WOW, did this record pretty much immediately blow us away! We had never actually heard these guys (this guy actually, he also plays in Birds Of Maya), but had always thought Purling Hiss was a pretty awesome name, so not expecting too much, we threw this on and then BAM, we were sold, smitten, obsessed even, finding ourselves playing this to death, getting these songs stuck in our heads, and not just the songs proper, but even the weird little recording anomalies and random bits of musical glitchery. For a record that sounds, and is maybe meant to sound, so lo-fi and tossed off and just sort of half assed, a druggy murky muddy home brewed pop record, it's impossibly catchy and well crafted and AMAZING.
A heady mix of classic pop songsmithery, blown out psychedelic drift, abstract tape experiment fuckery and fragmented bedroom 4 track alchemy, Public Service Announcement plays at times like some classic rock record that's been dubbed a million times and then played back in your crappy car stereo, the one with only one speaker and no bass knob, and at other times like some inspired Guided By Voices mini pop epic, and occasionally like some super baked, basement psych jam blowout, wasted and lazy and drifty and divine.
The record opens with "Run From The City", which within 5 seconds establishes itself as some impossible instant classic, with a totally killer guitar lick that IS the song's hook, the track sounding like some lost punky pop gem from the seventies or eighties that somehow got left off of every compilation since, the verses crunchy and muddy and melodic, those guitar leads just sealing the deal. In fact, we could barely get to the rest of the record cuz we just wanted to keep playing the first track.
"Porch Dude/Slight Return" offers up our first glimpse of Purling Hiss as wasted and stoned psych jam drifters, shuffling drums, swirling flanged guitars, everything hazy and wreathed in pot smoke, little spidery leads surfacing here and there, bit otherwise a blurred and bleary drift, the slight return of the title being the revisited melody from the album opener.
And then there's "Don't Even Try It", the other song we can't seem to keep from just playing on repeat, with it's folky guitar and vocal intro, the tape speed constantly shifting, the sound warped and warbly, like someone with their finger on the record as it spins, and then the chorus comes in, with it's "woo ooo ooo" refrain, and the song suddenly reveals itself as some pretty perfect pop. Lo-fi yet lush, vocal harmonies, guitar melodies, a hook to die for, all hazy and sun dappled and catchy as all get out.
After a brief (but AWESOME) minute long Van Halen loop, that manages to be totally twisted yet totally catchy, the record slips right back into fuzzy lo-fi pop, more oooh's and aaah's, summery steel string strum, dreamy harmonies, and sweet pop hooks, before unfurling some serious psychedelia in the form of "Gypsy", a sprawling droned out chunk of druggy spaciness, and at that point if you're not already under the record's spell, you bliss out and drift off and let the record carry you wherever it will, whether it be to "Zor" a thick buzzing, swirling, yet still dreamily melodic bit of dark drone, or to "Beautiful Earth Creature" which is another perfect chunk of jangly pop, replete with those warped speed fluctuations that end up becoming irrevocably part of the song, or to the heady spacepsychjam freakout of "Malice In Wonderland" or to the twisted Ariel Pink-ish warbly fuzzy FM radio pop of album close "1976".
Warped and wonderful and definitely one of our new favorite records.
It is a red letter day for us here at aQ, in that we finally actually get to write about and sell you a Pye Corner Audio release instead of lamenting the fact that our supplier for PCA recordings only sent us a fraction of what we had initially wanted - or is more often the case, that it sold out completely before we could get our hands on ANY. To be sure, over the past couple of years, a few of Pye Corner's releases have slipped in and out of the shop, leaving just an ectoplasmic stain of picture-perfect electronic retro-futurism on our collective minds; and it also seems fitting that Pye Corner Audio released an album of his hauntological disco on the Ghost Box label, which again we've never gotten enough of to list. But now, hurrah, we have this!! As the title specifies, this triple cd set collects the first four volumes of Pye Corner Audio's Black Mill Tapes, which were originally released on vinyl as a couple of double lp sets which are (as noted) long gone.
Pye Corner Audio is the work of audio wizard Martin Jenkins, who is one of the in-house engineers at Miloco Studios in London where he works alongside the likes of Alan Moulder, Flood, and Trevor Jackson - yeah, top flight producers for sure. It's obvious that the work of Pye Corner Audio did not develop in a bubble, as there are very clear ideas and a fully formed sound language that is very savvy in its references to Delia Derbyshire's sci-fi electronics, the autobahn precision of Kraftwerk's songwriting, John Carpenter's bold synth melodies, and the bad-ass swagger of Detroit techno. In a rare interview, Jenkins described the working methods of PCA as being quickly sketched-out variations onto quarter inch tape and even four-track cassettes with a couple of no-name Japanese monosynths and a drum machine. He continues that "I definitely embrace imperfection. In my days as an engineer, I spent so much time polishing performances and correcting mistakes that I realised it made for pretty sterile recordings. I also felt extremely liberated after coming to the realisation that there is no absolute final version of a song. There are just alternative interpretations. Once I stopped chasing that elusive perfection, things eased massively."
Through those monosynths and simple step sequencers, Jenkins builds a unique, forgotten sound of alien ambient passages made foggy through an almost Basinski-like approach to tape disintegration punctuated with crackingly good Italo-disco jams. These rhythms are where Pye Corner Audio really shines, presenting a whipcrack / leather-glove seduction that comes straight out of the Throbbing Gristle playbook for "Hot On The Heels Of Love", but if those four somehow had an imagined electronic music summit with John Carpenter at the other side of the table trying to score a soundtrack for Cronenberg with none of those super-egos getting in the way of each other. Yeah, this stuff is timeless. Just fucking timeless.
Portland, Oregon's guitar/drums indierock duo Quasi deliver a fourth album (not including their recently reissued Early Recordings) on a new label, Touch and Go. It may be their best one yet. The boy/girl harmonies are pristine, the melodies are
It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close).
But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well...
If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying.
The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught.
As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute.
The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck.
So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else.
Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.
We got our first taste of these Texas weirdos on a split with psychedelic drone-drug-doom heavies Bong, and the virtually unpronounceable Quttinirpaaq were definitely a good match, countering Bong's longform sonic explorations with their own heavy psych / caustic noise / kraut-sludge pummel. What we didn't know at the time, was that Quttinirpaaq includes among its membership, members of former Record Of The Weekers Rubble as well as Shit And Shine offshoot outfit Same Sac! Which totally makes sense, as No Visitors is a serious blast of drug addled Southern psych, the opening 90 second blast a crumbling almost industrial sounding dirge that sounds like Brainbombs at 16rpm, filtered through some seriously Butthole Surfers style drugginess. Which if you're anything like us, had us sold pretty much right away. And while not all of No Visitors is nearly so noisy, it is all pretty goddamn great. From pulsing low slung krautrock style murk, like on "Malvert", which drapes the motorik mesmer with wild squalls of caustic guitarnoise, and creepy hissy whispery vocals, and what might be some detuned pianos, to slo-mo black noise doom-dirge crumble, like on "Ex-Batts" which literally sounds like the tape has been slowed down, so all the instruments rumble and crumble and moan, everything wrapped in sheets of wild squealing feedback, and near Merzbowian noise, all the while lumbering and lurching like some lost Buttholes jam played back on a broken boombox.
These guys exist somewhere between skull crushing noise rock, atmospheric noise drenched Japanese style psych and primitive caveman dirgery, the comparisons we've read mention Brainbombs, Skullflower and Les Rallizes Denudes, but we'd probably also include Drunkdriver, Twin Stumps, Violent Students, Rusted Shut, Burmese, Liquorball, you can probably figure out what sort of glorious, druggy noisiness we're talking about. Super heavy, ultra psychedelic, stumbling and crushing, tranced out and woozily hypnotic, massive slabs of churning low end, beneath crunchy, jagged, distorto guitars, wild streaks of feedback everywhere, the vocals yelped and yowled, sometimes bellowed, here and there delivered in a deeply dramatic, and sort of creepy croon, the sound constantly on the verge of collapse, but always seeming to eventually coalesce into some seriously demented, kraut-sludge heaviness that will have most aQ customers losing their shit big time. And hell, there's even some faux techno, check out the gristly pulsating "Golden Needles", that sounds like Shit And Shine on Kompakt. Fuck yeah!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
It's been so long since we've heard from the Bros. (three years since "And The Surrounding Mountains" was released) that we'd taken them for broke-up. Well, we're pleased that our fears were unwarranted. There's no escaping the sounds-like-early-Pink-Floyd chorus of remarks that seems to follow Radar Brothers like an albatross whenever they're played. But then again, that's certainly not a bad comparison, or anything to be ashamed of. They can keep milking this musical cow as long as they want as far as we're concerned, cuz they know how churn it better than anyone. As with their previous recordings, their songs are mostly paced in that unique Radar Bros. snail paced tempo, like they're being pulled through molasses and their lyrics are the stuff of fever dreams. Haunting and dispassionate descriptions of horrific scenes, bleak outlooks and unhappy endings are the stuff of Jim Putnam's song writing, which are then hermetically encased in dreamy, opiate paced songs. You find yourself wanting to sing along with a chorus, but are afraid someone might catch you as the lyrics "Hey, is that blood, coming from me..." slip from your lips. With their songs seemingly floating in a space in between major and minor key, like a good blues, Radar Bros. can write sad songs that warm your cockles. It's a creepy and wonderful warmth of feeling, not unlike crying into a pillow until you fall asleep as a child, only to wake up feeling great. And while we don't want to deceive you into thinking the Radar Bros. resemble, even remotely, a blues band, there's also something -- as Allan pointed out -- timeless about the music of The Radar Brothers. They don't seem to take their cues from what anyone today is doing. If there's anyone they're influenced by it would be the aformentioned Pink Floyd (circa Meddle), or (a severely depressed and macabre) Beach Boys. Like their previous recordings, The Fallen Leaf Pages was recorded entirely at Jim's Skylab (now currently under Phase III) studio, and as you might guess it's absolutely gorgeously produced. Fallen Leaf Pages is an album that will grow on you with each listen. Highly recommended!
Back in November of '99, Radar Brothers' album The Singing Hatchet was our Record of the Week. Didn't think it was possible, but the band has actually gotten even better (to the point of -gasp- converting an AQ staffer or two who didn't like' em before), thus we hereby bestow the same honor on the new record And the Surrounding Mountains. For those of you who're unfamiliar with the LA-based trio of Jim, Senon, and Steve, their sound can be most easily described (and I'm sure they're tired of hearing it) as very similar to Pink Floyd. And not just any ole Pink Floyd, mind you!, but specifically the sad, epic two songs that conclude The Dark Side of the Moon: "Brain Damage" (y'know, "the lunatic is on the grass...") and, god, especially "Eclipse" ("And all that is now/And all that is gone/And all that's to come/And everything under the sun is in tune/But the sun is eclipsed by the moon...") You know how you never want that song to end, it's such a pretty, bittersweet way to close an album? Radar Brothers have made FOUR ALBUMS of that sound all stretched out and atmospheric and personal and warm. The guitars are ever so plaintively strummed so that you hear the chords but also the individual strings, the vocals are hushed and sung usually as a duo, the melodies achingly gorgeous, majestic swells of emotion. They're so great that I find it hard to do anything else while listening to Radar Brothers; like Low and Red House Painters' work, Radar Brothers' songs *demand* stillness and respect -- all your attention. Highly recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Mellow LA-based slowcore trio Radar Bros make some of the most emotional music we've ever heard. With super-plaintive, Pink Floyd-y vocals, creamy thick guitars, and hook-filled melodies, some of Radar Bros songs are so beautiful you literally have to stop what you're doing just so you can listen to them -- yeah, they're that good! Fans of Low, Half Film, Red House Painters, and Palace will LOVE this record.
Wow, out of nowhere (okay, there was a 10" a coupla years ago but we missed out) comes this FANTASTIC trio from Los Angeles whose quiet, mournful sound and plaintive vocals remind us of Neil Young & the delicate side of Pink Floyd. For fans of Low, Scud Mountain Boys, Radiohead, and Rex. Definitely a winner; we highly recommend you hear them.
Most folks probably know Ramleh mostly for their connection to sonic contemporaries and brothers in noise Skullflower, both having emerged from the same scene and both having released records on the infamous Broken Flag label (run by Gary Mundy, the main man of Ramleh). But Ramleh was always its own unique beast, a constantly evolving sonic terror, beginning life as a power electronics combo, before blossoming into something more in line with what might be called noise rock. But the line that marked that shift was never clearly delineated, with elements of pre- and post- bleeding both ways, infusing the group's sound with strange elements that definitely made Ramleh stand out amongst their noisy contemporaries.
Hole In The Heart was originally released on Broken Flag as a super limited cassette, in 1987, and is here fleshed out with extra sounds culled from a cassette release called Nerve released the same year, and listening to this again now, we're reminded how ridiculously prescient the sound of Ramleh was, predicting sounds that are all the rage now, from glacial downtuned dirgery a la SUNNO))), to tripped out druggy ambient free noise (about a million floorcore bands), strange post industrial dirgescapes (Wolf Eyes?), to blown out industrial metallic crunch (about a million more bands), it's a sound that is definitely of its time, but also sounds like it could be some super limited microlabel cd-r release of today.
Opener "Bite The Bolster", is all slow smoldering drones, distant shimmer, processed ghostly vocals, lo-fi for sure but lush and strangely dramatic and lovely, leading straight into "Do Not Come Near" that does SUNNO))) better than SUNNO))) themselves twenty-odd years earlier, a heaving, grinding crumbling mass of gnarled buzz, laced with streaks of feedback, buried melodies, muted pulses, fractured almost-rhythms, some of it sounds downright dubby, albeit blown out and noise drenched, hypnotic and washed out and crushing.
Which is then followed by the epic 25 minute, 6 part "Redcap", a sprawling multi movement noise jam, which begins with a weird bleated doomic plod, only to explode into a squall of swirling whirling hiss and buzz, distorted vox, and wild tangled feedback, not that far removed from Our Love Will Destroy The World or Birchville Cat Motel. Loops, and haunting melodies, the track lurches and lumbers, slipping from all out assault, to dark stuttery drift and back again. Part three is a massive slowed down metallic dirge, processed vocals stretched out into a grinding drone, while the (surprisingly catchy) main riff pulses in the background, eventually splintering into angular loops, topped by a soaring super distorted psych guitar wail. The next part falls somewhere between Godflesh and Wolf Eyes, a crushing synth flecked distortion drenched plod, with billows of echoey vox, a motorik pulse at its core, doomy, but also sort of blissed out. A brief burst of twisted tweaked riffage and what wounds like pipe fights and broken glass, opens up into the final part, beginning with a churning muted loop, and shards of effected feedback, sounding a bit like an industrial WOLD, this muddy musicbox sort of looped melody happening way down in the mix, while a soft cacophony of high end and swooping distorted vox careen and collide in the space above, at first it sounds like a sort of abstract free noise freakout, but the vocals get more and more melodic, and the song takes a new shape a twisted bit of depressive noise pop, a bit like the Dead C, before blinking out.
"Spear Flowers" begins as a gnarled tangle of super distorted riffs, again weirdly melodic, swirling and collapsing inward, eventually transforming into a looped hypnotic drug jam, repeated mantra like vocals, crunching grinding electronics, buzz all over the place, loads of feedback, totally mesmerizing, and again, sounding like it could be from today.
