Moogs. Magma. Need we say more? All right, we will. This reissued 1980 album is both very Moog-y and very Magmoid. Mostly instrumental, it was the work of classically trained French pianist Jean-Philippe Goude, who was also interested in jazz, rock, and minimalism, and who had played keyboards with the Magma offshoot band Weidorje in the late '70s. So though this is a solo album, he got a lot of help from various heavy friends... usual suspects from the French prog-synth-rock underground, including members of Magma and Heldon (Klaus Blasquiz, Bernard Paganotti, Patrick Gauthier, Richard Pinhas, Francois Auger, and many more, what a lineup!). Thus this fits in snuggly with the Magma-inspired, jazz meets prog "Zeuhl" movement, especially tracks like opener "Les Saturnales" (with Blasquiz on vocals) or the exciting quadruple-guitar heaviness of "Dies Irae". But this is a varied album, and despite all the guests, two tracks feature no one but Goude alone, including the quite strange and effective soundscape piece "Coma". He also does a piano/synth duet with Heldon's Pinhas on the original album's final track "Cantiliene", which has that sort of Romantic, classical vibe we associate with Cluster's Roedelius. We say original album's final track, 'cause this cd reish closes with a bonus cut, the relaxed, loping, rather happy-sounding "Trio Des Mini-Moogs". Another track we should mention is the fantastic "Machine", wherein the melancholic strings of a chamber music quartet are overtaken by bleeping, burbling mad scientist synth and chugging mechanical beats.
The entire album is a delight, being both experimental and avant-garde, AND mesmerically melodic. Like we said, interestingly varied, but always with an aura of refinement, elegance and careful composition. It makes sense that Goude would go on to make a career out of library music and soundtracks for film and television. Indeed, if we understand the liner notes correctly, several of the tracks here were rearranged from pieces Goude had previously written for a pair of privately pressed lps, commissioned for the use of the French national gymnastics federation (???).
You'll find those extensive liner notes, vintage photos, etc. in the cd booklet. Lion has done their usual thorough labor-of-love job here, although this could have used one more round of proofreading, as we noticed a few insignificant typographic errors. The only potentially confusing one, being that the tracklist on the back cover has the songs numbered 1-12, omitting 5 though, as actually there's only 11 tracks... whoops. But other than that minor glitch, this is nicely done, with the original album's retro-futuristic graphics carefully reproduced. Love the neon-looking script for the text!!
Definitely glad they reissued this, having never heard it before, many of us here at AQ are digging it, even the not so Magma obsessed. And while perhaps "warmer" than some French coldwave, fans of that sort of thing should check this out, it certainly has something in common (including personnel) with Bernard Szajner's stuff, for instance.
Wow! We were never too taken with this Swedish stoner rock band before, really. Their first two albums were decent stoner rock, definitely heavy, but kinda generic and not that inspiring or inspired. Their 2nd album merited only a 2-sentence review from us. But this, album number three, we have to rhapsodize on about... We always recognized that they had potential. And now it's been realized. Oddly enough, by means of shedding their "stoner rock" identity somewhat and being reborn as a full on, leather-and-spikes *heavy metal* band! Actually, when we first got this, we thought they'd just jumped on the retro-metal bandwagon. And maybe they have. But it turns out that they maybe belong in the driver's seat of that bandwagon. Combining the epic doom of Candlemass with even more vicious headbanging fare, this is damn good -- nice n' heavy, and with some frickin' great *songs*. Guitarist/vocalist JB (also in the Spiritual Beggars) kicks ass on here, showing more personality than before. Is that what happens when you stop smoking pot? Well we don't know what came over these guys, actually, but whatever it is, we approve. Wolf's Return? If they weren't wolves before, now they sure are.
Not sure what to say about this other than BUY IT NOW... it's one of those black metal records that we'd recommend even to normally-non-black-metal music purchasers, if you're into checking out something weird, a metal record with layers of droning guitar texture and shifting tempos, speeding up then slowing down, creating an almost avant-garde metal psychedelia. For the metal fans, we'll provide some further elucidation... There's a definite black metal elite that everyone is familiar with: Burzum, Satyricon, Burzum, Emperor, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Ulver and all those folks. But there is also a more underground elite, even more grim and frosty and brutal and buzzing. Think Judas Iscariot, Nargaroth, Veles, Moonblood, Carpathian Forest and of course the mighty Graveland. This is not really all that new, but since we were finally able to get enough to list (and because there is a new Graveland on the horizon) we figured we should get this one listed cause it's so completely amazing. So, now that most of the underground is dead, and Burzum has become a Nazi Peter And The Wolf, and Darkthone is getting thrashier and sillier, and Satyricon is pretty much techno, it's basically left to the dynamic duo of Poland's Graveland and Germany's Nargaroth to keep the real blackened flame burning. While Nargaroth blaze and buzz, and spit blurry buzzsaw black metal in furious spurts, Graveland sort of stumble and careen chaotically, never really moving much faster than a midtempo gallop, with drumming that struggles and flails under sheets of corrosive fuzz. That's exactly where Graveland shines, they're not fast but rather thick and layered, they're not technical, rather droning and simple, very reminiscent of prime Burzum. Soaring majestic melodies drone beneath ambling blackened waltzes, buried beneath layers and layers of blackened grimness, or grim blackness, or whatever it is that gives Memory And Destiny such a suffocatingly dense sound. Anyone who digs the divine darkness of all the above mentioned bands should bow down before Graveland and let the droning dirge of Memory And Destiny envelop your soul and crush your body into dust.
The metal label Stormspell's motto is "Old farts stuck In the '80s and proud of it". They're the folks who have been bringing us a lot of cool cd reissues of obscure, cult metal bands from the '80s (such as Max Planck, Xinr and Detest), some of 'em as part of Stormspell's ongoing "Red White and Heavy Arcane Collector Series For The Initiated" featuring long-lost demos from bands that are SO cult and obscure they never even got signed to make a proper album.
Well, the old farts at Stormspell have now found some young bands also stuck in the '80s, and have begun a new series of releases, putting these bands' demos out on cd but this time not waiting 30 years to do it. Fantastically dubbed the "Jewels Of Gwahlur" series (the Jewels Of Gwahlur being the macguffin of a Conan story of the same name), five volumes have now been released, and we're reviewing 'em all this list. It's a bit like something else Stormspell did some years ago, the "Thrash Clash" series of splits by underground thrash acts. But these bands are even more "old school" in sound.
Each entry in the series comes in nice trifold digi-wallet packaging, the covers pretty much identical except for the band logos, with a standardized "bejewelled ancient leather tome" look, a la the 3rd Edition D&D rulebooks if you're familiar with those; doubtless some of these bands are! However, despite the uniform design, each entry in the series gets its own unique artwork on the inside, as well as credits, liner notes, etc. Most of these discs are ep-length, around 4-6 tracks, but it should be noted that they're quite cheaply priced. So even though we're reviewing each one individually you might as well buy 'em all and let your cd player sort 'em out! As for us, we're looking forward to hearing more from all these bands (pretty sure we will!), and are curious as to what further Jewels Of Gwahlur will be uncovered by Stormspell in the future.
GRAVEN RITE from Texas play "arcane heavy metal", super epick, doomy, and majestically melodic, with commanding but melancholic vocals delivered with a slight nasal inflection. Inspired by pulp swords & sorcery fantasy of the Weird Tales variety, the five tracks this five piece offer up here should especially appeal to fans of Manilla Road. This is definitely the sort of thing that if it came out in the '80s (which it sounds like it could have) would be highly sought after by collectors and probably reissued by a label like Stormspell! Alternate universe mission accomplished. Out of the whole Jewels Of Gwahlur series, this one and Volume III by Terminus, are vying for being our personal top faves.
Man, we'd thought that Graves At Sea were long gone, sunken deep into some pit in the ground, maybe playing their ultra doom dirges for the denizens of Hell at this point, but no longer active in our surface world. Turns out the band, in fact defunct since 2008, recently reformed with a new lineup, so they're essentially back from the grave (back from the sea?) - and here's a new recording from 'em, on a split with another hoary bunch of heavies, Sourvein, whom we haven't kept up with lately either, but are also are still kicking out the stoner sludge jams like every day's doomsday.
Graves At Sea take the first half of this split, with two tracks, each over seven minutes long, their blown-out, droned-out sludge stomp as forceful and abject as ever. Headbanging to this makes your skull feel like it weighs a thousand pounds. Their vokills are like we remember 'em too, a gruff shrieking gargle that sometime sounds witchy in a way - not witchy like all those sultry female "occult rock" singers, but witchy like a cackling hag putting a curse on you. (It's a dude singing by the way, we don't want to mislead.) Awesome shit, bad vibes you can rock out to.
The Sourvein half is awesome shit too, three tracks of their slo-mo, Southern Sabbathy sludge sound, pretty much as heavy but more spaced out and psychedelic than the Graves stuff, not quite so grim, the vocals a bit more wasted Ozzyish, the riffs and leads a bit more overtly classic '70s inspired - man, makes us realize we need to go back and check out the Sourvein recordings we've slept on - the last thing we reviewed by them was back in 2005, must rectify that pronto!
Both bands kill it here, a superb split for anyone into the sludge!! (FYI, there's also vinyl of this, we should get some soon...)
We've never seen this movie but if it's anything like the soundtrack, boy do we want to see it. It must be INSANE. And very, very groovy. 'Cause this is one trippy record, guitarist/composer Billy Green's psychedelic soundtrack to the 1974 biker flick Stone, today a cult classic (we hear it's out now on dvd, gotta find it!). It's from Australia, one of the early precursors to Mad Max in the so-called "Ozpolitation" genre (about which there's been a recent documentary that we also have to see!), doubtless full of violence, stunts, bikes, and girls.
We don't know much about the plot except that it involves the badass Gravediggers motorcycle gang (who, while as shaggy and dirty as any Hell's Angels, ride fancy new Japanese pocket rockets instead of the Harleys you might expect), characters with names like Dr. Death, Stone, Toad, Undertaker, Captain Midnight, most of whom get their own distinctive cues on the soundtrack. Beyond that, the liner notes mention acid trips and something about a political assassination, and well if you know what happens don't tell us 'cause we don't want to spoil anything for when/if we do see the film, we'll just enjoy the music for now!
Track one, the six minute, 35 second long "Eco Blue/Toadstrip" really dumps listeners in at the deep end, being a dark and unsettling musique concrete composition consisting of noisy electronic Moog synth bbrrzapp, and didgeridoo drone (ordinarily we detest the didge, but this IS an Australian movie), like a drug fuelled jam between aliens and aborigines. If you survive that (rather than report to the tent for those who ate the bad acid), the next track shifts mood considerably, being a funky freaky instrumental called "Race", full of wah-wah guitar and more electronic embellishments. Yep, just two tracks in and it's already totally awesome! As the disc continues, you'll get to hear all sorts of other strange and groovy sounds, including short interludes of sound effects and chanting ("Pigs"), lush, melancholic orchestration ("Cosmic Funeral"), bluegrass pickin' ("Septic"), classical strings and splashing cymbals ("Amanda"), Hendrix-y fuzzed fusion ("Stone"), mellow hippie blues-bliss ("Smoke"), heavy prog plus free jazz freakout ("Gravediggers"), and loads more that's either super groovy or super wacked, or both. Sometimes it sounds like a 'proper' film soundtrack, with the usual sort of suspenseful or sentimental cinematic stylings, but mostly it's all about sleazy, krautrocky chaos!
It's mostly instrumental, except for the bonus tracks, one which consists of dialogue from the film ("Hip's Rap"), one being a kinda cheesy soul-fuzz number ("Cosmic Flash"), and also two portentous versions of "Do Not Go Gentle (Rage)", a song based on the Dylan Thomas poem, set to music by Billy Green - we prefer the second one, sung by Jeannie Lewis, which was probably very important to the emotional impact of some crucial scene in the movie but here just seems awesomely over the top and incongruous.
The final bonus track is the audio from the original theatrical trailer for the movie, which starts off with someone screaming "SATAN!!!!!" followed by a dead pan voiceover intoning "Stone is a trip", and reciting further selling points, backed by a collage of sound effects and funky hard rock vamping, all snippets from the soundtrack. Again, it makes us want to see it... except, in a way, maybe we're realizing it's better to have the film exist (for us) only in our imaginations, 'cause the soundtrack is so far out it seems likely that the actual film couldn't possibly live up to it, could it? In any event, the soundtrack certainly stands by itself as a sizzlingly lysergic slice of '70s rock/electronic weirdness, part Bobby Beausoleil, part Amon Duul, a little bit Sly Stone, a little bit Sir Lord Baltimore... and altogether Stone(d).
