Lots of folks did not dig 2010's Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint, the ninth (?!) full length from Austrian black metal legends. They had already been moving away from their raw, primitive beginnings, but on Time Is The Sulphur, the group went all out, adding all manner of tripped out weirdness, tons of effects, the record had a sort of electronic black industrial vibe that we found pretty appealing, but definitely alienated lots of their fans. With this new record, last year's Leytmotif Luzifer, the band don't return to their roots, but they do reach back a bit, with a sound that to our ears sounds quite a bit like their 2007 masterpiece Fractal Possession. The sound is still pretty polished, and super produced, but it's also chaotic and dense, dizzyingly complex, and heavily layered, with moments of classic blackness, splintering into tripped out Deathspell worthy churn, the guitars too, flitting from furious insectoid riffing to wild, alien shreddery, and while not nearly as bewildering as the new Mastery, it does display a similarly avant bent, without losing sight of the black roots from which their sound was born. And while it's not as weird as some of their other material, it's still plenty fucking weird the band launching into some straight up classic metal crunch, unleashing twisted multi tracked shredding solos, the vocals suddenly erupting into a super dramatic bellow, some twisted minimal drift, some weirdly melancholic moodiness, even one track that sounds almost like Abigor gone power metal, right down to the weird ork-choral vox, and the final track that gets downright poppy and bombastic, reminding us a bit of Code actually, but Abigor's sound sound here is never far from another eruption of black metal madness, and mad it is...
So yeah, maybe don't be expecting Orkblut or Nachthymnen, but don't be scared off by the band's twisted sonic sensibilities, cuz it's that outsider, obtuse, modern take on black metal, that produces transcendent art like Leytmotif Luzifer. We have the super fancy A5 digibook, which comes with a huge beautifully printed booklet with lyrics and artwork, but like the Darkspace, it took forEVER to get these, so once we sell out, it might be a bit before we can restock, and we might not be able to get the digibook version again, which just means you should grab one now before they're gone.
If you're a fan of Finland's Circle and/or their various offshoots (and if you're an aQuarius customer, chances you are!), then you know all about the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal), the invented sub-genre self-classification that many of those bands embrace, as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of incorporating various heavy metal signifiers that they're fans of, into their sound and image. Although even at their most "NWOFHM", Circle, Pharaoh Overlord and the rest still usually come across more proggy and poppy and WTF? than actually metal in most cases. Very few of their records could be mistaken for "real" metal albums, in their entirety - maybe Steel Mammoth's Nuclear Rebirth lp?
But this new NWOFHM unit, a project of Circle mainman Jussi Lehthisalo and his pal Samae Koskinen (a live member of Finnish grind freaks Xysma), is definitely (in our authoritative opinion!) a real metal band. A weird one perhaps, when you read the lyrics and look at the artwork, but metal first and foremost. The iron gauntlet is thrown down right on the opening track, the pounding "Cult Of No Return" (you'll find a video for it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjlLMCSZ_kk), which reminds us a bit of the the "black n' roll" approach of Norwegian kings Satyricon, circa such albums as Volcano and Now, Diabolical. Or at least, this sounds more like Satyricon than Circle, for sure. We're also reminded a bit of the Finnish melodic death metal band Sentenced, back on their long-forgotten NWOBHM (note the B, not an F) influenced Amok opus from '95. And this aggressive (yet also atmospheric) attack by the Akhamin Kirjasto duo continues, for ten varied tracks in total on Torches Ablaze. There's hella old school evil riffing a la Venom, some lashings of symphonic synths, and a dose of (melodic) death metal brutality in the form of the gruff (but intelligible) vokills from Samae, singing in English about such subjects as "Synthetic Death", "Knights Of Torment", and a "Bitch From Hell". Though, he changes up to a more clean style on the likes of "Sea Of Madness" and others, giving a whispery death-gasp on the speedy "Thousand Snakes", a track that could possibly have fit in on Circle's Katapult album. The Lovecraftian thrasher "Speed, Yog Sothoth" is another blazing ripper, albeit laced with unexpected weird noisy breakdowns, Jussi's avant-garde/experimental leanings coming to the fore without violating the essential metalness of this one.