"Hole In The Heart" is total in-the-red ramshackle pop infused noise rock, like a heavier, more lush Dead C, the main melody sweet and catchy, but slowed down and buried in hiss and buzz, lilting and dreamy for all its abject aggression. "Product Of Fear" is a gorgeous guitarscape, layered buzz, washed out glimmering warmth, humid and haunting, and really really pretty, which leads you softly into "Grazing On Fear 2" which is also pretty, in its own way", but is also a cacophonous blow out, twisted atonal organ, and churning distorted white noise, eventually lurching into a cool skipping, stuttery outro. And finally, the nearly 25 minute "True Religion", an expansive soundscape of processed guitars that again is strangely pretty, very much in the vein of Jesu or Nadja, the guitars blown way out, but the melody is lilting and melancholy, a sort of soft doom, but wrapped in muted crunch and crumbling buzz, before slipping into a strange fractured interlude, before emerging on the other side some sort of slow motion noise pop dirge, epic and triumphant, finishing off in an explosion of grinding white hot / black hole skree.
Absolutely essential for pretty much everybody, but specifically, folks into Nadja and Jesu and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Skullflower, and anybody who likes super heavy droned out noise, pop infused shoegaze industrial metal bliss out, and crushing power electronic dreamdronedirge. Reissue of the year so far, hands down.
Emaciated. Fractious. Toxic. Violent. Raspberry Bulbs is the blackened punk outfit that Marco del Rio conceived after dissolving the cult black metal duo Bone Awl in 2010 or thereabouts. The raw-nerve energy of Raspberry Bulbs is a continuation of Bone Awl's brand of D-beat primitivism, but with some downright catchy riffs and pop-hook chops replacing the black metal. Over three albums, Raspberry Bulbs has perfected that formula - one that could be cranked out on a single worn-torn guitar and knuckle-busting drum kit. Even as Raspberry Bulbs has swollen from a sole venture for del Rio to a formidable five-piece, the riffs have a crust-punk urgency that's completely in the moment and full of wild-eyed rage.
Raspberry Bulb's 2013 album Deformed Worship caught many people off guard, coming out on the boutique publishing house of paranoiac electronica, Blackest Ever Black. Despite the aesthetic differences, the malaise and the claustrophobia and the tension of Black Rain, Cut Hands, and Raime find easy parallels in the jackbooted punk stomp of Raspberry Bulbs. It also makes a hell of a lot of sense that Dominic Fernow / Prurient released the first (and dare we say, slightly undercooked) first album from Raspberry Bulbs. So there's the connection for you. Privacy picks up right where Deformed Worship left off as an antisocial, bad-seed punk brother to Christian Death's Only Theatre Of Pain, starving the skeletal riffs into a acid batteries of ravenous angst and eschewing the goth miserablism in favor of a throat-ripped snarl. The guitars sound like they've been strung with razor wire and hot-wired into Crime's pawn shop amps. With the multiplicity of guitarists, Raspberry Bulbs just sounds louder, snottier, and meaner. Fucking awesome, we gotta say.
We discovered this strange split lp via the always amazing WFMU in New Jersey, a freeform radio station we've collaborated with on numerous occasions in the past, most notably we shared a couple showcases at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas, which by the way was no coincidence, and it wasn't just because we're pals, it's also because WFMU constantly and consistently play the most amazing shit. We think we know about the craziest, most underground music, and then we tune into WFMU and routinely have our minds blown. And yeah, we blow their minds once in a while too, with stuff we recommend on our list, but pretty much every time we listen to WFMU, we have to have a pen and paper handy to jot down all the amazing things we need to track down, which happened recently with this here record. One track was all it took to know this was some serious aQ-worthy weirdness, dark and psychedelic, tripped out and bizarre and beautiful, on a label we love too, with a background story as cool and weird as the music itself. So we got as many as we could (it's limited to 300 copies!) but odds are they won't last, so grab one of these quick cuz once we describe it to you, we're pretty sure you're not gonna be able to live without one...
The oddly named Razen are a duo, who grew tired of the traditional rock band instrumentation, and decided to each pick a new instrument, one they had no idea how to play, which is how they ended up with a detuned santoor (like an Indian hammered dulcimer) and a drumset assembled from metal plates. And thus was born Razen. They've expanded their instrumentation to include still more instruments they don't know how to play (bouzouki, keyboards, horns), and have invited a handful of guests to contribute an even more impressive and bizarre arsenal of noisemakers, including bagpipe, chalumeau (a classical style recorder), sopranino (one of the smallest horns in the saxophone family), bass recorder, duduk (a Middle Eastern woodwind) and shenai (a North Indian oboe), and this is the result: a glorious, mysterious take on world music, dark and haunting, heavily percussive, cinematic, abstract and dramatic, the label mentions Moondog and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and David Lynch, but we also hear some Sun City Girls, some martial industrial music, while at the same time the sounds dip into African folk music and Indian style ragas, all rife with drone and buzz and strange melodies, lush textures, frantic rhythms, all filtered through Razen's distinctively non-world music perspective.
"Rammelaargong" begins with hypnotic tribal hand drumming, deep low end thrum, fluttering woodwinds, and haunting steel string shimmer, eventually building to a frenzy of howling horns, and frantic drumming, infused with plenty of drone and buzz, and a strangely motorik rhythmic pulse, with everything eventually dropping out, finishing off with a brief flurry of lo-fi percussion.
"Razen Zand" begins with a thick undulating raga like drone, rendered in glitchy electronics, before the drums kick in, and then the horns, and the sound is almost like a marching band playing some abstract African folk music, the drums and horns locked into staccato bursts, while in between those bursts, wild melodies are unfurled from buzzing steel strings, the sound manages to be epic, and majestic and HEAVY. "Richel" is all low end blur, and woozy snake charmer melodies, shimmery spidery buzzing strings, a sun baked sprawling raga-like drift, the vibe dark and emotional and intense, very cinematic, wild fluttering woodwinds flit above that mournful snake charmer cry, the track laced with sharp percussive strikes, and thick low end thrums, hummed chantlike vox, and swirls of metallic shimmer. "Rode Hond" too, begins with a deep metallic buzz, layered and lush, and those exotic intense snake charmer melodies, the percussion, spare and skeletal, but propulsive and rhythmic, the song growing more and more intense the drums more frenetic, the horns and woodwinds more tense, soaring and singing out, all the instruments slipping into a hypnotic groove, that we could listen to forever, and fades out way too soon.
So incredible, it's only 4 tracks, but they're so intense and detailed and blossom a little more with every listen, you might as well set your turntable to send the needle right back to the beginning, and let it play all night.
And that's just the Razen side. The flipside is taken up entirely by a single track from Sheldon Siegel, which is not in fact a person, but rather a group, a Belgian abstract free jazz outfit, made up of cello, drums, percussion, sax, vocals, tapes and music box, and don't be expecting regular old free jazz, they are after all teamed up with Razen for a reason, and not because they're both from Belgium, it's more likely, that like Razen, the guys in Sheldon Siegel approach their music similarly, looking to subvert the old, and invent something new, to create a music that while made up of free jazz elements, is more than free jazz, and what they've come up with does definitely strike out from the confines of free jazz, sure, a quick listen will sound like free jazz on the surface, but as you dig deeper, and the song develops, thick grinding cello drones ground the sound, a thick undulating textural buzz, underpinning, stuttery skronk and little flurries of percussive skitter, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer. Over the course of the side's 25 minutes, the group shift gears dramatically, slipping into a seriously twisted dirge, with the horns super processed and sounding almost electronic, blissing out, and letting blurts of feedback and spurts of rhythmic sputter spar over mournful cello melodies, sounding super dramatic and intense, after some bursts of almost traditional sounding avant jazz, the sound winds way down, the tapes warble and whir, the other instruments are muffled and muted, a strange landscape of scrapes and thumps, of fragmented melodies, and abstract ambience, before finishing off with a strange stretch of stumbling loping jazz flecked skitter, and swirling droned out weirdness.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Now available on vinyl!
We love dancehall. A lot! Makes perfect sense too, a grinding, pounding, throbbing mix of hip hop and dub, with that totally repetitive, hypnotic, instantly recognizable dancehall beat, you know: BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP. With tongue twisting toasting over the top. Very similar to grime (which is probably why we love grime so much too). Hard really to improve on dancehall, you could maybe, rough it up a little, and, which gives us ragga of course, but then, you could also make the beats even thicker and crunchier and WAY more distorted, you could have the vocalists toast through a tin can and twine run through a fuzzbox and plugged into a battered old blown out loudspeaker, you could take all that stuff and supercharge it, send it coursing through your speakers as if your stereo was struck by lightning, the resulting sounds coming out of your speaker a hard and heavy, fierce and fucked up, super aggressive and distorted but still totally wild and danceable digital hardcore ragga. Whoowee!! Fuck yeah! Similar to the way Alec Empire and other folks took drum 'n' bass and jungle and turned it into superdistorted hardcore brutality, a few likeminded noiseniks have been doing the same with ragga, giving it a DHR makeover, turning already pretty aggressive ragga music into a brain melting blast of buzzing and blown out dancehall. One of those folks is the UK's Kevin Martin, who after years of lurking on the fringes of the noise underground, running the Pathological label and playing in God, Ice and a handfull of other fucked up dubbed out noise outfits (maybe hinting at what was to come), renamed himself the Bug, and started making dark and dense dubby dancehall, the new sound owing as much to classic dub and dancehall as it did to his time spent playing weird fucked up noisiness. A few years back the Bug hooked up with Rootsman and formed Razor X Production, a dynamic duo that began to whip up all sorts of brutal distorted ragga classics, all big beats, blown out production and toasting by some of the world's best reggae / dub / ragga vocalists: Cutty Ranks, He-Man, Daddy Freddy, Tony Tuff, Mexican, El Feco and more. This double disc collects some of the best singles, beats are jagged and sharp, distorted stabs, rumbling rib cage rattling low end, synths are massive thick smears of speaker shredding fuzz, each track a pulsing, throbbing dubbed out groove as hard and pummeling as it is groovy and funky. If all "dance music" was this fucked up and firece and fun even us wallflowers would be forced to spend all our evenings sweating and slithering all over the dance floor.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This former Record Of The Week (on the occasion, in 2009, of Sub Pop putting out an expanded double cd reissue), was reissued at last on vinyl this year for Record Store Day... or supposedly it was, but actually, the copies only just showed up! Well, we'd have wanted a bunch anyway, 'cause, again, it's Record Of The Week. Dunno if we can get more when these run out, as, again, it's a limited Record Store Day release. This edition, the first time it's been on vinyl in 20 years, comes with a download, and additional tracks.
So, here's what we said, which is a lot, about this fave before...
Red Red Meat barely get a mention on the aQuarius website, mostly in reviews of post-RRM outfit Califone, but as with many bands, that has more to do with timing than anything, predating as they did our New Arrivals list. If there was time, we can think of hundreds of bands we'd love to revisit and give their due. And Red Red Meat would definitely be at the top of the list for some of us. So this deluxe expanded reissue of RRM's 3rd, and arguably best, record makes now as good a time as any to gush a bit about one of our favorite records of the nineties.
When Sub Pop began expanding its focus beyond grunge, signing all sorts of bands, from pop to country, slowcore to garage rock, they definitely lost a lot of their hardcore buy-anything-on-Sub-Pop fans. But for many of us, no matter how into the grunge years we were (and believe you me, some of us were WAY into grunge), this shift marked the beginning of Sub Pop's transition into more than a regional label focused on a single sound, and is precisely why Sub Pop continues to thrive while so many other labels fell by the wayside. Among those un-traditionally Sub Pop sounding bands were groups like Codeine, Rein Sanction, Hardship Post, Jale and Red Red Meat, all of which ended up loving as much as if not more than all the classic grunge mainstays.
But Red Red Meat, there was just really something special about these guys. They were sort of country, definitely fitting loosely into the burgeoning alt-country movement, but they were so much more, their twang was rooted in a sort of timeless rock, but at the same time it was infused with a druggy warble, wreathed in hazy swirls of whirs and drones, the guitars were murky and muddy, the slide guitar slippery slithery, frontman Tim Rutili's vocals were weary and washed out, emotional, but laid back and slurred, perfectly complimenting the band's warped warble.
Bunny Gets Paid, originally released in 1995, found the band pushing their sound even further out, the sound still recognizably Red Red Meat, but from record opener "Carpet Of Horses", the band seemed determined to create some sort of 'classic' bit of drone drenched country blues. Lazily strummed acoustic guitars draped over a whirring fuzzy pulsing drone, the vocals appropriately melancholy, rough and ragged, allowed to drift over the slow shifting drone beneath, almost no percussion, very little structure, the song a living breathing bit of spaced out dream folk, incredible (and incredibly subtle) melodies, a killer main hook, all left to just sort of shimmer and hover and sprawl, sun baked and druggy, like some sort of drugfolk raga, definitely prescient, unwittingly laying out the blueprint for new weird America or freak folk or whatever you want to call it a decade later.
But Bunny Gets Paid is not all sprawling oozing melting slow motion blues, the band do rock, "Chain Chain Chain" is some classic sounding nineties indie rock and roll, reminding us of a more classic rock sounding Grifters, but still not losing any of their wooze or warble, the record doused in effects, guitars warped, alternatingly crunchy and jagged, bluesy and ooze-y. "Buttered" is a total heartbreaker, thick steel string strum and twang, subtle strings, effects dappled ambience, thick swaths of whirring drone, the whole thing managing to sound intimate and bedroomy, but also epic and timeless.
The classic track here though has to be "Gauze", a moody minor key lope, so laid back and soporific, the guitars spidery and translucent, the vocals seemingly an afterthought, the drums a simple shuffle, lush and intimate and hushed, until the chorus, another gut wrenching heartbreaker, the vocals wrapped in almost Butthole Surfers FX, but done so deftly, that instead of sounding weird or fucked up, it just sound perfect, delivering a total break up /make up mix tape refrain to die for. And so it goes. "Idiot Son" is a the Rolling Stones filtered through nineties indie rock and busted four tracks (with more nods to the Grifters), "Bunny Gets Paid" is another meandering druggy droney drift, disembodied vocals, fragmented guitars and skittery percussion, and another killer hook buried in the murk and mire, and the record continues to unfurl, in all its hazy, lazy, dreamy, wasted, late afternoon, too many beers and broken hearts glory, finishing off with a 2 minute bit of near perfect bedroom folk, peppered with singing strings, reverbed piano, all wrapped around Rituli's gorgeously weathered croon.
Absolutely one of our all time favorite records ever. Anyone into Califone, Calexico, Souled American, Giant Sand, Neko Case, Ryan Adams, should absolutely pick this up, and any one into the current crop of freak folk and drone psych who aren't adverse to actual songs, might dig this too.
And like the expanded Sub Pop cd, this new vinyl version includes extras - B-sides, alternate versions and covers, makes this essential, even for folks like us who already have it. A 4-track demo of "Chain Chain Chain", less rocking, all stripped down and appropriately lo-fi and languid, a single version of "Idiot Son" that finds the song stretched out even further. Record opener "Carpet Of Horses" gets reworked into a pounding dirge, way more rocking and heavy than the original, but still just as darkly evocative, and there are unreleased tracks, one a weird dub workout, the other three wonderfully weird warbly rockers (one rife with horns) that don't sound at all out of place alongside the rest of Bunny Gets Paid.