Now, if you search on such keywords as "motorcycle gang", "fuzz", and "soundtrack" on our website, besides this you'll find our rave review of another Satanic motorcycle gang movie soundtrack that we ALSO made a Record Of The Week once upon a time, that'd be the music by John Cameron and session band Frog from the 1972 zombie biker flick Psychomania, reissued by Trunk some years back, and now sadly out of print again. Billy Green's Stone soundtrack is obviously the only thing that comes close. You could definitely file 'em together, Stone being a worthy successor (with a song called "Toad" instead of one called "The Frog"). It'd be a great double feature.
Also, remember that unusual series of Aussie psychedelic sixties/seventies surf movie soundtracks from the Japanese label EM, we listed a while back? The ones by Farm, Peter Martin & Finch, Tamam Shud, etc.? Though this is inspired by wheels rather than waves, and ain't so sunshiney, still fits in with the best of those.
As usual with B-Music / Finders Keepers productions, this is a labor of love, and the cd booklet reflects that, its many pages stuffed full of full-color film stills and poster artwork, along with a lengthy and knowledgeable essay by DJ Andy Votel. Before delving into the story of Stone, Votel talks a bit about the history of '60s / '70s B-movie biker cinema, citing the aforementioned Psychomania as an important forerunner to this film and its soundtrack.
Like we said, we've never seen Stone, though we want to. However, we've been fans of this soundtrack for some time. There was a previous, Australia-only compact disc reissue of this back in 1999, on the occasion of the film's 25th anniversary (which was celebrated with a 35,000 strong biker rally!). We were never really able to get any to stock though, so it's awesome to have this now, and it's been further expanded with additional bonus tracks, as well as nicely packaged, including a slipcover. When we heard it was coming out again, we immediately thought, Record Of The Week. Finally folks everywhere will get a chance to hear this, and ride with Stone and the Gravediggers!
It's weird to think about the world before the Internet. Little pockets of bands in out of the way places, producing wild and wonderful music, that outside of a few tape traders and cool record stores just didn't get heard. In some ways the advent of immediate world wide communication has been a wellspring of amazing music, since now, some kid who records in his bedroom in Finland, can now be heard by anyone in the world. Anywhere. Any time. The downside is of course the proliferation of bands whose material maybe didn't need worldwide exposure, music that was just fine where it was, in the bedroom or the basement. Thankfully this particular release is a definite example of the former. Australia has produced some killer rock over the years, from AC/DC to Radio Birdman to Lubricated Goat (one of Allan and Andee's favorites) to the Dirty Three to more obscure noiserock bands like Budd or the Dumb And The Ugly or Primitive Calculators. A few lists back we reviewed an awesome disc by the band Whitehorse, whose epic sludge-y, drone-y dirge definitely hit the Sunn 0))) / Earth / Corrupted / Khanate spot. The guys in Whitehorse suggested we check out another Aussie outift (also from Melbourne) a two guys and a gal trio called the Grey Daturas, who only a few weeks later just showed up in our store with a box full of cds, about to embark on their first US tour (some of the dates with Sunn 0))), see elsewhere on this list for tour dates). And while the Daturas are indeed heavy and droney, their sound is less slow motion sludge and more blown out fuzzy psych rock. A blurry druggy mix of Hawkwind, the Dead C, Comets On Fire, Residual Echoes, Dead Meadow and Bardo Pond. The Daturas' sound is all over the map, from churning, throbbing fuzzdrug churn, with squealing feedback and choppy uneven riffing, to drifting dreamy stripped down post rock, all careening wildly between thick swaths of super overdriven psych fuzz, and drenched in crumbly distortion and all manner of wah. When they kick out the jams, it's fierce and mesmerizing, pounding and relentless, with simple propulsive percussion and spaced out swirl. Often stretching out into head nodding Krautrock jams, spacious and hypnotic. When the storms calm and the band drifts off and just sort of meanders, we're reminded of Codeine and other like minded practitioners of drowsy, druggy slow core. Still noisy, but mellow and intense, brooding and subtly aggressive.
The Grey Daturas are all instrumental which as you probably know we tend to dig, since there's nothing like a bad singer to ruin a perfectly good band, but there's always the risk of bands with no vocalists to be really really boring. But because a lot of the Daturas' tunes are improvised, and the band is willing to take all kinds of musical chances (they often switch instruments, sometimes perform as a duo with no drummer, etc...) it never gets boring, instead it becomes the perfect mix of droning free rock, kick ass instrumental post rock, buzzing druggy psych and even occasional blasts of full on metal. Mix in some cool song titles: "The Hanging Man Is No Peacock", "Force Is A Weapon Of The Weak", as well as some oddly political song titles (but more sort of Sixties politics): "For Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale", "Night Of The Barricade: Paris 1968", a gorgeous washed out black, brown and grey cardboard sleeve, and a totally kick ass live show (they performed admirably with a handful of fill-in drummers here, even teaming up with art noise outfit the Yellow Swans for one show), and you've got one of our favorite new bands / releases. AND they're recording a new record right here in SF when they get back from tour...yay!
Huzzah! Our favorite instrumental down-under doom-bringers return (to disruption) with this new
full-length, the prolific Melbourne trio's debut for Neurosis' Neurot label. It's a good fit, of course, this should go over well with the whole post-rock/metal crowd, this album often grindingly hypnotic, the Grey Daturas' lumbering sheets of distorto-drone skullflowering forth over a roiling bed of precision percussive clangor right from the get-go! Their threatening waves of pure heaviness, sharpened into a drill-drone of an attack, also occasionally take detours into areas of abstract ambience, the guitars of Bonnie Mercer and Rob MacManus carving psychedelic feedback sculptures, then tightening again back into full metallic impact, driven by the skittering drums of Robert Manson.
As heavy as they are (which is HEAVY) you can't really call the Grey Dats a metal band. They're in that quasi-metal realm with the likes of SUNNO))), Boris, Harvey Milk, and Nadja, perhaps, with a certain amount of experimental lo-fi fuckery going on that reminds us of many of their freenoise comrades over in nearby New Zealand... The title track itself is a clattering, pottering about, like something the Dead C would come up with, while the track called "Undisturbed" is anything but, sounding like a violin or creaking door hinge dying a slow and dismal death. And the high-end scraping skree of "Balance Of Convenience" should peel some paint. And then, as already mentioned, there's all the juggernaut, trance-inducing, spaced-out, instrumental doom rock post rock surging through tracks like "Beyond And Into The Ulimate" and "Neuralgia".
The Grey Daturas definitely like all the varieties of drone! And fans of, what should we call it, avant-doom, or drone-doom, or whatever, should like all varieties of the Grey Daturas, starting with this disc if you haven't already made their acquaintance, covering all the bases as it does!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been looking forward to listing this, holding off on getting the import 'cause we knew that the label it's on, Van, was working on a US distribution deal. Finally it's here, and with appropriately dismal delight we can share this digipack'd slab of supreme doom metal with you. The debut full-length from Swedish band Griftegard (meaning, "burial ground") is an impressive one. Massive, morose, melodic, epic doom, a bit like the early work of ultimate Swedish doomlords Candlemass, also reminding us of Trouble circa Run To The Light, Warning's Watching From A Distance, The Wounded Kings, Fall Of The Idols, and other class acts. Maybe even a little Nick Cave! One of the guys in Griftegard used to help run the I Hate Records label, so it's no surprise that his band knows how doom should sound from the get-go. Slow and plodding, of course, and with much depth of feeling. The ragged edge to the singer's voice gives these dirges extra emotion, as if the crushing riffage needed any help, so very lumbering and slumbersome it is. Quiet parts, piano and organ interludes, add to the atmosphere.
Solemn, Sacred, Severe IS the perfect title, and review tagline.
Griftegard, like many doom bands, have a religious vibe to them. We don't think they ARE Christian, but these songs are often ABOUT Christianity (and its discontents), in particular, the apocalyptic Jehovah's Witnesses sect. Lead off track "Charles Taze Russell" is in fact named after an important historical figure in that church. We first heard it in demo form, on a cd-r comp that came with an underground doom metal 'zine, and by itself that track put us on the lookout for an album from these gloomy guys, and again here it is, one of the most accomplished doom debuts in recent memory. Well, the Garden Of Worm we listed last time was pretty good too, and if you liked that you're probably gonna need to hear Griftegard's moans of misery as well...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yay! After being out of print for the last couple of years, this fantastic album has finally been reissued! Unfortunately it's not a domestic reissue, so the price tag is still import-high. But it's well worth the $, being one of our very favorite discs by Otomo Yoshihide's amazing sampling/noise/jazz outfit Ground Zero. This one's all covers, Ground Zero interpretations of tunes as far ranging as Massacre's "Bones" to John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March", Omoide Hatoba to Burt Bacharach... Includes liner notes in both English and Japanese explaining Otomo's reasons for doing each song. Great album, great band. If you missed it the first time, get it now!!
Hey! Just in time to tie-in with our recent review of the new album Rhythms From The Cosmic Sky by Earthless (a highlight on list #265), we've received several brand new cd reissues of old Groundhogs albums, among them this one from 1971, Split. What's the connection? Well... take a listen! And also recall that the bonus track on that Earthless disc was a cover of the Groundhogs' "Cherry Red", the original of which is to be found here. Knowing how much y'all love Earthless, we figured we'd order up on these and make it a highlight too. The other Groundhogs reissues we have to refamiliarize ourselves with a bit, but this one we know is an ultimate psychedelic blues rock classic. The title track is an extended epic four-part suite, taking the blues far into prog territory, while "Cherry Red" is simply a hard-driving, HEAVY bomb track for sure. And for this reish, the album's original eight tracks are augmented by four bonus BBC live in concert recordings, versions of "Cherry Red" and parts 1, 2 and 4 of "Split"!
Lead by guitar hero Tony McPhee, the Groundhogs were among the best of the late '60s British blues boom, heavy and freaky enough for today's backwards-looking proto-metal fanatics to cotton to. The occasional hippy goofiness and old tymey Beefheartian hijinx may or may not be to everyone's taste, but we (Earthless fans for sure) can all agree on awesomeness of the wailing fuzzed guitar parts, can't we? And those are NOT few nor far between. Split is all about the energetic riffage -- and the concept of (drug induced?) mental breakdown readily conjured by McPhee's wild soloing. File with other early, exploratory heaviness like High Tide, T2, Arzachel... and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac as well.
Wow! The first vinyl-only (that's right, no plans for a cd we're told) Sublime Frequencies release focuses on a single group rather than an anthology of regional folk and pop or collaged radio broadcasts. Struck by an ecstatically squealing lo-fi blast of electric guitar from a song heard on Moroccan radio, the Sub Freq's main man, Alan Bishop went on a quest for the regional origins of that particular electric sound. Canvassing numerous cassette dealers, he was only able to identify the music as Sahwari and to pinpoint the region as the Western Sahara, a disputed territory nestled on the Atlantic Coast of North Africa between Morocco and Mauritania where frequent political struggles have caused the massive displacement of the region's indigenous people. A few months later, Bishop's colleague, Hisham Mayet, armed with Bishop's recording travelled back to Morocco to continue the search, ending up in the last outpost of the Western Sahara, Daklha, where through the help of the Sahwari shopkeepers was finally led to the creator of the strange music himself, Baamar Salmou, or as he is known in Sahwari, Doueh. Born in 1964. Doueh learned guitar on a homemade instrument fashioned from pieces of wood and steel strings. In 1981, influenced by Mauritanian music as well as Spanish cassettes imported from Europe and America of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, he formed Group Doueh, fast becoming one of the definitive groups in the region, playing in festivals all over Northern Africa and even in France and Portugal. His wife Halima later joined as a vocalist and percussionist and in later incarnations, Doueh's son Jamal joined on keyboards. The tracks on this release are all taken from Doueh's personal archive except for two recordings made by Mayet, early last year. This is definitely some of the strangest and twisted ethnic music we've heard in awhile with its buzzing lo-fi circular guitar hooks and exhuberant vocalising and infectious rhythms, reminding us of aspects of Konono No1's DIY tinkering, Tartit's desert trance-jams and a bit of the Shaggs self-taught charm (not so much in sound, but how a lot of the guitar parts follow the vocals). Limited to 1000 copies, this is so awesome and highly recommended!!
Another winner from Sublime Frequencies! We're beginning to think with all this hidden music to be discovered and lost classics to be recovered, there's definitely no point in having so many new bands, we oughta just have some of them swap their gear in and just join the hunt for all this amazing music we miss out on...
But until then we've got the Sublime Frequencies fellas on the case, and this latest discovery has definitely got to bee one of the best yet. Group Inerane are spearheading the Tureg Guitar movement, inspired by the musicians who used this music as a political weapon in the Libyan refugee camps in the late eighties, early nineties. This is how the blues should sound. Groovy, intense, funky, emotional, dark, gorgeous, the guitars grinding and crunching and wailing, slithering and soaring, accompanied by chanted and sung vocals, that are perfectly woven into the lush fabric of the various guitar parts. The riffing is fluid, but also bit jagged and rough. The opening track is a killer. One of the most amazing and intense songs we've ever heard, worth the price of admission alone. Just guitar and vocals, chunky and propulsive, but also weirdly slippery and sinewy, the melody swaying back and forth from major key to minor key, an incredible hook and the riff, well, one of THE best riffs ever.
