A lot of our favorite krautrock, like this, is really nothing more than what you might call super duper "heavy progressive" rock that happens to be from Germany. Not really eccentric or electronic or "kosmiche" like some of the more famous, innovative krautrock acts, but still darn good if you're into psych, prog and proto-metal and just want to hear some kickass longhaired jams -- often with flute! Though, sadly, there's no flute in this particular case.
Berlin's Murphy Blend (named after a pipe tobacco, and featuring future members of similar acts Blackwater Park and Hanuman) made just one album, back in that magical year of 1971. Now reissued on cd, their album is a solid one, rocking bombastically. There's plenty of powerful guitar riffing, and even more in the way of Hammond organ jamming from their classically trained keyboardist, capably pumping out both rock n' roll grooves and neo-classical flourishes (as on "Praludium/Use Your Feet", before the track gets into breakbeat mining territory). Meanwhile, the sometimes goofy lyrics are delivered in heavily accented English, but the album's strength isn't the vocal melodies, but in the compelling, propulsive instrumental passages. Definitely a "heavy progressive" gem. Oh, and it's kinda cool that, despite all the prog excesses earlier, the final track ("Happiness") is less than three seconds long!
We're still not sure if/when there will be a domestic release of this new Muse opus, so in the meantime, here's the pricey import version. Muse? That's the British band that anyone who wishes Radiohead had made "OK Computer Parts II & III" instead of "Kid A"
Attention gamers! (We know some of you are gamers, yep, don't deny it.) Also, perhaps, attention druggies! We've been waiting for this. From the same crazed minds that brought us the "Necro-Demonic dungeon crawl" board game Cave Evil, comes this REALLY bizarre design. It's an "adventure board game" for 2 to 5 players, simulating a psychedelic magic mushroom trip! Each player is, like, supposed to be an apprentice shaman, competing to become the next chief shaman by having the most intense and enlightening experiences while high on 'shrooms. (Note, the rule book explicitly states that "this game is absolutely unplayable on Mushrooms!", which would indicate that they tried�) Even the veteran gamers here at aQ have never seen anything quite like it. It's nothing if not unique. And very elaborate. And truly psychedelic.
Our copies of The Mushroom Eaters just showed up in the mail a few days ago, so this is not a 'playtest' review. It says it takes "90-120 minutes" to play, but we're pretty sure our first session, learning how to play, will take way longer than that; we're looking forward to finding some time soon though to give it a try! Especially since Cave Evil, which have played, is great. While this is a very different sort of game, we're pretty sure it's going to be awesome too. It certainly LOOKS fantastic, the colorful, psychedelic artwork found on every part of the game being super strange and trippy - AND, get this, the board is printed in 3-D, and the game comes with rainbow prismatic 3-D glasses for each player to wear!! (Though, it's not required.)
We're still not quite sure how it all works, we'll have to read through the 16 page rulebook a few more times before we attempt playing it, but we're pretty intrigued by the concepts involved. To give you some idea (or perhaps scare you off), the game includes such components as "Player Mood Cards", "Personal Path Octagons", "Breathe Tokens", "Large Focus Cubes", "Small Nervous System Cubes", a "Shaman Drum Board", "Wisdom Tokens", "Paradox Tokens", and "Mantra Answer Tokens" among many other things. Uh, wow!
Like Cave Evil, it's a fairly DIY production, but an impressive one. You get a LOT in the large box, all of it as we said covered with weird, trippy artwork, by a whole bunch of artists, some of whom also worked on Cave Evil, though that was all black and white and this, as we said, is quite the opposite, very colorful indeed. There's a thick game board that unfolds, several other separate smaller boards, a die, a pawn ("representing the mushroom"), various cardboard tokens, two decks of cards, lots of wooden cubes, and of course, five sets of 3-D glasses! Our minds are blown just looking at it, so playing must be some kind of trip. We don't know if it's a good way, or not, to see what it's like to "get high" without actually taking any drugs, but even attempting to play it does seem likely to create an altered state of consciousness�
By the way, while Cave Evil had the black metal connection, this one's not as directly music-related (though a lot of the folks who did the art are also musicians) - but we're sure any aQ customer interested in this would have plenty of appropriate music in their collection to use as a soundtrack.
And as with Cave Evil, it's a limited edition. We have just 3 copies in stock. We get 'em direct from the designer/publisher, Nate Hayden, and he says we can probably get a few more if we need 'em, but maybe not for long, fyi.
Now considered something of a classic, here's an awesome acid-folk rarity recorded thirty-five years ago by a gaggle of hippies in Barcelona. This is something we've had sporadically in stock before ('cause people in the know were asking about it) but now at last we've got enough to list -- and they're cheaper than they were before, too! This, Musica Dispersa's only album, was originally released in 1970 and now appears on cd, digitally remastered, in a nice digipack complete with folded booklet/poster (the liner notes are all in Spanish but there are lots of sepia-toned photos for non Spanish readers to look at).
Their sound is both danity and drugged-out, occassionally playful but most often melancholic and mellow... with moaning vocals, sad flute, organ, mandolin, piano, bongos, and various other percussion instruments, Musica Dispersa made quite quiet and gentle, dismally beautiful music (that was apparently very political in the context of their times/place as well). They tend to draw comparison to both the archaic, acoustic approach of the Incredible String Band and other UK folk acts of the era, and the freaky freeform ramblings of early Amon Duul. And we're strongly reminded of another krautrock band, AQ faves Siloah. Definitely something for which the phrase "weird and wonderful" was always intended. Recommended.
Total "Arctic Hysteria" here people! We liked this a lot when we first listened to it, before we even knew what it was. Well, we knew it was Finnish (always a plus), and released on Circle's Ektro label (also a reliable indicator of quality). It's not another "NWOFHM" band though, or even any sort of Circle side project, or even really a band at all. As it turns out, the quasi-Industrial DIY soundscapes of noise and drone created by Musiikkivyory ("Music Avalanche") are the work of one person, Mika Taanila, who was all of 15 years old when this was first released as a homemade cassette - back in 1981! That's right, a Finnish teenager in the early '80s making monstrous noise/drone tapes, contemporaneous with the likes of Maurizio Bianchi. How cool is that? Pretty cool we think.
The 12 tracks here (resurrected from a couple of super rare tapes, circa '80-'81) are a wonderful witches' cauldron of throbbing rhythmic chaos, fractured grinding drones, strange voices, field recordings, and DISTORTION, lots of distortion... it's a playful sort of isolationist music, if that makes sense. And as an evidently artistically inclined kid he had every reason to want to express himself in such a fashion. Imagine being a teen with fears of nuclear war, living up near the Arctic Circle. The dark postpunk music (Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, The Normal, Dome...) you were able to tune in to on the BBC's John Peel show might make a lot more sense than the "normal" happy Christian adults who surround you!
So Mika began messing around with tape recorders, cast-off band instruments, radio static, toys, primitive percussion, etc., and pretty soon had generated enough material to fuel his own bedroom cassette label (of which it's hoped that Ektro will eventually reissue more releases), which issued limited runs of tapes not just by his own Musiikkivyory project but also by other likeminded Finnish friends... and, in fact, one by Italy's M.B. himself! (A reminder that international networking was possible before MySpace came around.)
Ektro has colorfully packaged this in a fashion up to their usual spiffy graphic standards, the cd cover insert folding out into a large sheet with photos and liner notes (in both English and Finnish) on one side, the other a poster depicting one of the original cassette releases at larger-than-life size.
Crude, creative, and compelling, this is quite an interesting surprise, thanks Ektro!! We'd definitely like to hear more from this corner of '80s cassette culture, hint hint.
Not new, but we've been fans of this record for years and had never reviewed it, in part 'cause in recent years stuff on the Second Battle label has been notoriously difficult to stock consistently. But one of our suppliers just managed to score a batch of these so we saw our opportunity to write it up for those of you as yet uninitiated into the krautrock awesomeness of My Solid Ground. How awesome is that? Well, the very first track is called "Dirty Yellow Mist" and is over 13 minutes long, featuring a relentlessly repeating distorted guitar riff ceremonially intoning over and over and over as wordless female vocals, droning organ and tribal percussion build up around it. If you're like, "cool!" then this record is for you, it's as good as that sounds. This 1971 (aha, 1971! says Allan) album exemplifies druggy, downer spaced-out psych, being very reminiscent of Pink Floyd circa Meddle (another awesome album that we really should properly review some day!) and Amon Duul II -- along with other krautrockers like Siloah, Necronomicon, Agitation Free and early Guru Guru. And the Floyd feel isn't just 'cause of the cartoon pigs that adorn the cover art either. But there's also a side to the band that's more along the lines of garagey hard rock, with several Kinks-riffed attacks to shake your shack. As primitive heaviness goes, this is a classic. Hazy and weighty and often ominous (check out the mumbling vocals on "The Executioner"). Includes seven bonus tracks (the original 24 minute version of "Flash" not least among them), and comes packaged in a swank digipack.
Illinois' "psychedelic black metallers" Nachtmystium are back with their eagerly anticipated (and somehow controversial) new full-length album for big new label Century Media (after several on Southern Lord). The underground is abuzz, and we couldn't wait to hear it, being big fans of their previous album, Instinct Decay (and intrigued by their recent Worldfall ep, featuring a couple unexpected covers). Probably what's controversial isn't their psychedelic musical direction, which we already had major clues about from the catchy, buzzy, dreamy, E-bowed and bizarre Instinct, but just that Nachtmystium are moving on up from the underground, getting more "indie" scene attention... for instance, a review on Pitchfork, who even wonder if this is really a black metal album. The fact that Pitchfork is even writing about it, makes all the "true" black metallers wonder the same thing. But whatever, yes it's a black metal album, albeit one with lots of Moogy synths and backwards tape effects and even some saxophone (from Yakuza dude) on the three-part, 12 minute "Seasick" opus that ends this disc, and other left field, post/prog/psych rock twists and turns. There's a track ("Away From The Light") of pure ambience. But also quite a few tracks of pure black metal brutality. And beautiful blends of both.
Overall, Nachtmystium mostly remains a raging black metal beast, dosed with spacey FX. Think (later) Satyricon meets Neurosis, maybe, with the controls set for the heart of a dead black sun. Really, if black metallers can deal with the likes of Sigh and Arcturus and gone-prog Enslaved, they can't possibly have a problem with Nachtmystium. In fact, quite the opposite!!
And as far as we're concerned, this is possibly Nachtmystium's best yet. Certainly best produced, and most ambitious. The fullest realization to date of this band's genre-bending progression. And the punny title is pretty clever. Black Meddle, get it? You do if you're a Pink Floyd fan. And it's not the only Pink Floyd reference here. We're not sure that if Pink Floyd circa Meddle were to have made a black metal album it would sound like this, or even if this is supposed to be Nachtmystium's best guess at what that would sound like, but the inspiration at any rate has worked to create something pretty special. There's utter blasting blackened riffarama with rasping vokills, moody stretches of instrumental psychedelic '70s space-out bliss, and, well, what more do you need to know? Already sounds like a thumbs-up AQ item, right? We have always wanted post rock bands like Pelican to be just a bit more metal, and Nachtmystium shows that can work perfectly from the other direction. Recommended. What will Pt. 2 hold in store we wonder?