Remastered, handsomely packaged, includes download as we said, real nice!!
Red Red Meat barely get a mention on the aQuarius website, mostly in reviews of post-RRM outfit Califone, but as with many bands, that has more to do with timing than anything, predating as they did our New Arrivals list. If there was time, we can think of hundreds of bands we'd love to revisit and give their due. And Red Red Meat would definitely be at the top of the list for some of us. So this deluxe expanded reissue of RRM's 3rd, and arguably best, record makes now as good a time as any to gush a bit about one of our favorite records of the nineties.
When Sub Pop began expanding its focus beyond grunge, signing all sorts of bands, from pop to country, slowcore to garage rock, they definitely lost a lot of their hardcore buy-anything-on-Sub-Pop fans. But for many of us, no matter how into the grunge years we were (and believe you me, some of us were WAY into grunge), this shift marked the beginning of Sub Pop's transition into more than a regional label focused on a single sound, and is precisely why Sub Pop continues to thrive while so many other labels fell by the wayside. Among those un-traditionally Sub Pop sounding bands were groups like Codeine, Rein Sanction, Hardship Post, Jale and Red Red Meat, all of which ended up loving as much as if not more than all the classic grunge mainstays.
But Red Red Meat, there was just really something special about these guys. They were sort of country, definitely fitting loosely into the burgeoning alt-country movement, but they were so much more, their twang was rooted in a sort of timeless rock, but at the same time it was infused with a druggy warble, wreathed in hazy swirls of whirs and drones, the guitars were murky and muddy, the slide guitar slippery slithery, frontman Tim Rutili's vocals were weary and washed out, emotional, but laid back and slurred, perfectly complimenting the band's warped warble.
Bunny Gets Paid, originally released in 1995, found the band pushing their sound even further out, the sound still recognizably Red Red Meat, but from record opener "Carpet Of Horses", the band seemed determined to create some sort of 'classic' bit of drone drenched country blues. Lazily strummed acoustic guitars draped over a whirring fuzzy pulsing drone, the vocals appropriately melancholy, rough and ragged, allowed to drift over the slow shifting drone beneath, almost no percussion, very little structure, the song a living breathing bit of spaced out dream folk, incredible (and incredibly subtle) melodies, a killer main hook, all left to just sort of shimmer and hover and sprawl, sun baked and druggy, like some sort of drugfolk raga, definitely prescient, unwittingly laying out the blueprint for new weird America or freak folk or whatever you want to call it a decade later.
But Bunny Gets Paid is not all sprawling oozing melting slow motion blues, the band do rock, "Chain Chain Chain" is some classic sounding nineties indie rock and roll, reminding us of a more classic rock sounding Grifters, but still not losing any of their wooze or warble, the record doused in effects, guitars warped, alternatingly crunchy and jagged, bluesy and ooze-y. "Buttered" is a total heartbreaker, thick steel string strum and twang, subtle strings, effects dappled ambience, thick swaths of whirring drone, the whole thing managing to sound intimate and bedroomy, but also epic and timeless.
The classic track here though has to be "Gauze", a moody minor key lope, so laid back and soporific, the guitars spidery and translucent, the vocals seemingly an afterthought, the drums a simple shuffle, lush and intimate and hushed, until the chorus, another gut wrenching heartbreaker, the vocals wrapped in almost Butthole Surfers FX, but done so deftly, that instead of sounding weird or fucked up, it just sound perfect, delivering a total break up /make up mix tape refrain to die for. And so it goes. "Idiot Son" is a the Rolling Stones filtered through nineties indie rock and busted four tracks (with more nods to the Grifters), "Bunny Gets Paid" is another meandering druggy droney drift, disembodied vocals, fragmented guitars and skittery percussion, and another killer hook buried in the murk and mire, and the record continues to unfurl, in all its hazy, lazy, dreamy, wasted, late afternoon, too many beers and broken hearts glory, finishing off with a 2 minute bit of near perfect bedroom folk, peppered with singing strings, reverbed piano, all wrapped around Rituli's gorgeously weathered croon.
Absolutely one of our all time favorite records ever. There's a whole bonus disc too, which we'll get to in a second, but the record itself is reason enough to pick this up, especially if somehow you've never heard it. Anyone into Califone, Calexico, Souled American, Giant Sand, Neko Case, Ryan Adams, should absolutely pick this up, and any one into the current crop of freak folk and drone psych who aren't adverse to actual songs, might dig this too.
The bonus disc of b-sides, alternate versions and covers, makes this essential, even for folks like us who already have it. A 4-track demo of "Chain Chain Chain", less rocking, all stripped down and appropriately lo-fi and languid, a single version of "Idiot Son" that finds the song stretched out even further. Record opener "Carpet Of Horses" gets reworked into a pounding dirge, way more rocking and heavy than the original, but still just as darkly evocative, and FOUR unreleased tracks, one a weird dub workout, the other three wonderfully weird warbly rockers (one rife with horns) that don't sound at all out of place alongside the rest of Bunny Gets Paid.
And the super iconic doll's head in the tipped over glass cover art gets a deluxe reimagining, a massive fold out multi panel digipak inside a swank slipcover, with a thick booklet, jammed with photos, original covers and artwork, as well as some newly penned liner notes from band members and Red Red Meat fans including members of the Shins, the Fruit Bats, Modest Mouse and others!
We have loved this band since we were in high school, when we first picked up a copy of the Red Temple Spirits' first record. That album - Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon - became something we've returned to over and over again. Then, it was a more adventurous, post-apocalyptic, and lysergically tainted take on the British post-punk / goth-pop albums of my youth. You know, Love & Rockets, Siouxsie, The Smiths, The Cure. But later, upon discovering the Syd Barrett fronted Pink Floyd records, Twink's Think Pink, and the Outsiders' CQ, Red Temple Spirits seemed less to fit in with their contemporaries and more of a feral updated expression of psychedelic awakening of those bands from the '70s. The basslines from Red Temple Spirits may have been lifted wholesale from Steven Severin of Siouxsie & The Banshees, and the guitars could hit the jagged, sparkplug bursts of Gang Of Four or even Crime (but for the most part, they paralleled the dark-eyed jangle of the Abecedarians); but the arrangements were far more convoluted - at times shambolic and rambling, and at others ritualistically intense.
The band emerged out of the LA goth-punk scene in 1987, when bassist Dino Paredes departed Psi-Com, which was fronted by none other than Perry Farrell (who would go on to form Jane's Addiction) only to find another amazing frontman in the form of William Faircloth. This British ex-pat was equal parts doomsayer and acid casualty, eagerly waxing poetic about the latter through the lens of the former. Many of these visionary tales mapped out a basic philosophy of universalist gnosticism - "The Light Of Christ" addresses a common gnostic precept that an inner wisdom is trapped within the human condition and can be tapped through meditation, invocation, rigorous study, whatnot, but not before passing through allusions to Buddhism and animism. Vocally, Faircloth sounds a hell of a lot like Black Francis / Frank Black trying to do a Syd Barrett impersonation - a demonic, tonal yelp with a faint trace of a British lisp.
The band produced two albums, the aforementioned Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon (1988) and the nearly impossible to find If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa, I Wouldn't Stay A Minute More (1989). The bulk of copies of the latter all seemed to end up in Greece for whatever reason, and given the prices for the album online, must have been single handedly supporting the Greek economy. The debut is an astonishing album that sprawls from languid dirges to frenetic punk-pop songs all lead in dramatic fashion by Faircloth. The second album attempts to tighten up some of the more unhinged aspects, with a few more conventional psych-rock songs but when they hit the cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls To The Heart Of The Sun," it really is a twisted acid trip launched beyond Earth's orbit, through pounding tribal rhythms, Keith Levene-esque guitar scratchiness, and Faircloth's belted vocals. Both of those albums are present in their entirety here, along with some choice bonus tracks (including a really tripped out version of 13th Floor Elevators' "Rollercoaster") as well as a third disc of demos.
This 3cd set also marks the reinvention/reactivation/resurfacing of Bruce Licher's Independent Project Records, complete with the amazing letterpress folios he was creating back in the '90s. Faircloth was actually one of Licher's press technicians after Red Temple Spirits broke up, and Red Temple Spirits and Licher's Savage Republic were certainly coming from the same headspace. The major difference being that Red Temple Spirits was actually a way better band, if criminally under-appreciated. Very highly recommended!
The return of Redd Kross!!! Their first record in FIFTEEN YEARS!! The Redd Kross nerds at aQ have been in a tizzy since we first heard about an impending new album. And we're happy to report it's even better than we had hoped. And impossibly, it might just be their best since Third Eye, heck, maybe even since Neurotica! And yeah, we talk a lot about favorite bands, and are quite hyperbolic in our descriptions of records and groups we love, but Redd Kross definitely are one of our all time favorite bands EVER, no hyperbole there at all, some of us have been listening to Redd Kross for going on thirty years now. And Andee's very first band (with Jay Lesser) even played their first show with Redd Kross!! And every single RK record, from the early punk rock teenage jams, to their later, more polished, major label releases, has ruled, the boys in Redd Kross masters of pop songcraft, unfettered Beatles worship mixed with an encyclopedic knowledge of classic pop music, not to mention punk rock roots and a sound so distinctive that even wearing their influences boldly on their sleeves, Redd Kross jams could never be mistaken for anyone else.
We went and saw them play last year, the first tour with the original line up in ages, and it was rumored the band were raising money to release the next record themselves, and they played all the hits, new and old, and sounded as food as ever. And here we are a year or so later, and Merge stepped up and released what might just be contender for record of the year, and as mentioned above, might just be one of Redd Kross' best record period.
We weren't initially sold by the first single, the title track, which totally sounds like a Neurotica B side, which is not a bad thing at all, it just sounded a little like RK by the numbers, but then something happened and the more we listened to it, the better it got, a KILLER chorus and an even more killer pre-chorus/bridge, some wild wah guitar psychedelia, the sound heavy and fuzzy and crunchy, swaggery and the sort of sound younger bands would kill for. But once the second track started, we knew this was IT. "Stay Away From Downtown", is total Yellow Pills style power pop super charged and cranked up, with a main riff that is SO catchy, the vocals and main melody total Beatles worship, and then the chorus, holy shit, one listen and it was lodged permanently in our brains. Nothing we can say can compare to hearing it, check out the sample below and be SMITTEN. We ended up listening to that song fifty times at least before we could even bear to move on, and yet the rest of the record did not disappoint, and more than lived up to the promise of the first two tracks. "Uglier" is another track that sounds like it could have been plucked right off of Neurotica, and the chorus, another killer, crazy catchy, the song laced with some rad psychedelic freakouts.
"Dracula's Daughter" is classic Redd Kross balladry, all Partridge family style power pop jangle, and at times melodically reminding us of Thelonious Monster's "Sammy Hagar Weekend", while "Meet Frankenstein" is a perfect slab of fifties style retro pop, which had us thinking Redd Kross would have been an even better choice to supply the music for the fictional band in the movie That Thing You Do (instead of Fountains Of Wayne).
The rest of the record unwinds like a classic Redd Kross record, every song crazy catchy, jangly and fuzzy, funny clever lyrics, killer harmonies, hooks galore, borrowing liberally from all the classic pop bands that came before, but making those sounds all their own, and stick around for closer "Hazel Eyes", whose main riff is a dead ringer for another classic RK jam "Follow The Leader", from 1997's Show World, but here unwinds as a droned out psychedelic jangle pop dirge, laced with weird effects, and a woozy groove, and finishes the record in fine fashion, weird, heavy, trippy and crazy catchy. It's been nearly impossible to work on the list cuz this record is ALL WE WANT TO LISTEN TO. And we're already gearing up to see Redd Kross play here next week, we're in a sort of Redd Kross mania, which makes sense cuz this record is SO GOOD. Record Of The Week hands down, and yeah, quite possibly Record OF THE YEAR!
Anyone who's been digging Ty Segall, King Tuff, Purling Hiss and other like minded noise poppers, who has yet to discover the joys of Redd Kross, now is the time to discover your new favorite band!!
Depending on how you look at it, this record is either the best, or the funniest record we've heard in a while. A pretty successful pastiche of the highly illogical musical tastes of adolescence; post-Hardcore grind, shiny-faced emo pop, and gangsta rap (brilliantly exploited, with a Ween-like irreverance; the opening 'skit' makes Reggie the victim of a driveby shooting). Plus bizarre but totally appealing '80s new wave love songs, faux-Crass faux-Euro polito-punk songs (the hilarious 'Dwarf Invasion'), and pure disco grooves MC'ed by a hillbilly calling for some weird linedance that could only have origins in Fresno. Totally absurd but, man, it works. I'm the first one around here to immediately dismiss a joke record, but this is no joke. The pop songs are first rate, hooks and kick ass melodies. The metal is metal! Grinding and pounding, thanks in no small part to members of Coalesce being the core of Reggie. But some of the disc's best moments come with the effortless mix of the two, crunching brutality mixed up with Weezer-worthy radio fare. God knows how it works but it does. Humor + honest to gosh pop hooks + crazy surprises may be the formula. Yup, a unanimous AQ staff favourite.
Every time we start a review with a phrase like "we don't really like techno all that much" or "we've never been huge fans of pop punk" we end up getting people writing in defending the genre in question. But truth be told, we -do- like techno and we -do- like pop punk, and we do like all kinds of music, it's sort of the point of this store. It's just that we generally tend to dig the weirder, more far out, more creative risk-taking fringes of all those genres, which is -also- the point of this store. But that said, we don't actually like pop punk all that much, at least not the strain of cookie cutter made-for-MTV dreck that one typically thinks of as pop punk. But we do love pop. Do we ever!!! And we do love punk! And unlike the bad math that results from adding metal and hip hop (oh how we desperately wish someone could make that work!), pop and punk fit pretty comfortably together, add some good songs, and maybe even some metal riffage, and we're in business. Thus we have Reggie And The Full Effect, originally a joke side project for a handful of emo / pop punk luminaries (Coalesce anyone?), now a band that's as good as if not better than all of the serious bands that spawned it. They are the ultimate emo band. Of course you have the huge kick ass production, great catchy songs, sensitive whiny boy vocals and big distorted guitars. BUT THEN, you've got some chugging metal guitars and howling throat shredding vocals, fuzzy synths, goofy lyrics, and an ultra dumb / totally brilliant sense of humour. And as if that weren't enough, every third or fourth song is a total eighties synthpop workout, straight up New Order mockery / worship (one of which is a dead ringer for track two on the recent Killers record! Now who's laughing?!). Goofy and silly, but actually really good and fun and catchy. And finally, you've got RATFE's hardcore alter ego, the fictitious Finnish electro punk outfit Common Denominator, who have contributed one track to each Reggie record, always with Common Denominator's lead vocalist introducing the band, in a thick inexplicably German accent: "HELLO AMERICANS, THIS IS KLAUS FROM COMMON DENOMINATOR. WE ARE THE BAND YOU THAT YOU ARE LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW WE ARE FROM FINLAND AND THIS IS THE THIRD SONG OFF OUR DEBUT ALBUM IN AMERICA, THIS SONG IS CALLED DEATHNOTRONIC AND IT GOES LIKE THIS!!! And what follow is what can only be described as Ministry meets Rammstein meets that song that ALWAYS seems to play during cheerleader competitions (Y'all Ready For This!) as well as some awesome noodly guitar leads.
