We planned on reviewing this for our last list, but got a little slammed and forgot, oops! But no matter, because in the meantime, we managed to catch an Aevangelist live set at the first incarnation of California Deathfest the other day! And boy, was it ridiculous. Already we were convinced that Aevangelist was one of thee most bizzare, psychotic bands we have heard recently, but seeing 'em live totally confirmed it! THREE guitarists, one looking like some lost member of Coal Chamber, a keyboardist, and a saxophonist (and, yeah, bass and drums too). It perfectly translated the songs on this record into a live experience, a huge warped wall of sound, sometimes totally metal, other times just a psychedelic mass of chaos.
So we come to the record itself: Enthrall To The Void Of Bliss is a twisted mass of psychotic riffage and insanity-inducing atmospherics, total musical madness and sonic depravity. Weird vocals that have no problem shifting between out-and-out slamz style gutturals, black metal shrieking, and operatic howls. Sometimes the songs have so much happening at once, it almost feels like two totally different songs playing simultaneously. Samples, organ, some sort of harp instrument, and saxophone combine with the already massive sounding guitars and drums and vocals to create an even bigger, grosser wall of sound. Take the dense and lysergic doom-laden death and black riffage of some of those recent Ajna Offensive bands like Saturnalia Temple and Aluk Todolo and combine them with the total WTF? weirdness of Sigh and throw in some seriously hateful riffing of Nuclear War Now! style war metal and you're sorta getting the idea here. You also get songs like "Alchemy" and "Meditation of Transcendental Evil" which totally come out of nowhere, being witch-housey, programmed-drum numbers that may not sound like the other tracks on here but somehow still completely fit in to the total carnival-like madness. Totally a must-listen for fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, Mitochondrian, Saturnalia Temple, Sigh, and anything on Crucial Blast.
"Come a little closer," Victoria Legrand croons on "All Your Yeahs", inviting us to lean in to Beach House's new (nearly surprise) release, Thank Your Lucky Stars. Trailing their last album by only a handful of weeks, really, it'd be easy to see Thank Your Lucky Stars as no more than a sequel to the highly-hyped, velvet-coated opus that was Depression Cherry. However, Thank Your Lucky Stars stands on its own. Its shoegazey guitar solos weave their way through warm synth melodies (notably on "One Thing") and Legrand's vocals shine through more clearly than on past releases. This album is a bit of a darker and heavier take on their style of twinkly, extra-terrestrial style of dream pop. The weight can be felt most on this album's twisted and tortured B-side tracks "Rough Song" and "Elegy to the Void". But, with the perfect amount of lo-fi fuzz and room to breathe between each song, we're given the time to appreciate how simply beautiful this album is. Every other Beach House release has felt like the soundtrack to a loving embrace. Thank Your Lucky Stars reaches out to us as honest reassurance on the nights where we feel alone remind us that, though we are each singular stars, we reside in a sky populated with billions of constellations.
(Compact disc version forthcoming, but this was such a rush release they didn't get it done at the same time as the vinyl.)
Greenferno is the latest cloud of sickly sweet, Satanic, sonic bongsmoke from these Polish stoner heavies, and if the band name, and the album name, and the song titles ("Diabolical Dopenosis", "Inhale In Hell", "Undertoker", and "Goat Smokin Blues") didn't clue you in, these guys traffic in wasted riffage, massive Sabbathy stoner sludge, which as always, owes much to all the other bong-bands that came before (Bong Ripper, Bongzilla, and, er, Bong!), but these guys are HEAVY, and have some serious swagger and swing. It's tough to pull of instrumental music without being boring, but somehow, these extended jams are totally hypnotic, and super dynamic, lumbering from churning doomic crush, to more laid back, psychedelic slither. There are some stoner appropriate samples here and there of course, but really, it's about the RIFFS, and the vibe, and these guys are doped out masters. Every track here (the shortest clocking in at a still respectable 6 minutes) delivers bleary eared blasts of blown out heaviosity, wild shredding, FX drenched leads, epic drum pound, all of it utterly headbangable, but also head noddingly drugged-out. We consider ourselves pretty serious connoisseurs of stoner metal, even the non stoners among us (maybe ESPECIALLY the non-stoners), and these guys are definitely amongst our favorite sonic bong slingers. Totally recommended for those jonesing for some seriously wasted, skull crushing, mind expanding, stoner bliss!
Latest transmission of mysterious, hazy sonics from this longtime aQ fave, a super limited tape that once again demonstrates Berber Ox's ability to wring pathos and emotion from field recordings and sculpted soft noise.
This time around, things start with a sprawl of grey crumble, and gradually, from within this cloud of sound surfaces the sounds of what appears to be the seaside? Birds, voices, the occasional horn, children laughing... The vibe is very tranquil, aside from the strange muffled voice, that is seemingly projected from an old loudspeaker, but really, the whole thing is transformed by the ambient cloud wreathing those disembodied sounds. Subtle melodies surface through, so subtle in fact, that they almost seem like mirages. It definitely requires attentive listening, and some headphones, but the rewards are great, it's easy to get deeply lost in this deceptively simple arrangement of sound.
The rest of the tape is equally beguiling - muted thrums, softly psychedelic tones, processed sounds mutated into smears and blurs, buried percussion constructed from sonic detritus, never quite allowed to coalesce into a proper rhythms, instead, used to add texture and timbre, occasionally slipping into lovely minimal drifts, while often seeming to dissolve into shapeless streaks of monochromatic sound, usually grey sky-ing some sonic snippet of everyday life, overcast, haunting, melancholy, and utterly mesmerizing.
Nicely packaged and extremely limited. We got these direct from the label, and while we will hopefully be able to get more, it's certainly possible that these are the last copies we'll see.
We can't believe it's been five years since Doug Hream Blunt himself walked into our store and consigned his self-released recordings of home-brewed, proto-chillwave dance funk, recorded with washy and chirpy synths and genuinely out there guitar solos, with songs about dancing, fly guys and ladies' butts. Kind of a smoother Wesley Willis (ok, much smoother!) with Jimi Hendrix dreams, Blunt's genuinely infectious musical enthusiasm shined through on each track. We made Gentle Persuasion record of the week back in 2010, without knowing much about its backstory. Doug was very vague on details too, saying the recording was from 2000, but we believe that was when it was pressed, but not recorded. Having suffered a stroke a few years before, he couldn't go into great length about the recording at the time (he's doing much better now, as evidenced by our recent record signing event!), but we had an inkling that the recordings were known in certain crate-digger / DJ circles, which were immediately confirmed once we had it on our website and orders from all over the world started pouring in.
Seriously, we have sold tons of his release, and now lo and behold, Doug is finally having his well-deserved, big moment of larger recognition and discovery via David Byrne's Luaka Bop label, with this reissue of his complete recordings which include the two previously self-released discs we previously listed: Gentle Persuasion and Big Top, remastered and put together for the first time - these tracks have never sounded better! A lo-fi but breezy outsider funk, made with repetitive cheap-sounding keyboards loops and tones (the kind being currently exploited by Dam-Funk, Ariel Pink, and James Pants, all Doug Hream Blunt fans by the way), strange metallic tropical guitar tones that sound more like steel drums and flute sounds than actual guitar, and sly, laidback vocals and catchy, infectiously naive grooves that work their way into our heads and never let go. So delightful!!