One of two new releases from Mr. Aidan Baker. One under his own name, a gorgeously druggy twangy slab of slowcore, and this the latest from his slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
Crashing waves of balls of yarn. That's one attempt to explain this band's sound... Along with bringing in the usual Earth, SUNNO))), and Boris comparisons. The Toronto based duo of Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, flute, piano, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass and vocals) are an "atmospheric doom" band whose slow moving, heavy and heavily distorted music definitely shares something with the likes of early Earth, but although they've done a split 3" with UK doom nasties Moss (among several previous underground releases) you can't really define them as being a "metal" band at all. Their gauzy, droney, doom-spelled-backwards music has a warm, melodic underpinning, somewhere within the billowing clouds of distortion that form the three long tracks found here. I guess it's something like the churchy, "funereal" doom of Finland's Skepticism, really, but even more calm, echoed and ambient. Melancholic but very pleasant, with both growled vocals and gentle singing hovering just beneath the surface, this music somehow suggests rays of pure white light shining down from on high to illuminate their low-end murk... and during the final third of the last track "Breakpoint" the heaviness drops away altogether for a quietly sung coda that could be from the most mellow and poetic of indie-pop albums. Nadja's music is definitely more abstract and altered than, say, Ocean (another sludge-dirge outfit reviewed elsewhere this list), and is so much more beautiful than the monochrome darkness dwelt in by many other doom bands. If you can imagine an ultra-distorted hybrid of Growing, Codeine and, uh, Ras Algethi you'd maybe come close to the sound of Nadja... Recommended!!
The third album of real serious, advanced black metal from these serious, advanced Germans. Their previous effort incorporated an experimental electronica element, but this one seems to discard that idea (perhaps as being too trendy and gimmicky -- heck
"Songs For A Simple Moment" is an introduction to the musical world of Shinji Shibayama. Since 1992 Nagisa Ni Te has released four records of honest, fragile psychedelic folk. With ties to Maher Shalal Hash Baz, whose members have at one time or another
With a revolving host of guest musicians, the core of Nagisa Ni Te centers on Shibayama and his partner Masako Takeda. Drummer Ikuro Takahashi, most recently of Fushitsusha, had once been a major part of the lineup, but has recently, mysteriously retired from music altogether. But that's another story...
In the Japanese psych underground, there is a strange coexistence of feedback/noise and earnest, heartfelt acoustic folk. Nagisa Ni Te embrace both aspects and combine the two at times. Think a more naive version of Tim Buckley or Neil Young. And if you're at all familiar with the brittle psychedelia of Shizuka, or the primitive guitar feedback freakout of the obscure '70s psych gods Les Rallizes Dénudés, you will definitely want to venture forth. From the fragility and innocence of "Star" and "They" to the shattering, feedback drenched Rallizesesque live rendition of the twenty minute epic "The True Sun", this comes highly recommended as an introduction, and is a great companion to the growing output of Nagisa Ni Te! (Even if you're already a fan and have their Japanese import cds, you'll probably want this for the rare/unreleased/live tracks included.)
It's been ages since we've heard from Bellingham Washington's Narrows, whose last two (and only two) records, Alligator and The Skull At Life Size, were huge AQ favorites. Our Narrows obsession was solidified by a mindblowing show at the Hemlock where the band laid waste to all post rock past and present in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes, managing to rock so hard, even with the frontman / guitar player seated the whole time. A mix of lurching loping metallic bombast and lilting whispery post rock moodiness, not like the current crop of metallic post rockers though, no the Narrows were something much more unique... all the best parts of nineties mathrock, June Of 44, Slint, Rodan, but filtered through that weird Bellingham outsider vibe (also responsible for Reeks And The Wrecks) and lovingly wrapped in some serious skull crushing riffage. And of course songs. Killer songs. Moody and mournful, personal and emotional, and catchy as all get out.
We had sort of given up on the Narrows, we knew there was a record in the works, but they sort of seemed to drop off the musical map completely, until all of our fears were assuaged by the sudden appearance of this here brand new full length, that is somehow even better than their first two discs, heavier, prettier, weirder....
Beginning with the nine minute near perfect post rock epic "The Sasquatch", a sequence of big groaning downtuned riffage, huge pounding drums all wrapped around a strange insistent loping groove, with wailed super emo vocals, like a prettier Melvins almost, or a resurrected Engine Kid, some Unwound, a little bit of Sub Pop, a little Amrep. These super dynamic nine minutes might as well go on for 90 minutes as far as we're concerned.
The second track, the even longer "Last Of The Norsemen", is all slithery slowcore, with crooned sadboy vocals, spidery guitar melodies, shuffled drums, until the crashing chorus, a gorgeous minor key stop start lurch, along the same lines as Codeine's "Cave In", with burbling underwater bass added to the mix, and a convoluted mathy arrangement, before drifting back into the moody lope of the first few minutes, peppered with strange slippery guitar chords and unexpected dynamics, somehow totally off kilter and alien sounding, but super catchy and melodic and surprisingly pretty!
"Quellish" is up next with its serpentine distorted crunch and crashing blown out drumming, letting up here and there for some muted shuffle and croon, before the bombast is brought in again, a super emotional musical seesaw, that manages to subvert the tired loud-soft-loud-soft thing and turn it into something new and exciting sounding.
As if the deal wasn't already sealed for best post-math-whatever-rock / slowcore record ever already, they finish it off with the heartwrenching "Over and Out", a sort of damaged Pinback on horse tranquilizers mathy groove, with big booming Albini-ish drums, over blooping underwater bass, and slithery minor key distorted guitar melodies, and a super subtle hook to die for. The song has a wicked, super dramatic coda with crumbling distorted riffing, and super emotional leads, yeah LEADS, what self respecting post rock band can whip out the leads and bring you to your knees without sounding the least bit cheesy? Can't think of very many (or any really)... but The Narrows pull it off effortlessly. There's an "Over and Out" part two, but it's more sort of a coda, that now burned into your ears/heart/soul melody is pulled apart, wrapped in some twangy Morricone-ish guitar, some tinkling music box like keyboards, and allowed to unfurl lazily into the distance, becoming more and more abstract and indistinct, culminating in seven minutes of silence... Needless to say one of our favorite new records, pushing all our buttons, old math rock, new post rock, metal, pop, heavy, pretty, strange... Absolutely and utterly recommended (as is seeing these guys live if you get the chance)!
This recording, the musical life of Pandit Pran Nath, his influence on Western minimalism, his importance to music, both modern and traditional, is steeped in history, but just as important, if not harder to describe, is the sound. A warm drifting dreamscape, layers of buzz and hum and drone, Nath's perfectly intonated vocals, hovering weightless above a thick swirl of Sitar string buzz and slowly shifting drones. This is true drone music. Warm and rich, thick and effervescent. Densely layered but light and airy. Truly difficult to describe, but a record that has immmediately become one of the most played / listened to records around these parts. Nath spent most of his life studying and performing in India, and became well known for his strict adherence to the authentic rendering of traditional ragas and an unwillingness to change his style or sound to be more 'modern'. His focus on the slower 'alap' sections of ragas was an obvious influence on seventies minimalists like La Monte Young and Terry Riley (both students of his), and other students / followers included Don Cherry, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt and many others. He eventually became a US citizen and continued performing, composing and teaching right up until his death. There is a definite dearth of recordings, considering how long Nath had been performing, this 2 disc set was originally released in 2002, and has luckily been reissued. The price tag is steep, but once these sounds hit your ears, any thoughts of price or money as well as all of your other earthly worries will just drift away. Both of these performances, one from 1971 recorded in San Francisco, the other in NYC in 1976, feautre Nath accompanied by Western musicians, Terry Riley, Ann Riley, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, who seem perfectly in tune with Nath's sound and vision. Anyone who loves the music of Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Organum, any of that minimal drone music, would do well to dig deep and discover the roots of that music. This is most definitely some of the most beautiful, transcendental drone music we have ever heard.
Looking back on reviews of other Necks records, we find ourselves either struggling to describe the Necks' unique sound, or gushing uncontrollably about how goddamn great they are. More often than not, some mix of the two. And we realized that wasn't likely to change here, with the latest record from these Australian modern jazz minimalists, who do indeed have a sound that's difficult to describe, but that is precisely why they are one of our favorite bands EVER. Jazz or otherwise. And they are most definitely jazz, drums, upright bass and piano, and many jazz music tropes are present in their music, it's just that their music takes the idea of jazz, and stretches it way out, and turns it into something much more about tension (and no release), about timbre and mood... Their songs are generally 20-60 minutes long, most of their records are in fact a single track, and they slowly build a gorgeous lush jazzscape that on the surface appears jazzy, a quick glancing listen and an unsuspecting listener might think, "oh, nice, jazzy", but had they bothered to keep listening, that wasn't just a part in a song they were hearing, it WAS the song, and the Necks masterfully take that part and nurture it, from a hushed whispery skitter, occasionally to an all out roar, but just as often, just a much more dense and intense hushed whispery skitter. The three players impossibly and organically linked, sounding less like a band, and more like pure sound. Like we said, it's hard to explain. In some ways, their music sounds like it could be the result of some sort of audio manipulation, as if some audio alchemist took jazz samples and stretched and layered them into these droned out hypnotic jazz ragas, which in itself is a testament to these guys' skill.
On Mindset, the Necks offer up two 21+ minute tracks, the first might be their darkest yet, starting out immediately with some deep low end thrum, some minimal drum skitter, the band immediately locked into a dark almost dirgey groove, and when the piano comes in, it's noisy and surprisingly atonal, the pedals depressed, the tones all bleeding into each other in a thick swirling angular sonic cloud, while the bass and drums remain locked tight. The bass gradually grows more active, and more melodic, as does the piano, the sound impossibly lush and dense, sounding like a way heavier Lubomyr Melnyk, swirling flurries of notes over layered drones, the drums subtly propulsive, it almost sounds like a jazz Godspeed You Black Emperor, so epic and majestic, and darkly moving. Eventually the drums too begin to be more active, and deviate from the groove, the sound building to a cathartic climax, before jettisoning much of the jazz, and turning into a dark droned out abstract psychedelic dirge, with what sounds like effects everywhere, although we're pretty sure they don't use much in the way of effects, there even seems to be what sounds like a guitar, offering up fuzzy squalls of high end buzz, the second half doesn't sound like jazz at all, more like some heavy droney psychedelic post rock outfit. So good. One of our favorite Necks jams for sure. And definitely a good gateway for those aQ-ers who tend toward the jazz-phobic.
The second track is a lot more subdued, starting out super abstract and spacious, tinkling melodies, mysterious sound effects, minimal percussion, spacey little glitches, streaks of high end skree, it's not until 5 or 6 minutes in when the song really starts to coalesce, the bass bowed, unfurling lush slow-mo melodies, and then finally, the drums drift in, another motorik shuffle, the sound remaining ethereal and washed out, glimmery and shimmery, very cinematic too, the drums crazy busy, but still holding things down, the track growing more and more frantic, and frenzied, while on the surface, the piano remains languid and tranquil, while beneath it, the rest of the band grows more and more agitated, the sound so dark and tense, and growing ever darker, hints of funkiness are blurred into something more abstract, the groove nearly swallowed up by the bands swirling sonic churn. Maybe THIS one is one of our favorite Necks jams ever. Hell, who needs to pick? Another Necks record that will no doubt rank as one of our forever faves, and again, Mindset definitely seems like the kind of record that could very well convince some folks out there of what we already know, that the Necks are one of thee best bands out there!
Hot damn. A new Necks album. They're one of our favorite bands EVER, and this is (one of the many reasons) why. Silverwater provides 67 minutes of the Necks' unique, hypnotic, keys/bass/drums bliss, all one track of course as is their wont. Over the course of those 67 minutes, though, the music made by this Australian trio varies quite a bit. Their trademark trance-iness is present, always, but at the same time this new album (their first studio record in, like, 3 years) seems more programmatic and propulsive than we're used to from these guys, taking off in directions we haven't necessarily heard from them before, but still sounding more like the Necks than anything else. Yet, parts could be mistaken for an underground ambient psychedelic jam from the likes of Sylvester Anfang, almost. And we'd say this is the Necks record to get Bohren & Der Club Of Gore fans into 'em. Other comparisons we've perhaps made before would be to Circle (in their non-metallic Miljard mode), Supersilent, Alice Coltrane, and AMM... anything that can elicit references to the likes of those is, obviously, amazing.
