A couple years ago we had a book here compiling the first ten issues of this brash and argumentative UK indie/punk fanzine, with a bit of a riot grrrl/girl power slant, circa 1987-1993. Now Ablaze!, under its original editor, is back with a new issue, after all these years! On the cover, everyone's faves Sleaford Mods, plus inside, features on Viv Albertine from The Slits, The Chills, Peaches, Jeffrey Lewis, Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, Joanna Gruesome, and lots and lots more, including plenty of reviews, and articles on everything from the indie scene in India to "DIY vs. austerity".
Very cool, now looking forward to #12 in less than twenty-two years hopefully!!
Reissued by Water a few years ago, now again on vinyl by the unstoppable Superior Viaduct, one of THEE greatest punk rock records ever. As a band, these legendary SF punks existed for a scant two years, and only released an ep before they broke up; their debut lp, this one right here, was only released in 1983, four years AFTER the band disbanded, but it displayed an incredible knack for writing amazing pop songs, and hnted at what could have been, had the Avengers survived to make another record.
But really it hardly matters, as this record, often referred to as The Pink Album, is so good, not only is it an incredible collection of impossibly catchy songs, but is there anything more punk than making a record this good and then hanging it up? Hell, hanging it up before the record even came out?! Just give a listen to the first couple sound samples and you'll be sold (if you haven't already worn out your old copy). "We Are The One" is a total punk pop anthem, with Penelope Houston's snarled/crooned vox and Greg Ingraham's killer guitar playing, the whole band killed, and the songs were untouchable. And if "We Are The One" isn't already enough, "Car Crash" will seal the deal, all super melodic bassline, and chugging churning riffs, dark and minor key, Houston's vocals all raspy and occasionally cracking, and the crazy catchy "wooooah oooh oooh" chorus that you'll find stuck in your head forEVER.
In the early days of the Time Released Sound label, almost all of the releases were tiny 3" cd-r's, gorgeously packaged and meticulously assembled, with the small size somehow adding to the idiosyncrasy and art-like presentation of the releases. Years on and MANY releases later, TRS has dipped back into 3" territory with this little gem, a single 20 minute track of hushed, ethereal drift, rumbling thrum, soft focus swells and raw field recordings, all blurred and smeared into a brief, but emotionally riveting sonic travelogue, thematically focused on flooding and climate change and our permanently damaged ecosystem, but for all that conceptual heaviness, the music itself is airy and ethereal, melancholy, but also strangely hopeful, like the sound of the sun, breaking through the clouds. So lovely. This TRS release only comes in ONE version, and is limited to just 50 copies. Each one is a randomly encased collection of organic and manmade detritus, embedded in polyurethane, housed in a plastic medical tray, the discs hand stamped, and there's a printed insert/photograph attached to the box with a clear stamped band.
For a band called Bludded Head, we're a little surprised it took until record number three for them to christen an album Reign In Bludd. But Bludded Head definitely more than live up to the promise of that loaded title, their sprawling doom/sludge heaviness existing somewhere between the epic majesty of Harvey Milk, and the psychedelic sonic bar brawl of Rusted Shut. The 8 minute opener perfectly demonstrates this, with it's slow build creep, all shrieked vox atop rib cage rattling lumber and churn, only to explode into a squall of wah wah drenched psych-noise chaos. Over the course of the other three tracks, these Neanderthal noiseniks from Texas (not sure why we thought they were from NY before), pull apart the carcass of noise rock, and reimagine it as some sort of filthy plaything, the way some redneck mouthbreather might toy with a wounded animal, "Fuckitdry" lurches from math rock crush, to angular, dizzying falling-apart-ness, while "Pouring Rain" gets all Slinty, but with some extra sludgy slabbage on the side, and finally, a heartfelt, slo-mo, crumbly (and very Harvey Milky) cover of Codeine's "Pea".
Cool spot varnished covers, and includes a download as well.
Bretschneider is long recognized as one of the founding engineers of the swaggering post-techno rhythms of the seminal Raster-Noton label, alongside Alva Noto, Byetone, Senking, etc. Isolation eschews the rhythmic structure but not the sine-tone and white noise instrumentation for this ghastly piece of minimalism originally scored as an installation in a former Stasi prison in Bautzen in the former East Germany. Sensory deprivation and severe solitude were common practices on the general prison population, and Bretschneider directs his piercing tones and thrumming low-end, embedding the acoustic phenomenon of the anechoic chamber (where the extreme high pitches of the human nervous system and the extreme low frequencies of blood flowing through the body become audible) into the psychologically debilitating conditions of a brutal incarceration. As grim as the subject matter is, Bretschneider's work is a somber meditation on these themes, all done with exemplary skill and technique akin to the lowercase work of Bernard Gunter, Richard Chartier, etc.
Plux Quba is a record that after the nearly 30 years of its existence remains impossible to categorize. It's almost as if it was an alien broadcast beamed in from another planet. Little is known about its creator, Nuno Canavarro, outside of his native Portugal, and its discovery is so unbelievably legendary and riddled with hearsay that it's easy to dismiss this as a probable hoax.
Recorded in 1988 and released on a private label, it was believed to be discovered in 1991 by Jim O'Rourke while traveling through Europe with Jan St. Werner (Microstoria, Mouse On Mars) and Carsten Schulz (C-Shultz and Hajsch). Liking what he heard, Rourke eventually started a label call Moikai in 1998 and the first release was Plux Quba remastered by Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral. That the sounds contained on Plux Quba would go on to heavily influence the sound of all three artists' later output (not to mention bearing a strong sonic resemblance to Aphex Twin's early ambient pieces, Boards of Canada's nostalgic filmstrip melodies, Prefuse 73's glitch-hop, and Christian Fennesz's sublime Endless Summer) is a bizarre case of cosmic synchronicity. Rumors that this was an elaborate prank by the three electronic artists have since been quelled by enough evidence of Canavarro's existence as an architectural student, a member of semi-popular Portuguese new wave bands, and his subsequent compositional work in Portuguese cinema.
