This dvd set is so cool, two AQ staffers wanted/needed to review it...
Cup sez: This 2-dvd set is fantastic! The band really shows their love and respect for their legions of fans with such a super generous helping of rare Maiden treasures (and the price tag's pretty kind too). In particular, I found The Early Days documentary on this dvd to be sooo inspiring and impactful (and entertaining too... especially hearing Bruce Dickinson talking about wearing his "jimjams"!). For one thing, it has proven to amply refuel the fires of hardcore Maiden fans' Dickinson vs. Di'Anno frontman debate. That said it also resonates even if you're a non-Maiden fan, a not-yet-a-Maiden fan or simply not a metal fan at all, and you might discover (as I did) that you have newfound respect for Steve Harris and co. Awesome!
When I (Allan) ordered this, I actually thought it was just one dvd, with a bunch of classic Iron Maiden live stuff on it that I probably had already seen on videotape but figured would be cool to have on DVD since I'm such a big Maiden fan. And I assumed a few AQ customers would think so too. But then when it showed up, I discovered that there's TWO discs, and the second one is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to anyone into Maiden, '80s nostalgia, or air guitar (I'll explain in a sec).
On the first disc, you get three concert films: 1981's Live At The Rainbow with Di'Anno singing, plus 1982's Beast Over Hammersmith and 1983's Live In Dortmund both with Bruce on the mic. In just three years, quite an arc of triumph. Turns out some of this I had seen, but some of it is previously unavailable footage. So, that disc is cool in and of itself. And then there's Disc Two. As Cup alluded to above, there's a documentary, The Early Days (90 minutes) which is so in-depth it's insane, and quite entertaining, the documentarians talking to everyone and anyone who had anything to do with Maiden, telling the story of Maiden from the band's modest inception in the punky mid '70s through their world-conquering Number Of The Beast album and tour. But what really made me exclaim "Heavens to Eddie!" is the episode of an 1981 British TV entertainment/documentary programme called 20th Century Box that focused on the burgeoning New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) as exemplified by the young Iron Maiden and their legions of fans. This is where the air guitar comes in...well not just air guitar, cardboard guitar! Apparently it was quite a pastime of the punters who populated clubs like the Soundhouse (whose resident DJ, Neal Kay, provides some unintentionally hilarious interview moments, like talking about how he doesn't approve of the term "heavy metal" while wearing a t-shirt with those very words on it) to make their own cardboard guitars and bring 'em out for a night of competitive headbanging. We don't want to spoil it by telling you more... it's great though. If you like Heavy Metal Parking lot you'll love this.
If that wasn't enough, true Maiden fans will then be utterly freaked out to see the amazing Live At The Ruskin, 45 minutes of live Maiden shot with a home video cam from the crowd at the show in a tiny club celebrating the release of their very first album. Wow. Incredible.
Plus there's tons of extras: 5 promo videos, early TV appearances (Top Of The Pops!), photo and art galleries, etc. They really did a bang-up job with this DVD package. Basically, Maiden rules, early Maiden rules even more, and if you like Iron Maiden, you must get this!!
After being out of print for the last year or two, all these classic Iron Maiden titles (and a few, later, not-so-classic ones) have been reissued domestically in remastered, repackaged (big booklets of photos, artwork & lyrics, slipcovers) and cd-rom enhanced (with videos!) form. We've got Iron Maiden, Killers (that's a metal must-have sez Allan), Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, & Powerslave (those are the good ones...well okay, maybe Seventh Son of A Seventh Son also). Anyway, it's time to get rid of your old scratchy vinyl or cassette copies and pick up some of these new cds. And is it just me, or did they somehow make the cover art look even better? The cd-rom stuff is really well done, too. Up the Irons!
This is not the first time we've heard from these Portuguese heavy metallers, but might be the best time! Either this band has gotten better over the years, or our ears have gotten more and more leathery (possibly both). This is their first release since the NWOBHM covers split 7" they did with Slough Feg back in 2005, and it's been worth the wait, that is if you're into epick swords and sorcery metal '80s style. Overlords Of Chaos is escapist metal manna to sate the bloodthirsty appetites of true metal warriors, the lyrics based on works of Robert E. Howard (just like their doomier brothers-in-arms The Gates Of Slumber). Underground, only-for-the-true stuff, very much in the vein of Ironsword's big heroes Manilla Road. So much so, that they actually got Manilla Road's Mark "The Shark" Shelton to sing backup on a few of the tracks here. Boy, the Ironsword dudes must have been excited about that! We're almost surprised that Shelton wasn't too busy signing each band member's entire Manilla Road collection to actually have time to get behind the microphone.
Ironsword's regular vocalist also sounds a lot like Shelton, delivering these barbaric battle hymns in a manner both gruff and triumphant. That well matches the music, seriously pounding and powerful. We say seriously, and if you can't take these Conan-inspired tracks ("Wrath Of Crom", "Cimmeria", "Dark Shadows Of Stygia", etc.) in that spirit, well... either this isn't for you, or at least you'll get some laughs out of it! If the latter is the case, fine, but you'll be missing the gist of something that really means a lot to these guys... they're not doing this for laughs at all. R.E. Howard and Manilla Road speak to their hearts, and maybe Ironsword can speak to yours if you let them.
All thirteen tracks here, from the uber-majestic opening sweep of "Death Of The Gods" to the glorious "Hyperborean Hordes" to the ripping "Fear The Night" to the semi-acoustic requiem of "The Pyre Of Kings" are Howardian headbangers par excellence. But it's the rockin' "Road Warriors" with its monomaniacal, repetitive riff break that starts at about the 3 minute mark that is the highlight for us, though. Suddenly they're Pharaoh Overlord, for about 45 seconds at least! Otherwise, it's all about good stuff like Cirith Ungol, Omen, Manowar, Sacred Steel, Doomsword, The Gates Of Slumber, and of course Manilla Road.
There's another retro-'80s "true metal" album reviewed this list, the self-titled one by Portrait. Comparing the two, well, they're both gonna be cult items. But Ironsword seems to be the geekier gang, yet their music is heavier and rawer as well. If you had to choose between Portrait and Ironsword (we like 'em both), it's a basically a choice between Mercyful Fate and Manilla Road... and if you aren't into either of *those* bands, then we imagine that both Portrait and Ironsword would want no part of you anyway.
Slowly but surely, the mighty work of irr. app. (ext.) has been oozing out from the Santa Cruz mountains through various outlets such as Crouton, Helen Scarsdale, and Beta-Lactam. Perekluchenie was originally commissioned as part of a Beta-Lactam Ring subscription series (which if you were lucky enough to sign up would earn you a bonus picture disc with the LP) but the growing interest in irr. app. (ext.) warranted a regular pressing, thanks to such high-profile releases as the irr. app. (ext.) contribution to Nurse With Wound's Angry Eelectric Finger trilogy as well as the Salt Marie Celeste performances with Steven Stapleton himself! The relationship between irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound has gotten even more convoluted as Stapleton has joined irr. app. (ext.) in their last couple of performances. We should be quick to point out the irr. app. (ext.) and the genius behind the tongue-twisting project is far from a Nurse With Wound copyist. Hardly! While both projects draw inspiration from Surrealism and avant-garde composition, they both express strong divergent aesthetics that show how rich and open the field of Surrealist-tinged sound art can be.
Qualified as "a pointless theatrical exercise in one act or less," Perekluchenie actually spans four lengthy pieces of audio madness. Waldron wanders through desolate strums across a prepared piano (or some other instrument that's equally heavy and reverberant) which gives way to ill-tempered birds, ominous windswept drones, and funereal bells. Waldron shatters the grim atmosphere with an unnerving passage for tactile squeakings and poltergeist driven furniture. Elsewhere, discordant horn bleats rupture the heavenly glow of elegaic tones and genuinely baffled exclamations erupt from a very young Django Stapleton. Waldron includes other vocal contributions from Lori Anne Anne Lori Chambers, Aquarius' former owner Windy Chien, and Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd.)
All in all, Perekluchenie is a truly wonderful album! We've been fans of Mr. Waldron for many years now, and he's yet to let us down.
We sold so many of these when we made it Record Of The Week a while back, and everyone we know who bought a copy freaked out and declared it one of their new all time favorites, and for good reason it's an amazing, mind blowing, tripped out chunk of pure sonic inspiration. It's strange and beautiful and weirdly heavy, and proggy and tribal and it's funky as all get out. Well, we managed to get a final batch from the label, it's now sold out NEVER to be repressed, so if you missed out on this the first time around, you got yourself one more chance, don't blow it.
It's no longer out of the ordinary for a rock band to look beyond rock for inspiration. Or a jazz band, looking to expand their sound. It definitely makes sense as musicians are generally constantly striving to explore, to open their minds, their music, searching for unique instruments, new ideas, new sounds, even looking for something much more ineffable, something more spiritual. Psychedelic rock bands have typically looked East, The Beatles are probably the prime example of a rock band looking to India for musical AND spiritual inspiration. But on a much smaller scale, modern music develops and expands by incorporating new influences, the more 'exotic' the better. So for years, we could watch bands do just that, incorporate new instruments, sitars, tablas, whatever, alternate tunings, Eastern scales. Jazz musicians on the other hand, tended to look to Africa for inspiration, the tribal drumming, the vocal chants, all found their way onto tons of amazing records, amazing in part because of what they borrowed from the African music that was their genesis, as with many many discs by the Art Ensemble, Coltrane, Don Cherry, etc., etc.�
So if all this borrowing and influence is so commonplace, what's the big deal with this disc, a deluxe reissue of a rare 1972 LP entitled Uganda, by Japan's strangely named Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffalo? Well to begin with, imagine a Japanese jazz drummer in the early seventies, so obsessed with African music, that not only are his records already rife with African influences, but he eventually travels there, and proceeds to play with local musicians, collects indigenous instruments, and returns, driven to realize the record he knows he must make, Uganda, a record that manages to sound like African music, jazz and psychedelic rock, while sounding like nothing else. Ishikawa teamed up with fellow percussionist Larry Sunaga, a bassist and guitarist, and a saxophonist, who instead of playing sax, composed all four lengthy pieces here, the results are amazing. Dense, dizzying, abstract and tribal, fuzzy and tripped out, long stretches of solo hand drum percussion, furious acid fuzz freakouts (courtesy of guitarist Kimio Mizutani, from Love Live Life+1, People, and other freaky Japanese '70s psych units), chanting and handclaps, all woven into an expansive, sprawling divine chunk of out there Afro-fuzz-psych-jazz-rock divinity.
