Compared to the recent release of the collaboration between avantgarde turntablists Philip Jeck, Otomo Yoshihide, and Martin Tetreault, Jeck's solo production receives the superior packaging job -- not only with the normal sized digipack (and not that stupid 'super jewel case') but also with the beautiful design from Touch's Jon Wozencroft. Furthermore, Jeck's album clocks in nearly 20 minutes longer and is two bucks cheaper.
OK, so it looks good, but what does it sound like?, you ask. The AQ verdict is -- it sounds wonderful! Philip Jeck's take on turntable experimentation involves using multiple turntables and scratchy old records to create blissfully beautiful surface-noise looping. His largely improvised compositions make the most gorgeous, repetitive, droning use of good old-fashioned record crackle and hiss. Jeck takes great care to allow for scraps of melody to emerge from the original music on the records with snippets of piano, sitar, and slow-motion vocals, popping out of crackled loops and often recalling the height of the Robin Storey era Zoviet France in the late '80s.
What differentiates this new album from the previous excellent ones in his oeuvre is its dynamics (perhaps due to the fact that these were all live performances?) -- the music is more active in terms of the elements used and their resulting emotional power. In fact, the first track "Above" is the creepiest composition I've ever heard from Jeck. The dynamism is also evident in that he uses more individual sounds that unfold over time but *not* necessarily being looped. It's nice to hear him trusting the sounds to stand on their own rather than needing the looping effect to make them beautiful. Highly recommended!!
- RealAudio clip: Above
- RealAudio clip: Pax
As huge Philip Jeck fans, we were super excited to see the release of this follow-up to his wonderful "Vinyl Codas I-III" double cd. And it doesn't disappoint. Jeck, with his multiple turntables and scratchy old records, is the ultimate master of blissfully
A new Philip Jeck record! What could be better. Well, how about adding fellow turntable experimentalist Janek Schaeffer to the mix? Then how about taking the two of them, equipped with all manner of antique record players, setting them up in an abandoned thirties office building at the foot of the Acropolis, and having them gather source material only from used record shops, a motley collection of second hand Greek and Turkish lps and 45's. Sounds like heaven. And it is. Schaeffer often seems focused on rhythm and source material, while Jeck's aim is more emotion and ambience, thus the two work perfectly together. Slowly shifting shades of darkness, move sluggishly like sonic ice floes, snippets of mubled vocals struggle against record crackle and skipping loops of distorted orchestration. The whole record is a series of fuzzed out ambient soundscapes, smeared deftly into indistinct outlines, voices float by like clouds, rhythms emerge from the murk, having fallen together seemingly randomly by the overlap of assembled sonic striations, rumbling crunch, slowed down into a thick sonic mulch, wavering melodies cloaking the horizon in glimmering sonic dew, guitar melodies deconstructed into distant frameworks, surrounding static swirls of sweetness and occasional bursts of violent skree. Horns squeal and are quickly subsumed by thick slowly bubbling pools of strummed mumbly guitars and minor key lullabies. Dreamy and heavenly. We just can't get enough of this stuff. The music of dreams. The music of darkness and light. The music of life, slowed down and observed from within.
AQ fave P. Jeck's 2002 masterpiece (Record Of The Week on our list number 135) has at last been repressed and is back in stock!
Philip Jeck's take on turntable experimentation involves using multiple turntables and scratchy old records to create blissfully beautiful surface-noise looping. His largely improvised compositions make the most gorgeous, repetitive, droning use of good old-fashioned record crackle and hiss. Jeck takes great care to allow for scraps of melody to emerge from the original music on the records with snippets of piano, sitar, and slow-motion vocals, popping out of crackled loops and often recalling the height of the Robin Storey era Zoviet France in the late '80s.
What differentiates this new album from the previous excellent ones in his oeuvre is its dynamics (perhaps due to the fact that these were all live performances?) -- the music is more active in terms of the elements used and their resulting emotional power. In fact, the first track "Above" is the creepiest composition I've ever heard from Jeck. The dynamism is also evident in that he uses more individual sounds that unfold over time but *not* necessarily being looped. It's nice to hear him trusting the sounds to stand on their own rather than needing the looping effect to make them beautiful. Highly recommended!!
Mark Ernestus is probably best known as one half of the Basic Channel production team and record label (along with Moritz Von Oswald). The two also ran the Chain Reaction label, and both continue to make and release music, Ernestus most notably recently remixing tracks by Konono No.1 and Tony Allen as well as co-releasing the amazing Shangaan Electro compilation we reviewed a while back. Apparently, over the last few years, Ernestus became increasingly obsessed with Senegalese Mbalax music, which is super rhythmic, featuring multiple drummers playing wildly syncopated rhythms, the drums augmented with marimba like synths, the music wild and tangled, dense and driving, groovy and funky, dubbed out and super trancey - it's not hard to see why a techno visionary would find this stuff utterly mesmerizing. And thus was born Jeri-Jeri, a collaborative project between Ernestus and a griot clan of Senegalese drummers. At first we were maybe expecting a sort of African/techno hybrid, but wisely, Ernestus let's the drummers and other musicians do their thing, while he mostly mixes and produces. And that THING is track after track of hyper rhythmic grooviness that definitely speaks to the sort of looped mesmer of techno music, even moreso here, as this is the instrumental version of the Jeri-Jeri record, the 'versions' in dubspeak. Which is not to say the record proper is not great, it is, and features a handful of amazing vocalists including Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour doing their own thing over these rhythmic workouts (and we do have copies in stock, just ask!), but stripped of the vocals, it somehow becomes even more mesmerizing, the drums obviously the focal point, but there's also sinewy basslines, the occasional keyboard and synth, often adding yet another rhythmic component, and some subtle melodies, some guitar jangle here and there, adding some subtle tonal coloration, and remnants of the original vocals surface here and there, dubbed out and heavily effected, but really, every track here is a glorious celebration of rhythm and sound, of drums as divine, and they sound so divine here, with most tracks featuring both a complement of Sabar drummers as well as a drummer on a traditional kit, the overlapping rhythms, the syncopated grooves, the barrage of beats, cascading grooves, all wound around simple looped melodies, and locked tight, it's totally irresistible, the sort of singular sound that is both dancefloor ready, but also dense and nuanced enough for headphone listening, some track wild and raucous, others tightly wound and darkly groovy, all of them sublime, emotional, and energetic, lush and organic and ALIVE. Drummers, and fans of drum music will be in heaven, but really, anyone and everyone who is drawn to the rhythm in sound, whether it be techno music, world music, metal music, will be hard pressed not to be totally mesmerized by these sounds.
Here's one of those albums that we KNEW we'd make Record Of The Week - IF ever it was reissued. And now it has been! Here's a fully legit reish of this cult '70s hard rock rarity, a record by one of those bands who seem simultaneously to be both testosterone-tanked young men and wizened ol' wise wizards. Yeah, a Record Of The Week easy, on account of it not only being an old fave of some of us here, but something that immediately caught on with the AQ staffers who hadn't heard it before, this reissue getting played in the store quite steadily (and loudly!) since it arrived. Let's listen in, as Jerusalem's vocalist belts it out, in an emotive yowl a bit like Robert Plant but with Ozzy Osbourne's paranoid feelings: "Hey girl, will you never learn? Who d'you think you're fooling with your lyin' and your cryin'? You'll only be happy the day you see me dyin'!" But then, in more of a normal speaking voice, we get the casual aside: "Oh yeah, that's the way it happens sometimes. Ha."
Right on, brilliant. That's from "Frustration", the first of nine fantastic tracks on the one and only album by this English band, recorded in 1971, released in '72 on Deram/Decca, produced by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Why Jerusalem didn't get big is a mystery, though the liner notes give some clues as to why they disbanded. Heck they're even fairly unknown (or a well-kept secret) among connoisseurs of '70s heavy psych and hard rock, with this being its first ever official, non-bootleg reissue on compact disc. Now, there's lots of great obscure heavy rock rarities from the early '70s. We've raved about reissues of many of them (Dust, Leaf Hound, Toad, Bang, T2, etc.). But as far as unheralded proto-metal goes, this belongs pretty much at the top of that longhaired, bellbottomed heap, as essential as any of 'em anyway. Pentagram, Bedemon, Blues Creation, Budgie, Night Sun, you name it.
Allan here first heard Jerusalem a few years back when a friend who shares his taste for proto-metal passed along a cd-r copy of this otherwise unavailable album (thanks, Glenn!). Killer stuff indeed, damn it was good. One of the heaviest things from the era he'd ever heard, Jerusalem took it to an extreme that most of their peers didn't approach. With elements of both biggies Sabbath and Zeppelin, but more frenzied and frantic on one hand, more plodding and suicidal on the other.
Crashing, fuzzed out guitars. Energetic hectic riffage. Doomy, thudding blues. Wicked stinging, sliding soloing. Punkish attitude (competitive with contemporaries Crushed Butler). The vocals often hoarse, on the verge of screaming, or gone over that edge. Yeah, pretty heavy for '72! This is rough, raw, proto headbanging mania mixed with mystical, melodic proggy interludes, of course we love it. Plus it's got a genuine dark, occult, despairing vibe, with poetic lyrics about madness, murder and death... And you can't get much more "downer rock genocidal" sounding than the truly, uh, primitive bludgeon what might be the heaviest track here, "Primitive Man".
Pretty darn metal when it comes down to it, forget the "proto". In their own way though, Jerusalem sounding halfway betwixt '60s garage rock and '80s New Wave Of British Heavy Metal... which on balance puts them a bit ahead of their time. In fact, since what's old is new again, this actually sounds like if could have been made now, not because it sounds modern (it doesn't) but because it's so line with certain stonery retro-stylings popular today, particularly in Sweden. In other words, if you like Witchcraft, you'll love Jerusalem!! We always thought that of all the obscure '70s bands that are their forebears, Witchcraft sound most like Jerusalem (well, next to Pentagram). Remember what we said in all caps about Witchcraft's debut? "PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER!" Well the same would go for this, except that it's the real deal, which makes it even better.
Anyway, to return to our story, after Allan got that cd-r dub, he knew he had to find a proper cd. There HAD to be one, this was too good not to have been reissued, right? But, after looking and looking, no luck. Then, one day, Allan came to work at Aquarius and lo and behold what did he hear, but Jerusalem blaring from the store stereo! No, it wasn't this reissue. This was still a few years ago. Turns out, Andee had found a used copy of a bootleg cd someplace, and had bought it simply 'cause he thought the cover looked cool (he's like that), without knowing anything about the band. Life is so unfair, thought Allan. But he was able to eventually guilt Andee into giving him the cd for a birthday present (thanks, Andee! You can have that one back now). Later on, we discovered a Japanese reissue that may or may not have been a boot but in any event was way too expensive and hard to get, nothing we could easily stock and sell for a reasonable price. But NOW, we happily are able to share Jerusalem with you thanks to this nicely done reissue on the Rockadrome label's Vintage imprint! Yeah!
In addition to the nine songs from the original LP, this cd comes with five bonus tracks, including non-album single "Kamakazi Moth". The thick booklet is filled with lengthy liner notes, complete lyrics, vintage photos, all that good stuff you want in a reissue. Once more, yeah!
Not only does DJ Jester currently drive the East Coast Boca Burger-mobile (he applied for the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile but alas got the veggie version instead), he's also found time to make what is easily the best turntablist record we've come across since
Who thought the dreamiest, fuzziest bliss pop record of the year would come courtesy of the same man responsible for the soul crushing might of Godflesh's Streetcleaner, and someone who once called Napalm Death home? Well, actually we sort of did. Especially since last year's Silver ep, on which Justin Broadrick's Jesu took the already fuzzy dreamy metallic crunch of their debut, and injected it with all sorts of unlikely glistening pop and muted indie jangle, creating an impossibly pretty metallic dirge pop, equal parts Godflesh, My Bloody Valentine and M83.
And as if to prove that Broadrick indeed has a heart of pop beneath that crushing downtuned exterior, we now have the Conqueror, which if anything, pushes Jesu's sound even further into the glistening dreamy realm of pure pop. But fear not, we're not talking sugary sweet, treacly pop music cheese, no this is Jesu after all, spawn of Godflesh, so there's no shortage of dirgey rhythms, BIG crushing guitars, lurching tempos, thick swaths of buzz and fuzz, but it's all just window dressing for some seriously pretty pop. The opener is shockingly poppy, with sweet melodic hooks, tinkling piano, breathy vocals, all processed and wrapped in a fuzzy dreamlike haze. An immediate classic for sure. The rest of the record strikes a delicate balance between the dirgier heaviness of the first Jesu record and Broadrick's newfound love of the jangle and swoon, each track a glistening pop gem, placed delicately into a blown out landscape of loping drum crush and thick shimmery guitar buzz, coruscating sheets of distortion wrapped tenderly around heartfelt epics, soaring vocals, and dreamy melodies.