Eerie wavering drones delicately unfurl near the start, quiet and pretty... that gives way to a section that's almost ceremonial, like some percussive ritual. Sparse and deliberate, drums-only for a stretch, to be joined by deep, plucked bass notes... it could be some kinda krautrock jazz... and it does get "jazzier", sort of, with electric organ coloration, and cyclic piano plinkings, but also electronic-y gritty glitchiness overdubbed... Silverwater's shimmering textures and minimalist pulsations are simply beautiful, enthralling. It's a glorious 67 minutes, all right.
If you know the Necks, you know you need this. If you're new to the Necks, please do yourself a favor and check this out. Next to seeing them live (which some of us have been lucky enough to do, oh my god they were good), this will demonstrate quite effectively why we hold them in such high regard.
Finally a new Necks record! And as usual, it's a single epic, slowly shifting jazzscape, shuffling and hypnotic, circular and completely gorgeous. Folks around here have been totally smitten by this Australian minimal jazz trio for years now. Every record another new 'song', most of their releases are one long piece, which makes sense once you understand the Necks.
If Circle are the masters of repetitive, motorik hypnorock, then the Necks are their jazz equivalent, unfurling endlessly looping, slow shifting Steve Reich-ian dark jazz epics, and like Circle, while there is a motorik element to the rhythm and the groove, it's much more fluid, almost like some strange living shape, and it seems like maybe these guys aren't playing it so much as trying to control the sound, pushing and pulling, stretching and shaping. And the songs are only limited by the length of a compact disc, they all sound like they could, nay should, go on forever (there was a rumor of a Necks 24 hour performance!!).
We sometimes joke about Necks records all sounding quite similar, and sure they sort of do, but only on the surface. Each record is a subtle and entirely unique collection of sounds. Much of it has to do with the compositions themselves, but also the fact that many of the recordings are live performances, which capture a piece, but only the way it was performed that one time. Some are more propulsive (Drive By), and some like this one, are more abstract and ambient.
On Townsville, a single 54 minute performance recorded live in Australia on February 15th 2007 (Andee's Birthday btw), the band reel in their rhythmic tendencies, instead opting to float and flutter, to drift and swirl, the drums are barely even present over the first half of the performance, offering up soft sizzles and billowing clouds of metallic shimmer, the bass too is merely support, offering up dark dense tendrils of low end sprawl and blurred low end whir. It's all about Chris Abrahams' piano, gorgeous glimmering flurries of notes, tossed in the air like confetti, or falling from the sky like snowflakes. It almost sounds like Lubomyr Melnyk is sitting in, offering up some of his swirling 'continuous music' piano. The whole track is one long slow build, the bass and the drums lurking in the background, offering a soft warm sonic bed over which the various notes and chords from the piano dance and drift, moody and melodic and so mesmerizing.
Further into the track, the bass and drums become much more animated, subtly sparring with the piano, the whole band engaged in a series of fluttery swells, but still with the piano leading the way.
Easily one of the jazziest of the Necks discs, but without losing its drone-y minimal psychedelic vibe, so much so that certain parts definitely remind us of the more ambient Circle records, like Tower, Empire or Miljard. Imagine Circle featuring Lubomyr Melnyk on the piano, performing a piece co-written by Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and you'll have an idea of what to expect from Townsville. As with all Necks records, totally divine and totally recommended.
Does the name Hellhammer mean anything to you? The raw, Venom-worshipping, Melvins-inspiring cult metal band that later morphed into Celtic Frost? Well it meant A LOT to the guys in Necro Schizma, a Dutch doom band whose 1989 demo tape has just now been
In addition to the six tracks from Necro Schizma's demo tape that appear here, there's another seven tracks recorded at a live gig in 1990. They do a cover version of Hellhammer's classic "Triumph of Death" both live and on the demo, and it easily could be one of their tunes (except maybe it's a little *faster* than their own stuff!).
Aside from Hellhammer, they also list as inspirations Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost, Manowar, Angel Witch, Messiah, Judas Priest, and Slaughter (we're pretty sure that'd be the Canadian thrash act, not the the American hair metallers). They don't mention Saint Vitus, but boy does the guitar sound like vintage Dave Chandler!
Doom. Pure doom. Made by fans back in the day, luckily unearthed for fans today. We only have a few copies, and may or may not be able to get more, so if you think you want one, be quick. Thanks to Greg Anderson (Southern Lord/Goatsnake/SUNNO)))) for turning us on to this!
Oh, how we have been waiting for this! Finally, after years of being unavailable, both records by the mighty Necrofrost are available again. If you've been paying attention to the AQ list, you will probably recognize the name Necrofrost from citations in various reviews of damaged, demented, freaked out fucked up black metal. Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, The One. It's pretty much impossible to talk about bizarre black metal without mentioning Necrofrost. And here's why:
Okay, we know that black metal is a serious and GRIM business. There is no place for humor or frivolity. No smiling or laughing and definitely no smirking. Just bitter bleak misanthropy. Suicidal despondency. Utter frosty misery. But absurdity is a whole 'nother story. We've championed some truly absurd/damaged/demented metal in the past, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Vondur, and of course last week's record of the week Meads Of Asphodel. But I think Necrofrost just might take the cake. This is one of the most fucked black metal records we have ever heard. Start with the titles. The record is called Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner! Some of the song titles: "Carcass Carried By The Crawls Of Titanbats", "Me The Tundra", "Slaughtered In A Misanthropic Intent", "Nostalgia Freeze The Norse Reaper", and on and on and on. The record starts off with grunting and growling and mewling, like a legion of just birthed demons, struggling to awaken and crawling up through the murk and the mire, inexplicably accompanied by some jaunty renaissance faire minstrels! Weird. The band then launches into some buzzing stumbling, chaotic, ultra grim lo-fi black metal. Struggling blastbeats, caterwauling guitars, midtempo dirges and some truly necro grunts. But suddenly the song breaks into a bizarre acoustic/country tinged breakdown, complete with warbly wicked witch vocals shrieking and squealing above the din and later, creepy keyboards evoke some long lost Z grade horror movie, while out of tune guitars emulate some sort of scary circus music. Weird! While the core of Necrofrost's sound is definitely ultra frosty, uber grim, lo-fi black Black BLACK metal, even their metal is damaged and demented. Super spastic drumming, retarded guitar, ridiculous mixing, tape drop outs (a la Faxed Head?), vocals that threaten to overwhelm the mix and occasionally do, becoming a Merzbowian blur at full shriek, baritone chants weaving in and out of ear shredding high end blur, muffled blast beats underpin, pretty arpeggiated guitar melodies while the vocalist speak/sings a litany of evil, in his best grumpy grandma moan. There's just too much weirdness to really do this record justice in a review. You just gotta hear it. A frosty, hellish mud covered, grim chunk of brilliantly skewed outsider avant black metal!
We love Necrofrost. The ultimate in damaged weirdo outsider black metal. Managing to be completely bafflingly bizarre but still grim and cult and black and heavy as fuck. This is one of two long overdue reissues, this one from 1999, and still sounding as amazing and as fucked as ever. It's called In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor after all, and features some of the best black metal song titles EVER: "Slaughtered With Misanthropic Intent", "Rapacious Forests In Ultimate Sleep", "The Return Of Animalian Bloodlust", "Bloodthrones And Legionwoods"...
And while the sound is appropriately black and buzzy, it's ultimately filtered through Necrofrost's cracked and distorted metal sensibility and ends up being some of the coolest weirdest black metal you will ever heard. At it's core, this is a loping midtempo, slightly doomy, buzz drenched black metal. But Necrofrost take that sound and drag it kicking and screaming, bloody and battered through some haunted forest, into a cave and down into the pits of hell. While not as completely wacked as their other record Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner, In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor is more subtly fucked, its dementedness demonstrated less by bursts of renaissance faire folly or country banjos and more by some inherent, intangible what the fuck vibe that seems ooze from every recorded second.
After a weird, horror movie piano intro, with minor key strings, sounding like some Morricone spy thriller, the band lurch into black action. Sheets of blasting buzz, howled demonic shrieks, over a stumbling chaotic blast beat, the tempos ever shifting, bizarre atonal Greg Ginn guitars playing tangled angular leads, strange doom breakdowns, almost jaunty polka style rhythms, twisted and tweaked circusy guitar melodies, albeit all doused in grim blackness, thick washes of medieval keyboards, haunting minor key arpeggiated guitars, these are all part of Necrofrost's sinister sonic world, but ultimately, their grim black blasts are fucked enough, the perfect black metal gateway, luring you with blast and buzz, grimly sucking you into their strange sonic underworld, and maybe once you have successfully traversed Necrofrost's Misty Soar and Swampy Floor, you'll be ready to brave their Bloodstorms...
Essential for all fans of Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, Benighted Leams, Furze, Urfaust, The One and other practitioners of the dark and damaged black arts...
Another labor of proto-metal love reissue here from the folks at Rise Above, who brought us the Steel Mill listed last list, and the Bang box before that. If you liked Steel Mill in particular, Necromandus is worth checking out too. Like Steel Mill, it's got a bit of left-field progginess mixed in with its proto-metal heaviness... or maybe the other way around. Really, on paper, you'd think this would be super heavy. First off, the name Necromandus sounds rather metal and evil doesn't it? As does the album title, and songs with names like "Homicidal Psychopath" and "A Black Solitude". And, this album, recorded in 1973 and intended for release on Vertigo (which ultimately didn't happen), was in fact produced by none other than Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi! He even contributes a guitar solo on the title track.
The album starts off with the striking of a gong, followed by a brief atmospheric instrumental intro, then, wham, does indeed get pretty darn Sabbathy with the galloping "Night Jar", a definite proto-metal classic as good ('n heavy) as anything by Jerusalem, Bang, Dust, Lucifer's Friend, Night Sun, May Blitz, Leaf Hound, etc. But after that, Necromandus suddenly take a turn and get all jazzy/proggy on us for the rest of the record, sounding more like Yes than Sabbath, really, which is ok by us as well. Good stuff, and definitely not altogether mellow! In fact, a lot of it is rather ripping. You'll still hear echoes of Sabbath, who had their proggy side too, after all. But folks looking for pure proto-metal / doom might be confused. Although we'd say "Night Jar" alone is worth the price of admission for them, anyway!
Plus, for this deluxe reissue (which comes in a slipcase, with lavish booklet, like the Steel Mill), Rise Above have added 9 bonus tracks, a good, raw recording of the band kicking ass at a live show from '73, featuring a bunch of the album tracks and more.
Too band Necromandus didn't "make it", hard to understand why not, they were definitely a talented group and you'd think their connection with Sabbath would have helped (they even momentarily formed Ozzy Osbourne's original solo band when he first left Sabbath in '77, before returning to do Never Say Die). Probably had they actually been more metal... but we like what they got up to here, regardless.
While we wait for the cd to be restocked (hopefully, soon, maybe today!), we just got a few copies of a new VINYL reissue of this krautrock classic. It's an import, expensive and limited of course, but you're probably never ever gonna find an original LP at any price...not sure if it has the bonus tracks that the cd had, but it does have the liner notes. And more importantly, it's in packaging that folds out into a giant cross, just like the original LP sleeve apparently did!! Wow. Here's a portion of our review of this album from when we listed the Garden Of Delights cd version:
Aa masterpiece of suicidal, political Krautrock heaviosity from 1972. NECRONOMICON. Freaky then, freaky now. Psychedelic hard rock that was about as 'extreme' as it got at the time...definitely if Terrorizer magazine had existed back then, these Germans would have made the cover. Not that this extreme by today's blackened metal standards, as there's enough pretty and melodic elements included amongst the fuzz riffage to satisfy the mellower hippie types in the Necronomicon freak-scene. And, they're no Black Sabbath. Still, pretty far gone for '72. The title: How To Kill Yourself. Now that's a bad trip. The very first track, the seven-minute "Prolog", almost makes the remainder of this album superflous, as it's a full, epic encapsulation Necronomicon's heavy prog excess. Theirs is an album replete with stinging acid guitar, heady Hammond organ, and monkish chanting. Ecclisastical choirs wail over trudging, yearning guitar and organ -- shades of Magma and J.A. Caesar. It's like Amon Duul II murdering Pink Floyd and riding their animated corpses all the way to hell. Again, not in any way metal, but what you might call Wagnerian garage-psych... Definitely an obscure but A-list kraut/psych album for those with occult tastes...
