We've just gotten ahold of a handful of self-released recordings from Alpine Decline - one of the many amazing projects to arise from the panoply of Beijing bands. This boy-girl duo are in fact American expats (one shaggy haired kid from Ohio, one Chinese-American from Los Angeles) who uprooted their existence in LA after the demise of their previous band (Mezzanine Owls) to open shop in Beijing.
Visualizations is the second album from the band, released in 2010, same year as the debut. A mystical spaciousness permeated their sound on Visualizations, which may not be surprising as the band employed the talents of Californian psychonaut M. Geddes Gendras to produce the record and flesh out the sound with bass, modular synths, and guitars. Jonathan Zeitlin sounds like he's singing through a tin-can telephone with all of the depth provided by the expanse of spring reverb. There are tons of effects laced throughout the album's 10 tracks - swirling, druggy pools of evanescent shoegazing blur and wash propelled through their jangled noise-pop. There is still plenty of Unwound and maybe a bit of Boyracer to be heard in the mix, but the album defines itself more via heavy doses of psychedelic atmospherics and the selective bombast of Pauline Mu's drums.
We've just gotten ahold of a handful of self-released recordings from Alpine Decline - one of the many amazing projects to arise from the panoply of Beijing bands. This boy-girl duo are in fact American expats (one shaggy haired kid from Ohio, one Chinese-American from Los Angeles) who uprooted their existence in LA after the demise of their previous band (Mezzanine Owls) to open shop in Beijing.
We've witnessed the arc of Alpine Decline's development all the way through to the release of their gorgeously heavy shoegazing album Go Big Shadow City, which proved to be an aQ favorite from 2014, and now here we have their eponymous first album. While defining just what makes up the Beijing sound is next to impossible, Alpine Decline's first recording certainly engages fully with the American underground, Jonathan Zeitlin's vigorous vocals dripping with a Midwestern drawl, and his guitar chops channelling the angular / ebullient indie-rock sound of the mid '90s, amidst the steady pound of Pauline Mu's drums. Think Unwound, Blonde Redhead, and Dinosaur Jr (sans J Mascis' penchant for the relentless guitar solo), but dusted with bright synths and plenty of reverb.
New vinyl reissue of the sole artifact from Chicago teenage combo The Bachs, a charmingly underground sixties garage psych platter of all-original compositions which was privately released circa '68 in an edition of only 150 copies. Such extreme rarity can tend to increase the hype (and collector's prices) without regard to true quality, but the punningly-titled Out Of The Bachs does feature some truly Nuggets-worthy tracks all right, of slightly shaky psychedelic garage jangle. The vocals are a little bit amateur, but are also quite affecting and angst-ridden, with some fine melodies and harmonies. There's a certain amount of sappy strum and sigh to this album, but then you get to a song like the "Minister Of A Mind Diseased", with its depressively morbid lyrics and fuzz-fuelled ravings, and you realize The Bachs their best really let some dark moody trippiness out of the box. For fans of The Electric Prunes, The Lollipop Shoppe, and the like.
The Deluge and Cascade are two variations on the same set of tape loops constructed by William Basinski, with the former being released on vinyl and the latter on compact disc. Piano and orchestral recordings are the source material embedded onto those tapes, which Basinski colors with the muddled patinas of a fictionalized antiquity. It's same deliciously haunted atmosphere that has captured our imaginations ever since he released the seminal Disintegration Loops nearly fifteen years ago. We'd love to believe that he stumbled up a pile of quarter-inch tape from some closet in a forgotten school who had a music program sometime in the '50s and '60s, whose students were only instructed on playing the most elegiac of funeral dirges on the piano. For that's to what these fragmented piano melodies allude. From the onset of the three pieces, Basinski introduces a loop packed with notes and relatively bombastic melodic figures, not quite to the point of Nancarrow / Melnyk polydactyl fervor; but the flurry from this introductory loop is intentionally set up to be a position of excess from which Basinski can chisel away to reveal a fundamental pattern within his woozy melancholia traced with delay, echo, reverb, and drone. So fucking what if we've already heard Basinski present this same technique on every preceding recording, it remains always unnervingly beautiful and spellbinding.
At nineteen, Zach Condon (vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and mastermind behind Beirut) released a delightful solo album of Balkan folk music which sounded so far beyond his years. Now, almost a decade has gone by, allowing age and experience to lend themselves to his timeless craftsmanship on new album, No No No. The title track playfully starts off with a distant arcade game intro before diving into the round, harmonious vocals and type of bouncing arrangement we've come to associate with Beirut's ingenious style of pop. "As Needed" features the most whimsical, lilting strings and "Perth" follows with the warmest, most intimate horn interludes. The instrumental and vocal palette of the group's fourth full-length album is so wonderfully rich that at times their sound seems as though it has been lightly dipped in liquid gold. No No No is a romp, and while maybe nothing could truly make us want to roll around in a field full of daisies with our best childhood friend (hay fever is brutal!), Beirut has come damn close with this one.
Burning (previously known as Prostate) is Minnesota-based industrial band that stopped by aQuarius on their recent US tour with Echo Beds (whose tape we also carry!). This cassette is a special tour edition of their full-length lp of the same name. The immediate and obvious contemporary reference point here is Youth Code - current and ex-punks diving head first into filthy, militant industrial that owes its existence to the mid-'80s output of Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and the like. Burning fit nicely in the current revival of those harsh industrial aggressors, but also bring their own flair to the sound. On "Lepsis," for example, you get a Strotter Inst.-esque experiment in repetitive clanking, a reprieve from the aggression but not from the intensity.
Burning is hardly forging any new ground here, but a knowing nod to the greats of early industrial make this worth a listen. Cassette only, but it contains a couple of reworked tracks from the lp that are exclusive to this tape!
No sophomore slump for this band, as it just seems like the other day we were praising the driving dark beat of their debut, Over Me. But in the relatively short time since that was released, the band has expanded their sonic palette and production while letting a bit more warmth and lightness shine. You can feel it immediately in the string tones that open the first track here, "Bruno", also because singer Hannah Lew (previously of Grass Widow) is stepping up more to the front of the mix, and why not, her voice is great! At times, it sounds uncannily like Deborah Harry from the early days of Blondie ("Broken Lines"), and overall, the band seem to be channeling the production of late-seventies Sire catalog, without obviously aping those specific bands (Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads). In essence, they've taken all the things they already do well and have assembled them with a polish that bumps them to the next level without taking away any of their edge. Recommended!
While Mike Cooper is probably best known for turning down the Rolling Stones when they asked him to join the band in the '60s, his own eclectic and super varied discography makes it clear that while his decision might not have led to riches, it did allow him to spend his life making exactly the kind of music he wanted, from free jazz to warped pop.
The songs on this new album are woozy and warm, hazy and dreamy, often sounding like they were recorded underwater, colored by prismatic sonic refractions and lush, layered textures. We're reminded a bit of aQ faves Woo, especially in the more sketch-like compositions, but it's also easy to hear shades of the fourth world explorations of Brian Eno & John Hassell, our favorite instrumental passages by baroque retro pop combo the High Llamas, and even some of those awesome homebuilt machine-music recordings of Pierre Bastien. While the term chill-wave was the go-to descriptor for a whole clutch of young/hip bands a few years back, this is more what we imagine ACTUAL chill-wave to sound like, created by someone who doesn't need to wear ironic neon sunglasses to prove how chilled out and utterly melt-worthy their music really is. And with the recent heatwave, this has been our go to record to get lost in the sun's rays, and be whisked away to some weird magical musical island on which we're perfectly happy to stranded. Highly recommended!