Indeed, the 15 tracks (8 of which are untitled - many clock in just over a minute) of Plux Quba can be seen as a bridge between the electro-acoustic computer-processing works of Robert Ashley (1979's Automatic Writing) and David Behrman (1984's Leapday Night) on the Lovely music label, and the advent of laptop-based electronica of the nineties. Yet Plux Quba seems less aware than that, as if created in a total vacuum. Its mystery remains one of its key attractions.
I (Scott) was turned on to this by friend and Alps band-mate Jefre Cantu-Ledesma in the nineties when he dubbed it to cassette for me, after raving about it endlessly. At first, I didn't understand the appeal. It doesn't endear itself to the listener right away. Each track is its own micro-universe of texture and mood. The first bursts of high piercing squelches, random cluster tones, bell drones and squeals, come off as abrasive and abstract, appear than disappear. Its soft-volume minimal experiments are heightened by pauses of pregnant silence that are not easy on casual listeners. It's not until about five short tracks in that processed disembodied voices, bird-like chirps and chord washes begin to emote a tangible melancholy melody, and that's when Plux Quba begins to work its magic. It took so many concentrated listens to that tape before I was finally under its spell.
Made with electronics, melodica, and pre-recorded tapes of acoustic instruments such as harp, flute, bells, marimbas, organ, an out of tune toy piano, and accordion, the overall sound is augmented by whispered transmitted voices, abstracted squeals, glitchy computerized electronics, toy instruments, crying children, animal noises, Conet Project style shortwave babble, and off-kilter hand percussion. It's almost as if a computer was fed some primitive bedroom recordings performed by children and asked to mimic the results. The cover art with its childlike drawing and strange font layouts doesn't offer any clues either, unless one is versed in Portuguese perhaps. But even then, Plux Quba seems to be mining a territory where language is useless as an orienting factor, but trades on a highly prevalent universality of emotion. It remains a singular and beguiling artifact that won't appeal to everybody, but offers massive rewards to the curious, adventurous and patient.
Mories, the madman behind the avant, blackened, symphonic, cinematic doom project Gnaw Their Tongues, returns with his fourth full length in 5 years as Cloak Of Altering, a sonically similar project that retains the grim noise and blackened ferocity of GTT but fuses it to some sort of fractured breakcore, adding frantic programmed drum machines, and wild glitched out rhythmic splatter to the proceedings, which only manages to make a fucked up sound even more fucked up. We're reminded of aQ fave Igorr, Venetian Snares too, but that sort of programmed weirdness is then wedded to grinding metal and blackened buzz. More often the sound erupts as a gout of damaged grindcore, but throughout, the sound continually splinters and morphs, crumbles and blossoms, into all manner of fucked up experi-metal shapes, sometimes barely metal, sometimes IMPOSSIBLY metal, but throughout, always a damaged blacknoise, electro-grind, black-wave, post-metal sci-fi doom WTF?, that should have weirdo metal nerds losing their shit.
Wow. Of the many recent Alice Coltrane reissues, I have to say this is the best one yet. Recorded in 1971, the record swells with beauty and emotion. It is serene not in a boring way, but in a sort of drone-y way, a state of suspended bliss and yearning that is colored with propulsive drumming courtesy Rashied Ali and Jack DeJohnette, tensely highpitched violin from Joan Kalisch, shimmering bells, and of course Alice's manic improv on the harp and ocean-lulling notes on the organ.
This record is so incredibly unbelievably beautiful, there's not a track that fails to attain superlative heights, and I highly recommend you get it, whether you're a beginner or an Alice fan from way back. Fans of modern experimental work like Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof! should also definitely check this out. Comes in a cd-sized mini gatefold sleeve (like an LP). Really well done!
A prepared pump organ and shruti box are amongst the chief instruments for the electro-acoustic duo Coppice, who have yet to exhaust the possibilities of these tools in their poking and prodding amongst the bellows, keys, and rudimentary mechanics. Tape manipulation and hard-disc computer edits are found within their compositions, but much of the work is recorded and developed in a live context, giving their wheezing drones, gasping bellows, soft rhythmic unspooling, spring-loaded tension, and clattering wooden cranks an idiosyncratic tactility which serves to amplify the physical nature of these sounds. When the electronics do come into the fray, fractal patterns blossom in heavily computerized algorithms rotating, expanding, collapsing all at once. Akin to the work of Eric Cordier, Joe Colley, Small Cruel Party, and Francisco Meirino. Self-described rather cryptically as "a story with many holes", Matches is packaged with metal mesh, colored thread, and transparencies, and is available as a properly replicated cd in a numbered limited edition of just 100 copies.
THE VINYL IS HERE NOW!
Yay, it's the second installment of previously unreleased tracks from San Francisco's legendary disco pioneer and gay porn soundtracks composer Patrick Cowley. Features a variety of sexy late-night vibes from primal jungle-themed soundscapes and cosmic ambiance, to pensive John Carpenter-ish intrigue, space funk, and even an instrumental demo version of Sylvester's slow-disco classic "Somebody To Love Tonight". For those who dug Dark Entries' previous Cowley collection, School Daze, which we made a Record Of The Week here, there's plenty more to sink your teeth into. Highly Recommended!
As you probably are aware, they try to have a second Record Store Day every year on Black Friday, with a bunch of exclusive, limited edition releases coming out then, just like on the real Record Store Day in April, which doesn't entirely make sense to us 'cause Black Friday is traditionally about stuff being on sale, right? But anyway, we did order some of the "Black Friday RSD" titles we thought were particularly diggable, this being one of 'em, a vinyl-only document of the mighty Deerhoof, kicking out their electronically-agitated, mathy, spasmodic, avant-pop, indie rock jams live in Japan (as maybe you already guessed from the cover graphics). Recorded at a show in Tokyo, December 2014, this features a dozen terrific tracks drawn from more than half as many Deerhoof albums, pressed on red translucent vinyl, of which we have very limited stock!