Most of the rest of the record is more a sort of African surf rock, fuzzy and twangy, with surfy guitar, soaring vocals, the whole thing wild and festive, jubilant and celebratory, but hold up, the final track on side one, "Nadan Al Kazawnin", is something else entirely, with its super distorted grimy guitars, a totally blown out in the red production, the riff looped and hypnotic, the vocals intense and heartfelt, the whole song howling and buzzing, sounding as gorgeously fucked up and raw as some experimental indie avant noise group, the guitar is indescribable, incendiary and white hot, all tangled up with the vocals, and bathed in distortion, wouldn't be out of place on some super limited cd-r... Totally amazing.
Pressed on super thick vinyl. Packaged in a heavy duty, full color gatefold sleeve, with tons of photos and liner notes...
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 1000 LPS!
You know how much we like instrumental underground UK prog masters Guapo here, right? Andee even put out one of their albums (2001's Great Sage, Equal Of Heaven) on his label tUMULt. Subsequently they released the massive Five Suns opus on Cuneiform. And now, their new release Black Oni is unleashed by Mike Patton's Ipecac label. And they've been going from strength to strength.
Like Japan's Ruins, the Guapo trio take a lot of inspiration from '70s prog, in particular the "zeuhl" stylings of the amazing French band Magma. But where the Ruins generally concentrate the Magma sound into a hectic hyper-blast, Guapo tend to stretch things out, spreading their prog-frenzy across (in this case) a forty-three minute, five part epic composition, not unlike the five part, forty-six minute title suite of Five Suns... that's their specialty it seems. Crazed drumming and complex bass lines coexist with spaced-out keyboards (including '70s prog stalwart the Mellotron), making Black Oni a combination of energetic prog mayhem and droning electronic darkness. For fans of Yeti, Tarantula Hawk, Circle and even The Necks... and of course anyone already into Guapo will love this new one. Recommended!
- MPEG stream:
- MPEG stream:
Prog nutters? These guys are, definitely. And be prepared to go prog nuts yourself for this new release from AQ-faves Guapo. This British band is now on Neurosis' Neurot label, after releases for (among others) Mike Patton's Ipecac and our own Andee's tUMULt. We've been fans of 'em for a long time, obviously, and are in good company! This new one is everything we'd expect from Guapo: extended, mostly instrumental cinematic symphonics, dark and moody, played with the virtuosity and verve of their '70s prog rock ancestors. Heck, I (Allan) played a 15 minute track from this, "King Lindorm", on my prog / krautrock radio show last night, Klaus To The Edge (www.westaddradio.com/klaus), and it fit right in perfectly alongside the '70s likes of Cornucopia and Gnidrolog!! Droning strings. Eastern melodies. Bombastic battery. Elegant eeriness.
Yet at this point, Guapo have developed their own sound to a degree where you can't just tag them as a retro proposition. Creatively, they're bringing their old school prog rock inspirations into the 21st century, and have refined their approach to a point where they have as much in common with modern post rock soundscapers as they do with the eccentricities of hoary prog heroes Magma.
As always, the duo of Daniel O'Sullivan (Fender Rhodes, piano, bass, guitars, harmonium, modular synthesizers, autoharp, voice, electronics -- whew!) and David J. Smith (drumkit, percussion) are their own veritable prog rock orchestra, though they do have occasional help from guests, including vocalist Jarboe from the Swans on one song. That'd be "The Selenotrope", one of two tracks originally from Guapo's tour-only Twisted Stems cdep, both of which are included here, and which we previously described as sounding something like a horror movie soundtracks scored by The Necks. (To Guapo fans who happen to already have Twisted Stems, we say no worries, you'll still be getting well over 40 minutes of brand new music on Elixirs too.)
All this proggy goodness comes wrapped up in a snazzy black & white artwork, packaged in a jewelcase with cardstock slipcase.
>>Sorry to say we won't physically have these until Monday or Tuesday. But go ahead and order it now!<<
After a stunning release on our own Andee's tUMULt label a few years back, the UK's finest noise-skree-experimental rock duo, Guapo return as a trio (!) and with a brand new album that...[review pauses here while Andee wildly air drums along with Guapo's one man octopoidal percussionist Dave Smith, although I suppose it's not technically air drumming if Andee's in fact hitting Allan in lieu of actual drums, but we digress...]
While their last full length Great Sage, Equal Of Heaven was a frenetic Ruins-esque, bass and drums (and sometimes sax) workout, Five Suns takes the obvious instrumental prowess and prog potential present on the first record, and turns Guapo into the only modern prog combo that could possibly threaten Christian Vander's Magma throne. Hyperbole? Hardly. The centerpiece of Five Suns is the five part, 46 minute title track. So gorgeously grand, so compositionally daunting, so fucking good, words fail us. The addition of a full time keyboardist, as well as the introduction of guitars, has helped Guapo's skeletal prog jams flower into expansive instrumental epics. The record begins with a huge swell, a swirling squall of wild drumming and thick instrumental chaos, that glitches out as if the stereo is malfunctioning, before setting you down gently, ready to embark on a daunting but inspiring musical journey. Droning ambience and repetitive hypnotic rhythms give way to ultra complex, ultra precise riffery. Melodies are subtle but infectious, slowling unfolding over the course of ten, sometimes twenty minutes. Minor key thrum underpins careening hyper complex arrangements, tense and intense, hypnotic and just breathtaking in its scope. The Ruins is still a definite reference, but all sort of other influences inform Guapo's unique take on prog, the cyclical hypno-rock of Circle (and beyond that the rhythmic propulsive psych/drone of classic Krautrock), the blissed out skree of Skullflower and Sunroof! as well as post rock, free folk, metal and all sorts of other disparate sounds. All woven smoothly and uniquely into a cohesive whole. A fifty minute track, even in the best hands, can veer into overindulgence and pointless jammery, but every second of Five Suns is perfectly placed, and perfectly played -- but without losing its organic, free feel. The two extra tracks are separated from the vast "Five Suns" by a minute long track of silence to clear your aural palate, and prepare you for two shorter bursts of rhythmic, hypnotic, droning modern prog. Originally the Five Suns album was going to be just that, the 46 minute title track, and we were a little disappointed to learn that extra 'short' tracks were being added to make the record more, ahem, radio friendly. But now listening to it as a whole, it seems like it couldn't have been any other way. The two final tracks let us slowly unwind from the dizzying sonic journey that came before. This record is fucking massive. If there was any sort of justice in the world, Guapo would be spoken of in the hushed tones reserved for bands like Magma or King Crimson. As far as we're concerned, starting right now, they will be.
Wow! UK noise-skree-experimental rock duo Guapo really take their prog-rock obessions to the limit on this new album, a joint release between France's Pandemonium label (home to AQ-faves Hint as well) and our own Andee's tUMULt label. Guapo have always
Woah. What a surprise! See, the German psych/prog/kraut specialists at World In Sound have been responsible for a lot of cool '60s/'70s reissues and comps (Cold Sun, Modulo 1000, Psychedelic Minds Vol.1...) but they also have released some unfortunately not-so-hot cds by a bunch of modern prog and stoner rock bands doing the retro thing, and well, we haven't reviewed any of those based on the old "if you don't have anything nice to say..." principle. Just not worth bothering. BUT, that was until this disc came along. Like we said, a surprise. This Julian Cope approved (Record Of The Month for August '08 on his Head Heritage website) band has come up with a doozy of debut (?) here, a real humdinger from these Gallic guitarslingers. Featuring Matthieu Canaguier on "thunderbass", Antoine Hadhoannou on "prophetic drums", and most importantly, badass-in-chief Gregory Raimo on "guitar & guitar lighter, yaya preach, feedback", this trio's No More Invention sounds something like the French answer to The Heads, or White Hills, or even Mainliner. Utter aggro over the top distortodelic geetar excess. Frickin' savage. SAVAGE.
Nope, not at all what we'd have expected from World In Sound. Not only have they found a current signing that's good, in fact great, said signing are also a lot more punk than we'd have thought. Heck we bet these guys grew up on Metal Urbain, maybe even Soggy! The rabid vocals are somewhere betwixt Johnny Rotten and Mark E. Smith, babbling indecipherably. They also remind us a bit of the guy from The Trashmen (if "Surfin' Bird" was a raving, epick 12:50 long biker/garage meltdown blowout kraut jam called "Lighter Slinger Festival", ferinstance). Some other song titles, just to whet yer sick appetites: "Into The Garage", "The Beheaded Motorbiker's Head", "Black Dwarf Man", "Gigolo Albinos", and (uh-oh) "Auschwitz Boogie". Nothing holy here. Simply full tilt, fucked up, freaking out-out-out. Don't come looking to Gunslingers for songs and melodies and suchlike. Come looking for the blinding white lighting of FX overloaded, speed freak amp-sploitation, and the rhythm section rough-and-tumble of mainlined rock action energy, and you'll find it. Timeless stuff, heck if this WAS a '70s acid-punk reissue we would be less surprised. Gunslingers could do battle with the likes of Gaseneta, based on what we're hearing here. Recommended!
Oh boy! This is another one of those releases that pushes all of our overwhelming music obsessive buttons, like the Conet Project, The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv 1900-2000 box, the Yahowa 13cd box, the 50 cd Merzbox, the Ayler Holy Ghost box...
Compiled and produced by Gert-Jan Blom of the Beau Hunks, Harmonic Development brings to light the long lost harmonium performances of the fascinating Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949) whom some of you will know much better as a thinker and philosopher than a musician. This release consists of a beautifully designed 140 page softbound book filled with tons of photos and historical and personal minutae, accompanied by two compact discs of music in a digipack AND an additional disc of mp3's (that brings the total amount of music to over 19 hours!!) as well as a cool MPEG video of Gurdjieff home movies. Holy crap! So first, who was G.I. Gurdjieff? Well, the simple version is that Gurdjieff was an early twentieth century Russian mystic (and retired hypnotist), who drew inspiration from Sufism, and was fascinated with music. Gurdjieff had composed for piano for some years, but late in life he acquired first a wire recorder, and then a tape recorder, to document his improvisations (his "moosic") on the harmonium, a sort of pump organ, that produces a sound that is rich and full, a sort of lush, wheezing melodious moan, haunting and otherworldly. This collection gathers up recordings from the forties, from the last few years of Gurdjieff's life, and feature loads of intimate performances, several talks, and lots of ambient chit chat. It seems that Gurdjieff would perform a piece, slow and sad and gorgeously dreamy, enveloping all of his listeners in the mood, and when he was finished, he would then crack jokes and make small talk. Many of these performances feature this strange juxtaposition of almost religious intensity, and breezy lighthearted banter, which was somehow another part of his unique world view. We've yet to delve completely into the book, but even on their own, the discs are wonderful and completely mesmerizing, offering up hours of droney, mysterious harmonium music, but all sorts of ambient sounds and snippets of conversations as well, giving these recordings almost the same sort of vibe as the Conet Project, a distant dark mystery, as if these sounds were pulled from the ether, captured from another world and another time. At once recognizable, but at the same time totally alien.
And as you enjoy the hours of recordings, you can peruse the book which contains a preface by Robert Fripp, information on the unearthing and restoration of the recordings, track notes, transcriptions of the talks, as well as recollections of Gurdjieff's final year from a host of friends and students, among them the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright.
After a few years of unavailability, now this krautrock classic has been reissued again, as a domestically priced digipak on Revisited, as part of their Brain label reissue campaign. This was the 3rd album from Guru Guru, recorded in 1972 with producer Conny Plank, and it was the the last of theirs to really be about the power trio heavy rock (as opposed to the lighter, jazzier stuff they got into later on), and boy do they let it rip on a lot of this. At the same time, Guru Guru's goofier tendencies are also to the fore, as you can see from the picture on the sleeve of a leaping, why-be-normal Mani Neumeier (the drummer), which despite being on the back cover has become one of the iconic krautrock album art images, along with Kraftwerk's traffic cones, Faust's X-ray fist, and Amon Duul II's Shrat-the-reaper...
There's four long songs on Kanguru, none under 10 minutes, one of 'em over 15. And you'll quickly hear why, for instance, Makoto Kawabata and all the Acid Mothers Temple folks are so into this band. Psychedelic freakiness that's HEAVY, yet playful. "Oxymoron" is a trippy groove, featuring treated vocals chanting "smelled like shit, but it wasn't it" (presumably a drug reference). High or not, guitarist Ax Genrich gets let loose to slay it up on his axe, Hendrix-like. "Immer Lustig", "Baby Cake Walk" and "Ooga Booga" also all feature plenty of complex, burnin' guitar/bass/drums interplay, with the latter boasting the doomiest fuzz riffage. Wild stuff, it must have been a blast to see these guys play!
