Aaron Davis (aka Acre) offers his first production in almost five years after a very prolific chapter which saw numerous releases of his synth-blossom desolation dotting the landscape of the psych-drone underworld. Beyond Cease To Exist is a considerably more mature and confident set of recordings, as Davis snaps the synth-noise undulation to the slow march of drum-machined rhythm, while the sheets of long-form electronics expand through fragmented melody and almost guitar-riff distortion in these lush yet spare constructs of burnished silvery drone. With the arpeggiated mono-pulse sequencing, these two tracks ring with a sci-fi paranoia harking back to the classic works of Conrad Schniztler or those even those replicants from Oneohtrix Point Never. Limited, of course - to 100 copies.
Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) dedicates this album to the turkey, following numerous explosive noise albums in homage to various animals. While frogs, fish, and dolphins have appeared throughout the Merzbow menagerie, birds in particular seem to the object of fancy for Akita, and here he offers the following: "Turkey is beautiful animal and do not eat them." How his vegan beliefs co-exist with the feral electric screams that is the Merzbow / Akita aesthetic has long been a mystery to us; but that does not diminish the psychedelic intensity and kaleidoscopic overload heard here. Akita is focused (or appears to focus) on the analog systems of closed-circuit noise construction that dominated his work up through the mid-'90s. Wattle squiggles and noodles with an electronic squawking that could be Akita's mimicking of the titular bird, with these sounds (un)settled above a scorching roar of jet-engine tumult and clattering demon-pulse frenzy. Limited edition picture discs of just 270 copies!
So cool. We've been wanting to list this for a while, finally got a bunch of copies so we can. It's a disc collecting early pieces by one of our favorite idiosyncratic music makers and sonic visionaries, Pierre Bastien. For those who have yet to discover the joys of Bastien, imagine strange haunting lullabies, played BY ROBOTS. Real Robots! Well sort of. Bastien would take apart old turntables, use bits of random electronics, stuff laying around the garage, sometimes adding multiple tone arms to record players, sometimes using bits of metal and electronics to create little machines that would pluck strings, or make little rhythms, and he would play along usually on trumpet. It sounds strange, but the music he created was magical, mysterious, childlike, but strangely mechanical (obviously) and haunting. Like a super DIY bedroom Philip Jeck but with a band of homemade robots! Sold? We figured you'd have to be. We've been pretty obsessed with Bastien and his music ever since we first heard his Musiques Paralloidres album almost 10 years ago.
This compilation collects a bunch of early tracks, a handful never before released, all from well before his first proper album, mostly culled from the eighties although one track is from WAY back in 1968, an untitled track for prepared guitar and Metronome!
Soon, rather than utilizing a mundane metronome, he was indeed building his own mechanical music-making helpers, the "Meccano". Each one custom-designed to accompany Bastien on plucked strings, skipping record, scraped metal, automated percussion, whatever Bastien imagined as accompaniment for a specific song. The results are divine, tick-tocking, clicking and clacking, wavering and warbling, dark plucked melodies, dizzying fragmented loops, squiggle and scrapes, alternatingly mesmeric and gentle, chaotic and clattery, a sound like a ramshackle music box, gives way to a sweet child-like melody, the sound of a toybox coming to life once the children are asleep, a mini toy orchestra performed in the still of night, with only the moon and the stars looking on. Many of the tracks feature much more actual playing than later Bastien discs, but the robots are still out in full force, playing along, his own little mechanical band.
All of Bastien's records are fabulous, super creative, innovative, baffling, fun and funny, playful and sometimes silly, but just as often dark and beautifully brooding. Mecanoid, Pop, the recently reviewed Visions Of Doing, all of them deserve to be in the collection of any adventurous music lover, and Les Premieres Machines 1968-1988 most certainly does too!
The booklet features a few photos, liner notes in French only (unfortunately), and an extensive discography!
We have a couple of these remaining from RSD, and in this reviewers opinion, they are easily the best things reissued for this holiday of redundantly repressed dollar-binners (though, these both were reissued as recently as 2014, go figure). These first two albums from The Bevis Frond, both originally released in 1987, are all-time classics of bedroom 4-track psych freakery, covered or namedropped by a who's-who of drugged-pop all-stars (Teenage Fanclub, Elliott Smith, Sonic Youth, J Mascis).
Although both are equally stellar, Inner Marshland is the more drug-damaged, like the flower-power psychedalia of Odyssey & Oracle ten years on. Random bursts of effects from Salomon's records pop in and out of the mix, adding all manner of discombobulation. Trust us, if you haven't heard this, one of your favorite bands has and has obsessed over it. Time to pass the torch.
We have a couple of these remaining from RSD, and in this reviewers opinion, they are easily the best things reissued for this holiday of redundantly repressed dollar-binners (though, these both were reissued as recently as 2014, go figure). These first two albums from The Bevis Frond, both originally released in 1987, are all-time classics of bedroom 4-track psych freakery, covered or namedropped by a who's-who of drugged-pop all-stars (Teenage Fanclub, Elliott Smith, Sonic Youth, J Mascis).
Although both are equally stellar, Miasma hints towards the Britpop future that Nick Salomon (the sole freak behind The Bevis Frond) would embrace. There are some seriously catchy jangly anthems on here, all surrounded of course by Salomon's guitar wizardry and strange vocals. Trust us, if you haven't heard this, one of your favorite bands has, and has obsessed over it. Time to pass the torch.
Body Of Light is the goth / synth-wave project for brothers Andrew and Alexander Jarson, with a slew of previous releases on Ascetic House. Volanta Di Amore was first released in 2013 on Chondritic as one of their many limited edition cassettes, but now receives a vinyl overhaul for this excellent album of sleekly darkened synthpop with plenty of overtures to Xymox, Psyche, and Soft Cell. For those keen on what Dark Entries has been digging up, Body Of Light seems to be tapping into that particular curatorial strain of minimal wave from the '80s: a DIY sensibility with a knack for inventive electronic melodies and impassioned vocals, here spun in harmonies from the two brothers sounding quite a lot like a young Marc Almond. Those who know Chondritic only as a noise label may be surprised by how catchy this can be - oh yes, this one is quite the earworm. Another great record from Chondritic!
