aQ faves who specialize in their own unique strain of instrumental, improvised, computer-processed post rock, have teamed up here with Tuscon-based indie singer-songwriter Howe Gelb of Giant Sand fame (both artists are Thrill Jockey alumni, that's probably the connection). So you get the desert-country-folk-Americana stylings of Gelb, set amidst the abstract, electronic, glitch-and-distortion infused, fractured soundscapery of Radian. Aesthetically & methodologically, this record is definitely Radian's; yet Gelb's acoustic guitar, piano, and especially voice are crucial components, spiced and edited into Radian's atmospheric, oddly rhythmic sonic constructs. It works really, really well, Gelb adding a very human, ghost-in-the-machine element to the proceedings, with his melodies, hushed spoken commentary and non-sequitur storytelling. Always intriguing, often moodily beautiful, with a sometimes-sinister undercurrent, this reminds us a bit of mysterious UK post rockers Reigns at times, also a bit of Bill Callahan's recent dub album, in a way. Highly recommended!!
We were pleasantly surprised a few years ago when Light In The Attic reissued the first (self-titled) Thin Lizzy album on vinyl, not really LITA's usual sort of jam, but of course cool. At the time, we remember talking to one of our pals who runs the label about it, and asking if they planned to reissue any other albums by the seminal '70s Irish hard rockers, like, maybe, Vagabonds Of The Western World (one of our favorites). Turns out, he hadn't really even ever heard any other Thin Lizzy albums beside the debut, but he said he'd check 'em out! Clearly, now, that's happened, and Light In The Attic has just brought us swank (180 gram, gatefold, tip-on jacket, 24bit/96kHz remaster, 'book-deep' liner notes) first-time vinyl reissues of Lizzy's 2nd and 3rd albums, Shades Of A Blue Orphanage from 1972 (not reviewed yet, but in stock, also cool), and this one, 1973's Vagabonds. Both from the early, oft-underappreciated era of Thin Lizzy, before "The Boys Are Back In Town", before the famed dual-guitar lineup, back when things were slightly more hippy-dippy, sometimes folky, sometimes bluesy, sometimes proggy. But with brilliant guitar work in its own right, courtesy of original Lizzy axeman Eric Bell. And of course, with the charismatic vocals and storytelling songwriting of frontman/bassist/rock and roll legend Phil Lynott, in full effect. Since we reference Thin Lizzy in a lot of heavy music reviews these days, hopefully we don't have to tell you how great they were. But if we do have to tell you, or tell you that they were great even before the Gorham/Robertson dual guitar era, let it be via Vagabonds. Just get it. It's got some killer rockers (including "The Rocker"!), it's got some more mellow, pretty tunes ("A Song For While I'm Away"), it's got the freaky epics ("The Hero And the Madman"), and their traditional Irish folk factor too. Heck, any album with both "Little Girl In Bloom" and "Gonna Creep Up On You" is a GREAT album. And we didn't even mention all the other great songs. A stone classic any way you cut it.
Not so sure how to peg the title of this album, which is actually three horizontal lines that some have transcribed on the internet as a squiggly version of a Greek epsilon. Oh, what funny characters can be found in the nether regions of the various fonts of the world! Typographical challenges aside, this album marks the debut album for the Swiss gothgaze outfit Veil Of Light. All of the gloomy references to Joy Division, Lycia, Death In June, and Swans are present for Veil Of Light in these skeletal songs of militant march and funereal mood. The album's languid melodies are crafted almost entirely through reverb drenched synths which cling to the persistent snap of a drum machine that is pushed way forward in the mix. Vocals, guitars, and bass are all intermittently dropped within these songs though these instruments are blurred not so much by effect but in how soft these are in comparison to the drum machine's danse macabre. For all of the '80s goth ghosts haunting these songs, Veil Of Light's slippery sheen of black clad digitalia and somber electronics slip between the current crop of electro-mopists (e.g. Tropic Of Cancer, Lust For Youth, and most everything on Posh Isolation) and the whole witch house thing whose sparkle peaked a couple years back. It looks that this is already sold out at the source, we should note.