Take the first track "Animals and Dawn", nearly 12 minutes long, and over those 12 minutes, the song veers and drifts through about ten distinctly different sounds and styles, all held together by the relentless African drum jam that runs through all four tracks. Beginning with what sounds like some strange low end synth buzz, those drums kick in, intense and hyper rhythmic, amazingly recorded, so on headphones it sounds like drums are all around you. That buzz, pulses and undulates beneath the frenzied drumming, and this goes on for almost 3 minutes, which is when some wild super distorted acid psych guitar swoops in, jagged and freaked out, spitting out soaring wah wah drenched buzz, before the bass joins in and the drums coalesce into a more recognizable groove, and the band nails it, heavy, slithery proto-metal, churning and pounding, eventually locking into a super technical prog workout, and then dropping out completely, again leaving just the drums, which are soon joined by hand clapping, and chanted African style vocals. Finally, for the last four minutes or so, the band unwinds a groovy jazzy prog workout, still underpinned by those same rhythms, but now the bass carries the groove, letting the guitar go wild, wild psychedelic leads all tangled up in great strange shapes over the groovy rhythm below. Eventually, the song is swallowed up by effects, reverb, delay, echo, as if the band were playing on some huge elevator, as we sit on the surface, listening as the band slips further and further into darkness. Holy shit. If this were a $30 single, that track alone would make this essential for folks into psychrock, proto-metal, free jazz, avant African music or really anyone into strange and fantastical sounds.
The second track, "Asking For Love", once again begins with African drums, the two percussionists, offering up wild tangled beats for nearly two minutes, until in swoops a weird synthy buzz, which quickly transforms into a seriously Led Zep worthy riff, the drums a strange counterpoint to the distinctly rock and roll riffage, and the vocals soaring and shouting, but this kick ass riff fades out only after a minute, and we're back to more dense drumming, Mesmerizing and hypnotic, locking into incredible grooves, veering off into off kilter time signatures here and there, but always returning to that groove. This continues until about one minute from the end, when the bass and guitars explode in a buzzing psychedelic freakout, the drums mirroring the intensity of the axes, locked into an ever expanding supernova of blown out sound, until the furious explosive finish. Whew.
Track three (on the original, the start of side 2) "Battle", begins with some straight up jazz prog, angular and complex, the drums and guitars locked tight, the whole thing convoluted and intricate, stopping suddenly after 30 seconds, at which point an African thumb piano plucks out a delicate music box melody, while in the background, other strange instruments scrape and thump and honk, eventually blossoming into a full on Afro-jam, the drums pounding away, male and female vocals, call and response over the mesmeric beats below, but again, this only lasts a few minutes before switching gears and launching right back into the angular prog that opened the track. This happens a couple more times. Long stretches of abstract percussion, plenty of buzz, and rattle, melodies played out on mysterious African instruments, separated by brief blasts of that �buzzing tangled prog, which is exactly how the track finishes off.
The closer, "Pygmy" begins with a groovy walking bass line, a cowbell heavy almost-funk rhythm, eventually some acidic wah wah guitar, and suddenly we're in some serious seventies, Blaxploitation soundtrack style jazz funk, the bass a constant presence, that groove irresistible, the vocals soulful, the percussion still busy and intense, beneath the more static rhythm driving the songs. The guitar and vocals get all tangled up, the vocals more sort of scatting, the guitar offering up jagged shards of high end, or unfurling soaring psychrock leads, the bass and guitar locking into step right at the end, for one final super tight psychprog finish.
It almost seems ridiculous to describe each song in detail, as that's only part of the story. All four tracks work together, leading into one another, offering up bits from pervious songs, giving up little sonic hints as to what might come later, and it's not just the arrangements, it's the feel, the mood, the vibe, and while mere description might make some of the songs sound schizophrenic, flipping back and forth from part to part, some parts lasting only a few seconds, nothing could be further from the truth. The composition here is as deft as the performance, the arrangement is simultaneously free and abstract, yet, tight and composed. The songs breathe and open up, drift and wander, but never seem to lose their direction, and the grooves ever present, even if on the surface the band seem to be drifting though inner space.
Uganda is truly unique, freaky and far out for sure, but most definitely an essential chunk of jazzy, proggy African Japanese psych rock bliss, organic, expansive, epic, rhythmic, space-y, proggy, heavy and funky!! If you've got Julian Cope's Japrocksampler book, you'll find it in his Top 50 list of Japanese psych essentials, right above the debut from Flower Travellin' Band.
As with all Tiliqua releases, gorgeously packaged. This one is housed in a full color miniature box, printed front and back, with a Japanese style obi of course, and inside extensive liner notes in both Japanese and English, with tons of photos. And it is limited of course, not sure how limited, but judging from how quick past Tiliqua releases fly out of here, better to be safe than sorry. And this is actually the first in a new Tiliqua series called Distorted Oriental Sensory Perceptions 1969-1978 focusing on "Obscure Japanese Psychedelic rock artifacts." We can hardly wait to see what they dig up next... there's a lot of others on that Japrocksampler list we'd love to hear...
Last list we highlighted a newer album, entitled Itavalta, by this Finnish band, and now we've got their equally recommended debut, available on either cd or LP (with the vinyl lacking the bonus remix track found on the cd, though). This four-song (+ remix) debut of theirs is the real reason that Circle guitarist Janne Westerlund told us that Itavayla is the "boogie rock band" he plays in. On their second disc, they took off on some other tangents beyond the barroom boogie blues. But here, that's what it's all about, sort of. Not what you'd think, though, or maybe it is. Remember, these guys are from Finland (land of weirdness) and feature a member of Circle. And sound a lot like Circle as a result, although Janne joined Itavayla -after- this recording, so they didn't get the idea from him. Circle channeling ZZ Top, that is. And we're talking ZZ Top from the '80s on, after they embraced technology and got all computerized and robotic. Thus the progged up arsenal of Roland and Yamaha synthesizers listed here, the synth-drum sounds, and even the robot voices (on "Future Boogie"). And, the minimalist, cyclic structure of these loooong hypnotic tracks (in the Circle style that we love) of repetitive slide guitar riffs, shuffling drums and honking keys.
The first track, "Black Diamond Express" appears to be built around a sampled voice (that guy can't be Finnish!) from an old time blues recording or something. Itavayla provide the backing, blending past and future both, which leads to the organ-riffed, electro-boogie overload of the next track, "Tesco". And on it goes, mesmerizing sci-fi, space age boogie blues from Finland, reaching a tranced-out peak with the 13+ minute "Jesus Kristus". So, crack open a cold Miller beer (or the Finnish equivalent, whatever that is) and kick back to these Circular, futuristic gutbucket grooves!! Seriously, Allan can't stop listening to it. Recommended.
The best of the James Brown's J.B.'s, now available for a low price. If you're into the funk, you've gotta have some J.B.'s, and this is a nice collection of essentials.
Domo arigato! Now here's a nice import vinyl reissue of this essential late '60s Japanese psychedelic rock record, the genius debut by 'Group Sounds-gone-gloomy' band the Jacks. Along with underground cult heroes Les Rallizes Denudes, The Jacks were another early, influential home-grown Japanese psych band, just ask Keiji Haino, whose outfit Fushitsusha covered the Jacks' classic "Marianne" on the second Tokyo Flashback volume.
With stinging Quicksilver psych guitar leads and melancholy vocals, the Jacks' legendary Vacant World, from 1968, is a truly gorgeous album of delicacy, darkness, and murk, that words like 'timeless' and 'dramatic' well describe. Its sparse, sad beauty makes it one of AQ overlord Allan's favorite '60s psych artifacts ever (although fellow AQ overlord Andee isn't as into it, but then, he doesn't really like Can or the Velvet Underground, either). Unlike other noted Japanese 'GS' bands like The Mops or The Challengers, these guys were not mainly, merely doing covers of the rock hits of the day from San Francisco and London, no. While Western garage and blues and psychedelic rock certainly shaped their sound, the Jacks seem uniquely Japanese, uniquely Jacks as well.
Though there's fuzz guitar on here, it's much more about atmosphere, moodiness, melody. The lyrics too, were apparently somewhat subversive, not that we'd know for sure. Totally recommended, especially to those of you into the more gentle and balladic side of more current Japanese psych acts like Ghost, LSD-march, Up-Tight, Nagisa Ni Te, etc.
Pressed on red vinyl, identical to its original issue, we're told.
Fans of current underground Japanese psych stuff (Acid Mothers Temple, Keiji Haino, Ghost, Nagisa Ni Te, etc.) who'd like to delve into the early psychedelic era precursors of those acts have been lucky lately, what with that Les Rallizes Denudes double cd finally having some availability, and the Flower Travellin' Band disc we recently recommended too. As we mentioned in our Rallizes review, The Jacks were the other crucial home-grown Japanese psych band, an admitted influence on Fushitsusha certainly, who once covered The Jacks' classic "Marianne". And we just managed to get a few imported copies of this 2-on-1 disc by 'em, released last year on the Japanese Shagadelic label. Not only does it have the ten tracks of their legendary "Vacant World" but also another 11 constituting their follow-up album "Super Session" (both 1968), plus three rare bonus tracks (two from singles, one live). The booklet provides discographical information and album/single art.
With stinging Quicksilver psych guitar leads and melancholy vocals, "Vacant World" is a truly gorgeous album of darkness and murk that words like delicate, dramatic, and timeless well describe. Its sparse, sad beauty makes it one of Allan's favorite '60s psych artifacts ever, though not everyone else here is so moved. Unlike other noted Japanese 'GS' bands like The Mops or The Challengers, these guys were not mainly, merely doing covers of the current rock hits of the day from San Francisco and London. While Western garage and blues and psychedelic rock certainly shaped their sound, The Jacks seem uniquely Japanese, uniquely Jacks as well.
Now for two warnings: The second album on here, Super Session, unfortunately does seem to delve into a more commerical, less special sound. It's as if some producer or record exec told 'em they had to be more like the competition. As a result, this does venture into a bar rock zone that's not at all on par with "Vacant World". And if you like saxophone, they get into that here too. A very different mood from the debut indeed. Oh well. But it's still cool to have, kitschy fun.
Ok, here's the second catch: we ONLY have 6 of these in stock right now, so if you need this, act fast...dunno when/if we can get more, unfortunately.
MPEG Download: "Marianne" [/audio/jacksmarianne.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Marianne" [/audio/jacksmarianne.m3u]
Besides having some of the most memorable album covers ever, Millie Jackson also made some damn fine music! While it's her saucy mouth and sassy attitude that she is usually most known for, It Hurts So Good is all about an undeniably deep hitting and fiercely delivered Southern soul that sizzles so damn good! This was her second album, recorded in 1973 and while many later albums would provide some great moments, It Hurts So Good really stands as her strongest album from start to finish. Her voice is so strong and bold and the rich instrumentation kicks oh so right. Millie shows her range from in your face and funky to smooth and sultry without losing a bit of rawness or conviction in the process. With bonus tracks worth hearing and extensive liner notes this is a must have for soul & funk lovers, and a record that really deserves more attention and praise. Highly recommended!
