These young spandex-clad Swedish shredders are back with their second strike of speedy, melodic, refreshingly retro '80s styled metal! Yeah, that's right, they make it seem fresh again somehow, they've got a lot of the right spirit, like their pals Helvetes Port, with whom they share the same fashion sense. However, Enforcer aren't so eccentric, seeming a bit more "pro" though. And the other thing they've got, that really counts, are cool songs! Not only do they go for the gusto with galloping guitars, high pitched shrieks, heroic choruses, etc. but yeah these are catchy, actual songs with a "pop" element like bands wrote back during the glory days of the early '80s, the era that so inspires these guys. Obviously NWOBHMers Iron Maiden is one influence, we're also hearing some Grim Reaper, and, crossing over to the USA, maybe Riot and Alcatrazz (the latter especially on the Japanese-themed "Katana", and remember, that band had a rather famous Swedish guitarist after all).
And, though they're definitely intent on staying "in genre", doing songs with titles like "Roll The Dice", "Midnight Vice", and "Live For The Night", with lyrics about sleazy fast livin', violent death, and so forth, it's not all formula, Enforcer provides some interesting surprises, like the way the title track starts off as an instrumental ripper before seguing by the the end into a drifting wordless la la la blissful outro, not what we were expecting.
Among today's crop of eighties metal revivalists, Enforcer, along with fellow AQ faves Cauldron from Canada (with whom they've toured), lead the pack amongst those who totally shred authentically -without- neglecting the pop, a rare breed!
What are they enforcing? The law of metal, of course. We welcome the discipline. We almost overlooked this band 'cause we thought they were just another one in the current glut of generic retro-thrashers (many of whom make their home on the Heavy Artillery label). But we're glad we gave it a listen, 'cause Sweden's Enforcer turned out to be a nice surprise, more 'musical' than most and party hardy too. They're a young n' energetic band forging '80s-ish metal along the lines of NWOBHM stuff like Savage, Saxon and Diamond Head. We're also hearing echoes of Riot, Metal Church, early Megadeth, Exciter... No it's not that original, either, but that doesn't stop it from kicking ass (see also Bullet, and Wolf). It's just a good ol' old school rip fest. Speedy but also melodic, with high pitched shreiky (but not too shrieky) singing, shredding leads, and lots of catchy grooves - the bass lines are active and audible, galloping away Maiden style. Death and black and (now) thrash metal bands are a dime a dozen these days but it's impressive when kids kick out something like this, sounding like the real deal from the early eighties, though with better production! The disc is packed with neck wreckers and should have you headbanging and air guitaring with abandon. It's not epic or eccentric or doomy, but sometimes pedal to the metal spandex-clad rockin' is enough! You can buy your umpteenhundredth grim black metal album (we have, and counting...) but once in a while you want metal that's fun and exciting. And for that, Enforcer is just the thing... also check out the Heavy Metal Killers comp on Earache (also reviewed this list) which features a track from this Enforcer album among many other current true heavy metal up and comers.
The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Rodelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again Water has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Whoa! I thought that Weakling's "Dead As Dreams" was gonna be the uncontested "Black Metal Record of the Year" until I heard this, the new album from Norwegian Viking-metallers Enslaved. Now Weakling has some competition! "Mardraum" ("Nightmare") is probably Enslaved's best record to date, no mean feat considering that their "Frost" and "Eld" albums are two of the best Nordic black metal discs ever, in AQ's humble opinion. This new album somehow combines the violent and epic qualities of Enslaved's past works with what can only be considered (despite our dislike, and over-use, of the term) a 'post-rock' sensibility. And, on top of that, there's a full on ROCK element at work here too. During the very first track ("Larger Than Time -- Heavier Than Night") you'll swear that (despite the very metal attack) you can hear in the droning guitar harmonies and mathy drumming the post-rock of a Codeine or A Minor Forest! Enslaved have created a new, multi-layered complexified psych-metal, mixing dangerous speed with slow doom epic majesty (the waves pounding on shore during the Viking longboat raid)...then, amid all this beauty and brutality, they'll go and whip out some leather-clad, almost-punk rock n' roll riffing that's just as foreign to the black metal template as the 'post-rock' aspect just discussed. Not that any of this seems purposefully jarring or ill-fitting (or Mr. Bungle-like) -- it seems quite natural, more artful than artsy. Another example: track seven, "The Ending Empire", starts off with a catchy riff-cycle that strongly reminds me of something like "Insidious Detraction" off the first album by Greg Ginn's Gone, but then the song takes a turn into an almost honkytonk country-western flavored breakdown with a melodic rock guitar solo, before the Viking battle re-commences! Brilliant. Is this the most intense, heaviest, most psychedelic, rockin'est, 'post-black-metal' album ever recorded? We think so. Norwegian genius that puts almost all heavy-duty avant-rock acts to shame, metal or not.
Ivar Bjornson, Grutle Kjellson, Dirge Rep and R. Kronheim are Enslaved. We mention them individually because they and their band deserve to be household names, at least among Aquarius customers. Enslaved are definitely one of our absolute favorite Norwegian
Ok, enough hyperbole (for the moment). What's "Monumension" really like, and how *does* it compare exactly to "Mardraum"? Well, somebody had told us to expect that the new Enslaved would sound like Genesis, but that's definitely not the case. True, '70s prog rock a la Genesis (or, maybe more accurately, King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator) certainly flows in the blood of Grutle, Ivar and Co., along with the more ancient blood of their Norse ancestors. Opeth fans will hear the parallels. But are they truly warriors of modern prog? Not quite, as they are so much more. The first thing an Enslaved fan will notice is the surprising prevalence of death metal style vocals alongside the black metal rasps and Viking chants. Vocally, lyrically and musically, this is some seriously heavy stuff, and violent. But it all flows, sometimes into realms so tripped-out and Floyd-ishly psychedelic that you'll forget you're listening to "metal" at all. But then, the next song will start with a blood-quickening, bone-jarring riff to remind you. Like on "Mardraum", the band brilliantly weaves various metal/rock styles into pure Enslaved music, perhaps upping the "folk" aspect a bit (which balances those death metal elements nicely). There's even a bonus track by a related band called HOV (Trygve Mathiesen and a "tribal choir" which includes all the members of Enslaved) that's meant to evoke traditional Viking music -- although the band stresses that "Enslaved has never been about reproduction or literal interpretations. It is more of a quest for creating our own musical traditions and dimensions. The band is built upon the philosophy, magick and myths of the Vikings, not a desire to dress like they did during a historical period or to talk exactly like them. It is something deeper than a mere roleplay to please the outer eyes and ears." These efforts by Enslaved certainly have resulted in surreal, epic, timeless metal for the mind, body and soul.
So yes, these rune-obsessed geniuses, mere youngsters wise beyond their years, have created another utter masterpiece. And it's not just me -- everyone I've discussed this record with agrees that it's amazing. Arrrgh -- my fanboy ramblings can't even begin to do it justice. Emperor, Satyricon, Ulver are all great Norwegian black metal bands that in various ways and to various degress have also branched out into the beyond, but Enslaved are something else again.
Magic with a K, audial indulgence describes Equimanthorn's Second Sephira Cella. It's sonick Sumerian mystery from several necromantically exalted members of the Texas occult metal act Absu, including Emperor Proscriptor Magikus, whose absurd genius has been trumpeted here before. Is Equimanthorn also an "act"? Or it in fact something more serious? Whatever it is, it's certainly NOT a black metal album. No metal on here at all, actually. It's all quite atmospheric (but musical), creepy, ritualistic material... The resemblance to, say, Absu is all in the lyrickal text, the ancient sorceries evoked and invoked. Ridiculous it (probably) is, but at least these adepts have done their homework. You can argue with them about the significance of the Sixth Throne Of Asaru or the Rule Of Utukagaba but I'll stay out of it. Professing a belief in supernatural arts or not, the sheer sonics should seduce many a listener. Divided among the three members of Equimanthorn (Proscriptor, Equitant, and Ekimmu Abstractum), the tracks here are all deep and dark ritual soundtracks, resplendent with droning synths, 'unseen voices', mellotron, 'six-fold bows', and varieties of exotic Eastern instrumentation. We're reminded of such diverse artists as Goblin, Laszlo Hortobagyi, and a host of World Serpents... The music and its meaning are well matched. Equimanthorn is at ease with obscure, occult Esoterica in a way that, say, The Secret Chiefs 3 would like us to think they are but never will be. Advanced, impressive, and -- regardless of any reality-altering aspects -- excellent, candlelit entertainment.
At this point Roky Erickson's turbulent story has been pretty well documented (there's even a movie about it!), and it now seems to occupy the same strange annals of musical history as the Norwegian black metal murders and the rise/fall/rise/fall/rise again of Pentagram's unsinkable Bobby Liebling - gazed upon with morbid car-crash curiosity by the casual listening public! But it's still probably the best place to start for those uninitiated souls considering taking the one way trip into the bizarre landscape of The Evil One. The abridged version is this: Roky Erickson first made a name for himself as a founding member of psychedelic pioneers and vocal LSD proponents 13th Floor Elevators (bonus fact: they're thought to have invented the term "psychedelic rock"!), but as a result of a minor drug arrest and a schizophrenia diagnosis he wound up in a mental institution subjected to the horrors of involuntary electroshock therapy.
In the years that followed his release he publicly claimed that a Martian had begun inhabiting his body, was arrested for mail theft after developing an obsession with the postal system... only recently, in the 2000's, has seemingly pulled himself together, and thankfully has started playing live again. It's definitely a sad and a fascinating story, but all throughout those tumultuous years Roky kept putting out albums, and it's important not to let the backstory overshadow that fact. Because regardless of everything else, there is absolutely no doubt in our minds that The Evil One is a bona fide MASTERPIECE, and is probably as good as any hard rock record you will ever hear. Originally released in 1981 and collecting some of Roky's earliest solo material (a few of the tracks were featured on the I Have Always Been Here Before compilation that we reviewed some time back), The Evil One is as timeless a rock record as there's ever been. It seems to exist in some sort of vintage vacuum - it has that vague sense of sounding "old" but doesn't seem to belong to any specific period in music. It has the unique quality of sounding both ahead of its time and strangely retro, even for 1981 - like it was transported from some alternate rock & roll past where the Billboard charts were topped by pop/rock occult ballads and catchy demon worshipping jams.
"Two Headed Dog" opens the record with a jarring, almost post-punk wall of guitar dissonance before a snare drum ushers in an absolutely perfect swaggering proto metal riff - recalling the best moments of classic Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult. Great leads and tight flawlessly simple drumming abounds, all while Erickson wails about children being nailed to crosses like some sort of deranged bizarro Neil Young, if he'd perhaps become a Satanist preacher or delirious doomsday prophesier. There's a Southern twang to Roky Erickson's vocals as well, that lend a certain Americana baptist noir to much of the record. The production is soft and almost subdued - but it's the perfect compliment to the deceptively simple songs and Erickson's surreal stream of consciousness lyrics (perfectly represented by the album cover's chaotic collage that seems to be exploding from Roky's head). The Evil One is certainly a strange record, but it's a subtle creeping strangeness. It's a strangeness that never compromises the songwriting. As we said earlier, first and foremost The Evil One is a fantastic rock record - chock full of catchy choruses, great guitar leads and extremely tight understated playing.