The first we've heard from this Portland trio despite them being around for almost seven years! They also feature old aQ pal Myles Of Destruction in their ranks. Disemballerina play dark, brooding chamber music, think the darker, more sparse moments of the early Godspeed You! Black Emperor records, or a much more sinister Rachel's. In fact, Poison Gown would totally fit in with the best of the Constellation Records back catalog. Funeral baroque, or neoclassical gloom perhaps. Comes in either a very affordable minimal cd-r format or a more ornate and unique cassette release from our friends at Black Horizons.
'Tis the season. Released for "Black Friday Record Store Day" this year, the most gangsta stocking stuffer (stuffa?) you're ever gonna come across, a limited red vinyl 7" single in Priority's "Respect The Classics" series, featuring two tracks taken from Eazy's 1992 EP, 5150 Home 4 Tha Sick, celebrating Christmas in Compton with sex, drugs, and guns. Ho ho ho.
Finally, we have enough stock on these to list!!! Jean-Claude Eloy is a little known French electro-acoustic composer, who nonetheless has a very impressive back catalog of material which is now seeing the light of day again. We first came across Eloy's work through Keith Fullerton Whitman's Creel Pone cd-r imprint of hyper-obscure experimental wonkiness and what-the-fuck electronics; Shanti was one of those Creel Pone discs, ripped from the double vinyl originally issued in 1979, with this properly replicated cd being mastered from the original tapes. Splattered analog drones and electronic resonance abound in these constantly unfolding, shifting, sloping, devolving, and blossoming compositions that marry the pioneering techniques from musique concrete disruption with the cycle-based patterning of the most rigorous applications of late '60s / early '70s electronic music, coupled with subaquatic spookiness and mind-expansive mesmerism. Think Delia Derbyshire, Arne Nordheim, Roland Kayn, and the intense minimalist works of Stockhausen, who had actually invited Eloy to the WRD studios where he composed much of Shanti from 1972 to 1973. An excellent and necessary reissue!
This Portland, Oregon trio combine retro garage surf muscle with British invasion-era pop hooks for a wickedly catchy and well-crafted platter of tunes.Happy Horror is full of whip-smart driving grooves and almost avoids obvious pastiche ("X-ray Glasses" may be the kitschiest exception) while still playing serious homage to bands like The Zombies, The Hollies, and The Buckinghams, with just enough of a hint of The Cramps's devilish edge to keep us coming back for more.
A painter of emotional torpor through sound, perhaps. Brian Pyle (also known for his work in Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings) returns with another cinematic gem of slow blooming atmospheres that ooze from his ever-reductive songs for pooling synth tones, ethereal yet weary guitar strum, and plenty of hypnotic ellipses that always seems floating halfway down deep sea trenches or recently jettisoned from an spacecraft's airlock. Even though this is very much a Brian Pyle production, he's employed the talents of Peter Broadrick to contribute live drums for one track, the synthwave coldness of Soft Metals on another, and especially the hitherto unknown vocalist J. Moon who croons perfectly in step with Pyle's shimmered portents. Badalamenti and Barry Adamson certainly have some very worthy competition in this longtime aQ favorite!
This noise rock duo from Mexico are exactly what all you aQ noise rock nerds want in a band. Thick grinding downtuned bass, dense drumming, and bellowed vox, not so much songs, as riffs upon rhythms, unwinding grooves and blown out metallic crunch, all wound up into tense cyclical hypno-rock workouts, most tracks just a single part, almost like a meaner, more metal Lungfish. The slabs of distorted heaviness (some abrasive caustic crunch, others doom metal lumber) are balanced by skeletal psychedelic drift and experimental Ride For Revenge style metallic/rhythmic abstraction. Add these guys to the short list of dynamic duos we can't get enough of.
We remember FAT from the late '80s, early '90s, a noisy experimental improv-rock trio from Canada (by way of Prague, for a while there) who palled around with the likes of Borbetomagus and Elliott Sharp, their music often difficult, but interesting and unique. Now, suddenly, FAT are back, or rather, a couple previously unreleased (and very unusual) recordings from their heyday have just appeared on cd - one that's an illicit, extreme "remix" of a 1990 album by a Czech heavy metal band (!) called Citron, and another, this one we're listing now, that FAT recorded in Morocco in 1991, collaborating seamlessly with a number of local Berber musicians that FAT befriended, and had already spent much time jamming with on visits over several previous years. It's full of squeaky, endless trance-like grooves, joyous voices, traditional folk melodies, dense percussive rhythms, and some bits of damaged Derek Bailey sounding guitar - quite an ethnic/improv fusion for fans of Sun City Girls, The Ex, and lots of the North African guitar music you'll find on Sublime Frequencies. Pretty phenomenal, and probably now FAT's most accessible album as well as most exotic.
When we were putting together our vintage New Arrivals list a few weeks back, the one with super short reviews like we used to write back in the day, we had planned on reviewing this reissue of the debut from Florida avant-primitive noise-core duo Harry Pussy, with this super succinct description: "SKROWWWWWWW, EEEEEEEEEEEEEE CLANGBLAPCLANG, SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK, SKRONK, GRRHHHTTTTTRFFHHHDEEEWWW OOOOOOOW CHHRRRGGGFFFGGG FGGGGGRRRRRRHHHHHHOOOOOWWWWWW BOOOOOOONGCRAAAAAASHBLANG EEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWWWEEEEEEE." What more is there to say really, the duo of Adris Hoyos and Bill Orcutt created some of the most visceral, most innovatively chaotic and confrontationally raw punk rock noise EVER. Whatever noise group you can think of - Hanatarash, Incapacitants, Borbetomagus - Harry Pussy could more than hold their own and deliver the equivalent audial destruction, as well as an amount of audience baiting that was nearly unprecedented, certainly in the experimental underground. Guitarist Bill Orcutt has more recently become a bit of an outsider solo guitar icon, with his primitive blues scrabble and deconstructed avant Appalachia, and if you're familiar with his solo stuff, imagine that plugged into a shitty amp, cranked to deafening volume, and then paired with some of the most frighteningly original drumming ever, courtesy of she-devil Adris Hoyos, her self-taught drum pummel the equivalent to laying at the bottom of an elevator shaft, while a dump truck unloads its payload of busted cymbals, warped drums, broken sticks, in a clattery, caustic cascade. AND then there's her banshee like vocals, fierce and feral.