We've long been big fans of our pals, local garage pop punks Dirty Ghosts. But goddamn this new single (cassingle to be exact), is leaps and bounds beyond anything we've heard up until now. Which is saying a lot. And while the whole EP is pretty rad, it'd be worth the price of admission even if it was just the track "Cataract", which is easily the single most addictive and catchy song we've heard in forever. And yeah, we know, we traffic in heavy hyperbole pretty much all the time, but while you might be inclined to take that last statement with a grain of salt, it's absolutely true. This reviewer has listened to this song no less than 50 times in the last couple weeks, and that's not counting how many times we've watched the eye popping video (check it out here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6n-DexoE14]).
Imagine if you will, a female fronted Devo, or some lost power pop new wave group from the seventies, and you'll get the gist of just how goddamn great "Cataract" is. The main hook will be lodged in your head for days, if not weeks. In fact, even when we finally got the tape for ourselves, it took forever before we could even make it past "Cataract" to listen to the rest of the songs. But we did, and goddamn this band has gotten so good. No idea why they're not HUGE. "Witch Hunt" sounds a bit like the Cars, but with way more grit and grime, and some crunchy guitars, while "Quicksand Castle" is dark and brooding and driving, and sound like's some lost post punk jam, mixed with some crazy catchy poppiness. The EP is capped off with two remixes, the first by none other than aQ beloved electro weirdo Tobacco, who turns "Cataract", into a synth soaked shimmy, all woozy, and warped, and deliriously druggy, the second by some cat called Mikey Young, that sounds like some vintage MTV jam, like Patty Smyth or the Motels, but with lots more buzz and swagger.
We can hardly wait for the full length, but in the meantime, until it finally drops, we're just gonna listen to the shit out of this! We recommend you do the same!
Grant and Rachel Evans have closed down their longstanding cassette label Hooker Vision, and rechristened their cottage industry as Adversary, which will only be selling super limited editions of their own works. We have to go on record to state our sadness about the retirement of Hooker Vision - as that not only was one of the best label names of all time, but it was also one of the best curated cassette imprint we've encountered. Oh well, at least they're doing Adversary, with two new tapes from each of the Evanses for us to enjoy.
The sounds on Reflection come out of the smoldering, electro-acoustic noise works which Hooker Vision and the occult / blackened imprint Vaald have released in recent years. A sense of murky basement malaise and sweltering dread certainly carries over on to this new cassette from Grant Evans, though Evans attenuates these teethgnashing dislocations of texture and psychic abrasion into a dourly meditative blur of pulse-wave echolalia that falls between the classic late period works of Maurizio Bianchi (e.g. The Plain Truth and Armageddon) and the resonant tape-loop hypnosis that oozes from the bleariest of Rapoon's immense back catalog. A few of the frequencies and harmonics bare a passing resemblance to what Rachel has just released on her tape Cradle Songs (reviewed nearby), making us wonder if Grant had constructed some of his tape loops from overdriven room recordings of what Rachel may have been recording. One hell of a great tape from Grant Evans. Super limited too!
It remains to be seen if she's shelving her Motion Sickness Of Time Travel project; but here we have a solo recording from the cosmic dust merchant Rachel Evans, under her own name. Cello and electronics are the main instruments at her disposal, making for a very tranquil set of recordings with Evans additionally layering twinkling, somnolent lullabies on a Rhodes piano, and with only a sparse array of treatments at work on these sounds. The elliptical quality of these passages gives a very strong reflection of Basinski's tape loop work, especially his Rhodes sourced piece A Red Score In Tile. These Cradle Songs are lullingly beautiful, sleepily drifting, and comfortingly quiet, suspended on the zone between dreamtime and wakened states. Evans' cello creates beds of acoustic droning underscoring the electronics and the Rhodes. The second half of the tape finds Evans' cello exploring more acerbic textures in a long-form scrape-scape, albeit tempered by reverb and the soft-focus bleariness of her production techniques. Earlier in 2015, Evans gave birth to a son, and we hardly find it a stretch to suppose that these songs may have been actual lullabies that she composed to help him get to sleep. Lovely stuff. Adversary only printed up 50 of these 21 minute cassettes, and they are sold out the source.
Let's get this out of the way first. Ghost seem to be the new Deafheaven - a metal (or maybe not?) band everyone loved and flipped out over, but then the more popular they became with the squares, the more the cool kids began to distance themselves. In the case of Ghost you could argue that record number two wasn't as good as the debut, which sure, is probably true, but this new one RULES. And we would suggest that any haters that jumped ship, jump right back on, cuz Meliora is a doozy, heavier than Infestissumam, catchier too, and we're saying that even though actually several folks here seriously DUG Infestissumam. We might make an argument that Meliora rivals Opus Eponymous too. Seriously, some of us have been unable to listen to anything else.
The production is polished and perfect, the songs are classic rock with hints of prog and occult metal, moody and melancholy, crunchy and fierce, majestic and epic, the rock band lineup augmented by organs and keyboards, the arrangements lush and the songs at once timeless but also modern and mysterious. The Blue Oyster Cult influence looms large, moreso than on any of the other records, which as you might have guessed is a very good thing. And that's just the music. Let's not even get into the costumes, the band of nameless ghouls, the demonic pope vocalist Papa Emeritus III (there's a different Papa on each record, except not really, they just claim to fire the previous one and hire a younger Papa, but somehow it's the same voice, hmmm...). They're like a KISS for the underground weirdos, which KISS was kind of too, but you know what we mean.
Totally hooky, totally headbangable, for at least a few of the big Ghost fans at aQ, this is their best, and a definite contender for a record of the year (certainly already in the lead, based just on its impossibly heavy rotation). If you've yet to check these guys out, don't let all the grumpy anti-hipsters dissuade you, cuz almost nobody is making heavy rock records like this anymore, certainly not rock records this weird and great, we're guessing you'll probably it. We definitely do.
We're not entirely sure, but we think Shawn Greenlee was a member of Six Finger Satellite, if he wasn't this disc sure makes us think he would have been a perfect fit.
Cobbled together from various live performances, run through all sorts of filters and hand made electronics, Greenlee takes all manner of glitch and bleep, buzz and crackle, squeak and hiss, and renders it totally alien, creating shimmery squiggles, sheets of caustic high end skree, long streaks of textural whir and rumble, harsh white noise draped over creaking malfunctioning machinery, processed voices, fractured melodies, all sorts of grinding skitter and strangled buzz, essentially a field recording of a laboratory full of robots and machines, becoming sentient, and deciding to destroy their former masters.
This isn't harsh noise, but it's definitely noisy, and chaotic and freaked out and pretty dizzyingly over the top. Strictly for folks who find even the most damaged of electronic music too pedestrian.
We only have a few of these, it came out last year, and is packaged in a super gorgeous metallic gold die cut fold over paper sleeve. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES...
