With a lot of stuff on the AQ list, to us at least, the music often transcends its genre. And part of the fun of reviewing a record like that, is getting people who don't normally listen to that kind of music to check it out, and maybe even dig it. You know, some metal record that's so fucked up and damaged that it might appeal to folks into noise music or experimental music. Or some pop band that's so heavy and intense, that even metalheads might dig it.
Well, with this, the long long long overdue reissue of the first and only record from San Francisco's very own Sea Hags, we're not even gonna bother. This isn't fucked up or noisy or experimental. It's heavy, groovy, glammy hard rock that totally kicks ass. And if you don't dig stuff like Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks and the like, then odds are you aren't gonna dig this. But if you do (and if you don't what the hell's wrong with you?!), and somehow you missed out on the greatest hard rock band to ever come out of SF, then for fuck's sake, pick this up NOW.
Hailed back in the day as the next Guns N' Roses, and described by their manager thusly: "There's only so far you can go with three junkies and one alcoholic�", the Sea Hags were Bay Area rock heroes, who would hang out with Courtney Love, have Metallica's Kirk Hammett play lead on one of their tracks, almost get a song on the Sid And Nancy soundtrack after a tip from Love (who was fronting Faith No More at the time!), record with Mike Clink who produced Appetite For Destruction, kick their drummer out while recording, have the band nearly break up on tour after being busted for drugs, and (sadly) have one member die at age 26 of an heroin overdose a year after the band breaks up, but more importantly than all of that, record one of the best hard rock records of the nineties, and one of the greatest hard rock tracks EVER in the form of "Half The Way Valley".
Just listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. Filthy and dangerous, groovy and bluesy, glammy and heavy, and so crazy catchy, a pinch of the Stones, a bit of the Yardbirds, lots of Aerosmith, plenty of GN'R , all mixed up with their own unique take on sixties pop and seventies hard rock. Kick ass riffing, pounding drumming, boozy world weary vocals, and hooks galore.
Not sure what else to say. Amongst the hard rockers around these parts, the reissue of the Sea Hags record was a HUGE deal. So much so, that had it not happened, Andee and Allan might have considered it for their fledgling eighties metal reissue label!
Needless to say, this is essential listening for hard rockers. One of our favorite discs from the nineties. Finally reissued, and damn if it don't sound as kick ass as ever!
As with all the Rock Candy reissues, the packaging and presentation are amazing. If only ALL reissues were this well done. Bonus tracks, tons of photos, extensive liner notes, interviews with bandleader Ron Yocom, as well as track by track notes and a band history.
Hell, whoops, ach eee double hockey sticks yeah! Or should we just say hallelujah!? This obscure Xtian '60s psych fave has just been officially reissued with loving care and TONS of extra, associated material. Here's what we said about The Search Party when we first encountered a reissue of it (a Korean import, at the time) some years ago:
Fans of psychedelic sixties rock n' roll might be a little concerned about what they're getting when a peek at the album cover shows that two of the band members are men wearing clerical collars. Priests who rock? And these are no long-haired Jesus Freaks, either. The four men and one woman in this band look pretty straight. But, have no fear, their music is plenty far-out. This self-released 1968 album is the sole recorded legacy of The Search Party, a Christian folk-psych combo masterminded by the Reverend Nicholas Freund of Mount Saint Paul College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, but recorded at the San Francisco Theological Seminary's Montgomery Chapel (hence the title). They were definitely hip to the sixties West Coast vibe, with female vocals that remind us a bit of both Grace Slick and Linda Perhacs. Much of this is quite ethereal and haunting, full of organ drone-tones and dreamy, downer atmosphere. The album's centerpiece, the nine-minute "So Many Things Have Got Me Down" could be a lost acid-krautrock jam. While The Search Party are at their best on the slower, moodier numbers, the more uptempo songs, though, go to some amazing extremes with over-the-top vocals and searing fuzz guitar - as in "You And I" which stands in stark contrast to the gentle, somber sounds of much of the rest of the record, whose original liner notes include the statement that "this album...is a demonstration of these five people's concern for you." Now how often do bands today say things like that? Bless' em. The New Creation and the Concrete Rubber Band - a couple other lost '60s Christian rock reissues we reviewed here previously - have nothing on this!
And not only do you get that wonderful album here, but Lion Productions have tacked on a whole extra disc. Turns out, prior to the formation of The Search Party, Nick Freund and The Search Party's guitarist/vocalist Peter Apps already had made music together in the St. Pius X Seminary Choir. As you can guess from the name, this group was rather more overtly religious, less secular sounding, 'though it was during this period that Freund attended a show at the Fillmore (featuring Cream, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Janis Joplin!) and got turned on to the hipper sounds of the SF ballroom scene. The St. Pius X Seminary Choir released three albums: Sing Out With Joy To The Lord, Sing To The Lord A New Song, and Each One Heard In His Own Language About The Marvels Of God, the third of which appears in its entirety on this set's second cd, with selections from the other two spread across the balance of both discs as bonus tracks. While the St. Pius X Seminary Choir was different in style, being mostly more 'square', churchy choral music with some rock/pop influences, and definitely not in the same league as The Search Party, it's still cool to hear music from 'em, particularly the stuff on the Each One Heard In His Own Language album, which starts off with a quite freaky, possibly Stockhausen-influenced electronic noise / sound collage composition (!) and also includes what appears to be a version of "Twist And Shout" rewritten as part of "Mass For The Secular City"...
Furthermore, this is packaged with a thick cd booklet full of liner notes (including reminiscences from both Freund and Apps), press clippings, photos, lyrics, etc., etc.
Let's say it again, hallelujah!
An unusual and utterly unhinged black metal album from two of the members of Norway's Neetzach (whose debut cd we reviewed a couple lists ago), Vrangsinn and Dirge Rep. They call Secht "a musical piece of pure insanity". We'd agree, though some might take exception to the "musical" part. They go on to say that it was "composed under Satanic and Narcotic influence" which we do believe. Seriously though, this is certainly a cult concept: it's all one 37 minute track, starting off with drizzling rain-sounds and melancholic acoustic guitar, developing a disturbing, droning atmosphere with baby-like black metal mewlings before unleashing a full-on electric guitar and drums assault, building ever-heavier and more frenzied, with angular breakdowns and an overall extremely maniacal vibe. About twenty four minutes in, it returns to hissing ambience, a creeped-out chill-out in the forest before a final dose of chattering distortion ends the album. File with Abruptum, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Rakhim, and whatever other semi-improvised, soundscapey, single-tracked, non-standard black metal you can think of...
And making this even more crazed and cult, since the Secht duo are such scenesters they were able to enlist such friends/fiends as Gaahl (Gorgoroth), Nattefrost (Carpathian Forest), and Nocturno Culto (Darkthrone) amongst others to provide additional screams n' sounds!
FUSHITSUSHA! No, that wasn't a sneeze. We're trying to get your attention, if you're into that band, Fushitsusha. Those of us here who are big Keiji Haino fans (and we're talking BIG fans), will readily admit that while we love all of the Tokyo psych shaman-in-shades' multi-instrumental solo outings (including solos for guitar, hurdy gurdy, percussion, and electronics) and various collaborative efforts (with Pan Sonic, KK Null, Boris, Sitaar Tah, Tatsuya Yoshida, Merzbow, etc.), it's really his best-known band, the legendary Fushitsusha, that got us into Keiji in the first place, and that we love the most. Avant-garde, free-rock, garage-psych heaviness taking off from obvious sonic/spiritual '70s inspirations Les Rallizes Denudes into the realms something even more experimental and "outsider", a la the Dead C. Unfortunately for us, Fushitsusha disbanded some years ago. But at long last, we've got these, the simultaneously released TWO debut albums from Haino's new "permanent band", Seijaku. Like Fushitsusha, an improvisational power trio, led by Haino's amped up guitar. He's also on "blues harp" on one of these discs, steel guitar on the other, and of course trademark anguished vocals (or should we borrow the metal term vokills?). Besides Dark Lord Haino, the Seijaku trio consists of Nasuno Mitsuru (Altered States, Korekoyjin, Sanhedolin) on bass, and Ichiraku Yoshimitsu (Acid Mothers Temple, Nishinihon, ISO) on drums.
And yes, the "blues harp" does mean that the idea here is Haino & Co. playing "the blues". Or what the label suggests is a fusion of Delta blues, and Noh theater. But electric, very electric. And, well, Haino sure sounds like he's got the blues, bluer blues than any blues EVER, judging from how his guttural cries sound like each word is being tortuously torn not just from his throat, but from his very soul, as if it's the last thing he's ever going to be able to say, or scream, in this world. A striking contrast to his relatively calm and trad harmonica playing. But quite in keeping with sheets of feedbacky guitar skree, utterly Fushitsusha style, that Haino often unleashes. At other times, his guitar is a chiming, slashing, distorted twang, part of the fractured "blues" vibe, along with the plodding percussion and low end rumble that gives this an apocalyptic atmosphere indeed. Would Robert Johnson recognize this stumbling, staggering, scrabbling music as the blues? Well, he knew about dealing with the devil, right, so the vocals wouldn't faze him, and yeah we think might well appreciate the improvisational and spiritual aspects of the Seijaku sound. But beyond that...
Of the two discs, Mail from FUSHITSUSHA (bless you!) (it really is all caps in the disc's title) is the one that, according the Haino, represents "21st century blues". The title obviously makes the connection clear to Haino's earlier outfit, they're apparently "adhering to the Fushitsusha method", and the back cover credits Haino as the "originator". There's ten tracks, with titles like "Forced To Think You Love" and "Please Send Me A New Heart"... this one has a sheet of lyrics provided, in Japanese though, but we think we might get already have gotten an idea of what Haino is so down about.
Meanwhile, the 2nd of the two discs (by catalog number), You Should Prepare To Survive Through Even Anything Happens, with the whiter/lighter cover, is dedicated to "Albert King, The Doors, and Steppenwolf"! It's meant as Haino's tribute to the SPIRIT (if not exactly the sound) of 20th century blues, and is the one with his occasional harp blowing. It features four (long) tracks, titles include "Keep On Fighting" and "Look Over Here From The Other Side".
While each is a bit different, Mail From... with more short sharp shocks, You Should... stretching out soulfully, rollin' but mostly tumblin' hard, we're pretty certain that if you want one, you'll also want the other! Both come in handsome digipacks, like all Doubtmusic releases, of course.
There's been an onslaught of Ruins-related releases on Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida's Magaibutsu label this week, folks!! Here's one from a brand-new band formation we'd never heard of before, Sekkutsu Jean, an improvising duo featuring Yoshida on drums, keyboard and vocals, and Sato Kenji on bass, cello, and voice. The results are most often SUPER distorted and heavy and fierce. Some of this reminds us a bit of some real old Ruins stuff, when they went for the ultra-dirty fuzz bass sound on such albums as Infect and Stonehenge. Total blurting bass bludgeon. Other parts are more "jazz", or even "classical" oriented, with droning sawing strings battling Yoshida's drum battery, or accompanying his keyboard lines. And then there's things that we can't even begin to classify, like track six, "Wihytcujmo", which is based around a drum machine beat and vicious cello bowing. Overall, this is some seriously mean stuff, without the strain of goofiness that oftentimes shows up in other Yoshida-related improv projects. There's 19 slices of killer improv weirdness here, with easy-to-remember titles like "Ghijuhnkkumn" and "Qyxoichdbihm" and "Bysjiahvoskkn"!! Over the course of all these tracks, there's a lot of creativity and intensity. Recommended.
And as with all of this new batch of Magaibutsu discs, this comes packaged in a handsome tri-fold full-color cardboard cd sleeve.
Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including this, his awesome Kraftwerk tribute! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat!
Back in 2000, we had this to say about El Baile Aleman: Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyways, so incredibly executed down to the tiniest detail, this one will sit at the top of the heap! Super duper fun.
Former member of the Jungle Brothers goes solo, sounds like Wu-Tang with a head injury!