Guru Guru's previous album, Hinten, had a track called "Bo Diddley". Kanguru's songs are also suggestive of primal '50s rock n' roll influences - although stretched waaaaay out, and given a hippified, improvisatory, drugged-up makeover! Hmm, have you ever seen the live video of early Black Sabbath covering "Blue Suede Shoes" on a European TV show? Maybe the Guru guys had seen that too and it got 'em thinking...
What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedlia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet... here's the currently in print, Japanese mini-LP sleeve version. Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.
Like a blast from the krautrock past, Bureau B brings us the debut album from Gurumaniax. But, unlike a lot of the German label's releases, this ISN'T a reissue - it's a brand new album featuring the two surviving members of krautrock legends Guru Guru, drummer Mani Neumeier and guitarist Ax Genrich. Hence the name, GuruManiAx, get it? Sadly, original bass player Uli Trepte passed away last year, so the trio is rounded out by new bassist Guy Segers from veteran art proggers Univers Zero (with guest Mario Engelter performing bass duties on two of the tracks as well). The final track here is entitled "For Uli T." but it's as if the whole thing is dedicated to his memory, doubtless he'd approve 'cause Gurumaniax is about the closest thing to ye olde Guru Guru as could be imagined, really it sounds like they went way back to the earliest albums by the original trio for inspiration (UFO, Hinten, and Kanguru, circa 1970-72). Dunno if they dropped some acid too, to get into the mood, we wouldn't be surprised...
It's card-carrying krautrock all right, freaky and psychedelic, meandering and mesmeric, mostly instrumental. Psy Valley Hill is full of lengthy, pulsating jams and drifting, echoing FX, with just enough (but not too much) of Guru Guru's trademark goofiness / weirdness (ferinstance, "Telefonladies", with the voices of telephone operators mixed into the music). Much of it is super spacey, with swirling electronics in all the nooks and crannies. Their MO seemingly involves lots and lots of improvisational freedom, yet each song finds structure and identity. Results range from the jauntily spaced-out free-rock-abilly of "Voodoo Touch" to, on the very next track, the chain-rattling abstract soundscape of "Electrosaurus", that could be something by Absolut Null Punkt.
Gurumaniax are good natured and generally mellowed out, but still venturesome, traipsing to the edge of the void and sometimes beyond. The splatter of Mani's percussion and the echoed unfurling of Ax's axe is often slow and steady, even somnolent or sedate, but elsewhere utterly urgent and agitated... Quite obviously, these guys know what they're doing, heck it was about 40 years ago they first started making these sort of sounds, now the bread and butter of bands like LSD-march, Circle, and of course Acid Mothers Temple, with whom the ever-energetic Neumeier has collaborated. And, speaking of Circle, we're really reminded of that Scandinavian band by track four, "Ghost Of Odin", a lazy almost dubbed-out jam, blissfully hypnotic, with occasional quirky vocal mutter, eventually building to a loud, distorted climax... nice!!
Mani is always making records, but it's especially exciting to hear again from Ax, whose last solo album back in 1995, Wave Cut, was quite fine. It's commendable that, without T., they decided not to officially bill this as a Guru Guru reunion. But, listening to it, they certainly could have. Gurumaniax is the real deal. Recommended! And not only to krautrock heads, but also to post rock types who like Tortoise and stuff like that, check this out and see if it's not too hippy for you!
All right, another "hawk" band. Lately there's been Freedom Hawk, and Doomhawk. Being somewhat "stoner rock", this is one that should also appeal to the same folks who liked Freedom Hawk. And going way back, maybe even Hawkwind. Though the classic '70s rock band that these guys most remind us of is Thin Lizzy. A LOT. They're overtly, utterly under the spell of Thin Lizzy (a band that's more influential now than ever it seems). The melodic but husky vocals are like a gruffer Phil Lynott, the twin guitars twine together harmoniously in classic Lizzy fashion. And heck, in case we didn't get it, they even do a song entitled "For Those Who Love The Lizz" that not only sounds like Lizzy, but has lyrics that cleverly consist of references to that band's songs, like "the hero and the madman", "renegade boys back in town", "that blue orphanage in the shade", etc., as a tribute to their Irish inspiration! Although, overall, Gypsyhawk are more than a tribute, bringing in elements of garage, doom, punk, prog, and good ol' metal along with the specific Lizzy/Lynott influence.
Turns out, Gypsyhawk vocalist/bassist Eric Harris used to be in blackened thrashers Skeletonwitch, another killer band we like quite a bit. What we heard was that he got kicked out of Skeletonwitch, or otherwise quit the band, while they were on tour. This happened in Los Angeles, and instead of catching a Greyhound bus back home to Ohio where Skeletonwitch are from, though, Harris decided to stay in LA and start his own band there! Which, we gotta say, is a pretty darn rock n' roll thing to do. Thus, Gypsyhawk was born. And they're quite a bit different from Skeletonwitch (whose dual guitars dated from a different era) but equally awesome. For those into more melodic stuff, anachronistically proto-metal, especially so. These guys have the riffs, the leads, the melodic hooks, and the heaviness, to be right up there in the "hawk" band pantheon. Rockin' and majestic stuff that should go down well with fans of Lizzy-lovin' bands like Bible Of The Devil, Hot Fog, Falcon, and Valkyrie.
A fine debut, and it's adorned with fantastic purpley-blue and gold artwork (that looks a bit Erol Otus-y), nicely packaged in a digi (the cd) or gatefold sleeve (the lp). And the vinyl version is limited, there's 200 on purple wax, 200 on half-and-half purple/multicolored splatter, and 100 clear with color splatter, we've got an assortment of the first two.
Hopefully we made it clear, we're stoked on this!
Rambunctious 2nd full-length here from these Pasadena, CA heshers, now on Metal Blade, whose rippin' retro rockin' sure as heck still worships Thin Lizzy and also, to a lesser extent, Motorhead. The twin guitar harmonies, the rollicking riffage, the gravely whiskey soaked vocals - yeah it's all about those two '70s proto-metal, partly punky gods, especially Lizzy. Though their influences don't stop there, of course� they do a decent NWOBHM gallop, and channel KISS catchiness and psychedelic Priest too; but not much after, say, 1980 makes it into the mix! And Gypsyhawk do it all damn well, kicking ass here with triumphant fervor, building on the promise of their debut which we also dug a lot. They've got the sound, and the songs, sheer good times for anyone who likes some '70s inspired, high energy hooky heaviness - though, we wonder if the closing cover of Rick Derringer's "Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo" isn't taking things a bit far�? Naw, they're just having fun, as will you. (Did the original version of that song have somebody yell "Smoke weed!" right before the lead break? Well if not, Gypsyhawk has rectified that oversight.)
Put this on, and sure you're probably gonna wanna follow it with some Lizzy, but not before you give the Gypsyhawk another few (or many!) spins. And it just begs for the volume to be cranked to ten or eleven. What else can we say? Really recommended for those who wanna rock! Especially fans of Thin Lizzy, Bible Of The Devil, Slough Feg, and heck that other AQ fave 'Hawk band, Freedom Hawk.
Wow. This is a real "believe it or not" release. We thought we knew all about eccentric electropop pioneer Bruce Haack (1931-1988). Omni's reissue of Haack's 1969 psychedelic synth classic The Electric Lucifer was an automatic Record Of The Week for us. But we'd never heard of Haackula before. However, it lives up to its billing as a "lost classic of outsider electronica" for sure. At first, we weren't sure what to expect, putting it on with some excitement and trepidation... rest assured, we now have big smiles on our faces. Haackula is playful and perverse, and perhaps more than a little bit paranoid. Imagine Perrey and Kingsley on some bad acid. Haack's electronically effected vocals here continue the wordplay that he delighted in on The Electric Lucifer but now, shockingly, some swear words have crept in, for instance he drops the f-bomb in the first song "Lie Back", wherein he also rhymes "schizoid" with "shitzoid"!
Bruce Haack unleashed his Moogs (and warped imagination) in his bedroom studio to create Haackula back in 1978, but it remained officially unreleased until now. Possibly 'cause a large portion of Haack's discography consists of records for children, we were really surprised by the R-rated content of Haackula. And the R isn't just for robotic. There's a song called "Blow Job" fer chrissakes. Perhaps this is why it never saw the light of day in Haack's lifetime...
Haack's homebuilt synths and rhythm machines bleep and bloop, shuffle and shudder, conjuring an alternate universe of electronic computer funk wackier and weirder and way more off-kilter than anything Kraftwerk was up to at the time. The musical sense of childlike innocence with which Haack was so adept is still happening here, these tracks are as tuneful and catchy as ever, but his mystical ideas are joined by sexual themes... where The Electric Lucifer was astrological, Haackula is scatological. Adult realities are confronting the outsider, making Haackula's haunted house electronics all the more eerie, while the bizzaro-factor (plus Haack's aforementioned songwriting skills) insure that it's all very entertaining, gleefully so.
And if Haackula itself wasn't cool enuff, there two equally mindblowing bonus tracks. First there's Bruce Haack's 1982 proto-hiphop collaboration with Def Jam's Russell Simmons, an 8 minute track entitled "Party Machine" that features funky Herbie Hancock "rockit" style grooves and deep distorted vocals laying down such science as "Haack attack is back... Bruce Haack... Anti-wack." Damn!
The other bonus track included is an epic 32:15 piece called "Icarus" that would have made a fine release all by itself. Commissioned in 1979 to accompany an avant-garde art exhibition in Guadalajara, it's a sensational soundscape of everything from mad scientist laboratory burbling to faux-classical fantasias, frightening noise and groovy beats...
Omni has done their usual nice job with this. It's remastered from the original master tapes, and includes a thick booklet. Extensive, informative liner notes tell the story of Haack's "lost years", about his psychological ups and downs, how his passion for music and technology (and the two together!) never flagged despite his lack of major label success after The Electric Lucifer failed to take the world by storm... we also learn how he hooked up with hiphop producer Simmons, though we're left wondering if any DJs back in the day ever got their hands on it. As well, the cd booklet includes vintage photos and lyrics to all the Haackula songs.
Like we said, believe it or not, it's true. Haackula lives!!
Can you imagine if "Music To Moog By" maestro Gershon Kingsley had dropped acid, joined a commune, got religion, and jammed with the Silver Apples and Lothar And The Hand People? That might approximate what the unique, wondrous psych-pop "Mooglove" of 1970's The Electric Lucifer sounds like!
YES!!! It's about time. We've always wanted this album to come out on cd. This HAD to be our Record Of The Week. Heck, years and years ago, Allan (long before he worked at Aquarius) became a bit obsessed with this record. He'd found a beat-up old LP of it at a yard sale, bought it mainly 'cause of the title and the freaky colorful cover graphics, and then was blown away by the weird music within. It's what we've described as being "perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere." Allan actually went so far as to try to track down Bruce Haack for an interview, but without any luck (turns out Haack had already passed away back in 1988, a couple years before Allan discovered the record). And Allan's not the only one here at AQ to have a longtime soft spot for this record... so we're all so happy that it's finally, FINALLY been given the cd reissue treatment. It's absurd, really, that this wasn't reissued sooner. The legend of eccentric electronica pioneer Bruce Haack has only grown in recent years. There's been several compilations of his work (Hush Little Robot was the best, since it featured a couple tantalizing cuts from this album), expensive imported Japanese reissues of several of his Moog music albums for kids, a posthumous Electric Lucifer sequel from the vaults, and even a documentary released on DVD, entitled Haack - The King Of Techno! But Haack's crowning glory, his masterpiece The Electric Lucifer, wasn't available at all. Until now. And The Omni Recording Corporation (a label new to us) have done it right, even down to the very welcome notion of including a 5-minute track of silence to separate the 13 tracks of the album proper from the over thirty minutes of additional bonus material that they've added on -- which consists of a 1970 Canadian radio interview with Haack on the subject of Electric Lucifer and an alternate take of "Electric To Me Turn". The packaging is top notch as well, reproducing the amazing artwork and Haack's trippy sleevenotes from the original LP (wherein he discusses his concept of "Powerlove"), plus cramming tons of additional stuff into the thick cd booklet. There's loving liner notes by several of Haack's friends and colleagues and lots of vintage photos and graphics. Nicely done.
How can we explain the utter charm of this album? Well it's about as psychedelic as you can get, a concept album that's futuristic and Biblically ancient at the same time. Haack used an electronic "computer voice" (long before it was cliche) that he named FARAD, as well as regular human vocals, to convey deep Age of Aquarius astrological/philosophical concepts, sometimes in the form of sinister liturgies, at others like playful rhyming lullabies. These Moogy, moody and groovy compositions feature churchy organ sounds, bleeps and bloops, and rhythmic percolations that wouldn't sound out of place in the Star Wars cantina. There's lugubrious droney passages, mechanical beats, switched-on classical flourishes, and musique concrete style sound collage. Very weird *and* oh-so-catchy. It's definitely every bit as wonderful and essential as the Silver Apples albums, which we know so many AQ patrons love dearly. Again, we're so happy this has been reissued. Highest recommendation. Listen to the love angel, people!