There's tons of variety too. You only need to look at the transition from the aforementioned "Two Headed Dog" into the album's second track "I Walked with a Zombie" - a pristine slab of Saturday night drive-in B-movie doo wop (complete with "I walked with a zombie"/"He walked with a zombie" backing vocal tradeoffs!). Elsewhere there are more upbeat cuts: it's not too hard to imagine "Mine Mine Mind" or "I Think of Demons" being played by Tom Petty or The Cars while "Don't Shake Me Lucifer" is classic Chuck Berry/Rolling Stones blues rock boogie woogie. But all the while Roky is still injecting even the album's poppiest moments with bizarre imagery about devils, goblins and gremlins. It's unsettling, fun and bewildering all at the same time. There's plenty of heaviness as well though. "Night of the Vampire" has a staggered militaristic intro that recalls Diamond Head's NWOBHM classic "Am I Evil" before slithering into repetitive clean guitar gloom accompanied by epic guitar leads and bubbling horror movie synthesizers. Then this incredible closing duel synth/guitar lead comes in that seems to recall the same crumbling castle gothic horror of Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley." Elsewhere the loose driving groove and jagged guitar harmonies of "Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play" would totally do Thin Lizzy proud - you can almost hear the unquiet restless spirit of Phil Lynott singing over it!
But moreso than referencing older bands, this record's influence can be heard in so many places after its release - most notably in the current wave of modern witchy, occult obsessed groups. It's as essential to Witchcraft's hazy organic seance-rock as vintage Pentagram is. The glorious proto-doom of "Stand for the Fire Demon" is clearly the template for The Devil's Blood's entire sound. The opening riff of "White Faces" sounds more than just a little bit like Ghost's "Ritual" (and was covered by both The Devil's Blood AND Witchcraft to boot!). And one group of dudes from North Carolina just went ahead and named their entire band after the pulsing proto metal of "Bloody Hammer"! It's not even a stretch to imagine this could have been a pretty big influence of the stripped down rock & roll darkness of Danzig's first couple of solo albums - even the "whoa-oh"s in "The Wind and More" sound a bit Misfits-y!
Just in case it's not obvious yet, this comes with the highest recommendation, and we won't hesitate in declaring it absolutely one of the best hard rock/proto metal records ever recorded. And also one of the weirdest! It's so bursting with great songs and absolutely overflowing with character in fact that it's hard to imagine ANYONE not loving this record. So give yourself over to Roky's monstrous world. Stay a while! See what strange creatures you encounter there. But don't blame us if you never find your way back home again!
This is a Krautrock masterpiece!!! This cd reissue of the 1975 debut release by Eroc has totally floored us. Eroc's the solo project of Joachim Heinz Ehrig, who was the drummer in Grobschnitt. He used his solo project as a way to explore electronics, cutups and sound collage all surrounding totally beautiful & harmonic instrumental pieces. Of the albums he made under the Eroc moniker this is the one that shimmers with the most beauty while still showing his crazy range and unpredictability. From the blissed out to the bizarre, Eroc 1 is one of those records that you can't believe you've never heard before, and one that once heard will surely go down as one of your favorite psych/kraut/prog gems of the '70s.
Every time this plays in the store, someone in the back inevitably comes up front to see what the heck is playing. And often they begin to think that if this keeps up, they just might just have a new favorite record. Striking the perfect balance between experimentation and melody, Eroc melded the use of modular synthesizers, tape, overdubs, sound generators, guitars and percussion into an incredibly forward thinking, densely layered, crazily original sound. There is a golden sonic glow reminiscent of the best moments of Cluster / Harmonia, every track is fantastic and original, each one drives us wild, and the four bonus tracks on this collection are just as good as any of the tracks on the album proper! You can hear the early blueprints of so many musical movements that would take shape in the decades following Eroc's 1975 debut. Moments of dreaminess that foreshadow Durutti Column, glimmering electronics that anyone on Morr Music would kill for, and an integration of so many elements that sonically predate groups like Fridge by decades! We can imagine Andy Votel (Prog Is Not A 4 Letter Word, Finders Keepers) freaking out over this album much like Julian Cope who sang this disc's praises on his Head Heritage website.
And certainly all of us here at AQ have discovered a record that is pretty much a shoe-in for many of our all time favorite lists!
The Brain reissue series on Revisited continues to bring us the crazy krautrock goodies! Of course, having already raved about the first solo album from the drummer for theatrical prog loonies Grobschnitt, Joachim Ehrig aka Eroc, we were exceedingly curious about this second one. Ja, Eroc 1 was a HUGE hit 'round here. After all, we called it a "krautrock masterpiece" and compared it to all sorts of favorite things, from Harmonia to Fridge! So, what's the deal with Eroc 2, originally released a year later in 1976? The cut-up confusionality that was a deliberate, delightful part of Eroc's debut is continued here, but taken to further extremes, which makes this more of a DIFFICULT spin at times. It's more bizarre, with the curiosity factor up and the overall listenability factor slightly down.
Like Eroc 1, this has its share of moody, melodic, synth-laden instrumental bliss-outs for the Cluster fans in the house. Eroc 2's electronics also venture into carefree, Bavarian dances for Liederhosen wearing' hippies. And then there's a bunch of paranoiac freakouts to give Faust a run for their money! In a word: Quirky. Heck, downright weird. But it's krautrock, that's what we came for. The mood of the music displays good and bad vibes both -- and a sense of humor, we're pretty sure (though our lack of German makes it tough know just what's a joke). There's a healthy amount of talking (auf Deutsch) all over this album. Singing too. Though there's lots of purely instrumental parts as well. But with 30 tracks (13 of 'em bonus cuts!), some of them dense epics, many others brief under-a-minute interludes of insanity, the puzzling and the pleasing are in rough proportion. Amidst Eroc's wonderful spacey, synthy, psychedelic music, you'll hear all sorts of stuff. Children's voices. Babbling outbursts. Electronic squiggles -- and the sound of maniacal sawing? Oh and orgasmic (male) moaning... Perhaps it's all some sort of concept album and all this makes sense, tied together in some strange narrative. Or, they're all nonsense non sequiturs, anyway? We don't know, but are amused/intrigued/entertained. Definitely, get Eroc 1 first, but check this out too. If you like your krautrock to be uber krauty, full of surreal surprises and jokes you won't get, you'll probably dig this. Like Eroc 1, this consists of stuff recorded in Eroc's home studio, growing out of tapes intended to augment Grobschnitt's live shows. Both records turned into personal LP-length visions well worthy to stand alone.
Can't wait to hear Eroc 3, which is supposedly also been reissued or will be soon...
Es is the work of Finland's Sami Sanpakkila. This is the first work that we've encountered from Es, though Sanpakkila is closely connected to the out-rock ensembles of Circle and Ektroverde. The nine tracks are hermetic sculptures built out of beautifully gossamer guitar playing with Zoviet France like backing loops and atmospheres. Fans of early Durutti Column or Steven R. Smith's evocative work should definitely take note.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Very cool, fancy import vinyl reissue of this Carpenter classic (and onetime aQ Record Of The Week), from a mysterious UK label who have just started doing a whole series of uber desirable soundtrack reissues on lp. We're always going on about John Carpenter, citing his music as a big influence on a lot of underground bands today, and this is definitely a good example of what we love about his stuff.
Here's what we said about this when we made the cd reish a ROTW back in '05:
Why are we making a soundtrack for a movie from 1983 starring Kurt Russell (who hams it up in a piratical eye-patch) our Record Of The Week, this week? Well, we've got a few reasons... first off, the music is awesome and we love it (good reason right there). Secondly, this cd has been out of print and hard to find for several years now, going for silly sums on eBay, sought after by soundtrack collectors and electronic music fans.
While director John Carpenter is known for making quite a few classic films in the B-grade horror and sci-fi thriller genres (Halloween, The Thing, Assault On Precinct 13, The Fog, They Live etc.), it's perhaps not as well known that he personally composed the soundtrack music to many of his movies, starting with his first flick Dark Star back in 1974. Working out of a home studio with what was technically advanced equipment at the time (machines which would now be considered awesomely vintage), he composed electronic music soundtracks that some might say are even better than the movies themselves. Certainly they're worthy to stand on their own, anyway (just like Goblin's soundtracks for Argento's films). Carpenter's compositions have influenced other musicians, and not just soundtrack writers. Anyone who loved the Zombi album we recommended last year needs to have some John Carpenter in their collection for sure!
And we recommend Escape From New York as being one of his best. Somehow it combines a lot of stuff that we figure a lot of you like: suspenseful Goblinesque darkness, droning old school synths, kitchy Disco Not Disco style NYC '80s groove... Loaded with claustrophobic nervous tension, these tracks make use of taut, minimalistic, hypnotically repetitive rhythms that make us imagine an Electro version of AQ faves Circle. The atmosphere is further enhanced by the inclusion of sound FX from the film and snippets of dialogue - the tough guy banter of Kurt Russell's wiseass anti-hero "Snake" Plissken is priceless, especially due to Russell's constipated Clint Eastwood delivery.
Set in a dystopian, wartorn then-future of 1997, Escape From New York sends "Snake" into the maximum security prison that the island of Manhattan has become to rescue (at pain of death) the President of the United States, who is being held captive there by the city's "inmates" after Air Force One made a particularly poor choice of a place to crash-land! The film also stars the likes of Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Donald Pleasence, and Isaac Hayes, all of 'em capable of chewing the scenery right along with Russell. You definitely don't need to have seen Escape From New York to get a kick out of this soundtrack, but the movie is an enjoyable '80s action thriller worthy of its cult status and listening to this will probably get you to go rent it.
Carpenter composed and performed the score in association with sound designer Alan Howarth, whose home studio (stocked with an ARP Quadra, an ARP Avatar with 16 step sequencer, a Prophet 5 programmable analog synthesizer, and a Linn LM-1 drum machine) was used for the recording. Howarth was further responsible for remixing and remastering the album for the release of this "expanded edition" which first appeared in 2000. It includes several cues originally meant for scenes deleted from the theatrical release of the film, and runs to over 57 minutes in length. 'Bout time it was back in circulation!
This vinyl version includes a poster of its exclusive over art, by Jay 'Iron Jaiden' Shaw, along with liner notes from both Howarth and Shaw.
Birmingham's self described 'dark, vicarious, pernicious, sinister, hateful, drug influenced, tortured, philosophical, and barbaric doom' band return with three tracks, clocking in at almost 45 minutes, of the most brutal doom we've ever heard. Even better than their two previous double cds, because now the production, always their one shortcoming, finally matches the sheer power and intensity of their epic doomscapes. Walls of inpenetrable low-end dissolve into slow motion, spaced out, dire and tortured dirges. Utterly Breathtaking.