Okay, we love weirdo one man black metal band Jabladav. And have dug pretty much everything he's done, from buzzing black metal Weakling worship, to blissed out dronescapes, to grim, icy ambience. But for a while now James Harlow, aka Jabladav, had been threatening to release all kinds of other sonic weirdness, like a straight up prog record, which we're still waiting on, and an electronic record, and well, this is that electronic record. Your first clue shoulda been the title, mashing up the names of a classic Squarepusher record and a classic Aphex Twin record, and sonically, it's easy to see that's pretty much exactly what Harlow was going for. Mixing skittery beats, with a plethora of sampled voices, the occasional 'Amen' break, it's plenty glitchy, but also sorta jazzy (hence the Squarepusher nod we presume). Sonically all over the map, the record flits from goofy grooviness, to dense, programmed splutter, "Fuck You Muslimgauze" is one of our favorites, with its looped and loping industrial stutter step beat, and swirling swaths of Middle Eastern string buzz, in fact, a handful of the song titles are actually downright literal. "Ambient 12038" is indeed a hushed, wispy, ambient sprawl, while "Funky Sushi", is pretty much straight up funk, real drumming, not programmed, beneath some Funkadelic like super distorted shred. But Harlow is a weirdo, and that's reflected here big time. It's pretty schizophrenic, but all the different facets of Harlow's constantly shifting sound, are pretty bad ass. "Closed Letter Analog 7019" is a creepy, minimal drift, laced with chiming, minor key melodies, and ominous swells of chordal thrum, and "Schultz" might as well be called "Schulze", cuz it's total bloopy Tangerine Dream worship. The whole record is a trip, dizzying in its scope, and while that might be annoying in some cases, here it really just makes the record a kind of warped musical adventure, where you never know what's gonna happen next, and no matter what does, you're totally psyched. Or confused. Usually both!
Like all Jabladav related releases, this is extremely limited (just FIFTY COPIES), and each one is not only hand numbered, but also signed by the man himself!
Oops, we meant to review this ages ago, but somehow it slipped through the cracks, and wasn't called to our attention until someone from the band recently dropped off their brand new release which hopefully won't take us 2 years to review. Sorry guys! So this is not new, but then again it's not like this ambient kraut-prog outfit with local and international ties will be easily found anywhere, so better late than never, right? Hedersleben may sound like some obscure krautrock group from back in the day but it's a relatively recent group that features seasoned members from British punk legends UK Subs (!) who formed after working with Nik Turner from Hawkwind on a music project a few years ago (and indeed, Nik Turner makes a guest cameo on flute here). Rounded out by local San Francisco musicians, members of Hollow Mirrors and Dragontime, together they channel the fluidly amorphous spacerock jams of Brainticket, Embryo, Gong, Hawkwind and Temple. With tripped out proggy instrumental interludes woven throughout with druggy whispered female vocal passages, Hedersleben pay such devotional tribute to their influences that it's difficult to decipher that this wasn't recorded in some German commune 40 years ago. In fact, the group has gone on to become the touring band for Nik Turner as well as the studio band for the latest incarnation of Brainticket under the leadership of founding member Joel Vandroogenbroeck. How 'bout that. Very cool dreamy and spacey kraut-psych stylings!
Sure, let's call 'em a super group. Why not? Helen is fronted by Liz Harris. Yes, THAT Liz Harris, of Grouper fame; and she's joined by bassist Scott Simmons of Eat Skull, and Jed Bindeman, who seems to be the only drummer in Portland, Oregon given his ubiquity in so many great projects (Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Operative, The Greys). Also, the trio list an eponymous Helen as the backing vocalist, who sounds remarkably like Liz Harris herself.
They've also made claim that the band's first intentions were to be a thrash band. Now, that would have been quite amazing had Helen followed through on that concept; but that was not meant to be. Instead we have this lovely lovely lovely shoegazing noise-pop project. Liz Harris has long been able to craft drifting, pop-narcotic perfection through her slumbering songs as Grouper. Joined by a rhythm section, she's forced herself to step forward with her melodies - both vocally and on guitar, both of which are still buried in rainclouds full of reverb and sadness - and it's a gambit that pays off very nicely. Simmons tends to throttle the bass, which has him sounding more like D Boon than Deb Googe more often than not; and Bindeman take an understated, if upbeat approach to the kit. Actually, the whole rhythm section of Simmons and Bindeman can be pretty upbeat, with Harris adhering a jangly blur to the wintery grandeur that's long been her trademark. It's a nice mix. The atmosphere on The Original Faces is pretty damn captivating, reminiscent in all the right ways of Black Tambourine, The Aislers Set, The Lilys, and whatever your favorite Slumberland band is, past, present, or future. A wonderful release!
Avolition marks the return of both the noisegaze project Infinite Body and the local experimental label Isounderscore, both of whom we've not heard from in about five years or so. The former is the nom de plume for Los Angeles' Kyle Parker - a glum fellow with a heavy brow furrowed in the trenches of harsh noise production. His transfiguration from the brutalism of his former self (aka Gator Surprise) into the glistening proposition of Infinite Body finds plenty of remnant stains and scars still buried within a majestic, celestial minimalism that has encapsulated the handful of recordings he's mustered over the years. Each of the four tracks on Avolition are connected through a razor-sharp sparkle that has been dusted over all of the sounds. It's akin to the glinted tactility of billions of diamonds adhered to a glassy surface that's thoroughly beautiful to admire from afar but will easily shred the skin of anybody who touches it. Underneath this surface, Parker distills sparse melodies and bejeweled mysticism from strings, voice, church organ, and what sounds like a high-digitized version of a harpsichord. There's a plethora of digitized compression, pitch-correction, and vocoded-synthesis (especially on clipped chorale of "Enlacing", which is the logical next step in morphing Animal Collective's all-crescendo vocal pop kaleidoscope into a flickering hologram of a sleeping cyborg's replication of Charlemagne Palestine, woah). The brightness and sharpness of this album are designed to be acute, making this an abradingly beautiful album of shimmering pink noise. Packaged in Isounderscore's signature foil-stamp covers for a mathematically calculated polyhedron that is equally as sparkling as the music. Limited of course.
Yet another recent release from this long time aQ fave, who after a protected period of silence, sent us a big ol' box with FOUR new releases. Two of which we've previously reviewed, this being the third, and much like Maj, which we listed last time, Hail is another ambient affair, and might be the prettiest, most tranquil thing we've heard from Jabladav yet. It's short, clocking in at just 19 minutes, but it's really beautiful. Haunting and pastoral, guitar chords ring out, smeared across a backdrop of hushed shimmer, the vibe sun dappled and dreamy, meditative and melancholy. It almost sounds like some sort of abstract twangscape, like a way more blissed out, drumless Earth, or even maybe Scenic, but super minimal. We also hear hints of Stars Of The Lid, and other guitar based soundscapers.
The sound unwinds and blossoms gradually, not building really, just sort of slowly shifting, the spaces as much a part of the proceedings as the sounds themselves. It also has a distinctly washed out, faded vibe, as if this might be something the Caretaker might whip up if his weapon of choice was the guitar.
You definitely don't have to be a metalhead to enjoy this side of Jabaladav, in fact, this is definitely something aimed more at anyone into psychedelic Krautrock, Pop Ambience, minimal dronemusic, and experimental guitar music, which we're guessing is a whole lot of folks reading this right now!
Like all Jabladav releases, super limited (just FIFTY COPIES) and obsessively numbered and personalized. Each disc is hand numbered, both on the disc itself and on the booklet, and both the disc and booklet are also signed. We got a bunch of these, but since there were only fifty made, it's a good bet that once these are gone, we won't be getting more.
NOW ON VINYL TOO!!!