Jacob isn't a person, but a duo, consisting of David Cordero, who belongs to a Spanish experimental post-rock ensemble called Ursula whom we haven't heard before, and Marco Serrato, who's the bassist/vocalist in Spanish avant-doooOOOoomsters Orthodox, whom we HAVE heard (and love). This disc on Utech finds the two working together on a new project in the spirit of what's described as "Xenakis-worship", making a dark and droney soundscape that lives up to its title, and then some! Full of spooky seismic rumblings, fluttering static, scary grinding distortion, speaker-rattling drone, avant-chamber string skree, it's only loud if you turn it up (we dare you), but even at a fairly low volume it's still sinister and eerie stuff. Inspired, perhaps, yes, by the electronic compositions of Xenakis, but also definitely by the duo's mutual love of sci-fi and horror film soundtracks. It doesn't say anywhere what the instrumentation is, but we think we're hearing cello or double bass, and electronics, and bowed cymbals maybe? All played by skeletons, or wraiths, in a dead void of inky blackness. Some haunting buried/effected wordless vokills enter into the listener's (sub)consciousness during the final track, too, we think, and hint at somethings we've heard from Orthodox. But if it turned out that this really was the work of an obscure 20th century composer we'd belive it - and be putting in a call to Creel Pone just to say, why have you been holding out on us?
The six tracks of nightmare atmospherics on this disc aren't just ominous, but THE ominous. Seriously. Open-minded Orthodox fans (what other kind are there?) should investigate, as should anyone else into claustrophobic isolationist soundscapery!!
Comes in typically nice, slim Utech packaging, with translucent printed sleeve and three cards bearing b&w photographs, morbid and beautiful.
What's the scariest and creepiest of instruments? Could it be the downtuned electric guitar, that sound that marks all things dark and heavy and brutal and grim? Or could it be the cello with its soaring keening deep throated moan? Well we might posit, especially in light of this Jacula record, that the creepiest of all instruments is most certainly the church organ. Surprising that an instrument used chiefly to inspire and praise can illicit such utter unease and create such a pervasively creepy ambience. And that's pretty much what Jacula is all about, creepy ambience. Thick and haunting washes of warm rich church organ drone, resonant and reverberant, sometimes accompanied by simple pounding drums or mournful folky guitar melodies or wild psychedelic freakouts or soaring female operatic vocals or even occasional lyrics spoken ominously in Italian, but more often than not it's just the massive and ominous swells of a church organ. So effectively and utterly evil sounding. Jacula are sort of like a doom metal soundtrack to a Dario Argento movie. Goblin meets Skepticism! A Krautrock Thergothon? But is's not all mellow murky moodiness, tracks three and four, "Triumpratus Sad" and "Veneficium", both feature seriously fuzzed out, almost punk rock riffs, that sound about a decade before their time, insistent and completely heavy, even more so when they're eventually joined by a pounding one-drum beat or strident atonal piano or wild swirling progrock keyboards. Amazing! It's no wonder we sold the first couple of copies we got in of this to members of local black metal bands Ludicra and Leviathan!
In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum (literally "The Poison Is Always At The End"), which was supposedly recorded in an English castle, was originally released in an edition of only 300 copies in the late sixties and has been completely unavailable until just recently (this reissue cd is not entirely new, but it took us until now to get enough copies to list). Formed in 1968, Jacula even counted a medium as a member of their band who we assume was critical to the process of creating this record, considering that In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum was "Composed By Spiritualist Seance (1966-1969)" Woah! And for those of you well versed in sixties and seventies prog, be aware that this reissue is NOT the same as the Jacula record released in the early seventies (1972's Tardo Pede In Magiam Versus), even though for some strange reason Black Widow has given it pretty much the exact same cover.
Wow! This kicked our asses. Traditional '80s metal done real well -- probably 'cause these guys released their first album way back then ("Ample Destruction" circa 1984). After a looong hiatus, they began a comeback attack several years ago, somewhat
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Now part of that special $5 cd sale deal, so there's no excuse not to own a copy of this vintage heavy classic (even just to check it out if you haven't heard it before). Here's an expanded version of what we said about this when we first listed the cd version some years ago:
Newly remastered and reissued, the James Gang indeed "Rides Again", the title of this, their 2nd album, from 1970. Their first and third albums, Yer Album (1969) and Thirds (1971) have also received the same treatment, and we have 'em, but this is our favorite. Guitarist Joe Walsh (pre-Eagles, y'know) and his biker rock cronies Dale Peters and Jim Fox supply the famed '60s headbang "Funk #49" on this disc, along with extended musical suite "The Bomber" and some beautiful acoustic tunes mixed into the electric rawk. A classic indeed.
Also, does the lettering/logo on the cover look at all familiar? It should, to anyone with who has seen our aQ logo. Heh heh heh. That's how much we like this one...
Finally available again, one of our favorite weirdo psych folk records EVER, reissued, with a whole 'nother record tacked on. The previously reviewed disc, Mice And Rats In The Loft, it definitely the reason to pick this up, the other record, the band's debut Sorcerers, is just a bonus. More on that one further down, first let's talk about the genius of Mice And Rats In The Loft:
After Comus' genius First Utterance record was re-released, this left Jan Dukes De Grey as THE missing seventies psych / prog / folk holy grail. And rightfully so. Originally released in 1971 (the year Allan has determined that almost every great seventies record was released, even though he was only two years old then), this record manages to be totally brilliant and absolutely absurd at the same time. It has much in common with the Comus record, super dramatic trilling vocals, frenzied acoustic guitars and manic bongos. But there the similarities end. Where Comus took those elements and created a harrowing pagan ritual, Jan Dukes De Grey take those same elements and embark on a freaked out prog journey into utter madness. Sweetly melodic flutes, acoustic guitars, and weirdly bombastic drumming are woven into a weird and wonderful lilting British folk, peppered with an ultra-memorable little arpeggiated guitar lick that you won't be able to get out of your head, pausing once for a fierce heavily strummed riff that sounds almost Sabbathy before resuming it's sweet folky journey. Then suddenly the whole thing is thrown into chaos by a brief splattery drum break, which the band emerges from in entirely different garb. An epic journey through angular, almost eighties sounding nowave skronk, damaged seventies prog, ultra twee psychfolk and avant jazz krautrock. Weaving wildly from sound to sound, muted duck like saxophone, super distorted acoustic guitar, warbling trumpets, manic bongos, soaring strings, fluttering flamenco sputter, employing a massive arsenal of instruments: violin, cello, zeldaphone (!), clarinet, recorder, chanter, harmonica, hunting horn, glockenspiel, as well as a 'clothes horse' contraption with a hanging flat drum, tabla, cymbal, chimes and Indian bells. And that's all in the first song! Twenty plus minutes of freaked out psych-prog-folk brilliance.
The second track sounds much more traditionally seventies British folk, but only compared to the first track. Jaunty and folky, occasionally dark and menacing, with bursts of maniacal strumming, and sweet vocal harmonies, before the band switches gears and belts out a wild klezmer folk-prog shuffle that sounds quite a bit like Uz Jsme Doma. The final track is a dense and relentless, heavy psychedelic swirl, with jagged wah guitars, throaty theatrical vocals and wild octopoidal Krupa-ish drumming, thumping tribal tom toms and sizzling cymbals. Phew.
Take a dash of Comus, a pinch of the Incredible String Band, a hint of Jethro Tull, a splash of Captain Beefheart, a drop of Uz Jsme Doma and a whole lot of LSD and shake vigorously!
As if that weren't enough, this double disc reissue tacks on the group's 1970 debut, Sorcerers, which while still quite cool, is not nearly as weird or rocking or proggy as the follow up, instead it's a heady slice of lysergic seventies acid folk, lots of acoustic guitars, fluttery flutes and of course, those acidy trilled Comus like vocals. Seems unfair to Sorcerers to pair it up with a record as mind blowing as Mice And Rats, but they do work well together, it's easy to hear the seeds in Sorcerers that would soon blossom into something much more twisted and gnarled and freaky. Definitely essential for folks into classic British sixties and seventies psych folk, and a great record, but odds are you'll probably find yourself gravitating toward Mice And Rats In The Loft anyway.
Either way, this set is way way way recommended! Includes all new liner notes, as well as the original album notes, newspaper clippings, and tons of super cool photos.
Somewhere right now Thom Yorke is blushing, now that this 1973 soundtrack has been reissued. Well, that's our speculation anyway, 'cause the main theme sounds SO MUCH like a Radiohead song (which one, we haven't quite figured out. Not "Paranoid Android" but close.) At any rate, this was either a big inspiration to Radiohead or it's just a marvellous coincidence. You'll hear it for yourself we're sure. Thom certainly needs to hear this if he hasn't already (as we suspect). And it's not just the melody of this soundtrack's main leit motif, but the singing voice itself. A French female doing wordless ah ah ahs -- play it back to back with Radiohead and you'll swear it's Mr. Yorke's famous falsetto. But that's only part of the reason this soundtrack is so fascinating. It's also a very very early electronica effort by a young Jean-Michel Jarre, later in the '80s to become well-known as a New Age superstar famed for spectacular multi-media shows. In the seventies, though, his output could be considered credible electronica pioneering. 1977's Oxygene is a pretty cool album after all. But this was before even that, and it's way more extreme. Truly jarring electronic sound that's hard to reconcile with the idea of "background" music in film! And Les Granges Brulees was not, as far as we're aware, a horror or science fiction flick where such might make sense. As far as we can tell, this Jean Chapot directed movie was a mystery / romance (staring Alain Delon btw). Certainly the vocals are romantic, and much of the rest of Jarre's crankier-than-Kraftwerk electronics are suspenseful, a la Goblin. One track breaks the mood a little bit -- "Zig-zag" must be from a scene where the characters visit a circus or something, as it's got that Jean-Jacques Perrey zaniness to it. But most of this is interplay between the haunting theme and freaky electronic fx. A very cool, out of the blue reissue, forshadowing Kid A some thirty years ago!
We love it when something unexpected, unknown, and essentially totally off our radar shows up and then completely blows us away! Which is exactly what happened with this chunk of epic cosmic psychedelic space-out by French artist Etienne Jaumet. By the looks of his photo on the cover we first thought this was going to be some sort of smarty pants singer songwriter, Jarvis Cocker sort of thing, but talk about about how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover! Instead, Night Music is one of the most satisfying and fully realized analog synth driven discs we've heard in ages. Imagine Goblin and Kraftwerk gliding through cosmic space, as the record's opening 20+ minute track really does evoke some sort of interstellar autobahn, the listener whirling through the stars and sky, Night Music a deep rich and nuanced soundtrack for that late night cosmic excursion. We also think about some of our fave modern psych-space rockers, like try to imagine Expo 70 remixed by Jonas Reinhardt, or Arp channeling Franco Battiato or Subway stretched way out into a sonic stratosphere pioneered by Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze. Folks who dug the Altres record we listed last time should definitely dig this too. We'd also bet the Black Devil Disco folks and both Zombi and Zomby lovers will find loads to love on Night Music. Oddly enough when we starting doing some digging to find out more about Jaumet we discovered he was in a group called Zombie Zombie (not however, related to the above Zomby/i's).