1971 strikes again. Holy moly, the planets must have been extra-aligned that year. Here's a krautrock classic from '71 that kinda fell through the cracks (though not the cracks in the cosmic egg). Well, it's certainly been lauded by some but we'd never heard it before now, anyway. In fact, this is its first time on cd, apparently, and we're glad to have it! Wild stuff here, a trip indeed, starting off with a serious dose of crazed, freakout action for synth and drums entitled "Thursday Morning Sunrise". Seriously psychedelic jamming jazz weirdness, like Sun Ra gone heavy. The synth squiggles and squeaks, growls and grumbles, and drums tumble and splatter, for almost 12 minutes. Some sunrise! But if you think that this is gonna be an album of improvised, uh, "drug jazz" (which it is, in part), you'll be surprised by what's to come on this disc... lovely acoustic guitar melodies ("Mellodrama Nr. 2 A"), faux-Eastern bliss-out vibes ("Raga"), and spoken word beat poetry set amidst angelic vocal arrangements ("Lady Blue")... like we said, a trip! But then again, all this eclectic awesomeness - from moody jazz to ethnic groove to fuzzy acid rock instrumentals - isn't all that unexpected in a krautrock band, especially one featuring members of Embryo and Exmagma, as well as mastermind Wolfgang Dauner (of The Oimels fame). They deliver the goods with a great deal of groove and gusto, making music both beautiful and bizarre... it could be the soundtrack to some avantgarde psychedelic art film from the '70s, like a Jodorowsky epic. Despite the not-so-cheap import price, this is a recommended reissue, done right. Snazzy, colorful cover, remastered sound (from original masters), 3 lengthy & quite excellent bonus tracks, liner notes... the works!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Easily a shoo-in for heavy metal/stoner rock album of the month! The long-awaited domestic debut by this cult Japanese band of longhaired 70's Black Sabbath freaks. Although they actually sound less like the Sabs than fellow Sabs-worshippers Trouble. Some other influences that come through the pot haze include the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (this disc includes their cover of "Innocent Exile" from Meteor City's Iron Maiden tribute), '70s Japanese heavy psych bands like Blues Creation and Flower Travellin' Band, Thin Lizzy, Saint Vitus, Kyuss, and other heavies. Meaning, in addition to sheer psychedelic doom riffage (a la another Japanese band, Church of Misery) they really can write *songs* in the classic sense--one listen to, arguably, the album's highlight, "Easy Goin'" and you'll know. We didn't think they made 'em like that anymore. And stay tuned for the 'bonus track', an unlisted 15 minutes of improv hippie folk drone in the tradition of Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. Very recommended indeed!!
To begin with, there's already something special about bands from New Zealand, whether they're making eccentric indie pop or droned-out experimental noise, we like ourselves a lot of NZ music! So this band Evil Ocean, from Auckland, already has that going for them. But then add in the fact that they're flat-out obsessed with music from another of our favorite locales, Finland, specifically what our friends in Circle like to call NWOFHM, and what do you get? A really, really awesome and unclassifiable album indeed. Krauty confusional garagey distorted DIY doom metal new wave soundtrack music? Maybe we can call it NWONZHM??
Apart from several interludes of eerie, abstract weirdness, the disc mostly consists of some fairly blown-out, rockin' songs, which are ALSO weird as all heck though. These tracks are full of thick fuzz guitar, churning riffage riding the rinky-dink ticky-tock of the manic, machine-sounding percussion. Other ingredients include dramatic female vocals and gnarlier, sneering male vox (rising into a falsetto at times), plenty of effects and sci-fi synth sounds everywhere, tons o' fuzz (we mentioned that already), spooky suspenseful bits, metallic gallop, industrial clank, seasick keyboards, and more... There's ritualistic stuff that sounds like Sylvester Anfang, propulsive parts a la Circle, and heads-down Hawkwindy hypno-rock. The mood can get genuinely intense and disturbing, yet Evil Oceans also obviously display a bizarre, even nerdy sense of humor, heck there's a track here called "Rise Of The Administration Daleks", complete with hysterical Dalek voices... but also Spaghetti Western whistling... what does it all mean?? It's art, or arty (several of the members are apparently successful painters) but most importantly it rocks in a quite entertaining WTF? fashion.
Recommended to anyone into so-called NWOFHM stuff (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Steel Mammoth, etc.), also White Hills, Brain Donor, and other gritty post-Stooges space rockers and post-punk derelicts. Released on pro-printed cd-r, packaged in a in a full-color ecopak with photos and artwork celebrating both the epic New Zealand landscape, and Charles Darwin.
It's frustrating sometimes that lots of our all time favorite records came out well before the aQuarius list was established. We occasionally pick old favorites, like Rein Sanction, Archers Of Loaf, Hardship Post, Green River, stuff that's still available, and review them on the list. Cuz as far as we're concerned, released dates and the concept of 'new music' are pretty much useless. All records are new and exciting to someone who has never heard them. But often times those old favorites are long gone and out of print. So when one of those records does finally get reissued, we jump at the chance to be able celebrate and share that amazing music via the list. Which brings us to this double disc reissue from weirdo eco-radical doom drug grinders Exit-13.
A band we have loved for EVER (so much so, Allan even interviewed them for the first issue of his old fanzine, years and years ago), Exit-13 were only loosely a grind band, sure they were fast and furious, guitars buzzed, songs were short and complex, the vocals a monstrous gurgle, the lyrics way political, all about the environment, vegetarianism, etc.� But for a grind band, they sure spent a lot of time spewing huge gory gouts of buzzing doomic plod, as well as incorporating convoluted jazz weirdness, freaked out psychedelic leads, thrashing punk rock, bizarre interludes with croony vocals, skittery rhythms, and noodly guitar jams, bits of angular retard-funk, Black Flag-ish gnarled riffing as well as confusional cut ups, dizzying collages of chopped and recontextualized vocals, Jello Biafra, bits of Jeopardy music, the theme from Underdog, Led Zep pastiche and whatever else they felt like tossing in there.
The best way we can describe it is John Zorn meets diSEMBOWELMENT meets Brutal Truth.
The original discs came with stickers that summed up the Exit-13 sound pretty succinctly:
"Mind warping philosophically contemplative environmental brain food from Pennsylvania's unique smoking grind rock extremists" (from Don't Spare The Green Love) and "An 80 minute head explosion of absolutely unique sonic intelligence from Pennsylvania's environmental grind rock hedonists. This band smokes, bud!" (from Ethos Musick)
Hard to argue with that�
So, High Life collects almost everything the band has ever recorded (minus the ep of '20s and '30s cover songs, all about reefer, sung by the Pain Teens' Bliss Blood): their one proper full length, as well as all of their various singles, eps and splits (previously released as Don't Spare The Green Love). And by now, you've probably realized these guys were all about the pot. The songs buzz by in dense clouds of bong smoke, lots of samples about marijuana, lyrics about legalizing hemp and pot. The back of the booklet even features a huge pot leaf and the "Stop the madness - Legalize Marijuana" legend. But that's only one of their causes, a quick look through the lyrics, reveals a seriously 'green' agenda, environmentalism, vegetarianism, there's even a whole track that's just a snippet of the Phil Donahue show, on which he interviews members of Earth First!
But none of that would mean anything if this band didn't completely slay. And thankfully they do. Heavy and fucked, weird, but weirdly catchy, buzzing and blasting, then pounding and chugging. Furious blasts of blown out lightning fast grind are butted up against lurching doom sludge, peppered with super fucked up free jazz breakdowns. Guitars are serpentine, jagged and angular, the drums go from pound to blast beat and back
the vocals harsh and gurgly, there are bits of weirdly classic rock sounding jams, over sound samples, electronics and Goblin-like keyboards...
"Anthropocentric Ecocidal Conundrum" begins with an insistent folky strum over chirping birds and burbling brook, until the guttural death metal vocals kick in and the drums, then it's some sort of metallic death metal folk freakout, finally morphing into some gnarled convoluted math grind jam. Elsewhere, cool creepy acoustic guitars drift over moaning synths, and splattery drums, super cinematic and haunting on "Only Protest Gives A Hope Of Life". There is plenty of weirdness. Damaged is a descriptor that constantly springs to mind, as does demented, and most certainly fucked. Silly too. But at it's core, this is heavy, heady stuff. Brutal but musical, fierce and fractured, forward thinking and seriously far out.
The second disc is the older stuff, and is at once more furious and thrashing, much more grind, but also has lots more sound samples, songs dotted with all sorts of film snippets, voices, bits of dialogue all tangled up with the growling harsh vocals. "Spare The Wrench Surrender The Earth" is half funeral doom, before launching into a more grinding blast of punk rock. The stuff from the first 7" is almost like old school goregrind, with impossible gurgling loooooow vocals, the guitars a furious blur, the drums a furious splatter. Then there's "Fingernails" hinting at the weirdness to come, with its fake horns, and frog-like croaking super effected vocals, and that classic funeral march melody mixed into the chaotic rrroooaaar.
Any fan of heavy music, be it black, thrash, grind, doom, or sludge should be able to get into these guys. And they're just weird enough to maybe also appeal to the less metal inclined looking for something freaked out and heavy.
An interesting note: like any self-respecting grind band, Exit-13 made a regular practice of releasing records with different versions of the same songs, so the song "Disemboweling Party" appears three different times, while seven other tracks appear twice. But in most cases, the various versions, while not totally different, are varied enough to keep it interesting, even if it's just that one is super hot and in the red, and one is super muddy and lo-fi, or even just that different samples were used.
Our only complaint, is that this is only sort of the complete Exit-13, 'cause they left off the extended, potentially-speaker-damaging noisedrone jams that closed out both their records, the 28 minute "An Electronic Fugue For The Imminent Demise of Planet Earth" from Ethos Musick and the 21 minute "Snakes And Alligators" from the Just A Few More Hits ep. Most of us wouldn't have minded paying a few extra bucks for a third disc, and ruined speakers, but what can you do?
Killer packaging, all the original photos, images, lyrics, quotes and propaganda reproduced in a huge booklet.
Back in stock, now way cheaper than before!
Ok, let's get the first question everybody has about this band out of the way: they've got nothing to do with our favorite Seventies proggers, Magma from France. The trio Exmagma was also from the '70s, but from Germany (featuring an expatriate African-American drummer though) and are known as Exmagma simply because they had originally called themselves Magma, until they found out about the French group and changed the name! Some understandable confusion resulted, we're told, because Exmagma's second record Goldball was only released on a French label...and the "real" Magma kinda sound more German than French what with their Wagner influence. Anyway, THIS band was more of an acid rock meets (free) jazz fusion kind of thing. Freaky, wild, and groovy. Laid back weirdness, some sax, lots of electric organ and piano, doublenecked bass/guitar...Mostly instrumental, with only some very rare Faust-like vocal parts. This disc contains their two albums, both recorded by Krautrock production maestro Conny Plank, with the first self-titled one from '73 being perhaps the more far-out and abstract, while 1974's Goldball more solidly grooved. Maybe. However, both LPs are "drug jazz" classics. Also, on the cover to Goldball (reproduced in miniature here) the band sports the craziest bellbottoms we've ever seen...they're on stilts under them I guess!
It's amazing how quickly Expo '70 went from being a group we had never heard of, whose cd-r we got randomly sent to us in the mail, to a dronerock juggernaut, releasing disc after disc of amazing ambient kraut-flecked drift, what is beginning to seem remarkably like a monthly installment of outerspace sonic exploration. But heck, we'd much rather get a new 'issue' of far out Expo '70 dronebliss every month than say, Star Magazine (well, actually, okay, maybe Star was a bad example, but definitely more than say Spin or Rolling Stone or pretty much any other monthly installment sort of thing, anyway...).