We don't so much hear some Godflesh / M83 hybrid now as we do the dirgey dreamlike murky bliss of nineties New Zealand legends Bailter Space, or the heavier side of the shoegazer spectrum, Swervedriver, Chapterhouse and the like. It's a captivating sound for sure, and a logical progression, and while it's distinctly less metal, there is still much heaviness to be had, even at its most soft focus and glimmering, the guitars retain their buzzy crunch, and the tempos are always dirgey and machinelike, but all the sharp edges have been smoothed out, and the rhythms maybe seem more languid than mechanical, and the fuzzy blissy poppy core of each song seems to radiate from within like some alien sun, giving each song, no matter how heavy, a soft burnished glow.
So you might wonder why the heck the new Jesu is $28.00? Well, we figured that like us, you'd probably rather spend a little bit extra and get the gorgeous Japanese version, with its elaborate silver printed slipcover and more importantly, an ENTIRE EXTRA DISC nearly thirty three extra minutes, two epic tracks, featuring in its entirety, the music from Jesu's new 12" on Aurora Borealis (which we haven't even gotten yet). And it is most definitely worth it. Two 15 minute tracks, each epic and majestic, huge throbbing fuzzed out guitars, pounding rhythms, drifting minor key melodies, thick washes of blissy psychedelia, soft processed vocals, the first a crushing dreampop dirge harkening back to the first Jesu record (albeit a bit poppier), the second an almost ambient guitarscape of layered melodies, murky vocals and shimmery rhythms, so good. So worth it.
And the packaging, WOW! A double disc digipak, housed in a thick plastic slipcover, a silver cityscape superimposed over the washed out grey of the digipak, with a booklet, lyrics, Japanese liner notes and of course a Japanese style obi.
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week a couple lists ago, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
This debut ep from Justin Broadrick's (of Godflesh) new outift Jesu has been a bit tough to keep in stock, and since when we originally had it we loved it so much we made it Record Of The Week, and since we finally managed to get more, we figured we'd relist it so those of you who missed out the first time can get another crack. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week recently, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
What the hell happened to Godflesh? We've been wondering that for years. Streetcleaner was a stone cold classic. Heavy and clinical and completely brutal. Slavestate, Pure, Selfless all great records as well. So what the hell happened? The riffs got more generic, the vocals, always the possible sticking point, got louder and louder and more pointless and distracting, until Godflesh became a shadow of the industrial metal legend they once were. That's why we thought it was a bit funny that people were chomping at the bit for this Jesu record, the first we've heard from Justin Broderick AKA Godflesh since 2001 and the godawful Hymns record. Why would anyone expect anything but more of the same watered down industrial crap? Well, that'll teach us for having so little faith as this record is something else. Figuratively AND literally. It's great. no doubt about it. Heavy and beautiful, haunting and crushing. But at the same time, it's not a Streetcleaner rehash, which we all certainly would have been happy with. Instead, Broderick has taken the harsh industrial crunch of Godflesh, and tempered it with layer after layer of thick sonic grandeur and lots and lots of melody. And gone are the shouted vocals WAY up in the mix, and in their place, actual singing. Melodies, harmonies, some serious crooning by metal standards, but thankfully, the vocals are nestled way back in the mix, cozied up next to the warm thick guitars and the rumbling bass. Unlike the cold clinical fury of Godflesh, Jesu is dark and warm, thick and harmonically rich. These tracks are massive, glacially creeping epics, spelling out minor key melodies in lurches and bursts, haunting vocals draped over the thick riffs like sparkling Christmas lights, barely visible through the snow. Sort of like a metal northern lights, a thick rippling curtain of subtle disonnance, My Blooody Valentine filtered through the epic sludge of Neurosis. M83 playing at 16rpm. A gloriously hopeful, sonically sparkling dirge-y doom pop. Yes, pop. Because underneath the wall of guitars, and the dubbed out melodies, and super affected vocals, and lugubrious tempos, are actual songs. Good songs. Heavy sure, but beautiful and strangely delicate, especially for a 'metal' record. Reminiscent of Slint's Spiderland in the way it takes minor key moodiness, and imbues it with a gleam of hope, a hint of joy, barely discernible through the suffocating cloak of despair.
We love the Jesus Lizard. Hell, who doesn't? But with the band's entire Touch And Go discography now reissued, we're faced with the awkward task of reviewing records that are so ingrained in our minds that we're almost at a loss for words. What exactly do you say about albums that are pretty much beyond any sort of criticism? Well, first of all, we can tell you that these Albini/Weston remasters sound better than EVER, and if for some freakish reason you missed out the first time around, or maybe you were just too young, GET THESE NOW!!! And to those with worn out copies of these essential albums, likewise, GET THESE NOW!!! The best thing about re-examining these discs, however, is the fact that the Jesus Lizard sound as powerful, menacing, and balls out INSANE as they always did and always will. There's no further need to approach the Jesus Lizard discography with some bullshit pseudo-intellectual attempt to place this band within a certain point in history (which is not to downplay their significance within time or place by any means, duh). Instead, you can simply bask in the furious glow of one of the best rock bands of the last 25 years (at the very least)!!! Still, as record purveyors, we feel it necessary to dish out a brief description before talking about the albums individually.
Shit. Where do you begin when describing this band? David Wm. Sims and Mac McNeilly, on bass and drums respectively, are one of the tightest and most intimidating rhythm sections in the history of indie rock (which, honestly, is probably not the best genre to lump a band like the Jesus Lizard in, but it sure is better than calling them a "pigfuck" band). On pretty much every song, Sims and McNeilly sound like they're walking you through the soundtrack to your potential murder, a quality that is only enhanced by David Yow's completely unhinged vocals. And what do you say about a guy like David Yow? He is without precedent and totally peerless, his crazed delivery and bizarre lyrics were the perfect ingredient to make the Jesus Lizard one of the best and most unique bands to ever walk the earth. Oh, but then we certainly can't forget the band's brilliant guitarist, the legendary Duane Denison, whose unique, super trebly guitar playing slashed alongside the band's muscular rhythm section like a rusty, disease-ridden knife. The Jesus Lizard are indeed one of those bands where every member was equally essential in bringing forth their amazing trademark sound.
It's pretty much impossible to pick a favorite Jesus Lizard record, they all rule, ALL of them, even the major label releases, this was a band who were pretty much untouchable. But if we really did have to choose, it would probably have to be Goat. Head is an amazing disc, as is the debut lp Pure, but Goat is where the band finally locked into the sound that would become their trademark, a sound so instantly recognizable, that all you needed to hear was one instrument, and you knew, the crack of the drum, and angular slash of guitar, a weird distorted yowl, it didn't matter, and hell, if you heard em together, well, that was it.
Goat finds the band coming together and almost impossibly transforming into a seriously streamlined rock band, who were as tight as fuck, but simultaneously fucked up and loose and dangerous and chaotic. Due in no small part, as mentioned above, to their very dangerous frontman David Yow. But on Goat is where the power of JL's rhythm section finally became undeniable. The rhythms lurching and lumbering, the drumming insanely of kilter, but managing to still swing, the guitars distorted and crunchy, jagged and sharp, and the songs, how can music this mean and distorted and freaky be so goddamn catchy?
It's really about "Mouthbreather", the big Jesus Lizard hit if there ever was one. From the opening riff, it's the sort of song that would send a crowd into a frenzy, the drum part is beguilingly complicated, and the main hook, the stops and starts, it's relentless and overwhelming but so catchy and of course there's Yow's refrain of "Don't get me wrong, I like him just fine, but he's a mouthbreather". "Then Comes Dudley" is some unholy union of Big Black and Slint, with its low slung bass, big simple motorik drumming, and reedy main guitar melody, not to mention the awesome lurching start/stop bridge. And c'mon, "Seasick"? Has a song ever sounded so much like its title? A woozy, mathy, seasick stumble. And on and on, every track here is a "hit" in some alternate universe where people worship bands like the Jesus Lizard and not shit like the Jonas Brothers. And even to this day, Goat sounds as heavy and harrowing and genius as it did almost 20 years ago. And still better and more musically relevant than about 90 percent of the stuff coming out today. Not to sound like cranky old men on the porch with a shotgun yelling for kids to get off our lawn and for bands to try and write a decent song, but they really just don't make 'em like this anymore.
There are some bonus tracks, singles, live tracks, all new liner notes and let's not forget the amazing projector naked lady cover art!
We had been hearing about this record for ages, mostly that it was the best thing Justin Broadrick had done since Godflesh! Which would be discounting everything he'd done as Jesu, much of which we hold near and dear, so while we're actually inclined to agree with the above sentiment, it might be more accurate to say that, besides Jesu, which is an entirely different beast, we haven't dug a Broadrick project this much since the days of classic Godflesh. Which makes sense really. The first hint was the name, Broadrick having resurrected a name he used back in the Techno Animal days, and in fact, JK Flesh reminds us a lot more of Techno Animal than Godflesh. The jams here all remind us of the kind of weirdo experimental electronic stuff Broadrick was doing on the side, when he was still doing Godflesh. The sort of jams that you'd hear on some obscure comp alongside Alec Empire, or Porter Ricks or Spectre or Scorn, if you remember those Macro Dub Infection comps from back in the day (if not, you should track them down, they are incredible!) or remember any of the more obscure Broadrick alter-egos, Curse Of The Golden Vampire, the Sidewinder, Techno Animal of course, especially the opening track on Posthuman, which lays down a spare lurching beat over buzzing droned out guitars, and features some super intense heavily effected vokills that sound unlike anything else we've heard from Broadrick. And instead of being heavy, it's more a sort of brooding malevolence, a hypnotic lumber that borders on some sort of industrial demonic dub. And had the whole record sounded like that, we would have been just fine. But the other thing we'd been hearing about JK Flesh, is that it was like Godflesh, but with dubstep beats, which may have had some folks crying foul, it actually sounded pretty goddamn good to us, and we're happy to report that it does in fact sound about as good as we imagined it would.
The same sonic template as the opening track for the most part, but with distinctly dubstep beats, and the thing is, it totally works, the dubstep element really becomes secondary, as Broadrick unfurls some of his fiercest and heaviest guitar work in ages, his vocals a thick, hellish bellow, far removed from the shouty vocals that marred the last few Godflesh records, this is some sick, fierce, and yeah, slightly groovy heaviness. But think how radical the drum machine driven Godflesh was back in the day, playing alongside all these crusty grind bands and straight up metal bands, that actually translates pretty well to the now, with JK Flesh, melding that sort of crusty chugging heaviness to a more modern beat. The first few tracks really don't even really get dubsteppy at all, instead, seeming to ease the listener into this brave new world, two massive slabs of massive downtuned machine-doom heaviness that kills. It's not until "Devoured" that things get crazy, when the beat is actually skittery, sounding a bit like Clubroot remixing Godflesh, which is obviously not a bad thing AT ALL. The title track too, is all manic skitter, wreathed in an impossibly thick gristly patina of crumbling super distorted buzz, and it's a crazy killer mix. The sort of thing that just might have metalheads tempted to poke their heads out onto the dancefloor, but should most definitely have the dancefloor heaving, with what is essentially some of THEE heaviest dubstep EVER. "Earthmover" introduces some of that blown out bass wobble, but it's mostly lost amidst all the churning metallic riffery and squalls of effects. The record finishes with another weird one, a good bookend for that opener, a sort of abject creeping doom dirge, driven by a skittery beat, but not so overtly dubsteppy, instead, a pounding lumbering lurch, with some seriously sick vokills, and while there is a kind of drop, it turns into something much more washed out and psychedelic, with clean vocals, and thick washed out guitars, the result sort of dreamy and druggy, and a little bit like a darker noisier heavier Jesu.
For those of you, like us, who always found yourselves way more into Broadrick's extracurricular sonic activities, this is a no brainer, it pushes all our Techno Animal buttons big time, but it definitely is the closest thing we've heard to Godflesh in a while, but still different enough to be fresh and exciting. Needless to say, this totally rules, and is WAY WAY WAY recommended (& anyone who digs Necro Deathmort, in particular, should check this out).
Of course, the Jon Wayne we're talking about is not THE John Wayne, archetype of the bad-ass cop / cowboy / sheriff / general. This Jon Wayne appears as a scrawy, incompetent drunk who got it in his head that he needed to move to Fresno, California because
Yet, there is no doubt that Jon Wayne loves Texas, for Texas is huge. Texas is oil. Texas is J.R. Ewing. Texas is The Alamo. Texas is country AND western. Texas is a pick-up truck with tobacco stains puddled on the running board. Texas is a Longhorn (both the cow and the football player). Texas is a fucked-up place where the good ole boys control the state with backroom politics, blaming problems on immigration, but won't dare have their sons working in the field instead of some Mexicans. While it may not be true for all, it's true for Jon Wayne: Texas is God. It's a mythology that holds similarities to the "South will rise again" belief of Tennessee rednecks, but the two should never be confused. It may not make much sense, but asking why will just get your ass kicked. So don't.