But that's not to say HP traffic purely in unfettered, unstructured noise (although there is plenty of that too) - within these swirling squalls of sound, Hoyos and Orcutt continually lock into impossibly dense, mathed out anti-grooves, or spar maniacally with each other, a back and forth, tangled sonic wrestling match as swarms of skree and crape wind around octopoidal drum pound, the sounds occasionally winding down into distorted blues crawls, sometimes exploding into barrages of frazzled noise-jazz squiggles, and often just splintering into total face melting amp-destroying noise-fuck.
The strange thing is, as much as we remember this record being brutal and unrelenting and punishingly noisy listening to it again recently, it's revealed itself as truly and strangely lovely, textural and nuanced, a balance between melody and mayhem that might not be obvious on first listen, but there's a lot more going on here than first meets the ear. And for all the attitude, and legendarily violent performances, the actual music here is stunning, and weirdly magical, it's a rare sort of abstract, absurdist, psychedelic noise that manages to transcend the strictures of 'noise music', attaining the sort of beauty that would rarely be ascribed to such a fucked up slab of sound. Also contains one of the best Kraftwerk covers EVER.
Hey, Hey Colossus - you're on a roll! This out-there outfit from England, unclassifiable specialists in heaviness and krautiness and spaciness and other awesome-ness, wowed us earlier this year with an eclectic album entitled In Black And Gold, and now are back already, somehow, with another groovy album full of surprises, Radio Static High. Seriously, Hey Colossus are one of those rare bands who seem like they must have secretly broken into our homes and carefully studied our record collections before going into the studio and synthesizing a sound that brings a bunch of stuff we love together in unexpected ways. Certainly some Circle, a little Harvey Milk, a bunch of krautrock, a lot of '80s UK prog & post-punk... Hey Colossus themselves claim that this album was inspired by, uh, Jane's Addiction, Fleetwood Mac (late '80s Fleetwood Mac, no less), and Cypress Hill - probably they were joking, but if true in some weird way, that's pretty cool. In any case, these ten tracks are filled with driving rhythmic pulsations, dubby psychedelic effects, new wave-y catchiness, fuzzed out riffage, post-rock moodiness, stomping distortion, and melody, yes melody - compared even to In Black And Gold, this seems to us to be the most melodic album Hey Colossus have yet made. Maybe it's the vocals, starting with the spaced-out stoner pop of the title track. Though the 'groove' here is also very, very significant, tracks like "Hop The Railings" sounding a lot like Circle. Then you've got the precision prog element, with the likes of "Snapping Undone" in the mode of Belew-era Crimson - but also sorta Circular. It's a pretty unusual & fantastic mix as far as we're concerned, even if we can't really hear the Fleetwood Mac et. al.!
Another recommended release from these guys, making us wonder, what will they come up with next (and when)?
We still have a few of these left from Black Friday's Record Store Day offerings, one of the items we were most excited about, Tompkins Square's documentation of a rare West Coast appearance from Mr. High Lonesome himself, Roscoe Holcomb. Holcomb's unique and legendary mountain holler strikes audiences directly to the bone through dark and lonely songs that had been passed down through oral traditions for generations. A self-taught back-porch musician never keen on recording, but he always was a force to be reckoned with live. As an added bonus, the wonderful Jean Ritchie appears on one track too! Recommended. Get this before they're gone like the wind.
Julia Holter's dynamically percussive voice is simply hypnotic, lifting and lilting to the point of almost completely becoming one with the orchestral string arrangements which populate Have You In My Wilderness.
Between Ducktails, Beirut, Joanna Newsom, and this delightful masterpiece from Holter, 2015 seems to mark the rise of beautiful, ever-so-slightly experimental baroque pop. Balancing moments of explosiveness and reservedness, the album builds to a stunning finish in its title track. Singing of the battle between settling in love and seeking autonomy, Holter leaves us on the most perfect exhalation of sound. Don't miss this masterful release!
We were recently fortunate enough to host a really intimate performance by Robin the Fog (one half of the duo Howlround) in the store, and despite it being a stripped down version of his normally quite intricate live setup (only two reel-to-reel machine, not the usual four or more), it still totally mesmerized everyone in the store. Dense, gorgeous, haunting, even downright menacing at times, Tales from the Black Tangle likewise engulfs you in dense soundscapes that recall the dronologists on Students of Decay or Belong's October Language. The twist here is that all the material on here is sourced from field recordings in abandoned buildings and such, many of them downright MUNDANE things like creaking doors and drawers. How he manages to conjure such beauty and vibrancy out of totally unprocessed sound sources is anyone's guess. We only got a few copies from the man himself, and as there were only 300 copies pressed, restocks are unlikely.
Every now and then we like to spring some crazy '70s Italian prog on y'all just to see who can take it. We're not just talking Goblin (though we love Goblin), or any of the more "mainstream" Italian prog acts of the period (PFM, Le Orme, Banco), who were cool but didn't go far beyond the Yes/Genesis/King Crimson template. We're talking weirder stuff like Museo Rosenbach, New Trolls, Osage Tribe, I Teoremi, and Area. We hope to soon have some copies of the cds by an amazing band called Osanna (possibly Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band!!) but while we wait for those, we did manage to bring in a few of this, the 2nd album by another fave Italian group of ours called Il Balletto Di Bronzo. Sure, their nutzoid sci-fi keyboard attack will bring to mind ELP, but you'll also think of Magma (and their descendants Shub-Niggurath and Koenjihyakkei as well). Complex, powerful, heavy, precise yet darkly psychedelic, Ys (from 1972) is one of those timeless pieces of rock n' roll art that's definitely very '70s yet not entirely dated: you could imagine a Laddio Bollocko or Tarantula Hawk kicking out these jams, that is, except for the occasional operatic vocal chorus. This album's five long songs (plus a bonus track), with their acid guitar action, haunting female vocals, droning keyboards, martial drumming, baroque/classical motifs, and weird changes, are just about as good as over-the-top Italian prog can get, and that's pretty damn good. That is, if you are willing to get into it like we are. A top ten prog album (if Aquarius had a prog top ten, and please don't ask us for one, we'll be arguing for weeks).