And we finally get more of the story behind these recordings: Back in 1985, when Doug was 35, he decided he wanted to learn guitar and found an extended learning class called 'How To Form A Band' run by Victor Flaviani out of his garage. Victor taught Doug the guitar, even though Victor barely knew the instrument himself, and Doug set about writing and recording the songs with his other class mates. We remember seeing the video of Gentle Persuasion we found on Vimeo from a cable access TV video with Doug and what seemed to be an all-girl band, which turns out were his fellow classmates, which included Victor and his wife Angela too on drums and guitar respectively.
It's pretty phenomenal that this record went from getting the suspicious side-eye when we first took it in on consignment, five years ago, to becoming one of our favorite "WTF?" records ever. Not that it's so impossibly strange, but it's a genuine home-grown San Francisco DIY funk artifact with minimal ambitions that is finally being turned on to a larger audience, and we couldn't be happier for Doug! For fans of that Personal Space compilation of private press electronic soul, Dam-Funk, Ariel Pink or Dean Blunt, who apparently took the Blunt name in tribute to Doug!
Download code included with the vinyl btw. Also btw, if you missed the remix 12" that Luaka Bop put out as a teaser for this earlier this year for Record Store Day, we still have three or four signed copies of that left in stock...
The debut recording by these legendary Texan drug punks, finally available again on vinyl! Brown Reason To live was the Surfers' first record, a seven song ep, originally released in 1983, and reissued later bundled onto a cd with their live PCPP ep, but as good as that live stuff was/is, these tracks all on their own constitute one of THEE legendary punk rock records EVER. And we say punk rock knowing full well that the Buttholes' version of punk rock had almost nothing in common with what the rest of the world at the time considered punk.
These songs are damaged and disturbing, wild and chaotic, extended stumbling lysergic blowouts, as likely to erupt into a strange woozy sea shanty or a bit of twangy gallop as a blown out blast of pounding punk, moreso really. And while the sound here is not as overtly whatthefuck as the records that would come right after, it's weird enough that you could tell something freaky was going on, and you can hear the seeds that would blossom into that the Surfers eventually became. The Buttholes merged the punk sounds that surrounded them, with their own twisted take on DIY music making, not to mention lots and lots and lots and lots of drugs. All of these songs are timeless, total classics, but "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave" is practically a punk rock anthem, or no less than the genre's swan song. Depending on how you look at it, maybe both. For the band anyway, the track was every bit a standard as "Free Bird" was for Skynyrd. Listening to this again now, it seems insane that a band like this - who at one time seemed destined to a life of cult obscurity - achieved such enormous mainstream success. It's all urine under the bridge now though, we try to ignore the last few releases and focus on the years when the Butthole Surfers were untouchable ('83-'88?), and this is where it all started, a ferocious fucked up chunk of drug addled genius called Brown Reason To Live.
Finally these celebrated Portland, Oregon heavy metal heroes (and heroine!!!) are BACK, with their long awaited third opus. We've been huge fans of the band since their debut album, Agony & Opium, which in fact we made a Record Of The Week in 2010, and then 2012's Possession also had us slobbering. But that was three long years ago, not sure what happened to slow Christian Mistress's seemingly considerable momentum at the time, we know they had some line up issues, and also a weird dispute with Kanye West bizarrely enough (he stole their logo or something, WTF?), but anyway we're glad that at last they're rolling and rocking again! Saw 'em a couple months back playing down the road at The Elbo Room and they were on fire, sounding as good as ever which is saying a lot 'cause they've always ripped. Furthermore, their not-so-secret weapon, and crucial X-factor, the husky, extra special voice of Christine Davis, was soooo nice to hear again. The new songs they played had us even more excited about the impending album, here is is, and yeah, great stuff! Typically for the band, it's very classic '70s/'80s styled metal, speedy when they wanna be but often chugging along at a midpaced lope, allowing Davis to shine, she's in top form here for sure. Soaring melodies, shredding solos, headbanging riffs, a vibe that's triumphant and majestically emotive - even some acoustic guitars and moments for you to flick your lighter in the air...
Heck, we've raved about them so much before, do we need to add a lot more? Should be sufficient to say that they haven't lost a step, To Your Death delivers the traditional, well-crafted, memorably melodic heavy METAL that we expect from Christian Mistress, thank the gods! If you dig real old school sounding bands like High Spirits and Slough Feg and you don't have all three Christian Mistress albums in your collection, get with the program, poser!!
There's undoubtably a secret history to this album, one that will never be known as the founding / principle members John Balance and Peter Christopherson have both died in the past decade. Backwards was the Coil album that was slated for release sometime in the mid-to-late '90s on Trent Reznor's Nothing imprint, with various declarations of its pending release sporadically offered as a monumental tease to Coil's fanbase. To track the history a little bit: Coil released their groundbreaking album Love's Secret Domain in 1992 and began crafting the tracks for Backwards during a period of searching that took Balance & Christopherson to New Orleans back to England and finally onto Bangkok. Whilst in New Orleans, Coil (then fleshed out with Danny Hyde and Drew McDowell) recorded a what would become the Backwards album; but for reasons that always seemed opaque, the tapes sat dormant. Lawyers at Interscope and Universal could be to blame for the fact that Coil refused to deliver the tapes. Some fifteen years later, Christopherson would remix those tapes into The New Backwards, an album that represented his final vision of what that material could be; and some of those songs and tracks had made their way onto other Coil albums and as compilation contributions in some remixed form or another. But finally, FINALLY, there's now the posthumous release of Coil's Backwards, engineered into this current form by then Coil engineer / member Danny Hyde.
If anything, Coil were a baroque proposition; and Backwards is very much a baroque album, with a kitchen sink of electronics and live instrumentation liberally saturated throughout the cryptically serpentine synth-pop sensibility that made Coil such a unique band. Skittering, static pulse sequences formed the basis to much of Backwards, alternating between darkly lysergic dance numbers and ballast-heavy marches of somber, twisted, and / or malignant thought. The titular track is certainly a standout with Balance chanting amidst scurrying, hectic collages, countered by the swaggering hip-sway of the rhythm track - very much in keeping with what Coil had done on Love's Secret Domain. The immediate next track "Amber Rain", with its impassioned vocal hymn from Balance and an melancholy melody for synthetic piano, looks forward to what Coil would later do on Musick To Play In The Dark. Hindsight is 20-20, and of course, this album has been claimed to be - and should be seen - as the transition between those two landmark works by Coil. The original version of "Heaven's Blade" did get a much better makeover on the Ape Of Naples in 2005, but here it stands as a proto drill'n'bass number of compressed breakbeats and a splattered tapestry of occluded electronics amidst Balance's vocals. Many more rich, dark, and sordid details await on Backwards - a very welcome entry in the already hallowed Coil canon.
We've reviewed (and raved about!!) composer Mario Diaz De Leon's music before, but those were always his projects for electronics and guitars, a kind of dronedoom minimalism meets synthed-out psychedelic planetarium show music, heavy and hypnotic (one of our faves being his album Hypnos, which we made a Record Of The Week). But, De Leon is also a composer for larger ensembles, in somewhat more of an academic chamber music mold. He had a great album of such compositions on John Zorn's Tzadik label a while back, and now this labyrinth-themed one (twists and turns and inner discovery) on Denovali, featuring three pieces commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble, who perform these works.
The first two tracks both feature electronic Morse code bursts of static & distortion interjected amidst more typically orchestral, melodic (but sometimes equally maniacal) instrumentation. The first one, "Luciform", is for flute and electronics; the second, "The Soul Is The Arena", for bass clarinet and electronics, and both at times sound like some eerie '60s sci-fi soundtrack, such as Alexander Courage's Star Trek music, but overrun by drone-snippets of video-game glitch and buzz-blurt, all of it carefully/crazily patterned and ordered. It can be a bit dizzying and disorienting, in a good way, but often pretty and pleasant too.