You can tell that Jaumet also has a deep love of cosmic free-jazz as he introduces subtle saxophone on parts of the record with perfectly understated results, bringing to mind Herbie Hancock's Sextant album for sure, and also Sun Ra as reimagined by Four Tet, particularly on that epic opener "For Falling Asleep" - the very next track sure says "wake up", though, bringing in more of a techno thump to the proceedings, but still staying wonderfully spaced out. Pretty much every time we play this in the store either a customer or one of us who works here asks if this is a reissue of some long lost kosmiche gem, maybe from Germany in the 1970s. In fact we found out that Jaumet based the sequencing of the record on many of those same amazing cosmic psych records from the '70s, where first side of the vinyl is one long track and the other side is filled with shorter tracks. Jaumet also has such an obvious understanding of composition, especially how to stretch tracks out without letting them overstay their welcome, and thus Night Music is just long enough to totally transport us to another dimension, yet focused enough to stay listenable and sonically complex the entire time.
Something which only makes us love this record even more was the discovery that long time AQ favorite, '70s French folk-psychstress Emmanuelle Parrenin adds her voice as texture on a couple tracks (sounding very Yoko Ono, at times) as well as playing harp and hurdy gurdy. Furthermore, the mix was "directed and imagined" by none other than Carl Craig and you can totally tell, as the whole record flows with such a lush layered sound and driving pulse that is both immediately satisfying and utterly hypnotic!
'Tis the season for Philip Jeck, it seems! This UK sonic experimentalist is a big fave 'round these parts, so it's been a festive month indeed with the recent release of a live recording (reviewed 2 lists ago) and now this brand new 'studio' album, AND a reissue of Jeck's seminal, long out of print album Surf, reviewed nearby. Hallelujah.
Jeck is simply a wizard with the turntables, not in a hip hop DJ sense but as a sound sculptor, making ghostly slow motion looping drones and beats with crackly old vinyl and the phonograph mechanism itself. Listening to his music is to submerge oneself into a mysterious, evocative realm of sound that capitalizes on the claustrophobia of the locked groove, that dwells on the dusty textures of vinyl as if examined by a field recordist, rather than the usual needle, tone-arm, pre-amp, speaker method of sound extraction.
7 is certainly a strong Jeck showing, lacking naught for crackling, glacial drone and ominous background melodies stolen from another time and place. It's really amazing that it's a turntable (or turntables) making possible Jeck's music, which ranges from the very physical sounding action of a track like "Museum" to the simple haunting whoosh of "Wipe". Track four, "Bush Hum" deserves special mention as it's constructed soley from the "amplified hum of a Bush record-player and delay-pedal". With those tools -- no records -- Jeck creates a totally electronic sounding track of buzzing rapid rhythmic noise, loud, grinding like a swarm of robot insects. The very next track, "Now You Can Let Go" takes the opposite approach, where there are indeed LPs on Jeck's turntables, and you can actually catch traces of actual music being "sampled". Squawks of big band jazz, a bluesy lick, warped exotica -- but usually nothing really recognizable. It's almost like modern electronic dance music at moments, but worshipping the skipping LP not the digital glitch. But it's really Jeck's compositions with even less overt 'musical' content that we prefer, and 7's final track "Veil" delivers on that score with ten minutes of wonderfully droned-out sombre beauty, with no skips or scratches to interrupt its windswept trance... Of course, recommended!
As huge Philip Jeck fans, we were super excited to see the release of this follow-up to his wonderful "Vinyl Codas I-III" double cd. And it doesn't disappoint. Jeck, with his multiple turntables and scratchy old records, is the ultimate master of blissfully
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If you never really realized just how freaky and experimental San Francisco '60s ballroom psych legends the Jefferson Airpane were, this is a good one to check out. 1968's Crown Of Creation, their 4th album, features approximately none of their classic rock hits, instead it's way dark and psychedelic and weird - even the songs that are mostly acoustic and folky, like the David Crosby penned menage-a-trois ode "Triad", rejected by the Byrds for being too risque. Or opener "Lather", seemingly so lovely, yet with lyrics that are really rather disturbing - and Grace Slick's intense spooky delivery, plus musique concrete sound FX, puts it over the top. Other songs on the album get into a jamming heavy rock bag, with lashings of psych guitar, among 'em the apocalyptic album-closer "The House At Pooneil Corners", its bass-heavy, doomy vibe and trippy anti-war lyrics suitable for the record's mushroom clouded cover art.
Definitely a highly recommended '60s rock fave with some deep cuts for those who might have not given the Jefferson Airplane a good listen lately, or ever.
Here's one of those albums that we KNEW we'd make Record Of The Week - IF ever it was reissued. And now it has been! Here's a fully legit reish of this cult '70s hard rock rarity, a record by one of those bands who seem simultaneously to be both testosterone-tanked young men and wizened ol' wise wizards. Yeah, a Record Of The Week easy, on account of it not only being an old fave of some of us here, but something that immediately caught on with the AQ staffers who hadn't heard it before, this reissue getting played in the store quite steadily (and loudly!) since it arrived. Let's listen in, as Jerusalem's vocalist belts it out, in an emotive yowl a bit like Robert Plant but with Ozzy Osbourne's paranoid feelings: "Hey girl, will you never learn? Who d'you think you're fooling with your lyin' and your cryin'? You'll only be happy the day you see me dyin'!" But then, in more of a normal speaking voice, we get the casual aside: "Oh yeah, that's the way it happens sometimes. Ha."
Right on, brilliant. That's from "Frustration", the first of nine fantastic tracks on the one and only album by this English band, recorded in 1971, released in '72 on Deram/Decca, produced by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Why Jerusalem didn't get big is a mystery, though the liner notes give some clues as to why they disbanded. Heck they're even fairly unknown (or a well-kept secret) among connoisseurs of '70s heavy psych and hard rock, with this being its first ever official, non-bootleg reissue on compact disc. Now, there's lots of great obscure heavy rock rarities from the early '70s. We've raved about reissues of many of them (Dust, Leaf Hound, Toad, Bang, T2, etc.). But as far as unheralded proto-metal goes, this belongs pretty much at the top of that longhaired, bellbottomed heap, as essential as any of 'em anyway. Pentagram, Bedemon, Blues Creation, Budgie, Night Sun, you name it.
Allan here first heard Jerusalem a few years back when a friend who shares his taste for proto-metal passed along a cd-r copy of this otherwise unavailable album (thanks, Glenn!). Killer stuff indeed, damn it was good. One of the heaviest things from the era he'd ever heard, Jerusalem took it to an extreme that most of their peers didn't approach. With elements of both biggies Sabbath and Zeppelin, but more frenzied and frantic on one hand, more plodding and suicidal on the other.
Crashing, fuzzed out guitars. Energetic hectic riffage. Doomy, thudding blues. Wicked stinging, sliding soloing. Punkish attitude (competitive with contemporaries Crushed Butler). The vocals often hoarse, on the verge of screaming, or gone over that edge. Yeah, pretty heavy for '72! This is rough, raw, proto headbanging mania mixed with mystical, melodic proggy interludes, of course we love it. Plus it's got a genuine dark, occult, despairing vibe, with poetic lyrics about madness, murder and death... And you can't get much more "downer rock genocidal" sounding than the truly, uh, primitive bludgeon what might be the heaviest track here, "Primitive Man".
Pretty darn metal when it comes down to it, forget the "proto". In their own way though, Jerusalem sounding halfway betwixt '60s garage rock and '80s New Wave Of British Heavy Metal... which on balance puts them a bit ahead of their time. In fact, since what's old is new again, this actually sounds like if could have been made now, not because it sounds modern (it doesn't) but because it's so line with certain stonery retro-stylings popular today, particularly in Sweden. In other words, if you like Witchcraft, you'll love Jerusalem!! We always thought that of all the obscure '70s bands that are their forebears, Witchcraft sound most like Jerusalem (well, next to Pentagram). Remember what we said in all caps about Witchcraft's debut? "PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER!" Well the same would go for this, except that it's the real deal, which makes it even better.
Anyway, to return to our story, after Allan got that cd-r dub, he knew he had to find a proper cd. There HAD to be one, this was too good not to have been reissued, right? But, after looking and looking, no luck. Then, one day, Allan came to work at Aquarius and lo and behold what did he hear, but Jerusalem blaring from the store stereo! No, it wasn't this reissue. This was still a few years ago. Turns out, Andee had found a used copy of a bootleg cd someplace, and had bought it simply 'cause he thought the cover looked cool (he's like that), without knowing anything about the band. Life is so unfair, thought Allan. But he was able to eventually guilt Andee into giving him the cd for a birthday present (thanks, Andee! You can have that one back now). Later on, we discovered a Japanese reissue that may or may not have been a boot but in any event was way too expensive and hard to get, nothing we could easily stock and sell for a reasonable price. But NOW, we happily are able to share Jerusalem with you thanks to this nicely done reissue on the Rockadrome label's Vintage imprint! Yeah!
In addition to the nine songs from the original LP, this cd comes with five bonus tracks, including non-album single "Kamakazi Moth". The thick booklet is filled with lengthy liner notes, complete lyrics, vintage photos, all that good stuff you want in a reissue. Once more, yeah!
Nobody here except for Andee (who was already a fan!) had ever heard of this band before Circle mainman Jussi Lehtisalo told us he was reissuing their 1986 debut LP on his label Ektro. He also said, "Jesters will blow up the whole world!!!" Those familiar with
Duff: "Diggin' back through my life circa 15 years ago has been an emotionally unnerving experience. The music, the jams, the changing line-ups, the convoluted recording contracts, the hallucinations, the revelations, the girls, the divorce, poverty, doom, despair, joy, the extremely loud amplifiers�But that's my business. I will tell you it all began when my friend Ray Violet invited my roommate (drummer and multi-instrumentalist Doktor Stixx) and me (the bass player) to be the rhythm section on a songwriting demo he was organizing along with his buddy Bill Irwin. Ray offered to 'pay' us by allowing us each one song of our choosing produced to our individual satisfaction. I picked a metallic, psychedelic, existentialist war yelp I'd bashed out called 'End of Time.' During the sessions, which culminated on Halloween, 1984 (talk about Doom!), Ray played me the unforgettable riff to a song about a mosh pit dance in which the participants beheaded each other with shovels -- 'Diggin' That Grave.' Together, we finished the tune, and when all of the songs were completed, it was clear that 'Grave' and 'Time' stood alone and apart from the rest. We decided to form a band."