In fact, it's hard to tell if Jon Wayne and his band are the genuine bastard sons of Texas or if they are a part of the great Southern lineage of telling tall tales of hard drinkin' and hard livin' or if they are just a bunch of indie-rock dorks method acting. I don't much care what Jon Wayne's intention is, just as long as it isn't irony.
"Texas Funeral" was Jon Wayne's first album, mostly recounting how screwed up it was for this drunk Texan to be in the California Central Valley. His half mumbled / barely sung tales ambled alongside a raucous musical affair of sloppy cow-punk tunes and spouted the infamous epithets "I had to jerk off the dog just to feed the goddamned cat" and "Mr. Egyptian you're a goddamned liar." Even after all the time since its release in 1992, "Texas Funeral" remains an incredibly hilarious record.
Nearly nine years later, Jon Wayne makes his musical return with his sophomore album, "Two Graduated Jiggers." Upon first listen, Jon Wayne has become just slightly more competent as a song writer, without so many of the miscues and false starts which ran through "Texas Funeral." Of particular note is the opener "Generator," which is exactly what a drunk Calexico would sound like, yet is much more musical than anything else Jon Wayne has ever recorded. The rest of the album stays truer to "Texas Funeral" with Jon Wayne's country/western two-step crashing out of rhythm and tune during almost every song. Lyrically, he's even less decipherable, with his drawl overtaking the delivery and reducing what little song their might have been to a rambling mumble of obscenities. To many, that may be a living hell. But to those of us who find the current output from Nashville reprehensible, Jon Wayne's drunk antics are a blessing.
Okay, no bullshit. This is one of the stupidest things we've ever heard. But with the catchiest electro-pop groove accompanying a male German disco diva reciting I'm The Disco Dancing! [sic] complete with vocalized whip snaps, the b-side to this single has become THE club hit for the AQ staff this month (you wouldn't believe how many times we've played this in the store!). A-side 'You're The One' is certainly less of a brain rot boogie with croonsome vocals a la Jarvis Cocker and a squelchy big beat pop song that destroys Fat Boy Slim and the Chemical Bros. Oddly enough, Aphex protege Cylob is responsible for the two great mixes filling out this four-track single. Better than 'I'm Too Sexy', up there with 'Der Commissar', somehow kinda like both. No ifs, ands, or buts...you'll either think this is silly and hate it, or think it's silly and love it. We love it!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Probably one of the funniest records we have ever heard, this is a parody of early 80's straight edge complete with tour posters of Jud Jud headlining over Minor Threat, Seven Seconds, and Uniform Choice and a heartfelt mention of friendships and motivation and dreams becoming reality and the importance of their lyrics. Only Jud Jud's lyrics go a bit like this: JUD JUD JAH, JUD JUD JUD, JUD JUD JAH, TSSS TSSS TSSSSS, JUD JUD EEEEEEE, JUD JUD EEEEEE, JUD JAAAAAAAAA, JUD JUD, JUD JUD JAAAAAAAA, JUD JUD JUD, WAH NAH, JUD JUD JUD, WAH NAH, JUD JUD JUD, NING NING NING, JUD JUD, DIGGA DIGGA DIGGA, JUD JUD, EEEEEEEE, DUJ DUJ, DIGGA DIGGA DIGGA, JUD JUD JUD, JUD JUD, BBBDDDTLUM PPPPP, BBBDDDTLUM PPPP, JUD JUD JUD, DUJ DUJ, EEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, JUD JUD. And that's it--no guitars, no drums. Yep, that's right. Exactly like every straight edge single you've ever heard, only it's A CAPELLA! Even the 'feedback' whines are a capella! Excellent and hilarious.
We should all be very grateful to the mailmen who serve aQ. Without them, the aQ list would be a very different beast. They come by almost every day, through sleet and rain if necessary. Usually bearing gifts of strange sounds transported from all corners of the globe. And often, some mysterious unmarked package will contain something special, a gorgeous ambient lp, or some obscure otherworldly folk record, or in many cases, some bizarre twisted chunk of black metal. And often those records will go on to be big time aQ faves, which is bound to be the case with this strange disc from a mysterious black metal horde called Jute Gyte, that just showed up one day in the mail.
The package we got was jammed with records by bands with names like Night Troll, Tremor Of The Black Manx, Pumpkin Buzzard, Testikill, but we were strangely drawn to this Jute Gyte record, weird name, cool oversized dvd style packaging, and once we threw it on we understood why. The description on the label's website introduces us to Jute Gyte with these words:
"A bipedal humanoid rat releases a sandpaper-throated screech as most of its internal organs exit through a huge hole in its furry back. Large and small intestines launch forth in whip-like arcs, briefly straightening into perfectly even ropy lines. A massive snail-demon explodes into fragments of confetti: red, green, blue."
And as weird as that reads, once you immerse yourself in the blown out crumbling ultra raw industrial tinged synth laden black metal of JG, maybe it'll make more sense. Then again, maybe not.
The guitar sound is so fierce and fucked up. Ultra distorted, super saturated and fuzz drenched, not so much chuggy or abrasive as massive and blown out, as if a tiny bit more of anything and the riffs would just crumble to pieces, the drums mechanical and machinelike, the vocals a demonic shriek, howling and anguished, everything wreathed in washed out synths and what sounds like a million layers of distortion. The melodies are super catchy, the sound is impossibly warm and lush, even though in every other way it seems harsh and heavy.
Things slow down here and there, the music transformed into a lurching industrial stomp, all gnarled guitars and new wave synths, almost like some crazy blackened Six Finger Satellite jam. There's a cool abstract mandolin interlude (apparently there's mandolin throughout the whole record too!), that's all super spare and skeletal, before a thick warped and warble synth comes in and obliterates the mandolin, leading directly into the second half of the record, the guitar comes back in and is again sop distorted and heavy, that it almost sounds like a synth, the chords ringing out crumble and distort and cause the speakers to nearly implode. Locked into a churning low end psychedelic blow out, the track just throbs and pulses, not so much metal or industrial as some sort of drone music unleashed, the various tones and notes expanding like miniature supernovas.
After a bout of woozy twisted detuned-guitar post rock drift with harsh vokills, burbling underwater synths, and tangled atonal melodies, like Khanate heard through a funhouse mirror, the record closes with another massive and epic dose of in-the-red blackdrone buzz, like Nadja, if they decided to throw in with the dark lord, another heaving wall of crumbling blackness, wrapped around a surprisingly catchy melody, the drums buried in the mix, just a distant throb, with a lurching stop start arrangement, like some sort of slowed down black metal math rock, but dripping with distortion and effects, infused with spaced out synths, and again on the verge of total implosion. And like the rest of the record, impossibly warm and fuzzy and melodic, while simultaneously being one of the most distorted and blown out things we've ever heard.
This isn't brand new, it's maybe a year old, but we only just discovered it, and figured it was something we had to share with the loyal aQ. Quickly becoming a new black metal favorite, just in time for our year end lists...
It's always a challenge to meld electronic and organic sounds. When done correctly, it can be sublime, an otherworldly fusion of seemingly diametrically opposed musics, an impossible hybrid that on rare occasions can most definitely transcend its constituent parts. When done incorrectly, it can sound flat and forced. Or can simply not work at all. Most egregiously, the enduring 'electronica flecked folk' that we do on occasion love, but which in most cases is simply pedestrian strum and croon peppered with glitch and buzz and somehow presented as avant.
But this, this is something else entirely, an unlikely fusion of acoustic percussion, electronic studio production, various bits of programming and processing, and most importantly, recordings of actual Kenyan folk music, vocalists, traditional string instruments, all woven seamlessly into Kacirek's subtle sublime productions. It definitely makes more sense once you realize Kacirek is in fact a virtuoso jazz drummer and percussionist, thus the rhythmic focus of The Kenya Sessions, but that background in drumming hardly prepares us for this, a heady, propulsive, effusive, dark and mysterious bout of electronic folk music. And minus the voices, it's practically impossible to discern the Kenyan field recordings from the studio productions, there are moments of skittery Kompakt-like techno shuffle, but just as often, it Kacirek playing Marimba, or playing on a snare with brushes, and wrapping those sounds around the buzz of some African stringed instrument, or taking the various rhythms and weaving them into a lush, pulsing backdrop for some lovely vocalizing, the results are incredible, and range from the dark, buzzing and brooding opening track, "Arsenal Aluny Village", which almost sounds like a super minimal African Portishead, to the twangy shuffle of "Old Man Small Studio", the electronics dialed way back, but the marimba and tuned percussive melodies adding a distinctly Western pop element to the more traditional sounding vocals, or the murky almost Oval-esque shimmer of "Dear Anastasia", the backdrop smokey and sultry, the melodies dark and minor key, but then the vocals again transform the song into something completely original and very much unlike anything you've ever heard.
Imagine your favorite Sublime Frequencies compilation, or one of the Ethiopiques collections, if they were released on Kompakt, or imagine How To Dress Well composing a chill out soundtrack for late night Kenyan clublife, there aren't any 'beats' proper, instead the rhythms pulse and throb, shimmer and shuffle, skitter and stutter, usually super subtle, as textural as they are rhythmic, tangled up with pianos and marimbas, and then the Kenyan recordings, traditional instruments, twang and buzz, and those vocals, soulful and emotional, sometimes call and response, other times moody and crooned, and the sounds while often electronic, borderline 'techno' sounding even, just as often, veer toward something else entirely, more concerned with evoking a mood, creating a gorgeous ambient space, one that often explodes into something rhythmic and propulsive, but just as often slips into something hushed, and minimal, mysterious and lovely.
The record finishes off with the amazing "Takaye Preaching", which does indeed seem to be some preacher preaching, whose almost song like sermonizing, is accompanied by some perfectly matched up rhythmic flurries, skittery muted grooves and shuffling percussion, the rapidfire vocal delivery somehow softened by Kacireks's instrumental accompaniment, the result sounding like some moody jazzy drift wrapped around a hyper hip hop flow, but again, once the two elements are melded, it's hard to imagine that this was constructed in a studio, and not some sort of unlikely jam session, which is pretty much the magic of the whole record. A fantastically unique sonic document, a sort of avant world electronica, or minimal electro Kenyan soul, or maybe downtempo electro worldmusic, whatever you wanna call it, we're loving it, and odds are you will too.
There's something truly magical about music in nature. And we don't mean the music we find in nature, although more often than not, that natural music is far more interesting and beautiful then anything we humans can conjure up. No, we're talking about playing music -with- nature, -in-nature. The act of collaborating with something so big, so grand, so overwhelmingly complex, that sometimes just the mere act of creating sounds away from the studio or stage, just being outside in nature with your music, can seem truly divine. And as listeners, there is something thrilling about man and nature working together to make music. From the primitive forest black metal blast of Ulver recording Nattens Madrigal in the Norwegian woods, to the Jewelled Antler collective communing with nature, allowing wind and rain and sticks and stones to play as important a part in their music as they themselves, to the rain soaked ritual of Koukiji Kougezan's Live [11th] Final Hyakusenmansyuuraku, a near ambient performance for flute and sitar, with the falling rain, and thus nature, the focal point of the ritual / performance. So lovely, and vital, the music seems so much more whole, so much more alive, all intertwined with the elements.
Osmose was originally released in 1978 and found minimalist composer Ariel Kalma using all manner of keyboards, saxophone, harmonium, delays, effects, even circular breathing, to compose gorgeously minimal, softly spacey slow drifting ambient soundscapes, which were then mixed with the sounds of the rainforest (recorded by Richard Tinti). But unlike new age meditational music, this wasn't just music layered on top of random bits of field recordings, Kalma actually composed and mixed, edited and arranged his compositions to work with and within the sounds of the rainforest. Abstract melodies and warm chordal swirls, simple tribal war drums, perfectly blended with the calls of crickets and frogs and cicadas, the falling rain, birdsongs, flies, and all the sounds of the jungle forest. It sounds almost as if, while walking through the forest, you'd be just as likely to stumble across a bunch of analog synthesizers basking in a sunny glade or a wheezing harmonium perched in low hanging branches as you would frogs gathered by the edge of the stream. Sounds strange, but that's how interconnected the natural sounds are with Kalma's compositions. The distant animal calls sometimes form primitive loops, while Kalma paints them with warm soft smears of sound, extended drones and dreamy drifty ambience. Simple rhythms repeat while the sounds of the forest drift lazily by, everything sun dappled or rain soaked, It's almost like a pop ambient record recorded deep in the forest primeval. Or stumbling upon some ancient burial ground and discovering traces of some long gone krautrock jam, which over time had somehow sunk deep into the earth, or floated off into the sky, leaving nothing but memories, a handful of bones, sonic echoes of its former self. Sounds like ghosts, drifting like spirits through the leaves of the trees, floating weightless above the wet leaves and rich soil. Warm and fuzzy, dreamy and blissed out, so completely lovely and quite possibly our new favorite record to drift off to...