Overall, Torches Ablaze is certainly something that Circle fans should check out, but is maybe more for actual metalheads. Since we're both, of course we're digging the results here, the weird atmosphere that arises from Arkhamin Kirjasto's unusual blend of chugging metal shred, majestic spacey psychedelic synthwork, and the harsh but catchy vox doused in reverb. As NWOFHM goes, if their tongues are in cheek here, they're well hidden. Hail!
BACK IN STOCK!!
Badlands is the debut from this New York duo who traffic in wild, blown out, free form, noisy avant psychedelia, a relentless blistering sonic freakout spread over three tracks and thirty minutes. It might help (or maybe it won't, but it's still cool) to list the instruments used to conjure up this skree: one guy handles: "Machete Harmonic, Octave Shaking, Psycho Slide and Echo Disaster Lead Guitars, Feedback Vox, Tape Manipulation", the other is in charge of "Feral Wah, Astral Echo, and Feedback Lead Guitars, Amp Manipulation, Drums", which in a way says it all. After a brief bit of droniness, the sound splinters, and explodes into a five minute onslaught of frenzied guitar abuse, spluttery drum damage, all wreathed in thick swirling clouds of twisted FX and layered noise, but this is not straight up noise (although there's plenty of that), there are lots of dynamics going on, with stretches of scrabbly guitar, tranced out hypno-rock churn, tangled swirls of guitar psych, dense walls of crumbling, grinding, in-the-red, feedback doused dirgery, extended sprawls of effects heavy drift, and twisted droney ambience, but for all that, the sound is most definitely rooted in face melting psych-noise freakouts, which most definitely dominates the proceedings. But stick around for the 15 minute closer, the sound slowed down to a droney crawl, all grinding guitars, skittery drums, dense swirls of feedback and noise, the sound almost more psychedelic space rock than anything, but WAY on the noisiest side of that spectrum, imagine multiple Hawkwinds playing at once, each one trying to play louder and heavier than the other, the result some sort of ultra heavy, noise psych dirge, that is equal parts doom, spacey, tripped out and heavy as fuck. Where have these guys been all our lives. Fans of freaky noisy psych, line starts here. Fans of Fushitsusha, Mainliner, Burnt Hills, Heavy Winged, etc. check this shit out. NOW.
Super deluxe handmade packaging, maniacally ADD line drawing cover art (a la Nick Blinko), with a heavy cardboard insert, hand taped, with more line drawings, a picture taped to one side, housed in a stickered plastic sleeve, hand numbered, LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!
The first we heard from British sound artist Robin The Fog (here going by the name Howlround) was the stunning and mysterious lp The Ghosts Of Bush, which was sourced entirely from audio recorded in an abandoned building in the UK. It had been the home of the BBC's world service for seventy years, now left derelict, but somehow alive with strange sounds, captured and decontextualized into a haunting world of creaks and whirs, of shifting textures and buried melodies.
For Secret Songs Of Savamala, Robin set up in an abandoned house in Belgrade, with a flooded basement, the structure itself the palette, with open beams struck, surfaces rubbed and scraped, the sounds outside the house causing walls to vibrate, doors and windows to rattle, with some deft recording, and what sounds like some sort of haunting vocalizations, the sounds are whipped up into some sort of primitive ritualism, at times barely there, at others, nearly psychedelic, small soft cacophonies, that ebb and flow, dripping water, the clang of metal on metal, but more often than not, everything blurred and smeared into dreamlike soundscapes, lush and layered, rife with miniature sound events, all woven into languorous drifts, tape hiss and warble woven into the natural sounds, giving even the most mundane moments a woozy, hazy, faded feel, with other moments transformed into almost dublike trippiness.