Duff goes on to recount the whole sordid saga of the band and its successes and failures, ins and outs (of the band members -- who included past present and future members of such acts as 45 Grave, The Mentors, and Poison!). Highlights for them included signing to Metal Blade imprint Dimension, after "End of Time" appeared on "Metal Massacre V", and playing shows with the likes of Janes Addiction, Flaming Lips, and the Dickies. Lowlights include, well, uh, signing to Metal Blade imprint Dimension, plus all the stuff you'd expect to befall an '80s LA metal band that didn't "make it".
What's really funny (and not discussed) is how their saga ends with this reissue 15 years later on a strange Finnish art-rock label! From Metal Blade to Ektro!
This disc contains their entire "Fun at the Funeral" debut (seeing release on cd for the first time), plus eight bonus tracks consisting of punkier material recorded for their never-released third album (including "Diggin' That Grave '87", a more Talking Heads-ish take on their impossibly catchy signature tune), a home demo, and a live version of Black Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" (can't get away from graves and funerals with these guys!). Their studio cover of that song appeared on their second, all-covers album "In A Nostalgic Mood", the material from which both Duff and Jussi decided was unfit for reissue -- too bad, we want to hear it! Anyway, their live "EF", Duff says, "shows the kind of heavy metal Ornette Coleman spazz attack the band was capable of live." Dunno about that, but it's a fine way to end the disc nonetheless, summing up the fucked up "gleeful gloom" rock that Jesters of Destiny created.
To wind up, thanks Jussi for reissuing this masterpiece of heavy psychedelic pop metal weirdness! Now it's not just Andee here who's a fan. For my part (Allan speaking) I could listen to "Diggin' That Grave" on auto repeat a hundred times and not get tired of it, it's that great a song. To get that and the rest of the album too, plus all the bonus tracks -- well it's a happy day here at Aquarius!
This debut ep from Justin Broadrick's (of Godflesh) new outift Jesu has been a bit tough to keep in stock, and since when we originally had it we loved it so much we made it Record Of The Week, and since we finally managed to get more, we figured we'd relist it so those of you who missed out the first time can get another crack. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week recently, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
Here we go again. Maybe you remember our review a year or so ago of an ep by a psychedelic doom band from Wisconsin called Totem, related to "New Weird America" folkies Wooden Wand? We thought it was great, EXCEPT for one, possibly deal-breaking catch: the female lead singer's soaring vocals, which put it in the love 'em or hate 'em category, with most of us at AQ unfortunately forced to select the latter option, or at least do our best to live with 'em since we liked the music.
Well, as if to challenge us, Totem have changed their name to Jex Thoth (after the "stage name" of that selfsame singer!), and are back with their debut full-length album, again released by the doom metal purveyors at Sweden's I Hate Records, who previously have brought us music from Burning Saviours, The Puritan, Fall Of The Idols, Lord Vicar, Gates Of Slumber, and lots of other awesome heaviness.
That we have to have any reservations about this album at all is too bad, 'cause on the face of it, you probably couldn't deliberately design anything more likely to appeal to us at AQ, really! Not only is it psychedelic pagan DIY doom metal, to begin with, but check it out: Jex Thoth's guitar player Silas Paine is actually Jewelled Antler linchpin Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Blithe Sons, etc. etc.). Also in the band, another AQ friend, Clay Ruby (Davenport, Burial Hex). The cover art is by our Finnish pal Albert Witchfinder from doomlords Reverend Bizarre. And the album itself is dedicated to the memory of Cayce Lindner, from Flying Canyon, whom we too miss very much.
Also, Jex Thoth's "thanks list" is very much up our alley: they give props to Circle, Slough Feg, Silvester Anfang, Bobb Trimble, and Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, among others. And why are they thanking Bobb Trimble, whom hopefully you know as the '80s psych singer-songwriter outsider genius whose at-long-last reissued albums we made Records Of The Week last year? Because they do a cover of his apocalyptic song "When The Raven Calls" from Iron Curtain Innocence on here!! Yep, a Bobb Trimble cover! Brilliant. (And actually, we'll admit, a good choice for Jex Thoth's vocal style.)
So... plenty of indications that this is going to be something we'd LOVE. The music here is great, kind of an acid-folky New Weird Doom, all about ye olde '70s Sabbathy guitar riffage and Purplish organ jamming, fuzzed out and dirgey and druggy, full of spaced out fx, droning synth, lumbering distorted wah-wah riffs. It's not always so heavy, sometimes more of a melancholic moodiness, as much trippily atmospheric freek-folk psych and prog as it is doom (especially on the epic four-part "Equinox Suite"), their style of "metal" not solid steel or iron, but softer precious metals unearthed from an ancient treasure trove, like gold, silver and mythic mithril. We WANT to love this, and it shouldn't be hard... except for Jex Thoth's singing (again), which for most of us is just too high in the mix, too dramatic in a "thespian" sort of way, too sleek and clean and earnest, drawing out each word, each syllable with forced emotion... we're reminded of Grace Slick, with a side of Geddy Lee. But such things are subjective, your mileage may vary, and certainly Jex Thoth (the band) consider Jex Thoth (the vocalist) to be their major focal point, for better or worse. Her vocals ARE distinctive, and do give this band quite a unique vibe all right. And maybe they'll grow on us, actually they already have on Allan here, he'll admit, who while he still cringes a bit at some of her delivery, finds this working for him more often than not. So although we can't give this an unqualified recommendation, we're gonna highlight it anyway, and you can listen to the sound clips and see what you think. (We DO know some peeps who love her singing, actually, so maybe it's just us.) After all, in a lot of ways, this is the Jewelled Antler meets Jacula doom trip we've always dreamed of! A "New Weird Witchcraft" isn't far off the mark either. Acid folk classic doom, we approve of that!
Oh, and if you are already a Totem/Jex Thoth fan, you might be interested to know that we also have just a couple copies left of Jex Thoth's limited edition split 7" with '80s UK doom legends Pagan Altar (!), featuring the track "Stone Evil" from this album, we weren't able to get enough to list, but you might get lucky if you ask us quick, they're $12.98.
Heavy, heavy psychedelic acid funk with some Latin vibes, stuff that could have made Funkadelic proud, collected from the Jimmy Castor Bunch's earliest albums.
These 16 slabs of funk include almost all the really good songs (which is almost ALL of the songs) from the band's first 2 RCA albums ("It's Just Begun" and "Phase Two"), plus a few from their somewhat less awesome (actually quite weak) third and final RCA disc, the jazzy "Dimension III". Jimmy and the band bounced back and recorded many more funk classics after they left RCA, not letting disco get them down, and you can find those (and a few others from the earlier doo-wop phase of his career) on the "Everything Man" best of comp Rhino released a few years back, which only has a couple of the songs found here. There WAS a 2-on-1 import cd reissue of the first two of Castor's RCA LPs that we had a while ago, but we haven't been able to get it lately. I like the review I wrote of that disc a lot though, so why not quote some of it here:
"Blending fat funk guitar, '60s astrologically-obsessed psych rock, Hendrix worship (there's a weird tribute to Jimi here, a Purple Haze/Foxy Lady hybrid cover), as well as doo wop, soul and some sappy r&b...they don't make 'em like this anymore. "It's Just Begun" will send you back, way back, to the time of the "Troglodyte". The cave man theme recurs, with "Phase Two"'s "Luther The Anthropoid (Ape Man)"... Heavy acid funk stomp, silly sexual primal urge stuff to be sure, mixed with some lighter, more 'spiritually' oriented cuts. As we move into album no.2, there are definitely some really bad moments of love song cheese to interfere with your enjoyment of the BAAADDD moments of troglodyte funk, but on the whole this is deep and weird enough to be essential to the dedicated funkateer. For fans of early Kool & the Gang, Parliament, B.T. Express, that sort of thing, but the best stuff here's got a dosed and primordial edge unlike anything else excavated from the early '70s era."
This collection cuts out the worst of the "love song cheese" alluded to above (although the songs added from "Dimension III" aren't any better unfortunately) and so makes for, along with Rhino's "Everything Man" comp, a mandatory funk purchase. Not rare groove, but "everywhere groove" as it says in the liner notes.
Picked this album up at a garage sale as a kid, just 'cause of the crazy cover art, and have been a big fan ever since. Here it is reissued on vinyl, a definite '70s funk classic (from '72 to be precise), Jimmy's freakiest by far, stuff that could have made Funkadelic proud, both fuzzy and funky and a little Latin too. Or as we've said before about a Castor comp, "for fans of early Kool & the Gang, Parliament, B.T. Express, that sort of thing, but the best stuff here's got a dosed and primordial edge unlike anything else excavated from the early '70s era." And that "best stuff" is mostly all here on It's Just Begun. The title track is a heavy acid funk freakout, then there's the cave man classic "Troglodyte", and the trippy vibes of "L.T.D. (Life, Truth, Death)", and more... And it's all wrapped in that awesome, astrologically symbolic cover painting (featuring a slum building, in a wasteland, with not one but two giant Jimmy Castors looming over it, alongside a floating armored egg, tubes and troglodytes). There's an explanation of all the images' significance to be found on the back cover, dig it.
As you might expect from "the world's first openly gay rock star" (or make that would-be rock star), the music of seventies singer Jobraith is pretty darn glammy and campy, a blend of '70s hard rock histrionics and even more overtly showtune tendencies (Jobraith had performed on Broadway, actually, in the musical Hair, and was also a trained classical pianist), full of over-the-top pop and not-so-ambiguous sexuality.
He's part David Bowie (very much David Bowie!), part Marc Bolan, part Elton John, part Mick Jagger, even part Bee Gees (that high voice)... You can hear all that for yourself on these two new cd reissues of Jobraith's two Elektra albums, his notoriously overhyped self-titled debut from 1973 and its '74 follow-up, Creatures Of The Street. We'd gotten familiar with Jobraith via an earlier collection, Lonely Planet Boy, which featured songs selected from these two records, but it's nice to hear 'em in their entirety, and it turns out that comp missed out on a few of the many gems to be found among Jobraith's compositions.
Unfortunately the Jobraith story is a tragic one, his career fizzling after these two albums (both expensive flops), his brushes with fame always far-fetched and fleeting, Jobraith ultimately dying in obscurity, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, in 1983... though about ten years later, according the the story recounted in the liner notes, Morrissey tried to find Jobraith to take him on tour, unaware that he'd passed away long before.
So, while in retrospect there's for sure a patina of sadness over Jobraith's music, it's better tribute perhaps to Jobraith's memory to enjoy these albums in the fun, flamboyant spirit in which they were intended.
Both albums have their merits, we don't know if we could choose between 'em. The debut boasts the oh-so-Bowie "Space Clown", along with the piano-ballad bombast of "Be Still" (somewhere, this MUST have been a hit). You can party down to the proto-disco prog of "World Without End" or the funky "Earthling", and rock out to the fuzzy "Rock Of Ages" or the braggadocious "I'm A Man". There's also a bunch more piano-y crooner tunes on the softer side: "Inside", "Blow Away", and "Movie Queen", all quite good (the latter, quite, umm, gay as well).