Includes three bonus tracks recorded at the same time as the original lp, but unreleased until now, as well as a booklet of liner notes detailing the lives of both Ariel Kalma and Richard Tinti, as well as the genesis of Osmose.
Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant record that got little attention when it was imported to the US last year. Temporary Residence has finally issued the all-instrumental Maander stateside, and perhaps now the German 6-piece will get the recognition it's due.
We listed this before when it was only available as a super-expensive, hard to get import. And even then we were like, you gotta get this, it's amazing! Now, at long last it's been issued domestically, at reasonable price -- and it's even been repackaged in a slipcase (jewelbox inside), with two previously unreleased bonus tracks! So now there's nothing to keep us from making it record of the week, which Tonight's Decision so totally deserves. It's the follow-up to 1998's Discouraged Ones, a record that threw everyone for a loop, with clean singing and an hypnotic, almost Cure-like (but ultra-heavy) sound, refining their earlier and harsher black metalish doom-death style. This time around, these Swedes are even more mellow and depressed. They even do a great Jeff Buckley cover (better than the original we think)! In fact, the more we listen to it, the harder it is to understand why they're not huge. They should be huge, but they're ghettoized as a European metal band on a metal label. Don't take this the wrong way, but if Katatonia could somehow get into heavy rotation on MTV or your local alternative rock radio station, they'd be SO popular. But never fear, it's still metal. Just artful, gloomy, doomy, post-death metal with enough melody and emotion and atmosphere to make you cry. Really, one of the best metal records of the year. Yet, one that supposed non-metal fans could easily love as well, for its gloom-pop brilliance. Highly Recommended to all!!
They actually have a new album as well, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, coming out sometime later this year (maybe even later than that in the U.S.) and we can't wait!
Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue.
NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.
One of three neat new Mississippi titles in this week, and by far our favorite (and thus a Record Of The Week!) is this collection of archival recordings from famed female Hindustani classical singer, Kesarbai Kerkar. For fans of the Ustad Abdul Karim Khan and Pandit Pran Nath lps released previously on the label, this is an essential addition. What makes this release extra special is the lovingly designed booklet (with a beautiful tantric painting on the cover and English transcriptions of all the included ragas) that chronicles Kerkar's rise from her lower caste position as a courtesan to one of the most revered women in Indian classical music.
The lp consists of seven ragas, mostly morning ragas (but also an evening, late evening and monsoon raga), accompanied by saranji or harmonium that she recorded for the British label HMV on 78's between 1944 and 1949, Kerkar's unique style and vocal range is incredible to listen to, but is made more profound by the unfathomable struggles she had to endure throughout her life. Ridiculed at her very first public singing performance while employed as a kept women at the age of 26, she angrily vowed revenge by seeking to become one of the best singers India had ever witnessed. Her dedication to this task would not only involve some clever trickery, and ultimately separate her from her lover and patron and their only daughter, but also meant that she would have to enter into slavish servitude with her guru Ustad Alladiya Khan, and pay him for ten years of rigorous vocal training. But this ultimately paid off, for her master, who like many esteemed singers of his generation did not consider recording a necessary component of artistry, and had a devotional emphasis on obscure ragas, which gave Kerkar an unrivaled repertoire when it became her time to finally record while she was in her forties and fifties. Having toured the country extensively, the recordings only increased her fame and renown in India and beyond. Here we hear a voice that is unlike others we have heard before in its intricate extended modulations, sounding completely otherworldly and ritualistic, solemn and ceremonial, but with a devoutly serious temperament that singers like Maria Callas and Diamanda Galas could surely appreciate. So beautiful!
As much as we think sometimes we have a real way with words, there's always somebody who totally puts us to shame, which is exactly why we're gonna start our review of this, the sixth and latest record from Finnish underground outsider rock weirdo one man band Keuhkot ('lungs' in Finnish), with a description written by Jussi of Circle, whose label Ektro released it:
"The sixth struggle album of Kake Puhuu. The combat noise and insect world music downpreaching book. Rawer than its precursors, this album strips it down to marrow and squeezes juice out of it. Keuhkot batters mindless attributes of humanity from insects' point of view by means of reverse pop music. The aim is towards backwoods motorism, meritocamping, real men, moose hunt madness and established global upstarts. The most bearded feminist of Finland, Keuhkot, kicks the real man's groin. Keuhkot makes its own ethnic fusion gadding from rhythmic highways to distorted sidepaths in a refreshed guitar oriented soundscape. You may call it freaky but according to Kake, pop music (including metal, of course) is a freaky industrialized illness that needs a vaccination � which is Keuhkot."
We definitely couldn't have said it better ourselves, but heck, why not give it a try? Longtime readers of the aQ list might remember Andee's harrowing and ultra personal private Keuhkot performance in an abandoned schoolhouse in the wilds of rural Finland (you can read more about it elsewhere on the aQ site, in one of the other Keuhkot reviews), and are quite possibly already fans of Kake Puhuu's twisted sonic world of primitive programmed drums, twisted percussion, weird samples, layered loops, warped and woozy synths, detuned guitars and warbled guttural vox, and how could you not be, Puhuu is like the underground electro minimal abstract noise rock Jandek of Finland, record after record of totally idiosyncratic, ultra personal, musical weirdness, that sonically is all over the map, be it twang flecked almost Western sounding folk, woozy crooned torch songs, junkyard percussion driven lo-fi dirge rock, stumbling hypno-prog, who knows how the heck to classify any of this, easiest to just say this is some sort of utterly singular, surreal Finnish psychedelia, equal parts the Residents, Tom Waits, Birthday Party, Cop Shoot Cop, and who knows what else, all filtered through that totally cracked Finnish sensibility that informs so much of the Finnish music we love. A little bit circusy, a LOT whatthefuck, droney, fuzzy, distorted, stumbly, we want to say this is the best Keuhkot yet, but we sort of love them all, cuz they're all great. We'd say it's the weirdest, but they're all pretty goddamn weird too. We will say the opening track "Kuuluisia Alkemisteja Vol 1", is one of the coolest jams we've heard in ages, all super blown out synth buzz, pulsing and undulating, laced with haunting disembodied vocals, but the sort of droned out abstract psych trip out we could listen to forever. Just check out the samples, and prepare yourself to be baffled and confused and totally transported to some seriously demented sonic otherworld, and Jussi did in fact say it best: Keuhkot kicks the real man's groin!
We usually start reviews of records released on Mississippi Records with a blaring announcement that looks a little like this:
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Cuz we know there are plenty of folks out there, that like us, are crazy obsessed with that label, and will buy ANYthing and EVERYthing they release. And we imagine those folks will no doubt buy this one as well, but for the folks who might not be quite so Mississippi obsessed, or who might have gotten in the habit of seeing that announcement and skipping on by, we didn't want anyone to miss out on this one, because this record just might be the one to suck you in and MAKE you that obsessed. Sure it's yet another incredible unearthed gem from the crazy music obsessives who run the impeccable Mississippi Records label, and as we hinted at above, pretty much everything they release is worth checking out, and yeah, they're all special in their own way, there's a bunch of others on this very list, but this one, this one is something else altogether, a collection of 78s from legendary Indian classical vocalist Khansahib Abdul Karim Khan, dense, lush, emotional and spiritual ragas, haunting and mystical and completely gorgeous. A huge influence of legendary minimalist composer La Monte Young, in fact the liner notes offer up a quote from Young that basically says it all: "When I first heard the recordings of Abdul Karim Khan I thought that perhaps it would be best if I gave up singing, got a cabin up in the mountains, stocked it with a record player and recordings of Abdul Karim Khan, and just listened for the rest of my life."
We can definitely understand his feelings, this is the sort of music, so powerful and so passionate, that it definitely puts most 'singers' to shame. The instrumentation is very traditional classical Indian, but it's the vocals that drive these songs, the instruments way down in the mix, Khan's gorgeous vocals soaring and dramatic, haunting and moving and utterly breathtaking. We've seen descriptions of these recordings as being "not easy listening, but ultimately very rewarding", and while we definitely agree with the second half of the statement, these sounds while complex and totally unlike most of the other music you've heard, are not at all difficult to listen to, just the opposite, after just a few seconds, you'll be whisked away, totally transported, as the sounds surround you, and seep into your spirit and soul. The music here so utterly transcendent, so lush, warm and welcoming, yet at the same time, so strange and wondrous, Khan's voice sounding like its bathed in divine light.
Khansahib Abdul Karim Khan truly was a sonic shaman for the ages, delivering these divine musical messages to us, his willing supplicants. Incredible.
Packaged in super thick full color old school tip-on jackets, with a big booklet packed with liner notes and photos.
Recently released on vinyl by Mississippi Records, and made a Record Of The Week by us, this fantastic collection of 78s from legendary Indian classical vocalist Ustad Abdul Karim Khan is now available on cd (with different cover art for some reason). Compiled by Ian Nagoski (who also put together some of our favorite old timey 78's collections, including Brass Pins & Match Heads, Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts and Black Mirror: Reflections In Global Musics, among others!), the sounds here are unlike anything you've ever heard, so haunting and mysterious, timeless and powerful, a collection of lush, spiritual ragas, which manage to be both simple and Spartan, yet simultaneously sonically dense and melodically complex, a soundworld both moving and mystical, emotional and utterly gorgeous. Khan was a huge influence on legendary minimalist composer La Monte Young, in fact the Mississippi lp liner notes offer up a quote from Young that basically sums it up better than we ever could: "When I first heard the recordings of Abdul Karim Khan I thought that perhaps it would be best if I gave up singing, got a cabin up in the mountains, stocked it with a record player and recordings of Abdul Karim Khan, and just listened for the rest of my life."
We can definitely understand his feelings, this is the sort of music, so powerful and so passionate, that it definitely puts most 'singers' to shame. The instrumentation is very traditional classical Indian, but it's the vocals that drive these songs, the instruments way down in the mix, Khan's intense and ecstatic vocals soaring and dramatic, so commanding yet still impossibly warm and mellifluous. We've seen descriptions of these recordings as being "not easy listening, but ultimately very rewarding", and while we definitely agree with the second half of the statement, these sounds, while complex and totally unlike most 'Western' music you've heard, are not at all difficult to listen to, just the opposite, after just a few seconds, you'll be whisked away, totally transported, as the sounds surround you, and seep into your spirit and soul, soft swirls of soothing sonorous, sonic spiritual bliss. The music here so utterly transcendent, so lush, warm and welcoming, yet at the same time, so strange and wondrous, Khan's voice sounding like it's bathed in divine light.
Ustad Abdul Karim Khan truly was a sonic shaman for the ages, delivering these divine musical messages to us, his willing supplicants. Incredible.
A record like this is pretty much destined to be an aQ Record Of The Week. A super limited double lp, on Sublime Frequencies, featuring two whole lps of spaced out Arabic instrumental psychedelic surf rock and Eastern progressive beat, from legendary Arabic actor and musician Omar Khorshid, who is criminally unknown outside of the Middle East, especially considering his high profile, and the fact that this is some of the heaviest, buzziest, most rockingest stuff we've heard yet on Sublime Frequencies.
Born in Cairo, and widely considered to be the greatest guitarist in the Arab world, Khorshid became a ubiquitous presence in the Middle East, performing live, in televised concerts as an actor in films and on television, by the seventies he began working with a legendary Beirut composer, and his music became more and more avant and progressive, as did those who looked to him for inspiration, he helped introduce modern electronics, reverb, delay and other effects, pushing his sound way out, and creating something totally unique, and pretty fantastical.
On first listen, you can't help but be blown away. Wild tangled outer space synths, buzzy sitar like guitars, wild drumming, a strange sort of hypnotic buzzing Eastern style surf rock, which to these ears sounds like it was cooked up in a makeshift kitchen recording studio by an Arab Joe Meek. Fuzz guitar all over the place, almost like a Middle Eastern Ventures, propuslive, hypnotic, totally rocking, energetic and inspired, and seriously progressive, especially for the time.
His death was as dramatic as his life, after performing in 1977 at the Egyptian / Israeli summit at the White House, and being seated between Presidents Carter, Begin and Sadat, he was constantly harassed, enduring several assasination attempts and near constant surveillance, before being killed at age 36 in a mysterious car crash.
But his legacy lives on in his music, finally being exposed to a wider audience, a music at once original and forward thinking, exuberant, ebullient, fun and funky, wild and rocking and totally unique. Definitely one of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases. Only on vinyl for now, and while it's likely there will be a cd version (which we'll also make a Record Of The Week when the time comes), we can never be 100 percent sure, so better grab one of these quick, espeically considering we only got 40 of these and most likely won't be able to get any more! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
Yay, record number two from this rotating ensemble who took the internet (and aQ) by storm a couple of years ago when a mysterious video surfaced on the Dangerous Minds blog of a group of young men in a village processional in Northern Thailand unfurling THEE craziest psychedelic guitar music from their huge homemade soundsystem (proudly featured on the cover of the new record). Shortly thereafter an lp appeared, which we made Record of The Week, and now here we have its follow-up and we were so excited we couldn't help but make Khun Narin a Record of the week once again!!