Heady and hypnotic, this is some fantastic, and fantastically hypnotic deep listening, that we can get enough of. But it will have to hold us over until we get the OTHER new Robin The Fog record, that one sourced entirely from a squeaky iron gate!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
There's a point at which music can get no more frantic, no more noisy, no more heavy. The point at which the sound of music just becomes a blur of sound, a mess of noise. The trick is, especially with extreme music, is to get as close as possible without slipping over that line. Plenty have come close, and the closer they come, the more they hit that indescribable spot. Punk rock got close way back when, then metal got even closer, then the variants of metal pushed closer and closer thrash metal, metalcore, death metal, black metal, each generation of band, each new genre trying its best to get as close to the edge as possible. At moments on In The Library Of Horrific Events, Johnny Truant manage to get pretty fucking close. Their sound is a dizzying blend of ultra technical grind metal and classic heavy metalisms, each song an ultra complex downtuned chugfest, blast beats careen through dense fields of squiggly riffing, crushing crunchy sludge and howled vocals, half time breakdowns butt up to impossible buzzing grind workouts, but occasionally, out of a dense wild swirl of grinding chaos will emerge some incredible hooky dual guitar harmony, or some strangely melodic breakdown, as if Iron Maiden was somewhere under Johnny Truant's barbed blackened spiked exterior trying desperately to hack their way out.
Controversial as always, Brooklyn's Liturgy, the band 'troo' black metallers love to hate, is back. And it's not just purists who have found Liturgy's self-proclaimed 'transcendental black metal' (and accompanying manifesto) to be way too pretentious, arty, overly intellectual and dare we say hipsterish. And yeah, sure, Liturgy ARE intellectual and/or pretentious, but they also make some freaking amazing, weird music. So let's get all that out of the way by saying, they can call it whatever they want, just don't expect us to read the manifesto. To us, ok, maybe we wouldn't really consider them a bonafide black metal band, but the music they make wouldn't exist (probably) if there weren't such a thing as black metal. It's a part of their sound that they, well, have transcended? They're definitely their own 'thing' whatever it might be, a thing that beyond the black metal elements also incorporates math rock and academic new music and IDM electronica and other strange stuff besides. Totally up our alley in other words - although making The Ark Work an aQ Record Of The Week was also was a wee bit controversial here, 'cause we'll admit right off the bat that this isn't an easy album to sit through all at once. It's just so tripped out and CRAZY and exhausting, as you mentally process what you're hearing. But even if you can't take it all in one sitting, it's the sort of thing where we swear you'll be compelled to play individual tracks on repeat, over and over, just to get your head around 'em, and because certain parts can be so intense and mesmerizing, you want to really try to fully absorb/understand the awesomeness of them before experiencing the next draining yet uplifting track. So Record Of The Week it is, none can deny that it's an impressive piece of work and unlike anything else really. It's gonna have you going, what IS this? Very aQ-worthy, indeed.
Liturgy's bandleader, guitarist/vocalist/composer Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (whose name is only slightly less plausible than, say, Guy Mann-Dude, anyone remember that '80s metal shredder?) is one ambitious & talented dude... man... guy. Some pretentiousness may be a side effect of that, but whatever. It's not like we're paying attention to the conceptual lyrics about who knows what (though you might, they could be worthwhile). We're just busy being blown away by all the choppy stop-start arrangements; the symphonic horn parts; the insectoid guitar buzz that sounds like a Glenn Branca guitar orchestra made up of a whole bunch tiny, tiny, pygmy-like black metal guitarists; the mesmeric, trance-inducing drumming by the inhuman Greg Fox (Guardian Alien); the glitchy digital stutter that, seizure-like, grips bits of these tracks occasionally; the post-rocky, sea-saw way these tracks can build and build; the sheer proggy/mathy grandiosity of the whole thing, and all the other surprises, including, despite this music's difficulty-factor, some really beautiful, blissful parts too.
There are bagpipes, too, along with the trumpet and trombone, all played by guest musicians, but in addition there are also synthesized MIDI horns on here, the latter giving a bit of the vibe of an outsider composer realizing his epic opus with DIY bedroom recording technology. Then there are the processed vocals, also kinda melodic, but chant-like, a mantric supplication, sorta sounding like Om, but with the tape sped up perhaps or otherwise manipulated, and still quite emotive.