Animism just so happens to be Expo '70's first actual cd as well, the first release that's not a limited edition cd-r, which is one of the reasons we decided to make it record of the week. 'Cuz to be totally honest, every single one of the Expo '70 releases could have been, and heck, maybe should have been Records of the Week. Certainly if we based it on how much they get played in the store, and the reaction of the folks hearing it, and the fact that the cds have been impossible to keep in stock. But that's only one of the reasons. The other, is that Animism, in it's own subtly space-y and psychedelic way, is quite possibly the 'heaviest' Expo '70 release yet.
The record begins much in the same way as most of the others. A huge drifting rumbling soundscape. Spare and wide open. Across this warm expanse drift disembodied guitar squiggles, reverbed scrapes, bits of fragmented melodies, post rock snippets, tinkling percussive shimmer,
all drifting over soft swells of undulating low end. There are tons of FX, but it's not Acid Mothers style freakout, instead, these sonic aktions are muted and smeared into dreamy streaks. Never has a music sounded so much like what it must feel like to drift weightless through space. Cloaked in inky blackness, but with the sparkle of a million stars illuminating the seemingly endless emptiness. And so it goes on, each track, a slow lugubrious crawl through the galaxies, strange shapes drift by, colored lights, every bit of melody like some barely visible shooting star, soft billow clouds of FX enveloping you before dissipating and leaving you to once again drift wide-eyed into infinity.
Track three, though, is where things start to get a little scary. In come the guitars, and this time it's not the little glimmers and twinkles, these are thick sheets of crumbling rumbling distorted buzz. Relentlessly trudging beast like across the same barren soundscapes, but leaving a trail of blown speakers in its wake. The effects here are much more blown out, melodies slip and slither amidst the coruscating heaviness, sounding almost like someone transported SUNNO))) back to the seventies, where they ended up jamming with Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel. Granted the Expo '70 cd-r Center Of The Earth, was also pretty heavy, but on Animism, the heaviness seems to be more deftly integrated with the lovelier psych-drone-drift parts, an organic space kraut doom, as dark and dense as it is dreamy and effervescent. The record effortlessly drifts back and forth, from black drone to space-y drift, as if one couldn't possibly exist in this universe without the other.
There are some subtle sonic surprises too, like the way-up-in-the-mix, tripped out harmonized guitars on "Entering The Night On A Highway Of Astral Projection", the folky acoustic strum on "Missing Sun", and the swirling SUNNO)))-y murk of "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover", sounding a bit like the Angelic Process with the treble turned all the way down and the bass all the way up! Blissy and muddy, an epic blown out glistening dirge, suffocated under layer after layer of FX drenched detritus.
If there was ever an ultimate soundtrack for blowing the hatch and floating free, doomed to a languorous eternity of drug fueled drift and buzzing rumbling psychedelic space rock torpor, this is most certainly it.
So recommended.
As regular readers of the aQ list can no doubt attest to, we sure do love droning guitars. Whether downtuned and mostly motionless, or frenzied and buzzing, or blown out and shimmery, there's just something about the sound of those steel strings vibrating projected through massive walls of amplification. There's the primal primeval sound itself, the actual drone, a sound found everywhere in nature, then there's the power, the amplification, this transformed sound. The drone is most certainly linked to the machinations of life and the universe, we can only imagine, the Big Bang resulted in an aeons-long drone that hung over the nascent Earth, the sound of insects, the growls of beasts, the rumble of thunder, the white noise of the surf, all harnessed and sculpted into a more modern, more human experience of sound, into actual music. But the best drone music, with the most resonance, is the music that conflates the two. That creates a listening experience, wherein we find ourselves drifting off, sometimes to some man made universe, of songs and sounds and music, sometimes to someplace wholly other, where the music looses itself from the strictures of composition and arrangement, and is allowed to float freely, to drift. It's then, that the music maker becomes more than a musician, more than a rock band, almost more like and esoteric, ethereal wrangler of sound. The magic is creating music, that sounds like it wasn't 'created' at all, but instead, was discovered, unearthed, or if created, not from guitars and 4-tracks and drums, but from some strange energy, or some alternate universe, the sounds become glimpses into other worlds, or peeks into the music maker's soul. In creating these sorts of sounds, the listener is inexorably drawn in, and pulled quite willingly into a whole new dimension, where unlike the creator, who may have meticulously assembled the various elements, they are allowed to wander, and wonder, to float and drift and get lost, to allow the sounds to unleash emotions, to open up their mind, their hear, maybe in some cases even their soul.
As you might imagine, and we've mentioned it before, the drone is a mercurial beast, and one not wrangled easily. There are plenty of comers, who feel like once you've conjured the drone, it does the work for you, but such is not the case, as is proven time and time again, by sonic alchemists like Expo '70, whose take on the drone is less monochromatic, less one dimensional, whose dronemusic is infused with elements of krautrock, spacerock, postrock, but all woven into vast black expanses of sound.
Even more than past Expo '70 releases, Black Ohms manages to create some impossible world of sound, that is at once dark and sinister and foreboding, yet somehow dreamlike and serene, a collection of tracks woven into a seemingly continuous sonic drift, beginning with a deep, almost corrosive buzz, pulsing and undulating, shot through with streaks of melody, layered and textured, looped and hypnotic, heavy and dense and in its own minimal way, quite brutal, before giving way to something much more tranquil, a sea of glimmering, harmonics, and deep drifting tones, here the guitar is revealed as just that, a guitar, its abstract chords and minimal riffage, clipped and effected, draped in reverb and delay, and allowed to unfurl into softly propulsive rhythms, and spider web-like textures, again, infused with subtle melody, and blurred, burnished shadings.
The record wanders through miniature otherworlds of atonal melody, of machine like click and chitter, fifties computer bleeps and bloops, soft chiming jammy summer sun guitars, before returning to the deep, dark drone for a nearly 35 minute two part finale. The first part, a fifteen minute return to the sound of the album opener, the guitar again distorted and dark, not so much riffing as buzzing, a Niblockian soundscape of overtones and harmonics, a warm blackened bed for the ethereal melodic drift above, streaks of glimmering melody, soft stretches of wispy ambience, laced with an almost buried, looped guitar figure, all subtly rhythmic, a distant throb, like the pulse of some buried giant, muted and mysterious, but supporting the whole delicate structure.
The second, a 20 minute slow burn, a crystalline assemblage of barely there rhythms, deep layers of shimmering drone, this is the sound of a million dronemusic cd-r's fully realized, a smoldering chunk of minimal propulsion, rife with strange, tape speeds shift, but instead of jarring, it only manages to make the sound woozy, slightly alien, underwater, glimmering melodies, sparkling like black diamonds, fields of soft static like clouds of tiny insects, deep soft swells like the ebb and flow of some otherworldy tide.
Imagine the most minimal krautrock record you own, dubbed over and over and over onto the shittiest tapes possible, left in the sun, then played back on a car stereo, with only one woofer, but then render that in ear popping hi fi. The sound may seem murky and muted, but it is most definitely by design, there is nothing low fidelity about the sound of Expo '70, because within the meticulously and deftly obscured sound world, lurk all manner of sonic mysteries, each suspended in an impossibly beautiful blurred constellation of sound, which in turn is left to drift across a vast expanse of Black Ohms.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
More amazing voodoo groove.
1970 voodoo groove, amazing.
We've referenced these drugged and ugly New Orleans masters of sludge-core in tons of reviews, as they're one of the ur-bands that established the rituals practiced by anyone heavy and feedback laden, like Moss, Bunkur, Boris, Dot [.], Cavity, Corrupted, Khanate, Iron Monkey, Grief, Wellington, Acid Bath, Garadama, etc.
So we were so psyched to discover that EHG's first three discs were getting the deluxe reissue treatment. Elsewhere on this list we review In The Name Of Suffering, most people's fave EHG record, their third, Take As Needed For Pain, Andee's favorite, and this, Dopesick, their third, and part three of final EHG's godlike sludge trilogy. They would continue to make records, great records in fact, but the first three remain untouchable to this day.
In The Name Of Suffering was a hateful, feedback drenched trawl through a world of sludge, creeping and slithering, uncompromisingly brutal and crushingly heavy. Pretty much defining the sound of ALL sludge to come. With record number 2, Take As Needed For Pain, they added a little bit of that NOLA groove (you know, Down, Superjoint Ritual, Acid Bath, Crowbar, Soilent Green, Goatwhore, etc.) to their sound, making their plodding shrieking sludge a tiny bit more melodic and dare we say, catchy at moments. But take that with a grain of salt, melodic and catchy for a band like Eyehategod is still about a million times more caustic and corrosive than almost any other -heavy- band.
So with Dopesick, the groove factor is cranked up a little bit more, making Eyehategod here sound like the scariest, heaviest, druggiest, sludgiest stoner rock band EVER. But again, EHG in stoner rock mode, still outsludges them all, a groove flecked avalanche of slow motion ultradoom, screeching feedback, shrieking throat ripping vocals, blackhole downtuned guitars, all churning in a black sea of sludgemetal tar, lurching, and trudging and so fucking awesome!
Three bonus tracks: two alternate versions and one the appropriately titled "Dopesick Jam", an epic, lengthy freaked out psychedelic slab of glorious drugsludgedoom! Includes revised artwork and new liner notes from EHG frontman Mike Williams.
We've referenced these drugged and ugly New Orleans masters of sludge-core in tons of reviews, as they're one of the ur-bands that established the rituals practiced by anything heavy and feedback laden, like Cavity, Corrupted, Khanate, Iron Monkey, Grief,
So it's about time we listed our favorite EHG album, their dark and dirgey debut "In The Name Of Suffering", first released in 1990 on the French Intellectual Convulsion label, later re-issued domestically by Century Media, with the original's gross medical cover pictures prudently tucked inside. When this came out, EHG immediately joined the Melvins, Skullflower, and Hellhammer in the pantheon of the heaviest, most fucked up bands ever. Misanthropic metallic misery, complete with samples of Charles Manson's wisdom. Later EHG albums are good too, but this one was never surpassed. If you are one of Aquarius' "doom" customers and you don't have this disc, we urge you, in the name of suffering, get it!
We've referenced these drugged and ugly New Orleans masters of sludge-core in tons of reviews, as they're one of the ur-bands that established the rituals practiced by anyone heavy and feedback laden, like Moss, Bunkur, Boris, Dot [.], Cavity, Corrupted, Khanate, Iron Monkey, Grief, Wellington, Acid Bath, Garadama, etc.
So we were so psyched to discover that EHG's first three discs were getting the deluxe reissue treatment. Elsewhere on this list we review In The Name Of Suffering, most people's fave EHG record, their third, Dopesick, and this one, Andee's favorite Eyehategod record, Take As Needed For Pain.
Their debut was a hateful, feedback drenched trawl through a world of sludge, creeping and slithering, uncompromisingly brutal and crushingly heavy. Pretty much defining the sound of ALL sludge to come. With Take As Needed For Pain, they added a little bit of that NOLA groove (you know, Down, Superjoint Ritual, Acid Bath, Crowbar, Soilent Green, Goatwhore, etc.) to their sound, making their plodding shrieking sludge, a tiny bit more melodic and dare we say, catchy at moments. But take that with a grain of salt, melodic and catchy for a band like Eyehategod is still about a million times more caustic and corrosive than almost any other -heavy- band. It's really strange to revisit these EHG records and realize how many bands these days sound EXACTLY LIKE EYEHATEGOD!!! It's almost criminal. Sort of similar to the way SUNNO))) were basically an Earth tribute band, it's almost like EVERY one of the new breed of sludge bands is in fact an Eyehategod tribute band. But hey, who's complaining, it's a dark and disturbing sound we can never seem to get enough of. And as long as EHG are getting the props they deserve, then hell, bring on the sludge!!! Fans of ANY of the above mentioned bands who do not own this, are required by ALL THAT IS UNHOLY to pick this up immediately!!!!!!