So what has changed? Apart from a couple of new members, not very much. And that's the way we like it! As with Konono No.1, the rhythmic African group who hooked up kalimbas and homemade percussion to their own homemade soundsystem, their indigenous DIY sound isn't rooted in seeking out mainstream popularity (it actually sought them out!), but in pursuing a self-reliant approach to a deeply traditional music. There are subtle differences between the two albums - the songs here are more languid and flowing, yet still increase with hypnotic tempos and intricate searing guitar lines - the structure of the music remains the same, which is totally fine with us.
It's funny to think that music that sounds so far out and strange to Western ears is so rooted in everyday life somewhere else that it could be seen as routinely commonplace. We would gladly trade the last 20 years of mainstream western pop music for music like this, any day. Recommended!
It all started with a video on YouTube. Odds are one of your music nerd friends sent it to you already, or maybe you WERE one of those music nerds, sending it to everyone you know. Check it out: KHUN NARIN ELECTRIC PHIN BAND [http://youtu.be/IYGl-l0Toig?list=FLCuwmGlbaOAStwXMiPVY5Kw] A mysterious video with very little in the way of description, but really, it hardly needed a description, the sound was incredible, a wild, percussive, effusive, droning psychedelia, like a Thai version of Konono No.1, all buzzing distorted melodies, hypnotic rhythms, we, like many of you, must have watched that video a hundred times. And the visuals too, a group of musicians, relaxing in plastic chairs, in a town square, all in matching red vests, presumably from their jobs as taxi drivers, the sound pumped out through a wheeled, home built PA, all manner of instruments, double necked guitar style lutes, hand cymbals, drums, percussion, while all around them, people mill about, seemingly oblivious, to the psychedelic genius going on right before their strangely averted eyes!
Well somehow, some fella got in touch with the band in the video, and organized a proper recording for the group, which we discovered was in fact, Khun Narin Phin Sing, or Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, the name taken from the group's use of an electrified, double necked version of a traditional Thai instrument, the lute-like phin. As for the folks in the video that seem to be ignoring the music and the musicians, apparently this sort of music is pretty commonplace in Thailand, even former aQ staffer Byram, who lived there for the last few years, told us he'd wander past bands like this playing all over, all the time, but for the rest of us, this stuff is a revelation, and Khun Narin Phin Sing crazy new Thai psych rock stars that we're totally obsessed with.
The record itself was recorded in a way to as closely as possible replicate the YouTube video, no fancy studios, no expensive mics and multi-track recorders, no overdubs, instead, the band set up in a field right outside their town, in the mountains on Thailand's Northern border, and the music was captured field recording style, live, one take, the group made up of multiple generations, from kids in high school, to men in their '60s, the band running their instruments through chains of guitar pedals, using home built instruments and amplifiers, and of course that custom PA system, a visually and sonically striking behemoth made of 8 loudspeaker horns mounted atop a huge bass cabinet, with wheels of course, and the group just let loose, unfurling a glorious sprawl of droning, buzzy, heady, hypnotic Thai psychedelia, spidery distorted guitar melodies over motorik rhythms, minimal percussion, loping sinewy basslines, the sounds growing more urgent and frenzied, the wild phin shredding drifting atop a roiling bed of constantly swirling and shimmering buzz and thrum, gloriously mesmerizing, and totally transcendent, so utterly amazing, and absolutely recommended to anyone into weird and wonderful sounds, but especially fans of Sublime Frequencies style desert psych, who will be in heaven!!
Vinyl version comes with a download card, btw.
I know we seem to be kind of hard on Kid606. We are. He's the artist du jour. He's on practically every electronica compilation that came out in the last two years, everyone wants to put his records out, everyone wants to remix him (or be remixed by him),
Um, ok, either you're reading this review BECAUSE the band is named King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, or you were just about to stop reading it 'cause the band is named King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. If the latter is the case, please stick with it, they're actually a better band than their name might suggest (we're making this a Record Of The Week after all!!). Or, if you do think the name is cool, then they ARE as good of a band as you're hoping for. But maybe not the sort of band you'd think they'd be. It's actually kind of hard to pin down exactly what kind of band Australia's King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are, anyway. Kind of cosmic garage psych pop?
The first disc here, Float Along - Fill Your Lungs (originally released on its own last year in their home country) starts off stonery enough with a fifteen minute spaced out extravaganza called "Head On/Pill", truly a trippy psychedelic swirl, a mind-altering mix of lilting melodies, gentle vocals, and driving motorik rhythms, with loads and loads of FX, all sorts of fuzz and distortion. It's spacey and sunshiney and somehow like a much more garage-poppy Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple track. Had us sold right there. But this 7-piece ensemble aren't just about the extended space rock (pop). Most of rest of the songs on Float Along are much shorter, taking elements of that first track, or not, and going to other delightful garage-pop places, variously strummy and twangy and foot-tapping and head-nodding, fuzzy and shambolic, before winding the disc up with another long, tripped out (but mellower) jam in the form of the Eastern-tinged, drone-laced title track.
THEN, there's the 2nd disc, also released separately this year Down Under, the aptly titled Oddments, which is even more varied than the 1st disc. This one starts with a Bollywood-sampling instrumental that makes us think of ol' Money Mark and the Beastie Boys, super groovy and kinda chaotic, fuzzy "hairy funk", with lots of organ and synth sizzle. The psych-groove continues on the next, vocal track, bringing in visions of early Funkadelic and Shuggie Otis. But then, as the disc spins, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (love typing that name out!) get back into the ramshackle '60s teen garage pop inspired songwriting that also made up the bulk of the first disc, with a dash of distorted Ariel Pink-ish dementia. The wispy vocals of "Work This Time" make us think of Vincent Gallo's solo album When, "Hot Wax" is a weird, catchy jam incorporating some "Surfing Safari" quotes, "Homeless Man In Adidas" (!) is a hushed acoustic folk number... you see, all over the place. Oddments indeed.
Overall, soundwise, King Gizzard align themselves with the Ty Segall / Thee Oh Sees type of crowd, and so it's no surprise then that they're gonna be over here in the States in October touring with White Fence. Hope we get to see that. Seems like they'd be a blast live. But King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's style of "garage rock" is waaaay more cosmic and psychedelic and randomly bizarre than a lot of their US contemporaries, that's for sure. We'll be indulging ourselves heavily in both these records for a while yet, trying to fully get our heads around 'em. Nice, nice, nice.
Originally discovered by one of our pals at Root Strata, you can just imagine the emails:
"You guys gotta check out this band King Kong Ding Dong!"
"Um... really?"
"Seriously, they're so amazing, KING KONG DING DONG!"
"Ummm, okay..."
Originally we thought maybe it was all a ploy, and it was them messing with us, maybe they had recorded a bunch of stuff themselves and were trying to dupe us into heaping praises on what was essentially a joke, but we took their advice, sought out KKDD, and gave it a listen, and HOLY SHIT. All it took was about a minute of "Evil", and we were hooked. We made a sample, it's down below, we'll wait... listen, and read on...
After some woozy guitar and amp buzz and cord crackle, the band lock into a mesmerizing minimal groove, a loping melody, disembodied voices, swirls of effected buzz, simple tribal percussion, and then BAM, the main riff comes in, all languid and stoned sounding, super spaced out, just two notes, a weird sort of indie folk doom, crooned and hummed vocal harmonies underscore the warm warped riff and the stumbling drums wrapped around it. It's almost like some weird hybrid of Silvester Anfang, True Widow, Animal Collective and No Neck Blues Band or something. Raw and lo-fi, loose and shambling, but so darkly heavy and groovy and hypnotic. We listened to that track about 100 times, before we even moved on to the rest of the record, which was just chock full of sonic surprises. Nothing else on the record is quite like "Evil", the rest of the record flits all over the place from super abstract soundscapes to tuneful indie jangle, to vocal driven bliss out anti pop, to warm warped drone, but they are all somehow woven together into one organic, and constantly transforming whole.
Opener "Jample", winds a strange looped crunchy riff over a simple pounding beat, and some reverby "whooo"s, female vocals belt out an equally reverbed counterpoint, the whole thing building to a super tripped out effects heavy dream pop freakout.
Backwards guitars, lead out of that track into a gorgeous hazy acousticguitarscape, ethereal vocals definitely drifting into Animal Collective territory, but way more scrappy and lo-fi, shimmery sheets of indie jangle give way to blown out distorted drums and looped detuned melodies. Dreamy buzzy pop music gets twisted up into a strange Beach Boys dirge, all choral and chaotic, shot through with spidery high end melodies, which slips sweetly into a spare field of twinkle and twang, wrapped around distant drums and sweetly crooned falsetto vox. Then we're back to "Evil" again, which, heck, deserves yet another listen...
The final four offer up more off kilter outsider dream pop stumble, high crystalline vocals drifting over distorted drum splatter and looped guitar shimmer, soft swirls of effects drift beneath almost operatic sounding harmonies, a sort of twangy slowcore, but slowly crumbling into something much more atmospheric and abstract. After a brief fanfare, what sounds like a soft cacophony of horns, comes a strange harmonica loop, which erupts into some gorgeous, hazy, near perfect minimal space psych drone dream pop.
Shouldn't take long for the rest of the world to catch on. And wouldn't be surprised if these guys started getting hyped by Pitchfork or Matador or any other number of 'tastemakers', and heck, they deserve it, this stuff is mysterious and magical, and the fact that they're called King Kong Ding Dong, somehow only makes it that much better....
It had to be an aQ Record Of The Week. Nearly four hours of warbly and washed out ambient beauty spread out over 3 cds (and 6 lps!), from the man behind the looped and warped ambient jazz minimalism of The Caretaker and the electronic fuckery of V/VM. We've been listing/reviewing the vinyl versions as they were released, part one: When We Parted My Heart Wanted To Die, part two: When Did Our Dreams And Futures Drift So Far Apart, and part three: Memories Live Longer Than Dreams (elsewhere on this week's list). We would have made the vinyl ROTW too, but we thought it was a lot to ask, 6 lps, nearly $80, so we held off, for THIS. A gorgeous compact collection of all 6 lps on 3 discs, in super minimal sleeves, gathered in an equally minimal and mysterious slipcover, printed to look like an old wooden crate. The art and the sound are all inexorably linked. The music of Kirby is mournful and mysterious, melancholy and otherworldly, everything shot through with a certain degree of sadness. Check the song titles: "When We Parted, My Heart Wanted To Die", "The Beauty Of The Impending Tragedy Of My Existence", "And As I Sat Beside You I Felt The Great Sadness That Day", "Tonight Is The Last Night Of The World", and the sounds those words represent, impart the same sense of heartbreak and loneliness, the music feels grey, like looking through a rain speckled dust coated window, at an old abandoned lot, the metal rusted, broken swingsets, collapsing barns, dead grass, mud and old pieces of wood, artifacts of a happier time, all reflecting the blackened sky above. But somehow, this isn't miserable music, it manages to be warm, and thick, and rich, and deceptively simple, lots of layers constantly shifting. It's definitely dronemusic, but not minimal or static, these sounds are alive, record crackle, buried voices, old record, warped instrumentation, sounds are looped and stretched and inverted, tied into knots and then pulled slowly and delicately apart. Fans of Philip Jeck, and Tim Hecker, and William Basinski, this is another gorgeously decayed artifact to add to your collection, evoking many of the same emotions as those like minded soundscapers, yet, the music of Leyland Kirby manages to sound unlike any of them.
This is the perfect soundtrack for introspection, for long nights, candlelight, grey days, windswept storm drenched hillsides, for drifting off, for huddling up with another and sharing warmth, dark, delicate and so beautiful. An incredible, sprawling collection of blurred ambience, obfuscated field recordings, and sad piano melodies hint at the furniture music of Erik Satie, the mood engineering of Angelo Badalamenti, and the emotional resonance of Basinski's Disintegration Loops.
While technically the vinyl wasn't Record Of The Week, it essentially has been, for a couple months now, just delivered in installments, each one a mysterious missive from some otherworld, those who have been keeping up, no doubt understand, and are surely already utterly and inexorably tangled up in Kirby's magical and mournful world of sound, but for the rest of you, who have yet to delve, to climb through, to step beyond, to lose yourself completely. Now is the time, and the message is clear, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was...