Spacey, synth-based prog/psych from the early '70s (or whenever!) doesn't get much better than this. The trio Sensations' Fix captured something pretty special on their tripped out, ultra-underground sounding debut, originally released by Italian Polydor in 1974 and now reissued on vinyl for the first time, by local archival label Superior Viaduct. While it sounds like it could have been made in a synth-stuffed bunker in Berlin, or somewhere in the pastoral English countryside (outside, under the stars, towards the break of dawn), this was actually recorded in an suburban basement in the USA, on a 4-track, by an Italian musician, Franco Falsini (the composer, credited with "guitars and synthesizers"), and two Americans he recruited, Richard Ursillo ("bass guitars and electronic pedals") and Keith Edwards ("drums and percussion"). Though for much of this, Mr. Edwards sits out, as the mysterious floating electronics and blissful strum of Fragments Of Light are ofttimes purely ethereal, only occasionally lashed to propulsive beats, and even those are may be machine-made, with what sounds like live drumming on really only one of the tracks (however, he's apparently the guy that turned Falsini on to LSD, so he should get some musical credit for that).
Song titles include "Nuclear War In Your Brain", "Music Without Gravity", "Music Is Painting In The Air" and "Telepathic Children"; all seem quite appropriate, even the cryptic ones we don't understand. The drifty, druggy, echoing synthed-out weirdness of this, however, is balanced (or, rather, enhanced) by Falsini's knack for wonderful melodies, that's the key to this varied and delightful basement-recorded, often melancholic Minimoog fantasia.
As you may recall, last year we were super excited to highlight a Sensations' Fix anthology, Music Is Painting In The Air, put out by the RVNG label. We mentioned then how we've been longtime fans of this band's hard-to-find debut record, which we hoped hoped hoped would someday be reissued in its entirety (the anthology included just a few tracks from Fragments Of Light, in alternate versions). So, big ups to Superior Viaduct for making this happen. Man, we're not engineers so we wouldn't know about the superiority of their viaducts, but we do know the label's choice of records to reissue certainly is superior! Third aQuarius Record Of The Week this year already - Craig Leon, Devo, now Sensations' Fix! And, there's *another* great SV reish reviewed this list too, Heldon's Interface - and we also just got in their lp of the Solaris soundtrack, too!
In our review of the RVNG collection we said some stuff we may as well more-or-less repeat 'cause it applies here completely. SF's electronic-based driftworks have a quite lovely "pop" side to 'em too, sometimes - while mostly instrumental, a few tracks do have gentle, breathy Robert Wyatt-ish singing to go with the hazy, meandering, meditative atmospheres. It's definitely not the usual sort of quasi-operatic, over-the-top, classically influenced Italian prog that we're used to (and love), from bands like Il Balletto Di Bronzo, Le Orme, or Osanna, no. Also fairly far from the sinister soundtrack funk of Goblin. Sensations' Fix are different, having more in common with the kosmiche krautrock electronics of the era - such as Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Popul Vuh, Michael Rother, Ashra, A.R. & Machines, and You (among others who came before and after). They also may have indeed been influenced by the Canterbury sound of bands like the Soft Machine, so one Italian prog act we could compare them to would be Picchio Dal Pozzo. We could also compare 'em to a kinder, gentler version of Richard Pinhas & Heldon, from France, with a similar futuristic comingling of synthesizer and effected guitar, for sure (and thus is makes sense Superior Viaduct would release this simultaneously with the aforementioned Heldon lp too). Also the Heldon comparison brings up another big influence - Robert Fripp. Indeed, this record bears the inscription: "Dear Robert, you'll be glad to know that the heavenly music organisation is here too", a reference to the track "The Heavenly Music Corporation" on the A side of Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting album from '73. Oh, and on the surprisingly sunshiney vocal track "Do You Love Me?", we get a bit of an early Yes vibe.
So, if you want to something to enjoy that's just sooooooo very cosmic and dreamy and melodic, this is highly recommended!!
Hurrah! We've long been waiting for the opportunity to list something by Italy's Sensations' Fix. A long time ago, we encountered their debut album Fragments Of Light (1974) and were immediately smitten (it also was a great "secret weapon" to use whenever we were called upon to DJ a set of vintage psych/prog music or what have you). But reissues of anything by this spacey synth-based '70s trio have been seemingly impossible to find. We were excited, however, not too long ago when the Emeralds-approved Spectrum Spools label added a vinyl reissue of the 1975 solo album by Sensations' Fix leader Franco Falsini to their catalog of amazing unearthed cosmic electronic artifacts. That record, Cold Nose, or Naso Fredo, we described (well, raved about) as a gorgeously cinematic longform take on psychedelic new age music, a spiralling composition of EMS and Moog washes and floating guitar lines that reminds us of krautrock legends Michael Rother and Manuel Gottsching, with stratospheric guitar leads over organically pulsating synth treatments, constantly shifting and shimmering. Sounds good right?
That brings us to this very welcome archival double cd (or triple lp) set released on the obscure electronics oriented RVNG label, featuring 30 tracks taken from Falsini's tape vaults, including several alternate mixes of material from Cold Nose, alongside alternate versions of songs that appeared on all five albums released by his band Sensations' Fix circa 1974-77. Plus a number of previously unreleased tracks from those recording sessions as well. Sensations' Fix and Falsini recorded everything in a home studio, on a TEAC 3340 4-track machine, so fortunately Falsini still has access to all these productions and was able to personally select and mix the tracks for this RVNG anthology release. Especially fortunate considering that apparent record label business BS has thus far prevented the individual, original Sensations' Fix albums themselves from coming out again under Falsini's guidance, though we can still hope for full reissues someday. Regardless, this is a wonderful and extensive sonic glimpse into the spacey output of Sensations' Fix, if occasionally therefore somewhat lo-fi.
The blissfulness of Cold Nose is too part of the Sensations' Fix sound, but also there's some krauty rock grooves (some sampled by DJ Shadow, we learned from the liner notes) alongside the electronic-based driftworks. And they have a quite lovely "pop" side to 'em too - while mostly instrumental, some tracks do have gentle, Robert Wyatt-ish singing to go with the hazy, meandering, meditative atmospheres. It's definitely not the usual sort of quasi-operatic, over-the-top, classically influenced Italian prog that we're used to (and love), from bands like Il Balletto Di Bronzo, Le Orme, or Osanna, no. Also fairly far from the sinister soundtrack funk of Goblin. Rather, Sensations' Fix have more in common with the kosmiche krautrock electronics of the era, and also may have indeed been influenced by the Canterbury sound of bands like the Soft Machine, so one Italian prog act we could compare them to would be Picchio Dal Pozzo. We could also compare 'em to a kinder, gentler version of Richard Pinhas & Heldon, from France, with a similar futuristic co-mingling of synth (MiniMoog) and effected guitar, for sure.
Music Is Painting In The Air is handsomely packaged, with a booklet full of those aforementioned liner notes presented in both English and Italian, written by RVNG's Joshua da Costa (who like us was also smitten by Fragments Of Light when he first heard it) and Franco Falsini himself. These notes, while not removing all the mystery of Sensations' Fix, reveal much interesting information... like that prior to SF, Falsini was in a "space-blues" band called Flying with Dave Anderson of Hawkwind & Amon Duul. Or that their debut Fragments Of Light actually consisted of basement demos recorded not in Florence Italy, but Alexandria, Virginia, where Falsini had temporarily moved with his wife, who was American. Which is where Falsini found SF's drummer, also an American, and also the guy who turned him on to LSD...
It might be a bit obvious, but it'll get our point across: take a look at this album's cover, an evocative image of a Neolithic stone circle out on a mystic moor somewhere, the stones jutting up into a darkened, dusky red sky. Now imagine the amid the stones also a circle of Orange amps/cabinets, cranking twin guitar jams in a '70s psych/metal style... add a bassist and a drummer who makes a point of also being credited with "cowbell", and you're perhaps getting close to an idea of what Serpent Throne's The Battle Of Old Crow sounds like.
Released by Vessel (best known as the label who previously brought us that fantastic archival release by '70s Pentagram alter ego Bedemon, a few years back), this is the 2nd full-length from these Philadelphia instru-metallists (featuring one of the guitarists from sludge-doom act Otesanek), following 2007's Ride Satan Ride. The concept for -that- album was that it was a reissue of a long-lost soundtrack to an obscure '70s biker film. And it almost could have been, but we think Serpent Throne could have gone further with the idea, like having a repeating "theme" motif throughout the album, interspersing the tracks with made up fake movie dialogue and sound effects, or including a mellow acoustic ballad "hit single" that would have played during the imaginary film's love scene... stuff like that would have made it more like the soundtracks to actual films like Psychomania and Stone. But it was a cool debut anyway, that we should have reviewed but didn't, so we're making sure not to sleep on this one too. The Battle Of Old Crow scraps the movie soundtrack concept and just provides the riffy instrumental rockin', without pretense. Which we could describe as sounding like a stoner rock Fucking Champs, maybe. Or a shut-up-n-play-yer-guitar version of The Sword. In other words, heavy and badass in the guitar dep't. Of which there's two here, guitars that is, bringing the stirring harmonies, trippy leads, and fat riffs. Heck, it's got "guitariness" on par with AQ faves Slough Feg and Hammers of Misfortune. Fans of Earthless ought to dig this too, though the songs here are just that, songs, more concise and less jammy than Earthless's extended improvs. Another fitting comparison would be to fellow Philly instrumental act Stinking Lizaveta, if they were just a bit more overtly on the retro/stoner tip. The '70s heaviness of bands like Sabbath, Scorpions (both cited on the cover sticker blurb), Wishbone Ash, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple and the like is the obvious inspiration here, and Serpent Throne have definitely learned their lessons well.
While not having a singer can sometimes be a good thing (since any given vocalist's voice, not to mention lyrics, can be so subjective a pleasure, or not), the question that usually gets asked about something like this is, well, is it boring? We'd say, no, definitely not. Not if you like tasty guitar and authentically '70s sounding bellbottomed riffage! In that case, having no singer is a plus, since there's no vocals to get in the way of the guitarists doing their thing. Which they do quite well indeed! The rhythm section is pretty tight too.
While often, the solution (or purpose) of some bands doing the instrumental thing is to get ultra-techy and complex, to grab attention that way, Serpent Throne take a different tack, writing songs that are just that, memorable songs, vocals or no. Sure, there's moments where you wouldn't mind your favorite '70s metal vocalist stepping up to the mic. But Serpent Throne's catchy riffs and purely instrumental interplay is plenty enough most of the time - powerful, mesmerizing and melodic. Recommended.
Been waiting for this one for a while! Kinda mysterious, really. Certain sources say that this supposedly came out in 2010, but it never seemed to materialize at any of our suppliers. Last year, a vinyl version was released (and we might still have like one copy left) and so we thought the cd was immediately impending too, and kept waiting for it, and waiting... finally, it's actually available!! And worth the wait, 'cause we LOVE the ripping instru-metal stoner rock heaviness that Philadelphia's Serpent Throne brings, as displayed on earlier albums The Battle Of Old Crow and fake '70s biker flick soundtrack Ride Satan Ride.
White Summer - Black Winter is again a tour-de-force of '70s sounding, twin guitar, heavy riff rockin' psychmetal, sans vocals. For being an instrumental band, they manage to make their songs SONGS, y'know, not just jams, though they DO go off, too. Total chugging doomed out glory, adorned with resounding, heartbreaking harmonies, with titles like "March Of The Druids", "Riff Forest", "Pagan Eclipse", and (the remarkably mellow) "Mushroom Cloud". Damn good, somewhere twixt The Fucking Champs, and Earthless (but like we said, less jammy), and real deal '70s stuff a la Wishbone Ash, early Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, and Poobah.
A few years back, we wrote A LOT about The Battle Of Old Crow, hopefully that enticed you to pick it up then, and you're as eager for this new one as we are. Or, if you're new to Serpent Throne, this one oughtta make you a fan, if you dig folks playing the heck out of their guitars, at Black Sabbath inspired levels of heaviness and riff-mastery (and why wouldn't you??). Folks into fellow Phillies Stinking Lizaveta should also like 'em, Zebulon Pike fans too. Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More long lost '70s hard rock action, well '80s too, here for folks who dig comps like Brown Acid and Darkscorch Canticles. Boston-based power trio Seth got their start in 1974 as a cover band, but soon started writing their own proggy, heavy-riffed originals, at long last releasing their debut full-length in 1980, a self-titled album with 9 tracks that showcase both melodic pop chops and ripping instrumental shred frenzies, with helpings of thick synth at times too. Of course, they put that record out themselves - it wasn't until 2015 that an actual label got interested! Weird, 'cause the Seth self-titled album is awesome, with some great songs, making us think of Rush, early Styx (don't laugh, they were great), Ted Nugent, Winterhawk, and the James Gang. It's featured here on disc one of this lavishly-packaged gatefold double cd set along with EVERYTHING else they ever recorded - demos, live & rehearsal tapes, unreleased singles and album tracks from the '80s and after - even a 2014 reunion instrumental. That's a LOT of stuff, and maybe we don't need all of it, but the good stuff is purty darn good for a band nobody has ever heard of before. Consider disc two a bonus, but the reason to buy this is for the s/t album on disc one for sure.