NEW ON tUMULt!!!!
It's starting to get seriously tUMULtuous around here. One killer disc just out and still fresh, The Memories Attack, (one of ,if not THE pop record of last year, this year and any year, in Andee's humble opinion), THREE new releases about to drop (Diamatregon, Amocoma and the Ovens) and this, the first full length record from French ultra-mega-abstract-doom trio Habsyll, which just so happens to feature one member of the mighty Fantastikol Hole, as well as the former drummer of faerical punk blasters Nuit Noire!
But nothing, and we mean nothing will prepare you for Habsyll's particularly virulent strain of ultradoom. Heavy and slow, yeah obviously, but it's HOW heavy (very) and HOW slow (ummm, so slow the songs seem to have almost zero forward momentum) that makes Habsyll something much more than a metal band or a doom band, it's almost like twentieth century classical played with downtuned guitars and massive drums. So much space, the notes and drum beats miles apart, the drums not so much beats and rhythms (although those do pop up occasionally) as brief explosions or percussive squalls, more for dynamics and texture, or if they are actually engaged in some sort of actual beat, it's mind bendingly abstract and extended and slow to the point of hovering around 2 or 3 bpm. Think Khanate, Monarch, Moss, Bunkur, Fleshpress? You're already thinking too fast, too structured, too riffy. This is some excessive extremist radical dooooooooom, the sort of chug and plod and buzz and bombinate that makes the rest of those bands sound like speed metal.
But in this slow sprawl, and these long stretches of decay, these sudden flurries of drum splatter and downtuned chug, there is a buried beauty, occasionally, these disparate parts mesh into a brief flicker of melody, or a single epic majestic hook filled swell, before slipping back into blackness. And once or twice the band ramps it up, and locks into some serious pounding crushing black hole sludge, but even then, it's a crawl, a glacial black ooze tempo, and before too long, the band abandon any sense of rhythm or tempo, opting instead to drift through some wide open stretch of outerspace ultra doom emptiness.
The guitars go from grinding and sharp, to muddy and massive, the chugs flung into the ether and carried along on streaks of whirring hiss and blackened buzz, spitting out huge jagged shards of feedback, and long smears of blurred anti-riffage, the bass is a massive cloud of low end, throbbing and pulsing, exploding like a brick wall to the side of the head before slipping back into a shadowy rumble, the vocals a caustic demonic shriek, raspy and hellish, slipping into an almost hysterical falsetto, and just as often offering up some alien ululations, and the drums, oh the drums, any drummer can tell you how hard it is to play slow, but they're talking slowcore slow, or even regular doom slow, this is something else entirely, this is doom drumming gone free jazz, pound and skitter in equal measure, meting out beats one at a time, like some sleek black submarine releasing depth charges.
Two lengthy epics, 17 minutes and nearly 29 minutes, neither very traditionally doomlike, but both most definitely doom, maybe more 'doom', than most actual doom we've heard. Like staring into the abyss, or looking up at a black moonless night sky, these sounds are the sounds of emptiness, of bottomless depths, of never ending expanses of space and time, the end of the world, the birth of new universes, the sound of black holes, of exploding stars, the soundtrack to the end of the world, to the end of everything. Slow and heavy and low and spaced out and damaged and fucked up and strangely beautiful and mysterious and abstract and far out and completely kick ass while remaining very very very difficult listening indeed!
This is a split label release, tUMULt of course, along with 5 other kick ass labels: At War With False Noise, Obscure Sombre, PsycheDOOMelic, Skyr and Odio Sonoro.
- MPEG stream: II
- MPEG stream: I
Holy moly, at long LONG last a proper reissue of this should-be-much-better-known vintage rock classic! Seriously, this is one of those albums, where it's like, how come this hasn't been reissued before?! Why aren't the band's chief songwriters Chick Newman and Tommy Moonlight famous? Ok, it's been bootlegged previously, but not even as much as it "should" have been. You can hear these songs for the very first time and they'll sound like comfy old favorites. Hitherto lucky collectors only were hip to this (Allan here thanks Tim Ellison from the 'zine Rock Mag for tuning him on to Hackamore Brick years and years ago - we shoulda asked Tim to write this review, come to think of it, but we'll try to do it justice).
Hackamore Brick was a New York City band playing a special brand of laidback urban folk-rock / power pop, super catchy songs with jangly guitars, that are also very moody and bittersweet sounding. Their biggest influences seem to be both the Velvet Underground and The Byrds, and they live up to 'em on this, their only full-length, released in 1970 on bubblegum label Kama Sutra - though while sometimes sunny (through clouds) this sure ain't bubblegum. What this is, is a feast of great songs. They're all really good, it was tough for us to pick which ones to make sound samples for. One Kiss Leads To Another (a lyric from the track "Oh! Those Sweet Bananas" - they have a thing for quirky song titles) provides plenty of wonderfully melancholic, nostalgic earworm action, full of acoustic strum, hovering electric organ, clever if curious lyrics (with some unusual rhymes), and lovely, roughhewn vocal harmonies.
Of course, Hackamore Brick never made it commercially - you can hear maybe how this was a bit too REAL and raw and a bit too weird for the Top 40 pop charts of the day - but they belong in the Top 40 of anyone who appreciates offbeat brilliance. The Byrdisan West Coast element to their sound definitely means that folks who liked another recent reissue of a long-lost-obscure-gem, the Anonymous album, should also check this out. Also for fans of The Modern Lovers, Big Star, and plenty of latter day lo-fi indie pop.
Remastered, with new liner notes, this also includes bonus tracks, one on the vinyl and three on the cd, both formats including their pretty rockin' cover of Leiber & Stoller's "Searchin'" from their lone post-album single. We are so stoked on this!!! Buy it, you might find yourself a new favorite, formerly long lost album.
What a Blast from the Past! Probably the weirdest record produced by Giorgio Moroder, Nina Hagen's 1984 release Fearless has some of the craziest new-wave-disco tracks EVER made. Charting with "New York, New York", Hagen's tribute to that city's underground club culture, the rest of the record is a no-holds-barred romp of excess glamour and zany electro-funk, topped with her trademark bi-polar vocal range. There's even a cameo by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (man, they've been around for a while!). If you've been rocking lately to Maurice Fulton and/or his crazy "Paris Hilton" singing wife, Mu, or any of the Tiger Sushi G.D.M. series of past and present club jams, you might want to take an indulgent gander here. Guaranteed that the unique vocal stylings and punk-funk freakiness will have you saying WTF?! pretty darn quick. Glad to have this reissued! Also be sure to check out her Nunsexmonkrock album as well if you're new to Nina.
Holy moly. Yes this limited-edition, import double LP goes for $38 bucks. But we've only got a handful, quite possibly won't ever see any more and it IS one of the only vinyl releases ever (certainly the only one currently-if-not-for-long in print) from the shamanistic psychedelic maestro that the world (well, very small portions of the world) knows as Keiji Haino, either solo or in his Fushitsusha combo. So it's got that arcane relic quality to it, y'know?
'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape already came out on cd last year (also on Swordfish) but it's already out of print in that format, and this lp -- packaged in a 'hand-crafted', hand-numbered sleeve -- is thus also the only way to get this music, which (the important part) is pretty great. Let's revisit our review of the cd:
I know this is gonna sound dorky, but I (Allan) sometimes feel blessed to be in the presence, even via recorded media, of Keiji Haino. Yeah I'm a pretty devout fan of the 51 year old Japanese psychedelic shaman-in-black. It's a shame that outside of the realm of indie/underground/Japanophile music geeks, Haino is not better known. As far as I'm concerned, he's a 20th (now 21st) century artistic genius deserving of recognition and reverence from the wider world's institutions of high culture. Why? Well as my roommate likes to put it, his shit's just so tight. He can make harrowing, dark, cosmic, soul-bearing music out of anything: his trusty guitar and feedback, a tambourine, his own voice... But even fans like me might have found his last solo release on PSF, the all-acoustic guitar workout Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki, tough going. But THIS new disc is one I'd wholeheartedly recommend even to the uninitiated. According to the label it "sees him developing themes on from his last PSF release." I think by that they're not referring to Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki but to his previous PSF disc, the 'grey album' Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka. That was an incredible, hypnotic document of Haino in a gentle, ghostly mood, recording at home presumably, accompanying himself via overdubs on a 4-track, quite unlike his more typical live, over-amped, no-overdubs method. Now on 'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape, Haino again experiments with overdubbing. However his guitar sound on this tends towards the harsher electric tones of 'classic Haino' (solo and with his band Fushitsusha), much less 'jazzy' than on Mazu Wa... the grey is gone and he's back to the blackness. The six tracks found here all feature layers of electric guitar and vocal overdubs, a multitude of Keiji's playing together. To some this may sound chaotic and confused, but careful listening will reveal the ways in which Haino has carefully constructed these pieces. On the more guitar-heavy tracks his web of sound builds and builds in density, becoming a narcotic drone not unlike some Skullflower stuff, while other tracks are based more around Haino's vocal parts -- there's one I thought was gonna be all acapella until his guitar appeared a few minutes in -- raw and repetitious, almost Reynolisan. The album ends with a final descent into the abyss, a 26 minute trip that gets so seriously spooky that you suspect the overdubbing is Haino's way of not feeling so alone... Definitely Keiji Haino (and this album) is not for everybody, but it's worth finding out if he's for you because your life will be better for it, if you find his art speaks to you the way it does to me.
It's interesting for us to note that the last few releases we've had from black-clad Japanese psychedelic shaman* Keiji Haino have been big sellers, doing better even than usual for Haino discs here at AQ, perhaps on account of how they were put out by limited edition specialists aRCHIVE in super swank packaging (also, they were definitely excellent albums). So we've got to figure that a lot of folks who'd never before bought a Haino cd got one or both of those aRCHIVE releases as their first. Which is great, more people should definitely be getting into Haino's music -- he's an intense, impassioned talent (if an acquired taste...). It's funny, though, 'cause what he's really best known for is his searing guitar playing (and equally intense vocals). But those aRCHIVE cds, and several other of his recent releases, have highlighted other areas of creative exploration: electronics and hurdy-gurdy drones, solo percussion, a collaboration with a twenty-piece sitar orchestra, and primitive acoustic guitar improv... Not the heavy-duty, feedback-filled, freeform electric guitar he plays in Fushitsusha. As if on cue, this new solo release from Japan's PSF label documents just that: an hour-plus long set of electric guitar and vocals. So, Haino fans new and old, here's a must-have. Utilizing overdubbing (an infrequent technique for Haino), Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku starts all sinister and ominous, notes vibrating alone in the darkness, joined by more guitar lines, sounding totally HAUNTED but marching quietly forward, joined eventually by Haino's unique, plaintively tormented vocals (here sometimes hushed, sometimes oddly pretty). It builds and builds, becoming more urgent, more tense, more disturbed. Repetitive, feverish yawing, quite hypnotic. At about the halfway point, the volume gets dialed up, and there's an attack of swirling guitar violence... then back to the haunted void, and on, and onward... Haino fans will hear echoes his old classic Affection, and also the multilayered textures of his Next, Let's Try Changing The Shape and Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka solo albums. Good company indeed.
Such harrowing atmosphere. Such dark beauty. Such power -and- restraint. So emotional, so expressive, and all from one person -- well if there was more than one Haino could the world bear the weight? Hear this, feel it, and maybe you'll understand what we mean.
*shaman, dark lord, some title like that always seems appropriate in describing him!
This here's the third ear-boggling duo offering from the titanic team-up of Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha) and Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), two of the most masterful and distinctive artists in the Japanese psych/prog underground, you know 'em, you love 'em (if not, you're in for some bizarre, bewildering listening if you pick up this disc - what the heck, do it!).
This time around, we'd say it's a bit more Ruins-y than their earlier efforts Until Water Grasps Flame and New Rap, perhaps because it was edited and mixed by Yoshida, in somewhat the same manner though not quite to the same extreme degree as his computer-assisted collaborations with Imahori Tsuneo. Both Haino and Yoshida are accomplished improvisers, but this process of improvising and then later composition via computer edits is not something typical of Keiji Haino's work at all, in fact normally he doesn't even do overdubs. It's a "forbidden area" according to Yoshida's Magaibutsu label website! Here's the entire, somewhat confusional description they provide:
"Yoshida studio sessions to demolish and rebuild. Haino Keiji is playing Yoshida edit, it is a forbidden area depth issues that I think works. Contemporary, piece acoustic number, hard-core and edited by extreme impossible to reproduce surprisingly pop songs... Two wide variety of music to unite and condensation. New possibilities could look at things."