Once more into the breach with Bull Tongue! We're up to BT#5 now, once again with an all-star cast providing reviews of, well, everything and anything. Of course it all started with record reviews, but practically anything is fair game, some of the best pieces in any issue of Bull Tongue are the reviews of stuff that normally never is reviewed or even thought of as review-able (maybe not even on Yelp, like, um, "Ornette Coleman's Funeral"). 80 pages this time, contributors include Ira Kaplan (with "SFO Super Shuttle vs. Hollywood Town Car"), Byron Coley & Thurston Moore, Michael Hurley, Chris D, Alan Bishop, Leah Singer, Tosh Berman ("David Bowie & Scott Walker Punched"????), Mats Gustafsson, Kendra Smith, Ariella Stok, Trevor Block, Samara Lubelski, Bruce Russell, Barbara Manning-Vargas, Sharon Cheslow, Tesco Vee, Beans McCuttone, Naomi Yang, Richard Meltzer, Brian Turner, Chris Stigliano, Phil McMullen, Dylan Nyoukis, Joe Carducci, Hisham Mayet, Christina Carter, Tom Lax, David Greenbereger, Eddie Flowers, Owen Maercks, Erika Elizabeth, Marc Masters, Gerard Cosloy, and dozens more, a veritable who's-who of hipness. Amusing and/or enlightening, all of it.
REPRESSED, AND NOW HERE ON VINYL TO LIST!!
This is the first thing we've seen from Tim Gane after Stereolab announced they would be on "indefinite hiatus" back in 2009 (though there was a previous album from his newly conceived Cavern Of Anti-Matter project in 2013 on an obscure German label, with not much in the way of Stateside distribution). Cavern Of Anti-Matter is primarily an instrumental trio featuring Joe Dilworth (the drummer from Stereolab) and analog synth wrangler Holger Zapf; and this should not disappoint any Stereolab fan whatsoever, as the band follows the motorik / Krautrock / experimental art-pop continuum that Stereolab mastered on Emperor Tomato Ketchup. The trio effortless weaves blorping electronic sequences, hypnotically chimed guitar melodies, and a spry array of machined drums, while tactfully marching through electro-grooves and bubble-pop, space-age disco. Two guest vocalists are to be found on the album, with Sonic Boom delivering sermonized monotone and vocoder dislocation amidst burbling motorik grooviness reminiscent of the Groop at their best; however, the appearance of Deerhunter's Bradford Cox crooning on his track is nothing to write home about, but it's only two minutes out of what should be seen a formidable return to form for Tim Gane!
Second solo album from this hardworking Norwegian jazz drummer, who has played on a lot of other folk's records and also spends much of his time collecting unusual instruments, mostly of the percussion variety, many of which you'll hear on this album, including some unique items like one built with cake molds and springs. His first album was named after a vintage drum kit, this one's named after a special set of chromatic bells. Dahlen sounds like a one-man percussion ensemble, playing everything here, also including electronics and musical saw (yeah!!).
The album starts off with some shimmering, skittering click-clack clamor at its most beautiful, percussion meets drone in a dream wash of ambient mesmer, busy with sticks tapping and bells chiming. On track two, sprightly instrumental grooves with a bit more melody come to the fore, rather delightful. But then elsewhere, moody and sparse atmospheres prevail, accentuated by that wavvery singing saw, love it! On those tracks, it's more like more like some eerie postrock, almost Bohren-esque in its doomy slomo unfurling. Bohren meets Pierre Bastien, perhaps. There's also moments of what sounds like modern classical string-scrape, and twitchy improv bits too. All of it lovely and intriguing!
RECORD STORE DAY 2016 ITEM!
Surely these two could have come up with a better name than Drone. Those responsible are Mike Harding, who runs the seminal experimental label Touch, and Mark Van Hoen, who has delivered so many amazing recordings as Locust and Seefeel. This project takes its cue from a very early Van Hoen project called Aurobindo from the mid '90s which coincidentally Harding released through the Touch ancillary label Ash International. Yes, the drone almighty is central to the work, pushed by environmental recordings of air conditioning ducts and the tidal fluctuations of modular synth slowly churning through its low-tone oscillations. Throughout, Drone deftly weave their drones with shortwave radio bursts of utility signal transmission and rapturous melodic phrases buried under piles of distortion, sheets of synth-noise, and alienating metallic flange, making for a very solid release that easily fits with the Touch aesthetic, more akin to BJ Nilsen / Hazard than Fennesz. One of the rare, non-reissue offerings for Record Store Day 2016, and one that we have limited restock to offer forth!
Hey, cool, it's been a year or two but now this great zine is back with issue number three, and with zines like this it's always worth the wait (and a nice surprise when they appear). Despite the slick color cover and perfect binding, this is an old-school zine through and through, the new effort from Jay Hinman who did the xeroxed zine Super Dope back in the day. Eighty pages this time 'round with a ton of cool stuff in it, starting with a Sibylle Baier interview (!!!!), also NZ's The Coolies, Portland post-punkers Lithics, Tim Presley of White Fence, an appreciation of Phil Milstein's Velvet Underground Appreciation Society, a primer on essential DIY 45's from NZ in the '80s, and tons more, including of course lotsa record reviews. Here's the deal, this is a FANzine, and that means Jay and his contributors are looking out for you, providing such fannish extras as some personal picks of a few Baier-ish modern day female folkies to check out following that Baier interview. You will LEARN something to help feed your personal musical obsessions from reading this zine, guaranteed.
San Francisco's Department of Digging and Filling has been at work in front of Aquarius Records once again, with the rumble of bulldozers, front loaders, and jackhammers adding to the usual complex din of Valencia Street. It can be easy enough to obliterate that sound with a wintery blast of black metal or the overwhelming torrent from a feral noise artist; but in Grant Evans' tactile drone piece, we have sympathy. A metallic ring harmonizes with itself as the fundamental to accretion upon accretion of softly looped melodies, industrial washes, and the coronal chorus of motorized rasping tones akin to a Zimoun installation of thousands of microcontrollered engines purring in cardboard boxes. The softened acoustic noise matches and attenuates many of the aggressive sounds from the construction outside, though Evans complicates the matters with fragmented blurts of tape-mechanic clatter and closely miked motor grinding on metal. While jarring, it's never aggressive in the context. And according to the man himself, the album's sources are thumb piano and tape! Another great album from Grant Evans and one that parallels the works of Coleclough, Heemann, and the ambient output of Nocturnal Emissions for sure.