Absolution is the debut full length from Denver doomlords Khemmis, and unlike the various strains of dooooooom we find ourselves usually obsessing over, the sound of Khemmis is not especially sick or sludgy, dense or droney, or even all that drugged out or psychedelic. Instead, it's doom born of TRUE metal, epic and majestic, huge churning riffs, laced with soaring leads, killer harmonized melodies, and some seriously classic sounding metal vox. Sure there's the occasional howling bellow, but the main vocals are what makes this band so appealing, the songs groovy as they are heavy, hooky too, channeling the spirit of legendary practitioners of the doom-ed arts, like St. Vitus, Cathedral, Count Raven, Blood Famers, Revelation, Penance, Solstice, and All the rest. Bow down and doom on. Likely the doom fix you were waiting for, if you're cool with some growly vocals in your otherwise classic sounding dooming.
Latest in the series of reissues of obscure Lee Hazlewood productions from Light In The Attic comes this great anthology of tracks by a band of Nuggets-worthy never-weres from Amarillo Texas, The Kitchen Cinq (pronounced "Sank", a play on the French word for five, as they were a five piece, see!). The groop's sole 1966 album (Everything But....) and string of singles should have made them more than a mere blip in the regional psych scene as they were influenced both by the British Invasion and the emerging West Coast jangle folk sound. Like a mix of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators and The Byrds, with a seemingly aphetamine-fueled fuzz-pop sound, the band's probable lack of longevity was likely due to the fact they didn't record much of their own material - though songs like "Dying Daffodil Incident" and "When The Rainbow Disappears" by title alone should have set them apart. Instead, we largely get great covers of Neil Diamond ("Solitary Man"), Buffy Saint Marie ("Codeine") and The Hollies ("I Can't Let Go"), amongst many others. To their credit, they make these singles sparkle with gritty pop urgency, tremendous harmony and of course Hazlewood's top-notch production which accentuates the reverb and twang in such a beautifully satisfying way. As always with Light In The Attic releases, comes a great history of the band and lots of pictures. Great stuff for vintage garage beat geeks like us!
Latest in the series of reissues of obscure Lee Hazlewood productions from Light In The Attic comes this great anthology of tracks by a band of Nuggets-worthy never-weres from Amarillo Texas, The Kitchen Cinq (pronounced "Sank", a play on the French word for five, as they were a five piece, see!). The groop's sole 1966 album (Everything But....) and string of singles should have made them more than a mere blip in the regional psych scene as they were influenced both by the British Invasion and the emerging West Coast jangle folk sound. Like a mix of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators and The Byrds, with a seemingly aphetamine-fueled fuzz-pop sound, the band's probable lack of longevity was likely due to the fact they didn't record much of their own material - though songs like "Dying Daffodil Incident" and "When The Rainbow Disappears" by title alone should have set them apart. Instead, we largely get great covers of Neil Diamond ("Solitary Man"), Buffy Saint Marie ("Codeine") and The Hollies ("I Can't Let Go"), amongst many others. To their credit, they make these singles sparkle with gritty pop urgency, tremendous harmony and of course Hazlewood's top-notch production which accentuates the reverb and twang in such a beautifully satisfying way. As always with Light In The Attic releases, comes a great history of the band and lots of pictures. Great stuff for vintage garage beat geeks like us!
Marco Corbelli is best known for his work as Atrax Morgue, an obsessive project of power electronics and death-industrial tactics that continued on the unseemly traditions of horrifying Italian noise. His first recordings date back to 1992, beginning a flood of Atrax Morgue recordings, as well as an array of side-projects and limited editions feverishly produced for his Slaughter Productions imprint, which was also the home to many a likeminded artists (Megatera, Sshe Retina Stimulants, Mauthausen Orchestra, Richard Ramirez, etc.), but in 2007, Corbelli ended his life.
Kranium was a short-lived project for Corbelli from 1993 to 1995, with all three Kranium cassettes originally self-published through Slaughter Productions. These recordings took a more restrained approach to Corbelli's obsessive aesthetics for sexual depravity, psychological disturbances, and ultra-violence. The Brighter Edge Of Death was the second of the Kranium recordings, paralleling the dark ambient pursuits of contemporaries in Lustmord, Brighter Death Now, and Raison D'Etre. It's an album dripping with cavernous reverberations, lumbering synth pulsations of keening low-end oscillations and dead-eyed drones. Throughout the album, Corbelli plunks slow-motion rhythms in deep resonant pools of echo and reverb, buttressed by liturgical chants, sepulchral ambient passages, subterranean atmospheres, and snippets of horror movie dialogue. Corbelli's compositions and strategies are simple yet thoroughly effective in crafting this hypnotic yet terrifying album of gothic darkness. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! We were ONLY able to get enough stock of this particular title, given that Urashima only pressed up 99 copies of album of which we snatched up the final copies.
Urgh!! It's the debut full-length of brutal, blackened, industrial death metal churn n' clank from this Tokyo based duo of Italian expats, consisting of M on "axe/machinery" and R on "vokills". This band's brutish, minimal, monolithic music certainly isn't for everybody, no sir, but those it IS for will love it. You might know if that applies to you already, as a couple years back we rave-reviewed Legion Of Andromeda's self-titled, self-released cd ep, essentially a demo. New recordings of three of those tracks are featured here ("Cosmo Hammer", "Overlord Of Thunder", and "Sociopathic Infestation"), alongside four new compositions. Here's some of we said about the ep, all of which surely still applies here of course: "Each track mostly a single riff, hell, at times it sounds like a single chord, chugging hypnotically, driven by a programmed robotic rhythm, occasionally shifting into a sort-of-chorus, but really it's just a noisier version of THAT ONE riff. All the while, some seriously throat shredding demon grunt, grindcore style belched vokills gurgle and growl over the top. Total knuckle dragging blackened bliss out of the highest order." (Well, that's a bliss out for people like us� we suppose others may find bliss in turning it off!).
This album was recorded by none other than Steve Albini (chances are, these guys like Big Black a lot), and compared to the demo ep, Albini cleans their sound up somewhat, just a bit, it's slightly less fuzzed and blown out, more clinical and precise perhaps. But still plenty brootal indeed. 'Tis truly a massive beatdown of heaving bowels-of-hell vocals, oppressive drum machine battery, and wall-of-static axe distortion, all layered and endlessly looping in what becomes delirious, distorted, deathly dementia, like someone took the entire early Earache catalog and reduced it all it down into some of the most psychedelically primitive, monotonously mesmerizing, mechanical heaviness possible. If you liked the Sewer Goddess we reviewed last time, but want something even more sick and EXTREME, then check this out!! In closing, we can't help but quote what the band says about this release themselves: "No filler tracks, no fade-outs, no avant-garde intellectual scum: just 7 slabs of inhuman heaviness fueled by total hate. The world is dead and mankind is shit. LIVE TO HATE. COSMO HAMMER MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE."
Cool b&w teeth/fangs cover art, which also incorporates the band's nifty axehammer logo...
Holy shit... they did it again! Two plus decades into their career and Low have managed to make yet another breathtaking record, a collection of songs that even on first listen, induced the sort of chills that only the most special records ever do. Along with Yo La Tengo, Low have proven to be one of the most consistent and reliable bands to emerge from the indie landscape in the last twenty-five years. Pioneers of the slowcore sound, their music has always been rich with wrenching emotion and a relentless power.
Over the years, they have experimented with more rocking and poppy directions, but even then, their slowcore roots remained, and somehow they always ended up, if not back where they started, at least sonically expounding on all the glacial beauty that came before. With Ones & Sixes, Low they have created maybe one of their best records yet, one that most definitely belongs with other Low faves of ours, alongside Long Division, Secret Name, and Things We Lost In The Fire. Everything we love about Low is in full flower here. Alan and Mimi's aching vocals, soporific songs that unfold like slowly blossoming flowers, with melodies that have us humming along - and in a perfect world, could/should/would be all over the radio. Low have never compromised their singular vision, and like the rest of Low's records, this is exactly it sounds like when a band remains connected to their truth and purpose. Brilliant!