As far as bonus tracks, Take As Needed For Pain is probably the best of bunch, 3 tracks from the long out of print Ruptured Heart Theory 7", a track from the also long OOP split 7" with 13, and two tracks from another long gone 7", another split with fellow sludge mavens 13.
Includes revised artwork and new liner notes from EHG frontman Mike Williams.
About ten minutes into this I came to the conclusion that I had to buy one. This is awesome. Any Fahey fan will freak out watching this dvd. The 1996 material by itself is great -- a concert at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage that maybe some of you reading this were lucky enough to attend, plus backstage interview footage wherein ol' John Fahey reveals both some of his history, and his humor. But it was the 1969 portion of this I watched first, which consists of a much more youthful, clean-shaven John Fahey guesting on some sort of guitar-oriented TV talk show, hosted by a woman who is clearly both a big fan of Fahey's playing and also somewhat bemused/confused by his musical eccentricities. She even almost scolds him for doing something that she tells her own guitar students not to do, though they determine that he had a good reason for it... Fahey proves himself to be quite a charming character, smoking a cigarette as he answers the host's questions and demonstrates his techniques, playing quite a few lovely lovely songs. It's amazing viewing for anyone already under the spell of the man's music and persona. Fans, get this!
Those of you into obscure '70s heavy rock - or cult '80s metal for that matter - ought to be interested in this new album from the power trio Falcon. It's their second record, following a self titled debut in 2004. That one featured a cover of Bang's "Redman", and also a cameo vocal performance by Bobby Liebling of Pentagram, on a song dedicated to the memory of Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott... and that should give you an idea of where Falcon is coming from, in terms of influences/atmosphere. Capturing the spirit of the '70s proto-metal that we dig so much here at AQ too. Bang! Pentagram! 'Lizzy! c'mon!! Some other obvious selling points in Falcon's favor has to do with who's who in the band. They've got Greg Lindstrom from '80s epic doomsters Cirith Ungol on bass and Darin McCloskey of stoner metal act Pale Divine on drums. The third, crucial part of the trio is vocalist/guitarist Perry Grayson, who used to play in a much more technical power metal band called Destiny's End but gave that up to concentrate on his true love (well, next to the weird pulp fiction of H.P. Lovecraft), full on '70s-sounding downer rock. He's one of those guys with the crazy record collection full of vintage vinyl proto-metal platters, trying to bring it all back to life a la Magnus from Witchcraft. And being a badass guitar player with heavy friends makes it look easy, with Falcon now on to their second album, this one, so let's tell y'all some more about it...
Die Wontcha - love the title, love the cover art, which we can only guess was probably lifted from an old issue of Weird Tales or something like that - features ten tracks of groovy, rockin', bellbottomed '70s heaviness worship. Nine are Falcon originals, the tenth a killer cover of "Leader" by Aussie proto-metallers Buffalo (you'll find the original on their 1972 album Dead Forever, the reissue of which is reviewed elsewhere on our site). Since Perry recently relocated from LA to Australia, it's even more appropriate they do a Buffalo song. And boy howdy does it fit in with their own material.
The disc starts off with Lindstrom's lament for Scottish Formula 1 race car driver Jimmy Clark, who died in a tragic crash back in '68. It's totally the sort of thing a band like this back in the '70s would have written... almost a modern-day folk song. Definitely very Thin Lizzyish, with Perry's slightly gruff, deep voiced vocals, melodic minor key guitar leads, and classic, loping, hummable riffage. For those more into fantasy subjects, a couple tracks later Falcon's got "The King Of Elfland's Daughter", inspired by a poem by Irish fantasist Lord Dunsany. It too has a lot of Lizzyish licks...
Everywhere, Falcon's fuzzed out guitar and fat riffs scream '70s, as do the lyrics, Perry dropping lines like "back in the days of yore/hippie to the core" and "hit the stage with heavy rockin' band/tour the world kickin' out the jams/turn the amps up loud/stun the crowd". Yep, that's rock n' roll like they used to do, and Falcon bring it. But maybe the best expression of Falcon's mission is found in the lyrics to the disc's final track, penned by Lindstrom, entitled "Show You All" - which is all about going to a big show by some currently popular so-called rock band and unavoidably thinking they could do much, much better, Perry singing: "I want to jump on stage/and show you how all to play". That's kinda cocky, but we're sure some of you will share Falcon's sentiments, folks we'd recommend this to who also enjoy such quality, ripping n' riffy bands with retro-rawk '70s influences as Witchcraft, Burning Saviours, Bible Of The Devil, Slough Feg, Danava, Drunk Horse, etc...
By the way, although we never listed it before, we do have a just a few copies of Falcon's equally rad s/t album in stock as well, the one with the Bobby L. cameo. We figured since we were highlighting this, some folks might want to pick that one up too, so we got some from the band. They're a little cheaper, 'cause the copies we have of that are pro duped cd-rs, not actual cds, FYI. They still have the same cool metallic foil stamped covers of the original cd version, though. And *this* disc is indeed a real cd, not a cd-r.
Fans of the NWOFHM, get ready for the NWOFAOR.
First off, please go read our review of Circle's Incarnation to get the whole back story about this release. 'Cause our pals Circle, the celebrated Finnish space/kraut/WTF? rockers, are not Circle anymore, they're Falcon (Ex-Circle). It's all part of an elaborate scheme we try to explain in that Incarnation review. But explanations are difficult, as there are multiple layers of meaning to what Circle, we mean Falcon, are up to here. On the surface, Falcon (Ex-Circle)'s debut album is all high concept hijinks, total retro '80s AOR good times party tunes love songs, a mix of arena-ready hard rock and radio-friendly soft rock with flashy guitars, melodic singing, and cheesy keyboards. Every track sorta sounds like a 'training montage' song from a movie, if you know what we mean. But we don't think it's ironic parody. Maybe homage, but not parody. If you pay attention, listen to the lyrics, it's not just joking. There's an underlying sadness, a yearning, a sincerity to Falcon (Ex-Circle)'s journey into, uh, the realms of Journey - a synth-laden, fantasy MTV rock n' roll pleasure zone. Take a close look at the cover art to see what we mean about possible divergent depths of meaning - what's that about?
Listening, we're hearing hints of lots of stuff we used to hear on the radio growing up - from Billy Idol to Styx to the Psychedelic Furs to Golden Earring to Aldo Nova to Neil Young (circa Trans?), and more. These former Circle guys have gone beyond their previous forays into the "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" to get waaaay more pop than metal here, though we do hear a bit of a galloping Thin Lizzy-ish riff on "Leather Seat", sprinkled however with magical synthesizer fairy dust. Tracks like "Horses" and "Ace Of Hearts" also boogie pretty hard.
Falcon (Ex-Circle)'s songs are good, good enough to make the grade as undeniable "guilty pleasures" just like some of their obvious inspirations. Almost the only thing that makes this NOT seem like you must have heard it on the radio back in the '80s is that the vocals, while melodic, can have a bit of a rough edge to 'em, plus the Finnish accent.
Really, we thought the Falcon (Ex-Circle) 7" that came out earlier last year, was a one-off, that was going to be the extent of the joke. Instead it was the lead single for this album. So, as with a lot of Circle & Jussi related projects, one begins to wonder... maybe it's not a joke? In fact, Jussi insisted to us that this whole Circle/Falcon (Ex-Circle) stunt is actually an artistically significant, serious thing for him. He even wrote an essay about it, explaining what he's trying to achieve, but unfortunately we couldn't read it 'cause it's all in Finnish. He did ask us to list/review both Frontier and Incarnation at the same time, that was important. And so we comply.
Of the two albums, Frontier and Incarnation, the one under the Circle moniker is indeed easier to see as Circle, on the extreme experimental/drone side of their aesthetic. Even though it's not "really" Circle. Meanwhile, this Falcon disc, actually by Circle (confused yet?), does not sound much like anything Circle has ever done. Cause these are more traditionally structured pop/rock songs, verse/chorus/verse stuff, although they can't get away from the hypno-rock repetitive thing entirely.
Anyway, like we say in the Incarnation review, lots of interesting questions raised, but at the end of day, what's important is are you gonna like listening to it? Well we do, these songs are BUILT for heavy rotation and that's what we're giving this disc. At first we were like, haha, but now we're addicted!!
Falconer's self-titled debut from last year was one of the "true metal" sensations around AQ at the time (that is, for Andee and Allan anyway, and I think we're getting Windy into 'em now too). The band's folk-derived melodicism and sheer heavy metal might
Mithotyn, AQ's fave "Viking" black metallers after Enslaved, are sadly gone. Their last album, the magnificent (and silly) "Gathered Round The Oaken Table" was the perfect epic Norse sing-a-long disc, merging blackened-folk-metal riffing with
Another plush, ploddering platter for all you doominoids out there... it's the furthering of Fall Of The Idols from Finland, members in good standing of the "Circle Of True Doom" founded by Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P.). A sophomore set consisting of seven downer dirges, slow and slumbersome, lumberingly lethargic - and also quite lovely, if classy, classic doom is yr thing. The Seance is a fine followup to Womb Of The Earth, their previous effort on I Hate Records. As before, the cleanly-sung, sometimes sort of chantlike vocals are a large part of this band's gloomy glory, emboldened by massive, majestic marble riffage and anthemic melody. So deep it is to weep. Imagine a mix betwixt Pentagram and Katatonia, that's the sorrowfully Sabbathy spirit this seance has channelled. The relatively uptempo trudge of track three, "At The Birth Of The Human Shadow", makes it stand out as the rocker of this batch, with the other songs all even more of a smoothly slo-mo, gothic grind taken to an exhausted, exalted extreme. Well done.
Here's another heavy one from a label that all doom-heads should pay attention to, Sweden's oh-so-positive I Hate Records, who recently brought us the latest from Burning Saviours and Gates Of Slumber, among others. Finland's wonderfully gloomy Fall Of The Idols play slow and lumbering, classic doom with tons of feeling. This debut album of theirs is a downer trip all right, supremely mournful, sunken into depression, like old Candlemass on Quaaludes. It's melancholic and miserable, and somehow melodically peaceful too. The plodding, repetitive guitar riffs and martial drumming (punctuating stretches of spacey quietude), along with the molasses-thick production, help produce this band's hypnotic aura of doom, but what's most crucial are the wretchedly, wrenchingly emotive vocals. The singer reminds us of Pentagram's Bobby Liebling just a bit, but deeper, dronier, and more chant-like, singing of such things as "when heart dies and soul is torn" and "drifting through the blizzard, wondering how lonely you've become"... In addition, the occasional use of acoustic guitars and uptempo attacks of metallic chug, vary the album nicely. But overall, with this one, you're simply doomed, doomed, doomed. For fans of fellow Finns Reverend Bizarre, and also early Cathedral, early Trouble, and maybe even CoC's Blind... A class act.