The sound of electronics failing heralds Hyacinth, the second album in as many weeks from Grant Evans. A pierced ring from fluorescent tubes as the current ballast is on its way to failing, the ionized glow of magnetic tape feeding back on itself, and a scratchy rumble of unknown origin all situate prominently in Evans' slow-crawl composition of disquiet and acoustic dread. As Evans' ratchets the tension some 25 minutes into the piece, a venomous sibilance hisses to the foreground with the mechanics of the tape machine stridently surfacing as the rear guard and giving way to a turgid blast of oily black noise. It's far more menacing than the ambient industrial practices of Repose, paralleling the crypto-philosophical musings of Giancarlo Toniutti (aesthetically speaking), Joe Colley's nihilist constructivism, and the enigmatic recordings of Knaekede Stemmer. Limited, as with all Adversary discs, to a mere 50 copies.
The Austrian avant-guitarist offers four tracks of beautiful guitarscapes tricked out through his signature glitched-n-blurred processing. Hardly cold for a slab of digitalia, the opening track "Liminal" is one of Fennesz' more structured numbers, built from a simple chord progression on his acoustic guitar, that then stomps on a Mogwai-ish distortion box for at least one burst of incendiary soft-loud-soft dynamics. All of the sounds prickle, squish, and splutter amidst a swarming sea of digitized pixels that reassemble themselves as echoes and ghosts of Fennesz' original guitar playing. "July" darkens the hue quite a bit with a warbling bass that looks back to the post-rock explorations of Rothko or Labradford. "Shift" is one of Fennesz' finer drone-centric moments that builds a hallowed melody out of a cavernous wash of sun bleached tones, and the title track is a collaborative effort with Steven Hess on drums, resulting in a slowcore tune fleshed with all of Fennesz' digital ephemera.
FYI, there is a compact disc scheduled for release in September 2011, for those not so keen on the vinyl format. Oh yeah, this has been cut at 45rpm, so you know that we'll be playing this at 33 as well!
Last time we gave the Record Of The Week nod to Gnod was for their super-space-psych Chaudelande opus. That was followed by the completely different but also awesome electronic/industrial WTF? freakout of the Infinity Machines triple lp. Now these UK mind expanders are back with a new effort, and another new direction - this one could be pegged as their tribute to early Swans!! It's not space rock at all, it's total early Swans style pummel, dirgey and shouty and clangy. Also a bit like Skullflower, and early Swans. Did we mention early Swans? And we love stuff that sounds like early Swans!!!
There are four tracks here, each one a slab of mesmeric, abject heaviness (the fourth track, a remix, appears on the cd version but not on the vinyl, however the vinyl comes with a download code for the whole album that includes it). The first two are downright short compared to most Gnod tracks - only around 7 to 8 minutes long, each - and work with empty space perhaps more than any previous Gnod compositions, utilizing skeletal rhythms like the repeatedly aforementioned Swans, or the spacious psych of contemporary act Disappears. Track two, "Learn To Forgive," is a miasma of barked orders and atonal melodies, some of them like haunting whale calls, formed from phantom feedback, which eventually emerge out of the void as the track progresses.
The climax here is obviously the headcaving pummel and fierce brutality of the third track, the epic 18 minute "Sodom & Gomorrah," an all-in, headfirst dive into everything Gnod is about: huge, spacious, mind-blowing psychedelia, crushing rhythmic dirge that feels like will never let up. But when it does, then there's that fourth track, a reprise of the the opening number, in the form of a dubbed out remix (by Raikes Parade), sorta going full circle to give the listener a more blissful come down finale after absorbing the punishment dished out on the three abyssal tracks preceding it.
A massive album, and so awesome. Both formats come packaged in nice shiny, mirrored sleeves, and the lp is on white vinyl.
RECORD STORE DAY 2016 ITEM!
Soundtrack to 1977 Italian crime flick (also known as The Heroin Busters), composed and performed by the mighty Goblin, not long after they waxed their famous Suspiria score, so this is prime Goblin-era shiz. As expected, funky, cop-car-chase stuff abuts moody psychedelic atmospheres. The main theme is one of our personal Goblin hits, with wailin' psych guitar, a classic of theirs for sure, and elsewhere the record delivers plenty of groovy percussive excitement, as well as suspenseful electronic synth-scapes that almost sound like they belong in a sci-fi film. While not as well-known as Suspiria and Profondo Rosso, definitely a soundtrack Goblin fans will love.
More info on this edition from the label: "First ever LP version of the full soundtrack. Gatefold cover with new artwork and extensive liner notes, a 30x30cm poster insert with images of lobby cards and posters of the film. Limited Exclusive RSD 2016 edition in white heroin coloured vinyl."
Finally on cd, the first two releases from LA black metal trio Harassor, who on their self-titled debut demo delivered a twisted and fucked up and weirdly raw strain of black metal that definitely speaks to the warped sonic sensibilities of aQ metalheads. Plenty of D-beat style raw black metal pound, the guitars filthy and crusty, the vocals an effects drenched bellow one minute, an alien garble the next, the drums a wild chaotic pummel all but buried in the noise drenched mix, the sound primitive and blown out, lo-fi, but still caustic and noisy and heavy, the songs tending toward the punkish, but slipping easily into furious buzzing blast or lumbering doomic lurch.
When we first reviewed the demo, we called out the track "Killed By Inanity", which unfurls thick crumbling superdistorted riffage, pounding midtempo drum pummel, the vocals a caustic glass gargling growl, careening from tangled gnarled blast, punky gallop, to full on blown out almost noise rock, thinking at the time that it both hinted at the group's non-black metal roots, and likely pointed to the band's new material continuing to push the boundaries of the raw, primitive blackness of which they were so clearly masters.
Which most definitely proved to be the case once we heard Hater Of Man, which definitely displays more polish than the group's demo, the raw demented sonic path these guys were on did indeed lead to a sound much more beholden to classic metal, crunchy riffage, loping, galloping tempos, plenty of doominess, some cool Theremin-like melodies, and some surprisingly deft songcraft.
Definitely recommended for fans of Bone Awl, Maleveillance, Akitsa, Ildjarn, and similarly grim practitioners of the primitive black arts, but also folks into raw classic blackened heaviness.
Ah, Tim Hecker signs to 4AD. The modern-day maestro of digital etherealism recording for a label that was once defined by the siren-song haunt from Liz Frazer's voice and Robin Guthrie's guitar, with many a 4AD act through the '80s consciously or otherwise paralleling that aesthetic. Hecker's "power ambient" luminosity and the scope of his music continue to be very much his own, and this album seems all the more baroque and exaggerated than his previous spirals of pixelated noise and dusted drone. Much of the source material for Love Streams originated with the vocals from an Icelandic choir, whose melodies were arranged by Johann Johannsson. The content of the choir's plainsong may have begun with a 15th century score, with the lyrics reversed from the original Latin and then wholly obliterated into mere phonemes of language by Hecker. So, yeah, there's voice... but a voice that utters only its connection to humanity and not any philosophical musings. That task is for Tim Hecker and Tim Hecker alone, whose romantic crescendos of manipulated, re-manipulated, and lushly re-drafted electronic smear and pointillist melody is wrapped up in the tapestry of detail and a magnificent luxury of his surface. The compositions bluster and quiver as semi-gelatinous chunks of sound, rippling with somewhat extemporaneous electro-glockenspiel melody and Icelandic vocal deconstruction, all self-aware of their shimmering beauty.