Even with the presence of Common Denominator, and the occasional synthpop workout, this is Reggie's least 'jokey' record to date, which is probably what makes it their best. Even the lyrics aren't as straight up goofy, in fact if anything, unless this is all a REALLY subtle joke, the lyrics tend toward straight up emo territory, love and loss and boys and girls and all that stuff. Pretty heartfelt stuff actually, and if there's one thing we're a sucker for it's emo! In fact the final song, a brooding piano driven emo ballad to end all emo ballads, is SO sincere, it seems like it MUST be a joke coming from these guys. But it's not. At least we don't think so. At first we were a little disappointed by the lack of skits and random stupidity, but as much as we love those old Reggie records, this one definitely has the potential for most repeated listens. There's just something about Reggie's combination of crunchy metallic guitars, weird Cars / Tupac synth melodies, perfect pop and goofy eighties high school ballads that we can't seem to get enough of!
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (part of the double disc reissue we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect -- spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. We grok that dude and these albums. There's actually two of them (albums) here, as this disc also includes A.R. VI, Echolung, originally released by Brain in 1975. Compared to Die Grune Reise it's a bit more mellowed out, if anything more cosmic and spacey... real nice! Total krautrock essentials, both of these. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear 'em...
An old fave, in fact a former Record Of The Week, at last reissued and available again, previously it was part of a 2-on-1 cd with another A.R. album, Echolung, but here it's by itself (with bonus dvd, more on that later). Nice packaging, great sound, so glad to have this back in the store! Here's more or less what we said before:
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (one we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect - spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. A total krautrock essentials. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear it.
This new, artist approved "Achim Reichel Edition" of Die Grune Reise is digitally remastered, and comes packaged with an extra, dvd disc (PAL, region 0, so it'll work in your computer but maybe not your dvd player) that contains an album length 42 minute video interpretation of the whole record ("Grune Reise - Der Film") that looks to be made fairly recently, with lots of trippy computer graphics going on, it's maybe better than the watching the "visualizer" on your iTunes but not much. Chances are, the pictures A.R.'s music will make in your mind are better than this, so use your imagination instead. The dvd also includes a 10 minute "Making Of" feature, but we don't know if that's a making of the album or a making of the video, 'cause the dvd menu/interface is just about the most confusing thing ever and we weren't able to figure out how to access that segment. So, the dvd is a bit of a bust, though again we didn't actually watch everything... and maybe the surround sound feature is a cool. Regardless, the album itself is highly, highly recommended!
Even though this is record number FIVE from Reuber (aka Timo Reuber), who is also a member of electronic duo Klangwart, Ring is the very first thing we've heard from him, and it immediately became one of our new favorite records, a dizzying assemblage of loops and samples and textures and effects woven into a series of super varied soundscapes, from hypnotic kosmische krautdrone, to hazy murky pulsing techno flecked electronica, to super frantic spaced out new wave, to murky electronic drone dirge psych rock to woozy minimal sci-fi techno, all of it rhythmic and hypnotic, lush and layered.
Self described as Reuber's "motorbike album", Ring finds Reuber trying to evoke a 'Reuber Principle' using a selection of sounds designed to sound different during each performance, depending on the venue, the audience and of course Reuber himself. All but one of the tracks are created using just two synthesizers, experimenting with rhythm and texture, creating constantly shifting collages of sound, all 'Ring' variations, the first "Ring Ring", the most blissed out of the bunch, a minimal electronic pulse, a slowly shifting melody, a deep buzzing vocal that sounds like Tuvan throat singing, a haunting bit of cinematic kosmische drift that ends way too soon. The upside being that it leads directly into the 17 minute "Ring", which takes the sound of the first track and explodes it into something much more celestial and cosmic, a supernova of sound, all blurred and washed out, hazy and shimmery, underneath which various bits of percussion pulse and pound, a buried rhythm that gradually moves to the fore, and the song transforms into a gorgeously hypnotic tribal psychedelic workout that sounds almost like modern day Boredoms. This tribal churn is laced with strange melodic bits, twisted effects, a roiling swirl of sound, that soon returns to the washed out cosmic shimmer of the song's beginning, only to again explode into some heaving crumbling rhythmic crush, and then slip right back into a hazy dreamlike outro.
"Ringer" offers up a swirl of looped repetitive synth, mesmerizing and cyclical, cinematic and sci-fi, gradually growing more and more distorted and intense, until some of the sounds coalesce into beats, and the track becomes a supercharged synth heavy sci-fi blowout that wouldn't sound out of place on a Zombi record, although with a bit more of a techno twist. "Ring Frei" counters the previous track with some low slung synthbass, some skittery skeletal rhythms, streaks of feedback and squealing electronic glitchery, and most importantly some seriously fat fuzzy, murky melodies, a crunchy, buzzy muddy krautjam, propulsive and motorik, almost like some far out Kraftwerk / Suicide / Electronicat hybrid. And finally "Ringfest" finishes things off with some Kompakt style throb and pulse, starting out sleek and late night and minimal, before blossoming into something buzzier and more twisted, with shards of rave-y synth, more of those buzzing throat singing style vox and some squiggly spacey Theremin like melodies. Wow. We really can't stop listening to this, so mesmerizing and psychedelic and hypnotic and tripped out and most definitely a new unanimous aQ fave!
Like some dusty old 78, left in the basement for 20 or 30 years, wet and warped, gritty and scratched up, thrown onto the ol' Victrola as is, and allowed to unfurl a warped and warbly, rickety detuned slow motion blues crawl. That's exactly what this latest disc from the Reveries sounds like. Recorded live in Italy in 2004, the Reveries, fronted by Eric Chenaux (who for those of you up on your nineties indie math rock, fronted Toronto's godlike Phleg Camp), magically create this sound from another time. But there's more to it than that, the sound is strangely damaged, alien even, and for good reason. The band employ a technique as bizarre as it is brilliant. Each player, in addition to wielding guitar, harmonica, bass, saw, nose-flute and thumb-reeds (!?), holds a tiny cell phone speaker IN THEIR MOUTHS!!! WHILE THEY PLAY!! OR EVEN SING!! So each of the instruments is sent first to the speaker in the mouth of another player, who much like a Jew's harp, is able to shape and warp the sound with the shape of his mouth. So you're hearing guitar come out of the bass players mouth, the bass coming out of the guitar player's mouth, the flute through another player's mouth, and on and on...
Then there's the singing, which all three members do, and as you might imagine, it's pretty difficult to sing with a speaker in your mouth, and a speaker cable trailing out of your mouth to an amp or a bandmate's mouth. The result is a mumbled and warbly, mush mouthed drawl, fuzzy falsettos, a garbled croon, often sounding like a toothless old Nina Simone, but just as often, like some strange buzzing growl, perfectly complimenting the band's detuned twang flecked scrawl.
It's almost like the Starfuckers playing Django Reinhardt at 16 rpm, with a countrified Derek Bailey on guitar. Cracking, wheezing and skeletal, a demented yet lovely underwater slow motion Western Swing, plenty of downtuned buzz, scraping and shuffling, whispering and whistling, seasick and gorgeously woozy. There are stretches of garbled instrumental chaos here and there, but the majority of the set is spent slithering and shimmering, meandering drunkenly through some strange sonic haze, an old timey radio broadcast, from some strange musical alternate reality, bits of classic blues and jazz muted and smeared pulled apart and tangled up into haunting and perplexing shapes. So gorgeous.
Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald (aka Maurizio) are the shadowy figures whose anonymous productions through the Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, and Rhythm & Sound monikers / labels remain the foundation for German electronica as we know it. While the two
As Basic Channel morphed into Chain Reaction, Ernestus and von Oswald began Rhythm & Sound to explore and exaggerate dub techniques within their techno constructions. There isn't much to the Rhythm & Sound approach, but that's the point, with an uncluttered yet seductive drum machine pulse, an incredibly deep bass line, and a metallic organ riff as the offbeat rhythm. But, the cavernous dub which softens all of the sounds into amorphous currents and dissolves time into a languid stupor is what makes Rhythm & Sound so effective.
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So, sure, "experimental/improv/psych" bands based outta Brooklyn are probably a dime a dozen these days, so what makes the debut from this new Thrill Jockey signing worthy of glorious Record Of The Week status here at aQ? Well, for one thing, Thrill Jockey have had a pretty good track record in that area lately, with aQ fave bands like White Hills and Barn Owl, and fans of either ought to check out Rhyton. At least, we had to give it a listen, and when we did, WOW! Totally tripped out and hypnotic, stonery psych explorations embraced our ears - and we think gently tingled any mystic sixth or seventh senses we may possess. Their jamming has a fuzzed-out edge, and a definite exotic, Eastern vibe, buzzing with electric saz for one thing... as if they're not from Brooklyn, they're from Brooklynistan!
The mesmeric music of Rhyton is a mind-melting mind-meld involving three well-matched musicians, a supergroop of sorts, the trio consisting of D. Charles Speer from the No Neck Blues Band, Jimmy SeiTang of Psychic Ills, and Spencer Herbst from some bands we confess we've not heard of before. Speer is on the strings, playing electric saz, electric mandolin, and baritone guitar. SeiTang is on bass and tape delay. Herbst is on drums and percussion (and videocassettes, we read somewhere?). A good set up for playing something that's rock, but not.
Over the course of the five, mostly long, mainly instrumental tracks here, Rhyton easily convinced us to make this Record Of The Week, or maybe hypnotized us into doing so! We just couldn't say no to their repetitive, reverby bath of shuddering soundwaves, sub-bass pulsations, meandering raga-like "split stereo, dual amped" leads, and loads of oscillators, loops, n' effects.
Relatively mellow opening track "Stone Colored" eases us in, giving us a sense of, if not where Rhyton is going, at least how they're gonna get there. And, as the cliche says, the journey is the destination. That's before the 12+ minute "Pontian Grave" heavies things up even more, and the raw side of Rhyton's experimentation is revealed. And so it goes, Rhyton getting into outre modes of instrumental psychedelic possession, centerpiece "Teke" being the perhaps the most druggily dubbed-out of the album's varied transmissions...and then, on the fantastic final cut, "Shank Raids", we REALLY hear the Middle Eastern influence come to the fore. It's not just the electric saz they've been making use of, on this one the rhythms n' melodies sound straight out of the Turkish psych songbook, stately and spacey, but also gnarly, warped and distortion-damaged, almost what it would be like to Greg Ginn's Gone, or Black Flag circa The Process Of Weeding Out, attempting a Mogollar or 3 Hur-el cover, yeah! There's a whiff of Sun City Girls to this as well.
Eastern aspects aside (or not), Rhyton's unique vibrations are on roughly the same wavelength as those of such outfits as Carlton Melton, Davis Redford Triad, White Hills, Titan, Bardo Pond, etc., and thus this should appeal to quite a few of you. So we say, get it! And get it quick, as the compact disc edition, packaged in a slim handmade sleeve (abstract art glued on front, hand-stamped text on back), is ultra limited to only 200 hand-numbered copies!! We got a bunch, but that bunch is probably all we'll get. Meanwhile, the similarly-appointed vinyl version is just a bit less limited, 500 copies made, and it comes with a postcard insert and free download code.
You may not necessarily know who Emil Richards is, but you've most definitely heard him play. The list of his musical accomplishments, is nearly Zelig like, seeming to appear everywhere and on pretty much every great recording, and having played with a who's who of performers, jazz, rock, underground, mainstream, even a small sampling of his music resume will have you wondering why he isn't a household name. He played with Charles Mingus, Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle, Doris Day, Judy Garland, he performed frequently with Harry Partch, he plays the bongos that open Lalo Schifrin's theme to Mission Impossible, he's the guy snapping his fingers on the theme music from the Addams Family, he played tuned bowls and gongs on Jerry Goldsmith's iconic soundtrack to 1968's Planet Of The Apes. He later played with Frank Zappa, George Harrison (he even traveled to India with Harrison) as well as Blondie, and hundreds of other pop artists, and played on soundtracks like Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, Shaft, Chinatown, Dirty Harry, and again, HUNDREDS more.
But for weird music obsessives, he's no doubt best known for his record New Sound Element: Stones, originally released in 1967, which was a collection of 12 songs, each named for a month, and its specific birthstone, and which is infamous for the fact that it was in fact the first commercial recording to feature the Moog Synthesizer. But beyond that, it's a crazy record, some sort of twisted electronic jazz sci-fi exotica, the main instruments being ring modulated mallet instruments (marimba, xylophone, etc.) and synth, trippy and woozy, playful and silly, but at times, seriously twisted and darkly psychedelic. We're reminded of course of Perrey And Kingsley, after all for many of us, that was our first real exposure to early Moog pop, but Richards' compositions are a lot less goofy, less melodic too, more rhythmic, with the best tracks layering wild jazz drumming, over heavily effected marimba or xylophone, the sound locked into propulsive grooves, while the tones and overtones are constantly altered to created woozy warbly melodies, that's not to say this stuff isn't on the playful side, it most definitely is, the darker passages more than balanced by goofy, super melodic workouts, but the sound seems to always slip back into something a wee bit darker, whether it's the droney, swirly shuffle of "Emerald (May)", or the driving drum heavy psychedelic trip out of "Bloodstone (March)", the wild Moog swaddled xylophone shredding of "Moonstone (June)", or the fuzzy twisted jazzfunk of "Ruby (July)".
Imagine a drum/percussion driven sixties jazz record, re-engineered by some Moog mad scientist, and you'll get an idea of what Richards concocted on Stones, which has been floating around as a bootleg for years, but this is the first official reissue. And Stones is only the beginning. While it's most definitely the reason to pick this up, Omni has also tacked on a bunch of bonus tracks, first, a handful of songs from New Time Element, also originally released in 1967, which features a selection of pop and jazz standards, presented with odd time signatures and unique percussion, the original liner notes even give the listener breakdowns of the various rhythms of each song. It's not super far out, but a fun listen, and a nice chunk of sixties jazz. The final batch of extra tracks come from Richards' 1968 release Journey To Bliss, which is probably closest to Stones in sound, dialing back the electronic element, and heavy on the rhythms, lots of marimba, xylophone and percussion, some drum solos, a bit of fuzzy jazz funk, a heady psychedelic jazz excursion for sure, fans of the recent Spiritual Jazz collections will definitely dig, the album culminating in the final 18 minute six part epic "Journey To Bliss", which features a yogi like recitation, directions for meditation and inner peace, over Eastern raga style buzz, playful percussion, and more of Richards' wild psychedelic jazz.
Like all Omni reissues, gorgeous presented, with loads of pictures and extensive liner notes!
As always, we were way ahead of the curve. You were too, right there with us. Going all the way back to Acid Bath, that seminal NOLA rock band, that somehow combined Eyehategod style sludge, and groovy dramatic emotional rock a la Alice In Chains or Katatonia or Jeff Buckley, we were proclaiming that not only should Acid Bath have been HUGE, but AB frontman Dax Riggs should be a rock star. So here we are over ten years later, and all that time, Riggs has continued on, first with Agents Of Oblivion, then Deadboy And The Elephantmen, all groups and records we LOVED, and played incessantly, but still, Dax and co. lurked way underground, barely even making a ripple in the mainstream music world.