Then, the third track, "Portals Before Dawn" is the disc's big finale, a slowly unfurling twenty minutes of many moods, performed by the entire Ensemble, with flutes, clarinets, piano and percussion, alongside De Leon's synths. He's woven together a genuine epic, at turns blissfully mesmeric, eerily suspenseful, dense and dramatic, and gorgeously majestic. Bravo!
While it's already established that Mario Diaz De Leon can make great albums entirely on his own, we do hope he gets more opportunities/commissions to work with ensembles like this in the future, 'cause while it's not so rare to hear someone doing cool stuff with synths, you don't get to hear that juxtaposed with the various chamber music textures heard here, nearly as often.
A marvelous haunted-pop ep from Sweden's' Death & Vanilla, who reprises two of the best tracks on their 2015 album To Where The Wild Things Are. The titular track and "Follow The Light" are blithe tracks of bachelor pad psychedelic poptunes with a soft focus of sexy spookiness rendered through mellotrons and sampled harpsichords accompanying the tremolo fuzzed guitars and the breathy delivery from Death & Vanilla's chanteuse Marleen Nilsson. Two unreleased tracks find their way onto the B-side with a radiophonic track of Derbyshire-ish analogue percolations leading into a triumphantly cinematic number that should make Morricone stand up and take notice. A repeating motif for a wordlessly vocalized melody builds through an groovy piece of avant-pop tension, only to collapse into a swirling melancholy where Nilsson's soft focus voice and an acoustic guitar are the lone protagonists amidst all of Death & Vanilla's vibrato trills and tremolo frills. As we said, marvelous!
If Martin Newell from Cleaners From Venus or Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices somehow grew up in the sleepy San Diego suburb of La Mesa, CA in the seventies, managed to secure a bunch of instruments and recording equipment from garage sales and swap meets and then recorded in their bedroom an elegiac ode to the ordinary charm and civic pride of their childhood hometown, you would get something very close to this brilliantly lo-fi slab of DIY bizarro-pop wondrousness!
Recorded in 1984 by Joseph D'Angelo and a handful of friends, At The Medieval Castle Nineteen 100-Year Lifetimes Since (one of the best titles ever!), is the kind of obscure scrappy visionary recording (along with the likes of Daniel Johnston, Sun City Girls and The Frogs) that is embedded in the DNA of so many indie bands that came afterward - from Yo La Tengo and The Supreme Dicks to The Unicorns and the bands of The Elephant 6 collective. It's a hotly Technicolor teenage daydream of nostalgic childhood, of Sears Christmas catalogs, Disneyland, skate parks and summer carnivals, that is slowly fading away, as some songs here delve into more ornery young adult concerns, like the psychedelic pseudo anti-drug PSA of "An Open Letter To The Seniors From Mackenzie". Layered riffs of guitar, horns, organs and drum machines, sometimes used in pondering twee instrumentals, but more often in wide-eyed and wobbly surreal psych-pop confections, seemingly sung by earnest but very warped high schoolers. In our minds we can imagine Departmentstore Santas trying to enter this record in a city wide talent contest sponsored by the local chamber of commerce and barely squeaking by with an honorable mention from a baffled jury. So very great and weird!! Thanks to the folks at Superior Viaduct for digging out this obscurity. A must have for fans of any of the above bands/artists mentioned!
We may have unfairly pegged local guitarist Matt Baldwin. His records are big time faves around here, gorgeous mesmerizing guitarscapes, from raga infused psychedelic folk to Fripp / Rother style cosmic guitar explorations, we sell them like crazy, and they get played all the time in the store as well, so when it cam time to review a recent release on Baldwin's Psychic Arts label, we were all prepared for some blissed out guitarscapery, but instead, we got Cryptic Cross, a twisted lo-fi weirdo metal band from the East Bay, whose sound was murky and buzzy and psychedelic and sort of insane, and really about as far as you can get from Baldwin's solo records. So we were determined not to make the same mistake with this most recent Psychic Arts release, from the strangely named Dragontime, another group from Oakland, the cd featuring some cool psychedelic Rainbow Brite style paste on cover art, that definitely points to something a bit on the weird side.
And it's that artwork that maybe gives the biggest clue to what's going on here, cuz it's as far removed from the warped metal of Cryptic Cross as it is from Matt Baldwin's records. The opening track is all pulsing rhythms and synth swirls, kind of new agey, a little bit like video game music, a bit of swirly kosmische shimmer, quite cool actually, but definitely not what we were expecting, a sort of prismatic glistening rainbowscape. The second tracks adds ethereal female vox, and it's transformed into a soundtrack to some low budget fantasy film, a little 4AD, a little swoonsome shoegaze dreampop. After that the record continues to mutate and shift, from fuzzy, warbly organ minimalism, to an almost jazzy sounding lo-fi synth heavy tropical ballad, and from strange alien Asian video game folk music, all processed vox and dreamy melodies, to a murky, softly buzz shimmerscape, and from skeletal sun dappled folk pop, to droned out ominous cinematic synthscapery.
Definitely far out, and seriously super cool too, a little like a female Fastest, conjuring up her own sort of 8-bit shoegaze soundworld, that we can't seem to stop listening to...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered!
Yowza. Hells to the yeah. It's Fuzz II time. If'n you don't know, Fuzz is the stomping heavy psych power trio featuring garage pop wunderkind Ty Segall (playing the flailin' drums) as well as the Ty Segall Band's Charlie Moothart, wailin' on the guitar, and rounding out the trio, Chad from The Meatbodies is now their bassist. After a couple brilliant singles, Fuzz released their eponymous debut in 2013, blowing us away and earning Record Of The Week honors at aQ. Now they're back... with another ROTW, natch!
Fuzz II means the next level of Fuzz. Advanced Fuzz. Definitely more Fuzz - there's 14 tracks here, some short blasts, but others mega jams - including a lengthy, 13+ minute album-ending epic freakout that is apparently titled "II" (yes, a numbered album with a title track, brilliant!).
Of course, if you call your band Fuzz, that's what you gotta deliver. And they sure do, job number one. Lots and lots of fuzz, check. Moothart again channels the likes Leigh Stephens, Randy Holden, Martin Weaver, and other legendary axe-wielding fuzzmasters of yesteryear. Ye olde stoner rawkin' Blue Cheery, Black Sabbathy heaviness is a big part of the Fuzz equation, as are the garage psych pop smarts Segall is known for on all his other records. For us, it's a killer combination!! And this time 'round their longhaired retro-proto-metal riffage is maybe a mite more proggy and complexified, more Sir Lord Baltimore baroque than Blue Cheer basic. Well, they still turn the air into cottage cheese, but there's a whiff of some fancy camembert in there too, with a couple tracks bringing in some orchestrated sounds (must be by the guest credited with "InterstellarStringSweeping"). And there's keys and synths and stuff too. Not that it's nothing but muscular hard-hitting rock action though, sounding like some lost late '60s / early '70s classic that just couldn't be, 'cause it's so grindingly badass and freshly in your melted face.
We're digging it big time, all the freaky sounds and hooks and riffs and FUZZ. Ty Segall never lets us down, and as serious heavy psych lovers, Fuzz is one of our favorite projects of his. For fans of all its proto-metal inspirations like Sir Lord Baltimore, as well as the music of Ty's pal King Tuff, and even moreso, King Tuff-related band Witch.