Into extreme abject industrial blackened sludge??? We are, especially when it's this good. So, if you're like us you too will be smitten by the mighty Sewer Goddess. Metallic, filthy, noisy, droning nightmare dirge in the tradition of such sonic terrorists as Godflesh, Swans, Gnaw Their Tongues, Wolf Eyes, Zeni Geva, early Scorn, and Neubauten. Naturally, we've been fans since we first heard Sewer Goddess a few years back - you'll find a worshipful review or two on our site of some previous releases... Now here's the latest from Sewer Goddess, an album entitled Painlust. Not subtle, no. At times bleakly ambient, at others out-and-out grinding, Painlust, with such cheerful (not) songs as "Flog", "My Grave", and "Black Meat And Bones", merges the industrial metal with the more creepily cinematic soundscapery. It's a disc of powerful, feedback-filled sound design, replete with anvil-clank rhythms and distorted atmospheres, death-knell drumming and depth charge guitars, pummeling heaviness shrouded in murky electronic FX, and harsh anguished screams from the Sewer Goddess herself - the band's frontwoman Kristen Rose, who is also capable of an wide range of effective vocal approaches, from aching melodic wails to hissing shrieks to an ice-cold monotone declamation, often processed and treated and layered, becoming a one-woman chorus, these whispers and echoes sounding like sick 'voices in your head'. Let them in and grovel for the Sewer Goddess. Seriously good stuff for those into 'this sort of thing', as we said. Makes us imagine mechanical monks performing some sort of assembly line cult ceremony in a hellish factory/church.
Believe it or not, one of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, currently only has a one-word review on our website. Certainly it deserves more than that. Although, at least the word we chose is "amazing". The album's original release on MoWax in 1996 (almost ten years ago!!) more or less predated our obsessive reviewing schedule, so like quite a few other classics it never got its multi-paragraph due on our new arrivals list. And chances are, we figured that listing it our our site with the simple "amazing" recommendation was enough, 'cause it's hard to imagine that everyone hadn't heard of/heard/bought a copy by now. But since, after all, we still sell it steadily, clearly there must be those as yet to discover it. Now, with the release of a double disc digipack "deluxe" edition in a plastic slipcase (a treatment afforded by the same label to the likes of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, by the way, making this something of an honor for DJ Shadow!), we have the perfect excuse to basically take a few hundred words to say "amazing" again! Shadow's masterpiece (disc one, "The Album") is a brillant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise.
And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster so recently) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it (opinions here were mixed about his many-years-later follow-up The Private Press in 2002) and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already, what the heck are you waiting for? And to further underscore the point that this a great and important album, we're told that there's a book in the 33 1/3 Series coming out about it soon too!
Then there's disc two, what (aside from the packaging, which includes a booket of photos, essays, and track notes from Shadow himself) makes this a "deluxe" reissue. Disc two, entitled "Excessive Ephemera", features a slew of Endtroducing-era cuts -- alternate takes, demos, remixes, and a live radio performance. In addition to a few tracks that made it out on now-out-of-print MoWax singles, a bunch of these are unheard-before, work-in-progress versions of tracks from the album, so as bonus material this is more about providing insight into the creation of Endtroducing and less about any long-lost tracks that shoulda been on the album. It is kind of a way to listen to Endtroducing again with new ears. And it's nice to have the "extended overhaul" of the all-too-brief album track "Organ Donor", a mix that Shadow created expressly for James Lavelle's DJ use. So, a lot of added value for all Shadow fans who want to pick this up again and re-enter the world of Entroducing.
Amazing.
We actually originally discovered this record in a thrift store, years ago, and ended up buying it for $5 or whatever, just cuz the cover was super trippy, and it was printed on cool prismatic reflective paper, and of course, we had no idea what to expect, and while we dug it, a LOT, and listened to it constantly, for whatever reason, it never occurred to us that what we had was some treasured rarity lost psychedelic artifact, one that certain discerning producers have mined for killer breaks, until we found out this reissue was on the way. So we revisited the record and holy crap!!!! How could we not have known?! So insane, and inspired, and ridiculous, and over the top, and ahead of its time, and it totally out trip-outs almost any record we can think of! Needless to say, we're super psyched to have this reissue, which features that original record, along with a whole mess of bonus tracks!!
So the record proper, Lux Aeterna, was originally composed to celebrate a friend of William Shaller's wedding, thematically driven by concepts of union and togetherness, and ostensibly based on the Catholic mass, this is far from any sort of religious music you've ever heard. Following in the footsteps of other iconoclastic composers, like Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Vannier, Lee Hazlewood, David Axelrod, Scott Walker and of course Magma (more on that in a second), Sheller conjured up what is at once an over the top symphonic prog epic, but also a strangely meditative operatic chorale, the sound a gorgeous and dizzying fusion of bombastic prog, classical opera, tripped out seventies psych, outsider jazzfunk, and soaring symphonic majesty. The first track alone should convince you, with its groovy loping stripped down rhythm, its woozy bassline, its swoonsome strings, its slippery slide guitar (!!), its lush operatic vox. That cut is equal parts lost soundtrack and weird Morricone-esque krautfunk, sort of, the sound epic and dramatic and VERY cinematic, dark and subtly sinister, minor key and haunting, but then with about a minute to go BAM, the the sound shifts, sort of fractures, and gets super lo-fi, soaked in phaser and flanger, swirling and tripped out, laced with psychedelic wah guitar, a woozy, melting fad out groove. Holy WOW. So fucking awesome. And that's pretty much how the rest of the record plays out, with Sheller weaving these lush orchestral epics, alternatingly symphonic or operatic, when all of a sudden he'll mix in some trippy sci fi freak out FX or fuse rock drums to soaring operatic vox and symphonic strings. Some tracks play it totally straight, like "Ave Frater, Rosae Et Aurae", which really could have been plucked right out of a mass, but then in swoops "Opus Magnum Pt. 2", with its driving kraut-ish groove, reprising the opening theme, but adding some seriously loopy bleeps and bloops, squelches, and reverby blurps, tripped out laser fire squiggles and swirling analog electronics. Only to then settle right back down into some hushed string driven drift, but a minute or two later and the sound explodes again in a frenzy of FX, the song gathering momentum, and heft, and transforming into a sort of dirgey driving jam, wreathed in strings and an avalanche of glitched out electronics. And so it goes, slipping from haunting ritualistic choral music, to tripped out psychedelic seventies prog funk grooviness and back again, sounding quite often like Magma, or some similarly epic prog combo, stopping occasionally to dip into a bit of musique concrete or twentieth century classical, or introducing seriously terrifying children's spoken word, reciting what sounds like scripture, before finally finishing off with a gorgeous melancholy piano coda, again a refrain of that opening melody.
Quite a strange and twisted record for someone's wedding, sure WE'D all be psyched, but in 1972? Wow.
After a two minute track of silence, meant to separate the programs, comes, as the first of a big batch of bonus tracks, several pieces from Sheller's soundtrack for a 1969 film called Erotissimo, the music appropriately psychedelic and seventies hippie rocking, but of course laced with strings, and surprisingly some heavy proto metal riffing, wild psych guitar leads, dreamy female vocals, the whole thing building to a killer fuzzy psych rock blowout, before slipping back into something a bit more fuzzy and woozy.
After that is "My Year Is A Day", Sheller's big hit, a fantastic slab of orchestral pop, that reminds us of early Bee Gees and the Zombies, and fans of either/both will flip. The rest of the record is more of the same, fuzzed out psychedelic orchestral pop, "Couleurs" being a standout, with its freaked out effects heavy breakdowns, and sitar like buzz running throughout, but really all twenty tracks are killer, making us thing there must be a whole lot more William Sheller we need to track down. Maybe Omni will follow up with another reissue. Here's hoping!
Like all Omni releases, lots of photos, and extensive liner notes, as well as some weird unseen art and reproductions of the covers of some of the singles that are included as bonus tracks!
Fucking gorgeous new album from pianist Shipp, who almost never disappoints. Moody, classical-inspired jazz that also makes use of the talents of Mat Maneri (violin) and uber-bassist William Parker. From lyrical and melancholy to nervous and energetic, this
Wow!!! Most loyal AQ customers are pretty aware of our total love and adoration of almost all things Finnish, especially pretty much everything released on Finnish label Fonal. They just have not done us wrong yet. Islaja, Kemialliset Ystavat, Paavoharju, Es, the list goes on and on. And while for the most part their releases focus on the more murky free folk side of Finnish underground rock they have proven to be a label that isn't just about one 'sound' but instead are simply about beautiful music. Period. Whether it's random ethereal forest folk, dreamy drifty swooning ambience, or crunchy chaotic tribalistic clatter. Their latest release, from the Helsinki quartet Shogun Kunitoki, is further proof to that effect, and dare we say this might even be the greatest thing Fonal has released. Some of you may be shouting IMPOSSIBLE! And under different circumstances we'd be right there with you. But just listenening to Tasankokaiku has us thinking not only is it possible, it's damn near for certain. Color! So much vibrant color just bursting out of Shogun Kunitoki's instrumental onslaught. It starts out on fire and every song and sound just feeds the flame. It's almost as if Steve Reich and Terry Riley raised a child weaned on the BBC Radiophonic experiments, a young Rick Wakeman who grew up listening to the fuzzy guitarscapes of M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas... and the dreamy and propulsive instrumental jams of Stereolab, and thus cultivated a totally informed yet unique outlook and approach to music and music making. The sounds on Tasankokaiku are triumphant and assured, flickering then bursting, warm and so totally alive! Knowing how to perfectly use repetition to build momentum and then suddenly blast off to sparkling spaces that make you feel like you're being spirited away to a place that you've never been to but have always dreamed about. A sparkling glistening land of thick warm keyboards, hypnotic prog laced krautrockiness, Neu-infused soundscapes, basically a world populated by all the sounds that drive us wild. This is another one of those rare records that is an across the board unanimous AQ favorite. Everyone who works here loves it. We all hear different things too, besides the above mentioned bands, Andee hears bits of Goblin and Zombi and Heldon, Allan hears hints of Aavikko and Cluster and Circle, Irwin noticed a little Broadcast and even some Raymond Scott, but no matter what you hear, or what shades of sound reveal themsleves to you, the sum is SO much greater than its parts. A gloriously dense and warm world of fuzzy sound that we just can't stop listening to. No matter what music you've been obsessed with lately, this is one of those special records that somehow trumps whatever it is, straight to the top of your listening pile, elbowing it's way past all the other discs in your collection right into your cd player where it will effortlessly fend off any other records wanting to get in there. It's that good.
Most people cringe upon hearing the word "supergroup," and not without good reason: most supergroups fucking suck. Shrinebuilder, however, is a rare beast, an exception to the general rule, and it almost seems offensive to call them a supergroup. BUT... that's sort of what they are. Consisting of Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep), Dale Crover (the Melvins), and Wino (you should know him by now, but let's mention The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan and Saint Vitus!!), Shrinebuilder raised some pretty high hopes, and it seemed impossible that these four living legends would let us down. Thankfully, they haven't. In fact, Shrinebuilder's debut has far exceeded any expectations we had for a project which was pretty much destined to kick our asses in all kinds of different directions. You can detect each musician's individual style, sure, but more than anything, Shrinebuilder seems to follow a decidedly old school approach to heaviness - think Sabbath, Buffalo, that kind of thing - delivering five lengthy songs of groove laden metal heavy on the riffs (no surprise there), doomy bass, awesome to the point drumming, and plenty of spacey FX. There are moments where you have to remind yourself that you aren't listening to Sleep, especially when Al lays on the wah wah pedal, and parts of this album fulfill the fantasies of those who sometimes wish Om had a guitar player. Scott Kelly and Wino are one hell of a guitar team, and there are some amazing moments of fuzzy, sustained harmonies and plenty of chugging overdriven riffage. Crover's drumming is particularly impressive here, not that anyone needs to remind you that the guy slays. His playing here is less busy than it tends to be with the Melvins, and his steady pound suits these songs perfectly. The unmistakable vocal stylings of Wino, Scott, and Al all show up, but one of the band's greatest strengths is the fact that this sounds like the work not of some half assed side project, but of an actual band. So yeah, don't let the whole "supergroup" tag throw you off, as this is a potent brew of fully realized HEAVIOSITY.