Load strikes again! Amidst all the skronky arty punk costume rock bands indigenious to Rhode Island, Necronomitron rises above to play some actual honest-to-god METAL, and Providence's Load label was up to the task of bringing it to the indie-masses via this cd. Metal? Well, yeah, nasty, speedy, convoluted heaviness indeed. Besides their cool name, Necronomitron's got wretched chipmunk vocals, wheedily-wheedily guitar solos, frantic riff-mongering, and drumming that sounds like a panicked giant centipede barrelling down a particularily steep staircase. And lots of "parts". It's a bit like old Nuclear Assault or Voivod, with the treble cranked to eleven. Or imagine a Crom-Tech record that was truly heavy. Insane, punk, metal. The hectic tech-metal madness of songs like "Unscheduled Sunrise", "Incephalopod" and "Invading Assassin Is Dead" will dizzy and stupify you. After that excellent Usaisamonster record, another Load winner. Yay!
Who would have thought that this little cd, an insane one-man Carcass/Morbid Angel hybrid, released on a tiny European label, would cause such a stir here at Aqaurius even among non-metalheads? And after running out of the 5 or 6 copies we were able to
Putrefaction. I love that word, especially how it's spelled. Anyway, despite the generic death metal band name, album title, and lyrical content, Necrophagist is by no means your run of the mill generic death metal band!! No sir. First off, it's one guy (German, I think) playing the guitar, grunting the vocals, and programming the drums. Bedroom home studio metal. The main thing, tho: playing the guitar. This might be the ultimate crazy squiggly guitar lead album ever, outdoing even Morbid Angel and Krisiun in the extreme guitar soloing sweepstakes. It's insane, really. As brutal as the music gets, there's guitar shredding wedged into every available moment of music. As mentioned, this is one guy, probably recording at home. Well, I don't know about that for sure, but there must have been a long ProTools session involved in this!! 'Cause there's no way anybody could do this live. So, as a death metal record, pretty great indeed. Ignore the death metal aspect (if only the dude who did this would have!) and you've got an avant-garde guitar shred fest for John Zorn fans. It would make Buckethead weep. And supposedly there IS a new record on the way, this time a FULL band, that's fully capable of pulling this stuff off live. Just hope they manage to make it over here. In the meantime, just sit back and enjoy the onset of putrefaction.
A couple people asked us/told us about this before we got it... apparently word-of-mouth among cult black metal mavens was strong early on! And all their hushed queries and whispered expressions of awed enthusiasm are well deserved, we discovered, once we heard it ourselves. This is definitely NOT just another run of the mill black metal album. Negative Plane somehow have captured something more ancient and strange than usual in their music. They have a real "old school" mystique about them, that Venom / Celtic Frost / Bathory feel, yet at the same time this is infused and infested further with an especially alien weirdness, a bit of the same vibe as Nordic avant-gardists Ved Buens Ende. The album is drenched in effects, rendering the rasping vocals into an internal, infernal dialogue with themselves due to the amount of reverb, echoing in collusion with the music to make extra-effective what's otherwise indecipherable.
And though so seemingly raw and olden, there's a lot more "going on" here than with some of the dronier black metal efforts we've heard -- these tracks are full of complex runs, twisting turns, sudden changes. And sheer atmosphere is not neglected. Neg Plane's doomy vibe, their church organ tones and eerie melodies, are one important aspect of this record -- lashed with tons of FX to their other aspect, raging riffage, you've got an underground cult already established, the duo of Nameless Void (guitar/vocals) and Bestial Devotion (drums) requiring servitors rather than mere fans. Very special.
Hmmm, we must have done something to obtain Satan's approval, since he has recently rewarded us with releases from two of our absolute favorite cult black metal bands, and both exceedingly idiosyncratic ones at that. There's Inquisition's highly anticipated and indeed amazing Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm opus, which we'll be reviewing next time (we ran out this week!), and this, the equally eagerly-awaited 2nd album from Negative Plane, whose 2006 debut caused us to describe them as "very special", a band so underground and cult that they require the devotion of "servitors rather than mere fans". As such, we bow and praise, for five years later, this second strike is another slab of antiquarian, abyssic genius.
Doomy, dramatic, delirious black metal that's so thick with true old school feeling that after a few spins, the only thing you can follow it with are crackly vinyls by '80s and early '90s underground overlords like Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, Possessed, and Mayhem. Yet their artistry is directed down their own path, not that of retro nostalgia, even if they stir up the same Satanic vibrations as those ancient ones.
Negative Plane are masters of mystique, their music a masterful combination of atmospheric (and not only that, but also interesting) interludes, that evoke eerie olde silent film musick, and much more metal onslaughts, that emerge intricately from the hissing murk with pounding drums, swarms of guitar, and raw guttural vokills. Field recordings, bells, cello, piano, organ, and some female vocals are all woven into the mix, creating something quite unique and effective.
These rumbling, rollercoastering compositions, with their sepulchral production and strangely classical motifs, are all cloaked in weird, haunting ambience, it's like they recorded with Leyland Kirby or Indignant Senility in the producer's seat. If it's truly possible for metal to not just be about the occult, but actually BE occult, the reverby rituals recorded by Negative Plane are, and leave us with a Lovecraftian "indescribable" to add to this review.
Vinyl version to be unleashed in March, FYI.
Been wanting to list this reissue for a while, finally got enough of a handful in stock to do so. If you're into doom metal at all, real old school doom metal, then you're familiar with Swedish legends Candlemass. The premier epic doom band of the '80s, responsible for classic albums like Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Nightfall, and Ancient Dreams, who are still at it today, most recently bringing the hammer down with Death Magic Doom reviewed here a few months ago.
Well, way way back in their misty past there lurks Nemesis. This is where Candlemass's career of doom began. Featuring future Candlemass bassist/bandleader Leif Edling, and axewielder Christian Weberyd, Nemesis recorded a 12" ep in 1984 entitled The Day Of Retribution. Here it is reissued, complete with original PINK cover art (yay! we love anything, especially anything metal, with a pink cover!). The five songs of the ep, some of them later reused in Candlemass compositions, are examples of raw, wrenching doom dirge at its most basic best. Like Black Sabbath from beyond the grave, gone even more gothic and grim. Maybe I'm just a Candlemass fanboy, but this stuff still gives me the chills. Part of Nemesis' charm belongs to the unpolished vocals, from Leif Edling himself. He's not a soaring, operatic vocalist like Candlemass's best known singer Messiah Marcolin, not at all, but he sounds like he means it, wailing like a damned soul, in a lower register. The chugging riffs and Leif's anguished vox convey a lot of emotive power, enhanced too by the rough production, making the perfect mystic music for blasphemous rites and psychological breakdowns, conjuring Satanic black shapes within one's mind...
This new reissue, with liner notes from Leif, is filled out with six bonus tracks. A prior reissue had paired the Nemesis ep with early Candlemass demos, but this includes even earlier, more cult Nemesis demos instead! Tinny and distorted, but definitely of historical, doomological interest, after you've enjoyed the main course.
We love Fenriz. Not just cuz he's the drummer from legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, but cuz he's a funny, super opinionated, black metal mouthpiece, whose musical knowledge, especially when it comes to metal, but well beyond, are above reproach, and his related rants are hilarious. There's a reason they've been reissuing all the Darkthrone records with a second disc featuring Fenriz's 'director's commentary'. There's a reason he was the focus of the recent black metal documentary Until The Light Takes Us. And if you have the DVD, and there's a reason one of the bonus features is Fenriz in a classroom, with a bunch of blackboards, schooling the rest of us on the history/roots/development of black metal. But as we've discovered over the years, and as the above would attest to, Fenriz is not your normal black metaller. For one, he has a thing for techno, and electronic music as a whole, not to mention a bunch of other seriously non-metallic musics, one of which is spaced out kosmische synth music, a la Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre.
Which resulted in a band mysteriously named Neptune Towers (aka Fenriz and only Fenriz), and a pair of records (with a third that was unreleased) woven together by some overarching sci-fi concept. Sure, by now, synth projects, well, everybody's got one, but in 1994, to have some underground black metal icon release a synth record, well, it was a bit shocking. But what was even more shocking, was how goddamn good they were. Listening to this stuff again now, if the circumstances were a bit different, Fenriz could have essentially been Expo 70 or Zombi neary two decades ago! Sure lots of metalheads probably have this or want it, but all the kids today into the whole retro Goblin / Carpenter kosmische synth axis, will be blown away to discover this slab of brooding, epic, droned out, synthscapery.
Caravans To Empire Algol is part one of Fenriz's Algol mythology, and is self described as "Deep Space Alien Astral Synth", which is pretty much right on the money. The cover featuring a red hued cloud of stars, some mysterious corner of the galaxy, the liner notes simply read: "Escape The Earth. Unlike many synthesizer/space releases, this album has no vocals or drums. This is purposefully in order to enable the listeners to keep 'both feet off the ground.' Vocals and drums are particularly earthbound instruments that would eclipse the mission of this disc. Escape the earth." The original liner notes further suggest that the record "will only reach their optimal goal when heard alone. NOT FOR COLLECTIVE LISTENING." And finally, "Only effectively listenable on large black stereos. Deep space awaits. Neptune Towers supports extinction of all organic life forms. NO TAKEOFF. NO LIFE." And while that may have been a bit tongue in cheek, the sounds here seem to back up those boisterous claims, unfurling a seriously chilling sprawl of isolationist drift, like the soundtrack for some planetarium light show, but an old crumbling planetarium, tucked away in the woods, seemingly abandoned, except for these strange sounds emanating, and instead of stars projected on the ceiling, the building has crumbled, leaving the listener to stare directly into the blackness of deep space.
Two epic tracks, the title track clocking in at 24:35, and its sonic sequel, the 12:39 "The Arrival At Empire Algol" closing out this first installment of our sonic journey. Thick sitar like buzz, droned out, and drifting above a hissing swirl of shimmer that seems to float from speaker to speaker, the sound occasionally building into something more distorted and crumbling, almost like SUNNO))) or some sort of black noise combo, but blurred and billowing, haunting and ominous, the sounds rough and raw, heavily textured, primitive and lo-fi, but somehow transcending their genesis and blossoming into something truly cosmic, a pulsing krautrock style synth throb just beneath the surface.
The vibe is murky and minimal, but also trancey and psychedelic, a serious slab of home brewed kosmische, akin to some kid building a time machine in his bedroom, it's like Fenriz tinkered with his crappy old synth, until it opened a portal to some other dimension, to the far reaches of the universe, and these are the transmissions that came pouring out. And while lots of synth music borders on the new agey, there's nothing wimpy about this, this is synth music that rattles your skull and loosens your bowels, it really does evoke some sort of otherworld, some journey into the unknowable, conjuring up not just the mysterious of the unknown, but the harrowing journey to get there.
About nine minutes in, the clouds part a bit, letting shards of prismatic melody shine through, giving the proceedings a celestial vibe, but soon it settles back into something much more haunting and ominous, long tones, unravelling over a softly swirling sea of tangled melodic murk, yet it remains still weirdly majestic, until the almost bombastic final minutes, dirgey, and distorted, but a groovy bassline that seems to lurk just below the surface throughout, which is what gives this a subtly krautrock feel, and that near the end is panned hard and swings from speaker to speaker, while the synths grind away, slipping back into the sitar like buzz of the opening few minutes.