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None of us here really like "techno" all that much. That's why we were always so attracted to the mutant strains of techno that manage to turn what often to us seems to be vapid, plastic dance music into cool and creepy, murky weirdness. Chain Reaction's brand of so-called "heroin house" for one. And of course Kompakt's beloved minimal thump. That German label's output was however always really close to being just straight up four on the floor house music, but somehow they always found a way to be sonically creative enough to turn their techno into something new and exciting. And then something weird started happening. The folks at Kompakt called it "pop ambient", a new strain of techno that removed the beat from the equation entirely, relying more on thick organic swells and crystalline melodies than beats. Occasionally, those melodies would fragment and shift and loop and form abstract almost-rhythms, but more often than not, notes and chords would just hover, suspended in an ambient ether, humming and vibrating, shimmering and buzzing. Such is the case with this new Klimek record (an artist who had a track on the Pop Ambient 2004 compilation we also made Record Of The Week a little while back). Spare and sparse and elegently gorgeous. The source material sounds like it must be a guitar. But it's as if the notes were extracted one at a time from the guitar. No strumming or fingerpicking. Just the timbre of a steel string vibrating and disturbing the molecules around it. Removed from its natural setting, these notes sound completely alien, althought they remain rich and organic. Klimek takes these notes and drops them delicately into a warm sonic bath, letting them settle next to complimentary notes, some notes dissolving into nothingness, or disturbing the tranquil stillness, sending off gradually decaying sonic ripples. Imagine the abstract glitch-guitar technique of Fennesz, the underwater ambience of Oval, the quiet parts by your favorite post-rock band, all stretched out, melodies pulled apart until, the notes are almost far enough apart that the melody that birthed it is just a shadowy memeory, a sonic trace, leaving a gorgeous and shimmery landscape of sonorous languor.
Washed out, hazy, dreamy, shimmery, warm, droney, otherworldly, gauzy, ethereal, all perfectly describe a microgenre we've come to love, called simply Pop Ambient. A techno subgenre, that essentially removed the beats from electronic music, leaving just the shadows, the outlines, the colors, loosed from the stricture of rhythm (for the most part), those colors and moods and textures are free to seep and bleed and drift and vaporize, into whirring soft focus streaks of blurred, almost new age-y ambience. A sound that various other music makers have definitely referenced, Jeck, Tim Hecker, the Fun Years, anyone creating haunting drone music or textured minimalism, will no doubt find themselves drifting into a certain sort of pop ambience. But it seems, that pop ambience has a certain warmth, not quite sunshine-y, but definitely a glow, the imbues the majority of that music with a dreamlike luminescence. While the other folks traffic in something much darker, and while their sound may touch on pop ambience, it remains in the realm of the black, the grey, the sonic underworld.
Weirdly enough, we do find ourselves wondering about a pop ambience that was, well, less glowing, more ominous, something darker and more sinister, that could somehow remain ambient pop, without slipping into something else, into dronemusic, or some sort of minimal noisemusic. Strange that it would come from Klimek, who is responsible for some of the dreamiest prettiest pop ambient music we've heard, but Movies Is Magic, Klimek's 'film music' record, is in fact that rare beast, a gorgeous slab of pop ambience, that seethes with tension and emotion and drama, sure it shimmers and glistens, but it also creeps and hums ominously, drones are layered and pulled taut, melodies are minor key and are wrapped around looped cycling strings, field recordings, voices, organic instruments, all woven into Klimek's constantly mutating noir soundscape.
Gorgeous and haunting, these tracks evoke everyone from Bohren, to Autechre, Philip Jeck to Pole,�Barry Adamson to Oval, this record would be a perfect fit for Kompakt if it weren't so dark, or Chain Reaction if there were some beats, instead, it exists in some strange rain soaked constant midnight nether region, the pop dialed way back, as is the ambience, this is anything but placid, or calm, this music is alive, crackling with dark energy, tense, and intense, very evocative and textural and moody. The songs are quite varied, but work perfectly together as a whole. Dark moaning horns surface here and there, Bernard Herrmann strings everywhere, the occasional skittery snare, rubbery bass, everything woven and smeared and layered, woozy and dreamlike, a few of the tracks sound all rural, a bit Morricone-ish and Western, subtly twangy with reverbed harmonica, others drift into flute flecked almost Kitaro sounding new age-y flutter, beneath a murmur of rainfall,�disembodied reverbed voices, murky percussion, and hazy looped melodies.
Here and there, the record does get all dubby, with little synth stabs, and careening not-quite beats, all wrapped in whir, and exuding a serious sonic import, sometimes sounding almost sinister, but just as often pulling back into something much more melodic and mysterious, straddling the line between lush drift and blackened beauty.
Movies Is Magic is our new late night chill out drift off soundtrack, and should certainly appeal to folks who like us maybe always fantasized about a little darkness in their ambient drift. And folks into dark drone music, black ambience, and soundtrack music, might find this the perfect gateway to the fuzzy dreamy drifty world of pop ambience.
Novaya Zemlya is a grand statement. But then again, Thomas Koner doesn't operate in any scale other than monumental. All of his albums (barring the somewhat lackluster La Barca from 2003) speak through the gasping drones of a bleak existentialism. For Koner, the human condition is mirrored in the environment around us, especially those rugged, barren locales at the poles, with his isolationist smears of grey sounds alluding to water, ice, permafrost, wind, radiation, and vast empty spaces above the Arctic Circle. The environmental site for this album is a suitably inhospitable Russian archipelago jutting far out into the Arctic Ocean toward the North Pole. During the arms race of the Cold War, the Soviet Union used Novaya Zemlya as a nuclear test site, dropping the Tsar Bomba in 1961 on the landmass, which was permanently scarred by the largest atomic detonation in the history of the world. The thin layer of nuclear fallout which has buried itself in the frozen tundra of Novaya Zemlya commingles with radioactive isotopes from poorly managed storage facilities, sunken reactors, and scuttled submarines.
Koner describes this landscape through its hazardous potential, which is so much worse than the current situation. With global warming, the methane gas spewed from a melted permafrost will lift all of that radioactive material into the atmosphere and send that along the prevailing winds across western Russian over Scandinavia and into continental Europe. Perhaps, a greater catastrophe than Chernobyl. In speaking to that potential, Koner manifests pockets of near silence throughout the album with his signature tectonic rumblings and stealth-bomber frequencies gliding beyond the event horizon into the realm of the audible. Darkened crumblings of earthen material pocks the beginning of the first in a trilogy of tracks, sounding almost like slabs of ice thunderously collapsing into the sea. Drones swell and collapse into pools of resonant emptiness, broken on the second track by a disembodied shortwave radio transmission of garbled voices. The album returns to those cold, contemplative sounds until the end of the album draws near, when Koner introduces a few elegant, melodic plucks from what might be a harp. For all of the foreboding that looms throughout, the end is almost hopeful that humanity might just sort out this global warming puzzle. But then again, we might not; and then, we're fucked.
An easy contender for 2012's album of the year.
From the very first notes of Assume Crash Position, we're immediately transported right back to Kinshasa in the Congo, a bustling town square, people going about their business, cars zooming past, children playing and shouting, people sitting at tables on the sidewalk drinking, eating, catching up, birds perched in the trees, chirping, just a regular bustling African city, except maybe for a certain group of musicians, creating their own soundtrack to daily life, conjuring up a gorgeous, rhythmic, hypnotic and strangely psychedelic racket, equal parts classic African folk music, High Life, and junkyard percussion. The musicians are wielding a strange array of hand built instruments, there's lots of rusted metal, car batteries, old cracked loudspeakers, various drums, and most notably, some fantastic looking, and even more fantastic sounding amplified thumb pianos. By now, regular readers of the aQ list most likely know we're talking about the truly amazing Konono No.1, quite possibly one of our favorite African ensembles ever, past or present. When we first hear them a few years ago, we were blown away, the super distorted thumb pianos spitting out clouds of rapid fire chiming notes, tangled melodies, all locked into super hypnotic drum driven grooves, call and response vocals, simultaneously festive and danceable, dark and mysterious, raw and feral, primitive and DIY, lush and melodic and like nothing we had ever heard before.
When we first threw on Assume Crash Position, our first thought, was that very little had changed, and to a certain degree that's true, all of the above mentioned elements are still present, the wild thumb pianos, still the focal point, their sound curious but so warm and sweetly melodic, the call and response vocals, the tribal percussion, the groovy rhythms, but from the first track it IS in fact evident that some things have changed. That opening track, "Wumbanzanga", is far more melodic, far more pretty and almost more like some of the other traditional African music we've heard in the past, with great female vocals, the vibe super festive, but those thumb piano melodies definitely add a distinctly Konono vibe. Then the next track, "Thin Legs" explodes in a frenzy of whistles and tribal drumming and vocals, that's it, but it too manages to be super melodic and totally effusively celebratory.
It's not until "Mama Na Bana" which opens with that Konono style stop start THRUMP THRUMP THRUMP, where the whole group locks in, before launching into classic Konono, it's really hard to describe, but those fuzzy buzzing metallic melodies wrapped around the repetitive rhythms and the super emotional vocals, the whole rest of the record is classic, albeit a bit more polished and melodic, Konono junkyard Congotronics...
Some of the highlights this time around include "Makembe", with its buzzing melodies, crooned vocals, and the sounds of kids playing and birds chirping, before there's a BIG crash, apparently the sound of a concrete wall collapsing, a wall the vocalist was moments earlier leaning against, and then the band launches into one of the best jams on the disc. Or the gorgeous closing lullaby of "Nakobala Lisusu Te", with muted thumb pianos, super tangled melodies, and a sweet soulful croon, so dreamy and blissful, the perfect way to unwind after a wild, sweaty, funky, groovy, Congotronic workout.
The packaging is cool too, with tons of photos of the local scrap yard / junkyard, where the band gather up most of the material they use to build their instruments, not to mention a shot of that collapsed wall that crumbled mid-song. As with past Konono's, utterly and absolutely wholeheartedly recommended!
So here it is! Hard to believe it's finally here -- some of us have been waiting forever for this record, or at least ever since we discovered a tiny, super compressed, thirty second long sound clip on the internet over a year ago. In all of half a minute, we became OBSESSED. Completely captivated by this band's totally alien, lush, organic 'world music' weirdness. We eventually tracked down a (great) live record by Konono No.1, which we listed here a few weeks back, and then after tons of internet sleuthing and a bunch of emails we finally managed to get in touch with someone at the Crammed label in Belgium who was willing to sell us this brand new studio album directly, since they are without US distribution. Phew! So was it worth it? Hell yeah! Anyone who heard that infamous sound sample (which was from this album), or who got to hear the live record, knows that this band is totally amazing, and indeed this record is beautiful, wild and wonderful, chaotic and festive, totally perplexing but completely mesmerizing. For those who missed out on the live record (which we've also just restocked!) or are new to the wonders of Konono No.1, here's the story: twenty five years ago, Konono formed in Kinshasa, an area between Congo and Angola, performing their own version of traditional Bazombo trance music, incorporating the then-unwanted distortions of their haphazard homemade sound system. They left the bush and settled in the capital where they were forced to compete with the harsh sounds of the city: cars, trains, buses, shouting, etc. So with very little to work with they fashioned pick-ups, microphones, loudspeakers and amplifiers from stuff they could find on the street -- old car batteries, pots and pans, magnets, even branches. Their main instrument is the likembe, a kind of thumb piano. Konono features three of 'em (bass, medium and treble) and the sound of the electrified and amplified likembe is what defines their sound. Accompanied by dancers and percussionists, the likembes wail and drone, buzz and moan, totally overblown and distorted, sounding a little like sixties fuzz guitars, turning a glorious high life jam into something much more strange and wonderful. Super rhythmic, and thick with the buzzing melodies of the likemebe's, Konono weave a massive sound. It's the wildest weirdest street party you've ever been to. Throbbing with energy and emotion, rambuctiously rollicking and totally infectious. Seven lengthy tracks that all sort of bleed and fuse into one epic world-psych jam. The African high life Hawkwind? So so great!
Check out this video clip:
KONONO [http://www.crammed.be/craworld/movies/konono_promo.mov]
A lot of the soundtracks we review, are for movies we haven't actually seen. In some ways that's sort of liberating, at least from a purely musical standpoint, hearing the sounds solely for what they are, instead of having those sounds inexorably linked to specific images. And in a lot of cases, we have discovered some incredible films via their soundtracks, and not the more common other way around. We got this soundtrack to this 1981 French horror/thriller (directed by Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, and scored by his longtime collaborator Andrzej Korzynski, also Polish, but more on that in a second) in a few months ago, and instantly, become totally obsessed, spinning it multiple times a day, inevitably folks in the store would ask what it was, because it's so goddamn good. And creepy, and twisted, and pretty much the perfect score, but for what, we weren't sure, as we had not seen the movie. And while are obsession proves that you needn't see the movie to love this, once we actually DID see the movie, we flipped for that too, wondering how the hell we could have missed out on it all these years. It's literally one of the weirdest, most fucked up films EVER. And the soundtrack we had become so familiar with over the last several months, finally viewed in the contest of the film, made both even more bizarre and amazing.