By the way, this is on special sale here ($2 off the regular $14.98 it would be) for the next two weeks only. Not that we can imagine anyone who'd be into this not picking it up right away anyway!
Here's something we haven't had in a while, so it seemed worth highlighting again now that we've tracked down some more copies. It's the 1986 debut album (plus 2 bonus tracks) from an amazing French prog band with a shuddersome name, and sound. It combines the classical grandeur of their obvious influence Magma with looser, more experimental sounds. Very dark, heavy and ominous; creepy like Universe Zero. Spooky soprano female vocals give way to noise guitar freakouts and rhythmic passages that bring to mind This Heat. It's kind of mind-blowing, actually in keeping with the concepts of cosmic horror evoked by their H.P. Lovecraft-inspired band name (and if evoking Shub Niggurath weren't enough, there's also a song here called Yog Sothoth). Really, if you want something that sounds like Magma venturing into the realms of sanity-blasting horror, this is it. The first, nearly 17 minute track should have you knocking on the door of the nearest asylum, begging to be let in. Such ominous art rock. Definitely one of our all time fave "Zeuhl" albums outside of the actual Magma masterpieces themselves, indescribably infused with epic Magmoid drama, and that band's signature throbbing bass heavy rhythms.
Japan's best black metal band (along with Sabbat) are back with their first US domestic release, having just been signed by big metal label Century Media. We've always been fans of their fucked-up genre-mangling horror movie soundtrack metal, and this might
The Silence is the new band formed by Masaki Batoh and a few other ex-members of longtime Japanese psych faves Ghost (not to be confused with the Swedish metal Ghost). Drag City released their self-titled debut earlier this year, we slept on it then somehow, but now that the band's 2nd album is already out we're listing 'em both together, 'cause they're both great!
Making up for lost time we guess (the last Ghost album, In Stormy Nights, came out eight years ago), these two records by The Silence are solidly in the Ghost tradition - that is, underground '70s psych-kraut-prog-folk stylings with chamber music chops, timeless and tight, able to veer from smoothly poppy pleasures to sudden freakout weirdness in the course of a single track. Gentle vocals, lovely melodies, hypnotic windups, sweeping symphonics, spacey synths, flute flutter, grandiose organ... there's all sorts of proggy psych-y goodness all over both of these, equally recommended albums. For the record, the s/t debut has their intriguing interpretations of the traditional "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair" and Can's "Tango Whiskeyman" that fit right in with the surrounding, trippily varied originals; while Hark The Silence may be the more ambitious of the two albums, with mostly longer, jazz-inflected compositions, including the three part "Ancient Wind" and the propulsive "Fireball" (12+ minutes of motorik minimalism that sounds like Ariel Pink meets Acid Mothers Temple).
Sorry, the cd of the s/t is currently out of stock, so we're just listing the vinyl for now, but they should be back...
Not long ago, we hope you recall, we highlighted a pretty rad release on the Rephlex label, a double disc compiling the entire recorded output of early '90s "Britcore" rappers The Criminal Minds. They had been billed as being something akin to a "UK Public Enemy", and we agreed! In our review we made mention of some of TCM's contemporaries, that we were now also quite curious to hear: Hijack, Silver Bullet, the Demon Boyz...
Well, we just discovered that emcee Silver Bullet's debut full-length from 1991, Bring Down The Walls The No Limit Squad Returns, was recently reissued by a new label called Original Dope, an imprint of Cherry Red that's focused on UK hiphop. Cool beans! 'Cause on eBay, original copies of this Silver Bullet cd were going for like 40 bucks - plus this is remastered, with worthy bonus tracks and brand new liner notes.
And hearing it, it's for sure something that anybody who liked TCM will dig. Fast, funky, and frantic, with a definite dark vibe. SB's rough, raw, rapidfire flow is well matched by the uptempo beats of his DJ Mo, the disc is energetic and intense from start to finish, and dense with sampling. Like TCM, this has got that PE/Bomb Squad feel as well, but especially apocalyptic and adrenalized. In fact, Silver Bullet was hand picked by PE to open a European tour of theirs, and one of the 4 bonus tracks tacked onto this reissue is a Bomb Squad remix of SB's "20 Minutes To Comply" (a track built around a sample of ED-209's "dialogue" from the movie RoboCop, by the way).
Movie soundtracks, particularly horror movies, were a big part of the Silver Bullet sound... you'll hear John Carpenter stuff, the Twilight Zone theme, etc.; in some sense Silver Bullet could also be said to have pioneered the "horrorcore" subgenre of rap (a la Gravediggaz), lyrically too. Just check out signature cut "Bring Forth The Guillotine"! Which, of course, is also political, as are tracks like "Undercover Anarchist", which also probably attracted PE's attention.
This reish is nicely done, with detailed Silver Bullet bio provided in the cd booklet, wherein we learn that his career derailed after this album due to run-ins with the law (as he admits now, he was young and dumb, and is lucky that in living out his gangsta rap fantasies, playing around with guns and stuff, things didn't turn out worse for him than they did). He should have paid attention to his own tune, "Guns Of Mind Alone"...
Belgian funeral folk avant ambient doom troop Silvester Anfang sure have a way with images. Their first full length featured the band in white hoods, shirtless, with sticks and clubs and axes and goats on chains, now this one, the band's first proper cd release, sports a foxy raven haired lass licking a skull, and elsewhere in the booklet and on the sleeve, posing with said licked skull, as well as plenty of goats still, upside down ladies in bikinis in the shape of an upside down crucifix, as well as a full color fold out poster of the babe-licking-skull album cover....
And while that all may seem a bit over the top, somehow, it suits Silvester Anfang's dark and demented music. They're like a grim, blackened, metallic version of all those freaky forest neo folkies. Imagine Avarus or Feathers or Kemialliset, just hanging out beneath the trees, weaving their stumbling free folk magic, when all of a sudden, they're pulled into some pit in the middle of the forest, only to emerge days later, with a blank dead eyed stare, emotionless, eyes black as obsidian, their hair tangled and matted, their skin covered in mysterious tattoos, and the sounds they make, like some some primitive musical ritual...
That's sort of what Silvester Anfang sound like. The parts are all familiar, the shuffling rhythms, the junkyard percussion, the haunting vocals, the detuned guitars, but somehow twisted, dark, and so black, and like they also somehow dragged some big ass amps as well as at least one full drum kit out into the woods, and the results are seriously scary (and amazing).
The first track unfurls a web of jagged distorted guitar melodies over a simple motorik pound, surrounded by all sorts of chants and distant drones, above a constantly shifting landscape of grinding whirs and swirling clouds of tinkling melodies, occasionally overtaken by thick washes of super distorted guitar buzz, everything culminating in an orgiastic musical free for all, with wild feral female vocals, dense tribal drumming, epic cinematic swells... an immense sonic squall the lights the black forest with some burnished red glow...
The second track, the nearly half hour long "Konfituur Voor De Satanjeugd" is much more subtle and stretched out, some sort of German Oak krautrock style slow burner, all shuffling drums and whirling ambience, spidery guitars and glistening barely there melodies, until about the 20 minute mark, when a riff finally coalesces, a killer riff, a sort of Viking dirge, a bit metallic, grinding away over thick sheets of blown out guitar drone, a dense wash of amp buzz and guitar growl, the riff looped and cyclical, while in the background lurk streaks of high end guitar and warm whirring synths, gorgeous and not a little bit frightening.
Magickal and mystickal, dark and diabolical, just the sort of musick that might very well have you too licking skulls after repeated listens, and there's certainly not a better recommendation than that...
The always interestin' Japanese label Doubtmusic has three new releases out, we'll get to the enka-sax-solos one by Kazutoki Umezu and the jazz-improv-with-flourescent-light-instrument one by the Kazuo Imai Trio on a upcoming list soon, but we picked this disc to highlight first, this time, 'cause we know how many eager Otomo Yoshihide fans there are out there, and this disc features Otomo teaming up with a hitherto unknown to us rhythmic progwave unit called Sim, a trio comprising Oshima Teruyuki on guitar, Ootani Yosio on electronics/computer, and Ground Zero drummer Uemura Mashiro. Together they encode an alien, mechanical glitch-funk, definitely something special for fans of This Heat, Starfuckers/Sinistri, Radian, and the like.
Fried and fractured, the mutant grooves of Sim are further gunked with grit and glitch spinning from the seemingly warped turntable action of maestro Otomo, who is also credited with the use (and abuse?) of a "self-made synthesizer". Otomo's turntables are also presumably the source of the cut-up vocal loops heard on this otherwise instrumental set, garbled transmissions of chatter and mumble from unknown entities.
But it's Uemura's percussive percolations that utterly underpin this futuristic FX laden fantasmagoria. With each frayed nerve beat seemingly counting down to some terminal fate for the listener, his drumming interlocks with chicken scratch guitar and throbbing (temple) low end pulsations, amidst a miasma of electronic noise textures: blips and bleeps, crackle and feedback, eerie squeak and creak. It's maddening and mesmerizing, music for some discombobulating no-wave-by-way-of-onkyo dance club. This Sim+Otomo network is dense and distorted, displaying staggered rhythmic freakishness that seems off, then on, speeding up and slowing down and phasing in and out of "grooves" with precise imprecision.
The packaging is perfect for this, a striking digipack design as is usual for Doubtmusic, featuring not one but two circular die cut holes, a big one offset on the front through which you can see the cd, a smaller one in the back right in the center of the clear cd-tray, both to go along with the artwork, elliptical orbits echoing the way the music on this disc syncs and spins.
This is so absolutely brilliant and bonkers, that when we first heard it, we thought it must be fake, some modern day Rephlex artist putting everyone on, taking the piss, with a "raga-techno" album supposedly from the early '80s. But, no joke, this is the real thing! In 1982, Charanjit Singh, a famous Bollywood composer (he was featured on Sublime Frequencies amazing Bollywood Steel Guitar compilation), had a plan to translate ancient traditional Indian classical ragas to the synthesizer. Using the very synths that would later define Acid House (Rolands TB-303 and TR-808!), Singh unwittingly created a proto-acid masterpiece, before the techno genre ever existed. Since only a hundred or less copies were made originally, this release was mostly a rumor since its creation. We vaguely remember Drew Daniel from Matmos talking about it on Pitchfork, a couple of years back, saying someone should reissue it, but we weren't ready for how incredible and ahead of its time it sounds. Imagine if Kraftwerk (or even Oneohtrix Point Never) started composing music for a Bollywood Rave. Or imagine a more raga-inspired take on another proto-acid classic, Manuel Gottsching's epic E2-E4. While the "disco" rhythms are fast and frenetic and don't really vary that much between tracks (they're not really disco beats per se, but more akin to acid's trancey bounce), the synth flourishes and squelches of the raga over the top are soaring and floaty, making the tracks deliriously hypnotic. Capturing acid house's lysergic transcendence but with an outsider's economy that refuses to date it specifically to the era. While we only have the double lp, there will be a cd release sometime in the next month or so. But don't sleep on the vinyl too long as it's highly limited, and we guarantee there is not another release quite like this one in your collection. Highest Recommendation!
Italian abstract analog glitch-rockers Starfuckers have been a long-time AQ fave. There's just nobody else quite like 'em. As their music has become ever more fractured and dissonant and dissolved in time, so too with the band itself it seemed...at least, we hadn't heard anything from the Starfuckers camp for ages.