Woah. Here's another amazing set of archival recordings from the seminal No Wave quartet Mars! Back in 2012, the boutique Spanish label Anomia released a triple cassette box from the band's archives; and now we're getting a portion of the first cassette issued on vinyl care of Feeding Tube, with a whole bunch of extra material.
Mars is a band that really shouldn't need any introduction, as they were one of the four seminal No Wave outfits along with Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, James Chance & The Contortions, and DNA, featured on the No New York compilation from 1978. At the time of that compilation, the band had only issued one single, but they recorded furiously with enough material to warrant the 78 album released by Lydia Lunch in the late '80s and a couple of live recordings some 20+ years after the fact.
The band's origins date back to late 1978 when Connie Burg (aka Lucy Hamilton) and Cunningham met Sumner Crane and Nancy Arlen. Aside from Crane's ability to play the piano and Cunningham's school days with a trumpet, Mars was an entirely self-taught proposition, trying to learn the basics of rock'n'roll through their collective infatuation with the Velvet Underground. At that time, the band christened themselves China (a moniker later adopted by Burg). The switch from acoustic to electric (and from China to Mars) is described in Dylan-esque terms, along with the name change to Mars as well as introductions to Lydia Lunch and James Chance being instrumental in the development into a tour-de-force project of rhythmic dislocation and atonal distortion.
For the Mars completist, we should note that there a handful of tracks on the cassette boxset that are not found here, and vice versa. Nonetheless, this is an incredible historical document!
Out of print for a few years now at least, the third album from these frenetic Japanese spazz-mongers has just been repressed on vinyl!! We originally reviewed it back in 1998 when it first came out, giving it the following brief but enthusiastic write-up: With every release, you wonder how Melt Banana is going to make their records just as fierce and brutal as the last without indulging in banal formulas. Yet their sound has evolved into complex shards of Dadaist hardcore played with hyperkinetic precision. One of the highlights on this album is their insane collaboration with Mike Patton and the rest of Mr. Bungle on "Area 877 [Phoenix Mix]"! Highly recommended!
To that, what need we add? Perhaps about those shards, yes shards is the word - splintered shrapnel of yelping vox, wiggly guitar, octopoid battery, all spinning around in a blender at 100mph. Everything you like about Melt-Banana, Charlie delivers!
Found a VERY small stash of these original 1993 vinyl pressings at one of our suppliers. At original 1993 vinyl prices too! (Yes, remember when vinyl was cheaper than cds?). This release was the debut from Milk Cult, a beats-and-sound-collage side project of Dale "C.C. Nova" Flattum from San Francisco's late great grungy noiserock heavies Steel Pole Bath Tub, and it predates our "list" by a couple years, so we've never reviewed it, though much later on we did make Milk Cult's fourth and final album a Record Of The Week (2000's Project M-13, now long out of print unfortunately).
Love God opens with the title track, well worth the price of admission alone, 10+ minutes of chugging distorted Slayer riffage meets turntablist whip-whip-whap in a sampledelic maelstrom. All kinds of other insanity enters into the pounding mix, from flamenco dance music (?) to police sirens. It's apparently the soundtrack to a short film by Frank Grow which we've never seen but we figure it must be pretty freaky. From then on, the warped vibe of underground '90s plunderphonic noiserock industrial soundtrack mayhem continues, in a surrealistic style where, like, moments of sepia-toned old tyme record crackle loopage that could be from a Leyland Kirby disc, will be rudely juxtaposed with sudden onslaughts of -actual- Slayer samples, or even blasts of machingun fire. It's definitely very '90s, in a good way, think Pain Teens, early Scorn, Sucking Chest Wound, experimental Melvins, Cosmonauts Hail Satan, WordSound label dubby "illbience", and of course Steel Pole Bath Tub themselves - they always used samples, weird voice-overs and whatnot, and if you're familar with them, what you'll hear here will remind you of that aspect of their sound, but given center stage. Chaotic and/or creepy for sure, but "groovy" too in a way. Needless to say, these are the last copies we're gonna see, and when they're gone, they're gone. (Honestly, we only found 4 of these, so apologies in advance if they're all been snagged by the time you read this.)
Yes, there are a plethora of insanely limited editions published for and by Natural Snow Buildings and their satellite projects; but with their recent dealings with Ba Da Bing, the problematic availability has been alleviated somewhat. Of course, there was a tiny cd-r bonus edition that was coupled with this album but only available in pre-order direct from the label. No shops got any of those; so, we apologize in advance that we cannot offer that version. HOWEVER, we do have this amazing album itself, from aQ fave death-folk explorers Natural Snow Buildings.
There's long been a haunted thread that traces through all of the work from the French duo of Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, whose long-form tangles of ritualist drone-rock minimalism and sprawling, opiated psychedelia harks back to International Harvester, Flying Saucer Attack, and Kemialliset Ystavat. Here on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Buildings plumb the depths of an emotional gloom and shuddering despair with this epic, cinematic album. The two have long specialized in expansive tracks of shimmering guitars, woodwinds, and bowed instruments that could be psalters, zithers, and / or violins, all of which blossom into sublime masses of dronological impressionism; and on Terror's Horns, Natural Snow Building engage in a sound far more elegiac and funereal and heavier than heard on any of their previous recordings. The freak-folk transcendence of NSB still will embrace the unsettling falsetto of Ameziane and the percussive clatter of Gularte, with the swirling psychedelia tumbling downward in lush cinematic collapse, with heavy minor-key chords and reverb saturated rhythmic plod providing plenty of parallels to the early days of Barn Owl and the latter days of Earth. Beautiful as always, these Natural Snow Buildings, if much darker than in days gone by.
The shadowy figure behind Neznamo is the same Muscovite who offered up the Peal Grim cd from a couple months back. That was the album sporting the disclaimer "This record is not recommended to listening for depressively inclined persons" and Aiwyasyo is a blackened ambient record of a similar disposition. This album is not as exasperatedly bleak as the Peal Grim album, but it makes for another really amazing entry in the canons of contemporary Russian dark ambient works. Synth, guitars, and spectral emanations may or may not be in the mix for the bleak electrical pools of Aiwyasto. Sawtooth hums and buzzes gird the semi-melodic fugues that swirl, rumble, and brood over 40 minutes into this overwhelmingly sublime expanse of Ur-drone majesty that's not all that far from the likes of Troum / Maeror Tri, Aidan Baker's more turbulent solo works, and the cosmological grimness of Inade. Very nice, indeed.
One of our favorite Oakland bands since they first hit the scene, we've been dying for this new album by Shannon & The Clams, as they seem to just get better and better with every record. And if you ask us, it's a crime that Shannon Shaw is not super famous, as her voice, delivery and presence blow away so many other, lesser singers, even those who are superstars. We'll take Shannon over Adele or Amy Winehouse or even the awesome Brittany Howard (Alabama Shakes) any day!
The group's secret weapon on "Gone By The Dawn" is again their wonderful range. Cody Blanchard, who doesn't get nearly the adulation he deserves, which is often the problem in a band with such an iconic front person, is such a great guitarist and vocalist in his own right, and is a driving force in the Clams. He leads the rest of the group as they whip up a seriously potent mix of doo-wop, punk rock, garage, and psychedelic pop. This could very well finally be the record that breaks them out to a new audience, and takes them to the next level. Cuz, damn, we want to live in a world where Shannon & The Clams could be a musical guest on Saturday Night Live or The Tonight Show. And yet, even if that never happens, we'll be happy just to have these amazing songs, and to revel in the group's unique sound and irrepressible spirit for a very long time to come!