A brutal release from Monorail Trespassing, this one from the Orange County maximalist HHL. Both sides of this 40 minute cassette end up with the gains cranked as high as they can go on all of inputs, pedals, and whatnot, arriving at a full-frontal noise assault akin to Controlled Bleeding's convolutions of distortion and sonic violence. The launch points for each side are considerably different, with the A-side lurching through a mechanical whirl like some sort of diabolical turbine that's becoming unhinged and is about the spool an infernal toxic cloud into the atmosphere. Junkyard metal demolition emerges out of a nocturnal set of abandoned warehouse recordings of ghostly creaks and scrapes of metal across concrete that steadily builds in density and grotesque physicality up to the sustained car crash of volatile noise and volcanic distortion. Pretty fucking epic. Limited to 100 copies.
After a small break comes yet another record in the massive avalanche of tUMULt releases headed our way in the next few weeks (Iran, Painted Black, Leviathan, OCS, Diamatregon, Worms). This is the second missive from San Francisco's premier NOISEPOP band, not 'noise pop' in the jangly-pop-punk-San-Francisco-festival-Creeper-Lagoon-Overwhelming-Colorfast-Fastbacks sense but the gorgeous-pop-songs-buried-under-a-thick-splattery-wall-of-buzz-hum-whir-skree-guitars-set-on-self-destruct-Beatles-flitered-through-Skullflower sense. Like Sebadoh or Pavement being backed up by Throbbing Gristle or Whitehouse. Or Nurse With Wound fronted by Elliott Smith. If you get our drift. For record number two, Iran has scaled back the noise just a bit and let the pop shine through. And shine it does. Gorgeous, heart-breaking, voice-cracking lo-fi love (and un-love) songs, delivered in a wavery falsetto, over gentle guitars, naive drumming and strange but wonderful backgrounds woven from vocals, amp hum, guitar buzz, as well as rumbling low end and squealing feedback. When the noise does kick in, it's not noise for noise sake, Iran handle the squirming serpent with a deft hand, molding gorgeous sonic squalls and speaker shredding skree from overdriven amps and detuned guitars, with buried melodies and strange and mysterious rhythms laying beneath the storm, like looking through a murky pond at the secret life below. Adventurous indie rockers could very well be looking at their new favorite band, and experimetal/avant garde-niks may just find themselves developing a sweet tooth, cause everyone know the sugar goes down easier with a mouthful of medicine.
Another new release from tUMULt laboratories, finds our coworker Andee's label dipping its toes into pop, and recoiling in horror, as it pulls its feet back covered in muck and crud. Iran take 'Indie rock' and bury it in fuzz and hiss, taking ultra catchy pop, and dragging it through the detritus of lo-fi noise rock, picking up an ungodly assortment of buzz and blur and scuzz. Imagine a Pavement record on Siltbreeze. Or Sebadoh, if Lou Barlow was a jaded fuck instead of a sappy romantic. Or old Smog covering Skullflower. Or Harry Pussy playing Built To Spill. A beautifully cacophonous mess. Iran play damaged folk music, bombarded on all sides by a wild assortment of squeals and shrieks, static and hiss, and speaker clogging grit. Huge and slowly shifting, dronescapes that evolve into perfect little pop songs and then explode into jagged shards of high end skree. Iran are psychedelic and textural and noisey and totally catchy, hardcore, hook-filled low fidelity un-pop noise. Pop. Plus fucking wicked 'tiger' cover art.
"Nonagon Infinity Opens The Door! Nonagon Infinity Opens The Door!" - so goes the repeated chant that surfaces throughout this album, the latest from the Aussie psych freeks with the best/worst name ever, who are also big AQ faves and past Record Of The Week honorees to boot. It's billed as the world's first infinitely looping record, in the sense that each of its nine songs seamlessly flow into the next, with the very last track ending (or does it?) right back where the very first track began, so put this on repeat and there will be nothing to indicate that it isn't supposed to keep on spinning forever. Yeah it's a gimmick but it's the sort of thing that we appreciate a band taking the trouble to conceive of and actually do, plus those chanted segues add to the sweaty cult ritual vibe of the album - this is trippy psych you can frantically dance to, with uptempo strobe light beats and wild, wailing guitars, harmonica, and FX. The album consists almost exclusively of high energy hyperdelic grooves laced with herky jerky vocal melodies, frenetic prog explosions, and the occasional spacey part - imagine Acid Mothers Temple jamming in the Castle Face garage, perhaps. It's got a "the end is coming!" urgency even though it NEVER ends...
FYI, we're too low on the regular vinyl of this to list it now but will be getting more to do so soon, and also a super limited edition picture disc NINE-sided vinyl version is due out in a month or so, we're only gonna be able to get a few of those, though...
When picking Records Of The Week for this milestone New Arrivals list number five hundred, what would be more appropriate, more Aquarius, really, than a band requiring one of the most ridiculously "hyphenated" descriptors we could come up with? Eccentric-Japanese-doom-punk-grind-funk-psych-prog-WTF?-weirdness (whew!) is only the shorthand description of what this Tokyo trio amplify into your earholes here. Nope, they haven't gotten any easier to pigeonhole than when we reviewed their debut album, 2007's Goblin King. It's been a while since that one, and in the interim their original guitarist Kelly Churko passed away due to a tragic illness, which delayed the completion of this second King Goblin opus - but the band regrouped, and now bring us at long last Cryptozoology, a disc dedicated to the memory of Churko, who appears posthumously here on the harsh-ambient-electronic intro track performing alongside guest Hiroshi Hasegawa of noise acts C.C.C.C. and Astro.