So the film itself, banned until 1991, and at the time classified as a "Video Nasty", stars an American, Sam Neil, who becomes convinced his wife, Isabelle Adjani, is cheating on him, which she is. Neil hires a private investigator, eventually meets the lover, and the lover's mother, but there's so much more to the story, there's a crazily neglected child in the mix, some truly twisted parenting, and SPOILER ALERT!!!! Some sort of super gross oozing monster that lives in an abandoned building that Adjani is in love with, or is at least having sex with? There's tons of screaming and hitting and fighting, and one of thee most dramatic freakouts EVER, with Adjani losing her mind in a tunnel, and ending up spewing and oozing all sorts of weird fluids, there's a particularly psychedelic denouement as well, lots of crazy scenery chewing, the whole thing is utterly and unabashedly over the top. Even right after seeing it, we weren't sure what the fuck just happened. But we did know, we loved the movie, and suddenly, loved the soundtrack EVEN MORE.
Korzynski's soundtrack is a series of short cues, most less than a minute, that find the composer experimenting with synthesizers, drum machines, primitive electronics. It's actually quite progressive, and in places is reminiscent of Carpenter or Goblin, especially in the movie's 'theme'. Check out the opening track "The Night The Screaming Stops", and it will be stick in your head forever, the tense strings, the pulsing rhythmic throb, the mysterious percussion, the swirling synth, and the creepy sci-fi sound effects, not to mention the melody. It's so haunting and creepy, but in the film, it's over the most innocuous sequence, and it's that juxtaposition that makes it so effectively chilling. Seriously if this soundtrack was 2 minutes long, and consisted of that first track, we'd still want a copy!
But dig in, there's plenty more, haunting swoonsome strings, drifting over a lilting organ melody, dreamy and drifty, but so subtly ominous, there's some full on synth prog, again revisiting that opening melody, but with more heft, as the soundtrack unwinds, there's lots of percussion, shakers, little flurries of synth shimmer, deep drones, the orchestral theme is particularly stirring, a refrain of the opening credit sequence, but so much more creepy and hauntingly stately. There are also lots of brief blasts of synthy psychedelia, appropriately titled things like "Detective's Desserts" or "Bloody Embrace", and part of the reason these cues are so short, is that much of the movie is sans incidental music, so the cues come in to accentuate certain events, the sonic equivalent of jump-scares, but super effective, and they add a whole other level of surreal psychedelia to the proceedings, very 'Euro' for sure. The series of "Kreuzberg" variations are particularly freaky, sinister and mysterious, grim ambience and super tense orchestral weirdness. Oh did we mention "The Man With The Pink Socks"? Another perplexing plot point, and one that here gets the bookending closing sequence, revisiting "Meeting With A Pink Tie". Adding some extra wah guitar, and both revisiting that opening theme.
Listen to the sound samples and see if you can resist. But really why bother? You won't be sorry. Even removed from the movie, this score is fantastic, psychedelic, orchestral, proggy, tripped out and bizarre, and no doubt will have you headed to the video store to experience the baffling brilliance of the film, once your sated on the equally baffling and brilliant score.
Like all B-Music / Finders Keepers releases, includes a huge booklet with lots of liner notes and tons of rare photos.
Full length number two from these SF heavies, and while they haven't sacrificed any of their Teutonic crush, or noise rock heft, they do display a surprisingly melodic side on Container Ships, a soft white sonic underbelly that was hinted at on their recent split 7" with Thou, on which they covered a Low track, and it feels like much of the sensibilities that not only drove that choice, but determined what they did with it as well, are all over Container Ships. And while nothing here is quite as darkly delicate, the band do definitely dial back the heaviness, letting the sounds linger, letting clean guitars spread out and set the mood, and when the hammer does fall, the sound this time around is much more crisp and lush, even when the guitars are downtuned, churning and chugging, they ring out, the sounds reverberant and rich. The debt to the Unsane and Helmet no longer so obvious, at least not all the time. On the opener, which might be the prettiest song here, the band offer up their own sort of slowcore minimal math rock / noise rock sprawl, subtly nuanced, and super melodic, another big change on display here is frontman Scott Evans' vocals, which have transformed from a gruff bark, to a serious croon, still rough around the edges, but way more emotive and the perfect match for the band's ever developing sound.
But fear not, get an earful of the second track, "50's Dad", which is all loping, chugging noise rock crush, Evan's vocals higher than on past record, which definitely changes the vibe throughout, and makes even the heaviest tracks here, less of a knuckledragging vibe, and more of an emo edge, which again totally suits them, especially when the band lock into a weird loping groove, and Evans sings himself ragged, his voice rough and raw and impassioned. Not to mention the burst of tangled psychedelic guitar leads that are wrapped around the middle of the track.
The guys have been busting their asses for years now, and we always sort of wondered why they weren't huge, but goddamn if this record doesn't change all that nothing will.
The whole record is a sort of push and pull between the muscled mathy noise rock of the early records, and this desire to make beautiful music, even if it's dark, mean, ugly, hard and heavy beautiful music, which this most certainly is, and it's that balance that makes this record, and these guys so good. The title track here is a dirgey doomy drag, the chords ringing out, the vocals carrying all the melodic weight, and transforming a dirgey chugfest into something epic and intense, the song revealing a grasp and mastery of dynamics that was most definitely underutilized on past records, but gets a serious workout here.
"Cornerstone" is about as poppy as these guys get, and again, they not only mange to pull it off, they also make it this hook heavy noise-pop fit seamlessly into the way heavier rest of the record, not to mention demonstrating another element the band have in their arsenal but obviously choose to employ very judiciously. The record finishes off with the 9 minute epic "You Don't Have Cancer", which again reveals their slowcore proclivities, and demonstrates their ability to subsume that sound into their own, the resulting hybrid another sprawling, gut wrenchingly emotional, crushingly heavy, surprisingly melodic epic, that would, and does, put most other heavy bands to shame.
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!
Oh man, we wanted to see this movie from the second we first heard about it. Kids in a primary school get a wicked case of the 'cooties', which transforms them into zombie like wee beasties, and it's up to the teachers to survive, and if need be (which need very likely does be!) dispatch of the hungry, demonic hordes roaming the playground. The trailer looks ridiculous and over the top (we haven't actually seen it yet), and very much like a grade school version of another awesome horror-school classic, The Faculty. Beyond that just being such an amazing concept for a movie, there's the added bonus of the incredible score by weirdo soundsculptor / dronelord / avant grade composer (and huge aQ fave) Kreng, aka Pepijn Caudron.
Longtime readers of the aQ list are also likely fans of the Miasmah label, which Kreng generally calls home. His releases on Miasmah are moody and murky and minimal, twisted and shadowy, waste and faded and gorgeously mysterious. And while all that sounds like the perfect ingredients for a seriously sinister horror score, since this is not your typical horror movie, Caudron gets to explore WAY out of his usual sonic comfort zone, whether it's long sprawls of DJ Shadow like beat driven grooviness (in one instance, the haunting main theme is played by what sounds like a sitar!), or swirly, symphonic exotica, or hushed, somber shimmer, it's all woven together into a proper album, that is a pretty fantastic listen, even sans the film.
The DJ Shadow comparison is actually pretty apt as beats and breaks surface throughout, but it's in the execution that things get and stay weird, in fact one of the best musical moments is when a loping beat limps along beneath a cacophony of detuned brass. But it is a horror soundtrack, so Carpenterisms abound (reworked in Kreng's inimitable style), there are plenty of tense, driving synth jams, barely there haunted house ambience, darkly delicate pianoscapes, strangely dubby drifts, some deliriously atonal 20th century sounding cacophony and bursts of what sounds like some rad eighties VHS soundtrack, all dayglo distorted, blaring and bombastic.
While not nearly as dark as some of the Miasmah releases, there's an ominous underpinning to the proceedings, even at it's most playful and melodic, it's fun and freaky, and like the best soundtracks, not only is a great listen, but has us wanting to see the movie even more than we already did!
Most Americans (well, not most Americans, but the ones paying attention) were first introduced to the progressive versatility of Norwegian jazz singer Karin Krog back in the nineties when European distribution regulations finally relaxed enough for wider promotion and availability across the Atlantic, and what a discovery it was. Having performed and recorded since the early sixties, Krog was essentially a household name in her native country, having worked with the some of the most esteemed bandleaders and arrangers of the post-bop jazz world, Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp, Jan Garbarek, Steve Kuhn, and John Surman among them. Her then 30 year old back catalog was a treasure chest for crate diggers and beat heads and sure enough compilations of her work along with other groove heavy "Black Forest" jazz figures from Scandinavia, Germany and Poland, like Wolfgang Dauner, Michael Urbaniak and Urszula Dudziak, began to crop up in the early 2000's.
It's been about 13 years since Crippled Dick released the first Krog survey, Raindrops, Raindrops, which mainly focused on her seventies work. Some of those tracks reappear here, like the great Herbie Hancock composition, "Maiden Voyage" and "We Could Be Flying". On Don't Just Sing, Light In The Attic expands that survey into the margins on both sides of her career from the sixties to the nineties, and truly highlights her wide range from funk-laden jazz pop to cosmic fusion explorations into freer modes of vocal expression and electronic experimentation. Krog's delivery can weave an incandescent tapestry no matter if the material is traditional or experimental. Her approach to standards is by no means by the book and indeed is quite innovative. Who else could turn the Mississippi Delta twang of Bobbi Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe" into a Scandinavian jazz groover? Or transform John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" into such blithely cool rapturous devotion? Krog's dry lilting voice is effortlessly breezy, at times near lackadaisical as it almost trails off a the end of a phrase - but also at times spitfire, full of life and in total control. "Don't Just Sing" is not only a track here exploring how much the voice can do without words, it's also a personalized mantra for how the voice can convey emotional and tonal complexities as well as transform audible worlds into poetic vision.
While we long for full reissues of her essential records like We Could Be Flying, Hi Fly (with Archie Shepp) and Joy, any survey of Karin Krog is warmly welcomed and this one is particularly great! Includes archival photos and liner notes including a Q& A with Krog herself. We cannot recommend this compilation enough! (Also be sure to check out her feature in this month's Wire magazine!)
Ghana must be a really loud place. Even just based on the amount of honking that that goes on there. Vehicles honk often and repeatedly, to shoo pedestrians or cyclists out of the way, to signify annoyance with slow traffic or blocked roadways, to signify a desire to change lanes or pass, to get the attention of other drivers or just because they're so thrilled to be driving. Taxis honk rhythmically to attract fares, buses also honk rhythmically while their drivers sing out the various destinations. But there's more than just honking, sound systems blast music, stalls selling their wares broadcast songs and sounds, prayers are broadcast through large speakers affixed to the outsides of mosques...
Sonic chaos certainly. But at the same time, all of these sounds merge into a strange sort of music, the sounds of a city going through the motions of daily life. Chaotic certainly, but also vibrant. Unique. And so alive. A joyful celebration of everyday activities.
At the root of all of this sound is Por Por, the honk horn music of Ghana. Por Por, pronounced 'paaw paaw', an onomatopoeic description of the local drivers' honking squeeze-bulb horn music, was initially just that, the sounds of a city in motion, but eventually, the drivers who helped keep the city moving, took the sounds of their work day and turned it into music. Horns honking, found percussion, wrenches on tires, pipes on concrete, drums, pumping up tires, singing and shouting, those sounds became ritualized, and became their own music, with particular sounds and rhythms and arrangements, and a specific purpose. This music while a reflection of the city around it, was rarely performed in public, but instead, was almost exclusively performed at union drivers' funerals, those funerals very reminiscent of the New Orleans jazz funeral, replete with processions, music obviously, and coffins modeled on the various buses and trucks carrying the dead to the afterlife. The story of por por, of Ghana and its independence is a long one, far to intricate and complex to get into here, but La, the province from which these drivers and horn honkers hail, was critical to the resistance to colonial rule, refusing to pay taxes, fighting a proposed ban on por por horns, a strong sense of community, were all critical to the region's struggle for independence.
So in honor of this year's golden anniversary of Ghana's independence, for the first time, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group gathered to record the music that had been such a part of their culture and their life. Recorded outdoors, in backyards, the sound of the city, the traffic, all around, the music of por por spills forth, effusive and celebratory, joyous and spiritual, complex and strange and like nothing we have ever heard before.