Creatures Of The Street perhaps veers even further into campy, cabaret territory than the debut (or maybe it's just that "Dietrich/Fondyke" is so much that way) but also offers up a fair bit of rockin' and also just plain weirdness. At times we're reminded of Sparks, and one of the best tracks here is a folky, quirky, quite catchy number entitled "Scumbag"! Other standouts include melodramatic opener "Heartbeat" and the walk on the wild side that is "Street Corner Love". As with the debut, there's plenty of piano, plenty of orchestration, and plenty of drama... The image/identity conscious Jobraith was always striking poses, both on album covers and in his lyrics.
While the world wasn't ready for Jobraith back in the '70s (even though his music is oh-so-'70s), obviously we've come a long way since then. Jobraith's excesses can be forgiven (those of his management too) and his cult status can only grow, as his actual music is still quite a kick. Heck I was in a bar the other night and the DJ was playing "I'm A Man"! Good to have these both individually reissued on cd at last, with liner notes by Ritchie Unterberger (author of, among other things, the excellent Unknown Legends Of Rock n' Roll, which didn't include Jobraith but probably should have).
Visionary cult cinephiles get ready to drool! If you were as excited as we were about the recent reissue of Kenneth Anger's early films, then this incredibly packaged and affordable 4dvd+2cd box set of the early films of Chilean theatrical genius Alejandro Jodorowsky will surely make your head explode!!! Fando Y Lis! El Topo!!, HOLY MOUNTAIN!!!! Marvelously restored and beautifully remastered, there is so much amazing material here that has either never been available before, or only available previously as extremely hard to find poor quality transfers from mediocre prints.
AND there's more! This set also includes the absolutely killer SOUNDTRACKS to both El Topo and yes, Holy Mountain!!! The Holy Mountain Soundtrack has never been released before and it so totally kills, and why wouldn't it, Don Cherry is all over it! But more about that in a minute, there's also bonus features, interviews, deleted scenes, audio commentary, a documentary and a short film from 1957 that was presumed lost until it was found early last year.
So for those who may be unfamiliar with Jodorowsky's films, a bit of back story:
Born in Chile and struggling to become an actor, Jodorowsky became fed up with the idea of scripted theatre and moved to Paris to study mime. Working with the great mime, Marcel Marceau while at the same time influenced by the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, Jean Cocteau's mythical fantasias, and the European Art House cinema of Fellini and Bunuel, Jodorowsky relocated to Mexico to form the theatre troupe, The Panic Movement, which would stage early happenings (involving lots of nudity and rotting food) and existentialist plays by Ionesco, Beckett and Fernando Arrabel. It was Arrabel's play, "Fando Y Lis" that would inspire him to move away from the theatre into cinema, but far from any structured or direct form of filmmaking. Jodorowsky wanted to re-interpret Arrabel's play by filming it completely from memory and in a remote and ruggedly extreme locale. Here he would bring together all the soul-baring psyche of experimental theatre, the role-playing excess of costumes, props and pageantry, the ritualistic entanglements of violence and beauty as catalysts of transformation, and most importantly the notion of existence as a journey through all kinds of personal and mystical revelations both sacred and profane. All of these qualities permeate each of the three films here.
Ok, you get the idea. So let's just break it down for you, what you get from this awesome box set:
--Fando Y Lis (1968): Jodorowsky's first full length black and white feature started riots at its premiere at the Acapulco Film Festival and was banned in Mexico due to its violent sexual imagery and ritualistic mocking of church beliefs. Based on Arrabel's play about a pair of dysfunctional lovers (one impotent, the other paralyzed) in a Fellini-esque quest for the spiritual city of Tar.
Extras on this disc include the 1994 French documentary, La Constellation which features interviews with Marcel Marceau, Peter Gabriel (who was inspired by El Topo, when he wrote The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway), and the French sci-fi illustrator, Moebius, who began working with Jodorowsky on the failed attempt to film Frank Herbert's Dune, which sparked Jodorowsky's interest in graphic novels.
--El Topo (1970): The bloody surreal western that spawned the Midnight Movie. Funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, this film is like a Sergio Leone film on a serious dose of brown acid.
Extras include an interview with Jodorowsky about the Midnight Movie phenomenon.
--Holy Mountain (1973): The ultimate spiritual quest film. Jodorowsky takes us through every imaginable belief system only to completely shatter our preconceptions about spiritual enlightenment.
Extras include deleted scenes and commentary about Jodorowsky's continuing interest in the Tarot.
--La Cravate (1957): A 35 minute silent film in color based on Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads about a girl who sells heads and the men who are her customers. This film was presumed lost until its discovery last year in someone's attic in Germany!
--El Topo Soundtrack: 18 tracks composed by Jodorowsky and John Barham inspired by both the soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota. Full of flutes and droning horns, accordions and organs and twisted Mariachi styles.
--Holy Mountain Soundtrack: 24 tracks composed by Jodorowsky, Don Cherry and Ronald Frangipane. Ranging from spiritual free drones to acid rock to Moroccan desert jams to pensive marches to soft jazz and everywhere in between. There are even themes for each of the nine planetary characters. Such a wild, weird, and wonderful soundtrack and it alone is worth the price of admission.
Phew! So can you guess, that this is totally and absolutely recommended!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's right, we're not crazy. We knew we'd be hearing some more skweee soon. Skweee? That's the Scandinavian DIY funked-up, glitched-out instrumental electro subgenre that we got all addicted to when we discovered it last year. We raved about two rad skweee comps, the Museums Of Future Sound Vols. 1 and 2, released by the Swedish skweee-centric Flogsta Danshall label. And we figured we'd be hearing more, once word really got out.
Well, it's England's Planet Mu label who now takes the lead in getting down with the skweee, signing Eero Johannes for his debut album. Eero had a track on MoFS Vol. 2, which also appears here (re-recorded?): "Finnrexin". That one is killer, but there's lots more here besides that's cool too, from the nervous blip-blip-blippage of "HAL Manifesto" to the 8-bit-y video game funk of "Natt I Sparvagnen" to the utterly catchy "We Could Be Skweeeroes" (which we'd encountered before on the internet)...
Indeed, all 13 tracks on this eponymous disc find Eero droppin' the bass with some slammin', squelching fat beats, gettin' jiggy with it, yet somehow (mostly) stayin' chill and relaxed at the same time. He's got a knack for working catchy melodies into his tracks, however frantic they may be. While our preference in skweee leans towards the stuff that's most lo-fi damaged and fucked up, and Eero's music, whilst crunchy, is sorta on the somewhat more polished/produced side of skweee, we're digging it plenty, spinning it a lot in the store.
Heck, didn't we tell ya? This is just the beginning. Warp had better make a skweee signing soon too.
Best skweee album of the year, so far!
One of our favorite reissues and new/old discoveries of last year was the passionate and powerful work of Gerard Manset. We immediately fell hard for his rich and textured songs which showed the more intense side of '60s and early '70s French Pop. So we were immediately intrigued by this collection of songs by Rene Joly when we saw that the orchestration was credited in part to Gerard Manset. But once we listened, it turned out to be Joly's voice that grabbed our attention right away. Full of drama, fire and beauty we couldn't believe that this was the first time his amazing voice had made it into our ears. It made us think of what Antony & The Johnsons might have sounded like if they were from France in 1970, or maybe Bryan Ferry doing Edith Piaf covers.
Even some of our friends who grew up in France had not heard of Joly so we don't feel quite as bad for not hearing him until now. How glad we are that this gem of French orchestral psychedelic pop has finally risen to the surface, brought to us by the same label that brought us the great Pop Made In France compilation highlighted last time. Prog fans will even want to check this out for the great King Crimson cover "La Cour Du Roi Musicien" (The Court Of The Crimson King). Majestic sounds filled with cinematic flair, and bubbling with grandeur and rich color. Joly's commanding voice sweeps us off our feet every time we listen. Highly recommended!
SKWEEE!! DJ Jon AD (who runs the LoDubs and losonofono labels as well as the kick ass Anthem Records store in Portland) claims responsibility for the "first skweee mixed cassette in the known universe". Yep, that's probably correct. Kudos to him, and as skweee connoisseurs ourselves, we can tell you it's a damn fine mix, dense with percolating glitch and electronic future-funk freakiness from some of the best in the biz.
And you're reading this and wondering what the heck this "skweee" is of which we speak, well first off this tape will school you, and secondly, just do a quick search on our site and you'll find reviews of previous skweee comps like Skweee Cruise and Skweee Tooth that should explain it.
Jon wanted to demonstrate that skweee can rock a (dance) party, and definitely succeeds. We like how he mixes in a few ringers - non-skweee, or perhaps we should say pre-skweee (?) tracks by the likes of Boogie Down Productions and the Beastie Boys, to give the listener a sense of skweee's hiphop, b-boy roots. The tape is also crammed, of course, with the work of such Scandinavian skweee luminaries as Limonious, Daniel Savio, Spartan Lover, Mangrove, Uday, Rigas Den Andre, V.C., Randy Barracuda, Slow Hand Motem, Beem, and Joxaren. The new wave of American skweee is represented too, with Portland's Lazercrotch leading off side A...
Over the whole tape, there's nearly 30 individual skweee cuts seamlessly mixed together, in quite a dense and frenzied fashion. Each side of this C-60 cassette was recorded in a single take, with two turntables, mixer, and effects ('cause skweee can always use MORE video game zipps and zapps).
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Comes with download code, so you don't actually need a tape deck...
Blimey, here's a "best of" from an early '70s UK prog band we'd never even heard of before, but we are now firm fans of (these nine tracks, at least). Ah, thank the gods for cd reissues and anthologies like this one, catching us up with worthy obscurities from way back when. Nothin' dusty here, as Jonesy kicks out some vigorous, vibrant, jazzy tunage all across this disc, offering up selections from their three albums (No Alternative '72, Keeping Up '73, and Growing, also '73) featuring searing horns, hard-charging guitars, melodic vocals -- and full-on mellotron abuse. The opening cut, "1958" sets the tone, and comes off sort of like Lalo "Mission Impossible" Schifrin meets Caravan. Meanwhile, at the far end of the disc, the wah-wah trumpet stylings of the 11+ minute "Jonesy" remind us the heck of '70s Miles, cool. And in-between, there's lots to like as well. It's propulsive stuff, energetic and superbly played, less about show-offy compositional complexifications (though there's enough of that to keep it prog!) or pretentious concepts (no Lord Of The Rings fantasies from these guys) than wild soloing combined with solid groove.
The liner notes cite such influences and/or comparisons as King Crimson and Nucleus, and they'd be right about those two for sure... we might suggest a little early Chicago as well (hey Chicago's first album is pretty killer, trust us!). Amon Duul II and Neu! are also mentioned, but we can't quite see exactly how those krautrockers can be heard here. But we'd agree that the grooviness and experimentation of Jonesy give them something of a Continental character.