King Goblin definitely remain in the anything-goes, kitchen-sink, genre-mashing tradition of such fellow countryfolk like the Boredoms and Melt-Banana, but more metal, more ROCK. To be a bit obscure, not unlike a mix of YBO2 and C.S.S.O., if you know 'em. This cd is littered with strange spindly grooves, loose no-wave funk with chicken scratch guitar, cookie monster grind vokills, bluesy psych jamming, heavy lumbering riffage, it's all here... You'll be nodding/banging your head, scratching it too, thanks to the dizzying juxtapositions of angular funk and straight up freedom rock that King Goblin stick in their blender. For example, they do a cover of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen", but here it's called "Birmingham Queen" appears to be a somewhat unrecognizable reimagining of that classic rock staple as if performed, if not by Black Sabbath, then Cathedral, somehow mixing super stoned spaced out meandering with extremely loosely-strung low end bass hammering. King Goblin = good stuff for when you want to get your WTF? heaviness ya-yas out. Cryptozoology is a good name for this since these songs are indeed strange critters unknown to conventional science.
Even the packaging is not-normal, the cd coming mounted on a card inside what looks like a 7" record sleeve (with cool b&w artwork).
When the Drinks album came out a while back, we were enamored by the Welsh half of that duo - the beguiling Cate Le Bon. And little did we know that she had three previous solo albums under her belt. So, Crab Day is our first exposure to her solo work; and is it quite the gem of eccentric avant-pop. The title references an imagined holiday by Le Bon's niece, who preferred celebrating Crab Day to April Fool's Day. The tales for her Crab Day spiral out as off-kilter / avant-psych tunes that hark to the discomforting jubilation that Syd Barrett would muster on his solo records. Many of the arrangements are sharply staccato in the rhythms that lock the bass, drum, piano, and even a xylophone onto a singular motorik, yet humanly played beat, with the guitars forming moire patterns of jangly, rhythm dissonance all of which allows for Le Bon's languid voice to glide effortlessly atop. As a chanteuse, she's not too far from Nico in terms of the cool and detached attitude she applies to her songs, though Le Bon is far more of a playful character.
(Note: released on compact disc too, but we're fresh out... maybe back in next week.)
YES! Here we have a MUCH needed reissue (and first time on vinyl) of some of the earliest Le Syndicat material. If you happen to be one of the sick peeps (like us) that got the six cassette box of their early material, then you already have this as part of that box, but now you can get what is perhaps the best tape in that collection on vinyl. The French duo of Ruelgo and Zorin are at their most industrial here - rudimentary and overblown sequencer rhythms provide the foundation, on top of which lies grim Maurizio Bianchi-style synth and tape manipulations, broken electronics, and vocals stripped of any human characteristics. Traces of material on here can be seen in tons of aQ favorites, from the lifeless techno thump of Carter Tutti Void, to the abject blasts of Chondritic Sound. A sound and philosophy that takes the vision of Throbbing Gristle and the early industrial pioneers to its logical conclusion. Totally essential.
RECORD STORE DAY 2016 ITEM!
A late but welcome RSD arrival is the latest and last remastered reissue of the four Sven Libaek film soundtracks from the nineteen sixties. To Ride A White Horse (1966) was an Australian surfing documentary that came out in the wake of the globally popular surfing film Endless Summer. Libaek's jazzy film score is tops, evoking a sublime wonderment of flutes, vibes and piano that run counter to the typical American surf guitar music we often hear in such contexts. The effect, as with all Libaek's documentary scores, underpins the theme of man's relationship to the natural world, seeking solidarity with nature rather than trying to conquer it. A beautiful moving score and if you were into Inner Space or Nature Walkabout, don't miss out on this brilliant wave.
Simply put, this is a beautiful album. Yes, it's a stark one, but its beauty is unquestionable. Mamiffer follows their 2015 collaboration with Daniel Menche with this grand statement of blizzard-drone distortion cast through hypnotic madrigals for voice and piano. Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner have been perfecting Mamiffer for some time now, with The World Unseen being their best album to date in part due to the cinematic scope of their production. These huge swaths of slow-burning drone, snowdrift stillness, and aggregated density are the stuff of an art-rock dream-date of Godspeed You Black Emperor covering Ride's "Vapour Trail" as a mesmer of icy minimalism and not of telescoped maximalism. Just check out the ear-candy chorale of "Mara" delivered by Coloccia, joined by a maudlin stream of strings amidst the guitar-drone heroics. The album's concluding trilogy "The Domestication Of The Ewe" tracks much darker territories of blackened ambience, ruptured distortion, and isolationist field recordings, breaking the harmonic spell of the songs from the front end of the album with harrowing results.
NOW ON VINYL!!!
This is the first we've heard from Mgla in a few years, they the cloaked nihilistic Poles making some of the most tantalizing modern black metal. Mgla have long had aversion to anything resembling self-promotion or ego; their matching black outfits worn during live shows that blot out any individual identity, all untitled tracks, and, this release in particular, which was uploaded with nary an announcement except to tell us that we should wait for a proper physical release for optimum quality. And here that release is!
Exercises in Futility perfects what Mgla have always done best: combine the nihilistic and bleak fury of the best black metal with the songwriting and melodies of a pop band. That's not to say there's anything cheery about this record, just that Mgla can somehow make a melancholic, knuckle-dragging riff into a catchy melody that won't leave your head. The guitar work is intricate yet dissonant, nihilistic yet made with great care, and the rare combination of tragedy and victory. The rhythm section is held down by the mysterious Darkside, who also drums for Kriegsmachine, in which he shows off a much mathier, chaotic style of drumming, but on here, he works more to service the already top-notch songwriting. There's an unmistakable style to Darkside's drumming, a sort of rolling disco beat on the ride, hard to describe but impossible to forget, and which somehow totally works to make those parts sound totally furious. The production on here mimics that perfect combination; clear enough to have full war-like force but murky enough to still feel bleak and rain-soaked like any good black metal record should.
It's clear to us at this point that Mgla are in a league of their own. Exercises In Futility is a modern black metal masterpiece, and easily one of the top metal releases of the year.
Weeks is the first Motion Sickness Of Time Travel recording since Rachel Evans completed her monthly Ballade Moon series in mid-2014. That sabbatical may not seem like a long one to most, but Evans has always been a prolific composer of her languid electronica. Of course, the birth of her son played a part in her hiatus from recording (though that did little to quell the activity of her husband Grant, hmm). Weeks follows plaintive lullabies that Evans recorded under her own name on cassette for Adversary in late 2015, and this one was designed for "an aid for self-hypnosis." We'll assume the self-hypnosis was prescribed by Evans for Evans; and this will certainly do the trick. Very soft radiant hues of synthesized drone and ambient patches drift, rise, and fall with the turning of tides or the rotation of the earth, trilled with delicate glissandos that pitter-pat against the lush fluidity of the electronic orchestrations. Much closer to Suzanne Ciani than we've ever heard Motion Sickness before. Limited to a mere 50 copies; and already sold out at the source.