This album collects two long out of print releases that the beloved Tim Hecker produced for Room 40 quite a while ago - Norberg was a 20 minute EP from 2007, and Apondalifa was a 7" dating to 2010. These being Tim Hecker releases, we had much to say about these gauzy, blurry, buzzy expanses of muted digital glitch, disembodied melodies, sepia toned ambience, organic and electronic woven into swirling shimmering soundscapes. So here's a synopsis of the two reviews we penned a while back about about the two recordings that constitute this, yet another exquisite Tim Hecker production!
Norberg begins with an Oval like sweep of glimmering chimes and washed out whir, but quickly develops into something much more weighty, the chimes swallowed up by a warm whirring blur, a softly churning, slowly crumbling wall of blissed out guitar buzz, the buzz very gradually dissipating, leaving just the hiss and the whir, to drift like gossamer clouds in a deep blue sky. The sounds become softer and softer, muted and murky, underwater sounding, allowed to pulse and ebb and flow and sway softly back and forth, under a delicate patina of electronic crackle, an ultra distorted guitar way down in the mix unfurling ribbons of gnarled prismatic crunch, spread out over the hushed shimmer below, like the icy crust on a dying sun. Finally the hiss takes on a life of it's own, pushing all of the other sounds under the surface, the hiss made up of all manner of skipping static and layered white noise, impossible musical in its own right, the perfect climax to a surprisingly bracing expanse of buzzing blissful ambient sound.
Apondalfia is a gloriously washed out sprawl of warm fuzz and softly swirling melodic squalls, all of the edges smoothed out, but leaving plenty of grit, the guitars way more obvious than in the past, but it's hard to tell exactly what they're doing, they seem to be unfurling strange little woozy warped melodies, that seem to loop and layer and shift constantly, ringing out and bleeding into the various sounds around them, all beneath the thick sonic swells and a glacially churning shimmery sonic gauze. So beautiful and deliriously hypnotic!
Latest blast of garage pop noise rock radness from one of our favorite outfits, and like the last however many records of theirs, it's equal parts hook heavy crunch and jangle, and more tripped out sonic experimentation. The first two tracks are straight up reverb rocking garage. Opener "Sex" is a bit fuzzier and crunchier, while "Nocturnal Admissions" is more smooth and slippery, and the weird thing is, either we never noticed before, or something's changed, but the Intelligence sound a LOT like aQ beloved weird pop nerds Jaill. Which is not a bad thing at all (and BTW, Jaill has a new record we have in stock, which rules! And which we'll review soon, but we digress)!
"Cleaning Lady" is where the band start mixing it up, with a noisy bit of programmed rhythm, wound around a low slung bass line, and some snake charmer synth melodies, and eventually some fuzzy guitar, and some swirling FX. It's a pretty heady and hypnotic jam, that manages to be both psychedelic, and sweetly poppy. And honestly the deeper we get into Vintage Future, the more we're convinced these guys have honed their songwriting chops significantly. While before it was a lot about the sound, and sometimes the sound was so cool or weird or noisy or chaotic, that the sound didn't matter, here the sounds, still cool, are in support of some of the best Intelligence songs to date. "Whip My Valet" is a frantic punky poppy blowout, "We Refuse To Pay The Dues" is all swagger garage-blooze stomp, "Tourists" is another weird one, drum machine, acoustic guitars, and swirly psychedelic filigree, while the title track begins all bass heavy and woozy, before blossoming into a super catchy slab of melodic jangle pop garage rock.
On first listen we did dig this a bunch, but the more we listen, the more it's revealing itself as not just good, but really fucking great. The Jaill vibe pops up a bunch, and at times we're even reminded of another aQ fave, Mrs. Magician. It's not nearly as weird as the other records, and in most cases, for us at least, less weird often equals less good, but Vintage Future might be their best (and suprisingly least weird) yet!
Five years we have had to wait for a new Phillip Jeck album; and with Cardinal, Jeck delivers yet another masterpiece of thick sonic impressionism, roughly crafted on his vintage turntables and filtered through an array of electronic devices. The textures, the melodies, and the slow languorous pacing of Cardinal has all the hallmarks of a great Phillip Jeck record, including the opaque layering of deconstructed and decontextualized sounds, all coalescing into majestic, sublime concentrations of hiss, murmur, and smear. On Cardinal, much of the recognizable elements of the crackly vinyl and the equally antiquated record players are sublimated within a deep plunge into a mysterious sonic swells that could be the fragments of Jack Torrence's haunted ballroom hallucinations. The massive oceanic wall that tumbles through the opening number "Fleeting", with its modulated shimmer and riptide undercurrents transcends all of the source material into a cinematic sustained crescendo of raw pathos. The slow deceleration of clouded tones and drones found on "Reverse Jersey" tumbles into one of two tracks of diaphanous swirl entitled "...bends the knee" fluttering some of the rare bits of the vinyl's inlaid melodies into the mix. An unplaceable arabesque here. A fugue from a string quartet there. And then we sporadically hear Jeck throttling his bass guitar as another harmonic component to his compositions. He mostly keeps a Bohren & Der Club of Gore slippery noir vibe, whilst mixing these deep-end notes into his sometimes ominous and always gorgeous elegies for decayed sound.
***MISSISSIPPI ALERT***MISSISSIPPI ALERT***MISSISSIPPI ALERT***
Another remarkable release from the Mississippi label, this time in conjunction with the newly formed Olvido imprint, run by Gordon Ashworth, prolific sound artist, member of aQ faves Knelt Rote, and who somehow also finds time to make music under Concern, Oscillating Innards, his own name, and probably more.
The Jail's A Fine School is a gorgeous collection of archival rebetika recordings made by the mysterious Constantine Bezos during the early 1930's. Dug up and mastered from the original 78s and assembled for the first time ever on lp, these recordings capture and chronicle the dark and seedy underbelly of old Athens. Bezos released these particular recordings under the pseudonyms A. Kostis and K. Kostis for reasons which aren't totally clear (although probably having to do with the reputation of early rebetika music in Greece as lower class music). Centered around guitar duets, which, according to the extensive liner notes, would later be seen as quite unusual in rebetika recordings, the bouzouki becoming the primary instrument of that once "disreputable" genre. The guitar melodies on here are on their own worth the price of admission, and there are a couple instrumentals that really showcase Bezos' expressive guitar playing style, but the gravelly croon of Bezos' voice is really the highlight of the record. Yeah, the lyrics are in Greek, but it doesn't really matter, and in fact, adds to the already mysterious nature of these recordings.
A totally unique and stunning release, unlike anything we've heard before (although we are admittedly not rebetiko experts). And, we couldn't possibly review this record without mentioning the massive booklet that comes with the lp! Info on Constantine Bezos' life, with extensive notes on rebetika music, the historical context of music during pre-WWII Greece, lyrics in both Greek and English, guitar tunings, previously unpublished photographs, and a glossary of some Greek slang used in the lyrics. Incredibly thorough, and just another reason to not sleep on this one.
Local label Superior Viaduct continues to unearth all manner of obscure sonic treasures, a bunch on this week's list, including this oddball release, the 1979 solo record from Jim Welton aka Amos, the bassist of legendary UK punks the Homosexuals. But unlike the catchy, poppy punk of the Homosexuals, Welton gets WAY out as L. Voag, delivering a grab bag of fragmented sonic experiments, that tend to leap wildly from sound to sound, skronky, chaotic clatter one minute, echo-drenched, detuned sort-of ska the next, jangly, horn flecked pop one minute, weird be-boppish, falsetto vocalled jazziness the next.