This album number two from Ilitch (a.k.a. Thierry Muller), originally released in 1980 and finally reissued in its entirety with a bonus disc of unreleased/live material. '10 Suicides' is record of dark and claustrophobic, primitive and noisy, electronic
Expanded, remastered reissue of this French guitarist's first album, originally released in 1978. Thierry Muller (for he is Ilitch) makes use of "destructured" guitar, droning organ, harmonium, tapes, synth, etc. to create dark, electronic soundscapes comparable to countrymen Heldon or a scarier Fripp/Eno. Experimental, atmospheric stuff indeed. Primitive, eerie, abstract, sometimes violent. This double disc set includes the previously unreleased third and fourth sides of what was originally intended to be double LP, as well as quite a lot of other bonus material, all of it equally nightmarish and excellent. Trainspotters should note that Ilitch is one of the avant-garde obscurities that appeared on the notorious Nurse With Wound list found on NWW's first album, along with much other seminal krautrock/noise/experimental weirdness, more and more of which is thankfully being reissued every day...
More sonic trippiness from these Aussie psych pop weirdos, hot on the heels of their recently released Paper Mache Dream Balloon full length. And like that record, Quarters continues the group's seeming shift away from the rambunctious psychedelia of their other records, toward something a bit more mellow and spaced out, a little more jammy, and even a wee bit jazzy. From the "Take Five"-ian opener "The River", to the woozy dream-jammage of "Infinite Rise", to the soft psych jangle of closer "Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer", these four tracks (each clocking in at exactly 10:10) are a woozily washed out, and fantastically blissful stoner pop daydream.
Legendary UK noise merchant Gary Mundy (Ramleh, Skullflower, Broken Flag collective) returns with Kleistwahr, a project that fits nicely within the legacy of a man known for harsh electronic noise. While we struggled to find any detailed information on Kleistwahr, we can say that anyone digging Skullflower's more recent forays into blown out guitar skree (and we know there are plenty of you out there) will find much to love here. The four songs making up The Return contain all the air raid siren guitars and eardrum pulverizing feedback we have come to love, but things take a surprisingly beautiful turn on side two, with warm droney keyboards weaving a haunting melody that perfectly compliments the album cover, a stark photocopied image of a building foundation sitting exposed in the snow surrounded by dead trees. Though the songs are instrumental, Mundy is able to perfectly convey a feeling of despondency and sadness, genuine emotions that definitely set Kleistwahr apart from the multitudes of floorcore outfits, all hunkered over effects pedals making lots of noise, but very little of it as compelling and emotionally charged as this.
Part of Noiseville's awesome Outer Bounds Of Sound series, with each lp limited to a one time pressing of 300. We received 20, so you know what that means...
NOW HERE ON VINYL!!! This was a Record Of The Week recently on cd via Neurot, so it gets a loooong review:
The sound of local noise rock outfit Kowloon Walled City has always straddled the line between Unsane/Helmet like measured metallic brutality, and a more spacious, song-oriented introspection, bordering on a sort of ultra heavy slowcore (at times hinting at our long time fantasy of a more metal Codeine). It was the tension between those two sonic sides that always gave KWC an edge over their noise rock compatriots for us. And while their last record Container Ships still mostly tended toward the heavier side of the equation, Grievances, their first for Neurosis' Neurot label, swings in the almost exact opposite direction. Which is not to say Grievances is not heavy, because it certainly is, it's just more subtle, more delicately crafted. And if the metal-Low thing SORT of applied before, on Grievances, it seems KWC has made a total transition from metal with slowcore moments, to a brooding, downer rock, with more metallic tendencies.
And we have to say, it definitely suits them. In fact, for long time fans of the band, it feels like the group's ever evolving sound has finally found that sweet spot, one that will no doubt bum out some of the group's more metal fans, but for the rest of us, this might be THE ONE. Much of Grievances is spent exploring space, and texture, tension and mood. For every bout of churning, hypno-riffage, there's a hushed stretch of Slint like Sprawl. Modern mope rockers True Widow are another reference point, as again are Low and Codeine and Galaxie 500. KWC have managed to take that sort of introspective mesmer, and transform it into something with way more heft. The only real remnant of the group's noise rock roots is frontman Scott Evans' feral bark, but even that has become something much more, taking that throat shredding yowl, and letting it do much of the melodic heavy lifting. Which gives the whole thing a sort of anguished, bruised quality, infusing the already introspective heaviness, with even more emotion and pathos.
And let's not take away from the record's heaviness, the sound (recorded by Evans) is stunning, the drums sound massive, the guitars thick and corrosive, some of the more melodic guitar parts are gnarled and gristly, squalls of controlled feedback are sculpted into jagged, mesmerizing melody, and when the band lock into a bout of hypnotic heavy riffing, it does most decidedly sound metallic, but it also blurs into a kind of mesmeric hypno-rock, often stretching out long enough, that even though it's all distorted chug, the sound becomes a burnished thing of beauty, equalling its core heaviness.
Even just from a purely technical standpoint, this record is a marvel, which is helping get KWC the sort of widespread love they have so long deserved, but should also finally get Evans the sort of adoration more generally reserved for engineers like Steve Albini. And it's a combination of that deft hand behind the board, along with stunning songs, subtly catchy songwriting, and a seemingly effortless mastery of tone and texture, that not only makes Grievances KWC's best by a mile, but makes this a serious contender for our top spot of 2015!