But then we heard they'd changed their name to Sinistri, the title of the Starfuckers first cd in 1994. And now the Swedish label Hapna, whom we always look to for interesting music, have, much to our excitement, released Free Pulse, the debut Sinistri album (but also kind of the sixth-or-so Starfuckers release). On Free Pulse, Sinistri are a quartet, consisting of long-time core Starfuckers members Manuele Giannini (guitar, amps, echoplex, wah, speaker, computer), Alessandro Bocci (computer, sampler, mixer, synth, turntables) and Roberto Bertacchini (drums), plus newcomer Dino Bramanti (real-time processing/live mixing, sampling, MaxMSP code).
And it seems that these fellows are up to their old tricks here, proving their motto that "music is a pollution of time". If you've heard the Starfuckers last album Infinitive Sessions from 2002, you'll have an idea of what to expect here -- they're still in their newfound "funk" bag. (Song titles indictate this is intentional, from to "Pre-verb Fried Funk" to "Black Vamp #1"). Not that this sounds very funky, far from it, though you can kinda hear it in their chicken-scratch guitar "licks". And if the song titles are clues to their sound, then try these: "Deep Squeak" and "Red Angular Feelin'".
Sinistri play what they call "nonmetric music", but that doesn't begin to describe it. It's mostly-instrumental "rock" music, broken down into the merest tics and pulsations of sound, brief drum hits and stabs of guitar littering Sinistri's quiet soundscape, stark and sparse, interspersed with shortwave-sounding static. Noises that most bands use ProTools to *remove* are the building blocks of the Sinistri sound...there's nothing else here. What vocals there are never rise above a whisper (a sinister one that that), melody is almost nowhere to be found, and rhythmically this is impossible to pin down. Forget "post-rock", this is post-post-rock at least. Maybe we could compare 'em to Radian, or US Maple, maybe...taken to a further extreme. Microscopic sounds being played freely. Different from most musics, and to at least some of us here, endlessly enjoyable.
If this is the first time you've ever heard Starfuckers / Sinistri, you may be bewildered. Give it a chance...you'll either not get it (that's fine)...or you might love it. Like this disc's pen-and-ink cover art drawings, Sinistri are intentionally cryptic. "Getting it" is thus optional, but pretty cool if you do, we think.
In the annals of the "early heavy", the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ages, the last official cd reissue, a two-fer, was back in the early '90s. But, proto-metal fans rejoice, 'cause now both SLB records are back in action, individually, on vinyl! 1970's Kingdom Come and the self-titled 1971 sequel, both of 'em essential slabs of heavy hard rockin' from this seminal band in heavy metal history.
The debut, with the spooky trippy "ghost ship" painting on the cover, alone justifies SLB's cult status. Very few bands in 1970 were this heavy (though, it must be said, Black Sabbath were on an other level entirely). Aside from the primly pretty, baroque ballad "Lake Isle Of Innersfree", this whole record is pretty much a frenzied fuzz blaster par excellance. And when we say fuzz, we mean FUZZ! Just check out the title track, a majestic six and half minutes mixing tripped out lyrics with savage bursts of ultra distorted guitar. There's definitely a sixties vibe to the proceedings; you can imagine bikers totally digging it. And it's as energetic as the proto-punk coming out of Detroit at the time, too.
The follow-up album is a little fancier, more diverse, and dramatic, the band expanded from a trio to a quartet, with extra instrumentation (acoustic guitar, organ). There's a 10+ minute prog epic called "Man From Manhattan" (which still gets heavy!), but also ragin' rockers like "Woman Tamer". And you get to hear SLB kicking out the jams in concert on the live track "Where Are We Going".
What's not to love about this band? They're a Sir, they're a Lord, they even have a singing drummer! So if you haven't yet been flattened by SLB's fuzz, time to add these to your collection, especially if said collection already includes the likes of High Tide, Tiger B. Smith, Highway Robbery, Leaf Hound, Toad, etc.
In the annals of the "early heavy", the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ages, the last official cd reissue, a two-fer, was back in the early '90s. But, proto-metal fans rejoice, 'cause now both SLB records are back in action, individually, on vinyl! 1970's Kingdom Come and the self-titled 1971 sequel, both of 'em essential slabs of heavy hard rockin' from this seminal band in heavy metal history.
The debut, with the spooky trippy "ghost ship" painting on the cover, alone justifies SLB's cult status. Very few bands in 1970 were this heavy (though, it must be said, Black Sabbath were on an other level entirely). Aside from the primly pretty, baroque ballad "Lake Isle Of Innersfree", this whole record is pretty much a frenzied fuzz blaster par excellance. And when we say fuzz, we mean FUZZ! Just check out the title track, a majestic six and half minutes mixing tripped out lyrics with savage bursts of ultra distorted guitar. There's definitely a sixties vibe to the proceedings; you can imagine bikers totally digging it. And it's as energetic as the proto-punk coming out of Detroit at the time, too.
The follow-up album is a little fancier, more diverse, and dramatic, the band expanded from a trio to a quartet, with extra instrumentation (acoustic guitar, organ). There's a 10+ minute prog epic called "Man From Manhattan" (which still gets heavy!), but also ragin' rockers like "Woman Tamer". And you get to hear SLB kicking out the jams in concert on the live track "Where Are We Going".
What's not to love about this band? They're a Sir, they're a Lord, they even have a singing drummer! So if you haven't yet been flattened by SLB's fuzz, time to add these to your collection, especially if said collection already includes the likes of High Tide, Tiger B. Smith, Highway Robbery, Leaf Hound, Toad, etc.
Can you handle some noize? The French trio Sister Iodine have apparently been around in the underground for some years now. Jim here recalls that their early stuff was more akin to no-wave, angular rock music (and was quite curious about them having a disc out on Mego). The rest of us here hadn't heard 'em before... but really dig this, which is definitely much more in the noiserock vein of, say, Wolf Eyes, than DNA-ish no-wave. Yep, noiserock a la Wolf Eyes, Shit & Shine, Cadaver In Drag, Hair Police, heck even Hijokaidan. Total distortion overload, the very first track coming off like an exploding minefield of noise, shit blowing up all around. But at the same time, it's not JUST noise, there's enough rhythmic structure to qualify this as rock music, made with guitar, drums, Korg PS3010 synth, and little regard for common standards of musical practice, like, say, melody, or even, really, riffs. Instead these 12 "songs" are all about interesting varieties of throb and rumble, flangey FX and feedback. Further keeping us entranced are the ponderously heavy drum hits, making things almost Khanate-like in parts, run through some sort of monster Merzbowian filter, as on the slumping slomping sizzling trudge of "Terminal Pain".
It's all instrumental (or at least, we can't HEAR any human vocals amidst everything else) but the song titles perhaps give some sense of Sister Iodine's mood: "Lava Junkie", "Black Trauma Delice", "Napalmee", "You Burned", etc. are all in keeping with their general sonic demeanor. Yeah, kind of a negative vibe, yet paradoxically gleeful as the cathartic impact of noisemaking with such abandon takes effect as well. This is the type of noise rock action we find most satisfying, and it even works at low volumes, as gritty textural drone, but turn it up (if you dare) to be fully cleansed in the controlled crinkum-crankum chaos of their howling rocket launching saucer landing skree!
This album was originally released a while ago on vinyl (limited and long gone presumably), and is now reissued on cd with 2 bonus tracks by Editions Mego, in nice, slightly oversized folder packaging like they like to do. Limited to 500 copies, and quite recommended.
If you still think of Ben Chasny's Six Organs Of Admittance as being primarily a folky, Fahey/Basho/Takoma style acoustic enterprise, then please note the blurb on the sticker on this new album's cover, where it says in time-honored rock n' roll tradition: "Play This Record Loudly". And you should, 'cause while it's not like Six Organs haven't rocked before (they have) but Chasny sure is getting his ya-yas out here, big time. As we said when we recently reviewed the non-album single, Parsons' Blues, that immediately preceded this full-length, this stuff sounds like "Six Organs Of Comets On Fire", and the lineup here backs up that assertion. That lineup features Ethan Miller, Ben Flashman, Utrillo Kushner, and Noel Von Harmonson, all from Comets, of whom Chasny himself has also been a member. Plus producer Tim Green contributes some guitar, too. Thus (?) it's the loud psychedelic freakout side of things (a la Comets) that dominates, on a majority of the cuts here, at least.
The album opens with an energetic, kickass quasi-instrumental (there's some voices but no words) called "Waswasa", and then on track two, "Close To The Sky", it really sounds like Chasny & Co. have slapped on their sunglasses-at-night and are channelling total Tokyo Flashback action, a la LSD-March, Up-Tight, High Rise, and goddamn godfathers Les Rallizes. Headnodding psych-noodling, all right! That's followed by the ritual ceremony of "They Called You Near", and for a while we're back to acid folk, not acid rock, territory. Track four, "Solar Ascent", is even mellower and lovelier, but the next one, "One Thousand Birds" rocks out quite a bit more, bringing back that psych skronk guitar over a steady rhythmic pulsebeat. And so it goes, this album both dreamy and driving, providing songs that focus on Ben's gentle hushed voice and melodies, along with distortodelic romps full of amped-up, Rallizes-esque throb that also ought to appeal to fans of Wooden Shjips and Crazy Horse.
If you liked what Chasny has conjured on other recent sets like Asleep On The Floodplain and Luminous Night, this is equally expansive and ambitious - but with a bit more Comets-y sonic violence n' volume overall.
The compact disc version comes packaged in a nice cardboard miniature lp jacket, and we like how the "cd booklet" in fact consists of a folded up dot matrix printout (or rather, what looks like one).
Eureka, California based young'un Ben Chasny was the hands down big hit at this year's Terrastock IV festival of peace, love and psychedelic drugs, held in Seattle (where, by the way, we were excited to visit the Experience Music Project museum -- $20, and worth every penny!). At the festival, Ben's airy yet dark psychedelia was augmented with the talents of other bandmates specially put together for the occasion, but on "Dust & Chimes", his first album just now reissued on cd for the first time, he's working mostly alone. Concocting lush laments from acoustic guitar, chimes, and subtle distortion effects, Six Organs of Admittance bespeak a love for psych-folk not of the fey British variety, but more akin to the ethereal otherworldliness of Japan's Ghost. Fahey fans will also find much to appreciate. Every sound is carefully placed and joyfully played -- and this attention to detail came across live in spades, where the youthful energy of this band reminded me of the Olivia Tremor Control, giving it their all. On record, this energy is rather more dark and mysterious than any Olivias comparison would suggest. Very nice.
It's such a nice day out and we'd really rather just sit in the sun and listen to this disc than review it, so why don't we just say: another great Six Organs album! and leave it at that, ok? Not ok? You want more from us than that? Well it IS another great album from this Ben Chasny fellow, whom for us is definitely tops among all the current crop of psychedelic guitar-pickin' folkies. Whether he's lending his weary voice to some lovely acoustic pop balladry, or blissing out on the fretboard in Fahey/Basho rustic raga mode, or harking to the spaghetti western soundtrack sound of Bjorn Olsson, or channeling krautrock spirits for a heavy duty distorted electric guitar jam, Chasny -- with a little help from his friends -- shines on this album. Maybe his best yet! Gorgeous, moody, yes indeed.
Of course, sitting in the sun listening to this might not be the idea. The Sun Awakens this is called, but it's more likely that the music on here will generate grey clouds to blot out the sun, casting shadows from some other time and place of pagan worship. Particularly when you get to the droning darkness of the mysterious, moaning, album-closing "River Of Transfiguration", an extended 24 minute ceremony of a song featuring the bass playing of Al Cisneros of Om and Sleep fame. Oh yeah. Recommended.
We've raved before about this cool metal band from Ohio, after they blitzed us with the sweet strains of their previous album At One With The Shadows (2004) and more recent self-released ep, Worship The Witch (2006). The strength of those releases, as well as the excessive, impressive showmanship with which they deliver their '80s influenced blackened speed metal of death in the live arena, has heightened their profile in the realm of underground US metal -- hence their deal for this new album. They've been touring hard, and getting great word of mouth, which we're happy to amplify. Perhaps the hype will even allow them to cross over to the indie audience that likes bands like The Fucking Champs and Early Man, we imagine that could easily happen -- though this ain't no ironic hipster metal, we know these guys are bona fide metalheads from the Midwest.
They just came through town recently on tour, opening for Nachtmystium, who had to cancel their SF appearance at the last minute -- but we don't think anyone in the crowd that night went home disappointed after Skeletonwitch, thrust into the headlining spot, got up there and wrecked everybody's neck, slaying in style with energy and aplomb. Killer show, killer band -- and this is a killer album.