Yeah, we said they sure came up with something that doesn't sound like anything else, at least not anything that exists, though we can come up with some this-meets-that, hybrid of this-and-that esoteric band math equations to try to describe it, like, um, Orthrelm doing their version of Om (if Om attended the Church Universal and Triumphant), or Phantomsmasher goes to conservatory... or how 'bout this: the track "Vel Valhaal" sounds like a song by outsider epic metallers Realmbuilder, remixed by Venetian Snares, with a gamelan thrown in for good measure, mashed up with a Herman Nitsch aktion. How's that? We're trying.
If all that's not ridiculous enough, oh then there's the fact that Liturgy recently they appeared on an episode of NBC TV show The Blacklist, with freakin' Peter Fonda behind the drum kit. WTF? If haters gonna hate anyway, you might as well cash in with surreal shit like that.
You've got your whole life to listen to this Liturgy album, so don't delay, get it now! While maybe we can't say yet for sure, we think it's one we will be coming back to when some other, more acceptably 'troo black metal' albums are long forgotten.
Oh, and 'cause we told 'em we were making it a Record Of The Week, Thrill Jockey has kindly offered a special BONUS for folks who buy it from us, and only us, this week. While they last, we'll be including a download coupon with each purchase that gets you an mp3 of the crazy remix that Soft Pink Truth (Drew from Matmos) did of the track "Vitriol", which is otherwise is only available on the version of the cd released in Japan. It's not as if Liturgy isn't already insane and fucked up enough sounding, but you can imagine what SPT does to 'em.
FYI the swank gatefold double vinyl version includes a download of the full album, too, while the gatefold cd version has no need of that.
Manii might have to be one of the more confusing black metal bands going. These Norwegians began life as Manes, releasing some seriously black buzz, before transforming into something altogether NOT black metal, keeping the name, but delivering a sound that mixed electronica, goth, trip hop, even some rapping, into something that at the time we described as sounding a little bit like Duran Duran. Manes are still a going concern, having released a similarly non black metal record in the from of 2014's Be All End All, another dizzyingly abstract collection of crooned electro pop, wild bombastic experimental sort-of-metal, churning modern rock, and other un-metal sounds, but for several years now, there apparently exists an alter ego, in the form of the similarly monikered Manii, which it seems, is where much of the old Manes' metal ended up. Kollaps is indeed a suffocatingly grim proposition. But gone here too for the most part is the buzz and blast, and in its place some slow-mo dirginess, a synth swaddled creepy crawl, that slithers and churns, a lumbering blackened doominess that is harrowingly atmospheric, while remaining extremely heavy, a hauntingly melodic slab of melancholy black miserablism, with brief bursts of more metallic fury, but with just as much moody ambiance, long stretches of mysterious shimmer give way to keening minor key murk, before mutating into heaving swells of epic metallic majesty, the usual drums and guitars bolstered by all manner of synths and keyboards, minimal electronics, making Kollaps sound almost proggy in places, a swirling and psychedelically transcendent songsuite that would be a contender for metal record of the year, if it hadn't come out in 2013!!!
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.
Elsewhere this list (and last) you'll find the SUNNO))) + Scott Walker collaboration, while this album is the 2nd effort to see half of the SUNNO))) duo teamed up with Japanese psych shaman Keiji Haino. We're hoping that this somehow means that we'll soon see a Scott Walker + Keiji Haino team-up, too... There's not too many degrees of separation left, c'mon!
But, that's not what this review is about. It's about the sophomore outing from the in-and-of-itself awesome Nazoranai trio, featuring guitarist/vocalist Haino, bassist Stephen O'Malley of SUNNO))), and on percussion, the ubiquitous Oren Ambarchi - who plays with Haino in another trio also well, with Jim O'Rourke instead of O'Malley. O'boy, these guys do like each other for dance partners, recall also that recently Ambarchi and O'Malley got together with Randall Dunn, too...