Of course, Yoshida is playing as well (drums, keyboard, bass, vocals), while Haino does his thing on electric and acoustic guitar, flute, soprano laute, and vocals. And the results should appeal to fans of either/both (and for that matter, also sounds something like an Acid Mothers/Melt Banana hybrid). There's both hectic and lumbering rhythms, weird vocal warble, frantic noise, tangled blasts of no-wavey guitar, fucked up grooves, chiming math-rock complexities, spooky synth ambience, droning chant ranging from silly to sublime, and echoing psych weirdness... basically a blenderized mix of Yoshida and Haino's musical tendencies, that despite the seeming chaos, Yoshida has structured into 16 remarkably cohesive individual song identities. For instance, take a track like "Loksooidgiifj". It could easily BE a hyper Ruins track up til about the 1:50 mark, when Haino's void-treading guitar makes its atmospheric entrance, transforming the piece into a more stark percussive space. Or "Lakdddffkouwwe", an extreme example of chopped-up prog skitter, with piano and fluttery flute o'er the top.
If you liked the Yoshida/Tsuneo discs on doubtmusic, you'll definitely like this, and it's got that special Haino mystique as well. Also look out for another Haino/Yoshida duo disc, Uhrfasudhasdd, to come out on Tzadik really soon, it's apparently a continuation of these sessions, 'cause they were so into it they recorded much more than the 50 minutes found here. And no, we don't know what's with the random letter explosion alphabet soup album and song titles, that's a Yoshida thing...
And here's the Tzadik-issued part II to the latest collaboration between Japanese prog/psych legends Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha). Part I, Hauenfiomiume, came out on Yoshida's Magaibutsu label, and we highlighted it last list. The equally easy to say, remember, and spell Uhrfasudhasdd consists of 16 more tracks from the same sessions... also with crazy alphabet soup song titles. So, what we said about Hauenfiomiume pretty much applies here too. Compared to earlier Yoshida/Haino team-ups, it's more on the Ruinsy side, in part 'cause Yoshida computer-edited and mixed it, splicing and dicing their original improvs (?) into condensed, intense compositions, ranging from eerie ambience, to heavy progspazms. There's lots of quick cuts and giltched-out passages, making for manic spires of spiralling energy... For instance, on the track "Thuguigodssphiff", This Heatish percussion is punched in next to blasts of distortion and Magmoid vocal choruses. Maybe this is what a 'screwed and chopped' Koenjihyakkei would sound like! Except that most of this seems sped up, not slowed down. "Dhoidvophkjiff" could have been constructed from samples of Orthrelm and Brise-Glace.
It's the sort of insanity you expect from Yoshida in other words, everything from attention-deficit keyboard tinkling to fried synth soundz to rubbery bass riffage to howling guitar (well that's probably Haino's doing). The black-clad Haino's ability to conjure utter darkness bleeds through as well (check out the track 12, "Zhuddiposshk" for some harrowing, horrific atmospheres and creepy guttural vocal stylings, which crop up again on the ominous "Fiuijkdfgpokwom")... Basically if you're at all into either Haino or (maybe moreso) Yoshida, you'll enjoy this crazy cornucopia of their most extreme tendencies, multiplied by studio technology! Recommended.
Hey, these three must really like playing together (and WE really like 'em playing together too). 'Cause this Haino/O'Rourke/Ambarchi collaboration has turned out to be not a one-off, or even two-off; this international power trio are on their fourth full album, now, in just four years. And just getting better and better it seems. This outing again combines the colossal void-sculpting electric guitar & emotive, echoing vocal yawp of Japanese psych shaman Haino, with sturdy rhythm section backup from indie/experimental superstars Jim O'Rourke (bass) and Oren Ambarchi (drums). You can imagine the latter two doing the whole 'we're not worthy' routine in the face of Haino's overpowering black-on-black aesthetic, but actually they ARE pretty worthy, O'Rourke's Brise-Glace background (and oh, yeah stint in Sonic Youth) aligning with dronester-by-day Ambarchi's interest in motorik krautrock percussion stylings (e.g. Sagittarian Domain) to definitely hold up their end and provide plenty of interest and umph to the improvised (?) soundscapes through which Haino's guitar carves wide swaths.
This time round, there's some surprises, too - including a cameo appearance by famed minimalist drone-pioneer Charlemagne Palestine! That's on the opening, nearly 10 minute track, which also features Japanese guest Eiko Ishibashi, both playing wine glasses (yes wine glasses) making dulcet drones over which Haino gently (yes gently) sings and plays guitar. That's another surprise, how quietly and peacefully this begins, and continues, on the spacious second track too, where Haino plays flute (yes flute)� quite nice. But have no fears, fans of the Fushitsusha-freakout-mode of Haino's guitaring, as despite the relative restraint and loveliness of those first two tracks, this set does get heavy and noisy as it goes on, the group erupting into amped-up action by the time track three rolls around, replete with the choppy attack and grinding tones of Haino's guitar. Ambarchi provides a steady beat, steadier than on your usual Fushitsusha fare, pounding away alongside the distorted bass of O'Rourke in cyclic rhythmic grooves, providing compelling, mesmeric support for Haino to do 'his thing' - and this is very much his thing - as the cryptic/poetic song titles will attest. Somewhat in contrast to Haino's reactivated Fushitsusha unit, which has gone in the direction of dealing in beautifully difficult, short, sharp shocks, getting almost no-wavy on their two recent Heartfast label albums, this Fushitsusha-like trio has stayed more in stretched-out jam territory, all right with us too. So, recommended for any fan of Fushitsusha OR this band, and we do consider them a band at this point, albeit as mentioned, and as it should be, a Haino-centric one.
Along with the sudden miraculous appearance of their nigh-impossible to find 1998 album "Amplifier Worship" in our racks (see elsewhere on this list) we've also managed to acquire a few copies of some other hard-to-find Boris titles, including this
RealAudio clip: "The Decision of a Dream Which Will Never Be Completely Red" [/audio/hainoborisdecision.rm]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
For some folks (you know who you are), this has got to be the most exciting entry on this week's New Arrivals list. The second recorded collaboration by this heavy duty international trio, each with their own dedicated following. But let's not kid ourselves. Only one is truly a cult, he of the dark shades and bangs. And, not to discount the impassioned contributions of Mssrs. O'Rourke and Ambarchi, both talented musicians and noisemakers in their own right, this is, as all such collaborations ultimately are, Keiji Haino's album, he's the star of the show (cf. Keiji Haino & Boris, Keiji Haino & Pan Sonic, Keiji Haino with Bill Laswell & Rashied Ali...). This is how it should be, how it must be, how it always shall be. So, if, say you were interested in an Ambarchi or O'Rourke record that just happens to have the Dark Lord of Japanese psych playing a little guitar on it, this isn't it. This is a new Haino album, with O'Rourke and Ambarchi in the roles of very capable sidemen, essentially manifesting a 2011 version of Haino's classic power trio, Fushitsusha! And O'Rourke and Ambarchi are here for a reason (for the 2nd time). That reason, being to bask in the darkly-shining psychedelic magnificence channelled uniquely by Haino, to be a part of that, to experience and share in it, and probably be changed by it. For the same reason we listen, but more so. O'Rourke, whose usual instrument is guitar, plays bass (as he did in Sonic Youth). Ambarchi, best known for his guitar-based dronemongering, plays drums. The implication is obvious. Both do their utmost to help Haino achieve, well, Haino-ness. And he does. On these four loooong tracks, recorded live in Tokyo, January 2011, washes of distortion and feedback are sculpted with eerie otherworldly angles only possible in some non-Euclidean musical geometry... shrill, sparking tendrils of guitar cascade over steady percussive plod and skitter. Haino's emotive vocal shriek is wrenched forth poetically o'er some select passages, but mostly this is about the ominous glorious grinding interplay of the three instruments. There's quiet stretches, and rocked-out bass-heavy ones; rhythmic moments of softly pulsating distorted shuffle, others where all players meld in one slomo explosion of dense churning muzz. Fans of Haino, fans of Fushitsusha, you want this. Those more familiar with the *other* two guys, well, they're introducing you to something special... And if your soul has ever cried out in the void, you'll like it. (PS if it's not obvious, a huge Haino fanboy here wrote this review!)
Nice graphics/design by Stephen O'Malley. Cd in digipack; vinyl in nice gatefold, cut at Dub Plates and Mastering, Berlin.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In terms of 'keywords' this review should go something like this: Hala Strana, Jewelled Antler, Thuja, Steven R. Smith, Mirza, limited edition cd-rs, Eastern European folk music. Eh? Ok, now some of you are already clicking ADD TO CART or headin' down to our store. But if all that was more-or-less gobbledygook to you, let's elaborate. Hala Strana, which you may already have encountered as an entry in the Jewelled Antler Library series of 3" cdrs, is a project of LA-based multi-instrumentalist (and multi-instrument builder) Steven R. Smith, who is a member of Jewelled Antler flagship improv psych group Thuja and a solo artist in his own right. Hala Strana is his vehicle for instrumental droned-out Eastern European folk music appreciation/interpretation, and really represents some of his finest work to date. Multitracking turns Steven R. Smith into a one-man village orchestra, playing everything from violin to optigan, bul bul tarang to gourd guitar, harpsichord to clay flowerpots! Bouzouki, cello, harmonium, percussion, etc. These songs also incorporate snippets of field recording tapes and sampled recordings of traditional music. Plus some of his Thuja cohorts also show up to help out.
Many of the tracks are based on traditional folk tunes from Hungary, Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, and other Balkan backwaters. If you've heard any of the wonderful Muszikas records, you'll understand Steven R. Smith's inspirations. His arrangements and instrumention turn 'em into total folk-psych gems, reminding us of certain krautrock bands, International Harvester, the Dirty Three, Kemialliset Ystavat, Black Forest/Black Sea, all sorts of good things. Utter old world beauty meets underground drone aesthetics = some kind of Transylvanian trance music. Really nice. And we're looking forward to *another* new Hala Strana disc, a cd being released on Emperor Jones next week. That one's gonna be good too. But Fielding is hard to top. After all, there's TWO discs worth of music, and a handsome, handmade lil' booklet of art and text included. Unfortunately, there's only about 25 of these still available, so act fast!
Every time we get in a new album from Steven R. Smith's Hala Strana it's as if we've been magically, mystically transported to one of the Olde World vistas with which he always adorns his cd covers (this one comes from the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493). He's an Eastern European influenced, drone-folk one-man-band, crafting gorgeous, mesmerizing, sometimes melancholic instrumental compositions in his home studio, incorporating sundry ethnic instruments and tapes and field recordings, in a manner quite in keeping with that of his Jewelled Antler brethren (instrument-builder Smith is an alumnus of Thuja, you might know). Only three of the songs here are authentic traditional tunes (from Latvia, Hungary, and the Caucasus), but all the rest of them also seem to derive from an ancient, far-off land of Smith's imaginings...organic, rustic, autumnal...music for meandering along a trickling stream, lazing in a meadow, peering at distant crags through a morning mist, or drinking in a ruined old tavern at night. Harmonium drones and gently plucked strings and wheezing accordion and keening hurdy gurdy (and more) are all woven by Smith into the medieval tapestry of Hala Strana's music. Ah, we love it. These Villages is Hala Strana's fourth release -- we can't say it's the best yet, only because the others were also so superlative too. Quite recommended.
Ripping heavy metal infused with ornate Queen-like pop smarts, in support of lyrical concerns that 99 percenters could rally around? Hmm, that could only be the new album from San Francisco's Hammers Of Misfortune! It's interesting to think, that 17th Street might be the very first record by these guys (and gals) that lots of people will be exposed to, on account of 'em now being on a "big" label, the venerable Metal Blade, who besides putting out this new record, also reissued Hammers entire back catalog last year. What will those newbies make of it, a bold, brash, bombastic, very very "musical", progged-out opus that's part power metal, part pop, part political commentary??
However, most folks reading this are probably already familiar with Hammers, perhaps possessors of the preceding four entries in their discography (or 5 or maybe even 6, actually, depending on how you count 2008's double album Fields/Church Of Broken Glass, as well as the archival release of their early material recorded under the name Unholy Cadaver). So this review is mostly directed those Hammers fans, AQ customers who have been following 'em over the years like we have, and are aware of all the various the lineup changes, and stylistic shifts (raspy black metal influences out, '70s Hammond organ driven prog in) that have become part of the Hammers saga. (If you are a newbie, we suggest you get The Bastard first, then check out their others.)
But, while 2001's The Bastard remains our favorite HoM release (heck, Andee here originally put it out on his label tUMULt, right?), we are definitely finding a lot to like about what Hammers have turned into ten years on. They remain a brilliant band, if an indulgent one - but then that's one of the perks of prog, isn't it?