Not only can they play, AND have good songs, but they have all the details down too, little details that are TIGHT. Like, for instance, when they play live, the two guitarists are on either side of the stage, both shredding on matching Flying V's. Good enough, but what makes it really tight is that one of the guitarists is left handed, and stands stage left, so both guitarists' Flying V's are pointed in opposite directions, flanking the scary singer and roving bassist, which just looks cool. You might think, on album, so what if the guitarists have such visual symmetry? Well damn if we don't think that we can HEAR it. Or at least hear that they're the sort of band that might cultivate that sort of old school, larger than life presentation.
This album certainly showcases their strengths: The aforementioned dual guitar shred (shades of Maiden and At The Gates). Blazing technicality in the service of solid, memorable, melodic thrash metal songs. And dynamic, demonic vocals (grunts, snarls, screeches) from a frontman who is also awesomely expressive nonverbally on stage (constantly pulling exaggerated faces and making almost sign-language hand-motions to illustrate his lyrics).
FYI, for fans who already have the Worship The Witch ep (or are thinking about getting it): 3 of that disc's 4 tracks are repeated here, albeit in rerecorded form. They also redo four songs from their now-out-of-print debut, which is fine 'cause the production here is much much better than on that first full-length.
It's so difficult for a doom band to carve out a totally unique sound. Slow, check. Downtuned, check. Plodding tempos, check. Growled vox, check. Nothing to do but get slower and lower, but you can only get so slow or so low, before the music stops being actual sound and instead turns into some sort of physical thing, like a big molten lump of mysterious blackness. Plus, odds are, in a name-that-tune style test, most of us would be hard pressed to tell one ultra doom band from another funereal doom band, or one doomdirgedrone outfit from another slow motion sludge combo. But then there's Skepticism, who even after 17 years, and some dramatic sonic shifts, still sound like no one else. Their warm washed out blend of chugging ultra low guitar and warm church organ-like keyboards, their haunting atmosphere and otherworldy production, sound like NOBODY else.
Way back in the beginning, the way we described Skepticism was like this: imagine a doom metal band jamming out in a church basement, while upstairs the organist practices, playing some haunting liturgical hymns, now imagine a recording made right outside the church's stone walls, so the metal is muted and murky, the pipe organ warm and thick and muffled, so weirdly heavy, but dreary and dreamy. We also at one point described Skepticism as black metal meets Labradford. Both are pretty accurate we think.
It's interesting that such a heavy, low end band would NOT have a bass player, but like all the other records, Skepticism employ just guitar, drums, and keyboards, but once you hear it, a bass would just muddy it up, the sound is already perfect, a dark shimmering heaviness as ethereal as it is crushing. The band's recordings gradually grew less lo-fi, thickening and becoming heavier and heavier, but without losing their distinctive sound. It's been 5 years since the last Skepticism record, Farmakon, and in that time, the band have once again subtly altered their sound, incorporating a bit more classic doom, a bit more propulsion as well, a little more 'chug', varying the sound more than ever, but around these new elements is still wrapped that thick, warm black Skepticism sonic monk cloak.
The strangest song is probably "March October", with its clean guitar, it's lurching chug, and it's almost drinking song like vocals, howled by a singer who we can't help but imagine is covered in sabre tooth tiger pelts, sporting a black beard to his waist, a massive mountain of a man, leading us on a brave march into certain death. The whole record is epic and majestic, funereal and crushing, morose, atmospheric and dismally, depressively beautiful. Anyone at all into bands like Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Boris, Khanate, Eyehategod, Cavity, Electric Wizard, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Thou, Trees, Otesanek, Fleshpress, Monarch, Nihill, Monument Of Urns, Atavist, Noothgrush, Catacombs, Winter, should either already love Skepticism, or should buy this, and then buy every single thing they've ever recorded, because as much as we love all of those bands, we just might love Skepticism the most...
Here's one of those crucial, seminal recordings that somehow (probably 'cause we were much less thorough about these things at the time of its release) never made it into our on-line catalog. Yet we often make reference to it, and have recommended other, subsequent albums by the band, including the recently-released "The Process Of Farmakon" cdep reviewed on list #142.
Happily, Red Stream has just reissued this album, the debut from Finnish doom-lords Skepticism, after some time out of print, and we now have a chance to list it for the first time! Originally issued in 1995, this 2002 version has been (slightly) redesigned graphics-wise but contains the same immense sonic slabs of funereal doom-trudge metal that so awed us seven years back. We hail this album as the ultimate "black-metal-meets-Labradford" listening experience. Totally morose, depressive, atmospheric ambience in heavy dirge death metal mode, with melodies to crush your soul. Medieval organ-like keyboards give this a grim, churchly air, and of course it sounds like it was recorded with the microphones quite distant from the instruments/amps, possibly in a nearby forest.
If like other Skepticism albums and/or are a fan of the likes of Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Burzum's "Filosofem", and other sad and gloomy things, you MUST OWN THIS. 'Nuff said.
It's always a happy day here at Aquarius when we get new music from Finland's Skepticism. I mean, a depressing day. Soooooooo wonderfully depressing. Skepticism are our favorite funereal forest doom metal band, we've described them before as the Labradford of black metal. Almost ambient, droning, downer stuff, plodding along through a nighttime fog. Imagine the music of a suicidal church organist, teamed up with some longhaired Scandinavian death metal teens. Beautiful.
As with all their releases, more of the same yet with enough difference to be a significant, essential addition to their ouevre. This time, the 'what the fuck?' aspect is highlighted by the bizarre bubbling noises that join the gruff vocals and downtuned guitars on the title track, which sounds as if it was recorded on a ship slowing sinking on the River Styx. As is their wont, this two-song ep (18+ minutes) precedes a full-length due out sometime later this year, supposedly.
Oh yeah! Sweden strikes again! The great Subliminal Sounds label (who brought us Dungen, as well as reissues from the likes of Baby Grandmothers and Trad Gras Och Stenar) seem to have revved up their faux-way-back machine to bring us what sounds a heck of a lot like an early '70s proto-metal reissue but in fact isn't, the longhaired young rockers of Skogen Brinner belonging to the here and now, somehow. But man this sure sounds like 1971, sheer hellacious FUZZ filled heaviness, wild wailing retro-proto-metal-punk-garage action. The Skogen Brinner boys don't hold back at all, and this stuff sounds too raw and real to be for calculated effect, it's not mere 'cool' retro posing. No, playing what you hear here clearly comes quite naturally to them - maybe their parents raised 'em on steady diet of Black Sabbath, Pentagram, and Wicked Lady? And the records of Swedish '70s proto-metal masters November for sure.
The singing is almost all in Swedish, and is performed with manic, aggressive attitude, though both vocals and music don't lack for melody when required - track eight, "Vargen Till Forvirring", being a nice brief acoustic respite from all the fuzzed out madness. Mostly though, yeah, it's hard hitting psychedelic freakorama, with lotsa fuzz guitar, some organ, echoing studio effects, and "hairy funk" grooves that would get Finders Keepers DJ Andy Votel all hot and bothered if he found this music on some vintage 45. Oh, and there's even saxophone on two tracks, "Odjurtets Hamnd" and "Farsonas Berg", riffing just as hard as the guitars. The only song with an English title and lyrics is called "Speed Freak", if that tells you anything. That track somehow sounds kinda like Mainliner gone medieval & martial. Total biker metal brilliance, there!
Belongs in the collection (and in heavy rotation on the playback devices) of anyone who also loves Kadavar, Burning Saviours, Troubled Horse, Horisont, Danava, La Ira De Dios, Scorpion Child, and other current bands bringing these heavy '70s sounds back. Ok, look - you know we love this sort of stuff. And we say Skogen Brinner have got the goods, get it!
Digipack cd or gatefold vinyl, both adorned with band portraits in '70s underground comix style, perfect.
Even if we didn't make this Record of the Week, we'd probably still be selling quite a few of 'em, as we're sure we've got a lot of knowledgeable record-collector-type customers for whom adding this to cart will be but the work of a second, the second after their eyes bug out upon seeing the artist and title listed above. But since this reissue is not only of an incredible rarity but also of an incredible record, we wanted to make sure everybody heard about it, besides those for whom it's already a "holy grail". Yep, Joakim Skogberg's original 1972 Jola Rota LP definitely falls into the highly obscure "holy grail" category, a lost treasure for lovers of weird, wonderful acid-folk and underground psychedelia. The sort of thing that develops a legend that it can't possibly live up to... but then DOES, blowing minds when it's finally reissued. The sort of thing that's whispered about among connoisseurs of psych, written of in a few select fanzines and blogs, heard only by a lucky few who got an Nth generation cassette dub or cd-r burn from a friend, who got it from a friend, and so on. The sort of thing, that even a few years after a brief exposure to its wonders, will make you stop and think every once in a while, dang when is someone finally gonna reissue that amazing obscure album??? Some other recently excavated examples would include Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed, Bobb Trimble's Harvest Of Dreams, and Gary Higgins's Red Hash... and before that, once upon a time Comus's First Utterance too would have fallen into that category. Bruce Haack's Electric Lucifer as well, though originals of that were and are much MUCH easier to come by. Whereas *this* album was originally pressed in an edition of around just one thousand copies -- of which only a few hundred were ever sold back in the day, with the remainder of the pressing being, gasp, melted down to be recycled into other LPs!
So, here it is, artist Joakim Skogsberg's lone album Jola Rota finally, officially reissued for the very first time! Our hearts went pitter pat when we found out. We first heard this when our friend Loren Chasse (of Of/Thuja/Jewelled Antler/etc. fame) floated us a cd-r burn he had gotten from a pal overseas a couple years ago, as per the scenario outlined above. He figured we'd like it, and of course he was right. What's not to like? Swedish-forest-folk hippie ritual mixed with droned-out psych guitar. Truly strange, and captivating, vocal mumble. And, get this, it was actually mostly recorded out in a forest, on portable reel-to-reel gear!! Once out of the woods, the raw recordings were overdubbed (Skogsberg being responsible for all sounds on this album) in studio, but remain quite raw, the mystery and majesty of northern landscapes, dark shadowy places, placid lakes, tall trees and moss-covered rocks utterly alive in the music of the nature-loving Skogsberg.
Side One starts off with "Jola Fran Ingbo", which introduces Joakim's unusual "Jola" singing style derived from Swedish trad folk, also heavily influenced by Buddhist chant, accompanied by staccato bowings of ominous violin. Immediately this is waaaay darker than most other Swedish folk/psych we've heard! Seriously droney and austere. That's followed by the more freaked out, rockier "Offer Rota", which finds Skogsberg singing whilst pounding away on percussion and unfurling a thick layer of distorted guitar murk, with what sounds like a Jew's Harp warbling in the background. The next piece, "Fridens Lijor", on the other hand, is an unaccompanied vocal piece, close-miced and intimate, all about Skogsberg's fragile Jola babble...
Beginning side two, "Besvarjelse Rota" builds up a dubby, bassy electronic rhythmic whomp-whomp throb beneath its damaged psych guitar wail, that (in our warped imagination) foreshadows modern minimal techno a la Chain Reaction, "heroin house" beats.... could almost be Pole jamming with Algarnas Tradgard or something! Later, the lengthy "Jola Fran Stensate" harkens back to the solemnity of the album's first track, and then "Jola Fran Leksand" winds up this unique, amazing trip with something of a pagan campfire dance piece, for folky fiddle and rattling hand percussion.
Overall, though, Jola Rota's mood is solitary and ceremonial. Skogsberg not a guru leading his followers, but rather one man, inspired, singing devotional songs to nature, in personal communion with the ancient deities of Sweden and the universe... it IS universal, probably why it sounds simultaneously like krautrock and Tibetan worship and Native American prayer-songs. The universality of the drone, and the human voice in spiritual reverence regardless of language. At its droniest, many moments here recall Parson Sound or the aforementioned Moolah. Totally, magically mesmeric. Wow... EVERYONE who's heard this since we got it in has been entranced.