As "prog" becomes more and more the "in" thing (hadn't you noticed?), the time is certainly right for a band like Jonesy to get some posthumous props. We'd suggest, ferinstance, that fans of Crime In Choir should investigate forthwith.
More Priest remastered reissues! Their new album, "Demolition" turned out to be a big piece of crap but that makes these old reissues even more necessary, as a reminder of their former glories in the days of Halford, particularily in the '70s. 1978's
Supreme metal triumph. The last good (in fact, great) Judas Priest album, also happened to be their last with 'Metal God' Rob Halford at the mic. Originally released in 1990, "Painkiller" at the time seemed like the big Priest comeback, after a string of
THE Judas Priest cd YOU MUST OWN. It's their second album, from 1976, and is one of the prototypical heavy metal albums of all time (along with earlier masterworks like "Paranoid" and "Machine Head" and later classics like "Killers" and "Master of
Of the four newly reissued/remastered JP discs, this 1982 uber-classic and "British Steel" are the definite essentials. (Of course, there's eight others coming up in this welcome reissue program, just in time to light a fire under today's Priest to make their new disc "Demolition" live up to these old records). Fuck, this one's got "The Hellion/Electric Eye", the title track,
Another Priest classic! If you're any sort of metalhead, you'll have this 1978 album in your collection. "Exciter", "Invader", "Beyond The Realms of Death", "Saints In Hell"...so many great songs. This disc is of course remastered and includes two bonus
We've gotten to a really weird place in our music obsession, as evidenced by the fact that sometimes a recommendation against, is almost stronger than a recommendation FOR. Sounds weird but it's true. We have friends at other stores, who will tell us something is terrible, they hated it, but then will add "you might like it though." And the weird thing is, they're usually right (that we'll like it). We've developed such a taste for the bizarre, it's sometimes hard to tell if something is bad, or so fucked up it's genius.
However, one of those friends recommended against buying this very record, very vehemently in fact. Hard to recall, but it was something along the lines of it not being very metal and being all jangly and wussy. Fair enough. But they are from Finland, and they do have a song called "Discover The Pigtail"! Those two pieces of critical info were enough to overrule our friend's warning, and we're so glad they were.
This latest ep from Finnish black metal, psychedelic post rock horde Jumalhamara is AMAZING. Three songs, all on the long side, with a sound that is pretty difficult to pin down. It is easy to see why someone questing for serious black metal grimness might be disappointed. The record begins with the sound of children, laughing, playing, and what sounds like oinking pigs, a field recording of some village, until the band ROAR into action, pounding out a fierce blast of blackened buzz, grinding and intensely heavy, but it literally only lasts for about 10 seconds, then the band drifts off into some washed out hippy psych territory, all crooned reverbed vocals, lazy sun baked melodies, simple hand drums, slippery minimal bass, streaks of dubbed out distorted guitar, but for the most part, this is almost like some blackened Finnish Grateful Dead. Near the end there's even some fuzzy organ, the guitars get a bit heavier, the vocals moaning and chant-like, but it never really explodes, just gets thicker and more dense, while still seeming jammy and druggy. So awesome. Almost like a slightly heavier, way more fucked up black metal version of the recent Dead Man record.
"Discover The Pigtail" begins with glistening harmonics, which are soon joined by some strange off kilter drumming, tangled riffing and howled vocals, the cool thing about this track is that those harmonics never go away, so even as the band slithers and sprawls, spewing out a sort of buzzy blackness, the glistening shimmer totally shines through, diluting the heaviness, turning what might be something raw and heavy into something way more bizarre and trippy, at times it almost sounds like two records playing simultaneously, they drift in an out of sync, all very dizzying and gloriously tweaked.
The final track is the briefest of the bunch, and begins as a grinding gnarled and blackened doomic dirge, but not typically sludgy and murky, instead it's super dense and layered, the drums doing much more than pounding away, stumbling and skittering, beneath streaks of high end guitar, and chugging blown out riffage, the cymbals sizzling, the whole track recorded super hot and in the red, blasting and pounding and twisting until it fades out.
Definitely not really black metal, more like some sort of twisted doom-ed post rock avant psych, but still plenty heavy and really fucking great!
Ok, so AQ customers are likely well aware of the "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" movement popularized by Circle and cohorts, an alleged genre that's usually more krautrock than metal anyway, but is certainly Finnish. Well, drop the heavy metal part and you've got Finnish New Wave, eh? And that's what new Smalltown Supersound act K-X-P are up to. Synth-laden '80s inspired "New Wave" from Finland, played on drums, bass, and keys (no guitar), with plenty of that motorik krautrock groove Circle and Co. are known for as well. One of their two, rotating drummers (they switch off on this recording) is in fact Tomi from Circle and Aavikko so that certainly makes sense.
Consisting largely of instrumental grooves, these eight tracks are heavy on the electronics, and driving hypnotic rhythms, with some vocals here and there, that at times remind us of Adam & The Ants, or what we think we remember Adam Ant sounding like, though the vocals in "Pockets" are weirdly effected in a way that makes 'em sound almost like Mika Ratto from Circle, singing over Gary Numan-like throbbing synth pop. K-X-P doesn't lack variety, "Mehu Moments" actually reminds us of a krauty version of that Charanjit Singh Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat reissue, it's got that "exotic" vibe with synth squiggle freaking out over steady pulsations, and "18 Hours (Of Love)" has a bit of a glammy Gary Glitter shuffle-time Fred Bigot feel to it, with the singer chanting anthemically over rhythmically spaced electronic distortion-detonations. Elsewhere, K-X-P offer up moodier, dubbier excursions. And yeah, with our love of Finland, and Circle, and krautrock, and coldwave, and noise, and disco, and dub, this pushes plenty of buttons. So this disc has been getting a lot of instore play here at AQ, as word passes from one staffer to another...
We'd happily recommend this to you if you enjoy some/most/any/all of the following: Jonas Reinhardt, Aavikko, Neu!, Suicide, Circle, Cold Cave, Salvatore, Bronze, even Rah Bras.
Oooh yeah! What else to say? Germany's answer to the Swedish legions of retro-proto-metallers like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, Troubled Horse, Skogen Brinner, etc. have returned with their 2nd full-length of swinging heavy fuzz riffage, wailing vox and wah-psych guitar leads, sounding as 1972-ish as ever. We loved their self-titled debut last year, and the collaborative record they did with French heads Aqua Nebula Oscillator too. This new album, for big label Nuclear Blast (who seem to be loading up lately on these sorts of retro-psych-doom acts, putting out the new Orchid too, as well as the latest by a couple of the above-named Swedish outfits), absolutely does NOT disappoint. From the crushing bluesy stomp of "Black Snake", to the urgent attack of the very Witchcraft-y (and/or Pentagram-y) "Fire", to the trippy grooves of the title track, and everywhere else and in-between, Abra Kadavra is quite the hard rockin' bellbottomed blow-out.
There's a spacey, hippie, Hawkwind vibe to much of this ("Rhythm For Endless Minds" ferinstance full of FX on both guitars and vocals) as well as a garagey side to 'em too (like the exotic swirl of the electric organ laced "Liquid Dream"), Kadavar achieving a satisfying synthesis of such styles overall. Acid Mothers Temple and Earthless fans should give 'em an ear, as well as all you folks already into that whole Swedish crowd mentioned above!
This is the domestic digipack cd version, we also did have expensive import vinyl and hopefully will be getting a slightly cheaper domestic lp pressing soon, but you should know, this cd contains a 7+ minute bonus track not on any vinyl version!
Just take one look at this record's cover - if you guess these longhaired & bearded hippie boys in their vintage duds are another retro-proto-metal band in the Sabbathy style of Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum, you'd be guessing correctly!! Only thing is, time trippers Kadavar aren't from up in Sweden like those bands, they're from Berlin. But damn, just like all those Swedish faves, they are sure good at kicking out the jams with authentic sounding, bellbottomed bombast. The six tracks here are like the March Of The Riffs, unstoppable; from start to finish it's a rollicking ride of fuzzed out retro-riffery frequently adorned with ripping wah wah psych guitar leads, and some even psychier synth (that to be found on the spaced out final track, "Purple Sage", courtesy of guest synth wiz Shazzula, she of Black Mass Rising fame). The tones are fat, the grooves loping, the vibe very much 1972 or so, harking back to the likes of Sir Lord Baltimore and Kadavar's hard (kraut-)rockin' countrymen Night Sun and Tiger B. Smith� funnily enough, the drummer here is named "Tiger". The rest of this classic power trio is rounded out by "Mammut" on bass and "Lindemann" (ok that sounds like a real name) on guitar and vocals, which are in a generally more gentle mode than his dun-dun-dundering heavy riffs, suggestive of folky ritual at times.
Kadavar's debut gets a hell yeah recommendation to all fans of any of the doomy '70s sounding stoner rock, particularly the Swedish bands mentioned above and their counterparts over here like Danava, Witch, and SF's own Dzjenghis Khan.
Digipak cd release or colored (translucent vanilla?) vinyl with digital download.
The flood of compact disc reissues of obscure krautrock albums has been constant and overwhelming in recent years, but few discs are truly as cosmic and inspired as collector hype claims make them out to be. Usually an album's rarity is confused with "classic" status. But every once in a while, we get pleasantly blown away by an unexpected unknown. Kalacakra is one such album that deserves its mythical, mystical reputation (and $300 price tag on the collector's market). Reissued in 2001 (but not heard by us until more recently, due to the glut of such reissues alluded to above), Kalacakra's "Crawling To Lhasa" contains eight tracks of mantric acid-folk self-released in 1972 by the apparently drugged-out duo of Claus Rauschenbach ("guitars, kongas, percussions, vocals, harmonica, slentem") and Heinz Martin ("electr. guitars, flute, piano, vibraphon, schalmi, cello, violin, synthesizer"). Their strange, hippie sense of humor and obsession with the culture of Tibet (the name Kalacakra is the Tibetan term for "wheel of time") results in some fantastically nonsensical, eastern-influenced psychedelia (nonsensical? well, that "slentem" that Claus plays is in fact a non-existent, made-up instrument!). The album begins with the dark, hypnotic "Nearby Shiras", a song about a plague-ravaged town in olden Persia, which features some totally sinister and maniacal whispered German-language vocals, reminding us a bit even of Comus. As their crawl to Lhasa continues, Kalacakra venture into zones of lovely folk-strum and raga-rock as well, before the album wraps up with a a deranged and damaged blues stumble called "Tante Olga". Oh, then there's two "bonus" tracks, recorded by Heinz in 1993, that are perhaps best ignored: electronic "world music" unfortunately lacking the mystery and insanity of his 1972 output, inoffensive but an unnecessary addition to this reissue for sure. Claus, we're told, still lives (on social security) in Kalacakra's home town of Duisburg, but does no recording. Good for him.