As Hammers fans have come to expect, this is chock full of intricate, incredible guitarwork. Lots of vintage sounding Hammond organ in there as well, those ivories tinkled by a classically trained pianist, juxtaposed with technical thrash velocities. And soaring, quasi-operatic vocals of course, too... speaking of which, that's one of the most significant aspects to mention about this new album, that among the lineup changes since the last one, they have a new male vocalist who might finally fill the void left by the departure of Slough Feg's Mike Scalzi after 2006's The Locust Years. New frontman Joe Hutton is a more than capable singer, in fact he's quite good, and while he doesn't sound exactly like Scalzi, there's a quality to his voice that old fans who miss Scalzi in the band will appreciate.
He's not their new 2nd guitar player though, that'd be Leila Abdul-Rauf, formerly of blackened death metallers Saros, also of Vastum - who in addition to being a shredder who can hold her own playing those harmonies with Hammers founder John Cobbett, turns out to have a nice "clean" singing voice (she did the cookie monster thing in Saros!), filling the female 'diva' role now in Hammers - though these new songs, with Hutton up front, definitely place more emphasis on the male vocal part, a good thing we think. And he's certainly given some infectiously melodic material to wrap his pipes around, as it were.
We're probably notorious for finding buried 'poppiness' in all sorts of not very overtly poppy music, but don't think we'll get much argument here when we say that while Hammers have always been melodic, this is definitely their poppiest outing yet. To the point that we can almost imagine 'em being played on the radio, and could even kinda compare some of this to the likes of, uh, Journey, at times. Ferinstance, "The Grain", the album's first "single" (or at least, leaked YouTube track), is something that WILL definitely get stuck in your head, the chorus catchier than a really catchy thing, though it's over 7 minutes long, so forget the radio idea... Elsewhere on this album, Queen (and the many-layered guitars of Brian May) are a good comparison. You'll hear that on the heartwrenching piano ballad "Summer Tears", a moody one... Going beyond Queen, the sprightly likes of "The Day The City Died" gets almost into Sparks territory, even! Lest that not sound very "metal", don't worry, the frantic charge of "Romance Valley" amongst other stormers here should be enough to demonstrate that 17th Street is totally deserving of having the old school bloody axe Metal Blade logo emblazoned on its sleeve.
Conceptually (and being Hammers, you know there's concepts!), well, all their other albums came out during the heinous reign of George W. Bush. Now the class warfare is more the focus than the so-called War On Terror. And guess what? This is thus the first, and doubtless only, protest prog-metal album aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement (Occupy 17th Street!?). One of the songs, "Staring (The 31st Floor)", is about the collapse of Lehman Brothers, for gosh sake.
With the demise of Ludicra, Hammers are now lead guitarist and main songwriter John Cobbett's only going concern. And there was a lot of pressure on, but we think Cobbett & Co. rose to the occasion. Though it's hard to gauge what other folks will think of this, as no other bands really sound anything like Hammers do these days.
Available on both cd (digipack) or deluxe double gatefold vinyl, 180 gram, 45rpm for maximum fidelity!! The vinyl version features an extra 7 minute track, "Salt", right in the middle of the first side. And furthermore, the mastering job on the vinyl is said (by the band) to sound better, though we haven't yet made that determination ourselves.
Ready for some harmonies and heaviness? Pure, prog-tastic METAL for the long, dark winter? We know you are, 'cause it's been a long while. But now, it's here. The Hammers come down for the second time with this long-awaited new album, the follow-up to their acclaimed (and already out-of-print, for now) debut The Bastard released on our own Andee's tUMUlt label back in 2001. Whereas The Bastard was a full-on rock opera, The August Engine only *sounds* like a rock opera, it isn't actually one. There's no narrative, unifying concept to the songs this time, which puts HoM's eclectic metal mixture in danger of losing focus, being too unpredictably psychedelic and epic for their own good. Wait, what are we saying? That's no problem! As diverse as their songwriting and sonic palette can be, everything here sounds like Hammers and nothing else (well, except Slough Feg), which can only be the mark of a brilliant band.
Bursting out of the gates with an adrenalized instrumental opener that thrashes like Megadeth while remaining as gloriously 'classical' and over the top as anything on The Bastard, we can't say The August Engine never lets up. It does, but only in the sense that some decidedly unusual, and sometimes mellow avenues are explored. But for every non-metallic moment of sweet singing and pleasant acoustic guitars, you get plenty of shredding electric ones, with pounding drums, dramatic male and female vocals on a grand scale, and headbanging riffage. Advanced metal mastery here folks. Pretentious? Indulgent? Arrogant? No, simply mighty. The 10-out-of-10 review this album has already garnered from veteran metal scribe Martin Popoff likened them to a psychedelic version of the best of Iron Maiden, who are we to argue?
Hammers still consist of John and Mike from The Lord Weird Slough Feg, plus drummer Chewy. On this recording, Janis Tanaka plays bass and sings like an angel, though when you go see Hammers live now, they have a new lineup including not only a foxy new bassist/singer but another female vocalist who plays Hammond organ as well!
The vinyl (on tUMULt) has different cover artwork than, but the same tracks as, the compact disc version, released in a black-and-silver digipak edition by upstart Italian metal label Cruz Del Sur. Both sport cool Voivod-ish liner art by mastermind John Cobbett himself. Of course, recommended.
Our own Andee proves himself, and his tUMULt label, to be truly dedicated to the Heaviest of Metal with this new release! Following on from prior tUMULt metal-oriented releases (the grim and trancelike black metal genius of Weakling, the blackened
Formerly known as Unholy Cadaver, Hammers of Misfortune is the demented brainchild of local metal master John Cobbett, who also plays guitar in the cult SF "celtic epic metal" outfit The Lord Weird Slough Feg. Mike from Slough Feg is also in Hammers, playing guitar and providing the "clean" male vox. And we must mention the contribution of Janis Tanaka (ex-Stone Fox) on bass and the exellent female vocals. "The Bastard" comes across like a mixture of Cradle of Filth and Blind Guardian, or Slough Feg and Opeth, or Satyricon and Mercyful Fate: it's that eclectic, that classic, that amazing.
People have been waiting a long time for this, the third opus from SF's own Hammers Of Misfortune, one of the most ambitious, audacious, bodacious, bombastic, maybe even slightly ludicrous bands in the metal realm...and metal this is, through and through, even as it pushes the envelope right over the edge into, I don't know, musical theater... 2003's The August Engine was pretty amazing, as was (our favorite) their year 2000 debut, The Bastard (released by Andee's tUMULt label we should note). The Locust Years has a lot to live up to.
And live it up they do here. Just check out the band photos for evidence of that (funnier if you know these folks). There's a shocking formal portrait on the back cover, everybody dressed up in tuxedos and evening gowns, hair pulled back. And then inside the cd booklet, you see 'em letting their hair down in a glammy, rock n' roll fantasy shot. It's nice to see that they don't take themselves too seriously, that should keep people guessing about this band. Not so pretentious as some might think, joking but no joke.
Quick intro first for those just tuning in/turning on to this band: Hammers is a rock-operatic heavy metal juggernaut with harmonizing lead guitars, pounding Hammond organ (new!), and majestic male and female vocal lines. The band features members of The Lord Weird Slough Feg past and present, and mainman John Cobbett is busy too with his other band black metallers Ludicra (new ep elsewhere on this list) plus he's been playing with the likes of Amber Asylum and even Jarboe of late... As you might imagine from all of this, Hammers is an especially eclectic mix of '70s prog, '80s metal, black metal (without the black metal vocals), classical music, avant-chamber-rock, Mary Poppinsy musical showtuneage, Opethian loud/soft, fast/slow dynamics...
Basically, everything (and more) that already earned mucho plaudits for the Hammers' first two albums is present here: the sweeping melodic grandeur, metallic excitement, complex arrangements, virtuoso playing, intelligent lyrics, many moods, and attention to idiosyncratic detail -- which is evident from the packaging, with its Thomas Woodruff cover painting and aforementioned photography, to the music, for instance the track "War Anthem" that features a whole hired drum line arranged by Hammers drummer Chewy. Or it's actually Chewy multitracking his own one man drum line. Either way, it's pretty darn Tusk!!
And lyrically, while it's not a storytelling narrative like The Bastard, it's somewhat more of a cohesive "concept album" than was August Engine... the concept being, near as we can tell, a very allegorical, cryptic protest against the awful person and policies of our president, George W. Bush!! Or at least that's what we get from lyrics like "Death - death to the infidels / sons of our servants shall serve and serve us well / and gifted with endless war / flags and fanatics forevermore" (from "War Anthem") or, "If people wonder at the suffering you cause / and your massive avarice has left them at a loss / if by chance they notice your bloody, snapping jaws / the blood upon your claws / your shifty eyes and laws / the nauseating flaws in all you've said / trot out the dead" (from "Trot Out The Dead") -- no that's not Satan they're singing about, not exactly. We're pretty sure that makes The Locust Years the world's first POLITICAL epic fantasy prog power metal album!!
Recommended of course.
The late '60s Swedish power duo of Bosse Hansson (Hammond organ) & Janne Karlsson (drums), though having slipped into relative obscurity, were once a legend -- and rightfully so. Not only did Jimi Hendrix seek them out when on tour in Europe, jamming with them and watching them play, but even covered one of their songs -- "Tax Free". Legend has it that Bosse Hansson, trained as a
There's so many reasons to love this record. Here's two: (1) it's about the Lord of the Rings! and (2) it's a beautiful, timeless album of psychedelic instrumental music worth listening to even if you don't know Gandalf from Frodo. So lovely. It's a big fave of most of us here at AQ. (Oh, a third reason would be that it was the first release on Sweden's Silence label, and sold quite well, helping them bring the world such essential psych as International Harvester and Algarnas Tradgard later on!)
Previously we've stocked the One Way label version of this, but now, no doubt thanks to the success of the LOTR movie, there's a newly remastered edition on Virgin that's got not only nicer packaging but also a previously unreleased bonus track! No information is given about that over eight minute long bonus track, but it's called "Early Sketches From Middle Earth" and sounds like a demo of themes later used on the album proper. This is what we wrote about the disc before:
Many of you already know and love Bjorn Olsson's atmospheric "Instrumentalmusik" cd which Omplatten released a couple years ago. What you may not know -- we didn't -- is that Olsson's album was essentially an homage to the work of fellow Swede, '70s prog/jazz/psych keyboardist Bo Hansson, and specifically his fantastic 1970 album "Sagan Om Ringen" or "The Lord of the Rings" (itself an homage to Tolkien's trilogy). Bo Hansson, together with a group of three other musicians -- percussion, saxophone & flute -- make the music. Bo plays organ along with guitar, bass and moog. The tracks, all instrumental, are lovely atmospheric numbers, reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, or similar kosmiche krautrock of the era. The album doesn't necessarily make you think of hobbits and orcs, there's no overt "fantasy/medieval" themes or anything (it's not like German pomp metal band Blind Guardian's version of the Silmarillion!). But it does capture the otherworldly, pastoral feel of Tolkien's work. Indeed, it would be appropriate to call this album magical...whether you're a Tolkien fan or not you should check it out! Recommended.
It's just too bad that Peter Jackson didn't use any of this music in his otherwise amazing LOTR film adaption! Now if only they'd reissue Hansson's "Watership Down" album as well...
Another Radioactive reissued rarity, and possibly one of the best yet. Oooh, we've got a weird one here. Seriously. But very cool we think. Didn't know what to expect from the whimsical band name and front cover artwork, but it wouldn't have been *this* anyway! The first track, "3-D, Free" starts things off pretty freaky with spacey vocal effects and a lethargic reggae beat, with heartfelt lyrics, singing lines like "I saw police shooting rats". It's reprised later at the end of the album in an even more wigged out "electronic" version. This is definitely psychedelic rock music, but also very futuristic for its time (circa 1977-1978), hinting at new wave/punk. With track two, "Positive People", things get even more Devo. And it doesn't get any more normal as it goes. Capt. Beefheart also seems to be at this party... weird weird weird. But these folks have a knack for melody amist the madness.
The Happy Dragon-Band was the work of one Tommy "The Happy Dragon" Court, who had previously released a now almost as obscure album on Capitol in 1974 as Phantom's Divine Comedy. Never heard it but we're told it's very Doors-ish and mysterious. Loading up on the synths (some very John Carpenter synths) and electronic effects and employing the services of multiple musicans and vocalists besides himself, Tommy's idea of a comeback a few years later was this quite odd band/album/project. Huh? Well, this just might have been a bit ahead of its time... or something. Ultimately, though, it's very original and, to us now, pretty darn cool.
What other precedents can we cite, or comparisons can we make? Zappa? Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come? a seriously dosed Andrew Lloyd Webber? Early Alice Cooper? Late Comus? Xolar-X? The Dreamies? Perrey-Kingsley? A back-from-the-future Ariel Pink?? With sizzling electronics, spacey effects, madhouse vocal choruses, definite hooks, serious psychological/cosmic moods, constant pitchshifting in the vocal dept, and song titles like "Astro Phunk", "Inside The Pyramid" and "Disco American", maybe there are no easy comparisons... All ten tracks have their unique charms. A chaotic, confusing, eccentric and yet (im)possibly brilliant and quite enjoyable piece of work!