A gorgeously ramshackle rhythmic workout, metallic percussion dense and spidery, a lush framework of intricate rhythms, beneath amazing vocal arrangements, but it's the por por that make this music so unique, honking rhythmically, strange melodies, sounding a bit like geese, an orchestra of squeeze-bulb horns, locking into looped rhythmic structures, hypnotic and mesmerizing. Like traditional African music being performed during rush hour in the middle of a busy intersection. Like Konono No1 but with horns instead of amplified thumb pianos. Most of the tracks seem to be more focused on the vocals, or the hypnotic rhythms, with the horns acting more as a melodic counterpoint. But some tracks, like the opening track "Por Por Akwaaba / Welcome" are entirely about the honking horns, sounding a bit like Philip Glass or Steve Reich composing for automobile horns, rhythmic and strangely catchy, and that is when Pop Por completely captivates, when the horns lock into strange cyclical melodies, all tangled up with the vocals, complete transporting us to the dusty streets of Ghana, horns in hand, honking joyously, letting the sound and the rhythms carry us away.
The final track is especially stirring, with the Por Por group heading into the city, and setting up outside the union office, enlisting all of the drivers present, as well as enlisting the help of various passing vehicles, for a call and response salute to their Independence, the por por horns honking rhythmically, regular car horns held down, underpinning the proceedings with long keening drones, folks singing long drawn out tones, almost wailing, a dense swirl of droning honking mesmer. So intense. And moving.
As with all Smithsonian Folkways releases, there is a huge booklet, with tons of amazing photos, extensive liner notes, as well as notes on each track.
At long last, the always heavily sought after soundtrack to Rene Laloux's 1973 Cannes Grand Prix winning animated feature La Planete Sauvage, an old aQ fave, is available again on compact disc! If the film itself is a hallucinatory masterpiece, the soundtrack - composed by Alain Goraguer (long time arranger for Serge Gainsbourg) - is as fitting as it is brilliant. Like an LSD dosed Isaac Hayes score, the music herein is at the same time both reminiscent of classic early seventies drama soundtracks AND completely surreal and strange. Lots of recurring leitmotifs recast in ever building and changing arrangements, including marimba, Theremin and bird whistles as well as the standard orchestral elements, guitars and funky organs. So great!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been championing Laddio Bollocko since we first heard their mighty 'Strange Warmings' album (which we finally managed to get back in, review later in the list) and inexplicably they have managed to elude the superstardom we predicted for them. But with their hyper-distorted-This-Heat-fronted-by-Albert-Ayler sound, they were definitely an acquired taste. It's been a couple years, and it's two releases later, and Laddio is kind of a different beast. This cd compiles the 'In Real Time' ep and the 'As If By Remote' sort-of-full-length, and shows an amazing amount of growth. They've all but completely abandoned the bludgeoning, pounding shrieking bombast, and instead stretch out, and explore rhythms and textures, creating lengthy krautrock jams, and hypnotic drones. And their noisey, in your face, live recording has been replaced by what sounds like a serious exploration of the studio as instrument, with at least half the record full of innovative production and gorgeous textures. Also, the sax, which on 'Strange Warmings', was more textural and not immediately identifiable as a saxophone, is more of a presence here, giving it more of a sort-of-jazz feel on several tracks.
Their sound these days is much more in the vein of This Heat and Circle. In fact, everyone who was blown away by the recent Circle releases should definitely check this out.
We've mentioned it before, but there are a handful of bands that seem to perfectly embody what aQ is all about. Bands and records that even though they shouldn't, have crazy crossover appeal. Weird black metal records that pop nerds obsess on, wild noisy hypno rock that inexplicably appeals to hip hop headz as much and indie rockers. It's not a set in stone list, it's nebulous, and it's different for everybody. Depending on the person, different bands mean different things, and pretty much everybody might have a different idea of the ultimate aQ band or record. The Conet Project is a definite contender. Finland's Circle are definitely in the running. And then there's Laddio Bolocko. Easily one of THEE greatest indie rock / noise rock / post rock / math rock bands ever. Pretty sure there are no aQuarians who don't worship at the altar of Laddio Bolocko.
And anyone who's heard these guys understands why. The group are masters of some ineffable musical alchemy, at once willfully difficult and extremely challenging, but also totally melodic, and mesmerizingly hypnotic. The krautrock vibe is huge, a motorik streak a mile wide runs through the works of LB, but they're also an explosive rock band, capable of total facemelt on par with most metal bands, they're also immersed in some wild, avant psychedelic free jazz, which also looms large in their canon. That might sound like it makes for a mess, but if it is, it's a glorious, unfuckwithable mess.
We've lavished much praise on Laddio Bolocko over the years (as well as on post-Laddio project The Psychic Paramount), and now it's time to do it again, with this stunning collection of rare live and unreleased recordings. And before you think this must be some sort of cash grab, releasing a bunch of shitty live tapes, consider that: A. This band is not nearly popular enough to merit any sort of cash grabbing (sadly), and B. just listen to this shit. The live stuff here blows most bands' best studio albums out of the water. The proof is in the 43 minute opening track pudding (appropriately titled "43 Minutes Of (Excerpt)"), a sprawling mega-jam that is constantly mutating, beginning as a gloriously blown out, and super melodic sort-of-space jam, gradually growing more gnarled and distorted, some of the tones reminiscent of Amps For Christ, before devolving into a droned out, buzz drenched slo-mo soft-noise dirge, that once again slowly builds to a wild psychedelic squall, that swirls and whirls and gradually settles into a slow burn fade. We used to compare LB to This Heat, and that's even more apropos here, with the band locking into dizzying rhythmic permutations, and slathering those various iterations in wild noise, or blurred chords, or crumbling distortion, or free jazz skronk and bleat. That This Heat influence becomes more marked as this collection progresses (just check out the clattery skeletal dub of "Afrostructure Pt. 1", or "As If By Remote", which imagines This Heat as a modern math rock band). Slintisms abound as well, with some moody meanders, and the live in Slovenia set sounds like some heavy rock band channeling the roots of spiritual jazz. What the fuck?! How did these guys do it? And why were they not huge? How did so much of the world miss out on these guys?! Laddio Bolocko is the rare group that has the potential to not just appeal only to weirdo music nerds (although if you are one of those, you very likely already LOVE this band!). The jazzy bits are not like some rock band simply aping jazz, they OWN jazz, and in doing so, create a new musical vocabulary for a classic musical form. The same is true for krautrock, math rock, noise rock, whatever the fuck kind of rock they want to take on, every song, every performance is a reinvention, every new movement a discovery. It's exciting and organic, tense and expansive, gnarled and abstract, alive and emotional, and just utterly and breathtakingly stunning.
Liner notes by Kid Millions. And both the double cd and limited triple lp formats (the latter of which is packaged in a deluxe box) come with a dvd disc, featuring more than two hours of live performance footage, that's really nicely done, looking less like typical live video than monochrome art film from decades earlier. Fans will be stoked.
We've mentioned it before, but there are a handful of bands that seem to perfectly embody what aQ is all about. Bands and records that even though they shouldn't, have crazy crossover appeal. Weird black metal records that pop nerds obsess on, wild noisy hypno rock that inexplicably appeals to hip hop headz as much and indie rockers. It's not a set in stone list, it's nebulous, and it's different for everybody. Depending on the person, different bands mean different things, and pretty much everybody might have a different idea of the ultimate aQ band or record. The Conet Project is a definite contender. Finland's Circle are definitely in the running. And then there's Laddio Bolocko. Easily one of THEE greatest indie rock / noise rock / post rock / math rock bands ever. Pretty sure there are no aQuarians who don't worship at the altar of Laddio Bolocko.
And anyone who's heard these guys understands why. The group are masters of some ineffable musical alchemy, at once willfully difficult and extremely challenging, but also totally melodic, and mesmerizingly hypnotic. The krautrock vibe is huge, a motorik streak a mile wide runs through the works of LB, but they're also an explosive rock band, capable of total facemelt on par with most metal bands, they're also immersed in some wild, avant psychedelic free jazz, which also looms large in their canon. That might sound like it makes for a mess, but if it is, it's a glorious, unfuckwithable mess.
We've lavished much praise on Laddio Bolocko over the years (as well as on post-Laddio project The Psychic Paramount), and now it's time to do it again, with this stunning collection of rare live and unreleased recordings. And before you think this must be some sort of cash grab, releasing a bunch of shitty live tapes, consider that: A. This band is not nearly popular enough to merit any sort of cash grabbing (sadly), and B. just listen to this shit. The live stuff here blows most bands' best studio albums out of the water. The proof is in the 43 minute opening track pudding (appropriately titled "43 Minutes Of (Excerpt)"), a sprawling mega-jam that is constantly mutating, beginning as a gloriously blown out, and super melodic sort-of-space jam, gradually growing more gnarled and distorted, some of the tones reminiscent of Amps For Christ, before devolving into a droned out, buzz drenched slo-mo soft-noise dirge, that once again slowly builds to a wild psychedelic squall, that swirls and whirls and gradually settles into a slow burn fade. We used to compare LB to This Heat, and that's even more apropos here, with the band locking into dizzying rhythmic permutations, and slathering those various iterations in wild noise, or blurred chords, or crumbling distortion, or free jazz skronk and bleat. That This Heat influence becomes more marked as this collection progresses (just check out the clattery skeletal dub of "Afrostructure Pt. 1", or "As If By Remote", which imagines This Heat as a modern math rock band). Slintisms abound as well, with some moody meanders, and the live in Slovenia set sounds like some heavy rock band channeling the roots of spiritual jazz. What the fuck?! How did these guys do it? And why were they not huge? How did so much of the world miss out on these guys?! Laddio Bolocko is the rare group that has the potential to not just appeal only to weirdo music nerds (although if you are one of those, you very likely already LOVE this band!). The jazzy bits are not like some rock band simply aping jazz, they OWN jazz, and in doing so, create a new musical vocabulary for a classic musical form. The same is true for krautrock, math rock, noise rock, whatever the fuck kind of rock they want to take on, every song, every performance is a reinvention, every new movement a discovery. It's exciting and organic, tense and expansive, gnarled and abstract, alive and emotional, and just utterly and breathtakingly stunning.
Liner notes by Kid Millions. And both the double cd and limited triple lp formats (the latter of which is packaged in a deluxe box) come with a dvd disc, featuring more than two hours of live performance footage, that's really nicely done, looking less like typical live video than monochrome art film from decades earlier. Fans will be stoked.
Finally re-pressed and back in stock!!
We have been championing this band since the very first time we heard their mighty 'Strange Warmings' debut years ago but continually faced the problem of all three of their releases being practically impossible to get. And my (Andee's) only possible complaint about this comprehensive career retrospective collection is that I WANTED TO PUT IT OUT ON tUMULt!!!! Arrrrgghhh. But kudos to AQ pal Mike who runs the mighty No Quarter label, for his amazing taste (Earth, Pharoah Overlord and now LB!) and ability to unearth/rerelease these out of print gems.
Laddio Bolocko were absolutely one of the most amazing bands we have ever heard, taking the bloated corpse of 'post rock' and filling it with squirming, ultra complex, super dynamic kraut rock and out rock and...uhhhh trout (mask replica) rock? Or whatever. Imagine a modern day This Heat, but with bigger amps, more lo-fi production, free-jazz scud missle saxophone, unlikely melodies, relentless rhythms, ear-ringing dynamics and a sound unlike anything you've ever heard. Sounds good huh? Well, it is. In fact. as far as I'm concerned LB were probably one of the most important and most original rock bands of the last 20 years. High praise indeed, but once you hear this stuff you'll be hard pressed to argue.
The Life & Times Of collects all three Laddio Bollocko releases, their devastating debut Strange Warmings Of and the two follow up eps, In Real Time and As If By Remote. Also included is a video playable on your computer (which, along with the nice digipak packaging, may even tempt those lucky enough to already have Laddio's hard to find releases).
Disc one is Strange Warmings Of, a pummelling and heavy drone rock masterpiece, in which an ex-Dazzling Killmen (Blake Fleming) takes his penchant for angular discordance a step further, forgoing the ferocious heaviosity of his former outfit, and instead, explores lengthy semi-improvisational psychedelic freakouts and repetetive hypno-krautrock instrumentals a la AQ faves Circle. Post rock jamscapes littered with shrieking and droning Albert Ayler-ish sax, jabs of no wave guitar, an overwhelming over-saturated super-distorted production and absolutely crushing drumming. Anyone into Circle or This Heat or Acid Mothers Temple or Faust or any or any of that, will be completely blown away.
Disc two contains the two later eps find Laddio Bolocko in a new space with a new sound. Showing an amazing amount of growth, LB have all but completely abandoned the bludgeoning, pounding shrieking bombast, and instead stretch out, and explore rhythms and textures, creating lengthy krautrock jams, and hypnotic drones. And their noisey, in your face, live recording has been replaced by what sounds like a serious exploration of the studio as instrument, with at least half the record full of innovative production and gorgeous textures. Also, the sax, which on Strange Warmings, was more textural and not immediately identifiable as a saxophone, is more of a presence here, giving it more of a sort-of-jazz feel on several tracks. This later, less ROOOOOOOAAAAARRRR sort of sound puts them even more comfortably in the sonic realm occupied by Faust, This Heat and Circle.