Some folks we know (who often make music under the name Thuja) got so inspired upon hearing this disc that they determined to start their own hippie psych side project, to be called "The Ways Of God To Man", drawing upon Kalacakra as well as the similar sounds of Yahowah 13 and Maru Sankaku Shikaku and Faust's "Tapes" as influences. We'll let you know if they manage to actually record anything!
Garden of Delights did their usual thorough job with this reissue, which boasts a thick booklet full of liner notes (in German and English), reproductions of label art from the original LP *and* from bootleg versions, plus photos of Claus and Heinz looking about as weird and long-haired and hippie-ish as it's possible to get!
Albums like this make us worry about overlooking other hidden gems amid the multitude of kraut/psych/prog reissues that we're blessed/cursed with every month, so we'll do our best to try and check 'em all out, eventually...whew...
Though we sadly haven't been able to get copies of the first Kaleidoscope album on cd of late (the one entitled Tangerine Dream, not to be confused with the krautrock band of that name), we are very happy to now have copies of this perfectly twee UK psych pop combo's recently reissued second album, 1969's Faintly Blowing! And it comes in a nice digipack with six bonus tracks! Now if only we had some tea and crumpets we'd be all supercalifragilistic. Ahem.
Kaleidoscope were one of the best unsung post-Peppers British psych-pop acts. This one carries on from their first (a solid AQ fave) with more of the same delightful dreamy oh-so-melodic and lysergically lyricized pop psyke, some of the best ever in our humble opinion. Orchestrated, emotive, shoulda-been-hits abound, along with some way-out psychedelic experimentation. The Kaleidoscope story continued into the proggy '70s with a name change to Fairfield Parlour but Faintly Blowing was really their last colourful hurrah of dainty dandy '60s poppiness.
Nice! The two crucial albums by this aQ fave sixties psych pop act, now reissued as a double cd, complete with bunches of bonus tracks!
Not to be confused with the various other Kaleidoscopes of the era from the US and Mexico, this perfectly twee UK psych pop combo's were one of the best unsung post-Peppers British psych-pop acts. We believe these guys might in fact have been THE ULTIMATE psychedelic pop band ever. The first of the two discs here contains their 1967 debut album Tangerine Dream (which is also not to be confused with the famous krautrock/soundtrack outfit Tangerine Dream) is just incredible. Gorgeous vocals, killer melodies, lush orchestrations, and, especially, beautifully baroque psych-speak lyrics that put "Strawberry Fields Forever" to shame - with lines like "Battalions in baby blue are bursting beige balloons / the water pistols are all filled with lemonade / the jester and the goldfish have joined minds above the moon / oh please kiss the flowers and you too will be safe / oh swing and sway..."
It's very British, twee and dreamy, being that perfect blend of sunshine and melancholy so many psych pop bands of the era were striving for. The Kaleidoscope did it best right here. I mean, if you like the Zombies and the Hollies and heck the Olivia Tremor Control, you should know about these gents too. Indeed, the album's final track "The Sky Children", might be THE ULTIMATE pop-psych track on this ultimate pop-psych record. (Hey a little hyperbole never hurt anybody.) It's an eight-minute epic, with a thrilling vocal hook on endless repeat, and amazing lyrics continually pouring forth the whole time. Truly awe-some, if you're attuned to the vibe. The disc is rounded out with six bonus tracks, from singles and such.
Disc two contains the band's second album, 1969's Faintly Blowing (and an additional 4 bonus tracks). This one carries on from their first with more of the same delightful dreamy oh-so-melodic and lysergically lyricized pop psyke, some of the best ever in our humble opinion. Orchestrated, emotive, shoulda-been-hits abound, along with some way-out psychedelic experimentation. The Kaleidoscope story continued into the proggy '70s with a name change to Fairfield Parlour but Faintly Blowing was really their last colourful hurrah of dainty dandy '60s poppiness. Quite nice, fantastic, possibly even supercalifragilistic.
Not a new release -- nor even a new reissue -- but we just manage to get some and wanted to list it 'cause it's something that several of us here have been listening to a lot lately! This Kaleidoscope were a sixties British pop psych band (not to be confused with the various other Kaleidoscopes of the era from the US and Mexico) and we believe these guys might in fact have been THE ULTIMATE psychedelic pop band ever. This album (also not to be confused with the famous Krautrock/soundtrack outfit with the same name as the album's title) is just incredible. Gorgeous vocals, killer melodies, lush orchestrations, and, especially, beautifully baroque psych-speak lyrics that put "Strawberry Fields Forever" to shame -- with lines like "Battalions in baby blue are bursting beige balloons / the water pistols are all filled with lemonade / the jester and the goldfish have joined minds above the moon / oh please kiss the flowers and you too will be safe / oh swing and sway..."
It's very British, twee and dreamy, being that perfect blend of sunshine and melancholy so many psych pop bands of the era were striving for. The Kaleidoscope did it best right here. I mean, if you like the Zombies and the Hollies and heck the Olivia Tremor Control you should know about these gents too. Indee, the original 1967 album's final track (followed here by six bonus tracks), "The Sky Children", might be THE ULTIMATE pop-psych track on this ultimate pop-psych record. (Hey a little hyperbole never hurt anybody.) It's an eight-minute epic, with a thrilling vocal hook on endless repeat, and amazing lyrics continually pouring forth the whole time. Truly awe-some, if you're attuned to the vibe.
Yay, more Kampfar(rrrrrr)! This Nordic horde, whose first ep came out back in 1995, was missing in action for seven long years, returning in 2006 with the frosty Kvass, and now they're back again with another icy blast of their Norwegian black metal mastery. If anything, this one's full of even folkier riffs, but stays super grim and heavy too, making for some sort of pagan ritual trudge, rolling and rasping and rollicking on and on majestically. There's something quite "classic" about the folky metal lope of tracks like "Vansinn" that's for sure. And as frozen cold as Kampar's collective heart must be, much emotion is still conveyed by the likes of "Vettekult". So, recommended obviously to any/all Kampfar fans, but also to anyone if you just like picking up a new Nordic black metal album this week - this one is the real deal like back in the '90s!
Something must also be said about vocalist and founding member Dolk (that's his name), who, in a recent band photo we've seen, displays a remarkable Kampfar logo tattoo across his stomach, gangsta-style! It looks pretty funny we must stay, but on the other hand, it's an excuse for him to show off his sixpack abs. As well as demonstrating he's serious about his band, it's no fly by night flavor of the month outfit. Indeed, though he somehow finds time for working out and getting tattooed and all that, Dolk's main priority remains channelling the wintry spirits of his Viking ancestors into metal music so powerful that even a non-band-member might consider getting the logo of inked on their body.
Simon from aQ faves The Heads is back with his second stellar solo opus under the name Kandodo. Once again he draws upon the rhythms and vastness of the sea and the sky to inspire the music on this album, which is a much more spacey and organic affair than the more intense fuzz freakage he indulges in UK garage psych masters The Heads. If you liked Kandodo's first one, you'll dig this too - it's again lovely and zoned-out, the tracks being pretty much entirely instrumental, composed of overdubbed, effects-laden guitar, shimming and fuzzy and droney, slowly and gently unfurling, sometimes building to a steady, krauty throb - as on the side-long epic "Swim Into The Sun", which Moon Duo fans will certainly love. The longer tracks like that are totally mesmeric and even the shorter interludes are too, before they fade out into the next.
These pieces aren't so much "songs" as they are mood-setting soundscapes, the repetitive, layered guitar parts working alone or in many cases mixed with field recordings (the sound of surf, appropriately, on both "Waves" and "Swim Into The Sun"), subtle bass pulsations, and occasional hippie hand percussion. Some voices are heard too, in a couple places, but they're buried samples, almost unintelligible, though we did figure out that the track "Grace And" incorporates an edited audio-tour of Elvis Presley's Graceland, to hypnotic effect. Odd, but there's a sort of soothing Conet-quality to it.
This radiantly glowing album is quite nice indeed and recommended; we can imagine Barn Owl fans enjoying the twang of "July 28th", we already mentioned the likes of Moon Duo, and also this has some post-rock appeal - folks into the softer side of Mogwai or Godspeed for instance might feel at home with a lot of this, though Kandodo is much more "wah wah psychedelic" in sound than yr usual post-rock.
Vinyl comes with bonus limited edition 7" with an exclusive B side, "Left My Heart In Monkey Bay" (the A side is on the cd).
Kandodo? If the name sounds familiar it's maybe 'cuz you've got the Wooden Shjips remix 12" wherein Kandodo was one of the participants. Aha, that's right, Kandodo is the solo project from guitarist Simon Price of UK fuzz psych mongers The Heads! And, following that Shjips remix, here's his first full-length under that moniker (the name of a supermarket in Malawai, where Simon grew up), released also through Thrill Jockey.
So, this should be of extreme interest to the legion of Heads fans out there. Even though, this -isn't- one of those solo projects that sounds just like the person's main band. Kandodo, a spacey guitar n' effects based, all-instrumental manifestation of chilled out cosmic krautronics, is a different, more blissful beast indeed, one that's rather more in the mode of deep, late night and early morning listening, for prayerful headphone inner/outer mind explorations.
Still, this is the sort of thing that we'd expect any fan of The Heads to enjoy as well. Also fans of Zomes, Expo 70, Barn Owl, Bjorn Olsson, Urthona... and there's also just a hint of Dr. Who theme music whoosh to this too. It's epic and echoing; both gentle and ominous, rhythmic and serene... Mellow and memorably melodic (each track, individually) even though composed, in the main, of hypnotic waves of droning distorted guitar, seeming simple and stark. Also some keys, tambourine, and lo-fi field recordings are woven into these "fuzzy lullabies" as Simon calls them.
While in OUR universe Simon is a rock star, if he ever needs to pick up some extra work, this release proves he could / should easily get commissioned to do soundtracks to BBC documentaries about, like, ancient science and cosmology. We're envisioning this music accompanying images of pyramids and henges and starry night skies quite effectively. Furthermore, certain tracks here could give the likes of Umberto some competition in the imaginary giallo suspense film soundtrack department, too.
About our only complaint is that this disc eventually comes to an end (after nine tracks) rather than being somehow limitless in duration, infinite and eternal the way it seems it should be.
Quite highly recommended, in fact, we came pretty close to making this a Record Of The Week, probably should have, as we think it's a must have for many of our customers...
If you remember the Pan-Thy-Monium disc we raved about years ago, then you'll have some clue about what Karaboudjan sounds like, and how weird and amazing it is, as it's basically Pan-Thy-Monium mastermind (and celebrated Swedish metal
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Brilliant melancholy not-even-really-metal-anymore music from this boundary-pushing Swedish outfit. Originally inspired by British melodic doom-death act Paradise Lost, Katatonia on Discouraged Ones is equally influenced by the likes of The Cure, Pink Floyd and the Red House Painters!