Venerable noise rock miscreants Shit And Shine have essentially been a one man show for a while now. And long gone are the days of costumed, multi-drummered Buttholes Surfers-like rhythm-noise blowouts. No, in addition to being a one man band, they've also essentially transformed into a sort of outsider dance music / damaged DJ / UIDM (unintelligent dance music!) outfit. Which is not to say Mr. Shit And Shine, Craig Clouse, is a dummy, cuz he's most definitely not. In fact, he's some sort of Joe Meek like mad genius, it's just that the 'dance' music he creates, is fucked up and fractured, demented and brain damaged, occasionally funky or groovy, but just as often chaotic and caustic. Usually some dizzying, ear shredding mix of all of those.
This latest clutch of jams, which somehow found its way onto the Editions Mego label (where to be honest, it's a pretty great fit) is actually the least obtuse, with Clouse seemingly either mastering the tools of his trade, or opting to be less willfully antagonistic, at least sonically. Which again is not to say this shit is smooth, it's most definitely not. In fact it's defined by its rough edges - opener "Signal Noise" sounds like some mutant strain of Neanderthal house music, filtered through a drug addled Art Of Noise if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't, but that only makes the comparison somehow that much more apt. "Upside Down Cheeseburger" is a stuttery low slung groove, with processed children's voices, some reverby twang, it's kind like a home brewed dub, but with some kraut-psych energy, and like most of the tracks a motorik element, with most of the songs a single loop, that essentially goes through various permutations, a minimal techno by way of outsider noise and Texas psychedelic noise rock.
Everybody's A Fuckin' Expert does keep a relatively low profile when stacked up next to the rest of the Shit And Shine catalog. Tracks like "Hay Ride" are murky sprawls of alien techno, which transform into looped, fragmented block party electro ("Chop The Night"), but remains plenty muddy and lo-fi. This might actually be the first Shit And Shine record that could properly find its way into an actual DJ set, and we mean like a proper dance floor DJ, not some experimental weirdo. "Picnic Table", for all its avant filigree, is pretty goddamn groovy, hypnotic and sorta slinky. Then there's "Rastplatz" that sounds like some lost Chain Reaction rarity. But it is Shit And Shine after all, so there's also "Ass" (the title should have given it a way), a manic bit of frenzied lo-fi skitter, underpinned by blurred buzz and squiggly squalls of noisy FX. But again, even here, Clouse manages to rein it in, balancing delicately between total collapse, and total, well, whatever the opposite of collapse is.
We love these guys (this guy?) and always have. And, fuck, we still do. Big time! Rare is the band that can make full bore speaker destroying noise rock pummel, and then weirdo avant techno, and not only keep their identity intact, but do it in a way, that folks who dig the former, can't help but like the latter, and vice versa. Every record is somehow, fantastically confusing, eminently satisfying, and bafflingly brilliant, and Everybody's A Fuckin' Expert is no different.
PS There's double vinyl of this too, we'd be listing it now but our supplier accidentally sent us the wrong record, whoops. However, we'll have copies early next week, fyi...
A few years back, we flipped the fuck out when we discovered one of our favorite records from the nineties, heck, one of our favorite records EVER, was getting reissued. It was a record we were so obsessed with, we had actually been considering trying to reissue it ourselves. That record was 1994's Discus, by the mighty Strapping Fieldhands, and for those of you who have yet to experience the sheer genius of the Fieldhands, you need to right that wrong. Trust us. While all their records were amazing, Discus remains their classic, a bizarre concoction of bedroom recorded indie rock, mixed with a sort of British style skiffle, all tangled up into a constantly shifting collection of perfect pop, obtuse avant sound collage, ramshackle jangle. In a way, they were like a more cerebral (but equally drunken) Guided By Voices, but WAY more twisted and noisy and at times totally WTF? But for all that fucked up noisiness and bizarre psychedelia, they were absolute masters of the pop song, albeit in an utterly, and gloriously bastardized form. Okay, so what are we getting at, this is not a review of Discus. But what it IS, is a review of a brand new band called Sparrow Steeple, boasting most of the same members, and sonically not that far removed from the Fieldhands mothership.
We had no idea this band even existed until the band showed up at aQ and dropped off two of their albums (we do have limited copies of the other one, if you want one (and you DO), just ask), and just knowing it was Fieldhands related, we were prepared to be blown away, and it did not disappoint. Super lo-fi, warmly and warped, but so impossibly masterfully poppy. Opener "Hamlet Egg Sandwich" sounds like GBV mixed with the Frogs, a lilting, stumbling gem, moody and heartfelt and fantastically twisted. Which quite honestly could describe most of the songs here. There's fluttery flute, loose, ramshackle drumming, strummed acoustic guitars, "Domino Mary" is total lysergic folk, it sounds like some seventies UK acid folk filtered through some avant indie baroque pop weirdness, while "Daydream Criminal", almost sounds like Texas outsider rock heroes Complete - dirgey, knuckle dragging, plenty of wah guitar, sounding like it was recorded in an airplane hangar, with the occasional guitar squalls overloading the tape, and transforming the sound into a weird pop-noise drone. The rest of the disc unwinds woozily, "Mantis", "Scared Of Joe Care" and "The Likkie Song" each a lysergic fragment of freaky folk, again, the Frogs vibe is huge, and we don't make that comparison lightly. Until finally, SS finish off with "Tuscany", a warbly psych jam, that sounds like the sounds, the intruments, the notes, the vocals, everything, are all gradually melting into some prismatic pool of viscous psychedelic sound. Goddamn, this is so good. Anyone who misses the days of the Fieldhands, the Frogs, Sentridoh, the Supreme Dicks and all that fucked up freakiness, this is for you.
Finally available on vinyl! After a tape and a couple 7"s, comes the much anticipated debut full length from this new crew of SF psych rockers, who by now should be quite familiar to fans of other Bay Area psychedelic space rock and garage rock, cuz if you dig Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Sleepy Sun, Carlton Melton and all the rest, as well as Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees and the like these guys should be right there in your space/psych pantheon. And while the spacier of those other bands tend toward the more droned out and krautrocky, these guys are much more classically rocking, melding a love of Spacemen 3 and other dronier drug rock with the classics, the Velvets, the Doors, even the Stooges, their songs simple and trancelike, plenty of jangle and simpler stripped down drum stomp, the vocals wreathed in reverb, and nestled in the mix, the guitars alternately chugging and crunchy, chiming and melodic, transforming simple pop songs into something more mesmerizingly hypnotic. Even album opener, Lonely Eye on the surface is simple and spare, but over the course of its nearly 5 minutes, it gets to the point where it could go on forever, and we'd sit there glassy eyed and blissed out.
Some of the other tracks are more garagey, like "Disguise", which should totally have Oh Sees fans flipping their lids, although the sound here hews much closer to old garage classics like the Fuzztones or the Lyres, which is most definitely not a bad thing. In fact if anything, much of this new record definitely leans toward that more stripped down garage rock sound, with fuzzy guitar, wandering basslines and fuzzy organs, but here and there, like on "Calling Out Your Name" the band unleash a riff that KILLS, in the case of "COYN", it's a dead ringer for the Stooges, one that the band could have ridden hard, but instead of getting all swaggery, the band sort of blisses out, applying multiple layers of guitars and upping the psych quotient considerably, not to mention some cool rhythmic weirdness, which lurks throughout the record, and reveals itself on repeated and closer listens.