Anyway, we super duper dug the 1st Nazoranai, as did a lot of you, it's gone out of print (too bad if you missed it) but this is a fine follow-up, again allowing (as if there was any choice) Keiji Haino's musical personality/aesthetic to take the fore: ultra intense dark psychedelic out-rock improv, made all the darker and heavier by the presence of O'Malley, as you can imagine.
As usual with anything Haino related, the track titles are long and cryptic, starting with "You Should Look Closely Those Shattered Spells Never Attaining Embodiment As Prayer They Are Born Here Again" (whew!) and the tracks are long, too (that one approaches 19 minutes). All four cuts here are fairly heavy and harrowing, featuring plenty of grinding droning guitars (abetted by some synth played by Haino too). Ambarchi's drums skitter and shake, Haino offers up the gut wrenched vocal lamentations like nobody else, and O'Malley keeps the bottom end solidly way, way down in the abyss. The rapport these three possess is evident, and emotive, whether whilst bringing the freeform freakout action to a boil, or when they lock into more structured passages - as on the album's final cut and title track, another 19-minute epic, that rides a lurching, repetitive rhythm reminding us of some of Haino's legendary band Fushitsusha's 'rockier' moments. Needless to say, recommended to all with fearless ears, poetic hearts and/or sorrowful souls.
MPEG Stream: "You Should Look Closely Those Shattered Spells Never Attaining Embodiment As Prayer They Are Born Here Again" [/audio/nazoraniyoushould.m3u]
Long time list readers and aQ customers know just how much we loved the now defunct Laddio Bolocko. And just how excited we were when half of Laddio Bolocko resurfaced in The Psychic Paramount, displaying a sound that somehow managed to be the perfect extension of what LB were doing when they called it quits along with a healthy dose of some all new shit that took all the things we loved about Laddio to impossible to imagine extremes.
Laddio Bolocko was like a super distorted, blown out, mathrock Krautrock band. Repetitive, propulsive, complex, heavy, but weird as fuck! And actually we would probably use the same set of words to describe PP. But PP has a more looped quality, less jammy, more psychedelic, if that makes any sanse. The sound is close enough that EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO BOUGHT THE LADDIO BOLOCKO SHOULD OWN BOTH THIS AND THE PSYCHIC PARAMOUNT FULL LENGTH. Seriously. Allan and Andee got a chance to see Psychic Paramount a few months back, and we were transfixed, standing by the side of the stage, slack jawed and wide eyed. Loving it, but at the same time trying to figure out how the fuck these guys make those sounds. It was really that amazing. They somehow managed to out heavy Khanate (who were also playing) while still managing to be dense and complex and weirdly catchy. They sound like a heavy metal This Heat! The most amazing part was the band locked into an impossibly furious freak out, when the bass player just stopped playing and packed up his stuff and walked off stage. A few minutes later the drummer stopped, broke down his whole kit and then walked off stage. The whole while, the guitar player is at the front of the stage, in a manic, eyes-closed trance, unfurling massive super distorted loops and dense washes of sound that sounded like there was still a whole band up there. A few minutes later, the guitarist put his guitar down, and it continued to churn out this heavy sludgy psychedelic loop, the stage totally empty, but a massive crowd frozen in place, watching the guitar laying on the stage as if there was a full band up there. After about ten minutes a super cute anime looking girl, short skirt and pigtails walked up on stage and shut off the guitar and the crowd went apeshit. That's what this cd sounds like. Exactly. And live! How the hell do they make these sounds LIVE? Huge swaths of looped guitar, impossibly amazing drummer, maybe one of the best drummers we've seen/heard in ages, there's one track on here where the bass and guitar drop out completely and the drummer just GOES for a few minutees and he somehow stirs up a din that sounds as dense and full and freaked out as the whole band playing. Some tracks are just full on blasts of NOISE, wild and dense, thick swirls of psychedelic sound, freaked out and chaotic, but even at its most noisy it's still so musical. Loud, weird, repetitive, hypnotic, mesmerizing, so so so good!