And we're extra happy that not only has this been reissued, but that the reissue was done by our pal Johan's Tokyo-based Tiliqua Records (along with EM Records, one of our absolute favorite reissue labels from that part of the world, or anywhere else). Which means, it's done up deluxe, packaged in a swank miniature gatefold LP-style sleeve, and it's been remastered from the original tapes with the help of Skogsberg himself. There's also new liner notes and previously unpublished photos of the long haired and bearded (of course) Skogsberg included. Nice! Sadly, this too is limited to a one-time pressing of only 1,000 copies... and unlike the original vinyl edition, we doubt the label will be left with any unsold copies to recycle!
FYI there will also be a super, super limited (and expensive) vinyl version of this coming on on Tiliqua in May, not sure if we'll be able to get any of those at all or if they'll be a label-direct preorder thing only...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Five track ep that features the best (and only good?) track from the Mo'Wax Headz 2-B collection, 1998's crash. Mr. Skull is one of the great overlooked producers of downtempo hiphop/breakbeat excursions. Dark and murky stuff a la DJ Shadow, Spectre & DJ Vadim. The first track is almost a 'post-rock' instrumental, although we hate the term... "Snapz" is supremely listenable & enjoyable. Don't miss it.
Another new one from Swedish noisemakers Skull Defekts, who like much of the new breed of cd-r underground outfits, have gone from unknown to prolific in the blink of an eye. This latest comes courtesy of the Cut Hands label, and is crazy limited, only a hundred copies�
And while past Defekts records have been strongly rooted in rhythm, this two tracker is much more about texture and mood, timbre and ambience, with any rhythm merely a muted pulse, a submerged throb, or a bit of dizzying skipped looping. The opening track is 21 minutes of low end murk, soft shimmering drift, smeared pixilated glitch, moaning bass tones, a distant swirl of disembodied voices, croaks and creaks, blurred into another buzzy layer, the track building in intensity, the tones growing thicker and more corrosive, streaks of feedback draped over sonorous tones, all wrapped in a whirring cloud of soft insectoid buzz.
The second track, also 21 minutes, is much more chaotic and confusional, voices swirl dizzily, chunks of glitchy electronics suspended in a roiling sea of constant low end buzz, smears of malfunctioning effects, sine wave skree and crumbling distortion, all looped into some haunting post industrial collage, eventually smoothing out into a long stretch of layered rumble and whir, but still shot through with jagged shards of percussive clatter and sizzling electronic grind. Sort of Pan Sonic meets Wolf Eyes which is most definitely a good thing.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in cool oversized, textured paper, three color silkscreened gatefold sleeves, the disc attached to a nub on one of the panels, a printed black and white insert, each disc hand painted.
Not only is this limited 3" cd-r release on one our our newest favoritest labels, Sweden's Kning Disk (who brought us both the Erik Enocksson Record Of The Week and Balroynigress reviewed on our last list) but it's also by one of our newest favoritest bands, The Skull Defekts (also Swedish). You know why we love Kning, and if you read our reviews of a handful of their previous releases, you also know what we think is so great about The Skull Defekts... they're abstract technicians of noisy mechanical rhythm n' glitch, masters of repetitive industrial improv thrum n' stutter. Like their Stateside colleagues (and Kning labelmates) Wolf Eyes, they've also been quite prolific (we have several other new Skull Dfx titles in stock and awaiting review, in fact!).
Polonium (named for a rare, radioactive element, used in the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning) is a heavy, hypnotic electrical noise construct about 20 minutes long, recorded live on the radio (Resonance FM) in London, England, January 6th 2007. Although performed by a stripped down duo version of the band, normally a quartet, it's a good example of what we love about this outfit and would make a good introduction to their sound, though we're listing it now mainly 'cause we know fans are gonna want to get their hands on this before it's gone, as this release, in its second and possibly final edition, is LIMITED TO 100 NUMBERED COPIES. We only have a few...
We had long been dreaming about a singles compilation from long running UK noise rock / psych dirge combo Skullflower, who are not a 'singles' band by any stretch, but somehow, peppered throughout their lengthy career, and a clutch of classic albums proper, lurk some of the most iconic singles ever, FOUR of which are gathered here, on cd for the first time ever. And the fact that those singles are essentially just the bonus tracks here, should give you an idea of exactly why this was a shoe in for Record Of The Week.
Two of our favorite, classic Skullflower jams, long out of print, now available again together along with the aforementioned singles: Carved Into Roses, originally released in 1994 on VHF, and Infinityland, released a year later on HeadDirt, with the classic SF lineup of Stuart Dennison and Russell Smith (of beloved nineties psychedelic scuzzdub heavies Terminal Cheesecake), two guitars and drums, no bass, both records featuring Simon Wickham Smith and Philip Best of Ramleh as guests. At first we were wondering why exactly these two records were being re-released together, similar lineup of course, and listening to them again, they are sonically very similar, marking the band's shift toward a somewhat different sound, shedding some of the pummel and thud of their earlier releases for something a bit more abstract and tripped out, still heavy and noisy of course, but edging a bit closer to the murky muddy psychedelic drift and gauzy blurred noise-psych drift of their sonic brethren in the Dead C, the sound here in many ways sounding very much like classic NZ noise rock of the era, the tracks lengthy headtrip blissouts, everything wreathed in feedback, the drums and vox buried in the mix, while the guitars writhe and swirl, droned out and raga like one second, fierce caustic squalls the next. SO already it makes sense to bundle these two records together, even more so though once we discovered that they were originally conceived of as one epic sprawling double disc set.
The opener of "Carved Into Roses" pretty much sets the scene, channeling vintage Dead C, and thus finding Skullflower at their very poppiest, reminding us a bit of Dead C offshoot Gate, a sort of meandering Velvets-y drift, lazy and laid back and lugubrious, the sound druggy and droney, a pop song swaddled in thick sheets of wild guitar and smeared psychedelic freakout, almost like some sort of super abstract and seriously drifty space rock, definite foreshadowing some of the sounds of today (White Hills, AMT, etc), the dirgey lope like one of those modern psych bands slooooowed waaaaay down, all swirling washed out guitar skree, ethereal buried-in-the-mix vox, it's downright meditative in its own heavy softly noisy way. The whole record isn't so blissed out and hazy, "The Rose Wallpaper" explodes into a tangle of free jazz freakout, the drums wild and octopoidal, what sounds like some sort of Middle Eastern horn bleats and skronks, the sound growing ever more noisy and chaotic, a seriously heady chunk of OUT-noise jazz if there ever was, which leads right into "Shiny Birds Of Doom", another dark dirge, this one laced with what sounds like organ, or maybe more horns, the lumbering industrial sounding drumming, pounding away through thick swirls of hum and buzz, some howled vocals drift in and out, surprisingly catchy melodies appearing now and again, but more often then not dissipating into the creeping abstract gloom, fans of Gnaw Their Tongues and similarly cinematic black doom will definitely dig.
"Silver Glove Puppet" is a hissy high end stretch of noise pop rendered in shades of grinding crunch, and fractured chaos, sounding a bit like a WAY noisier unhinged Swans, the song getting noisier and noisier, those tangled guitars unwinding thick barbed streaks of effects drenched buzz, but simultaneously becoming more and more song-like as impossible as that seems. Then there's "Metallurgical King", which brings back the horns, and lays them over a cool looped guitar, and some almost krautrock like drumming, super hypnotic, and cyclical, it's only 12 minutes, but you can totally picture this stretching out to fill up a whole live set, totally mesmerizing noisejazz krautdrone hypnorock bliss. And finally Carved Into Roses finishes the way it started, with a stretch of murky out-pop moodiness, the strangely titled "Ge4050" unfurls thick slabs of coruscating guitar buzz, warm washed out melody, never quite coalescing into a proper pop song, instead, seeming to blossom into some sort of psychedelic supernova, all blown out guitars and glimmering sonic blur. Another track that's way to short at seven minutes...
Which leads directly into Infinityland, which starts off with the epic nearly 13 minute long "The Idiotsburgh Address", which opens with a long stretch of layered guitar, blurred and buzzy, droned out and raga like, it's not until about 90 seconds in when the drums kick in, and those guitars coalesce into something again, almost poppy, dirgey, buzz drenched doom-pop creep, woozy and washed out, the guitars soaring and fierce, wrapped around a lilting minor key melody, some wailed wordless vocals, the drums occasionally explode into bursts of delirious drum damage, and of course the guitars are constantly splintering into wild blinding squalls of crunch and howl, but for long stretches, much of that heaviness peels back, again revealing a sort of dirgey industrial almost krautrock sounding meander, haunting and meditative, but still plenty heavy and noisy, and again, hard not to compare this to vintage Dead C. Which leads directly into "White Fang", which is one of the classic Skullflower jams, short by comparison, but the only track that really recalls the Skullflower of old, a pounding almost industrial rhythm, some chugging churning riffage, wild squiggly psychedelic leads, basically the freakout heart-of-the-sun space rock final finishing jam transformed into a whole song, one sounds like staring into the sun, blown out and gloriously blissfully heavy.
"Pixie Dust" is another favorite, darkly haunting, and creepy heavy, the opening riff seriously haunting and ominous, the sound immediately locking into a serious sprawl of noise drenched space-psych mesmer, the sort of thing that would have modern day psych rockers bowing down in reverence, as would follow up "Abraxas", which sounds a bit like Wooden Shjips with a heavy noise makeover, a tranced out groove pounding away within a constantly shifting cloud of psychedelic swirl. "False Magic Kingdom" offers up stretch of serious trip out, the 'free'-est track here for sure, a sort of psychedelic ambience, lots of random rhythmic skitter, pulsing looped buzz, streaks off feedback, clouds of cymbal shimmer, a total outrock freeform epic, before finally finishing off with the comparatively brief closer, "Blood Orange", a gorgeously noisy coda, which melds melancholic clean guitar melody to chaotic rhythms and blown out guitar buzz, yet another track which would have benefited from another 10 or 15 minutes...
And if that wasn't enough, there's a whole 'nother 50 minutes of glorious Skullflower skree, the aforementioned 7"s tracks, "Choady Foster" / "Spent Force" originally released in 1994 on Helter Skelter, "White Fang #2" / "Glassy Essence", also originally released in 1994, on Freek, the Village Sorting 7" originally released in 1995 on Self Abuse (featuring Tim Hodgkinson of Henry Cow), and finally The Art Of Skullflower, originally released in 1996 on Way Out Sounds, which features Bower solo as Total on the B side. Definitely some of our favorite SF jams, and we're so psyched to have them on cd finally. "White Fang #2" is a wild unhinged, super lo-fi, in-the-red, psychedelic dirge rock blow out, that is the most 'rock' SF has ever sounded, while "Glassy Essence" is a thick undulating sprawl of corrosive blackened drones, drifting on a muted chaos of drum stumble and cymbal sizzle. "Choady Foster" sounds like it could have come from the same sessions the produced Carved Into Roses", a murky, psychedelic space rock, motorik groove and thick gouts of frenzied guitars, over a totally mesmerizing stripped down hypnorock framework. "Spent Force" strips away the rhythm, and most of the low end leaving a strange stretch of minimal buzz and glitch and hiss, underpinned by minimal muted drumming and loads of tape hiss, not to mention the occasional super dramatic and cinematic sonic swell. The live version of "Metallurgical King" from the Art Of 7", finds SF in full on abstract trip out drift mode, the drums less a driving force and more another texture floating amidst billowing clouds of feed back and effects drenched sonic swirl. The Total track from the flipside, is similarly drifty, but somehow much darker and heavier, with more heft, and a more serious low end, but still all tangled up in feedback and crumbling distortion, although the main guitar unfurls a thick, SUNNO))) like thrum. And finally, the epic Village Sorting 7", which finds the track "Village Sorting" split into two halves and spread out over all 14 minutes available on that original slab of wax, a plodding drum beat, a fog of insectoid buzz and jagged shards of atonal melody, all blurred and smeared into what sounds like some sort of lo-fi slowcore dirge melting before your very ears, the song laced with some serious free jazz style skronk, the second half / flipside eventually sheds the drums and lets the grinding guitars and bleating horns freakout over a shimmering bed of rumble and buzz. SO GREAT! Here's hoping the rest of the SF singles find their way onto cd, but for now, we've been spinning this disc nonstop, at least when we weren't spinning the other two. Definite contender for reissue of the year, and absolutely essential for fans of all things heavy and psychedelic, abstract and spaced out, noisy and rhythmic.