The subtitle here, or perhaps it's their slogan, is "Join Our Mental Phase Sound". It's a good slogan, whatever it means, and if you wonder what "Mental Phase Sound" is, all you have to do is listen. Total Pink Floydian, Tangerine Dreamy synthesizer laden space travel from Japanese hippies with krautrock connections! The Far East Family Band, as their name definitely implies, was a '70s hippie Japanese psych/prog outfit, forerunners of the likes of Acid Mothers Temple. Once known as Far Out (they were!), they got even trippier in their Far East Family Band formation, which included future New Age artist Kitaro as a member. This album was their 2nd, originally released in 1975, and is a classic for sure (#14 in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler Top 50). It was produced by krautrock legend Klaus Schulze by the way, for extra kosmische cred!!
Nipponjin is an electronic/organic/rock ritual, a symphonic ceremonial music, effortlessly fusing the spacey synths of the German krautrock scene with authentic Eastern mysticism in a way that probably made the European hippies jealous. Some tracks are propulsive, full of electronically effected drum beats, others more mellow and meditative, with the whooshing of synths... there's ethnic instrumental twang, heavy bluesy electric guitar noodling, stately rhythms, majestic vocal choirs, and it's all quite melodic too, making for memorable music that's a prog classic album for the ages, from Japan or anywhere else in the universe. Heck the side-long title track that opens the album qualifies all by itself.
This is the first time we've seen a non-Japanese-import (and thus non-ultra-expensive) cd reissue of this, so get it while you can. It's limited to 1000 numbered copies, packaged in a cardboard "wallet" sleeve like Phoenix did for Flower Travellin Band's Satori and other reissues.
Our '70s Japanese psychedelia section just keeps getting bigger and better, in part thanks to the UK reissue label Phoenix, who brought us Brast Burn last list, also recently Karuna Khyal, Far Out, and another Far East Family Band album, Nipponjin. That one was their second, from 1975, and if you liked it you'll like this, Parallel World being its 1976 follow up, boasting one of the most perfect cover paintings ever, showing the band sitting in a wooden boat, in space, flying through the colorful cosmos. (The guy with the headphones and shades is so cool!)
Once again produced by kosmiche electronics master Klaus Schulze (with Gunter Schickert as recording assistant), this proved to be the band's final album, but it's a fantastic one, that deserves honorary krautrock classic status even though the band are Japanese. It's certainly a space rock classic at any rate, beginning with "Metempsychosis", a trippy intro full of spooky synth squiggle and snip-snip-snip drumming that accelerates into a blissed out shimmer, a combo that they take to extended extremes on the next track, the 16 minutes of "Entering/Times", full of buzz and gurgle, propulsive rhythmic scatter-clatter, and grandiose prog moves... it sounds somewhere betwixt Acid Mothers Temple and Zombi, really!
Vocals make an appearance on "Kokoro", a mostly gentle, lovely sort of dreamy ballad, but one that also features some searing, soaring electric guitar action to bow down and worship. And THEN there's the title track, a suite, 30 minutes long! It's a doozy, encompassing funky wah guitars, thick synth fuzz, electronic tinkering tingling tinkling, even some dubbiness... At times it's urgently rhythmic, but that can give way to calm, spaced out drone, it's got parts that remind us of Can, parts that could be Funkadelic circa their most lysergic effort Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow, and parts that sound like Augustus Pablo. If every druggy hippy jam sounded like this, we'd be living in a Parallel World indeed!
Obligatory Japrocksampler chart position citation: Julian Cope put this at number FOUR in his top 50. We don't always agree with his rankings, but it's definitely worthy of being up there. And it's in Phoenix's usual "wallet" (whatever) packaging, limited to 1000 numbered copies.
Japanese '70s psych alert! Grab yer Japrocksampler and look this one up, you want it!! (It's number eleven on Julian Cope's list of his top 50 Japanese psych faves.)
Having reissued the Far East Family Band's Nipponjin, we were hoping that Phoenix would turn their attentions to that band's original incarnation. They made one album as Far Out, and rarely has a band name been better chosen. Their 1973 lp is a stone classic, from that iconic white glove hanging on a clothes line in front of a blue background album cover to the two side long tracks of tripped out, heavy psychedelic music within. Well, Phoenix have granted our wish, which is awesome 'cause we've always wanted to list/review this album but previous cd reissues have been expensive and hard to come by.
Track one/side one, "Too Many People", eases the listener into things gently, with an echoing heartbeat pulse, some ambient Moog drone, and sad and mellow vocals, accompanied by delicately grooving guitar/bass... by the halfway point (8 minutes or so in) the track has gotten a lot more menacing, with plodding, heavier beats, thicker bass, adorned with "Eastern" sounding guitar licks and distorted acidic soloing. Yeah! 'Tis something that Flower Travellin' Band fans will find to their liking for sure! Towards the end of the song, when the vocals come back in, it's built up into a rather majestically progtastic piece of work that, when it all too suddenly ends, will leave you, the listener, wondering where your epic Nipponese longhaired fantasyland went, what's with all this boring, non-cosmic, not-so-grandiose reality you've so rudely been reacquainted with?
To fix that, at least temporarily, put the headphones back on, and cue up track two/side two, "Nihonjin", another similarly massive trip that can only be described as "far out"... this cut was later reworked a couple years later for the Far East Family Band's Nipponjin opus, though the original here is rawer, less Klaus Schulzified and symphonic.
Like we said, Cope had this up at #11, but for us it might nudge right into the top 10...
Ah, yes it's summertime! Warm sunshine and trips to the beach! And what's more summery than surf music? Lo and behold, our favorite label for obscure and amazing reissues, Japan's EM Records, has a special new series of five, count 'em, five reissues devoted to lost "surf" music treasures. The first two, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, are out now, with the others to follow in short order. We're pretty sure all of 'em are awesome.
And if you're familiar with the eccentricity of this label, you'll know that this "EM Under Water" series isn't going to be about, y'know, "regular" surf music of the Jan & Dean or Ventures variety, nope. These first two releases are both soundtracks to rad '70s surfing movies, and are fully psychedelic, with tripped out grooves, synth experiments, and heavy rock jamming all part of the mix.
This one's really fantastic. The music for the legendary 1970 Australian surf documentary The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun was done by a hippy band called Farm from Santa Barbara who themselves were part of the SoCal surf scene. Their lead guitarist, Denny Aaberg, even wrote a novel about his surfing days called Big Wednesday that was eventually made into movie starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Gary Busey! Other members later on played with such bands as the Surf Punks in the '80s and the Beach Boys in the '90s... and weirder still, The Captain from Captain and Tennille is on here somewhere too. But this is like none of that, needless to say. Farm's sound was more of a special surf/soundtrack/psych hybrid...
There's plenty of glorious mellow jazzy groovers on here, with organ that reminds us a bit of Bo Hansson's stuff, as well tracks like the heavy electric blues of "Zan Ho Zay" and the gorgeous folky acoustic guitar intricacy of "Innerspace". Mostly instrumental, but for two charming vocal cuts, "Crumple Car" and "The Eater", this is surf-psych at its peak for sure. A lot of the record was constructed around live jams, including the soundtrack's finale, the 13 minute improv "Coming Of The Dawn", a track Farm recorded in real-time response to a projection of the film's most awe-inspiring "inside the pipe" sequence. The filmmaker had rigged up a waterproof camera contraption that he was able to strap to his back and use to shoot while riding his board, one of the innovative techniques that made it a groundbreaking surf movie. This soundtrack had to help too!
This reish, done in the usual thorough EM style, is packaged in a nice gatefold sleeve with a thick, fully illustrated booklet in English and Japanese and other bits of ephemera tipped in, and includes a QuickTime video clip on the cd of an interview with the band. As well, both this and also the soundtrack to Drouyn include liner notes by Aussie surf music expert Stephen J. McPharland (author of Waltzing The Plank: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Australian Surf Music 1963-2003).
We all agree here at AQ that this is a really amazing disc. We also all agree that it's tough to describe! Which is maybe why we didn't manage to review it right when it first appeared a few months back. But now we'll try, since we like it so much and want you know about it. Simply put (which is impossible), Farmacia from Argentina straddle the line between minimal dance music and rhythmic noise. Crucial Sky In The Land Of Premonitions At Lorenzo's Weekend (there, doesn't that title tell you all you need to know? no? uh, yeah, you're right) is the work of a trio who are making their OWN original music first and foremost, not something we hear everyday. There's an experimental, home-brewed, kit-bashed approach here that possesses some of the charming weirdness of Argentine AQ faves Reynols without sounding like them... much more user-friendly, these guys! It's a sort of playful industrial/electro music, part Throbbing Gristle, part Aphex Twin, part Mouse On Mars, part Ratatat. One track even reminds us of Itavayla, or Trans Am. There's bopping abstract noises, wordless vocals, distortion and drone and disco-friendly beats. Surprisingly beautiful, beautifully surprising. The three members are credited with the use of plenty of analog synths, samplers, computers... an array of ethnic flutes... eggs, noises, and "atmospheric crucial voices"... y'know, the usual stuff. And the results are, as we said, tough to describe. But we figure it's got a wide appeal, to fans of Kraftwerk and Cluster back in the '70s... to fans of Lindstrom yesterday. Totally recommended.
Woah. This is a weird one.�A home-recorded psychedelic one-man-band "rock opera" from 1972, originally a rare privately pressed LP, now reissued on cd. Super freaky and moody and fuzzed out, with a messed-up "my woman done me wrong" vibe to it all. One JW Farquhar of Philadelphia sang and played all the instruments, though there are some other, presumably non-existent musicians credited on the sleeve... get a load of his supposed band, some of the best fake names ever: "Riffery Lowknut" on fender bass, "Slash Mullethead" on percussion, and "Callust Likfinker" on lead guitar! Steel Mammoth wishes they'd thought of those.
In the liner notes JW says that many of these songs "were written as an outcry against the materialistic nature of the woman during that time period". Maybe a little bit misogynistic? Well, apparently JW had just recently gone through a difficult divorce after having been married for 10 years, and was pretty down on women in general. Regardless of the merits of his bitter outlook, the bummed-out emotions expressed are certainly real. And feed into some genuinely twisted, trippy music.
The first two tracks, "The Formal Female" and "The Want Machine", are both multi-part suites, 11-12 minutes each. Groovy, laid back, lonely stuff, rife with FX and heavy doses of fuzz guitar (at one point, JW does to the traditional wedding march what Hendrix did to the "Star Spangled Banner"). "The Want Machine", with its funky guitar and guttural dialogue, almost sounds like the freakin' Jimmy Castor Bunch circa It's Just Begun, jivin' and acid-dosed (here, downer-dosed).
On "My Bundle Of Joy", JW's sad, melodic vocals are accompanied by what sounds like a primitive drum machine ticking away. It's really weird and lovely. Not sure what it reminds us of, maybe Vincent Gallo? Also, there's a good deal of woozy harmonica, or what could be Augustus Pablo style reggae melodica, all throughout the album. "Where Have You Been" and "Mansions" are equally odd and entrancing. Spacey, echoey, outsider rad dudeness! JW Farquhar is part George Brigman, part Dreamies, part Bobb Trimble, part Perry Leopold... like we said, a weird one. Not every Shadoks reissue is amazing, but sometimes when they find an obscure gem, like this, they really hit it out of the park, we're telling you. And as break-up records go, this one's unique.