Recorded live in 2002 in Europe. Packaged in a swank black digipak, it also includes a short film shot on tour that you can watch on your computer.
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...
The first few seconds of Lost Language, a blast of fuzzy crumbling distortion will have you expecting the latest slab of monster sludge, or a blast of pummeling downtuned brutality. And the bands pedigree might have you expecting something similar, guitarist Larry Dolan produced the debut full length from metallic post rockers Tides and drummer Mikey Lemieux used to bash the skin for metalcore heavyweights Drowningman. But what you get instead is some killer, super propulsive, slightly mathy, but very moody, instrumental rock, that harkens back to bands like Pell Mell. There's all sorts of definite reference points, Pell Mell is the most obvious, a simultaneously laid back and caffeinated burst of super energetic mathy groove. But can hear lots of nineties indie rock, plenty of SST, a bit of Tortoise, some Minutemen for sure. Surf rock guitars are wound tight beneath thick splashy swirls of open high-hat and frenetic almost funky drumming, the bass is sometimes slithery and dark, sometimes rubbery and almost dub like. Some tracks stretch into languid epics, others fly by, a manic expulsion of chaotic energy. Once in a while they sound a little like a less Joy Division obsessed Interpol, but again with that nineties instrumental rock vibe. The final track is the show stopper, a near half an hour epic, that almost sounds like the band took the first seven tracks and rearranged, reshaped, and reimagined them into one lengthy jam, keening angular riffs, wildly chaotic drumming, a hypnotic neverending epic, with cool backwards guitars, some My Bloody Valentine swoosh, the whole thing constantly shifting from full blown overdrive, to laid back lope, and back again, until the whole thing fades to a haunting soundscape of minimal guitar drone. Finally, a simple tribal rhythm emerges, and the track unwinds, a slowly decelerating coda, all muted rhythmic rumble and barely there melody. So cool.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE** (was $21.00, now $13.98)...
RECORD STORE DAY 2015!!
Did you listen to the Serial podcast, that This American Life spinoff? If not, that's weird 'cause EVERYBODY did (heck it was popular enough to be parodied on SNL), and also you should maybe listen to it 'cause it was pretty great, a fascinating true crime mystery about a high school student accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend that leaves you wondering how we can ever be sure of anything at all, ever. Is Adnan an innocent man, wrongly convicted? Seems likely. Or or instead is he a complete psychopath / brilliant actor? Maybe that's the explanation, just as likely perhaps. Anyway, the gripping and quirky podcast was accompanied by some very cool moody soundtrack music by Nick Thorburn, of various indie bands like Islands and The Unicorns, and it got a special vinyl-only Record Day release this year. Listening to this will definitely send Serial fans right back into the hole of puzzling about this confounding case, for sure. And even if you weren't ever addicted to Serial, this music is enjoyable and evocative - though we should note that none of the 16 tracks here are much longer than a minute or two.
One of three new releases on Don't Fuck With Magic, Campbell Kneale's (he of Birchville Cat Motel and Our Love Will Destroy The World) new post Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, the others being an archival sonic blast from the now defunct BCM, and a killer collab between OLWDTW and Finnish noisemakers Tomutonttu (both reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). We're the only source for these in the US and we have HALF the already small pressing, of which we've already sold half before even reviewing, which means these are going quick, and will be gone before you know it, so act fast if you want any/all of these.