You hear that? That echoing, droning, heavy psych jamming destroying your mind? Once more, at long last reissued on vinyl, the distorto-delic '70s Japanese guitar psych holy grail known as Live '77, from perhaps THEE pioneering, influential underground Japanese psych outfit, Les Rallizes Denudes.
The set starts off exploring Les Rallizes' mellow side, all sensitive and lovely, with "Enter The Mirror", but then soon explodes into sheer amplified overload, with throbbing mantric rhythms Circle fans should dig. It's a searing wash of guitars in the most far out VU, Neil Young, Fushitsusha realm, but taken way further out. Rough, raw live sound (as with ALL Rallizes, of course), but really all the fuzz and distortion and grit sounds just right. There's four long tracks on disc one, three looong tracks on disc two. By the time the epic 20+ minute "The Last One" at the end of the 2nd lp marches into white noise oblivion, you - and maybe your speakers - will be fried.
Limited, again, & doubtless not sticking around for long...
A vinyl reissue of this rare '70s Italian horror movie soundtrack (for cult director Mario Bava's 1977 film "Schock"), composed and performed by a very Goblin-like band called Libra. Fittingly for the murderous, paranormal goings-on of Bava's flick, this album is full of gothic keyboards, eerie wordless vocal choirs, queasy prog-funk synth vamps, and ominous drum-scapes. Libra really rock out on the Schock theme, while elsewhere they deal in creepy electronic ambience. Bands like Libra can make sweet lullabies seem scarier than full-on screams and metal guitars, and yet their spooky piano instrumentals wouldn't be out of place if used as intros for Cradle Of Filth songs. Soundtrack/horror/Goblin fans will be pleased.
Sub Pop's contribution to the "Black Friday Record Store Day" semi-frenzy comes from indie rockers Merchandise, teamed up with Dum Dum Girls, for a track, "Red Sun" that's all throbbing synths, gloomy dramatic boy/girls vox, and bombastic drum boombap. Dunno, somehow reminds us of The Cult! On the flip, another Merch/DDG collab, "Echo". We've got, like, 4 copies left...
Debut full-length of melodic and occasionally morbid ("Suicide Note", "Crib Death") garage rockin' from this Canadian husband-and-wife duo, the hubby being Jeff Clarke, frontman of garage rock freeks Demon's Claws. Together Jeff & spouse Emily Frances have come up with an enjoyable album of sloppy, lo-fi catchiness that touches on Nuggetsy '60s style pop psych, raw bluesiness, fuzzy punk, and twangy, hazy country-rock, the couple delving into their shared love of certain sorts of cool sounds from dusty decades past. You get the idea that they probably both had subscriptions to Ugly Things magazine before they met, and just might have some Lee & Nancy fantasies.
(Vinyl version upcoming on December 18th, btw.)
If there was ever a band that sounded like they were transported directly from the heyday of AmRep records and nineties noise rock, it's Multicult. These Baltimore bruisers channel classic Jesus Lizard and Midwestern pigfuck heaviness through their own twisted take on modern math rock. Looking back on past reviews of previous Multicult records, that's essentially what we've said every time, and goddamn if it's not still true. Surgery, Helmet, Tar, Unsane, Janitor Joe, Hammerhead, we could go on, needless to say, if you like your rock dense and driving, your basslines sinewy, your guitars alternately jagged and brittle, crumbling and distorted, everything lathered in a sickly sweet patina of sonic grime, howled vocals over lurching grooves and fractured rhythms, then look no further. And that's not to mention some seriously great songs - "Foreign Object" might be THEE catchiest noise rock song we've heard in FOREVER!
Includes a download too.
A glorious first-ever reissue of this legendary Moroccan band's third album from 1976. Cited by Martin Scorcese as the Rolling Stones of Morocco, not because they sounded like the Stones per se, but because their music, a mixture of contemporary and folk traditions (especially Gnawa trance music and Sufi mysticism), identified with disenfranchised youth increasingly critical of the conservative government. Their concerts were known to start riots, though this is largely due to the lyrics more than the music itself. Nass El Ghiwane were a five member band that used traditional acoustic instruments, banjo, guembri, and hand percussion in long trance-like songs that played a strong influence on the modern Rai movement in Algeria. Fully remastered and limited to 500 copies.
Oneohtrix Point Never is back with another record, this one descending further down the path laid out by R+7, a strange yet catchy mashup of high and low brow electronics. In the same way that harsh noise outfits rummaged through piles of modernity's trash for sound sources, OPN's Daniel Lopatin mines the 21st century media garbage bins for inspiration - Muzak, trashy guitar solos, Eurotrance arpeggios, and autotuned vocals are all prominent elements on Garden Of Delete. While not as conceptually awesome as R+7, Garden of Delete is some of Lopatin's most interesting and even poppiest material to date, and of course, is sure to appear on countless top of 2015 lists, although some of us here felt Lopatin may have taken his (previously ironic?) fondness for vocoders and such a step too far, where he's not joking anymore...
FINALLY REISSUED!!! While it's always a pleasure to listen the classic recordings of Organum, I've resigned myself to the possibility that David Jackman has quietly ceased all of his current musical operations and has been merely reissuing much of the huge back catalogue of his solo work and Organum from the '80s (what no Monoplane?). "Volume One" was one of the first documents of the Jackman / Organum reissues, collecting material from "Rasa" (originally produced as a split with Nurse With Wound on United Dairies) and the L.A.Y.L.AH. anti-records "Tower of Silence" and "In Extemis." Like everything else Jackman released, "Volume One" quickly went out of print and began fetching hefty sums on eBay. Fortunately, this has come back into print (but probably not for long); so those without a disposable income can afford to hear the wonderful paradox that is Organum.
The timeless, acoustic drones that make up the music of Organum could have been made for the beginning of the world or for its final breath; yet Jackman has always avoided assigning any specific metaphors to his work. Instead, this is music that attempts to exist purely within its own context, unconcerned with anything beyond its self-defined borders. Grinding motorcycle engines, steel strung instruments, bowed metal, and Japanese flutes are the instruments that continuously re-appear throughout Organum's recordings. However grim, Industrial, grating, dissonant, or punishing Organum could be with such instrumentations, Jackman always manages to arrange his work to emphasize the dynamic and often beautiful tonalities of those sounds. For those fans of Mirror, Andrew Chalk, Birchville Cat Motel, Oren Ambarchi, and other drone obssessed composers, Organum's recordings are required listening.