The folks at Time Released Sound definitely have a thing for music boxes. They even released a record that came with a built-in music box, and included an original composition for said music box! How cool is that? And we can't say that we blame them, there's definitely something about music boxes, their lilting melodies, their distinctive timbre, and here on Movement Of An Old Soul the sound of the music box is woven into soft focus fields of effected pianos, field recordings, and all manner of smeared sound. It's definitely a perfect fit on TRS, the actual music box sound dialed back a bit, so it's tough to tell what instrument is making what sound, instead it's a gloriously indistinct assemblage of soft sounds, a lush, pastoral, organic drift, that manages to be both delicately and exquisitely crafted, and yet seemingly utterly amorphous.
Again, in the Time Released Sound tradition, there are two versions, the normal, which comes in a digipak, and is limited to 100 copies, and a super fancy deluxe version, which this time is limited to just 65 copies, and comes on a folded matchbook style package, crafted from antique, hand stamped, stiff board folder material, collaged with vintage photos, old word cards, 100 year old player piano rolls, and a 3D winking eye. Even more far out is that inside, in a antique bank envelope, there is a rare, '60s metal Thorens music box disc, with a unique song on each side, and only playable if you actually have a Thorens player (!), along side ancient ledger paper, and of course a cd. All housed in one of those now iconic TRS smoked, anti-static envelopes. Wow.
The folks at Time Released Sound definitely have a thing for music boxes. They even released a record that came with a built-in music box, and included an original composition for said music box! How cool is that? And we can't say that we blame them, there's definitely something about music boxes, their lilting melodies, their distinctive timbre, and here on Movement Of An Old Soul the sound of the music box is woven into soft focus fields of effected pianos, field recordings, and all manner of smeared sound. It's definitely a perfect fit on TRS, the actual music box sound dialed back a bit, so it's tough to tell what instrument is making what sound, instead it's a gloriously indistinct assemblage of soft sounds, a lush, pastoral, organic drift, that manages to be both delicately and exquisitely crafted, and yet seemingly utterly amorphous.
Again, in the Time Released Sound tradition, there are two versions, the normal, which comes in a digipak, and is limited to 100 copies, and a super fancy deluxe version, which this time is limited to just 65 copies, and comes on a folded matchbook style package, crafted from antique, hand stamped, stiff board folder material, collaged with vintage photos, old word cards, 100 year old player piano rolls, and a 3D winking eye. Even more far out is that inside, in a antique bank envelope, there is a rare, '60s metal Thorens music box disc, with a unique song on each side, and only playable if you actually have a Thorens player (!), along side ancient ledger paper, and of course a cd. All housed in one of those now iconic TRS smoked, anti-static envelopes. Wow.
These recordings date back to Charlemagne Palestine's youth, when as a fifteen year old boy, he was asked if would be interested in playing the 26-bell carillon at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Manhattan. He took the task with earnest and passion, playing the carillon everyday for the next seven years, with his exuberant performances attracting the likes of Moondog and John Cage as regulars who'd pass by during Palestine's experiments. These church bells were given over to a nascent style of interlocking rhythm, harmonics and dissonance that would later get polished on the piano as waterfalls of glissando and constant arpeggiation. As with much of Palestine's work, this one too gets an onomatopoetic neologism - klanggdedangggebannggg. Yup, that sums it up! Limited to 400 copies.
An impish character in the storied past of New York's minimalism, Charlemagne Palestine has performed on church organs whenever he gets the chance or the commission. On that particular instrument, Palestine illuminates the rich acoustic spaces with long-form clusters of notes folding on top of each other with incremental layering of tone, vibration, frequency, and rumble, gradually slipping from the subtly transcendent to the volatile and atonal. The recording made in the thousand year old cathedral in Strasbourg back at the end of 2012 is suitably hypnotic in its gilded organ drones, enriched with the psychedelic raga overtones and harmonics that Palestine learned early on from Pandit Pran Nath and mastered in parallel with his NYC cohorts - Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, and LaMonte Young. As the concert in Strasbourg was a continuous, long-form 70 minute piece, the label cut the album into equal chunks, paring the beginning and ends of the album into immediate starts and stops. If that is troublesome to you, the download features the unbroken recording!
Two un-manipulated field recordings of two very different jungle ecosystems made by this long-standing member of the Los Angeles Free Music Society. A dawn chorus from Oaxaca presents a variety of bird calls - the endemic sparrow, finch, and rooster all feature prominently; plus some strange cawing and twitter that sound nothing like the birds we have here in California. The vocalization continues unabated even as as early morning rainstorm encroaches on the area; but as the avian chorus fades, distant dog barks and even the gobble of a turkey announce their place in the audio ecosystem. The flip side is from a bamboo forest on one of the Hawaiian islands. There is a strange squiggling that emerges in the white noise from the rain and the sporadic clomping of the bamboo stalks striking each other in the wind. Recchion posits the squiggle as the sound of the bamboo's thin leaves flapping and sliding against a hedge of other plants. It has much more of a strange mud-spluttering sound that has all of the tropes of some weirdo sound-artist blowing bubbles into water saturated soil. We'll take Recchion at his word that these were not him but the bamboo! Still, two very compelling sets of field recordings. Released on picture disc via Elevator Bath in an edition of 270 copies.
Sand's first album Golem is an utter classic of ur-folk krautrock recorded back in 1974 with the nascent technology known as Artificial Head Stereo Sound, meant to the expand beyond the quadrophonic. The recording gear was being lugged around by Klaus Schulze who was the man responsible for capturing Sand's album. They were a peculiar band for the whole Kraut scene, as they were drummerless - or mostly so, as a Yahowah 13-ish hippie boogie is tapped out on the album's finale "Sarah". But for the remaining four-fifths of the album, it's just bass, guitar, synth, and voice. The openness of their arrangements served the Artificial Head recording very well (with the results best rendered on headphones, very trippy); but all of these cool tricks would be worthless had Sand's Golem not already been lumbering, lugubrious monster of an album. The sprawling tracks roll in and out of slowly plucked / strummed guitar - like Manuel Gottsching or Gunter Schickert if played at 16rpm. It's sparklingly gloomy avant-folk, with spooky vibes from the synth and horror-laden lyrics uttered by the weirdly mannered vocalist Johannes Vester, whose take on a Cockney slur via Bavaria is most certainly an unconventional approach. It's no wonder that this album was one album that David Tibet obsessed over upon discovering it in Steven Stapleton's record collection. So much so that Tibet not only reissued the album, but reprised Sand's "When The May Rain Comes" on the iconic Current 93 album Thunder Perfect Mind. Probably the closest neighbors to Sand would be the aQ-endorsed strum-und-drang of German Oak or the weeping fortune telling of Paternoster. Required. Required. Required.