Fans of weirdos like the Sun City Girls, This Heat, the Cardiacs, and the like, will probably dig, but likely still be a bit confused, cuz while there are moments throughout that touch on familiar sounds, there are far more that are utterly alien, damaged, demented, freaky, fucked up, noisy, psychedelic, goofy and just plain bizarre. And yet, there is some sort of sonic (non)sense holding it all together, but just barely.
Total outsider post punk damaged sonic trip out, that is definitely probably reserved for true sonic freaks, those who love to dig deep for odd sounds and confusing musics, cuz this is most definitely both. But as with all outsider sound, it's seriously fascinating, damaged genius unfettered, a mutant musical skull cracked open, and the contents spilled out and pressed into wax. Which obviously means we're digging this a LOT.
Super swank packaging, and a download code. Also included are four bonus tracks, three of which are also totally tripped out, but there's one that's a surprise super sweet pop gem!
Full length number three from these local, psychedelic jangle-poppers and it's another glorious blast of sunshiny retro pop garage psych, that owes as much to C86 twee pop and early Flying Nun NZ indie pop as it does to the druggy mesmer of the Velvet Underground. All Odds End seems even more washed out and dreamy than the previous two records, at least the opening one-two punch of "Island" and "Lay It Down", but then "Police My Love" cranks it up, adds some fuzz, and some almost funky sounding bass, channeling some serious post punk into there otherwise wistful jangle, crunchy, and dynamic, and one of our favorite Mantles jams yet. The whole record is just gem after gem, whether it's the acoustic melancholy of "Lately", the organ swaddled garage fuzz of "Hate To See You Go" or the shuffling reverb-pop of "Undelivered", the Mantles are masters of bygone pop, managing to touch on all our favorite jangle pop tropes, but making it sound fresh, and original, and crazy catchy. The Mantles are like a more laidback, dreamier version of your favorite Castle Face band, drawing from many of the same sonic influences, but delivering it filtered through their paisley, prismatic sonic filter, resulting in some of the sweetest jangle you're likely to hear all year.
The Dead Cert Label thankfully unearths this obscure global-futurist tape loop collage of industrial new wave rhythms and concrete fourth-world ambiance from 1984 Madrid. Mecanica Popular were Luis Delgado (later of Finis Africae), and Eugenio Munoz, who conceived this recording using only tape loops and an innovative setup featuring an Arp Odyssey, an Eventide H910 Harmonizer and a Polaroid 600 camera (!) fed through an array of effects to make intriguing mechanical rhythms and soundscapes that whirr and clank in intriguing combinations. Prototypical of all kinds of left-field techno that came later, the first side has the layered minimalist rhythms that Craig Leon employed so sublimely on his Nommos lp, while the B-side gets into the darkly sparse industrial soundscaping and loping martialism that has obviously inspired much of Demdike Stare's later output. For fans of Conrad Schnitzler, Futuro Antico, and Kerry Leimer as well as any of the bands mentioned above.
One of a handful of new releases this week from local label Superior Viaduct, a killer batch of legendary/infamous oddball rarities, elsewhere you can check out Departmentstore Santas, and Homosexuals side project L. Voag, and then there's this, the only record from UK DIY art school post punks Milk From Cheltenham, originally released in 1983 on the War Boys label, run by Jim Welton aka Amos of the Homosexuals (the man responsible for the aforementioned L. Voag lp). Milk From Cheltenham set out to make their own Pet Sounds, but ended up with something far stranger, a damaged avant pop songsuite cobbled captured on an old cassette recorder, utilizing all manner of bits and bobs, cans and pieces of metal, boxes and veritable kitchen sink's worth of junk-as-instruments, and maybe most hilariously, a primitive "surround" function on the tape recorder, which more than anything made the sound even LESS Pet Sounds and more gloriously WTF?
At its core, the sound falls squarely in eighties post punk territory, but goddamn, it's so much more, and so much stranger, a home brewed concoction of sonic fragments, processed vocals, gorgeous lo-fi, layered atmospherics, jagged, blown out live recordings, stumbling, drunken jazz, seriously psychedelic freakouts, vocal experiments, skeletal punk-funk, loads of tape warble and feedback, moaning strings, handclaps and primitive FX, analog synthesizers, and electric sitar, bizarre vocal harmonies, field recordings, practice space noise jams, disembodied piano vamps, avant sonic collages, angular punky pop, and pretty much a million stops in between. They'd also play the various sounds and recordings through big speakers and then re-record them, almost like a more primitive Taj Mahal Travellers!
It's far out, and all over the map, but it's also gleefully inventive, and a total fucking blast to get lost in. It's not at all hard to understand why Triptych Of Poisoners was a crate digger holy grail, and thus was long, long overdue for a serious vinyl reissue!
Nice packaging as always from Superior Viaduct, includes a download code as well!
Wow, if you DON'T have all these Necks cds, and you might not 'cuz some have been hard to find lately, then this box set is Christmas come early. Treat yourself! Eight of the aQ-beloved Australian minimal trance drone-jazz masters' ReR releases, circa 1999-2011, together in a handsome box. This hefty cube contains Silverwater, Townsville, Chemist, Drive By, The Boys, Aether, Hanging Gardens, and Mindset - each of which has received rave reviews on our list over the years (three of which were Records Of The Week, though all easily could have been). If we pasted in our reviews of all of them here, this review would be waaaay too long. So we'd just suggest if you're curious, please look 'em up on our site. Basically, though, it's a great chance for anybody who has slept on The Necks to get a big dose of some of the best, most original and hypnotic instrumental 'jazz' music ever.
Of course, they have other releases you should get too - we'd love a box set of their earlier stuff, and even this set is missing some Necks releases that came out during that 1999-2011 time span. Still, more than enough music here to keep you entranced for a long time...
It's like Peaches knew just what we needed and timed the release of her new record to coincide with the current political/cultural climate, one that most definitely calls for the sort of transgressive sounds, fierce female power, and hot sexual confidence that only Peaches can deliver. At a time when Donald Trump is inexplicably leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, and once again Planned Parenthood finds itself under attack, we are in desperate need of a record like Rub, on which Peaches address those themes and more, not holding anything back. It's wild, emotional, energetic and bombastic, easily her most assured and raw sounding album since her game-changing debut Teaches of Peaches, which was released almost 15 years ago (crazy!).
Without getting the credit she so deserved, Peaches really changed the landscape of pop music, influencing so many huge pop stars who borrowed, stole, and/or otherwise channeled her distinctive style, in the hopes of bringing a new edge to their sound and image (Beyonce, Britney, Gaga, etc.).
To be fair, there was a time, maybe a decade ago. when we found ourselves burnt out on Peaches, growing tired of her seeming ubiquity, it felt like you couldn't go anywhere without hearing Peaches. But then somehow, she sort of faded from the spotlight, and folks began to forget all about her. And yet when we'd throw her records on, we'd quickly remember how great they were and realize how damn good they still sounded. Rub is a strident reminder that Peaches was no passing fad, and it's quickly becoming our new favorite Peaches record. The lyrics are so on-point, the humor hits hard, and contrary to many folks' opinion, Peaches is no one-note joke. It's the music that drives Rub, with its deep and dirty, catchy beats. Along with M.I.A., Peaches has proven that music can be revolutionary and sexy at the same time!