FINALLY REISSUED!!! Just like "Volume One," Robot Records has discarded David Jackman's mandala-like collages of medical clip-art as well as any pertinent information in favor of an all black package, with the tracklisting printed on the cd itself. Fronted by the curmudgeonly Jackman (who previously worked with Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra, Nurse With Wound, and members of AMM), Organum has been an unwavering vehicle to compose unsettling drones out of the dynamic timbres of metallic scrapings. As heard on the first track "Valley Of Worms" - a collaboration with The New Blockaders from the Organum album "In Extremis" Organum's sound is a monstrous howl of dissonant acoustic noises, chugging Kawasaki motorcycle engines (!!!), and abrasive textural overlayering; yet upon the following tracks "Horii" (originally released on L.A.Y.L.A.H. and featuring noted Organum graduate Andrew Chalk), and "Ich Reiste Weit Und Verweilte Fur Einigezeit In Tring" (an unreleased track from 1989), Jackman's symphonies of noise begin to harmonize into a eerily beautiful drone. Very highly recommended work that probably won't stay in print for much longer in spite of the repressing!
The necessary reissue of a 2013 tour only cassette that Pedestrian Deposit produced for one of their marathon jaunts across the United States, finding every shithole alternative art-space and / or dive bar that would host their volatile take on electro-acoustic expressionism. In all of countless performances, Pedestrian Deposit work through all of the variations that would come through a particular set that might involve a tension-wire attached to PD's Shannon Kennedy as she plays the wire with a bow amidst comrade in arms Jon Borges extracting the most demonic of full-throated noise from his power electronics set-up of pedals and tone generators. In doing so, PD are an amazing proposition; but they are reluctant to encapsulate these ideas on record, as if the performative aspect is a truer reflection of their work than on record. That said, when PD does finalize a project as on the prepared cello, backmasked electronics, and volcanic rumbling masterpiece of Eleventh Hour (or their 2015 album The Architector) it is always a wonder to behold. As with every Pedestrian Deposit album, this comes with our highest recommendation!
We've been BIG fans of New Zealand's Stefan Neville and his his lo-fi project Pumice for a long, long time, always wowed by his knack for weaving together both the NZ indie pop and NZ noise rock traditions so darn well. 2008's Quo was a Record Of The Week, and this new one is only his 2nd proper full length since then, and we love it too!! You could read our rave about Quo (referencing everything from Pavement to Polvo, from GBV to Beefheart) to get an idea about this man's brilliance, or just listen to this new record, which features, for the first time on a Pumice album, collaborative contributions from a bunch of guests (including folk/drone guitarist Matthew De Gennaro among others). Puddles is more rainy day moodiness from Pumice, distortion drenched yet delicate, with gentle jangle, sincere singing, wheezing pump organ and varied other instrumentation making for melodic AND noisy meandering down dreamy garden lanes and teeter-totter junk shops in our imaginations. (LP version includes download.)
Ramleh return with their first "rock" album in quite some time - their last release, 2009's Valediction, was a return to the Broken Flag era of harsh, smoldering drones. But Circular Time is rock music only in the most stripped down sense of the word. This is blown out, heavy psych that takes guitar-based rock to its logical conclusion, a whirlwind of total heaviness and obsession with englufment that has more in common with Skullflower than Hawkwind. That's not to say there aren't moments of musical serenity here - Gary Mundy has come a long way in knowing how to blend assault and restraint. A perfect fit for Crucial Blast and their brand of destructive heaviness!!
The most unhinged band in metal, Canada's Revenge, somehow manages to even sound more insane on this, their fifth full-length record, despite the departure of founding member Pete Helmkamp (Angelcorpse). The aural equivalent of being dragged to hell, also the aural equivalent of any of their trademark abject 3-word album titles. One of the few bands left still pushing extreme metal further!!!
Comes with sick patch.
'70s glam pixie Marc Bolan & his band T-Rex (along with that group's earlier hippie acid folk incarnation Tyrannosaurus Rex, in the '60s) have emerged as quite a big influence on a number of today's popular indie / garage artists, notably Devendra Banhart, King Tuff, Guy Blakeslee, and Ty Segall to name a few (Electronicat too!). Ty has taken things further by recording a bunch of Marc Bolan cover tunes, which couldn't be more perfect 'cause first of all, he can call it Ty-Rex, and also 'cause his songwriting often already sounds a lot like Bolan's.
This special limited-edition "Black Friday Record Store Day" release compiles together two totally out of print Ty-doing-T-Rex vinyl releases previously issued by Goner, a 12" from Record Store Day 2011 and a 7" from Record Store Day 2013. All eight tracks from both much sought-after tributes are found here, along with a previously unreleased bonus cover of "20th Century Boy" done very much Fuzz style. Can't imagine any Ty fans not wanting this, even if you don't know Marc Bolan from Mack Bolan!
A full 11 years since their last masterpiece Illusion's Play (which is only about 6 months in funeral doom years), these Finnish aficionados of gorgeously mournful DOOM have finally risen once more from the fog below to deliver another massive missive of crushing beauty. Monotony Fields is funeral doom surely, but that term betrays the lush landscape of sound that this album wanders listlessly through, layered with numbing morphine drenched synths, ethereal female chanting, patient heart rending melodies, guttural growls and world demolishing plodding drums. The effect is almost like death-doom gone new age - all engulfing, all consuming, the perfect winter album to drown in! Highly recommended for fans of Skepticism, Bell Witch, Asunder, Mournful Congregation and a very serious contender for DOOOOM album of the year.