Too Many Voices is the fourth record from Andy Stott, and manages to fuse two disparate sides of his sonic personality - a penchant for fractured beat experimentation, and a mastery of moody techno minimalism, here pushed even further out, well removed from those early records that initially captured our hearts. Not sure if Too Many Voices is meant to be tongue in cheek or self deprecating, but vocals are all over the place, and often not blurred into woozy melodic smears, with much of the album playing like some warped future soul, or alien neo-R&B.
There's still plenty of musical obfuscation, the opener lays down some Pop Ambient style shimmer, but then fucks it up, managing to inject some jitter and skitter, without losing any of the druggy tranquility, if anything, it's some sonic slight of hand, that allows Stott to basically slice and dice sounds, cram jagged cuts against other jagger cuts, and make it sounds like some sort of divine electro-lullaby. And from there on out, all bets are off. "Butterflies" drapes an aching falsetto vocal over some retro beatsmithery, and wreaths it all in hazy streaks of angelic thrum, wisps of breathless throb, and a production that sounds like it's melting and warping before your very ears. "New Romantic" sounds like Stott doing his best eighties electro pop, some super distinctive drum sounds, a new wave bass line, and some hazy vox that sounds like a super washed out ethereal Spandau Ballet demo, but of course filtered through Stott's fractured sensibilities. The future jams unfurl over the rest of the record, the sounds dipping into witch housiness, into melancholic downtempo, into slow motion electro, into hazy skeletal grime-funk and even into some almost Cocteau Twins sounding vocal heavy dream pop. It's a beautiful record for sure, but also baffling in its own way, somehow managing to be just what we wanted from a new Stott record, and absolutely not at all what we expected!
Yeah, you know us, record store weirdos who love us the latest batch of blurry black metal, the newest glitched out electro noise, the fresh sound of gut rumbling, tectonic, cosmic dronemusic, BUT, we also love songs, and we love pop, and we love rock, and we particularly love a strain of said rock and pop that they don't really make so much anymore. We're all children of the nineties, so our later formative years were spent listening to Pavement and Polvo, Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine, Superchunk and Silver Jews and Soul Asylum (when they were great, and they WERE great), the Afghan Whigs and Uncle Tupelo, Codeine and Archers Of Loaf, we could go on, but you get the picture. So if any of that strikes a chord, you just might find yourself falling for Sun Valley Gun Club, who hail from right here right now in the Bay but sound like they could be from 1995 Chapel Hill, or 1998 Seattle, or Athens in 1992, but we definitely don't wanna push the retro angle to the exclusion of everything else, cuz while these guys are definitely rooted in that era, and owe a lot to the above bands, they also manage to craft some of the best songs we've heard in ages. In fact it only took one listen to the song "Hey Collapser", before we were hooked, which then lead to about a hundred more listens, and as seems to be our process, we literally listened to nothing else but that song, until once, when we weren't quick enough to cue it up again, and the record went right into "Nebraska", and goddamn if we didn't then become obsessed with THAT song. And you can guess where it went from there.
But seriously, "Hey Collapser" is a total stunner, with its smoldering slow build, the laconic, laid back vox, the chorus that kills, the bridge that kills EVEN MORE, big build ups, plenty of bombast, a little bit of broodiness, it sounds like Built To Spill crossed with Uncle Tupelo, and maybe a little Radar Bros., some Pavement too, but really just a sort of classic songsmithery, that for us never gets old. And the aforementioned "Nebraska", which takes all the same elements, and crafts them into a super dark, tense, brooder, that explodes into some epic math rockiness, getting totally anthemic throughout, with some killer guitar parts, and with some of the most irresistible hooks EVER. Goddamn, if this was a seven inch with just those two songs, we'd be talking potential pantheon placement for sure.
But lucky for us, and you, there's about three more double A-sided singles' worth on here of classic sounding indie rock crunch and twang flecked, noise pop brilliance. Fans of aQ faves like Herzog, Weed, Ovens, Swearin', Telekinesis, Iran, the Wrens and other modern indie rock revivalists will definitely lose their ever loving shit. Expect this to show up on some year end top ten lists for sure!! (Andee's already got a space reserved!)
A pretty amazing collaboration between two heavyweights of the Los Angeles noise scene. Swanson, of course, of Yellow Swans infamy from his years up in San Francisco followed by countless solo recordings of mad scientist noise exploration; and Holger helming the desk as Hive Mind and half of Pure Ground, while running the Chondritic Sound empire. The two had performed earlier this year opening for Surgeon and Drew MacDowell, and this cassette offers an insight into the working process between these two artists. On the A-side, a rather simple hi-hat trigger acts as the rudimentary click track for the two to contort and modulate their snarled distortion and crumpled noise with shivers of white noise snaking through the mix, that is almost sorta catchy even though it's super fractured and jagged. More like super early Cabaret Voltaire or SPK without all of the death factory imagery. The B-side flickers through grim synth-noise drones percolating against almost raga-ish drum programming that's buried in all of the murk and unkempt gauziness. We got the very last copies of this from Chondritic, FYI!
Every once in a while a local band pops up, and we think, how the heck had we not heard of these guys already? Which is what we're thinking with Synthetic ID, cuz holy shit these guys rule. We're guessing it must be somebody we know, or someone from some other band, but really it hardly matters, cuz from the first few seconds, we were knocked the fuck out. A killer mix of angular post punk and loose limbed noise rock,
wiry guitars wound around tense yelped vocals, driven by urgent, frenetic drumming, definitely sounding like like some post punk artifact from the eighties, or some weird outlier released on Homestead back in the day, or some lost Dischord release, think the Wipers, Wire, the Minutemen - in fact, when some of us first heard this we assumed it must have been some new archival reissue on Superior Viaduct, it definitely has that vibe, a little new wave, a little funk-punk, a little woozy math rock, all wound up into something pretty goddamn great!! Castle Face delivers the goods again.