The second track is much more minimal, the buzz pushed into the background, a low level insectoid hum draped over the glimmering sonic starfield, the feel here even more raw and primitive, a mad scientist concoction, the buried melodies, and delicate textures doused in lots of noise and hiss, and strange sonic artifacts, intentional or otherwise, most likely the limitations of the original synth/4-track set up, but those limitations become as much a part of the sound as anything else, all smeared into a washed out haze, rife with strange barely there melodies, keening feedback, buried percussive thumps, and layers of thick undulating low end whir, all of which eventually devolves into a blurry sprawl of flanged rumbles and melodic moans, all sprawled into an endless series of blackened swells, laced with strange little bits of electronic filigree, sent into the ether like some doomed sonic transmission.
So incredible. ANYONE who digs all the dark synth kosmische cinematic soundscaping that is going on today, will flip for this. Especially if you have a large black stereo to play it on. Comes with updated artwork, swank slipcover, and new liner notes from Fenriz, explaining the genesis of Neptune Towers, and exactly what happened to the lost third part of the Algol trilogy.
Back in October, we wanted to make the reissue of Caravans To Empire Algol, the first album of blackened kosmische drone-synth drift from Neptune Towers our Record Of The Week, in fact we wanted to make both that AND this, a sort of dual ROTW. Both were records many of us here have loved for YEARS, so we were super excited for the chance to share them with all of you. Sadly, we were never able to get enough copies of that first one at the time to make it a proper ROTW, but we did manage to get a enough of the THIS one, so finally, Neptune Towers achieves aQ Record Of The Week status!! (And making it even more ROTW-worthy, this one, unlike the reissue of Caravans, includes previously unreleased bonus tracks from the never released third installment in the trilogy!)
Neptune Towers was in fact the alter ego of hilariously and hyper opinionated black metal mouthpiece Fenriz, one half of black metal legends Darkthrone, which is initially how we discovered Neptune Towers, Caravans To Empire Algol being the first in a planned high concept trilogy. But the music of Neptune Towers was about as far removed from the black buzz of Darkthrone as can be, instead, Fenriz in his NT guise trafficked in blissed out, kosmische, psychedelic synthscapery a la Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, which considering the current onslaught of retro-synth outifts, proves Fenriz quite prescient back in the day. And thus, for ANYONE into all the modern day practitioners of sci-fi synthwave psychedelia. Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Cloudland Canyon, M. Geddes Gengras, Gatekeeper, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice, Bitchin Bajas, etc., Neptune Towers is definitely worth checking out. But be warned, it's of a much darker strain than a lot of that stuff, gritty and low fidelity, but still impossibly spacious and epic. Black billows of spectral synth swirl around grinding cascades of low end buzz, everything swaddled in clouds of sci-fi squiggle and driven by dense echo drenched pulsations.
Like Caravans, the record is divided into two epic halves, the two lengthy tracks that make up Transmissions seeming to ooze from the darkest reaches of the galaxy, spectral sonic artifacts captured by arcane machinery in some abandoned bunker, the music pouring forth from the old dusty speakers, captured on those giant spinning tape reels, played back to a room full of baffled scientists, given this fleeting glimpse into some other world, in some far away galaxy, darkly cinematic, gritty and grimy, very rough around the edges, lush layers of grislty squelch, that suddenly explode into dizzying swirls of prismatic shimmer, all glistening and glimmering and downright new agey, before being sucked back down into the roiling blackened space-synth morass, only to emerge seconds later, transformed into a weirdly motorik pulsing groove, which again, soon dissipates leaving just shadows and ghostly melodic traces.
The sound throughout is in constant, glorious flux, hazy cosmic percolations, fractured, fragmented rhythms, swirling shimmering melodies, long droned out sprawls pocked with lazer beam blorp and space-sonar pings, the sound most definitely drifting into Goblin / John Carpenter terriroty here and there, with haunting little melodic refrains, that resurface, like the theme from some imaginary seventies sci-fi art film, or the perfect music for some blackened planetarium show.
This reissue tacks on four bonus tracks, excerpts from the aborted third part of the trilogy, 1994's Space Lab, four short sonic fragments that continue on right from where Transmissions fades out, continuing further into the reaches of the cosmos, lush, chordal swirs, arpeggiated melodies, all drifting through wide open expanses of deep black thrum, drifting somnambulently from swoonsome softly shimmering blackened cosmic-drone, to blissfully brooding synth-psych mesmer.
Comes in a swank slipcase too!
Another mysterious disc that just showed up in the mail one day, and totally knocked our socks off. So we ordered a bunch cuz we wanted to share them with all of you, but then we realized we had to describe it, and damn if this isn't a tough one to figure out.
Dark and somber, rhythmic and minimal, a muddy, murky, sort of krautdrone drift. The rhythms are pulses, that drift in and out, the guitars moan and keen, electronics warble and rumble, lots of twisted bits of low end, changing speed and tone, super abstract and drifty and otherworldly, the band occasionally coalesce into a sort-of-groove, but even then, it's a sort of convoluted lumber, vocals, wrapped in reverb and echo, draped over the stuttering anti-funk, the melody carried by deep slow shifting swells, all around fragments of sounds tangle and untangle, their overtones creating strange minimal melodies.
When the vocals do come in, it almost sounds like some sort of avant coldwave, imagine a cold wave Starfuckers maybe, a little bit cold and clinical and machinelike, but Net Shaker are less concerned with song, and groove, and being new wave or cold wave or whatever. They definitely exist in their own fucked up and fractured world.
The sound may be hard to pin down, but it's definitely mesmerizing, hypnotic, cyclical, a woozy, warped, murky assemblage of cold Teutonic pop, layered drones, motorik krautrock, spaced out post industrial ambience, not to mention some fractured druggy sonic collage. Noise rock, post punk, avant pop, dirge wave, cold core, krautwave, not sure what to call it, or if it even needs a name, what we do know is this is one of the most original sounding records we've heard in ages, and we find ourselves listening to this cd-r all the time. Which pretty much says it all...
Been a while (8 years?) since we've heard from Nettle, or DJ /Rupture for that matter. Nettle is the live band project of DJ /Rupture, the amazing mix master (and self-described "border-crossing bass visionary") responsible for, as we put it, "plunderphonic dancehall turntable mashups" on his various rad mixes (2001's Gold Teeth Thief being THE classic). We know he's got a show on WFMU, still does music and mixes, but we didn't know that his band Nettle was still active, or rather that it had been reactivated. So this new Nettle album is unexpected, but nevertheless awesome.
El Resplandor is a concept album, the quite cool concept pretty much revealed in its subtitle: The Shining In Dubai. Yes, we're in imaginary soundtrack territory here - what if, Stephen King's The Shining were set in an abandoned luxury hotel in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, on the Persian Gulf? Musically, this turns out to be an excellent idea... you keep the spooky psychological horror stuff (family moves into isolated empty hotel, things get weird, dad loses his shit, etc.) and add an ethnic Middle Eastern music element as well.
DJ /Rupture, credited with "electricity, mudd", works with an ensemble of musicians, including guitarist Andy from The Ex. So there's guitar, cello (x2), violin, and guembri (an African 3-stringed skin-covered lute) - along with lovely, wordless female vocals, something that's always perfectly suspense soundtrack worthy!
While in the past, this outfit sounded something like a beat-heavy, uber-distorted Muslimgauze, with hiphop elements even, El Resplandor is more restrained, atmospheric, and eerily evocative, in keeping with the concept. There's much somber shimmer and string pluck, and of course tape manipulation and electronic glitchery, with DJ /Rupture applying his mixing/editing skills to what may have been improvised solos from the various instrumentalists - we're not sure of the compositional method, but it certainly involves some measure of computer processing. The eleven varied tracks all individually contribute to the haunted, alienated, edge-of-the-desert vibe of The Shining in Dubai idea... From the stately exotic dance of "Espina" to the buzz, crackle and chaos of "Simoom (Wasp Wind)", this is a beautiful and dramatic disc. One that makes for a good late night listen, excepting the presence of that "Simoom" track, where thing get a bit... disturbed... that might wake you up from your reveries!
The digipack packaging features scene-setting liner notes by none other than imaginative architectural essayist Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG fame (great blog, check it out if you haven't before) and equally appropriate photographs by Lamya Gargash. Quite recommended!
PHAK YEAH!! It's been, like, ten years since this local groop, the 'South East Asian' alter ego of sonic subversives Mono Pause, put out their debut album, which became quite a bit of a hit here at aQ. Now at long last they've recorded a follow-up full-length, featuring the anthemic track "Fucking USA" which appeared on a 7" single some years back, along with ten more brand new cuts of their exuberant ethno-rock exotica.
Among several AQ pals, Neung Phak's ranks include Mark Gergis (of Porest), who is the man responsible for a lot of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases (and who now runs the likeminded Sham Palace label too). So you know that this band's take on various forms of traditional pop musics from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and elsewhere is well researched, steeped in firsthand knowledge probably gleaned on a backpacking / cassette-tape-digging trip overseas...
Neung Phak should definitely appeal to fans of Dengue Fever, trafficking in the same sort of groovy vintage Cambodian Rocks style psych pop, but with more of a twisted, fucked up edge to it, in the tradition of the late great Sun City Girls - whose Abduction label put this out, and whose Alan Bishop makes a cameo appearance.
"Fucking USA", which they would have us believe was recorded in Pyongyang, is probably the most punk rockish thing on here, but the whole album is exceedingly energetic and effervescent. And full of surprises - like the distorted electronic noise and free jazz freakouts that erupt in the middle of foreign-language funk vamp "Sa-Ha".
Make no mistake, though, even with the sometimes crazed vocals and distorted acid rock guitars, many of these tracks are dancefloor fillers, for sure! Their wild East-West hybrid may have its faux-ethnic elements, but they don't fake the funk. It's like the music Funkadelic would have made if drafted and sent to Vietnam in the '70s, then gone AWOL and playing in some dive bar with local musicians.
Meanwhile, the disc's closer, "Sad Chatri", is a seven-minute psychedelic slow burner, its grooves more for nodding out than getting down. Damn good, as is this whole album, highly recommended!
By the way, this was also released on limited vinyl as well, a couple months ago, but that lp version went out of print too darn fast for us to list - though we may just have 1 copy left if you act quick...
New Miminokoto, same as the old Miminokoto? Kinda! And that's a good thing, if you're a fan of the Japanese psych underground and this particular manifestation of the "Tokyo Flashback" vibe, Miminokoto both new and old being one of those bands, like LSD-march, Up-Tight, and Suisho No Fune, in the glorious distortodelic tradition of '70s masters/mysteries Les Rallizes Denudes... Yet, it's not it's not the quite same, as the old Miminokoto, 'cause lead guitar wrangler and vocalist Masami Kawaguchi has left the band (forming his own "New Rock Syndicate"). To replace him, they recruited Suzuki Junzo, formerly of Overhang Party, a Tokyo psych scene vet who has no problem at all slipping into the role of New Miminokoto frontman, bringing his own dark aura to bear on guitar and vocals, alongside the bass of Nishimura Takuya and the drums of Shimura Koji (ex-White Heaven).
Recorded last year, this release is also actually not all that "new", we've been wanting to list this for a while, just finally got enough of 'em in stock direct from Japan, and can now say: get it, it's great! Gorgeous stuff, when they get mellow, and gorgeous too when all amps are set on 10. There are indeed plenty of languidly paced mellow meanders, as well as fuzz-filled blow-outs, dense and devastating. And even at their loudest, Miminokoto manage to be quite mesmerically melodic, as they do during the more gentle shimmering sections of this set as well.