The packaging is pretty gorgeous too, a super deluxe 6 panel digisleeve, all full color textured paper, with something we had never seen before, the abstract oil painting from the cover printed on the jacket and then the paper sleeves affixed over the top, so parts of the painting our visible around the edges, it's really striking, and inside the various records and 7"s are reproduced in miniature, with extensive track notes, all that and a Japanese style obi too!
Before Skullflower became a blissed out free drone, psychedelic raga outfit which would eventually morph into the ultra dreamy Sunroof!, they were trolling much darker, much harsher waters. When IIIrd Gatekeeper first came out way back in 1992, it fell right in alongside its sonic brethren, Swans, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, Terminal Cheesecake, Ramleh and all of those industrial dirge rockers. Originally released on Justin Broadrick's hEADdIRT label, IIIrd Gatekeeper is definitely one of Skullflower's finest moments (and quite possibly both Andee and Allan's favorite SF record EVER), a slow murky trudge through a blinding squall of psychedelic guitar freakout, dense swirls of which lurk behind a lurching slow motion bass dirge and pounding near industrial drumming. Each track picks a riff and pounds it into the ground, repeating and repeating until you can't help but be drawn in, while white hot streaks of guitar skree and low end rumble spin around the relentless plodding. SO much heavier and scarier than almost any other record. A bit like a heavy metal Whitehouse, or a more psychedelic Swans. A muddy, filthy, drug drenched metal club to the side of the head. So fucking awesome.
THIS WAS A WAREHOUSE FIND. THIS RECORD IS SOOOO OUT OF PRINT, BUT ONE OF OUR DISTRIBUTORS FOUND A BOX SO WE TOOK AS MANY AS THEY HAD. ONCE THESE ARE GONE IT'S BACK TO eBAY WITH YOU...
First of all, you've got to admire a mostly unknown American swords-and-sorcery metal band that follows an album called "Kings of the Universe" with one titled "Consequences of Failure"! That definitely demonstrates a sense of realism amid the fantasy and an
We often wonder...can those Jewelled Antler guys do no wrong? Naw, so far, it seems not. Once you're hooked, you're hooked, and we can't help but sing the praises of pretty much all the releases to emanate from this inspired Bay Area "collective" of nature-loving, often-improvising, uber-prolific music-lovers, whether they be cd-r releases on their own Jewelled Antler imprint or one of the many spun-off to other like-minded labels. Like this one, on Soft Abuse. It's the second album from Skygreen Leopards, the duo of Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Mirza, The Birdtree, etc.) and Donovan Quinn (Verdure), and they sort of align with the other Jewelled Antler "pop/vocal" duos Blithe Sons (also with Donaldson) and Child Readers. But unlike those two, the Skygreen Leopards' songs are actually composed and rehearsed, less products of the moment than good ol' songcraft. Not that they went into any fancy studio to make this or anything, indeed the field recording that opens this disc situates the duo out in a pasture somewhere, seemingly serenading a bovine audience with their achingly lovely, loosely structured psych-folk-pop music. Gentle, whispy vocals sing songs with mythical lyrics, full of both melanchoic sadness and hope. Such song titles as "All Our Plagues Were Rainbows" and "Let Me Grow In Your Meadow" are good indications of what their music evokes. With a vast array of instrumentation (in common with most Jewelled Antler projects) including 6 & 12 string guitars, dulcimer, portable turntable, 5 string banjo, bouzouki, Hammond, chord organ, tamborines, mandolin, penny whistle, and echoplex, Glenn and Donovan conjure some quite beautiful nap-time music, sleepy and serene. Their songs should, obviously, be of great appeal to the whole Ptolemaic Terrascope/Broken Face crowd, with echoes of Elephant 6 (a little Olivia Tremor Control I'm hearing), early Tyrannosaurus Rex, Richard Youngs' folkier stuff. Resplendent in one of Glenn's crude but colourful collages, populated as always by mysterious bird-headed figures, One Thousand Bird Ceremony is an album that captures the la la las of fluffy clouds passing overhead, as the Skygreen Leopards say "Hello To All Your Rain" (track 7).
Fell in love with this band over 20 years ago!! Slant 6 were an all-girl indie-punk trio from DC, who made two albums for Dischord back in the early nineties. Soda Pop*Rip Off was their first, and arguably best (though Inzombia was good too, hopefully Dischord will soon be reissuing it as well). You might have noticed we mentioned Slant 6 in one of our Record Of The Week reviews last list, Rips by Ex Hex. Ex Hex being the new band of Mary Timony of Helium/Wild Flag - who long ago, before Helium, was in a band called Autoclave with Christina Billotte. Christina then went on to front Slant 6, and later, Quix*o*tic (with her sister Mira, later of White Magic), as well as the Casual Dots. We detected a hint of Slant 6 in Ex Hex's garagey pop, for sure, and as it turns out Ex Hex has even covered Slant 6's "What Kind Of Monster Are You?", so it's such good timing that this album, originally released in 1994, has just been reissued on (red) vinyl - which now also includes a download.
It's an obvious choice for Record Of The Week, when a great old fave like this happens to get the vinyl reissue treatment (or even, sometimes, if we just find a cache of original copies, like that Treepeople we made a Record Of The Week recently). After all, there's got to be lots of you out there who missed out the first time, right? So we're super happy to have this to write about this week, and fall in love with all over again. And if you liked the Ex Hex, you gotta hear this, Slant 6 still an inspiration all these years later, an exemplar of youthful, girls-that-rock energy and girls-that-take-no-shit attitude. Super catchy, super cool, more fun than Sleater-Kinney (who came along a little later), less didactic than some of their Riot Grrrl contemporaries such as Bikini Kill, just a killer band fervently kicking out the pop-punky, new wavy blasts, and often having something serious to say while they do it.
All 16 tracks here are great, some dark and angry, some moody and melodic; usually pretty tightly wound, topped off with Christina's excellent, distinctive vocals and slashing guitar. The trio also included Myra Power on bass and backing vox, and Marge Marshall on drums. We note that Marshall sports a Boredoms sticker on her kit in the back cover photo - and also plays trumpet, a la Yoshimi, on one odd instrumental jazz-march song here. Part DC hardcore, part surfy garage, part art-femme-punk, so very rollicking and choppy and hooky and right on.
We remember being so excited seeing them live back in day, and this spinning this record still gives us a thrill. Check it out!
Note: lp lacks the 3 tracks from the "What Kind Of Monster..." 7" included on the cd edition, but the mp3 download does have 'em.
Yeah, yeah, another obscure '80s cult metal band reissued. I'd heard about this group and how amazing they were supposed to be for a long time, but when I first got the cd reissue of their only album, 1985's "Winter Kill", it sounded just like I expected: high pitched vox, widdly guitar solos, Maiden-esque songwriting... cool, yeah, but nothing special. BUT, then I listened to it again. Something about this, some X-factor, makes it VERY special (or maybe it's just me). Rather than sounding like they're derivative of Maiden, Priest, and a host of mid-'80s Metal Blade bands, Slauter Xstroyes somehow do what they do so perfectly that THEY sound like the Platonic ideal of '80s true heavy metal, the template for every other band, the originators rather than imitators. Of course this isn't actually the case, yet a few listens into it, "Winter Kill" was having that effect: while it's on your stereo, it's the ultimate in metal. I bow down. Fans of the likes of Omen, Cirith Ungol, Warlord, Manilla Road, Attacker, and Brocas Helm should add this to their collections for sure. Classy, slightly eccentric, skilled, and -- the kicker -- full of actual emotion. Absurd as it sounds -- and the vocalist's squeals do sometimes sound absurd -- this metal is for real and meaningful. From the heavy droney keyboard intro, through the album's intervening moments of galloping attack, doomy riffing, and acoustic bliss, to the closing anthem "Mother, Mother Fucker" these guys rule. If you can listen to Spinal Tap for more than comedic value, as I can, you'll agree.
Despite the name, don't think parkas and scooters. Think, well, white rap. White rap by a pair of clever & cranky British blokes, who kinda sound like if Mark E. Smith from the Fall listened to a lot of Sensational or Kool Keith and decided to make a really WTF? electronic rap album of his own. Except there's two of him (seems to be one main guy, and a kind of a sidekick).
We got turned on to the Sleaford Mods thanks to a really cool record shop over in England, Norman Records, who put this album at the top of their Best of 2013 list, an apparently controversial choice even among the shop's own staffers. Some unconventional, outside of the box thinking there! So we figured we ought to check it out. And guess what? We can see why they picked it, though we can also see why it was a bold choice. Had we heard it last year, we might have been tempted too. It's addictive! And we don't always even understand half of what these geezers are on about, that's part of the charm - the thick accents (lots of "fookin'") and the British slang, only makes more wonderfully confusional their own weird brand of free-association wordplay, resulting in plenty of cryptic non-sequiturs that may or may not be intentional, though there's plenty of obvious witticisms too. The lyrics, near as we can tell, are mainly complaints about life and society and shitty music business stuff, full of references to wankers and "donkeys".
Here's some lines from the track "Shit Streets Runny" (that is, if we managed to transcribe it correctly): "Attention to detail / attention to detail / fookin' email / wap! mp3 / I need a fookin' bath / you ain't no roadrunner / you ain't no shoot shoot the runner / shit take on it / meanwhile back in the crap cave / I trod on my cape by mistake / and fell into the fridge mate / I fookin' hate Northern Soul / it's like Motown on the dole". Then the sidekick guy gets some good bits in too, like the one about "Brain Eno / what the 'ell does 'e know?"
And all that, their ranting and rhyming, and even a little bit of singing, sort of, comes on top of quite catchy minimalist hiphop backing tracks, with ticktocking drum machines and laid back grooves, simple and hypnotic, making for an oddly humorous and headnodding listen indeed, full of sing-song bits that will get stuck in your head, catchphrases too - we're all going "Wobble wobble wobble" ferinstance. Maybe it's even more amusing to us since we're American, and whatever we're lacking in context is made up for in sheer absurdity. Anyway, diggin' this a lot!
What more needs to be said about this stoner doom classic from 1992? Heavy, hooky, groovy, Sabbathy, a classic slab of metallic drugginess that launched a million pale imitators (not that Sleep were all-original either, being Sabbathy as we said!). Reissued now with, natch, a bonus Black Sabbath cover ("Snowblind" from the Masters Of Misery tribute comp) and the video for "Dragonaut", so completists might just have to buy it again, but even without those extras, anyone who somehow managed make it this far without hearing Sleep's Holy Mountain, well, now's the time to remedy that for sure...
Needless to say, this shit is HEAVY! Dirge-y, cannabis fueled excursions into the dark realm, swinging Sabbathy riffs, pounding devil drum percussion, and a wailing howl over it all. Fans of Corrupted, Boris, stoner rock, sludge, doom, and all that sort of stuff, catch the hell up!! Sleep's Holy Mountain was this so-Sabbathy bands MOST Sabbath-like release, almost too close for comfort - we're not convinced that Tony and Geezer didn't actually write this stuff!! Which in it's own twisted way is a very very good thing indeed. Wow. ESSENTIAL!
We initially gave this a spin just 'cause of the cool band name, without knowing really what to expect. Turns out that this ep from Seattle's Sleepy Eyes Of Death is fantastically full of fuzzed out, synth-heavy shoegazing post rock. Six spacey, soaring, cinematic songs, seemingly inspired by the nexus of new wave and krautrock (or Trans Am and John Carpenter and Kinski and Klaus Schulze...).
Perhaps the briefest and best description we can come up with is: M83 meets Zombi. There, that ought to do it! Seriously, that's what this sounds like, and thus it's a quite recommended treat 'cause we love both those bands, and the combo is a natural one. Whooshes of distorted electronics, interlaced with airy melodies, mark these melancholic, majestic tracks, mostly instrumental but for a sparse few moments of processed, computery robo-vocals. Though the pulsating rhythms sometimes are purely electronic, deliberate drum beats on an actual drum kit are often also poundingly present, adding more of a muscular human factor to the proceedings.
Though we've never seen their live show, we're not surprised that someone is credited with "lights and fog" in the cd booklet. You could imagine that they had a role in the studio too, 'cause you can almost HEAR lights and fog on this recording, lights flashing with atmospheric radiance, sonic clouds of synth-fog billowing from speakers...