So happy we are whenever another UT hits the street! This fat ol' magazine of "wild sounds from past dimensions" never lets us down, and always keeps us occupied, busy squinting at its pages and pages packed with fascinating info on both obscure and classic music from back when things were really happenin'... This 160 page issue has got Cubby + The Blizzards (who they? read and find out!), The Ugly Ducklings (likewise), Moulty from the Barbarians (we know who he is, he's the drummer with a hook for a hand!), The Fallouts, Elliot Murphy, The Beachnuts, Suzannah Jordan, and much more, including of course tributes to both Bowie and Lemmy, Ugly Things being one of the few mags around that we can think of that would appreciate the both of 'em equally, circa the '60s and '70s anyway. And there are also of course tons of reviews. Dig in!!
The great '70s obscure acid rock comp we've been rocking out to since it dropped last year gets a well-deserved sequel, equally jam-packed with forgotten gems of vintage heavy rock jams! Yeah man, Riding Easy do it again, digging up tracks from ten hard rocking proto-metal bands we'd never heard of before, mostly appearing on one-off singles and such: Ash, Sweet Crystal, Raving Maniac, Crossfield, Spiny Norman, Glass Sun, Volt Rush Band, Buck, Iron Knowledge, Sonny Hugg. (Yep, even the band names are pretty badass, most of 'em!). Comparatively, these acts tend a bit more to the proggy and psychedelic side of things than the last batch, being perhaps just as likely to bust out with a baroque keyboard flourish or flute solo as they are to clock the cowbell. In other words, a lot of Sir Lord Baltimore sounding stuff, yeah! Heck, Glass Sun's killer "Silence Of The Morning" tears it up like a really heavy Nuggets popsike number, and there's a lotsa garagey FUZZ all over this thing, you can't go wrong. So, if you liked the first Brown Acid comp, or that Darkscorch one, you'll groove on this big time!!
(On cd now, with vinyl to come later...)
Last year we raved about the Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery of this group's 2nd album, Outer Isolation. And, having subsequently seen 'em play n' slay live, we're even more convinced that Arizona's Vektor are one of thee very best metal bands currently going. Live, their music was complex yet ragin', these guys effortlessly, amazingly technical, but ready to party at the same time. Plus one of the guitarists has a tattoo on his arm that sez, 'Sci-fi or die', how cool is that?
Sadly, though, the record label Vektor was signed to, Heavy Artillery, has just folded. And so for the time being, the Outer Isolation cd is out of print, with its planned release on vinyl also in limbo. WTF? But, since Vektor has gotta be a hot property, we imagine they'll soon be signed to another label... However, for the time being, we can't get their newer album. But, we DID manage to grab a last few copies of this, their 2009 debut, for those that missed it. We didn't actually review it when it came out before, either, though we should have.
Utter next-level mind-boggling shred, that's heavy and hectic, and impossibly catchy too, like a brilliant mix of Voivod, Coroner, Destruction, and Megadeth. With their chugging rollercoaster riffs, exquisite neo-classical melodies, and outer space atmospherics, plus the vocalist's uncanny ability to switch from guttural tones to an inhuman shriek (they say in space, no one can hear you scream, but you'll hear this guy, and your dog will hear him better!), Vektor are one of the few 'retro-80s-thrash-revival' acts that we consider to be actually equal or superior to the best bands back then.
Basically, If you liked Outer Isolation, you'll like this too, in fact, how come you don't have it already?? And if you haven't yet heard any Vektor, well, check this out! But be quick, we only got like 5 copies, and then they're gone...
Listen on: Deezer
Six words: Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery. (Or is that seven?) Two more: Dizzying Genius. Another two: Buy This!
We were terribly remiss in not ever reviewing this band's previous album and first proper full-length, Black Future, 'cause it was one of the very best metal releases of 2009. Unfortunately, we discovered it a bit after the fact. But we are gonna try to make up for that by heralding the release of this Arizona based band's new one, Outer Isolation, also mindbogglingly awesome. Though it's hard to review, 'cause listening to it we're either stupefied by the mental strafing we receive via their hyperspeed metallic acrobatics, or possessed to headbanging mania by their catchy quantum riff logic, neither state conducive to sitting at a keyboard and calmly typing out our thoughts...
Actually, this came out in December - and thus instantly found a spot in Allan's 2011 top ten - but our suppliers miscalculated the demand for this and under-ordered, so were weren't able to get more until now, direct from the label.
What's the deal? The thrash of the past meets dramatic advanced metal math, kinda like a tripped out Absu taken on a futuristic journey into the stark outer reaches of space. The vokills are a crazed dog whistle shriek, or nasty black metal rasp. The guitars rip out utter absurd flight of the bumblebee shred, and sometimes moody moments of lovely, classical melody. Their are many moving parts in Vektor's technically complex song structures.
Unlike a lot of their peers in the still burgeoning "retro-thrash" genre, youngsters Vektor aren't just all about simply being as nostalgically, generically retro-thrash as they can be, instead they're about utilizing their considerable talents to make cool music, following their own alien vision. Sure, they pay some homage to their '80s forebears - their logo looks like it was designed by Away from Voivod - and you could certainly compare 'em to such great '80s proggy tech-thrash acts as Coroner, Watchtower, Obliveon, and yep, Voivod. But, it's more than that, this is its own impressive forward-thinking thing. We highly recommend getting lost in space with Vektor.
FYI, a vinyl version, with different cover art, is forthcoming at some point later this year says the label. Also, you will find the Black Future cd elsewhere on our website, sans review, and it's quite recommended too, obviously. (And If you already have it, then you know what to expect on Outer Isolation!)
Yay, it's a live recording from one of AQ's fave bands, the Bavarian post-rock combo known as Village of Savoonga! It seems, sadly, that they've broken up (too busy with Notwist, Lali Puna, Tied and Tickled Trio, and all their other projects, perhaps?) so this disc might well be their final release. Probably the last, or only other, chance anyone reading this (outside of Germany) got to hear VoS live was at the Aquarius Records 30th Anniversary party at the Bottom of the Hill here in San Francisco three years ago. Remember? We flew the Savoogan Villagers over here to play with Circle, Milk Cult, and Outhud. Kinda crazy, but *that's* how much we like this band! So, how's this live disc stack up to our memories (and their other albums)? Recorded at one of their final shows, at the annual Hausmusik Festival in September 2001, it sounds great, the band plays great, it's sheer post-rock mastery a la Slint. And it also sounds like maybe VoS had been revisiting... nay, scrutinizing their old This Heat records even more than usual. Their percussive rhythmic attack and live looping sound displayed here have that nervous energy we love. While drawing material from their albums Score, Philip Schatz, and their self-titled debut, this live show yet demonstrates an especially powerful, sinewy side to VoS, an intensity we recall from their performance at the AQ-party. Noisy, hypnotic, gritty. Talk about going out with a bang!