The seven tracks here include two fantastic covers of songs by the late Kaneko Jutok of Kousokuya (another long time Tokyo psych institution, a la Fushitsusha). They utterly fit the Miminokoto vibe, of course. Another vibe we're getting here is that of Neil Young, maybe it's 'cause we've been listening to his heavy new one, Le Noise... there's probably a lot of people who'll pick up that new Neil (also reviewed this list, and recommended) who'll never ever hear, nor hear of, Miminokoto... but we bet they'd like this, as long as the language thing doesn't get in the way for 'em. Sure, you don't know what Suzuki is singing about (only one title is given in English, "Wrong Distance", which is kind of clever) but it doesn't matter. The emotion in his voice - not to mention the emotion cranking through the guitar amps - conveys enough! This has been a go-to late-night listen for us ever since it showed up...
Man, have we been waiting for this! Why? Well, does Chrissy Zebby Tembo mean anything to you? The group that backed him up on his wonderful My Ancestors album from 1974 have a rare record of their own that's just been reissued, the electrifying indeed 45,000 Volts, and it's another killer document of Zambian heavy fuzz rock ("Zamrock"!) from the '70s! Founded by Paul Dobson Nyirongo, otherwise known as Paul Ngozi, a Hendrix-styled guitarist (he even did the trick of playing with his teeth), the Ngozi Family band released this winning album in 1977, and now that we've heard it, it goes right to the top of the selection of awesome garage fuzz rock from Africa in our collections, a small but ever growing category thanks to ruling reissues like this (we're also looking forward to Shadoks' impending cd edition of The Witch album, also from Zambia, next month, you should be too). And it's not so lo-fi as that Tembo disc, much better sound, though the production still sounds very "live", we think it's perfect, capturing both the thud and grace of the Ngozi Family's music.
There's ten tracks (including one bonus from a 7"), containing so much raw FUZZ! Burbling, sizzling, wah wah action. Along with wicked beats, soulful sincere vocals (some songs in English, others in a Zambian language, Nyanja perhaps), and groove that just won't quit. Most of the tracks are in a Western psych-rock style with distinct African influences, though a couple tracks near the end of the disc are much more like traditional Afrobeat, with hand percussion and mass chanting vocals. As far as the rock stuff goes, even when they kick back on the mellower, more sunshiney numbers there's still lotsa fuzz and snappy beats. And Ngozi actually translates to Danger in English, so you know that they don't neglect the harder and heavier fare on this album. Particularly proto-metal-ish is "Night Of Fear", with immensely fat riffing and echoed lyrics about graveyards and nightmares! Here and elsewhere we're reminded of Los Dug Dugs. Heck even a little Blue Cheer. And of course Ofege and Chrissy Zebby Tembo and others from Africa.
Timeless stuff, highly recommended. Tembo's My Ancestors, reissued on the same label, is already out of print on cd, and this reish is equally limited too, 500 copies only, so get it while you can. FYI there's also a vinyl version but our supplier is already out of those, at the moment anyway, if we're able to get more we'll list it then.
African garage fuzz fans listen up, we've got another nice "Zam-Rock" reissue here! Guitarist/vocalist Paul Ngozi (1949-1989), according to the adulatory liner notes in the cd booklet, was one of the Zambian music industry's biggest stars, at the forefront of the "Zam-Rock" phenomenon in the '70s. Those same notes explain he took the name 'Ngozi', which means danger, "because each time he took to the stage, people went crazy and it was all disaster"! Apparently he did the whole Hendrix routine of playing the guitar with his teeth, etc. We had heard of Ngozi before 'cause of previous reissues of his band the Ngozi Family's albums 45,000 Volts (1977) and My Ancestors (1974, with Chrissy Zebby Tembo). Both were KILLER, and so is this, a record originally released by a Kenyan label in 1976.
The Ghetto's nine tracks feature both hard-hitting riff rockers and more gently loping, lazy grooves. The singing is lovely & lilting some of the time, urgent & impassioned at others. The relatively lo-fi recording renders Ngozi's amped-up guitar fuzz kind of pleasantly 'soft' but still hella distorted. Lyrically, he tackles some heavy subjects here, like "Suicide", and starving children "In The Ghetto". It's spiritual too, with the song "Jesus Christ" being a most fuzzed out headbanger about Our Savior. Most of the songs are in English, but a few are in Ngozi's native tongue. If you've heard 45,000 Volts, or other Zam-Rock like The Witch and Rikki Ililonga, you pretty much know how rad this is already; it's got the fuzz, the funk, the African vibe� great stuff! Those liner notes also mention the titles of several other albums that Ngozi recorded, among them one called Heavy Metal (!) that we really hope gets reissued sometime too!
When is a drum circle way more than just a drum circle? When it's a KRAUTROCK drum circle, complete with electronic FX. Here we have all three albums from this all-or-mostly percussion oriented, instrumental krautrock ensemble, spread across two compact discs - you get Niagara's self-titled, entirely drum-driven debut from 1970, plus 1972's S.U.B. and 1973's Afire, the latter two of which added other instrumentation, like electric bass, guitar, piano, horns and flute (nothin' wrong with some flute!) to the drums, congas, timbales, cowbell, maracas, etc. But still, even with the expanded lineup, rhythm & percussion remains the main emphasis across all these Niagara platters. With Latin and African influences, the two sidelong tracks on the debut are simply killer funky jams, while the other records can get more jazzy and fusion-y, while still bringing the funk, in ways that fans of electric Miles and early Funkadelic and the swingingest "library music" will heartily approve. It's not a surprise that Niagara's debut, especially, is sought after by crate digging DJ's in the know, total breakbeat nirvana there. Krautrock at its grooviest!
You've probably never heard of Nibiru (this Nibiru anyway, though maybe you're deep into Sumerian mythology and/or Babylonian astronomy and are familiar with the term in other contexts!), but if you're at all a fan of throbbing, spaced-out sludge psych then please pay attention. Before writing this review, we put a tag on this in the store that just said "Ritualistic Occult Italian Doom" and that managed to sell a copy or two already, but more can be said about it. To elaborate, this is the debut full-length from an esoteric Italian trio who play totally-trance inducing, heavy rhythmic ritualistic stoner sludge. UFOmammut is an obvious reference point, Nibiru are equally fuzzed-out and head-nodding, but have some characteristics unique to themselves, notably their vocal stylings, which bring in an undercurrent of 'world music', the heavily effected vocals sounding like distorted muezzin wails, or even digitized Tuvan throat singing. The electronic treatment of the vocals kind of reminds us of the nefarious Auto-Tune, but instead of making 'em sound like Cher or Britney Spears, Nibiru's hypothetical version of Auto-Tune is set on 'guttural alien shaman' or something like that! The singing is thus oddly melodic, but also otherworldly. It's definitely distinctive and effective in creating their primal, droned-out, mesmeric, magickal mood. Helping with that too, are all the thick effects-laden guitar/synth/organ textures and lumbering, staggering layers of rhythmic pound. Right from the smoothed out grind of epic 18 minute opener "Invokation I: The Acid Skull", Nibiru never really let up, the listener transported into their mystic realm of dreamtime, doomic dervish sounds for the duration. Fans of such heaviness as Gnod, Bong, OM, Zoroaster, UFOmammut, Los Natas/Ararat, and Lord Of Doubts' Eastern/Buddhist ceremonial sprawl, would do well to investigate forthwith.
Compact disc limited to 300 copies.
These occult Italian sonic shamans have returned from another extensive druggy doomy dreamtime journey into the realms of heaviness/trippiness unknown to most modern mortals, who aren't 'experienced' like these guys, and here's the recorded result to edify us all. Their 2013 debut Caosgon first turned us on to their strange ceremonial sound, improvised esoteric stoner sludge for fans of UFOmammut, OM, Orthodox, Gnod, Bong, Acid Mothers Temple, etc. Now a year or so later they're back with even longer hair, longer beards, longer songs... probably, at any rate it's a longer album, two whole sprawling discs this time, filled to the brim with freeform Moog mantras, lumbering heavy riffs, hypnotic slomo rhythms, freaky FX, and drug gobbling/gargling vocal invocations. It's a Paul Chain getting high in Nepal thing you wouldn't understand.
The music of these Mogadon monks often takes the form of buzzing droning distortion, waves of it, interwoven with weird samples and those howling electronically treated vocals - moans akin to drones themselves - with the guitars chugging away behind the synths, intensive drums and percussion too, plodding and pounding, all part of Nibiru's truly otherworldly, seemingly never-ending throb. These tracks are tumbling, pulsating things that twist and turn in slow spirals, mutating more than anything else, as new components unexpectedly appear in the sound field: some Barn Owlish twang here, some primal vocal outbursts there; squiggling shortwave electronics, wavering guitar lines, 'liturgical organ', 'mini-digeridoo', feedback tangles, and occasional oddly relaxing melodies meandering about amidst the thicker sonic sludge.
We can't always guarantee these results - but under certain circumstances, at the right volume, if you play this at home, your rooms will fill with aromatic smoke, your walls will grow ropy green vines, and the sky outside will darken, swirling with alien colors, revealing hitherto unseen and confusingly arranged constellations of stars, dimly glowing through the mists... in your imagination at least, if not in reality... but what is reality? By the time you're onto the 2nd disc here you might not be sure...
So... Paging Julian Cope, we've got your new favorite album right here! Heck, the druid-dude probably know about this already, if he knows ANYTHING about psychonautic fantasias. However, we haven't read or heard much at all about this band anywhere, really, but if they keep it up we predict they'll develop quite a cult following for themselves, this is the sort of spaced out, improv-damaged, heavier-than-thou ritual we know you all love, we do!!
Limited to 300 copies only.
Those who fancy a little didgeridoo in their doom, get ready for the latest from esoteric Italian doom-psych cult Nibiru, who have returned to visit our plane of existence again, bringing with them another intense new set of sonic rituals. The two previous albums, Caosgon and Netrayoni, from this trio of shamanic freaks were both throbbing slabs of trance-inducing, ceremonial stoner rhythm and riffage, and that heavy, and heavily rhythmic, aspect of earlier Nibiru is well represented here, for instance, by the repetitive, tumbling, bass heavy attack that kicks in about two thirds of the way through track 2, "Ashmadaeva", preceded however by an expanse of droned-out atmospherics. The pounding track 3, "Trikona", is another sludgey juggernaut, one positively slobbering with drug-gobbling madness. There's plenty of that, actually, all across all four of these lengthy, effects-laden invokations, but things also seem just a bit more sprawling and abstract, in all sorts of diverse, delirious directions. The vokills are taken to almost monstrous extremes, this time 'round almost black metallish, a rasping exhalation/exaltation of their godz, while all the hallucinogenic, hypnotic heaviness, seems borne on opium scented winds from outer space.
The nearly 29 minute finale, "Khem", is arguably the album's tour de force / piece de resistance, passing through many and varied episodes, from its monkish groaning-droning intro, veering into a blasting black metallish segment, from surprisingly catchy moments of lurching riff-rock to a sudden break into This Heat-ish drum-thwap and Fushitsusha-worthy feedback to shimmering spectral synthesis graced with some haunting, harrowing guest female vocals, and on to ambient-noise sequences morphing into glitchy quasi-techno industrial metal. Yeah, it's weird. All over the place.
Weird and warped, dense and distorted, sounding like drone-doom metal descendants of ESP-Disk's Cromagnon tribe at times... Also this Nibiriu is still for fans of Gnod, Bong, and fellow space traveling Italians UFOmammut, these these tracks suggestive of that band indulging in actual cult worship!!