But come last year, Riggs resurfaced, performing live and releasing a pretty decent disc (that we've yet to review), and suddenly being pushed hard, his sound, not all that different from Agents Of Oblivion, but now with some promotional real label muscle behind him. Unfortunately, not much happened with his solo record, so it was time for plan B, the first Deadboy And The Elephantmen record, re-released as a Riggs sort-of-solo record. Fair enough. We proclaimed it genius way way back when, and time has done nothing but demonstrate what a killer slab of dark grooviness and intensely emotional heaviness this record is, was and continues to be. So since lots of folks may not have been around when we first gushed about this disc, figured this was the perfect time to gush again.
Years and years ago, the big rock n' roll sleeper hit here at Aquarius had to be the awesome Agents Of Oblivion album, featuring two crucial ex-members of the late lamented cult band Acid Bath. Heavy, poppy, psychedelic rock with vocalist Dax Riggs crooning beautifully over it all. We shoulda made it record of the week, we all thought in retrospect. It became one of our favorite records EVER. We were really bummed then to hear that the Agents, like Acid Bath before 'em, broke up not long after the album's release. But, rumors filtered in that Dax and a new crew of New Orleans n'er-do-wells had formed a new band with the unlikely name of Deadboy and the Elephantmen to carry on where the Agents left off. Allan confirmed this when he happened to visit N.O. and was lucky enough to catch a live performance from this new band. They had a demo out then, and we anticipated a full album release on some big label to appear soon...we waited...and waited... and eventually a Deadboy record did come out, but the band had to release it themselves, since once again, the big labels had no idea and dropped the ball big time. Mystifiying, 'cause Dax is a rock star if ever there was one, and these guys should have been HUGE. This record is epic and darkly dramatic, heavy and groovy and weird as fuck, but also catchy and beautiful. Totally accessible yet morbidly underground, we hear everything from some voodoo Alice Cooper darkness and drama, to a little Aerosmith swagger, to the heaviness and angst of Alice In Chains of course -- Acid Bath was always an AIC meets EHG (Eyehategod) hybrid, in a really good way. Radiohead's "Ok Computer" is hinted at too, and Jeff Buckley, as the music combines weirdly sensitive melodicism and dark atmosphere inspired by their hometown's swamps and cemeteries. Dax is as impressive as ever, he really *sings*, drawing out vowels over a dozen notes. His vocals are oddly warm and comforting but also anguished and intense. While the songwriting on this album does not quite match the relatively flowery yet heavy tunesmithery of the Agents of Oblivion album, and neither does the instrumentation call attention to itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing here as it lets Dax' voice take center stage and he... just... wails. He's like a sludge metal Bowie, flamboyant, and dramatic, his vocals impossibly emotive and intense. Sometimes despairing, sometimes incantatory. Oh the angst! And the music is a perfect match, going from brooding and minor key, to explosive and space-y. For fans of Alice in Chains, Acid Bath/Agents of Oblivion (of course), Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees, and Woven Hand. It may have taken a decade, but finally the rest of the world can discover what some of us knew all along�
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The unanimous AQ staff favorite of the week. Disc one is totally stuck in our cd player...it's only about 20 minutes long, but it may as well be infinite, 'cause we just keep playing it over and over. Appropriate, because, as with much of the late '60s work of American minimalist composer Terry Riley's work, repetition (with subtle changes) is the modus operandi here. The original source song "You're No Good", a pop-latin-boogaloo number released by Harvey Averne in 1968 (he's not credited in the liner notes to this, strangely) is a great tune in its own right. But soon after the original song's release. Terry Riley got his hands on it and created what oughta become one of his all time classic tracks. Riley used pedal-driven tape-loops and the Moog to take the infectious "You're No Good" chorus to extreme, abstract, mesmerizing lengths. It's looped over and under itself, at first sounding completely normal and then imperceptibly gets weirder and weirder until it's so odd that the customers in the store start looking concerned and asking if the cd player is skipping. It stutters wonderfully! Sometimes the left and right channels are playing different parts of the song simultaneously, to eerily beautiful effect.
That the original song is so insanely catchy and hook-filled (it's a "Dancing in the Streets"-style pop number) definitely contributes to the accessibility and fun of the piece. Disco minimalism? Hell yeah. Apparently it was commissioned as theme song for what must have been a very avant-garde Philly dance club, the operator of which was a Terry Riley fan present at the concert documented on disc one... Brilliant.
By the way, the original Averne song can be found on the compilation Dusty Fingers Vol. 2, and we've added a clip of the original below for you to compare.
Disc 2 of this archival set is live material from one of Terry's Poppy Nogood All Night Concerts held in Philadelphia in the fall of 1967. The lovely drones produced by his soprano sax and "time-lag accumulator" must have kept the attendees happy and hypnotized in their sleeping bags 'til dawn, and now we can experience a cd's worth of it now at whatever time of day or night we choose. Nice.
We knew nothing at all about this disc when it arrived. Not even sure how we ended up listening to it, but we're so so glad we did. The thing is, we get tons of stuff to listen to. Some all time AQ favorites began life as a random record that showed up in the mail, so we try to listen to everything, or as close to everything as we can. But there's so much, that just listening to random stuff that gets mailed in could be its own full time job (and before you all email wanting that job, trust us, it's not all it's cracked up to be). Inevitably stuff slips through the cracks, or we finally manage to listen to a cd months, sometimes years after it shows up.
But this one caught our eye straight away, with a super creepy cover depicting a dead woman, covered in blood, in a wide expanse of blackness, above her a head, with a hole in the forehead, and a rainbow shooting through the head onto the dead woman, all done sort of oil painting style. Immediately we thought, "Wow, that sort of looks like some Argento movie". Then we saw the title, 31 Invalid Movie Themes � Italian Music. Hmm. By a group called Orchestra Di Rockford Kabine. Okay, so maybe, we thought, a soundtrack to some giallo we'd never heard of. The first track seemed to confirm that, a snippet of dialogue from some Italian movie, dialogue, some buzzing creepy sci-fi synth, a panicked woman, screaming, some sort of struggle...
Then suddenly, we're in some sort of groovy sixties funk jam, all shuffling percussion, wah wah guitar, throbbing bass grooves, and then out of nowhere, a strangely convoluted interlude, very brief, but sort of stuttery, and then back to the groove. So now we're dying to know what movie this is from. Then the next track is some sort of stripped down electro groove, a jazzy piano vamp, lots and lots of record crackle, this couldn't be from the sixties...
And it isn't. It ends up it's a German duo called Rockford Kabine, not a person at all, not a composer, an electronic/sampling outfit who describe their sound as "acid smurf" (huh?) and whose modus operandi is crafting little cinematic pop nuggets. Like DJ Shadow doing Morricone. The various tracks are super brief, but super groovy and catchy, some are dark and ominous and ultra creepy, some are playful and exotic. Some sound like they belong in a spaghetti Western, others like they belong in a classic Italian horror film, one track even uses the sound of a pinball machine as the rhythm. Plus the whole disc is peppered with bits of dialogue from movies making it seem even more possible that these could all be little fragments from lost movie scores.
The sounds are all over the place, but manage to sound like they all belong, if not in the same film, at least in the same collection. From the aforementioned opening groover, to the smoky synth flecked mood music of "Al Signor Lorenzo N." complete with a creepy children's choir, to the exploitation cop show funk jam of "Di-Stanza", to the super distorted buzzy sixties psychedelia of "IX", to the Tom Waits via Amon Tobin stuttery junkyard percussion of "Insensato", to the muted meandering twangy western sizzle of "Italo Calvino", to the stripped down, but somehow still spooky rhythmic workout of "Zombi 3000", to the very DJ Shadow-ish creepy crawl of "Profondo Rosso" and it goes on and on. Every track is a strange little gem. Mysterious and cinematic. Each could easily be the theme from some lost film, or just a kick ass little segment from some DJ's set.
31 tracks, averaging a little more than a minute each, these tracks may not actually be from real movies, but repeated listening will have you wishing they were, or just creating the movies in your head as you listen. Fucking awesome.
We first discovered amazing German duo Rockford Kabine via their debut full length, Italian Music: 31 Invalid Movie Themes, which on the surface played like a series of micro snippets of actual Italian soundtrack music, interspersed with snippets of dialogue, brief excerpts from what we can only assume are in fact real films, the music the perfect compliment, wah wah guitars, Morricone-ish twang, smoky synths, spooky rhythmic dronescapes. It was an incredible collection of music that very well could have been soundtrack music, but was in fact an original creation, imagined music for imaginary Italian films. And we were blown away. Not soon after, the band contacted us to let us know that they were already working on a follow up, this one an ACTUAL soundtrack, to some sort of arty XXX adult film, yep, a porno, which in some weird way made sense, what with RK's ability to conjure up super sultry and sexy sounds, that draw from all sorts of different sources, their music already cinematic on its own, seemingly perfect to be wedded to visuals, and heck, when the visuals turn out to consist of sexy women, some wielding daggers, wearing World War 2 style gasmasks and leather bodysuits and well, it's tough to argue with that.
But since the soundtrack was to be available ONLY as a bonus disc with the movie itself, it required some wrangling, and contacting an actual adult film distributor down in SoCal to get our hands on copies. But we're so glad we did. Even removed from the visuals, like all great soundtrack music, Rockford Kabine's score for XERO is incredible, haunting, mysterious, groovy, funky, abstract, cinematic for sure, but also lush and experimental and moody and mysterious. The strange thing too is that the film seems quite European, almost like some Inglorious Basterds style Tarantino war pic (or maybe that's just the aforementioned gas mask get up getting to us), but the music is very Eastern, in fact all the titles seem to be in Japanese, which only adds to the mystique of Rockford Kabine's fantastic soundworld.
So we'll discuss the film in a bit, but as aQ is a record store, and this is in fact our Record Of The Week, it's probably best to discuss the soundtrack/score all on its own first. Like Italian Music before it, XERO is a series of shortish tracks, between 1 and 2 minutes, each super distinctive, with the duo conjuring up incredible mysterious moods in a manner of seconds, leaving the listener in most cases wanting more more more. And like their Italian Music, this does play out like some sort of DJ Shadow style sonic collage, still drawing from Morricone, and the Italian giallo tradition, but also from classic '70s porno music, with some funk and groove, but instead of the oft ridiculed wah wah guitar style porn kitsch, this is much more evocative, and dark, guitars are slithery, basslines low slung, undulating, bells chimes, notes drift through fields of reverb, riffs chug and churn only to dissipate in a field of chimes, spaced out drones collide with almost Tangerine Dream like synths, flutes flit and flutter, the rhythms are minimal and motorik, some tracks playing out like some krautrock groove (reminding us that Can made softcore soundtracks too, way back when), others like some lost cosmic disco. It's actually quite hard to describe XERO, there are so many different sounds and styles, and it's hard to imagine them working as a soundtrack, especially to an super stylized XXX art film, but removed from the film, the music, as varied and constantly shifting as it is, somehow plays out cohesively, like an album proper, guitar twang is laced over a minimal footstep like rhythm, organs wheeze, everything sounds softly woozy and lysergic, exotic percussion collides with gamelan like melodies, minimal hip hop beats are wrapped around stuttering loops, occasionally coalescing into some seriously fuzzy hairy funk, other times drifting into Goblin style almost new wave sounding synthscapes, acoustic guitars unfurl some Western strum, but woven in are some haunting synth melodies, even some mysterious voices, soaring strings and sorrowful piano, tense droned out ambience, skittery almost Portishead style downtempo beats, bells and chimes, all sorts of strange production, the sound sometimes crystal clear and lush and lovely, other times hazy and druggy and gorgeously washed out, a kaleidoscopic sonic journey through some imaginary world of naked women, gasmasks and daggers, weird Asian masks, furry shag rugs, a world that would have stayed imaginary had these sounds not been used to edit the film of the same name.
The film is indeed pornographic, and XXX. It's all female-on-female, there's very little actual hardcore sex though. And while it IS a porno, with no plot to speak of, it's almost more like it's about the music. Indeed, the movie was edited to the music, much like Sergio Leone used to blast Morricone's scores on the set and have the actors move to the music, so the film here is a series of impressionistic tableaus, the colors acid drenched and super saturated, long slow stripteases, even the actual sex is strangely arty and not traditionally sexy, but the strange constantly shifting images, the cool, always changing music, work together, creating something much more than a porno, in fact, the film seemed more like something the band would project behind them when they performed live, strange masks, the aforementioned rubberclad gasmasked mystery woman, another woman who looks a bit like a sexier female version of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, long duster, big hat, face obscured by hair, and as the back cover proclaims, "See the shocking ending the censors didn't want you to witness", and we can definitely attest to the fact that the ending is really weird, depressing and violent, and not at all sexy, but in some way, that makes this whole project more interesting, and bizarre, and pretty much perfect for Rockford Kabine's incredible soundtrack. Though of course you don't HAVE to watch it, the prudish can enjoy the soundtrack fully without reference to the visuals.
Needless to say, this is TOTALLY RECOMMENDED, but, since the soundtrack cd does in fact come with an XXX rated adult dvd, thus is required some unaccustomed legalese on our part, as follows... This is only to be purchased by adults, and by purchasing this, and/or adding it to your online shopping cart, you are hereby agreeing to these stipulations: that you are an in fact an adult, being of legal age, 18 or 21, in your legal jurisdiction to view adult oriented material that may be sexual or graphical in nature. (Local laws vary throughout the United States, so if you are not 100 percent sure of the laws applicable to you, you are advised to check before purchasing.) Further, you agree that you will not redistribute this material to anyone for which it is illegal for them to view or possess such material, nor will you permit any minor, or any person who would find this personally offensive, to view this material, and finally that you will hold harmless aQuarius recOrds, its officers, ISP, and employees, from and against any claims, liability, losses, costs, damages, or expenses (including attorney's fees) arising from you use of the images contained on the dvd. Furthermore, you will defend aQuarius recOrds against all claims of impropriety regarding your purchase of this item. Phew. We'd have put all that in small print if we could.
With the first track on this anthology being a recording of wind from a 1935 sound effects record, AQ beloved sound artist Steve Roden makes a very literal introduction to I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces. Released by Dust-To-Digital, this beautifully constructed hardback book filled with images both from and ephemeral to Roden's collection of 78s, as well as two discs worth of sounds from that antique vinyl. Yeah, the idea is pretty much the same as what the Climax Golden Twins presented via Dust-To-Digital on their also-awesome Victrola Favorites anthology a few years back; but Roden's collection trends more to the mid-part of the 20th Century and is focused on Americana (including a couple of Hawaiian tracks made before the islands were granted statehood). Following that crackled recording of the wailing wind from that sound effects record, is the unmistakable voice of John Jacob Niles, the 'mountain tenor' whose spooky falsetto and maudlin melodic wanderings predated Devendra Banhart by a good 60 years... Afterwards, there's plenty of bluesmen, blueswomen, gospel belters, Appalachian balladeers, and barbershop crooners, many of which seem quite world-weary in singing their tales of lust, money, and liquor (or the lack thereof). Some of the names are familiar to us (e.g. Clara Smith, Roy Smeck, Sol Hoopii), but there are plenty of anonymous recordings from home-cut discs as well. The arrangements for many of the songs tend to be very sparse, just voice and guitar is pretty much all you get on every track; and the album is dotted with tracks from antique sound effects records of birds, ice, and even "night noises!" For those of you aware of Roden's own compositions of understated field recordings, quiet ruminations on found objects, and soft looping techniques, this shouldn't be a big surprise.