And so it goes, the whole record, a killer collection of super hooky, spaced out psychedelic garage pop gems, the sort of sound we can't get enough of, and the sort of sound that should definitely position these guys alongside other garage/space/psych rock luminaries, and again if you dig Crystal Stilts, Thee Oh Sees, Wooden Shjips, or any of the other above mentioned bands, and have not checked these guys out, do yourself a favor...
We've been huge fans of the Stars Of The Lid ever since their first record, Music For Nitrous Oxide, way back in 1995. And their last record, Tired Sounds Of... is a beloved favorite and all time AQ best seller. It's been fascinating to observe their sonic development, from murky guitar based 4-track bedroom guitar drones, all foggy and fuggy and murky and dreamlike, to their current sound, a more modern, almost classical sound, of rich reverberant swells, and lots and lots of space.
The Stars' sound has obviously become much more clear and well defined, polished even, but everything we loved about Nitrous Oxide is still present, albeit in slightly altered form. The Stars' were always about swells, ebb and flow, melodies and compositions played out over expansive stretches of oceanic shimmer, and that at least hasn't changed on And Their Refinement Of The Decline. Notes aren't just played, they begin as tiny sparkles, little distant glimmers, and gradually grow into thick rich whirs, or massive rumbles, before just as quickly fading away again. Oceanic is definitely an apt descriptor, as the music here, as on the more recent records, does have that feel, like some epic dimly lit sonic sea swirling and churning, sometime tranquil and barely moving, other times heaving and tumultuous. It's the sound of a new dawn, an impending storm, or the birth of a galaxy, it's so completely epic while at the same time managing somehow to be pastoral and contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful.
In the early days it was just 2 guitars and a four track, and the sound reflected that, much more gritty and fuzzy, the mood a lot darker, evoking the desert, the starry sky, a druggy dreamy innerspace of muted minimal shimmer. As the band grew, and added instruments, more players, recorded in real studios, the sound changed dramatically, and suddenly, instead of some indie bedroom project, the Stars were crafting pieces that could stand alongside any modern classical piece, while remaining dreamy and drone-y enough to tickle the ears of indie dronesters worldwide. Which is probably the most fascinating part of the Stars' sound. They were making music equally as expansive and epic and gorgeous 10 years ago, but those sounds were limited by the technology, by the band's meager recording set up. And only now it seems that the band is able to fully realize the sound they have been hearing, and essentially creating, all along.
There are guitars here and there, it is after all still the root of their sound, but they seem to be overshadowed by the other instruments (although it is often difficult to pinpoint the instrument creating many of the sounds), heavy on the strings, three violincelles and a harp, as well as a surprising arsenal of horns, two trumpets, flugelhorn and clarinet, AND a children's choir!! But it's not just the players or the instruments, but how they interact and the music they create, and here the results are divine. Many of the tracks do sound like bits of modern classical stretched out into languorous stretches of muted drone and subtle shimmer, like watching the planets from outer space, observing the epic drifts of solar systems and an infinity of cosmic interactions, but others definitely reference more earthly sonic treasures, "Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)" has some serious Morricone going on, and "Don't Bother They're Here" references Scott Tuma's washed out guitar work in Souled American. But whatever subtle flavor is introduced into each track, the sound is definitely and distinctly Stars Of The Lid. Their shift to double disc releases also seems to suit them, allowing their slow burning soft swell compositions plenty of time to sprawl and spread and evolve into epic and soul stirring soundscapes. But even two discs is not nearly enough as far as we're concerned, so everyone buy this one, so next time, these guys can release a four disc set, or a ten disc set or a twenty disc set...
YAY! At last, reissued on vinyl again! Here's our original review when it first came out, circa 2001 (and was a Record Of The Week then, too)...
Epic double cd (make that triple lp) masterpiece from Austin, Texas' kings of the lullaby drone. Stars of the Lid's sound, while similar to past efforts, has undergone some pretty dramatic changes. Their multi-layered 4-tracked guitars are still present in all their serene beauty and dark tranquility, but the sound is more lush and more detailed, with treated strings, organs, backwards tubular bells and field recordings adding even more depth to this already layered and impossible-to-grasp-in-one-listen recording. 'Tired Sounds...' is easily the Stars' most obviously melodic record, thanks in no small part to the addition of strings, horns and piano. Dreamy nocturnal slow motion drones are the glorious backdrop to the ebb and flow of dark sonic swells and soaring strings. While lots of 'drone' music sounds sinister and threatening, and often clinical and cold, the Stars manage to imbue their minimal soundscapes with warmth and humanity, and a sort of hope and joy. When the mood does change, it's more melancholic, lost, maybe lonely, never evil. Really human, organic emotions brilliantly conveyed through sound. So much avant / experimental music is technical and electronic, but the shimmering ambience of the guitars and the grit and grime of the recording, as well as the perfect arrangements make this music transcend its contemporaries, filling your ears with thick slow sound, until it slowly spreads through your whole body. Think Angus Maclise, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Low, Alan Lamb's wire recordings, Pauline Oliveros' deep listening recordings, a more pastoral Skullflower, a more idyllic Total, John Cale, Godspeed You Black Emperor, the harmonium works of Hermann Nitsch, or Tony Conrad. But mix in those magic (non-academic) ingredients (rock background, songs, melodies) and you have probably one of the most beautiful recordings we have ever heard.
Sutures is the rare musical beast that appeals to both freaks who like to get weird on the dance floor late at night, in dingy basements and sketchy clubs, as well as those who would rather hole up at home alone, and enter different dimensions while blasting these murky and hypnotic sounds.
We hear elements of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voiltaire and Coil filtered through a dark techno lens in these nocturnal, narcotic sounding tracks. Listening to Sutures makes us want to be in a pitch dark space filled with smoke machines, fucked up projections and piercing strobe lights.
This cassette is an awesome blast of crunchy, industrial-techno left-field dance music. It's the kind of music that punkers and weirdos would call dance music, but most people who go to traditional dance parties would find way too alien or dark to get down to. As if we even needed to tell you, it's pretty clear where aQ stands on that spectrum. If we're gonna let loose and let the music move us, we want our soundtrack to be as haunting, propelling, warped and dizzyingly tripped out as the sounds Sutures conjure up here!
Another nod to Hellraiser is found in the title to this vinyl only release from the larger than life project Theologian. Lee M. Bartow, the author and creator of Theologian's death-synth epics, has stated that Clive Barker's horror stories are fundamental to his work, even referencing the Hellraiser books as his bible in various interviews. In this quote, we are introduced to the puzzle box that when solved opens a portal into another plane of existence, with any number of demonic characters to be found on the other side, Pinhead included. The roar of big machines endlessly churning, boiling, and grinding with an infernal purpose is heard throughout this album, with the side long B-side "Truthseeker's Pick" emerging as some sort of hellish field recording of sulfuric vents, locomotive clatter, and metal-on-metal clank with nothing but misery and pain to be experienced in such a realm. The album's introductory track "God Comes As A Wall" finds Theologian screaming into the void of a collapsed black hole, crushing rock, building, planets into a singular thrum of cataclysmic white noise. "The Sun Failed To Rise Today" is a continuation of the plodding industrial dirges that Theologian crafted on the mighty Some Things Have To Be Endured, spiralling with spectral noise, megalithic rhythms, and soaring mechanized screams. The shortest number makes for one of the more intriguing pieces in "Surface Of The Real" with its subaquatic techno pulsations bracing the clarion melodies for guitar and / or voice. Limited to 500 copies.
