Packaging boxsets can be a double edged sword. Such things can works of beauty and love for a particular musician or anthology. But, too elaborate an object with intricate / fragile hinges and multi-layered pieces of artwork, and the designer runs the risk that the audience will get it and shove the boxset on some high shelf, cuz it's too much of a pain in the ass to paw through to get to the music. Here's to Vaald for keeping things nice and simple - three tapes in clamshells meant to be sold in one unit for ease of use, and keeping to the label's austere aesthetic in artwork, grim electronics and black ambience. If that sounds a lot like Hospital Productions, Vaald does a damn fine job in looking through the Hospital lens even deeper into the underground with a whole bunch of cryptic artists who may or may not all be the same girl, dude, coven, and / or bedroom nerd. As such Chrysanthemum Maps Vol. I-III spells out the label's aesthetic through sound: mournful violin drones cast in shadowy reverb (by Marble Verse), dread-incuding techno nocturnes (by Negative Crown), dark energy hypnosis through synth cluster chords, tones, and drones that sounds very much like the latest works from Motion Sickness Of Time Travel (perhaps it is, under the pseudonym Hollow Light), sawblade and power tool recordings as an arte-poverta channelling of ill-will (by Spur+Phial), long-arc atonal discomfort (Grave Molt), and slow-motion shoegaze deconstruction into blackened hymnal (Silver Casket). Limited to a paltry 25 copies or thereabouts; and of course, it's already sold out at the source.
Every city in every state, every country, has its own little musical scene, one that has grown and changed over the years, bands playing gigs, recording records, breaking up, moving on to other gigs, finally getting real jobs and settling down and having families, those records and gigs and bands forgotten. But think about all the places, all the cities, all the years and decades, and how many bands and records that we've never heard or heard of must be lurking out there. Records that were given to friends, consigned at the local store, or just stashed in the garage or basement. Rare record reissues are nothing new, and there's enough that they can't all possibly be good. In fact it's gotten to the point where if a record is old, and nobody heard it, it suddenly becomes a rarity worth unearthing. Which is not always the case. But with all those records out there, all those forgotten bands, some with only a song or two legacy, it's worth digging though all the rest, on the off chance of stumbling on to something amazing. And scenes have always fed off themselves, often where there was one good band, there was two, and where there was two, there was a whole bunch. Which brings us to Rocky Mountain Low. A killer collection of seventies rock and punk rock and power pop from Colorado, which is a place we're pretty familiar with, at least from the eighties onward, but we didn't know a single band here, and some of these groups are amazing. AND, for such a sprawling varied collection, there's very little chaff. In fact, this could very well have been a Numero Group reissue, super well researched, incredible song selection, a totally unknown lost scene, a bunch of amazing bands, and tons of killer tracks, maybe a bit more punk rock and lo-fi, but then, that's fine with us.
The Ravers are crunchy and jangly and sound like they're from Minneapolis, Radio Pete might be our favorite, effortlessly creating some gloriously rough edged reverb drenched garage pop, the sort of thing all those new groups are desperately emulating, sounds like Ariel Pink or the Oh Sees or Ty Segall if they were from the early seventies, the Front are snarly almost metallic sounding punk rock, Defex kick out the muddy murky bass heavy jams, all squiggly angular leads, wild drumming and killer pop hooks, the Cells are total Romantics style new wave power pop, the Profalactics are all yelpy Riot Grrl sounding lo-fi punk rock three chord lo-fi crunch, the Instant are woozy low fidelity punk pop psych, a lot of this reminds us of Guided By Voices too, that sort of British sound filtered through a US punk rock aesthetic, and it goes on and on. So many kick ass bands, so many amazing tracks, a double lp AND a cd, with a massive full color magazine sized booklet, jam packed with extensive liner notes on EVERY band here, cool stuff for sure, and an awesome glimpse of yet another lost and forgotten scene...
This is the kind of kid's music compilation that is as much (or more) for the adults, who are really buying it for themselves, though your little one will like it too - we tested it out on Allan's 18 month old Josie, and she started happily dancing immediately, probably finding it a nice respite from the sort of weird sounds her dad usually subjects her too. With tracks from a bunch of classic artists (Van Dyke Parks, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Donovan, Vashti Bunyan, and more), it's a diverse and entirely delightful selection of material, not all of it originally intended for children. There's lots of gentle folk, some freaky funk (The Pointer Sisters doing a counting song from a 1977 episode of Sesame Street!), and sentimental soft pop - heck, the last track here is none other than "Rainbow Connection", and that sweet song, sung by Kermit the Frog, is the perfect capstone to this neat-o collection, which also comes with a specially illustrated story booklet, all about some critters in the woods who find a mysterious object (this record).
Btw, Third Man also put out a kid's portable turntable, the Third Man Mini Record Player that's sorta supposed to go with the vinyl of this, we have one in stock if you're interested in the complete package!
That's Mika Vainio and Frank Vigroux in collaboration on this exceptional album of industrial strength rhythms that are the closest Vainio has come to returning to the signature techno assaults of his now defunct Pan Sonic project. Clipped, distorted, and menacing, Vainio's electro bursts of basskick and slapped snare erupt in urgent chunks of chest cavity throb which dominate the entire album. Vigroux, of whose work we've previously been unaware despite a decade of activity, does well to buttress Vainio's rhythms with adroitly colored tone signals, blackened synth ominousness, subtle placements of dissonance, and the occasional cosmic filter-sweep that nudge the more introspective pieces into Schulze / Schnitzler territories of '70s deep space paranoia.
A busy month for local label Time Released Sound, with two new releases for December, this one from Polish composer and violinist Olga Wojciechowska, a collection of tracks originally written for theater and dance productions, but sonically perfectly in line with the TRS 'sound', moody and atmospheric, drifty and cinematic, this one a bit less abstract and electronic, and more modern classical, a heady blend of blurred ambience, and lush orchestration, strings and horns, chimes and drones, the soundtrack to some windswept epic, or some artful romance. A darkly dolorous and hauntingly lovely gem. And as always, there's the standard digipak version, and the SUPER DELUXE version, which this time around is limited to 65 copies, and comes in a hand seen booklet, composed of maps printed on vellum, mazes, a fabric pouch, stamped, punched, hand worked, and all housed in an antique education chart, which in turn is then wrapped in a collaged and stamped envelope. Phew!
A busy month for local label Time Released Sound, with two new releases for December, this one from Polish composer and violinist Olga Wojciechowska, a collection of tracks originally written for theater and dance productions, but sonically perfectly in line with the TRS 'sound', moody and atmospheric, drifty and cinematic, this one a bit less abstract and electronic, and more modern classical, a heady blend of blurred ambience, and lush orchestration, strings and horns, chimes and drones, the soundtrack to some windswept epic, or some artful romance. A darkly dolorous and hauntingly lovely gem. And as always, there's the standard digipak version, and the SUPER DELUXE version, which this time around is limited to 65 copies, and comes in a hand seen booklet, composed of maps printed on vellum, mazes, a fabric pouch, stamped, punched, hand worked, and all housed in an antique education chart, which in turn is then wrapped in a collaged and stamped envelope. Phew!