Yet another amazing discovery in the realms of unheralded heaviness from the '70s. Krautrockers Night Sun released this, their only album, back in 1972, and probably the only heavier sounds produced on earth that year were produced by Black Sabbath (and,
We got turned on to the synth-heavy, cinematic post-rock of this Aussie outfit last year, when their previous album Back To Zero was released on vinyl. Their secret weapon, a virtuoso theremin player, who coaxes all manner of weepy, wavery giallo-worthy ooohs and aaahs from that electronic instrument, its lovely, lachrymose vocal-like-timbre soaring over some seriously intense sci-fi zip-zap synth sounds and the massive momentum of the heavy, propulsive rhythm section. So powerful, and melodic! We're excited that they're now back with a brand new album, albeit with a stripped-down lineup: they're just a duo now, not that you could tell, having shed a couple of synth players in the interim (and switching out drummers, too). Multi-instrumentalist Miles Brown, he who plays the theremin, as well synths, bass, and "noise", takes up any and all slack, however. This sounds BIG.
When we reviewed Back To Zero, we noted that they had opened for Goblin, and that their own brand of soundtrack-y, Goblin-y horror movie prog sounded like it should have been released as an lp on the Death Waltz label. Perhaps you should just go read that review elsewhere on our site ('cause for one thing, the compact disc version of this new record is actually a double disc set, also including a reissued cd of that album as well), but we'll quote ourselves a bit: "Sometimes gently atmospheric (someone mentioned Sigur Ros), sometimes noisy and distorted (someone mentioned MBV), always compelling and evocative, The Night Terrors almost seem specifically designed for aQ appreciation." Indeed they do. We love this stuff! The new record has perhaps less of the gentle moments, devoting even more of its considerable energy to the crunching keyboards and math-rock rhythms. Tracks like "Monster" even hint at some form of adrenalized Euro-disco techno. Taken in sum, this almost approaches overload. Spiral Vortex is the perfect title; the sheer buzz and bombast of it all becomes quite headspinning. And demands to be played LOUD!! In a car, driving fast, even better. Makes us think of, like, if Emeralds got hopped up on Red Bull and challenged the Trans Am guys to a synthesizer drag race (whatever that means, but you know what we mean). This could be the soundtrack to all manner of suspenseful, futuristic action noir scenarios. Melody, majestic melody, is effectively employed throughout, not just on moodier cuts like "Celeste". Always, the awesomely distorted, low-end tones from the synths and bass are perfectly balanced by the more ethereal, high-end "singing" of the theremin. Technically, though, this is mostly instrumental, but for some uber-distorted robot vox on the very last track, "Force Field".
We mentioned Zombi in our other review - and basically these guys sound a lot like an over-the-top Zombi, if Clara Rockmore (you know, the famous classical thereminist) joined that band. Other obvious "recommended-if-you-like" references include: Umberto, The Oscillation, Maserati, Majeure, Nightsatan, and even the likes of Fuck Buttons and Black Moth Super Rainbow.
As mentioned, the cd edition, is a double with Spiral Vortex on one disc and Back To Zero on the other. Whatta deal! Meanwhile, Spiral Vortex is also available by itself on limited edition 180 gram red vinyl w/ download code.
We got turned on to the synth-heavy, cinematic post-rock of this Aussie outfit last year, when their previous album Back To Zero was released on vinyl. Their secret weapon, a virtuoso theremin player, who coaxes all manner of weepy, wavery giallo-worthy ooohs and aaahs from that electronic instrument, its lovely, lachrymose vocal-like-timbre soaring over some seriously intense sci-fi zip-zap synth sounds and the massive momentum of the heavy, propulsive rhythm section. So powerful, and melodic! We're excited that they're now back with a brand new album, albeit with a stripped-down lineup: they're just a duo now, not that you could tell, having shed a couple of synth players in the interim (and switching out drummers, too). Multi-instrumentalist Miles Brown, he who plays the theremin, as well synths, bass, and "noise", takes up any and all slack, however. This sounds BIG.
When we reviewed Back To Zero, we noted that they had opened for Goblin, and that their own brand of soundtrack-y, Goblin-y horror movie prog sounded like it should have been released as an lp on the Death Waltz label. Perhaps you should just go read that review elsewhere on our site ('cause for one thing, the compact disc version of this new record is actually a double disc set, also including a reissued cd of that album as well), but we'll quote ourselves a bit: "Sometimes gently atmospheric (someone mentioned Sigur Ros), sometimes noisy and distorted (someone mentioned MBV), always compelling and evocative, The Night Terrors almost seem specifically designed for aQ appreciation." Indeed they do. We love this stuff! The new record has perhaps less of the gentle moments, devoting even more of its considerable energy to the crunching keyboards and math-rock rhythms. Tracks like "Monster" even hint at some form of adrenalized Euro-disco techno. Taken in sum, this almost approaches overload. Spiral Vortex is the perfect title; the sheer buzz and bombast of it all becomes quite headspinning. And demands to be played LOUD!! In a car, driving fast, even better. Makes us think of, like, if Emeralds got hopped up on Red Bull and challenged the Trans Am guys to a synthesizer drag race (whatever that means, but you know what we mean). This could be the soundtrack to all manner of suspenseful, futuristic action noir scenarios. Melody, majestic melody, is effectively employed throughout, not just on moodier cuts like "Celeste". Always, the awesomely distorted, low-end tones from the synths and bass are perfectly balanced by the more ethereal, high-end "singing" of the theremin. Technically, though, this is mostly instrumental, but for some uber-distorted robot vox on the very last track, "Force Field".
We mentioned Zombi in our other review - and basically these guys sound a lot like an over-the-top Zombi, if Clara Rockmore (you know, the famous classical thereminist) joined that band. Other obvious "recommended-if-you-like" references include: Umberto, The Oscillation, Maserati, Majeure, Nightsatan, and even the likes of Fuck Buttons and Black Moth Super Rainbow.
As mentioned, the cd edition, is a double with Spiral Vortex on one disc and Back To Zero on the other. Whatta deal! Meanwhile, Spiral Vortex is also available by itself on limited edition 180 gram red vinyl w/ download code.
They're from Finland. They're called Nightsatan. Their record is called Midnight Laser Warrior and features on its cover some helmeted ghoul with a knife, and a sawblade, and a bullet belt, and tons of spikes and studs on the leather jacket that barely obscures his rotting zombie flesh. They have song titles like "Four Eyed Cyclops", "Death Chess 2000", "Karelian Stairmaster (Evil Lucifer)". The record was mastered by two members of aQ faves Finnish hypnorockers Circle. We saw a YouTube clip of Nightsatan performing, where a certain member of the crowd got so worked up he decided to sing along, that person was none other than Albert Witchfinder of the mighty Reverend Bizarre (and The Puritan, among others). Their drummer is credited with player "Laserdrums". And most importantly, they play "LAZERMETAL". Which is in fact, not metal at all, nor even "NWOFHM", instead it's some sort of crazy, futuristic, electro prog, like Goblin or John Carpenter, or any of the current crop of Carpenter worshipping retro futurists (Majeure, Umberto, Zombi, Blizaro) but filtered through some ELP, or Yes, or even more obscure prog faves like Il Balleto Di Bronzo or the New Trolls. Sure the sound is synthy, and retro and electro and will no doubt appeal to those folks, but it's also twisted and proggy and FINNISH, which makes this something else entirely.
The cool thing about these guys, ONE of the cool things, is that they're a proper band, this isn't just a studio project, assembled at a desk with a computer, no these guys are a BAND, and there's tons of footage of them playing live, and most notably, they have a DRUMMER, who plays drums, electronic drums sure, but they give the sound a sweaty, urgent, human element missing from lots of similar stuff, not to mention, these songs are epic and complex and again PROGGY.
Opener "Four Eyed Cyclops" begins with a bit of Tangerine Dreamy synthiness, accompanied by some growled cookie monster vox, but it doesn't take long for the track to get going, with some awesome syncopated rumming, locked tight with the synths, then another buzzing bit of low end synth swoops in, and while it's not metal, we can definitely feel the same sort of power and energy and intensity. All the synths drop out, leaving just the buzzing low end one to unfurl a serious slithery riff, the drums come back in, and it's like some weird electronic electro-doom, the metal vibe, more in the vibe than the sound, but it's definitely weird and heavy and electronic, with lots of bent notes wound into electro leads. Awesome.
"Death Chess 2000" starts off with more buzzing low end synth riffage, some "Iron Man" style kick drum, before slipping into another bit of electro-doom, only to have everything suddenly speed up, and transform into a car chase Autobahn soundtrack that returns briefly to that opening electro doom, before stripping down to just minimal synth and a skeletal rhythm, and more of those weird raspy vox, finishing off in a blaze of swirl and buzz.
"Karelian Stairmaster (Evil Lucifer)" might be the proggiest of the bunch, another swirly Logan's Run sounding intro, all arpeggiated melodies underpinned by thick wheezing synth buzz, while the snare drum drives the rhythm, before blossoming into a hazy, futuristic soundscape (which more than one customer mistook for the Tron soundtrack! If only!), that warbles woozily, and eventually switches tempo and becomes the perfect score for some lost eighties VHS tape horror movie futuristic dystopian city montage. Throughout, the song offers up some strange detours, intense super dynamic stop/starts, with pounding drums, and some gorgeous woozy video game soundtrack balladry (which again has us thinking how much better these guys would have been for scoring Tron).
"Ninja Apocalypse" is creepy, and haunting, with the sound of fake rainfall, deep bass swells, and a main keyboard melody that would most definitely not be out of place in a Halloween or Friday The 13th movie, but like all the songs, the track continually shifts and transforms, minimal and hauntingly creepy one second, supper progged out and propulsive the next, soaring and majestic the next, and druggy and psychedelic the next. "Steel Diamond Part 4" (parts 1 and 2 are on the 7" reviewed elsewhere on this list, not sure where part 3 is though), is another electro prog workout, that features a super soundtracky main melody wreathed in layer after layer of synth buzz, the drums dense and intricate, the sound swirling and shimmering, evoking images of alien planets, of crashed starships, of subterranean lairs, of strange creatures chained up and walking into the depths, of the blackness of space, which leads right into the final track "Stars, Our Destination", which takes that space synth sci-fi sound even further out, pulsing and throbbing, the melodies tangled and intricate, hypnotic and totally mesmerizing, the sound dramatic and emotional and epic, and so totally cinematic, every track in fact here plays out like the music to some climactic scene from some lost eighties sci-fi adventure epic, with "Stars, Our Destination" being the perfect culmination, the drums less rhythmic, and more dynamic, pounding alongside the synths, the vocals more breathy exhalations, soon joined by thick rubbery low end pulses, everything growing more and more intense before fading into a swirling drift of warbly synths, swirling FX and whispered urgent voices. There's a short hidden track, another sort of Halloween gone electro synthwave, with a pulsing house-y beat, creepy raspy vocals, and a main melody that sounds like it had to be created for some horror movie, tense and intense, this final coda brooding and moody, but also propulsive and weirdly motorik, the perfect sci-fi, electro house, futuristic synth wave hypno krautrock finish to a pretty much perfect sci-fi, electro house, futuristic synth wave hypno krautrock record!
And all this talk of soundtrack and cinema is not just us, the artwork on the back cover, which features a modular synth, with the various patch bays altered to read as song titles, also includes various inputs for things like "Doom & Gloom", "Heavy Pounding" and maybe most tellingly "Extra Giallo". So good. Easily our favorite of this new batch of synthy soundtracky sci-fi sounds. There is vinyl, but it's not out yet, a few weeks still. And if you dig this, be sure and grab one of those 7"s too!!