It's been a boom in outsider music these last few weeks at AQ, first it was the random rediscovery of Doug Hream Blunt's Gentle Persuasion, a fantastic and fantastically strange disc of breezy lo-fi outsider funk, that was dropped off by the man himself and required quite a bit of reconnoitering to track him down to get more (a continuing saga). And now there's this. A mysterious disc by a one man band known simply as Fastest, a cd-r that just showed up here one day, and none of us can remember how or when. In the mail? Dropped off? Spontaneous generation? It was just here one day, and we were mesmerized from the second we laid eyes on it. The cover is a huge blue owl against a blue background. The band name Fastest is written in big green letters, in a sort of cartoonish metal font, and superimposed right on the cover is a big barcode. The whole thing printed out on a home laser printer. The tray card folds all the way up around the side so there's an extra panel visible through the clear tray that boldly proclaims: "digital audio compact disc - state of the art phonorecord." The tray card features the ASCAP logo (ASCAP is the company that determines musician royalties) no less than three times, the logo is superimposed again on the back in a little white square, and at the top, blue text explains that the record was "Produced by Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical". We were almost afraid to throw it on, because we were convinced that there was no way the music could live up to the cryptic promise of the packaging. We were wrong.
The title track starts things off, and immediately you know this is like nothing you've ever heard... a flurry of lo-fi distorted programmed beats, that sound like they could have been lifted straight off that Vijaya Anand Dance Raja Dance Bollywood compilation on Luaka Bop from years back, but any resemblance to Bollywood ends there, as some strange atonal midi synth guitars swoop in, along with some woozy warbly bass, the strangely syncopated programmed beats sputtering wildly in the background, the song slipping into a moody drift, the vocals a strange ominously hushed whisper, that even remind us a bit of the slowed down mush mouthed rapping of Sensational, eventually there's a sort of chorus, the midi guitars buzzing, while a strange synth unfurls a twisted melody, and then there's the most brilliantly baffling break, a stop/start flurry of stuttering beats, and some more warped woozy melodies, eventually joined by a sort of midi guitar least, atonal and detuned, the whole thing sounding like it's melting before your ears, before finally returning to the 'chorus'. Holy shit. What just happened? What is this? How had we not heard this before? Very reminiscent in fact of those absurd midi guitar releases we raved about on lists past, all of them work of a single man, released under different names: Shevelreq, Xynfonica, Gluttony, Thursar. If you were as into those as we were, stop reading and buy this now. Everyone else, read on, and sink deeper into the glorious musical madness that is Fastest...
The first song is so perfect, and perfectly demented, we dared not go on. We just kept listening to that one song over and over and over. Heck we wanted it to be OUR theme song. But eventually we knew we had to go on, and somehow, Fastest managed to confuse us again. And again.
After some simulated jet engine sounds, "Jet Sound II" begins, but it's super melodic and all 8 bit sounding, and reminds us of music from The Legend Of Zelda, but those vocals, dark and ominous, weirdly offset the cheerful melodies and loping programmed rhythms. "Televise" begins with sample bells, and immediately returns us to The Legend Of Zelda, until the vocals come in, locked in tight with the main melody, making for some strange electronic lo-fi midi-pop mystery.
"While You're Here" might be our other favorite (if we were forced to pick), with it's haunting melody, over minor key distorted finger picked guitar, tinkling chimes, very cinematic, again like some dramatic moment in a video game, but definitely dark and haunting, but of course, the song slips right back into some Zelda-y minimal 8 bit balladry, replete with those slightly ominous gruff vocals.
"Million Lies" begins with some dramatic syncopated start/stop dynamics, before slipping into some pulsing electronic groove, but this time, the vocals are super distorted, and even more creepy, and the drums erupt into little flurries of rhythmic tangle.
And so it goes, the sound drifting from Bollywood flecked 8 bit video game soundtrack songsmithery, to eighties style midi driven synthwave, and some hard to describe stops in between, culminating in the final three tracks, maybe the darkest and heaviest of the bunch.
"Seasons Change" is all distorted bass, stereo panned so the buzz flits from ear to ear, the drums spastic and skittery, the vocals as grim and ominous as at any point, the melodies creepy and minor key, which leads right into "Alter Fate" all swirling synths and stuttery almost IDM sounding beats, the whole thing blurry and smeary, before slipping back into the dirgey synthy creep of the previous track, a sort of second movement, laced with more strange disembodied high end melodies over the tumbling drum fills and more gruff whispery vox, finally culminating in "The Wind", which begins with appropriately enough, swirling wind, distorted acoustic guitar, a gauzy patina of lo-fi buzz, before finally launching into a tense stretch of buzzing swirling electronic weirdness, the various chunks of low end fuzz and warped melodies, adding some serious pathos, growing ever more distorted and finally finishing in a blaze of super distorted programmed beats, chaotic and noisy and psychedelic, before winding down with more acoustic guitar.
Absolutely baffling and disturbing brilliantly, total genius outsider mystery music, this is the sort of thing groups like Gary War and Ariel Pink are striving for, but just can't ever quite reach. Fantastically idiosyncratic, highly personal, and completely warped and cracked and demented and literally unlike anything you've heard. It's not hard to imagine this finding its way onto one of those incredible strange music comps or one of those Songs In The Key Of Z collection, it's certainly divisive, it's definitely too much for some folks, so be warned, this is strange strange stuff. But folks around here have become a bit obsessed, and can't seem to get enough. Which is good, cuz there are at least THREE other cd-r's. If you decide you need those too, just ask...
Last list we recommended an album of ethnic-improv jamming recorded in Morocco, circa 1991, by eccentric Canadian avant-garde instrumental trio FAT. That was one of two previously unreleased (and very different!) FAT albums from the early '90s that only just saw the light of day, and this is the other one - which, getting even more eccentric & avant-garde, doesn't actually even feature a single note of music played by anyone in FAT. Instead, it's an illicit, unauthorized 'remix' of a 1990 album by a then-popular Czech heavy metal band called Citron, the 24 track masters of which FAT somehow got their hands on while on a sojourn in Prague, and proceeded to completely fuck with, to the point where it sounds pulled apart and twisted inside out, Citron's cheesy metal processed into a very strange, unrecognizable soundscape, full of histrionic vocals soaring into echoing void-space, backing synth fills morphed into symphonic ambience, and stripped-down drums juxtaposed with random-seeming guitar licks. It's like the album itself took some very bad drug, with various elements oddly emphasized and effected, stuff sped up or slowed down, making for a delirious, utterly WTF? mix that's both creepy ('cause it's so insane-sounding) and amusing for the same reason, reminding us a little bit at times of what those 'shreds' videos on YouTube sound like, if you know what we're talking about. Certainly unique, and certainly weird.
We've been wanting to correct a glaring omission from our site for some time now. Well, its not so much an omission as it's an overdue update on a very old review; one that was made when our reviews served only as shelf-talkers in the store instead of entryways into the vast online catalog of our website. And now with an affordable reissue with a bonus disc of rare BBC radio sessions and alternate versions, the time is right to reappraise this mighty, weird, and awesome jewel of classic krautrock greatness that is Faust IV.
Essential as any krautrock album we can name, including Can's Tago Mago or Future Days, Amon Duul II's Yeti, or Neu! 1, Cluster, Kraftwerk etc. It's also the record that coined the term "krautrock" which is the title of the nearly 12 minute opening track, a thick pulsating rumble of motorik groove that out-Neu's Neu!. But things definitely get stranger after that with bizarre forays into reggae, pretty ballads, prog, pop and free jazz. Yet for all the weirdness, this is the record to get if you've never heard Faust before as it's their most accessible and structured. Not nearly as kaleidoscopic and avant as, So Far or Faust Tapes, and even with the genre-hopping, the songs all seem to belong together. "The Sad Skinhead" has got to be the most left-field excursion into reggae we've heard, complete with marimba passages and echoing vocals, while "Jennifer" has to be about the prettiest song ever made. Each song linked together by odd passages of detuned piano, far away screams and noisy stews of synth warbles and feedback stabs. "Giggly Smile" obviously influenced Battles recent debut Mirrors, as strange effected vocals accompany groovy prog excursions that abruptly shift tempos into one of our favorite rocking moments ever put to tape before suddenly ending, launching into the sublime folk groove of "Lauft... Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald... Lauft". And it just keeps getting better and better.
The bonus disc features many alternate versions of the songs including a much longer version of "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", plus rare BBC radio sessions of two songs "The Lurcher" and "Do So" and one previously unreleased piece, called appropriately "Piano Piece".
This is definitely one of those records, where we wish we could just invoke some physical force to reach out and grab you through the computer by the shoulders and just scream "Buy this already!!!!!!"
One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
A 5cd box set devoted to krautrock legends Faust? We were salivating from the moment we heard about it! The output of the band from 1970-73 is truly remarkable, and their work can hardly be compared to any of their contemporaries. They transcend both psych and prog, they influenced countless acts and anticipated many musical trends, from This Heat to Nurse With Wound, New Wave and No Wave, Industrial and "Post-Rock", the Boredoms old stuff to the Boredoms new stuff. Seminal musical genius that everyone should hear. And this is both a good place to start for newcomers (I envy anyone hearing Faust for the first time!) and a necessary collection for fans.
The nitty gritty details, for those who wanna know it all: Wumme refers to the schoolhouse-turned-studio that Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck rented out at Polydor's expense (he also managed to get Polydor to buy the band all the recording gear they needed and pay for a 24-hour a day, live-in engineer.) It was under these ideal conditions that Faust recorded almost all of the material on this box set, which includes (get ready!): Faust's self-titled debut, their second album "So Far" (both of those terribly hard to find on cd, with the Japanese edition of "So Far" having been out of print for years now), the ever-popular "The Faust Tapes" (now with a track listing and indexing!) and "71 Minutes of Faust" (collecting both the "The Last LP" and "Munic and Elsewhere" LPs). And, also included in this set is an amazing disc of unreleased material, some recorded live at the BBC in 1973, plus some recently discovered & never before listened to tapes as well as the track "We Are the Hallo Men" which was originally on "Munic & Elsewhere" (though curiously credited here as having been on "The Last LP"), but previously left off of ReR's previous version of "71 Minutes of Faust". For this disc alone the set is worth the money to Faust aficionados! Then add in the 40 page booklet, illustrated with rare color photos (of them playing darts outdoors in the nude! THE NUDE!) and Super 8 stills, that features essays/memories from Faust friends/fans Chris Cutler and Peter Blegvad, and interviews with several band members as well as with their producer (the reclusive Nettelbeck) and, for the first time ever, with sound engineer Kurt Graupner!
Of course, the individual discs may be issued separately at some time (or not? all we've heard is that the BBC sessions will come out individually) but then again with those first two Faust cds being so hard to come by, and so essential, there's got to be lots of you out there you not only will want this whole box, but NEED this box. Nicely presented, clearly a labor of love, with the cds in not-fancy-but-serviceable individual digipacks (and don't worry, the paintings from "So Far" are included in a color booklet with that disc).
Dust-To-Digital are known for their excellent reissue work, unearthing and preserving music from scratchy old shellac 78 rpm recordings and the like. Bringing us vintage blues, gospel, Tuvan throat singing, and more, all with elaborate packaging and incredible attention to detail. They've been responsible for a host of fine cds, boxsets, and books, among 'em Victrola Favorites, Opika Pende, Steve Roden's I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces, and Goodbye, Babylon.