When you read our Saviours review below, you'll probably get the idea that we thought that it was the best metal of the trad '80s influenced (denim, leather, fists in the air) variety on this week's list. Well, it might be... but then again this record might be too (i.e. they're both pretty rad). Since we don't do our reviews in alphabetical order, though, Saviours happened to get written first, and into that review went many of the superlatives and expletives that we'd also apply to Harbinger.
Harbinger are deliberately '80s NWOBHM styled metal, but kick everything (especially everything ridiculous) up a notch, delivering the goods with all the hyperactive energy of school children hopped up on sugary breakfast cereals. It's all very intentionally over the top, but they mean it sincerely. We know they do, 'cause we heard about them in the first place from some friends of ours who are also in a metal band (Slough Feg), who always rave about how much fun it is to play in East Lansing, Michigan, 'cause that's where these Harbinger dudes dwell... they've got a total party house, drink tons of beer, only listen to vinyl (ironic then that this is cd-only as yet!), and watch movies only on VHS tape, not dvd. They probably don't have cel phones or use the Internet if they can help it. But these are kids, not actual '80s burn outs, just 20-something kids doing their best to live an imaginary '80s metal lifestyle. And, in addition, making old school heavy metal music to match!
What we really like about Harbinger is that as retro as they are, they're also completely willing to "own" the music themselves and do surprising stuff so that they really don't sound like a generic clone of any actual '80s band. Instead, like we said, they seem a bit more crazed than that. Invariably their songs, after relatively sedate intro, suddenly surge forward faster, as if you'd flipped the switch from 33 to 45 rpm. Their guitars are super distorted, this record a real rickety ruckus of a racket. Blazing along, these songs are crammed with unexpected cool parts, lots of shedding solos and burbling bass licks, blasts of drum clatter and plenty of high pitched waaaaaooooooooooohhh screams on the edge of insane. The vocalist also sings with a raspier nasal yowl that can convey melodic catchiness quite well, straight off the Sunset Strip... spin, ferinstance, "Die For Metal - Live For Death" more than once and see if you're not singing along. The disc is also littered with amusing samples - including some taken from our favorite metal mockumentary, no not Spinal Tap, we're talking about Bad Newz!
So maybe Harbinger aren't the most serious band ever, but they're having a blast, and it really do kick ass. It's hard not to get caught up in the spirit of things. Which allows us to appreciate the terrible cover art, a painting of a scary-looking warrior woman, quite buxom in her spiked breastplate, brandishing a morningstar in one hand and, in the other, what looks like an oatmeal or chocolate chip cookie but is upon closer examination actually dirt-globe of some sort, on or inside of which tiny silhouettes of other medieval fantasy fighters do battle. Weird, but maybe not as weird as the inner tray photo of a fist (with studded leather wristband, wearing a fingerless Harbinger brand weightlifting glove) thrusting upwards from beneath a pile of pocket change... pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters! That's their idea of bling, apparently. And somehow it goes along with everything else here that makes 'em seem more real and raw and fresh (idiosyncratically so) than some other bands we also like, who are doing the "New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal" thing too.
Record covers like this one just aren't fair. Michael Rother, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius hiply dressed on a platform in an abandoned train station with their backs turned to the audience playing all manner of amazing looking analog electrical equipment: synths, farfisas, banks of tone generators, oscillators, patch bays, stacks of amps, leaning guitars, and cords everywhere, amongst racks of machines with all sorts of knobs and levels. It just makes us soooo jealous. Not only for such beautiful equipment, but also nostalgic for this period of time in Germany in the early seventies when so much thoughtful and incredibly inventive music was being produced. First Amon Duul II, Can and Faust then Kraftwerk, Cluster, and, Neu!, with Harmonia being the perfect synthesis of the latter three bands both in sound and personnel. Especially when you see the back cover and you get a closer look at the band and you can tell the trio just have this alchemical connection with each other and the sounds they make. Each member is focused but self-assuredly calm. Not exactly what you would expect from a band whom Brian Eno once called "the world's most important rock band". Not that much of the world had ever heard of them. Nor is it what most folks consider rock music to be.
So this is it! We've been reading about this for months, and it's finally here: a live document of a now legendary show on March 23rd, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Not that it really matters that this is live, as their is no applause or chatter to clue you in, just bits of mumbled talking as the songs wind down at the very end. Harmonia members attribute this to there being only 50 or so people in the audience most of which were either too stoned to clap or too unsure at what points the songs begin and end. Doesn't seem to matter to the band anyway as we've already seen their backs were to the audience the entire time. But for a live document the sound quality is impeccable and what's even better all of the tracks performed weren't on any of their recordings, giving us, thirty-three years later, 5 new vintage Harmonia tracks to pore over. Most of which are over 9 minutes long.
Recorded between Harmonia's woozy debut, Musik Von Harmonia, and its more rock-leaning follow-up, Deluxe, Live 1974 is the logical conglomeration of both sounds, sort of like the merging of Terry Riley-ish repetitions with Robert Fripp's or Heldon's spacey and searing guitar extrapolations. But unlike conventional rock bands, Harmonia's music doesn't climax or necessarily change all that much, making their deceptively simple musical structures more akin to trance, electronica and slow disco. Beginning with the slow burn of "Schaumberg", an 11 minute epic of Rother's sinewy guitar lines that build and loop over gentle pulses of Moebius's programmed percussion and Roedelius' repetitive tonal keyboard patterns merging into a more sped-up and hypnotic version with bass rhythms on "Veteranissimo", an extended 17 minute meditation on "Veterano" from Musik Von Harmonia that breaks down to quiet heartbeats before slowly building again. "Arabesque", the shortest track at five minutes, does away with the percussive elements altogether, instead focussing on overlapping patterns of melodic synth and guitar before slamming into the loping quarter-hour stoner lurch of "Holta-Polta", then finally culminating in the blissful pastoralism of "Ueber Ottenstein".
It's been a stellar year or two for krautrock reissues as most of the Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Harmonia, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother catalogs have been reissued, re-introducing to the world the proto-new age realms of seventies German kosmiche music at a time when we can easily see its influence weaving through so many new bands like Arp, The Alps, White Rainbow, Lichens and Sylvain Chaveau. Always timeless, and never dated, Harmonia, like most of their German contemporaries mentioned above, were the most important rock band in the world simply because they cared about what they did, kept it simple, never indulged, and always left us wanting more.
Ok, we're really rolling out the Roy Harper here at AQ, as promised last time 'round in our review of his Stormcock album (which got a *great* response, thanks everyone, we hope you liked it!). And if you did, as we not only hope but pretty much expect, then we've got another one for you: Flat Baroque And Berserk from 1970, the album that immediately preceeds Stormcock in Harper's discography. Compared to Stormcock, well, it's similar in feel, but there's more songs and they're shorter (though some venture into the seven and eight minute range) and thus more variety. The strings and orchestration of Stormcock don't make an appearance, this is a pure singer-songwriter setting, Roy Harper showing what he can do with just his acoustic guitar and his impassioned voice. Just try the intense, confrontational "I Hate The White Man" on for size. Or the opening salvo of "Don't You Grieve". The outpouring of emotion, the depth of feeling, his verge-of-insanity intelligence regarding themes both personal and societal... sheer brilliance in both his poetry and his playing. As a unique talent, Harper was surely a worthy contemporary to Bob Dylan and Donovan and Syd Barrett.
Adding to the intimacy of the album, some of the tracks are interspersed with Harper talking (and laughing) about his songs, interacting with what sounds like a small audience, or just hamming it up with the recording engineer. Fascinating and sometimes quite amusing. His hippie humor lightens up music that's often delicate yet dark. So again, we urge anyone who still doesn't know why Led Zeppelin wrote a song entitled "Hats Off To Roy Harper" to check out this, and his other albums as we get them in. And, again, if you're at all enthralled by today's lauded folk troubadours -- the likes of Devendra Banhart, Ben Chasny, and Iron & Wine -- you need to hear Roy Harper.
'Bout time for some more Roy Harper on our list! This time, we've imported copies of the cult British singer-songwriter's third album, 1969's somewhat goofily titled Folkjokeopus. It's an opus all right, and folky (with lots of exquisite acoustic guitar playing from Harper) but jokey only in that, as a "folk" musician, Harper is irreverent and idiosyncratic for sure, and witty -- but no joke. The mood here is actually pretty dark and serious a lot of the time. The track "One For All" is dedicated to Albert Ayler, whom Harper knew from his days of busking in the streets of Copenhagen. According to his typically cryptic liner notes, Ayler liked to call Harper "tough guy". And as delicate and beautiful as so much of this music is, there's a definite toughness to Roy Harper, as he rails against the wrongs of society, spitting out clever couplets or crooning high and emotively over his own impassioned strum.
This record is the immediate predecessor to 1970's Flat Baroque And Berserk and 1971's Stormcock, both of which we've already listed, and if you like those two you should certainly get this one as well! The powerful, eighteen minute "McGoohan's Blues" (which grapples with some of the same themes as Patrick McGoohan's TV series The Prisoner, it seems) definitely foreshadows the epics of Stormcock, and is a crucial early composition in Harper's career. So we very much recommend this to all you '70s folk-rock fans, and/or those into the current scene inspired by such sounds (Devendra Banhart, Six Organs, Skygreen Leopards, Richard Youngs...). You need to hear Roy Harper and this is one of the classics of his discography.
To those of us who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Roy Harper might already be something of an implied legend, stuck in our adolescent memories as the name referenced in the Zeppelin III song, "Hats off to Roy Harper". Some of us may even have noticed in the liner notes to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here that it was Roy Harper belting out the vocals on "Have a Cigar". Sadly, for most of us from this generation we have heard very little or none of this man's own music.
Harper's life story (as raw material for some of the best songs ever written -- seriously, just surrender your ears to "Goldfish" or "Tom Tiddler's Ground") is full of drama and obsession: joining the RAF in order to escape a Christian upbringing, Harper's "legendary" self-inflicted nervous breakdown in order to get out of his military service provided the prima materia for some of his first songs (e.g. "Committed" on his debut album Sophisticated Beggar). After escaping a mental institution in order to elope with a pregnant girlfriend, Roy headed off into London where his rebellious ways got him arrested. Serving a prison sentence, he spent most of his time in the library reading and evolving his creative spirit. Following his release in 1964 he busked around North Africa and then returned to London to join the folk club scene alongside the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Bert Jansch and Nick Drake. During the recording of his first record he hosted the vagabonds of London in his flat and sermonized, guerilla-style, to the church-goers across the street from his flat window. So Roy's records were full of such expressions of protest against religion, politics, and the countless social forces subverting individuality and the imagination of the day. With every Roy Harper record, the listener gets extensive stream-of-consciouness rants, often surreal and often quite funny, complementing the songs with a voice that is at once confounding and endearing. The spirit in Roy's songs, one complicated by fits of great joy, sadness and absurdity, where the most banal things in life are rendered the most beautiful (such as "How could you say such terrible things with a wonderful wife like yours?") still coheres as the voice of a truly singular spirit.
So...why can't we find Roy Harper sections in most record stores? After all he has dozens of albums and is still very much alive and making music. Well, a rare and wonderful thing in light of the typical artist versus the record industry scenario is that Harper has somehow managed to own all rights to his records and now distributes his material exclusively under the name Science Friction. But doesn't distribute very widely as his is but a small operation, based in Ireland. However, we've gotten in touch with Science Friction and are now happy to offer our customers, at long last, a selection of what we consider to be some of Roy's best. Starting with Stormcock!
Recorded in 1970 at Abbey Road, Stormcock is a four-song, 41 minute opus of folk-rock genius (what has been dubbed by one critic a masterpiece of its own genre, "epic progressive acoustic"). Basically, the sort of thing that, despite the current upswing in the underground of psych-tinged folky songsmithery, you just don't get to hear much these days. A rare talent, fully on display here, and without some of the confounding eclecticism and eccentrities that may make some other Harper albums take a bit more work to get into. No, this is a definite "wow" from the very first few bars of the first song, continuing solid and stellar all the way to the end of the album. Gorgeously melodic, slow and langorous, sparkling with Roy's brillant acoustic guitar playing, otherworldly arrangements, and of course his voice, phrasing and lyrics. Roy wrote all the songs and sings and plays most of the music -- there's a few additional musicans on hand at times to help flesh out Roy's sound-world, among them one S. Flavius Mercurius (aka Jimmy Page) contributing lead guitar on "The Same Old Rock", as well as the orchestral musicians employed for the magnificent album-closer "Me And My Woman".
Anyone who digs Six Organs Of Admittance or Devendra Banhart or the like owes it to themselves to experience some Roy Harper. Likewise anyone who loves the quieter, folker sides of the aforementioned Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Packaged with lyrics, art, and Roy's cryptic latter-day liner notes.