Long time lyricist and activist Boots Riley has been a staple of the Bay Area community for decades. His clever brand of political hip-hop in such acts as The Coup (his most long-lived musical project) and Street Sweeper Social Club (his band with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine) has turned Riley into an international celebrity. His new book, Tell Homeland Security - We Are the Bomb, is an excellent collection of his lyrics and essays spanning back all the way to The Coup's first record, Kill My Landlord. It also features lyrics from the two Street Sweeper Social Club releases. Pretty much every song is a political manifesto, with enough humor thrown in to make the bitterness a tasty treat instead of a dry diatribe. Those of us who lived in the US through the first decade of this millennium will appreciate songs like "Babylet'shaveababybeforeBushdosomethin'crazy" and "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO." Most songs are accompanied by a short essay by Riley about the impetus behind the song, or at least some of his thoughts and feelings about it. Boots also expresses numerous feminist ideas and ideals through his lyrics, through songs written for his daughter and a fictitious mother who was killed by a pimp named Jesus. It cannot be stressed enough how large a part of the Bay Area progressive activist community Boots Riley has become. Anyone who went to any of the Occupy Oakland rallies a few years back was sure to see Boots somewhere nearby with a megaphone or holding a sign or giving a speech. Anyone interested in progressive hip hop or political activism should read this book.
Who's this Josh Rosenthal? Well, he's a friend of ours, and a Grammy-nominated producer, and runs the fantastic new-and-reissue record label Tompkins Square, and just wrote a book. It's kind of a memoir of his life in music... and love of music, written with passion and humor. We just got it in when he did a reading here last weekend for Litcrawl, which was lots of fun, and while we haven't sat down to read the whole thing yet, hearing the selections he read aloud as well as flipping through it certainly makes us look forward to digging in.
From Josh's introduction: "In this book I write about some stuff I've done in and around music over the past 30 years; records that I found or found me; and records, people, and live music experiences that have forever changed the way I listen." He also says: "Maybe you think it's bad parenting that I watched my kids' lips turn blue while I read the back-cover liner notes to an Ike Quebec LP, but I beg to differ. I was demonstrating to my kids that I really cared about something. My passion was certainly way more important than where there next snack was coming from." So if that statement has you nodding in agreement rather than dialing Child Protective Services, then this is a book for you! You should also be able to tell just from the chapter titles. Here are of few of them, if you're like us they'll make you wanna read the book for sure: Alex Chilton. Charlie Louvin. Bill Fay. Smoke Dawson. Obscure Giants Of Acoustic Guitar...
Yep there is lots and lots of good stuff & stories Josh gets into this 248 page trade paperback, including a section with eleven reasons to start a label (including "if you enjoy having things go wrong" and "if you enjoy being ignored"), and a couple lists of crucial records in his collection. The book couldn't have a better 'love of music, records, and record stores' vibe. Oh, and the cover art is by one of Rosenthal's daughters, so evidently his kids appreciate their dad's passion just a little bit.
Andrew D. Rothbard, member of post-punk pioneers The VSS, and singer / pianist from Pleasure Forever, has delivered to aQ one hell of a departure from his previous projects. Where The VSS was angular and raucous (their 1997 lp Nervous Circuits being one of this reviewer's ALL TIME FAVORITE records), his latest eponymous project is tape loops and knob twisting. The incredible pop sensibility of Pleasure Forever is certainly not gone, however. There's some definite hooks and choruses on Frequenseqer, but they are of the electronic psychedelic type. Oddly syncopated percussion lays a foundation for heavily-affected sitars and buzz-saw synths, and every once in a while some vocals creep in to add a melody or two underneath it all. Does it matter that you can't understand a single word? About half the tracks are instrumentals, blips and bloops making way for swelling walls of sound which end with the sigh of a piano line or the stutter of a manipulated arpeggio. On the tracks with vocals, Andy's voice is excellent and provides a nice washy contrast to some of the harsher elements. Frequenseqer is vaguely reminiscent of the recent Damaged Bug record, if that record were to take a lot of acid (like, a LOT) and draw a picture of Eno and Fripp's No Pussyfooting. Frequenseqer is frenetic at times and strangely beautiful at others, but it's not because the record can't make up its mind where it's going. There's a definite trajectory and a journey at work in the various changes of tone, the listener's emotions being manipulated skillfully. (An earlier tape of similar material, Exodusarabesque, is also available.)
Latest blast of outsider sonic WTF and avant rhythmic weirdness from these Texas noise rockers turned avant beat making electronic experimentalists. And they're back on Rock Is Hell, one of our favorite labels, specializing in the bizarre and baffling, and as if to celebrate this reunion, Shit And Shine offer up what we can only describe as, their 'jazz' record?
No bashing blowouts, no fractured drum machine rhythms, instead, the vibe is cool and mellow, skittery and softly skronky, woozy and a little psychedelic. A subtle krautrock influence runs throughout as well. Just check out the 16 minute opener "Denim Do's And Don'ts" which is a sprawling, late night shuffle, all languid organs and electric piano, draped over a hypnotic, minimal groove, and peppered with horns here and there, all the background for a strange narration, the vibe is sort of rainy night in an empty city mixed with a beat up old lounge in the middle of nowhere, both populated by shady characters, and all manner of mysterious shapes lurking in the shadows.
We kept expecting the record to explode into some crushing cacophony, or splinter into some sort of fractured beatscape, but instead, the band just sort of unwind, the house band at some jazz dive, jamming into the wee hours. And we'd like to say there are moments of fucked up, damaged Shit And Shine weirdness, but the fact that there's really NOT, is precisely what makes this so fucked up, and so strangely cool. A few tracks do almost devolve into more twisted murk, but really, they never drift to far from this a moody, dimly lit downer jazz, EXCEPT for "Jump On The Feeder", which sounds like one of the other tracks, slowly melting and crumbling, the voice too processed, and gnarled into an alien spoken word.
But yeah, who thought they had it in 'em?! And who woulda thought King Coffey of the Butthole Surfers would be behind the kit on a record that sounds less like drugged out chaos than moody minimalism. We certainly wouldn't have, but goddamn we dig it.
And as always, Rock Is Hell pull out all the stops - colored vinyl, super thick sleeves, all unique, and a download code to boot!
NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Here's some of what what we wrote about this way back when it first came out as a vinyl release:
It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some sort of elaborate prank. But it's one of those things that just makes you proud / embarassed to be an American. Elizabeth Clare Prophet purchased 24,000 acres in Paradise Valley, Montana and started The Church Universal and Triumphant, a creepy new age doomsday cult in which Prophet channeled spirits such as Jesus, Buddha, K-17, Morya, Quan Yin, Afra, Hercules, Mighty Victory, Astrea, Shiva, Pope John XXIII, and more. (Sort of like J.Z. Knight of Yelm, Washington and her channelling of "Ramtha" except even more scary.) Prophet and her husband stockpiled arms, built giant bomb shelters, and coerced their devotees to purchase their own survival equipment at exorbitant prices. Throughout its existence various members of CUT were indicted for kidnapping, lost custody of the children who belonged to the church and were investigated for tax exempt status and firearms violations. In 1995 former member Joeseph Pietrangelo Jr wrote a book condemning CUT entitled "Lambs to Slaughter: My Fourteen Years with Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Church Universal Triumphant".
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services. The tapes of these services have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn insane sounding. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an impossible mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium and variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended, trancelike vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended! We'd almost have made this cd edition our Record of the Week if we weren't certain that it would probably bug the heck out of more people than (like us) would love it!!