The vintage photos inside this 184 page book are completely lovely, with all of their rumpled edges, ruddy patinas, and cracked surfaces, with some far more poignant - such as the shot of a bunch of violas suspended outside in the sun perhaps to allow a coat of shellac to dry. There's the silhouette of G.J. Jessup decked out in his one-man drum and bugle corps regalia, and the glum looking fellow with the unkempt mustache leaning against his Funnygraph contraption (sadly, there's no corresponding recording for either photograph). Pages and pages of interesting images to provoke curiosity and evoke reverie. Altogether, Roden has compiled over 150 photos and 51 tracks for this stunning document of sonic obsession from Dust-To-Digital! Hard to imagine NOT wanting this.
Wow! Ok, this is pretty darn amazing. We ordered a copy of this based on a brief description we read, something along the lines of: "long lost futuristic funky proggy electronic music from behind the Iron Curtain". That was enough for us. And maybe for you too, though we're gonna go on and on about this anyway. But yeah, if that description piques your interest, let us just say that you will NOT be disappointed. However incredibly weird and cool you might imagine this could be from that short synopsis, it is probably even better!
And we were listening to it, and loving it, before we delved into the detailed liner notes and found out what it was all about - or when exactly it was from. So that's another recommendation, the music stands on its own without prior awareness of its quite interesting historical aspects.
What you get here are ten killer tracks drenched in echo effects, dense with percolating beats, uber-distorted analog synths, and eerily ear-catching melodies, a sound utterly full of "flanged, phased, and fuzzed electricity". They're previously unreleased reel-to-reel recordings, circa 1978-1984, from the vaults of this pioneering Romanian DIY electro-prog-pop groop who only released two tracks officially during their career, on a state-sanctioned compilation lp in 1981, before fading into obscurity. Rodion G.A. was founded in 1975 by a fellow named Rodion Ladislau Rosca, who had been collecting prog records and experimenting with homebuilt electronic gear since the dawn of the '70s. The G.A. comes from the names of the other two founding members of the band, but it's really composer Rodion Rosca's show, the material here recorded in Rodion's home studio in Cluj, most instruments played and programmed by Rodion himself, with occasional 'real' drumming contributed by one of the other guys.
Despite the deprivations of living in an oppressive Communist dictatorship, Rodion's creativity flourished, and this music still sounds super fresh and ahead of its time, venturing even into full-on proto-techno with the likes of "Diagonala", though always in its own unique hybrid form, on that track ferinstance mixing in what sounds like Eastern European folk motifs and Goblin-y giallo soundtrack spookiness. Krautrock influences shine through too, Kraftwerk and Cluster for sure, plus we can't help but think of odd outsider aQ faves Bruce Haack and Wicked Witch - cool company to be in!
Rodion's bombastic "hairy funk" prog grooves are melded to melodic pop hooks, always cloaked with a wonderfully miasmic layer of lo-fi grime. Everything here has its unique charms, ranging from the sinister, grittily distorted bunkurfunk of "Citadela", to the motorik delightfulness of "Salt 83", so strangely warped and sunshiney, to "In Linistea Noptii", wherein lovely piano playing mixes it up with the electronic elements. Some tracks are instrumentals, some have catchy vocal choruses - and some are visited by what sound like the echoing cries of a prehistoric pterodactyl, presumably another synth effect, sizzling stabs of which are always swooshing around.
So THIS was the sound of underground Romania back in the day, who knew? We are so thankful this freaky music didn't stay a secret forever. Yep, these "lost tapes" are quite the discovery, minds have been blown for sure. Automatic Record Of The Week.
Packaged with extensive liner notes by Andy Thomas, illustrated with vintage photos, telling the whole fascinating story of Rodion's stunted career, and recent reemergence as the "Godfather of Romanian electronic music". Oh, and the vinyl version also comes with a cd!
Heavy With Illusion is a collaboration between RST and Lenz, the latter being a previously unknown singer from Shanghai; and the former being one of our favorite New Zealand drone technicians, aka Andrew Moon. The previous RST outings are all-consuming thrums of amplifier smolder and long-form drone topography, coming out of the same tradition that begat Gate, Birchville Cat Motel, Surface Of The Earth, etc; and we had loved everything Moon has ever touched. That still remains true with this collaboration, though this album is very much a departure for RST. Heavy With Illusion allows us a glimpse into Moon's craft for the song, taking up the mantle of lumbering slowcore previously mined by Codeine, Low, or even the latter day incarnation of Earth. There's a melodic miserablism to Moon's chiming if heavy guitar which make full use of loud-soft dynamics with occasional drums punctuating the crashes spread out through these songs. Lenz mostly sings in Cantonese, very occasionally in English, those instances, along with the translated lyrics, speak to the morose poetry of Lenz's lyrics - death, the loss of love, psychic dislocation, and the disconnection from nature. She alternates between a plainspoken narration and world-weary melodies, as if Jenny Toomey of Tsunami were to front a Codeine / Charalambides cover band. Moon does offer two tracks of his drone-centric work with Lenz sitting those out on the sidelines. But the two together create a special sort of minimal musical magic. Pretty amazing, we gotta say!
We'd been hearing about these guys for a while, the new group featuring legendary Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey, a band that apparently formed nearly a decade ago, yet Farewell Drugs is the first recorded evidence, and still all we can say is it was totally worth the wait. Just listen to the first two minutes of album opener "Cigarette Rabbit", and you'll be transported to some drug addled psychedelic sonic otherworld, or maybe just back to the eighties, to some grim, filthy dive bar in bumfuck Texas filled with flashing lights and cloud of noxious smoke, where you're immediately ensorcelled by that oh so recognizable drumming, cuz holy shit does Rubble sound a lot like vintage Buttholes, King Coffey's drumming, dirgey and tribal, and woozily propulsive, pounding its way through dense clouds of detuned guitar fug, and a grimy fog of dying-batteries FX boxes, all manner of voices and vocals dipped in effects and reverb and sent careening into the blackened swirl of rhythmic churn and blurred drugrock chaos. But Rubble is not at all a Buttholes revival, although these guys pull off that psychedelic murk like no one has ever since. There's plenty more going on, like the noise rock dirge of "It's So Easy" (we were secretly hoping it was a Guns N' Roses cover, and which is in fact a Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies cover!), driven by thick, viscous riffing, caveman drum pound and some heavily effected lysergic vox, the whole thing a sort of psych sludge dirge on the verge of total collapse. Then there's "Waiting To die" (which we were also hoping was maybe a Townes Van Zandt cover), which shrugs off much of the murk and muddiness of the first few tracks for some seriously kick ass Stooges-y swagger, with cool raspy vox, chugging riffage, some tangled psychedelic leads, and a downright catchy sing along chorus. But then it's right back into it, with "Tom Of Midland", the guitar (or is it bass), fuzzy and buzzy and practically oozing, those Buttholes drums pounding mesmerizingly, the song gradually growing more and more chaotic and noisy and finally disappearing in a wild squall of tangled psychguitar.
But hold onto your hats for "Old Dominion", a bass driven slow burn shuffle, all woozy and washed out and then what the heck is that? Fucking kalimba! A thumb piano plucking out a dreamy melody over the group's druggy slow groove dirge, sorta like some Texas sludge Konono No.1, weird at first, but then suddenly you end up wishing there was kalimba on ALL the tracks. The sound shifts back to murky and crusty, until "On The Road South" that sounds impossibly like classic Hawkwind, and we're not talking freaked out space jam Hawkwind, although there's plenty of that too, we're talking catchy pop song Hawkwind, Rubble totally killing it with another hook filled psych pop heavy rock stomp that any other band would make their whole sound, but part of the joy here is you can sort of tell, it's sort of tossed off and effortless, and just maybe they don't realize (or even care) how good it is.
There's one more stretch of heavy spaced out psych pound before things get weird (or weirder!), with a closing one two punch that just seal the deal. "Southside Ashes" is all dirge-y drum pound, whirling guitardrone ambience and FIDDLE!! (courtesy of Ralph White from the Bad Livers, who also plays kalimba!), a dark brooding almost Godspeed like slow build, that leads right into record closer "Grey At Grace", which is a sprawling buzzing tripped out violin laced raga (!), all muted percussion and long layered tones, layered swirling psychedelic shimmer, hauntingly and meditative, a gorgeous chunk of minimal krautdrone mesmer that is probably the most surprising ending we never could have envisioned for this twisted slab of Texas drug rock psych.
Record Of The Week easy, record of the year contender for sure as well!
Cool, creepy see-through skull / health film-strip visible brain artwork, includes a download coupon as well!
Wow. Probably the best album from this band in a long time. And they're always really good. Still, their last two studio albums (2000's "Pallaschtom" and 1998's "Vrresto"), although amazing musically, might have actually taken their insane technicality to an almost detrimental, one-dimensional extreme, when compared to more melodic and memorable earlier Ruins classics like "Burning Stone". But, with this new release, we're really excited about the Ruins again. It's got more ideas, more variety, more inventiveness, more surprises -- and of course, more of that insane technicality.
Let's pause for a quick update for those not familiar with the band: Japan's Ruins are a drums and bass prog-core duo who play crazy, complex, heavy compositions and improvisations. Both members sing operatically in a made-up language, with one of 'em riffing and soloing w/ bass and effects to put most metal guitarists to shame and the other bashing the drums in an impossibly octopus-like fashion. Totally over the top masters of riff and timing they are. They worship French prog gods Magma, and are worshipped themselves equally and deservedly by fans and bands all over -- such as Mike Patton, who's just released "Tzomborgha" on his Ipecac label. And if you've never heard them before, this disc is in fact a great place to start (which is saying a lot).
"Tzomborgha" features weird (for them, even!) vocal stylisms, psychedelic fusionscapes, truly melodic and pretty parts, improv spasticity, and even some spacey atmospheric jamming, as well as plenty of the shredding bass/drums workouts with rapidfire, mindboggling changes like you'd expect. Continuing a Ruins tradition, this disc concludes with not one but two of their infamous medleys, the subjects of which in some way sum up the Ruins' appeal: one is devoted to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the other to Black Sabbath! The later is particularily amusing when they attempt to approximate (or parody) Ozzy's vocals... Earlier in the disc you'll also find two cover songs, one supposedly an Olivier Messiaen theme even though it sounds like a Ruins original, and the other the Shankar piece "Chittam Irangaayo", which is especially great. Indian classical music meets jazz meets the Ruins!
Tempering their complexicore excesses with a show of some diverse musical interests (along with getting a heavier bass sound that harkens back to older Ruins albums/bassists) results in this disc being the most vital in-the-studio display of their genius since, say, "Hydromastgroningem" back in '95 or 1993's "Graviyaunosch".
Yep, "Tzomborgha" is definitely impressive. Think about it. These guys have been around for, like, almost 20 years!! (I believe Ruins debuted in 1985.) They're at that point in their career where their last three releases before this consisted of two live albums and a best of! Isn't that like some Blue Oyster Cult shit? Most bands like that you could write off, yet here comes "Tzomborgha" to kick our asses. Awesome.
At last, reissued -- as a 'real' cd (not a cd-r) and cheaper too! This debut DJ/Rupture mix disc was a big hit here at Aquarius (and elsewhere too, apparently). We'd been getting the cd-r version on /Rupture's own Soot label direct from the man himself, but those are no longer available. Kid606 stepped in and signed DJ /Rupture to his Tigerbeat6 label, with a new /Rupture set called "Minesweeper Suite" due for release on August 27th. But, in advance of that, the Kid's other label, Violent Turd, has made the "Gold Teeth Thief" set available once again. Packaged in one of those plastic clamshell cases, with nought but a sticker for artwork, this remains a budget release, but a welcome one. It's also apparently a limited edition reissue, so if you missed it before, don't sleep on it now!! Here's our original glowing review, backed up by being named one of the top 50 best albums of the year by The Wire:
This is one of the best mix cds we've ever heard. And it's not about insane turntable skills, or about that 'isn't-it-weird-and-crazy-how-I've-juxtaposed-hip-hop-and-classic-rock' gimmicky stuff or about how famous or cool the DJ is (in fact, I bet you've never even heard of DJ /Rupture, an American living in Spain). It's about his choice of songs, and how smoothly and creatively they're mixed (live on 3 turntables). This cd is just an amazing and deft mix of dance hall (traditional -and- HARD ala DJ Scud etc.), hip hop, dub and electronica. Nothing fancy just 70 minutes and 43 tracks of some of our favorite shit: Missy Elliott, Nas, DJ Scud, Barrington Levy (a different track than his contribution to the amazing 400% Dynamite compilation, but you'll recognise his oh-so-familiar 'Woah Wooah.'), Nettle, Dead Prez, Bounty Killer, Kid 606, Venetian Snares, Luciano Berio, Shabba Ranks, Non Phixion, Wu-Tang Clan, Cannibal Ox, Djivan Gasparyan, Sub Dub, John Wall, Oval, Project Pat, Muslimgauze and even Paul Simon/Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba (ending all smooth and pretty with no beats at all). Wow.
As promised, the new DJ Rupture set is here on Tigerbeat6 and it does not disappoint. As on his last release, Gold Teeth Thief, Rupture's strong points, and this can't be emphasized enough, are combined in his great taste in a variety of musics and his smMOOOOVve mixing skills. There's also nothing ironic about his choices of source material and, maybe more importantly, he is only too happy to oblige us with the names of the cuts that he's mixing (well, most of them, presumably the ones he got permission to use). So obliging is he, that he makes the point of including label names and even URLs where applicable. So if you're curious enough you can track down all the individual cuts for yourself (which is actually a fun task to perform because you can hear what Rupture has tweaked through pitch and EQ from the sources to achieve his goals.) Unlike Gold Teeth Thief, which starts off like a stick of dynamite, Minesweeper Suite -- as I suppose its name suggests -- catches one off-guard. It begins with a pleasant track from Nubian musician Mahmoud Fadl gradually mixed in with the smooth dub sounds of J-Boogie and the two slowly pitched up together until by six minutes into the CD, Rupture has got the tempo up to a grinding pulse with all manner of breakbeats, dancehall, arabic music and hip hop weaving seamlessly in and out of the mix. In all, Minesweeper Suite is a much more ambitious undertaking than Gold Teeth Thief in that the source material that Rupture pools together for this set seems to consitently come from a wide variety of music from around the globe. Where the "world music" filled second half of his Gold Teeth Thief set may have seemed the weaker part of that disc, here it seems Rupture has increased his skills enough to throw just about anything into the mix and have it sound as if it were meant to be completely natural. Among the music sampled are Foxy Brown, dancehall from Cutty Ranks, Sade, Nina Simone, Robert Flack, Dead Prez, Djivan Gasparyan, Kid606, Cex, DOnna Summer, Wax Poetic, Dat Politics, even Cul de Sac. Quite an experience.
What would you think if someone described a band to you, as sounding like a mix of Butthole Surfers, Black Flag, the Brainbombs and black metal? Want if they went on to describe the band's sound in more detail, and they came up with something like "thick oozing ultra distorted, totally chaotic, drone drenched, drugged out, noisy as fuck, weirdly hypnotic, punishing and pulverizing, scuzz drenched doomic plod"? Well your first thought, if you were anything like us, would be "could such a band actually exist?" It does sound too good to be true. Your next thought might be "well okay, if a band like that did exist, not only would they be scary as shit, they'd also probably be my favorite band EVER."