Guitarist Ben Chasny and his deck of cards are back with another "Hexadic" release from Six Organs, Chasny utilizing the esoteric, chance-based compositional system he has devised, that previously resulted in an awesome heavy-duty noise-psych ensemble outing earlier this year. This time 'round, the cards he dealt have him playing in a solo, acoustic mode, crafting nine tracks of drifty, spacious drone folk, full of steel string resonance, soft voiced singing, and stark, dark, lonely atmosphere. Real nice, with hush and hum and strum and some Jandekian tanglings, for fans of Richard Youngs, Bill Orcutt, and of course the man himself, Ben Chasny - who graced us with a great instore just this week! (For some reason, vinyl and tape only, no cd version for Hexadic II, sad face.)
Longtime indie rock / perfect pop faves Spoon have this limited edition 45rpm 10" single out for this year's "Black Friday Record Store Day", the A-side being their cool cover of the Cramps song "TV Set" (which also appeared on the soundtrack to the Poltergeist remake/reboot, apparently), with all the hectic fuzz and swagger you'd hope for. Wonder if they thought it was clever, also, since lots of people buy TV sets on Black Friday? On the flip: "Let Me Be Mine (Night Version)", an alternate take on a track from last year's Spoon album They Want My Soul. Pink marbled vinyl, limited stock!
A lot of the soundtracks we review, are for movies we haven't actually seen. This one though, we had been hearing about forever, and saw the minute it came out. The sci-fi nerds around here were already familiar with the story of the failed attempt by demented genius / cinematic auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain) to adapt and film Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel Dune. And sure, some of us dig the version by David Lynch that eventually did get made, but it couldn't hold a candle to Jodorowsky's vision, one that was to include art design by H.R. Giger and Moebius, music by Magma and Pink Floyd, special effects by Dan O'Banon (Heavy Metal, Lifeforce, C.H.U.D., Return Of The Living Dead, Total Recall), and stars Mick Jagger, David Carradine, Orson Welles and Salvador Dali!! Why oh why did that not happen?! In the realm of things that should absolutely exist, Jodorowsky's Dune most definitely is high up on the list. And thus, what a fantastic story, and minus having the actual Dune movie, this documentary is about the closest we'll ever get.
And enlisted to score this tale of what could have been, is none other than aQ pal Kurt Stenzel, one half of local synth duo Spacekraft, who has conjured up a spectacular accompaniment, one that perfectly suits the documentary, but in fact could easily have been the actual score to Jodorowsky's Dune, had it ever come to fruition. It's super evocative, definitely retro, a burbling cauldron of synth tones and mysterious melodies, moody music cues and abstract fragments of sound. In many cases, snippets of Jodorowsky's dialogue from the film are set atop these synthscapes, which only adds a surreal quality to the already far out proceedings, Jodorowsky's voice and delivery are so unique, like some shaman or cult leader sermonizing, even more so with the amazing kosmische backdrop. Stenzel masterfully conjures up classic scores of that era, anyone who's been obsessing on all the various soundtrack reissues on Death Waltz and Mondo, could easily believe that this was in fact some lost score to a crazy eighties B movie. Squelchy analog synths burble and pulse and pulsate, oozing into atmospheric ambience, or coalescing into dramatic chase scene tension, swirling clouds of sound shimmer and glisten, slow shifting fields of texture drift like alien fog, conjuring visions of futuristic cities, of post apocalyptic wastelands, of futures undreamed of, and futures dreamed of only in the past. It's utterly mesmerizing, dreamily psychedelic, and totally fantastic.
The reissue campaign of the early works by Asmus Tietchens continues, here with a 1988 recording with long-standing collaborator Okko Bekker, originally released on Dom, now sporting four bonus tracks not on the original. Intentional or otherwise, E parallels much of the library music that was being quietly generated in institutional electronic studios across the globe, jumping thematically from pre-serialist melodicism played on period-specific digital sampling keyboards to Eno-esque avant-pop electronic numbers with a few forays into thoroughly abstracted / splintered sound collages and way out saxophone improvisations.
E was always an eclectic record and one that seemed out of place next to Nurse With Wound or HNAS; but in a context of Ghost Box relocating the KPM catalogue for themselves and those digging into the not-quite-new-age electronics of sci-fi exuberance and baroque horror synthesis (e.g. K. Leimer, Craig Leon, Laurie Speigel, etc.), this album will definitely bring delights in its fancifully cheeky electronic simulacrum.
Few who conjure the dark ambient arts have the credentials of Troum and Raison D'Etre - the former being the longstanding German bass/guitar/fx industrial drone duo with an exceptional track record and the latter being a staple of Cold Meat Industries always seeming to score the soundtracks for crumbled cathedrals wrecked by European decline and weather. Emotional portent is what both of these artists have mustered through their sculpted echo and reverberation flecked with spectral atmospheric melody; and that is exactly what these two produce in their first collaboration. An oppressive misery hangs on these expansive cloaking drones and ghostly ephemera, and De Aeris In Sublunaria Influxu is all the better for it!
The acid rock experts at Permanent & Riding Easy teamed up to produce this cool comp of underground American hard rock / proto-metal obscurities from the '70s, full of badass bands that would never, ever have had to be told "more cowbell!", bands who aspired to arenas but probably didn't get much beyond the garage, with a lone self-released demo single to their names, most of 'em - real finds, and real rarities, so we'd only heard of, like, one of 'em before! Lotsa fuzzed out grooves, wailing vocals, and heavy riffing guitar, a lot like the tracks on Numero's brilliant Darkscorch Canticles comp, but less mystical and D&D-ish, more straight up hard rockin party times tunes, probably inspired by Led Zep and Grand Funk but coming closer to Frijid Pink and Bubble Puppy. Crank this loud enough, and it's another Record Of The Week for some of us here, and likewise should be for those of you who daydream about the airbrushed fantasy artwork that'll go on the side of the van you'd like to own one day. For the curious, the acts on here are: Box, Snow, Tour, Zebra, Bob Goodsite, Raw Meat (whose track reminds us of Simply Saucer in a weird way), Punch, Bacchus, Lenny Drake, Todd, and Josefus.