We first discovered these Austrian noise rock weirdos via a clip on YouTube of the band covering Klaus Nomi, and nailing it, right down to the crazy operatic vocals. And while those operatic vocals don't show up here, the band is as weird, and gleefully noisy as can be. In fact, the first thing we thought when we heard these guys, was that it must be one of Jussi from Circle's bands. It has the same sort of purity, not necessarily TRYING to be weird, but somehow ending up impossibly strange, and sounding literally like nothing else. They'd likely be right at home on the now defunct Bad Vugum label too. Shit, come to think of it, if we didn't know better we would have assumed these guys were Finnish. They're not, but they are fucked up, and amazing.
The sound is rhythmic and angular, the sound slipping easily from jagged lope, to lushly layered majesty, the vocals an almost cartoonish croon, some tracks sounding like some lost Queen track, but filtered through some broken alien technology, others like the Striggles could be some strange seventies new/no wave band, like a more fucked up Devo. Some of the track are funky too, but not regular funky, more sort of damaged funky, with sounds dissolving into tangled buzzes and glitches, wah guitars churning away behind fields of squeak and skree, sometimes the sound blossoming into some weird percussion heavy freakout. Occasionally, the sound is like UK pop geniuses the Cardiacs crossed with vintage Funkadelic, if that makes any sense. And it doesn't. But that's why it's so good.
The Striggles are one of those bands that are impossible to describe without going into specific detail on every song, cuz they seem to have no regard for style or genre, woozy Prince like falsetto over smoldering slow burn funk, becomes a druggy Ween like pop, before building into a super distorted almost doomy dirge, and that's just ONE song. There's home brewed bedroom electro, full on metallic crush, shuffling jazziness, weird sped up vocals, some skronk here and there, a bit of forest folk, hushed and fluttery, some Bill Orcutt like guitar deconstructions that sound almost like a skeletal Slint, some pulsing piano driven minimal techno, some confusing lo-fi campfire jamming, with slowed down vox, and finally, some epic space rock, that sounds like something on Rocket Records or Agitated, spacced out hypno-kraut jammage that looks to Hawkwind before one final burst of matched out jazz-prog-noise.
Holy fuck. We love this band. Andee loved them so much that he ordered every single thing he could track down (we have a few of those other releases, all totally recommended, just ask!). Odds are if you dig damaged, sonic weirdness, love labels like Ektro and Bad Vugum, enjoy dizzying experimentation, and deft mastery of all pop and metal and noise and jazz, and an unlikely way with hooks and somgsmithery, not to mention texture and arrangements, and obviously if you love other oddities on the Rock Is Hell label, then this is most likely your cup of HEAVILY spiked sonic tea!
Again, Rock Is Hell go all out, thick black vinyl, heavy full color jackets, a download code, and maybe coolest of all, this includes a little figure/figurine that comes its own box, of the strange bodiless, lion faced, arm-legged beastie on the cover!!!
After all these years, we are still not all that clear what the acronym that Cedric Peyronnet (aka Toy Bizarre) has used for the bulk of his album titles. It's definitely some sort of cataloging system as his titles are in sequential fashion, now reaching 278, though there are some sizable jumps between the various numbers. Peyronnet may have explained what this may mean somewhere and at sometime, but enlightenment eludes us. So, we'll collectively shrug and move onto this vivid collection of manipulated field recordings and phonographic compositions that are found on this impressive album. Since the late '80s or thereabouts, Peyronnet has used natural sounds as his primary source material, working in parallel to Eric La Casa, Small Cruel Party, Tarab, and some of the more obtuse practitioners of contemporary musique concrete. Peyronnet's uneasy dislocations never settle on the notions of purely objective / narrative descriptions of sound, nor could they be defined as abstraction. So one can hear jolting splashes of water and mud along with Luc Ferrari like snippets of human voice well-removed from context alongside filter-heavy drones of liquid miasma and mercurial drones dappled with found object texture and splattered detritus. Peyronnet has quite a knack for rendering all of the components of his compositions with an incredible sharpness of detail - the purity of his dilated frequencies and an exactness to environmental elements work into his slippery compositions punctured with bursts of energy that Peyronnet allows to wane into solemn pools of contemplation.
The pale, shocked face of Meg Remy (aka U.S. Girls) stares out at us from the cover of Half Free, her expression so unsettlingly normal against the grey-scaled backdrop of familiar patterned wallpaper. In a similar vein, this album tells the twisted tales of a spectrum of very average women. The opening track, "Sororal Feelings", fades in from the ether with the narrative of a woman who has settled down with a man who has previously slept with her sisters, while next up, the album explodes into the smooth, spacey beat of "Damn That Valley". And so it goies, this release sampling from a wide sonic palette, resulting in a groovy fusion of sparkly disco, badass fem-rock, and haunting alt-pop, sewn together by the silvery, soulful thread of Remy's vocals. Between the stories of scorned and revengeful heroines and the off-kilter melodies, this album could easily soundtrack the most badass of horror flicks. In two words: perfectly demented. Another great disc from U.S. Girls!!
A while back we reviewed an lp collection called "It Can't Get Worse Than This", celebrating fifty releases from beloved weirdo Austrian label Rock Is Hell (we have a handful left, and it RULES, just ask if you want one!). So here we are a year later and Rock Is Hell are now celebrating another milestone, TEN years as a label. And to celebrate, they've released a double 10" called appropriately enough "Even Worse Than Expected", and it features all exclusive tracks from the Rock Is Hell elite, including some old faves: Mark Deutrom, Nate Denver's Neck, Seawhores, some NEW favorites, The Striggles, Bulbul, and some new to us outfits, including Hella Comet, Regolith, Macaque Revue and more!
The Striggles track is another baffler, an expletive laced angular chug and churn, noisy and wild, mathy and metallic, if you haven't read our review of the Striggles full length elsewhere on this week's list, let us just reiterate that WE LOVE THIS BAND!!! Mark Deutrom, a former Melvin, does his groovy, hooky, metal-pop thing, that once again has us wondering why he's not huge. We always mention Queens Of The Stone Age, and while it doesn't sound like that, it seems like those guys would hear this and take Deutrom on tour with them forever. Here's hoping. Nate Denver does a weird sort of home brewed, synthed out, nerd hop, thick swells of rumbling bass, skeletal drum programming, and Denver's twisted D&D flow. The Seawhores temper their noise rock, with programmed drums, shimmery exotic new age shimmer, reverie strings, and pulsing synths.
The rest of the tracks/groups are all over the map. Hella Comet is kinda nineties sounding, a little emo, a little noise pop, hooky and a little heavy, a little introspective, while Macaque Revue are a kind of damaged jazz flecked avant Americana (or wherever they're from), minimal blues, meets deconstructed post rock minimalism. Regolith unfurl some crunchy, decaying noise-drone mesmer, Bug wed drug addled vox, to loping, dirge rock stumble and some seriously downtuned heaviness while Dead sound like a slightly more tripped out version of the late great godheadSilo, with Killdozer vox, and strange harmonies that sound like Harvey Milk. Oh, and we forgot Bulbul, who are as gleefully baffling as usual, a creaking, rhythmic almost lullaby, rife with weird whistling, creative drumming, some chanted vocals, and a finale that sounds like Queen at 16rpm, all soaring guitar melodies, and layered vox, still wound around that weirdo music box rhythm that started things off.
Killer stuff! See what you've been missing, and (re) discover one of the coolest, weirdest labels around!!!
Like all Rock Is Hell releases, the packaging is top notch, silkscreened covers, heavy vinyl, one orange, one brown, the D-side also silkscreened, and a download code. LIMITED TO JUST 400 COPIES too!