Thus we have Rusted Shut. Going on 20 years now, these Texan noisemakers have somehow only managed two proper records and a single or two, each one of those jammed to overflowing with the abovementioned thick oozing ultra distorted, totally chaotic, pulverizing scuzz drenched plod. When we reviewed their Hot Sex ep, we alluded to the fact that if said ep wasn't an ep, wasn't vinyl only, wasn't over a decade old, and wasn't WAY too fucked up for most normal ears, it would have not only been out Record Of The Week, but our Record Of The YEAR. Of our EVER! Well, it's as if whatever God enjoys inflicting sonic torture on his children heard our prayers and conjured up this festering bit of blackened noise punk brilliance from whatever pit these guys call home.
It's rare that a band 20+ years old makes a record on the tail end of 20 years even half as good as the record that started it all, but we're tempted to say, this just might be the heaviest, freakiest, most brutally brilliant thing we've heard from these guys so far. Which is indeed saying a whole hell of a lot.
The opener "Home", is 5 minutes of blown out punk-drone, the guitars unwinding in thick gnarled tangles, moaning and rumbling and howling, a dense undulating layered swell of roiling sonic filth, fragmented riffs, squiggly downtuned Greg Ginn-ish guitar scrabble, the drums skittery and abstract clouds of cymbal sizzle, bursts of free rock splatter, while over the top, some sort of harsh, whiskey soaked punk rock testifying, spouting all sorts of misanthropic misinformation, like a post punk noise rock gutter scum Whitehouse. The music grows more and more frantic, faster, more freaked out, the various streaks of sound coalescing into riffs, that blur into still more smears of sound, the song an exercise in droned out filth caked tension.
Then there's "Heart Of Hell", total old school punk rock, but filtered through a sort of washed out lo-fi Brainbombs dirginess, the main riff, total classic punk rock, but locked and looped, and played over and over and over and over, totally trancelike, the vocals just as sneeringly scowly as on the first track, but once they drop out, the song locks into a total droned out punked up krautrock groove, that sounds a bit like Circle covering the Brainbombs, albeit doused in crumbling distortion and blurred reverb and delay.
Then comes "Intellect", 15 minutes of total blown out garage dirge bliss, the sound so in the red, that every time a cymbal hits, it swallows up the rest of the sound, the vocals so loud it sounds like the singer grabbed you by the head and locked his lips around your ears, you can feel his hot hellish breath and the spray of spittle. But all the while the music underneath, grows more and more distorted and somehow more and more hypnotic, so damaged and fractured that it sounds like the song might crumble into pieces at any moment. But that's just the first few minutes. Soon the band switch gear and the bass EXPLODES, like suddenly while the band was playing, the bass player went out to his truck and got 3 or 4 more amps and just let fucking loose, low end overload, everything acid drenched and psychedelic, the sound of speakers frying, of headphones melting, the vocals garbled like speaking in tongues, the bass unleashing a sludgey doomy groove, the song an endless noise rock blown out druggy musical brawl that makes the Butthole Surfers at their fiercest sound practically tame.
This song more than anything here reminds us of our first live run in with these weirdos. At SXSW this year, they played an instore, everyone was waiting to see the Mayyors, but Rusted Shut were just destroying the place, super noisy and scuzzy and awesome, and they just NEVER STOPPED PLAYING. The homeless-looking singer/guitarist guy kept getting shocked by the mic, so eventually he simply walked outside, after leaning his guitar up against his amp... some punk dude in the audience then picked up the mic, and freestyled some "I hate SXSW" lyrics... when he was done and threw the mic down, it seemed like the drummer and bassist would wrap it up, but instead they kept on jamming... and jamming... and jamming� then the guitarist came back in after being outside for what felt like (and pretty much WAS) ages, picked up his guitar, and then it seemed like, OK, this must be the grande finale... but that was only the beginning!! They literally kept on playing for another half hour at least. After a while, most of the crowd had gone outside to wait for the Mayyors, driven away by the bands wall of harsh vibes and skull stomping crush, and someone even joked that they should shut the doors of the shop and lock Rusted Shut inside...
These guys are lifers, they're insane, a total mess, which is the only way a piece of glorious sonic filth like this could ever happen. This is not music made by nice guys slumming it, by punk rockers getting their hands dirty, no, this is the sound of old guys pissed and insane, hell bent on punishing the rest of the world, a furious plod and pound fueled by hate, and misery, and drugs. Lots and lots and LOTS of drugs. And that instore, for all of it's confusional chaos, is pretty much the exact same vibe captured here. That is what this band is all about. About relentless endless riffing, hypnotic crustpunk dirges, wild damaged Neanderthal noise rock. The sick sick energy of Rusted Shut is an anomaly. This is not music, this is the sound these guys conjure up from their dead souls and black hearts, a fucked up noise drenched hardcore psychedelic space sludge whathtefuck that's just about the greatest thing we've ever heard.
We're pretty into twisted psychedelic music. The more twisted the better. And that mutant strain of weirdo psychedelia that is CHRISTIAN psych, somehow that seems even weirder and more ridiculous. Even though in some strange way, both Christians and psychedelic freaks were each trying to attain enlightenment, albeit by very different means. Which makes it all the more glorious, to hear the squares try to co-opt the super hip, in hopes of luring some of the lost toward the light. It rarely worked, and in most cases had the exact opposite effect, portraying the co-optors as painfully out of touch, and even more impossibly square. However, Brother John Rydgren might just be the exception. This Lutheran pastor very nearly pulled it off, due in no small part to his amazing voice, equal parts Ken Nordine and Orson Welles, his radio show a twisted dizzyingly psychedelic meditation on love and sex, war and death, set to some seriously fuzzed our psych rock. This double cd collects his three late sixties lps, which were originally only distributed to radio stations and churches (the radio stations instructed to burn them after broadcast, hence their rarity), and it's some of the craziest, coolest stuff you'll ever hear. Every once in a while, when we're playing this in the store, and people are freaking out, laughing, not believing what they're hearing, we sometimes jokingly ask if folks are ready to convert, but listening to this now, it's actually not that far fetched to imagine that back in the day, Rydgren could have really pulled it off, making Christianity cool and convincing druggies and hippies that somehow, that was the more righteously psychedelic path. Really, all it takes is a listen to the opening track, "Music To Watch Girls By", with its fuzz guitar crunch, and exotica vibe, all tropical horns, and groovy rhythms, Brother John intoning over the top, sounding way too lascivious as he describes one girl from head to toe, her lips, hair, her body, her lipstick, hearing that impossibly deep voice say things like: "She likes to be watched", "It's creamy", "Looks like she's ready for a happening", obviously there's a punchline, but it's a pretty uncomfortable wait, until he finally explains, that God created people, girls included, "Quite a design". "God made it", he explains, so you can think about it next time you're out watching girls, he doesn't want to take the fun out of it, it just makes girl watching... mean more! Holy shit, how cool is this Brother, it's okay to watch girls, just know that those gorgeous honeys were created by the man upstairs. And it doesn't get any less weird.
"Personality Doll Of The Week" is a weird anti-war sketch, where a nerdy scientist pulls the string on the back on the Personality Doll Of The Week, and she continues to say the same thing over and over, no matter what question he asks "I don't like war, I think everybody should love everybody else". Then there's "Mercy Mercy Mercy", which lays down a bluesy gospel groove, with Brother John, prosthelytizing over the top. Some seriously sweet sermonizing, and that voice, that VOICE!! Keep digging, up next is the "Hippie Version Of The 23rd Psalm", where Brother John rewrites that iconic psalm in hippie speak, with lots of baby's, and cool's, and dig's, and man's, all over a wild organ driven psych rock freak out. But it's the next track, "Rinky Dink", that sealed the deal, with Brother John's stentorian lyric reading, over another groovy fuzzy psychedelic jam, and thee most ridiculous chorus, Brother John delivering this line in a deep deadpan: "One, two, three, four, rinky dink". Groovy and ridiculous, and sorta crazy catchy too!
It stays relentlessly far out, warped and psychedelic, the music pretty great, choirs, sitars, fuzzed out surf guitar, tribal drumming, streaks of feedback, even some cool collaged experimental soundscapes, replete with samples of popular songs and fragments of Christmas carols, there's "To Sir With Love", a stately bit of baroque pop, over which various women describe love, and how to treat their man, and how their man should treat them, there's "The Happening", where Brother John interviews various people: Smokey Robinson, both Peaches and Herb from Peaches And Herb, one of the guys from the Association, one of the guys from Paul Revere And The Raiders, and bunch of others about God, and their faith, and how drugs are not the way to attain enlightenment, all peppered with Brother John again explaining: "They're young, they think, and some of them live what they think", there's the sultry sitar driven "Dark Side Of The Flower", with Brother John again sounding disturbingly sensual, there's a "Christmas Montage", that mixes Christmas carols, with horrible samples of news reports about people dying from drunk driving, rats overrunning neighborhoods, crying babies, so bizarre!
The whole second half of the first disc finishes with 20 one minute tracks called "They Say", each one a different vignette, delivered over some groovy psychedelia, each one finishing off with Brother John delivering the solution, beginning with the words "They say�" And again, some of them are disturbingly 'sexy', all about what men want, want couples need, etc., and of course, Brother John explains what 'they say' and ties it all back to God. Wow.
The second disc starts off with the "Cantata Of New Life", a sprawling 26 minute epic, rife with choirs, and orchestras, call and response vocals, very dramatic and cinematic, and of course the whole thing's peppered with plenty of fuzzy psych, and Brother John's deep sonorous voice, reminding us a bit of another recent Record Of The Week, William Sheller's Lux Aeterna. But then we get back into yet another collection of his radio broadcasts, and if it's possible, things get even creepier, Brother John in conversation with some mysterious woman, about dying young in car crashes, going AWOL, there's a track about computers, which is goofy and crazy, there's one about how God made rhythm, and more more more. Finally, the two part "This Is Silhouette", a weird collaged soundscape of fuzzed out psych, Brother John telling us how it is, and interviews with young people talking about God and drugs, and one final psychedelic sermon from Brother John!
Seriously incredible stuff, warped and wonderful, disturbing and inspiring in equal measure, fans of sixties spoken word, Christian psych, outsider music of all stripes, weirdo radio broadcasts, and other Omni releases, this one just might take the psychedelic Christian cake!
Packaged in a swank full color six panel digipak, with a huge booklet, with rare photos and extensive liner notes.
Sage Francis has always been the best lyricist of the bunch, the bunch in question being the Anticon collective (Dose One, Sole, Alias, etc...), but until now it was ALL about the lyrics, the music being just background for Francis's nimble flow. A Healthy Distrust finds Francis on fire, spitting some of the most biting, brutal and brutally funny lyrics EVER, sometimes in a purposefully unfunky drawl, sometimes sung in a goofy sing song, and sometimes sprayed in an impossible series of tongue twisting turns of phrase. And unlike Atmosphere and some other hyped white rappers, Francis manages to flow effortlessly, incorporating his white boy idosycracies into his lyrics and delivery instead of letting them define him as an artist.
And finally, for once, the music is just as impressive, dense and emotional, hard and heavy, but not heavy in that incongruous-metal-riff / metal-meets-hip-hop nu-metal way that most rap groups try at least once (and regret it), but in the way only perfectly crafted beats and thick evocative atmospheres can be. Intense and aggressive, melodic and strangely haunting and melancholy with minor key melodies and creepy sad loops. Thanks to a seriously impressive line up of beatmakers and producers: Danger Mouse, Alias, Sixtoo, Controller 7, Daddy Kev and more, A healthy Distrust would be just as good a record even if it was instrumental, with its dark deep Shadow-scapes, weird lumbering funk, skittering electronica, organic instrumentation and lots of wicked beats. So when you mix in Francis's Eminem-meets-MC Serch flow, you've got a contender for hip hop record of the year.
A lot of the attention has focused on the track "Sea Lion", a collaboration between Francis and Will Oldham. And rightfully so. A subtle shuffling drum and bass rhythm, over plaintive mournful guitar and Oldham's cracked moan of a vocal line. Definitely an unlikely mmatch up that works perfectly. Another standout is the anti gangsta diatribe "Gunz Yo!" that had us laughing out loud:
"Straight to the grill like a homophobic rapper unaware of the graphic nature of phallic symbols, tragically ironic, sucking off each other's gats and pistols, I've got more back issues than Guns n' Ammo, cuz my uzi weighs a ton and i never let go of the handle. Hanging onto mommy's pant leg...double fisted. Knee deep in shells, kicking ballistics. This dick is a detatchable penis. An extension of my manhood, positioned like a fetus. An introvenous hook up feeds bullets to my magazine. Nevermind the Bullocks, my pistol is a sex machine!"
and:
"I've got another gun, I keep it in my briefcase. It keeps me safe at my workplace. Cubicle gangster who's in need of his personal space. Angster of love who's unable to look girls in their face."
In fact, this is one of the few hip hop records that actually had us dropping everything we were doing to actually listen closely to the rhymes, even reading along in the cd booklet. And again, the lyrics had us cracking up, and occasionally even getting all choked up. They're that right on. Here's a few favorites:
"Now it's whistle blower versus the pistol holder. Case Dismissed. They'll lock you up and throw away the key witness. Justice is the whim of a judge. Check his chest density. It leaves much room for error, and the rest is left to density. The West Memphis 3 lost paradise. Now it's death penalty vs. Suicidal Tendencies. All I wanted was a fucking Pepsi. 'Making you think you're ugly is a million dollar industry.' Corrina Bain. If they could sell sanity in a bottle, they'd be charging for compressed air. They're marketing health care. They demonized welfare. Middle class eliminated. The rich get richer til the poor get educated."
"Let em freestyle, Winner takes all. When the music's dead I'll have Ted Nugent's head hanging on my wall. Kill one of ours...and we'll kill one of yours with some 'friendly fire.' That's a funny term...like 'civil war'."
"In a world where girl's got retro tattoos, and all I've got is a gut and velcro black shoes."
It's all in the the delivery though, and the above lines are so deftly woven in to the music, that it's hard to imagine them on their own as they are above, but just listen to the sound samples! For hip hop, 2004 may have been the year of MF Doom and Madvillain, but this year (so far) it's all about Sage Francis!
Sweden's Sagor & Swing are an instrumental drums and Hammond organ duo. HAMMOND ORGAN! We know some of you are crazy for the Hammond organ. We are too. And Hammond-freaks or not, this is a lovely, lovely record. Super melodic and dreamy, calm and mesmerizing. Eric Malmberg (organ) and Ulf Moeller (drums) take much inspiration from dark and sleepy Swedish forests, we're told, but we're sure the music of legendary Swedish '60s Hammond/drums duo Hansson & Karlsson is also a big influence! Malmberg actually plays a Hammond that Bo Hansson used on his beloved 1970 Sagan Om Ringen (Lord Of The Rings) album! Not only that, but he writes a comic strip published in a Swedish newspaper called -- get this -- Hansson & Karlsson In Outer Space. The duo's H&K obsession serves them well, without them becoming mere copyists at all. Some tracks are lively and spirited, with stick-in-your-head folk-derived hooks a la fellow Swede Bjorn Olsson (himself a sort of Bo Hansson protege), while others are more like slightly sinister Dario Argento/Goblinesque lullabies, that combine music box melodies with one-note ambient minimalism a bit like that one Aphex Twin-esque track on Burzum's Filosofem. Just a bit. Some Kraftwerk rhythms are hinted at as well, and Magyar Posse's cinematic epics too. This is definitely a universal AQ-staff fave, and we think you'll love it too. Apparently it's S&S fourth album, so we'll have to track down their other two asap!