Giancarlo Toniutti has certainly increased his activity around the turn of 2009, having released two new compositions after going almost a decade between records; and now, he's authorized a hefty overview of his early work, with a forthcoming boxset on Vinyl-On-Demand and this cd reissue of La Mutazione, originally released on Broken Flag back in 1985. Toniutti is earnestly long-winded in his academic defense of his work, speaking in highly technical terms and with willfully obscure references (i.e. the semio-cosmologist Rene Thom and the idiosyncrasies of the Athabascan dialect, seriously); and cd booklet of La Mutazione comes with a signature essay from the man on how this work came to be and what theoretical ideas revolve around these sounds.
The three tracks on this disc (the two original cuts on the LP and a unreleased bonus track) harken to
the early '80s as Toniutti darkened of cosmic electronics from the likes of Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Conrad Schnitzler through the lens of Whitehouse, Nurse With Wound, and Throbbing Gristle. At the time, Toniutti had just matriculated from the Conservatory of Venice with a heady amount of education in Stockhausen, Schaefer, etc. These three musical poles come together in this dark, dark, dark construction of layered static, analog synth explorations, and even some field recording. The totemically named track "The Tree" situates upon an oppressive drone of low frequencies scraped by waves of radio static, which parallels the early work of John Duncan in many ways. Throughout "The Tree," Toniutti injects a lugubrious bubbling of synthetic notes with similarities to the untrained atonalism that Maurizio Bianchi had grafted to the cancerous power electronics of Regel and Das Testament from the early '80s. Those same synth notes snap into a morose two note melody on the aptly named "Nekrose," which is even darker in atmosphere and creepy intensity than the first. The bonus track "Apoplettica" is a darkened delay exploration with clanking loops and unsettled harmonic drones that foreshadows the guttural psychedelic blackening that Mark McGuire alludes to in Emeralds.
A triumph back then, and a triumph now.
The only straightforward statement found on Counterchronology's densely worded liner notes is downright blunt: "Tiziano is dead." Aside from that one somber fact, the archeological ruminations of this recording are laboriously complex; but here's what we can gather. In September of 1993, the Italian vanguardist Giancarlo Toniutti came across two cassettes that contained material dating as far back as 1979, marking some of his earliest recording then in concert with a character named Tiziano Dominighini. He shelved them once again for another decade when he rediscovered the material to hold a number of open-ended / freeform recordings of Giancarlo and Tiziano clamoring about the glassworks shop run by Dominghini's father along with various environmental recordings, sparse yet maltreated guitar splutter, automatic writings, art brut actions, and long-form chord organ drones. In repurposing the musical interludes and provisional collages from those tapes, Toniutti sought to aggregate the sounds in such a manner as to maintain the something of an integrity from the originals while configuring the more naive gestures with the hand of a mature electroacoustic composer. On the near 34-minute first track, Toniutti weaves haptic events in varying degrees of density upon a bed of those long-form organ chords, with unhinged filter sweeps diving deep into cascading deep low-end rumblings. There's an extemporaneous psychedelic quality to much of the percussive burblings that hold aesthetic similarities to Angus MacLise, AMM, Z'ev, certain facets to the early Nurse With Wound continuum, and the most shambolic / abstract participants of the global freakfolk explosion from a couple years back. The shorter 10-minute second piece slowly blossoms from a deep bellowing thrum with desolated sibilance into a frenzied clamor on junked metal accompanied by distant flutes and strange utterances, both detouring from and complementing the first piece quite nicely. As rewarding as he is challenging, Giancarlo Toniutti continues to impress.
As listed on our in-betweener last week, this aQ Record Of The Week from last year is now again available on vinyl, we'd only had a few before (in fact, it was only the cd version we had been able to list as Record Of The Week at the time). And it's a bit cheaper now too. We ALSO just got in on vinyl a Volume 2 of Cold Waves Of Color, which we'll hopefully list next time!! (If you want one now, please just ask).
Anyway, here's our review of Volume 1 again, if you missed it...
Do you like runaway drum machines? Dubby echo? Danceable DIY '80s underground electronics? Homebrewed minimal electro pop? The Vox Populi! anthology we made a Record Of The Week last year? All the many cool synthwave reissues on Dark Entries? Then please give THIS your attention, you won't be sorry.
The Color Tapes label - later known as Color Discs for the vinyl editions - was the cottage industry of UK art-rock synthesist Gary Ramon, who with the music documented on this collection, sort of comes across like a new wave doppleganger of Cleaners From Venus. And there actually was a split cassette release between Cleaners From Venus and Ramon's band Modern Art (who later morphed into psychrockers Sun Dial) from 1986 or so. Here was a prolific songwriter of coldly sequenced and somewhat quirky minimal wave albums, mostly all of which were released on cassette with a small audience that radiated outward from the coastal village of Waltham, England. He, along with a loose collective, recorded in a handful of interchangeable projects - Modern Art, Mystery Plane, and WeR7 being three with the largest discographies, each with at least a dozen albums recorded in a six to eight year period. The former two projects later warranted vinyl anthologies from Vinyl On Demand; and it seems that the interest in this material blossomed from there.
Ramon and his cohorts were a talented bunch, following the rabbit-hole of darkly minded electronica. Think Factory, Sheffield, Industrial Records, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, and all of those Wire side-projects and you'll be able to triangulate the sound of Color Tapes. There was a knack for the pop-hook and the death-disco backbeat present this material that makes all of this material age very well. The opening track to the comp is from Berserk In The Hayfields, with its clamorous electro-bongo fills girded to a taut techno pulse sounds very prescient of the Belgian EBM scene some five or six years later. Live Of Angels and The Lord were two non-Ramon projects and both peddled in weird-science blorp and effects-happy guitars above spry programming. But the strongest material is through the streamlined step sequences and deft rhythms that showcase Ramon's engineering prowess.
Note there are two bonus tracks on the cd not found on the wax, unfortunately.
There was a time where scenes could exist totally isolated from the rest of the world. When it took months, not minutes, for music to find its way to the far ends of the earth. And when artists were forced to make music with very little knowledge of what was going on thousands of miles away. That said, who would argue that things aren't better now? There's no end to the amazing music we can discover these days with just the push of a button, instead of writing letters and waiting months. However, there are still scenes that may be super fertile, and producing incredible music, but for whatever reason, are barely known outside of the city/state/country. But all it takes is one obsessive music nerd, one obsessive DJ, or someone in the scene who decides it's time for the rest of the world to dig what's been going on, to change all that.
So we had very little knowledge about modern Peruvian music, electronic or otherwise. Most of our musical love was for seventies Peruvian psych and chicha music. But goddamn if this collection of modern electronic music didn't flip our lids. We had never heard of single one of these artists, but apparently they're all big deals in Peru, Lima specifically, which according to the liner notes is South America's party capital. These jams mix techno, house, electro, dubstep, and plenty of South American instruments and melodies, into a pretty sweet concoction of bass heavy beats, moody grooves, buzzing dancefloor blowouts, goofy blip-bloops, and some tracks that have a serious Afro-Latin vibe, maybe our faves of the bunch, which sound like they could have been plucked off some Sublime Frequencies dance mix (if there was such a thing, why is there NOT?). We won't bother going track by track, and odds are the names of the bands won't mean any more to you, but if you dig wild dance music, Afrobeat, Latin grooves, or any psychedelic electronica, odds are you'll find lots here to love.