The consonant heavy Tmpls is yet another Kneale project, and you thought his other projects were noisy, whoo boy, they ain't got nothing on Tmpls, a nearly 47 minute blast of ear shredding, head melting, speaker destroying white noise sound, a heaving wall of crumbling sound, blown out and distorted, crunchy and corrosive, on the surface, pure Merzbowian brutality, and heck even a little bit below the surface too, but in places you can definitely tell this started out as maybe something a bit more melodic, or something(s), in fact it sounds a bit like multiple Kneale jams laid on top of each other and then sent through a battery of malfunctioning distortion pedals, only to come out the other side a roiling chaotic crush. The timbre and tone constantly shifts too, from warm and warbly, with what could actually be buried melodies, to pure rhythmic crunch, as if any bits of melodies were stripped away, leaving a strange bit of glitched out garble, and elsewhere the sound is infused with undulating sheets of lowend, as if the noise component might be shed at any second, leaving a woozy warbly thrum, but it never does, it's a continuous sprawl of wild noise drenched sound, that is about the most intense and brutal thing Kneale has ever whipped up. You have been warned, only the iron eared need apply.
And as mentioned above, we have a handful left, but odds are even these noisy little buggers will disappear in a flash.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE** (was $23.00, now $15.98)...
RECORD STORE DAY 2015!!
Record Store Day 2015 brings us another batch of special vinyl installments in the burgeoning Rough Guide series! And as international genre/subgenre samplers go, the Rough Guide comps are usually pretty good. This year, we managed to get enough of most of 'em to list (sold out on RSD: Psychedelic Cambodia and Psychedelic India).
This one is certainly pretty great, it would be tough to come up with a bad comp of African rare groove after all, there's so much good stuff. This is touches on only some of it of course, and it's a broad spectrum, with tracks from the '70s, '80s, and today, everything from Nigerian highlife to Ethiopian R&B. It's got aQ fave Francis Bebey on it, it's got a great track from Ayalew Mesfin which adds some surprisingly garagey, fuzzed out guitar to the usual Ethiopian groove sound, it's got a neat, previously unreleased collaboration between Congolese singing group Les Mangalepa & Afro-oriented UK production duo Yam Yam... among other fine cuts.
180 gram vinyl, includes download with the album plus extra tracks.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE** (was $23.00, now $15.98)...
RECORD STORE DAY 2015!!
Record Store Day 2015 brings us another spate of special vinyl installments in the burgeoning Rough Guide series! And as international genre/subgenre samplers go, the Rough Guide comps are usually pretty good. This year, we managed to get enough of most of 'em to list (sold out on RSD: Psychedelic Cambodia and Psychedelic India).
This one, Bollywood Disco, would probably be worth it just for the last track alone, Vijay Benedict's insane epic "I Am A Disco Dancer", which clocks in at 7:44 and is indeed very vehemently all about being a disco dancer, which is a great subject for a disco number, obviously. The other tracks here are pretty fun too. As you can imagine, the Bollywood version of "disco" is a bit freakier than regular old '70s disco that's for sure. Besides Benedict, the artists include Mohammed Rafi, Nazia Hassan, Manna Dey, Usha Uthup and Bappi Lahiri, all "playback" singers with lengthy and successful careers in the Indian film/recording industry.
180 gram vinyl w/ download included - which features a whole other album sampler of music by Bollywood legend Kishore Kumar as a bonus.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE** (was $23.00, now $15.98)...
RECORD STORE DAY 2015!!
Record Store Day 2015 brings us another slew of special vinyl installments in the burgeoning Rough Guide series! And as international genre/subgenre samplers go, the Rough Guide comps are usually pretty good. This year, we managed to get enough of most of 'em to list (sold out on RSD: Psychedelic Cambodia and Psychedelic India).
This here's the sequel to last year's Vol.1 of Latin Rare Groove and again the Rough Guide compilers have dug up a bunch of deeeep cuts for this one. Rather than be a survey of better-known essentials in a genre, as is the idea behind most Rough Guides (or similar compilations), they really embrace the "rare" concept and go with some total obscurities, old AND new, and it's not all music from Latin America, either - as long as it's Latin beats, and funky grooves, it's ok, so there are UK and American acts on here, too. Some stuff is previously unreleased, can't get rarer than that, including one cut by NYC salsa orchestra Conjunto Alayon, from an unfinished 1980 album. Get this and get your boogaloo on.
180 gram vinyl, comes with download of the album plus six bonus tracks.