If Indiana Jones was a metalhead, this would be his favorite band! State-of-the-art death metal brutality/technicality with a Great Pyramid-sized fixation on Ancient Egypt. Here are some song titles: "Invocation of the Gate of Aat-Ankh-Es-En-Amenti", "Nas Akhu Khan She En Absiu", "Masturbating The War God", "Libation Unto The Shades Who Lurk In The Shadows Of The Temple of Anhur"! The liner notes even include detailed essays giving the historical background for each song's lyrics. Our resident Egyptologist, Elisabeth, is currently studying these for accuracy (she thinks that they are relatively well-researched, if not based on the most up-to-date sources...)! The archeological aggression of Nile combines the fast and furious, yet subtly melodic approach of Morbid Angel (who also share an interest in things occult and middle-eastern) with ethnic musical trappings (not always Egyptian either: there's even some Tibetan monks chanting on here). Live, these non-metal elements are brought in via PowerBook sampling, unusual for the genre. On record, such departures are even more effective and atmospheric. This, Nile's 2nd full-length for Relapse, is a dark, sinewy, complex, demonic masterpiece!
More beautiful and spooky "mountain tenor" from the one and only John Jacob Niles. We highlighted another great disc of his music, The Tradition Years: I Wonder As I Wander, a few lists back. Originally released in 1941, My Precarious Life in the Public Domain culls songs from The Child Ballads, a nineteenth century compendium of over 300 ballads originating in England and Scotland, collected by Francis James Childs, a Harvard University math professor. Most of these ballads had made their way into American folk traditions virtually unchanged and unaware of their European origins. Despite the name, these songs are not for children: Murder, hanging, adultery, unrequited love and suicide are the prevailing themes delivered hauntingly and simply through dulcimer and Niles astonishing voice. Incredible!
Really, what needs to be said about Nirvana's Bleach? Nothing probably. But also everything. Most of the folks here probably rank Bleach as their favorite Nirvana record, and some of us might even include Bleach in our best of all time list as well (c'mon, we know you keep one too, even if it's just in your head). And listening to this again today, it's shocking out great it sounds, not at all dated, better than 90 percent of the music coming out today, and it cost like $600 to record. EVERY song here is a goddamn classic, equal parts punk rock, pop, sludge, grunge, '60s garage, everything perfect, the vocals raspy and raw, the drumming killer, the guitar parts weird and wonderful, thick and heavy and grimy and so utterly catchy. Half the bands around today wouldn't even exist if it weren't for this record, hell, the musical landscape would be WAY different if it weren't for Nirvana, sure we grew up listening to Bleach, but we can only imagine discovering this record today, it would blow your fucking mind. How could a band on their first time out create a record that would basically reinvent rock for a new generation. Odds are most folks probably have this, and some of you are probably big ol' Nirvana geeks like us and will need to buy it again, for the improved sound, the killer packaging, the bonus live show tacked on the end, but if for some crazy reason you've yet to hear this, drop everything, don't buy another record until you take this one home and immerse yourself in its utter rock genius. Listen to the sound samples, and either be reminded how good this record is, or discover your new favorite band and let your life be changed, the way ours were when we first heard this 20 years ago.
The bonus tracks are from a live show recorded in Portland back in 1990, and it sounds amazing. Admittedly, Nirvana live were a dodgy proposition, or at least Kurt was, often singing weirdly or not at all, fucking up songs on purpose, or sometimes not on purpose, but this set is wicked tight, and loud and heavy, the vocals are pretty much perfect, they do some killer covers, some rad non-Bleach songs, and a few songs that would show up on future record, but it's cool to hear with this lineup, live all rough and ragged. And yeah, the new packaging is pretty badass too, no new liner notes but tons of photos and flyers and stuff, the perfect companion to the Live At Reading set which was also just released, and which we'll probably review on the next list.
Last year the Smalltown Supersound label clued a lot of lucky listeners outside of Japan into the wonders of the all-girl, uber rhythmic skronk rock groop Nisennenmondai, by reissuing the trio's Tori and Neji eps together on one cd (Heartworm then doing an lp version). That sure whet our appetite for more, and here it is!
Destination Tokyo starts off with a real choo-choo train of a track, "Souzousuru Neji", the crazy choo-choo threatening to go off the rails, propelled by nervous no wavey percussive jitter, feedback scraping around the edges of the beat. It's super repetitive, incessant, awesome. Part This Heat, part Liquid Liquid, part Children Coup d'Etat (a Japanese avant-rock band from the '90s, anyone remember 'em? We mention them 'cause of what sounds like a violin in the mix here). The track builds and builds for about 13 minutes, the bass pulsations protruding, the beats pounding harder, the whole thing getting denser and denser, intensifying until the sudden stop on a dime suck the air out of the room ending at about the 13 minute mark. Whew. Though then the Nisennenmondai girls pick it up again right quick with the chicken scratch groove of "Disco", another seemingly endless build up. That's their formula, and we sure dig it! Relentless high-hat, chiming and chirping guitars, layered and looping...
On this full-length, Nisennenmondai's music is still mostly instrumental (with the exception of the brief, a capella babytalk of track 3, "Miraabouru") but is presented with quite a bit LESS noise and distortion than on those two early eps, Nisennenmondai this time going for more of a spare, skeletal, minimalist sound, though still one that effortlessly builds and builds and builds to juggernaut proportions. It is much more "dancefloor" friendly, with song titles like "Disco" and "Mirrorball", not to mention the cover art, that must be the intention, but in a very motorik, krautrocky way. While "Souzousuru Neji" is probably the heaviest cut here, at the opposite end of the disc, the kosmiche synth wooshes and melodic loveliness that adorn the final, title track display Nisennenmondai at their calmest and krautrockiest, it's definitely one for fans of Neu! and Harmonia and the like. Heck this track could be Circle or Salvatore, playing at an ambient airport with planes and helicopters blissfully buzzing around. What is not to love???!
Motorik Japanese all-female trio Nisennenmondai are back, with a disc that takes the skeletal, minimalist 'choo-choo-choo' sounds of their previous outing, 2009's Destination Tokyo, to a stripped-down extreme. (They've stripped down the titles, too.) Eschewing a lot of variation, they really just lock in and go with the groove here. With standard rock instrumentation, they play what sounds like electronic music - they're an extra-tight 'live' techno band essentially, not unlike Austria's Electro Guzzi (who have a new album, Observatory, we'll be reviewing soon, too). These three long instrumental tracks of purely rhythmic attack are all tck-tck-tck, scht-scht-scht, thup-thup-thup... Ultra repetitive, up tempo percussive jitter that's sleek and steady, subtle yet urgent, constantly building up the mysterious, nervous energy. Based around live 'loops' of snare hits and bass beats, what sound like Morse code blips and Giger counter clicks, it's a brooding sort of thumping techno, with shimmering shoegaze guitars around the edges, distorted and echo-effected, creating quite a mesmeric & mekanikal, noirish mood. Sort of sounds like Circle playing a rave, really! (And we'd LOVE to experience this live!) Considerably compelling as far as we're concerned, and also kinda curious coming from a band who once upon a time sounded a lot like Sonic Youth and Deerhoof, though they've always been about the repetitive trance-induction, they've just honed that aspect and dialed back on their former noisy no-waveisms.
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Motorik Japanese all-female trio Nisennenmondai's most recent album, N, took the skeletal, minimalist 'choo-choo-choo' sounds of their previous outing, 2009's Destination Tokyo, to a stripped-down extreme. Eschewing a lot of variation, they really just lock in and go with the groove. With standard rock instrumentation, they play what sounds like electronic music - they're an extra-tight 'live' techno band essentially, not unlike Austria's Electro Guzzi.
N came out last summer, on cd only (which is currently backordered and possibly out of print). But now, for vinyl folks, and especially DJ types, Blast First has put out a 12" vinyl version, called N'. The tracks here are apparently re-recordings/re-workings of cuts from the N cd proper, but our description of those still holds: long instrumental tracks of purely rhythmic attack that are all tck-tck-tck, scht-scht-scht, thup-thup-thup... Ultra repetitive, up tempo percussive jitter that's sleek and steady, subtle yet urgent, constantly building up the mysterious, nervous energy. Based around live 'loops' of snare hits and bass beats, what sound like Morse code blips and Giger counter clicks, it's a brooding sort of thumping techno, with shimmering shoegaze guitars around the edges, distorted and echo-effected, creating quite a mesmeric & mekanikal, noirish mood. Sort of sounds like Circle playing a rave, really! (And we'd LOVE to experience this live!) Considerably compelling as far as we're concerned, and also kinda curious coming from a band who once upon a time sounded a lot like Sonic Youth and Deerhoof, though they've always been about the repetitive trance-induction, they've just honed that aspect and dialed back on their former noisy no-waveisms.
(Note: the sound samples below are from the original cd, not this vinyl version.)
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Yay! It's pretty cool that Norway's Smalltown Supersound has put this out, a disc collecting two previously released (in Japan only) eps by this Japanese all-girl avant-rock unit. We'd found out about this band a while back, and had wanted to stock their stuff, but sometimes importing cds from Japan is a daunting task. So our procrastination paid off, as now we have this handy disc, easily available. (It's also pretty cool that the Heartworm Press label has also just issued this on vinyl!) So what's the deal with this band? A mostly instrumental guitar/bass/drums trio who are psychedelically skronky, generating massive walls of distortion underpinned by propulsive no-waveisms. They're not a Japanese "noise" band like Merzbow or Hijokaidan, but certainly get plenty noisy. We could compare 'em at times to the likes of Afrirampo, Lightning Bolt, Melt Banana, Deerhoof, (early) Blonde Redhead... actually Nisennenmodai makes the reviewer's task a bit easier by naming several of the tracks of the Neji ep (2004) which begins this disc after some of their musical heroes, which to a degree they emulate: "Pop Group", "This Heat", "Sonic Youth". The "This Heat" track definitely has the nervous tension and percussive percolations we love about that band, whereas "Pop Group" is ultra-angular and extra-noisy...
The Tori ep (2005) that occupies the second half of this collection continues those themes - in fact, they do one of Neji's songs again, the densely rhythmic "Ikkkyokume", probably a signature track for the band as it so well represents their trance-inducing intensity, love of volume and minimalist song structure. Tori's first track "Kyuukohan" is tightly wound, repetitive number full of crashing cymbals, chiming guitar, and bass throb... building, building, building relentlessly to a massive climax. The next song, "Kyaaaaaa", incorporates yelping vocal shrieks and even more noisy feedback guitar. And so it goes, getting ever noisier, more throbbingly repetitive, a distorted, enthralling onslaught of explosive splatter/scatter rock indeed! We'd love to see 'em live someday, apparently there's crazy costumes and stuff, but that seems hardly necessary given the sheer energy of their music.
The limited double LP version is a handsome gatefold, on white vinyl. It's already sold out at the label, apparently we got their very last copies... act fast!
Packaged in a deluxe gatefold LP sleeve with a handful of gory-but-beautiful, blood-drenched photographs overprinted with shimmering transparent lettering, this triple cd is a partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day
Unlike previous releases of Nitsch's musical works where visual evidence of his "actions" (for which his music provides the soundtrack) appear only as album cover art, this time we get a CD-Rom with video of portions of Day 3's activities (the usual Nitsch spectacle of people stomping tomatoes, disembowling butchered pigs, crucifying naked participants, and pouring lots and lots of blood over everything). But regardless of whether that sort of thing interests you, the two audio cds in the set provide what we have come to expect from Hermann Nitsch's orchestrations: tense, swelling masses of atonal strings, the performers told to play loud, and then to play even louder. The major difference in these scores is in how Nitsch arranges the breakdowns of these swells. On one of the discs, Nitsch inserts some festive Polka tunes between his signature walls of sound; on the other, Nitsch required a drummer to back up the drones with stumbling, haphazard beats. His truncated fills and erratic rhythms making it into something almost "free jazz", if anything this dark and droney could be so described. You get the impression that this drummer is slipping and sliding off his drum stool because of all of the blood, and randomly striking his drums on the way down. In conjunction with the ominous, building strings and horns this creates a sound not at all unlike recent AQ fave Crystal Fist. As with almost everything we've heard from Nitsch, droning and mesmerising and magnificent.