Before we get into our usual wordy meandering, hyperbolic gushing and tangential ruminating, we oughta come right out and say it first thing, this record is fucking incredible. One of the coolest weirdest records we've heard in ages. Twisted and blown out, weirdly melodic and groovy, dense and washed out and otherworldly and fucking bizarre, equal parts blissed out hypnogogic shoegazey drift, lurching, chopped and screwed style Southern crunk, majestic choral dreaminess, blurred beat heavy collaged electronica, and sample heavy blown out synthbuzz epicness. In some alternate universe alien world, THIS is the music that comes blasting out of booming systems in tricked out lowriders, some sort of glorious, blindingly blissy club music that fuses stuttery stumbly beats, to crumbling distorted low end, and thick swaths of synths so blown out the whole record sounds like it might collapse, mix in soaring operatic vocal samples, low slung bass buzz, jittery drum skitter, and mush mouthed slowed down 'rapping', smear and blur it all into one glorious, warped and warbly cough syrup fever dream epic, and that's basically Salem's King Night.
By now, most folks have at lest heard of 'witch house' a new 'genre' that Salem seem to represent, willingly or not, it's hard to say, but alongside other groups like oOoOO, witch house has received the sort of blog hype (and mainstream press) that immediately turns us off, and made us want to hate it, but so far, everything we've heard, we've dug, big time, but nothing has kicked out ass as much as this Salem record. It's so weird, and twisted and bizarre, it's sort of hard to believe that THIS is the record people are talking about, it makes sense that we'd love it, and that it would be an aQuarius Record Of The Week, but the New York Times? John Q. Public? Fuck it, like we always say, we'd way rather here stuff like this on the radio anyway. But regardless of the hype, or the backlash, or any of the nonmusical stuff, it all boils down to how ingenious and utterly OUT THERE this is. Just check out the title track, some weird garbled voices, some skittery drum machine, some ravey synths, choral voices, and then BAM, the song explodes, the bass a throbbing slab of rumbling crunch, the drum machine weirdly awkward, but the perfect compliment to the tangled melodies, and those soaring distorted operatic voices, the track a total epic, building and building, like the score for some insane alien sci-fi slow motion dancefloor martial arts battle, you can almost visualize fishtanks exploding into galaxies of exploding glass shards, while bodies fly threw the clouds of glistening sparkle, everything seemingly floating weightless. So good. We could listen to this track FOREVER (and pretty much have since we got it). But then comes "Asia" with its fat stuttery beat, and girlish vocals buried beneath a miasma of crumbling distorted crunch, and woozy synth melodies and confusional drum programming, sounding a bit like some over the top M83 jam gone haywire, or maybe some lost Cocteau Twins B-side remixed by Alec Empire and Black Moth Super Rainbow, everything fuzzy and washed out and gauzy, murky and dark, but still suffused with a weird sort of sunshininess. "Frost" is more of the same, even prettier and blissier, taking Sigur Ros and dipping it in a vat of gristly distortion and Carpenter sci-fi synths, and then stretching it out into a billowing sheet of diaphanous dream pop.
It's not until "Sick" that we get a glimpse of Salem's other side, their chopped and screwed, sippin' sizurp, alien slow motion shoegaze hip hop side, the music remains essentially the same, maybe not quite as dense, still swirls of female vocals, a strange otherworldly chorale, but over the top of this sonic cotton candy , a 'rapper' delivers his mutated pitch shifted flow, mouthful of marbles, finger on the record slowing it do a crawl, creating a weirdly dreamy draggy druggy hip hop / dream pop hybrid. And the rest of the record seems to drift lazily between those two sounds, "Release Da Boar" finds Salem offering up another cloud of dopesmoke dreaminess, fuzz drenched dirge pop bliss, which gives way to "Trapdoor", another slow motion, DJ Screw style cough syrup remix, laid over a warm warped and warbly bit of lysergic ambience and buzzing rave synth swirl. "Hound" is like the title track redux, so thick and crumblingly distorted, but so blown out and beautiful, "Tair" is a gloriously weird spaced out, handclapped chunk of shoegaze rap, and "Killer" sounds like Joy Division or Interpol run through a million distortion pedals, and set to a Casio keyboard drum machine beat, only to shrug off some of the crunch and warble, leaving a gorgeous stretch of plaintive low slung doom pop, that hints at the poppiness that lurks beneath the surface on King Night, only to finish the record in a squall of synth buzz, mumbled vox and drum machine chaos.
Wow. What else can we say. This sounded so good in the store, and even better in headphones, but it wasn't until we got in the car, and cranked this as loud as it would go, that it finally sunk in, and suddenly, we were bouncing up and down in a tricked out lowrider on some alien planet in some alternate universe, our booming system BOOMING, getting totally lost in these twisted and gorgeously damaged sounds. WAY WAY recommended.
Norway strikes again! The amazing Salvatore (not to be confused with the cryptic No Neck Blues Band offshoot K. Salavatore) is a mostly instrumental five piece band from that Scandinavian country. They share a lot with their Finnish neighbors (and AQ-faves)
But Salvatore's urgent, headnodding music possesses a gorgeous charm of its own, as there's a lot more in the way of psychedelic guitar burn and use of feedback in their compositions than is usual with Circle. Some other bands that Salvatore seem to reference along with Circle and Neu!: Can, Pell Mell, Flying Saucer Attack, Village of Savoonga... not bad company.
From the first moment we heard this band, we thought: wow, we've *got* to get more of these, Salvatore is a natural for Aquarius! It took us a couple months, but we were finally able to import a bunch of both their first and second albums at a good price direct from Europe. And, after playing them in the store, we're pretty sure we were right about 'em -- we sold some immediately! So good. Both discs are totally recommended, with "Clingfilm" (2000) being overall more structured and melodically catchy and "Jugend" (also 2000) being perhaps more heady, intense, and soundscapey. And both, of course, are not just recommended, but *mandatory* for fans of Circle!
Salvatore's second album, subtitled "Music from and inspired by De Utvalgte's literary installation based on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde", was recorded in Morocco for reasons unclear to us, although we could go on and draw comparisions to the
Read the review of Savatore's debut "Clingfilm" nearby to get the lowdown on these Norwegians, whose albums are a must for any fan of AQ-faves Circle.
"Jugend" is equally as good as "Clingfilm", with maybe more of the drone quotent, though that's a generalization. It does feature as its opening an eleven-minute epic called "Jugend II" that's an awesomely beautiful heavy guitar drone piece, each delicious wave of feedback-distortion seemingly designed to directly trigger your brain's pleasure centers. Play this one LOUD! Elsewhere on the album, mellow out to the dub effects of "Gallo" or the sheer beauty of "Ambrosia".
And let's just say that track three, "We Have Found The Enemy And He Is Us", may be the best Circle song Circle never wrote!
The theme of Wilde's "Dorian Gray" is the battle of Youth and Beauty with Time, with the lesson being: Live! Such exhortations make sense when in the grip of this music! A fucking great record.
Although Salvatore do remind us so strongly of Circle (and Circle offshoots like Ovalki, Ektroverde, and Pharaoh Overlord), it seems likely that such similarities are the result of shared influences rather than a direct ripoff. And, even if Salvatore *are* shamelessly copying the Circle blueprint, we can forgive 'em 'cause they do it sooooo well.
A final note: their brand new album, entitled "Fresh" will be arriving in a few weeks, we'll list it when we get it. And we hear that they are recording a fourth album in Chicago with Tortoise's John McEntire...
Before Cat Power, Beach House, Grouper, Edith Frost, Christina Carter, Valet, Marissa Nadler, Tara Jane O'Neil, El Perro Del Mar, Isobel Campbell, Brightblack Morning Light, etc.... there was Hope Sandoval.
Beginning with her work in seminal and influential slowcore dream pop legends Mazzy Star, Sandoval's trademark dazed and hazy vocals have inspired countless other bands and performers, her gorgeous languid purr and the dark swirling sounds surrounding it were no doubt an intoxicating influence, and as fantastic as so many of those Mazzy acolytes are, there is just something so magical, otherworldly and trance inducing about the original. After Mazzy Star called it quits, Sandoval released both an ep and a full length under her own name, that full length, Bavarian Fruit Bread, was easily as dreamy, seductive and enchanting as anything that Mazzy Star had ever created.
It's been over 8 years since that album came out and we've heard very little from the elusive and mysterious chanteuse (other than rumors of a proposed Codeine reunion, with Sandoval on vocals, how amazing would that have been!!). She lives right here in the Bay Area, and performs now and again, sometimes with like minded music makers, sometimes on her own, she even made an appearance a while back on Vetiver's great debut record. Now finally, almost a decade since her last proper record, we have this completely chilling and utterly beautiful record, that proves it was well worth the wait, the record at once immediate and intimate, but also with the feel of something meticulously crafted over many long dark nights.
Immaculate, lush, warm, melancholy, seductive, sensual, sexy, smoky... words only begin to scratch the surface when describing the intensity and emotion, the depth and and delicate beauty of Through The Devil Softly.
The music here is again, a perfect match for Sandoval's gorgeous vocals, dark and lush and seductive and hypnotic, which comes as no surprise since her band The Warm inventions is comprised of some incredible players, including her main musical coconspirator, Colin O Ciosoig of My Bloody Valentine, who co-wrote several of the songs as well as being the Inventions' drummer.
Through The Devil Softly is a record that even on first listen sounds timeless, and ageless, a record that will no doubt seep into your heart, and soul, and play on and on, a constant companion, a musical balm that will soothe and comfort, ease you when you are uneasy, wrap you in warmth as you dream the day away, and lift you into the air as millions of memories, thoughts and desires infuse your body and mind. Simply breathtaking!
Remember the movie 2000 Maniacs? Where tourists are lured to a small Southern town and are forced to participate in 'games' that are essentially elaborate and ultra gory (and quite inventive) excuses for extreme torture that ultimately lead to their deaths. Or howabout the sixties biker classic Easy Rider? The ultimate drugged out hippie motorcycle road movie. Or maybe the seventies British horror flick Psychomania, about psychopathic suicidal bikers who make a pact with the devil, kill themselves and return from the dead to terrorize the squares? So now, imagine some crazed, druggy, doomy, psychedelic, psychotropic, head spinning mix of all three, and Satan's Satyrs are pretty much the perfect house band. Similarly, Die Screaming is essentially the soundtrack to the above, some impossibly insane, low budget, blood drenched, exploitation-splatter Z-grade alien biker undead epic. The opening track "Thumper's Theme" is uncharacteristically upbeat, but you can almost imagine this fuzzed out organ fueled jam playing beneath the credits as a porky, leather vested biker, presumably "Thumper" rolls into town, as the townsfolk lock their doors and lower their blinds, all to the strains of fuzzed out distorto riffage, wheezing organ, tumbling toms, all a little bit surfy, infused with just a bit of sonic swagger. But it's on "Instruments Of Hellfire" where things get really good, or perhaps bad if you're one of those innocent bystanders, wild squiggly psychedelic leads over blown out Stooges-y metallic garage punk pound, plenty of wild wah wah guitars, totally tripped out, and when the vocals swoop in, totally whiney, high pitched, and echo drenched, somewhere between a young Ozzy, and a more unhinged hysterical version of Uncle Acid, and in fact, Uncle Acid fans should be ALL over this. It's like a more raw and primitive take on the same sort of seventies psychedelic hard rock, but with SS, it all sounds so much more desperate and unhinged, frantic and dangerous. Oh and then out of nowhere, in comes a barrage of bongos and hand percussion, that gives the sound a little bit of a Goat vibe, but only for like 10 seconds, and then it's right back into another, lurching, lumbering psych-doom garage rock blowout.
Apparently UK doomlords Electric Wizard are huge fans, which makes sense, as they share much of the same sonic DNA, a similar psych-doom bent, and the same obsession with exploitation movies, horror flicks from the sixties and seventies, SS's jams even more that EW's evoking rubber suited beasties, blood spurting ultra violence, greasy bikers and bodacious bikini babes, if it's possible for a 'sound' to be greasy, and filthy, dirty and caked in dried blood, well, Die Screaming is as filthy, bloody and lysergic as it gets. And stick around for the sprawling creepfest closer, the 12+ minute title track, which is a drugged out doom crawl: over a bed of whirring organs, SS unfurl a lumbering dirge, a wasted psychedelic downer rock sprawl, that explodes in the last few minutes into a final, frenzied blast of heavy-horror biker rock crush that KILLS!!!
All that, and then when you add in the blood dripping logo, and melting skull cover art, it's pretty much a guaranteed aQ Record Of The Week! YOU WILL DIE SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the stuff we like! Slow moving vinyl crackle and click, achingly pretty. Droning melodiously, hum and repetition beautifully employed, this conjures a mood of reverie and melancholic bliss. Saule is the name used by Belgian composer Xavier Garcia Bardon for his turntable-based works, and this Sub Rosa cd is his debut release. The first thing we were reminded of when we heard this was Philip Jeck. You know how much we love that British looper of scratchy old vinyl, right? Like Jeck, Saule also finds music in the grooves of old records -- that is, in the sound of the needle on wax, as well as what's more commonly considered a record's musical 'content'. And like Jeck he's a careful listener, rather than a hyperkinetic whipwhipwhap dj. Futhermore, both Saule and Jeck use multiple turntables to elaborate an aesthetic enamored of dusty, glacially-paced drones. But although they have much in common, Saule isn't merely just another Jeck. No, Saule is more like Jeck crossed with a post-rock band! But there's no 'band', just Saule's prepared records, three turntables, a microphone, mixer, and "headphones (for feedback)". With Philip Jeck, the mesmerizing, crackling loops can be their own reward, but Saule will provide some rock-like resolution as well, as with the sudden burst of distortion that heralds the addition of a sampled, broken drum break toward the end of track one, "Hola". Especially when you get to "Lido", the third of three long tracks that comprise Sentimental Journey, you'll hear this post-rock thing we're talking about. Codeine mixed with Radian comes to mind. "Lido" was apparently originally conceived as a soundtrack to an independent film, stills from which enliven the cd packaging. And it, like the other tracks here, has a cinematic quality, though it might well overwhelm any visuals. This disc is a stellar exampleof 'turntablism' in a non-hip-hop context -- as we said, it's more like instrumental post rock instead, although we're sure DJ Shadow fans will like this! We suggest playing it loud, which will be especially effective when track three swells into something grand that Godspeed could never match.
Following up on the hilarious and successful "Rock, Rot, Rule" (see AQL #73) comedy cd comes a new collection of radio tomfoolery. On New Jersey's unique and prestigious radio station WFMU, Tom Scharpling hosts an unlikely talk radio show which features
We tried to play this for our favorite "music scholar" (we'll call him "JW") but his response was, "Oh yeah, I've already got that". Of course. Worth it for this piece alone, although the rest of this double disc set contains lots of laughs too.