To those bleak metal heathens whom dwelleth upon the white and wintry mountaintops, take heed!!! Vanum is a brand new ongoing project from K. Morgen and M. Rekevics (of highly acclaimed black metallers Ash Borer and Fell Voices / Vorde respectively) and rather than specializing in the sort of hypnotic, minimal modern black metal that you might suspect from their other ventures, Realm Of Sacrifice is instead a hugely impressive slab of melodic, melancholic and INCREDIBLY epic BM, drawing equally on the soaring windswept tremolo of such Norwegian forefathers as mid 1990s Ulver and Darkthrone, the glorious melodic sensibility of Swedish luminaries like Dawn and Naglfar, and the hateful regalism of Finnish royalty Sargeist and Horna. In short it's classic, rousing stuff, that actually sets itself apart from its more gimmick-oriented contemporaries by simply letting the massive, stirring melodies and furiously pummeling performances take center stage. The result is simple and unpretentious, yet entirely engrossing and timeless, and in our humble opinions the best album either member has been involved in thus far. If classic, no frills BM is your cup of tea (or indeed hornful of mead!) then this is essential listening.
Record number two from this local metal supergroup. And yeah, everyone hates being described as a supergroup, but fuck it, this is a pretty super group, and it's made up of some of our favorite people and players. John Cobbett and Sigrid Sheie from Hammers Of Misfortune, Aesop Dekker from Agolloch & Worm Ouroboros, and Mike Scheidt of Yob. All bands we dig heavily, and so one can only assume that the rules of band math dictate that cramming all of them into the same studio could only result in something pretty fucking kick ass. Which was precisely the case.
But Deeper Than Sky, the follow up to their heavily-dug-by-us self-titled debut, moves even further from the supposed original concept of the band, which was to be a sort of psychedelic D-Beat crust metal combo. Even on the first record, that seemed like that idea had already been cast aside, in favor of something more classic metal, NWOBHM guitars were all over the place, and Scheidt's vocals, for all their grunting and growling, more often soared into high pitched wails. Punkish energy abounded, and it does here too, but the sound definitely leans toward something more epic and classic, with thrashing, galloping, sci-fi majesty, infused with plenty of snot and snarl, but to indulge in a little more band math, Deeper Than Sky sounds like Voivod playing power metal, which is just as goddamn good as that ought to be. Most of the tracks are dense and complex, progged out and yeah, psychedelic, all without losing any metallic heft, or punk energy, in fact, somehow that stuff is harnessed and reshaped into, well into THIS. Vhol are definitely beholden to plenty of other bands that came before, but they're also extremely original, the songs dizzying in their scope and execution, sometimes they sound like a metal Magma, other times like a more intellectual Venom, and at others, like some fucked up pop band disguised as a metal band. Even the most furious, fucked up parts tend to display some odd element that transcends its constituent parts, and pretty, melodic passages are never far from collapsing into black holes of sonic aggression.
Fans of the first record will not be disappointed, and will likely be blown away by the group's progression, and anyone who has somehow yet to delve into the dizzyingly epic, sci-fi, punk-metal, psych-shred, prog-thrash soundworld of Vhol, it's time!!!
Like plenty of other folks, we were all super excited for this new set of songs from beloved Philly troubadour, Kurt Vile. Even before the full length landed, we were already pretty smitten by (and addicted to) the album's first single, "Pretty Pimpin", due in no small part to its awesome body duplicating video.
From our experiences with past Vile albums, we knew to reserve judgment until after multiple listens, as Vile has proven to be a grower, that special sort of songwriter whose songs gradually seep into the listeners subconscious, the songs slowly blossoming, the sound becoming more and more perfect with repeated exposure, eventually revealing all manner of intricacies, subtle melodies and more.
The studio is used to perfection here, with banjos, pianos and various other instruments complimenting Vile's distinctive songwriting, and singular guitar style, so perfectly. Vile is a master of crafting perfect soundtracks for long drives, slow bus rides, and lonely road trips. Like an impossible combination of Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and Thurston Moore, Vile proves once again on B'lieve I'm Goin Down, that he's something special, the rare artist who seems to have made the transition from underground sensation, to proper (almost) mainstream musical voice. And he's made another record that we're already hooked, and one we're likely to throw on for years to come.
The vinyl is is the ultra limited edition triple lp version, B'lieve I'm Goin (DEEP) Down, which contains four extra songs as well as instrumental reprises not on the cd (or the 2lp version we're not listing), and is housed in an extra fold-out gatefold with bonus inserts and a poster!
Like plenty of other folks, we were all super excited for this new set of songs from beloved Philly troubadour, Kurt Vile. Even before the full length landed, we were already pretty smitten by (and addicted to) the album's first single, "Pretty Pimpin", due in no small part to its awesome body duplicating video.
From our experiences with past Vile albums, we knew to reserve judgment until after multiple listens, as Vile has proven to be a grower, that special sort of songwriter whose songs gradually seep into the listeners subconscious, the songs slowly blossoming, the sound becoming more and more perfect with repeated exposure, eventually revealing all manner of intricacies, subtle melodies and more.
The studio is used to perfection here, with banjos, pianos and various other instruments complimenting Vile's distinctive songwriting, and singular guitar style, so perfectly. Vile is a master of crafting perfect soundtracks for long drives, slow bus rides, and lonely road trips. Like an impossible combination of Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and Thurston Moore, Vile proves once again on B'lieve I'm Goin Down, that he's something special, the rare artist who seems to have made the transition from underground sensation, to proper (almost) mainstream musical voice. And he's made another record that we're already hooked, and one we're likely to throw on for years to come.
Gosh, well, The Wire magazine often seems like it's meant especially for us, but the content of this issue in particular really does. Heck, Christian Vander, the prime mover behind spiritual, science-fictional French prog legends Magma, is the cover star! Then, there's an 'Epiphanies' column about Devo, and the 'Inner Sleeve' this time is about Can's Tago Mago. Major reviews include releases by Patrick Cowley, The Necks, and Kode9. Plus plenty more, including ex-Hunting Lodger Seth Cooke, a 'Global Ear' on Austin, and Flying Lotus compadres Thundercat and Kamasi Washington. An issue of the Wire isn't complete with out features of people we hadn't ever heard of before either, there's some of that too, great! And, as a bonus, there's one of those Wire Tapper cd samplers stuck to the cover, too (with definitely some never-heard-befores on it!).
NOW HERE ON VINYL TO LIST AT LAST!
Long have we been smitten by the work of Chelsea Wolfe; and Abyss continues to hold us rapt. The Californian doomfolk maven's first albums featuring stripped down arrangements of acoustic guitar and her gripping voice were aptly self-described as "spiritual realm funeral songs." Since recording the rough hewn gems The Grime And The Glow and Apokalypsis, Wolfe has sought more cinematic and bombastic productions that never lose sight of her darkened visions, lamentations, and night terrors. Abyss finds Wolfe working alongside longstanding collaborators Ben Chisholm and Ezra Buchla; and she's employed the production talents of John Cogleton (perhaps most notable for his work on the Swans' rechristening). There are additional guitars from Mike Sallivan of Russian Circles as well.
At its most conventional on tracks like "Iron Moon", Wolfe's smoldering take on goth-blues explodes and collapses in sequences of frightened exhaustion. But many of her songs - the languid "Grey Days" and the tempestuous "Color Of Blood", for instance - eschew standard balladeering, preferring the slow-crawl of repetitive phrases, minor-key dirges, and volcanic chunks of blackened noise all building to majestic soaring crescendos. The lilting "Simple Death" is a rare piece of (relative) sweetness and light, swooning with slide guitar and a simple backbeat for an atmospheric, ethereal number on par with the best of Mazzy Star. Brutal and beautiful all at once.