But THIS handsome book + cd set may be their most remarkable release yet, at least in terms of radical sound-conservation technique. It's certainly their most unusual. For example: one of the tracks here is an excerpt of an after-dinner speech given by late-19th century American orator and politician Chauncy M. Depew. You can listen to it on the cd, and distinctly make out the speaker's words, voice, and phrasing, amid a thick patina of hiss, hum, and distortion. Sounds like a poorly-preserved old gramophone disc. But, that sound isn't coming from the disc itself being played (and re-recorded for release on the cd). It's actually derived from a PICTURE of that disc, reduced by 2/3rds original size, that appeared in a 1898 magazine advertisement. The spiraling grooves on the record were pictured clearly enough that with creative use of off-the-shelf computer software, author Patrick Feaster was able to "play" a fairly accurate semblance of the sounds originally encoded on the gramophone record being advertised!!! Ok, that's pretty cool! Talk about DUST-to-Digital. And it's but one example of the MANY different, quite intriguing excercises and investigations in "playing back" sound from such antique and/or unusual "recordings" that Feaster and his colleagues at the First Sounds initiative have come up with, presented in fascinating detail in this fancy (gold gilt edges!), hardback 144-page book and accompanying 28-track compact disc.
Of course, one can argue, just what IS a "sound recording" anyway? In large part, that's what this is about; in fact, Feaster's introduction is devoted to that very question, which turns out to be both a philosophical one, as well as a technical one. Even in Feaster's expansive notion of the term, the idea that "sound recordings" exist from as far back as the year 980AD is perhaps a fanciful one, as he will admit, but still fruitful to consider.
Because, what this book is also about, more generally, is how human beings have sought to understand sound phenomena (from nature, voice, and music), through the ages, how sound has been "captured" and put on paper in graphical form to be perceived and studied visually. These visual representations of sound, are essentially all in the form of graphs of frequency, or amplitude, over time: sound spectrograms, sound oscillograms, phonoautograms, melographic inscriptions, manometric flame sketches, and many more. Various techniques, applied to various subjects. Found in these chapters and tracks, there's FBI voice-recognition studies from the '70s, phonophotographs of Negro spirituals from the '20s, and examples of Athansius Kircher's "Magia Phonotatica" circa 1650 (works which bring to mind Conlon Nancarrow's Studies For Player Piano), among others.
So, this is all very historically & scientifically interesting. Also, completely compelling just for the beauty of these images alone, which may or may not directly reflect the beauty of the sounds they represent - this is a lavishly illustrated book, with full-color reproductions of these various "sound recordings" to accompany the insightful text explaining it all. And the magic really happens, when you experience the book and cd in tandem, as each track on the cd, even the briefest, has an entire several-page chapter in the book devoted to it, and it really helps to read about and look at the visual sound source, while listening. Some tracks sound like antique recordings we're used to from wax cylinders and 78s, complete with the surface static we love so much; others like strange field recordings or ghostly experimental drones or balloons being rubbed together; still others like music boxes or similar devices�
This is the sort of unusual sound document to file with such aQ faves as the mysterious Ghost Orchid EVP recordings, the VLF recordings of Stephen McGreevy, or even the famed Conet Project (soon to be available again, with a bonus 5th disc!). In fact, one of the exhibits here, an 1890 phonoautogram by Emile Berliner, kind of reminds us of a Conet "numbers station" track, being a spoken series of numbers and letters recorded at varying speeds.
All in all, an astonishing, thought-provoking, and simply gorgeous book and cd, recommended to anyone interested in sound, science, OR art; meaning, probably everybody reading this!
Some will be curious about this simply on account of how it's an Editions Mego release, by Mark Fell who is one half of snd, the UK glitch-house duo that used to record for Mille Plateaux. For us, it was more that the bright orange digipak cover with shiny metallic silver artwork caught our eye, and then we read the text on the back that includes such sentences as "Using 32 operator frequency modulation synthesis configured in 16 pairs of operator and modulator, panned at equal positions around the circumference of a circle using high order ambisonics." And: "With 2, 4, and 8 channel rectangular waveshapes with variable pulse width subject to frequency modulation from synchronised sine functions with variable phase offsets." Intriguing, no?
What it it all boils down to is minimal techno electronics: clinical, precise, and purely rhythmic. Only the relatively blissed-out final track, "Death Of A Loved One", brings in much melodic coloration at all. Otherwise, Fell's music sounds a bit like a malfunctioning Geiger counter (especially the five track opening sequence "The Occultation of 3C 273"), with some pieces (the seven part "Vortex Studies") shuffling in buzzing, fizzing, distorted textures as well, and others (the "Acids In The Style Of Rian Treanor" series) incorporating sizzling synth squiggle. It's all very mesmeric (to some, maybe maddening to others), often energetically urgent, a dense, complex, pitter patter patterning of clicks, claps, and kicks, ratcheting up and down, constructed with conceptual, architectural logic... Definitely for fans of Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, Senking, Mika Vanio, and Kazunao Nagata (Zero Gravity).
Fell also has another new, simultaneously released cd out on Raster-Noton, we'll have to get that one reviewed soon too!
The first two albums (from 1975 & '76) by this hot-rockin' instrumental Slovak prog/fusion band. Rippin' stuff, with heavy guitar/keys interplay. Complex, flashy, very '70s. If we saw a band like this play today we'd be all "we're not worthy"! (Not new, but we got a couple and wanted to list it, along with the equally awesome Collegium Musicium disc, for the Iron Curtain prog freaks we know populate our mailing list!)
A brand new record from Mr. Justin Broadrick, formerly of Godflesh, presently of Jesu, as well the sole member of this, his long running project Final. Originally an experimental solo guitar project, and actually maybe STILL an experimental solo guitar project, Final has definitely changed over the years, lately sharing more in common with Jesu than anything, the same sort of blissy drift, washed out drone drenched shimmer, but in Final, those elements are blurred into something more ambient and less propulsive, more soundscape-y and less post metal.
Four long tracks, each slow building and slow burning, the first all soft ethereal melodies over a grinding crunching minimal drone, those two elements all tangled up, with the melodies eventually blossoming into epic atonal harmonies, sheets of sound like a symphony of car horns, smoothed into something much more listenable but no less clamorous and chaotic, definitely reminds us of Sunroof! near the end.
The second track starts out all SUNN-y, a crumbling distorted downtuned dirge, although within that dirge lurks some surprising melody, and this track too builds to a blissed out high end shimmer, overlapping tones, washes of synthy warmth, bits of buzz and glitch, lovely, but still softly abrasive.
The flipside begins with some sort of abstract doom, thick, jagged chords, ringing out, and allowed to nearly fade out completely, before the next one comes crashing down, lots and lots of space, in the background a strangely active swirl of skree, streaks of feedback, shards of feedback, sine waves and upper register whir, roiling and churning beneath the lumbering riffage.
And finally, the record finishes off with something altogether different. Something pretty and strummy and yes, shoegaze-y, but weirdly looped and hypnotic sounding, as if they took a chunk from a Jesu track, a pretty undistorted bit, then doused it in effects and set it on repeat, allowing it to slowly shift, but to lock into a mantra like loop, so gorgeous, could have used a whole 'nother side of this stuff for sure.
VINYL ONLY (At least for now, cd coming someday)! LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES!!!
Originally, posthumously released in 1972, this album collects late '60s recordings by these long haired Illinois boys, apparently a band renowned for their live show. We were initially interested in this reissue from a proto-metal perspective, as the reason we'd ever heard of The Finchley Boys in the first place is 'cause of a pretty killer, almost MC5-ish, track by them included on the heavy psych comp Up All Night some time ago. That song, the hard rockin' anthem "Outcast", is the lead off track here, and it's only flaw is that it fades out too soon. But as much as we like that one, it's another track, their cover of The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", that's our pick for the true classic here, a hard-hitting, garage psych workout with enough melancholic grandeur that it maybe coulda/shoulda been included on that Forge Your Own Chains comp that came out a while back. In their hands, it sure sounds like a track Roky Erickson/13th Floor Elevators fans oughtta dig. There's plenty more fuzzed out hard psych and rebellious acid rock on offer here besides, such as "Restrictions" and "Hooked", but what we discovered delving into this disc is that The Finchley Boys were a versatile (and talented) bunch. Among the 16 tracks total here, there's also some folkier acoustic hippie rambles, though they never go full-on country like you might have expected from a band with a name like theirs. Really, they're all over the hard/soft spectrum, doin' some wild RnB ravers and harmonica-laden blues rock (our fave is the way tripped out, almost underwatery-sounding "Finchley Boy Blues", plus they get points for the title "Deep Throat Blues" too), along with lovely dark psych ballads like "It All Ends". And there's even one seemingly out of place Motown style soul-funk number ("Bad When The Teardrop Falls") complete with horn section. Huh, wow. Pretty good though!
Definitely a very enjoyable reish for anyone into '60s acid blues action, who don't have to have it heavy ALL the time.
Good grief! FUZZ. Don't you love it? These guys do. Or, should we say did, since this was recorded back in 1973. Fire were a power trio from Yugoslavia, relocated for the purposes of playing and recording to Holland. Could You Understand Me is the only album they made -- though they cranked enuff fuzz guitar on this sufficent for ten albums! Aside from one run of the mill bar band blues cut (track three), this disc BURNS (as per their name) with heavy duty psych guitar mayhem. The last and gnarliest track here is even called "Flames". It's an instrumental, nearly nine minutes of extremely distorted, repetitive, pedals mashed, goin' for broke brainmelt. Dunno how they recorded it, musta done something wrong, but it's brilliant. They can also pen a decent tune, with the title track fer instance having a nice melodic element amidst the fuzz riffage.
Their influences were most likely Hendrix and Cream and possibly Blue Cheer. But when Fire really get burnin', we think this sounds more like current psych-mongers The Heads from the UK, or Japan's motorpsycho outfits High Rise and Mainliner.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Subtitled: Into The Pandemonium Of Celtic Frost. And that's what this is, cult '80s metal band Celtic Frost frontman Tom G. Warrior's tell-all autobiography. An unexpected book, to be sure! But it's a fascinating story, telling the whole strange saga from Tom's youthful metal fantasies as a teenage Swiss headbanger in the Venom-inspired (and since acclaimed as seminal) black metal band Hellhammer, to the heyday of subsequent band Celtic Frost touring America, and on to their major label glam rock disaster "Cold Lake", and beyond. The book reminds us a lot of Klaus Kinski's infamous autobiography, the same wealth of embarrassing personal information, the same obsession with sex (although in the case of the decidely nerdy Tom G., it's more often than not that he recounts tales of NOT having sex with groupies). Frost were the sort of band (despite their "evil" image) that wouldn't make it on stage on time not 'cause they were all blasted on drugs, but because their bassist was still at the comic book store! Anyway, this is a very entertaining book, with a lot to say about the absurdity of the record industry as well as the absurdity of Tom's 'avant-garde' metal band! Celtic Frost fans will of course find much of interest (did you know that their unreleased final record was going to be produced by Jesse Johnson of Prince proteges The Time?? or that Ken Russell asked them to do the soundtrack to "Lair of the White Worm" but they didn't have time? Or that Tom liked to record raps busting on his record label, unfortunately not released on their rarities compilation?) and other readers might well become fans as well, just because Tom is so smart and strange... Recommended!
