WTF? The debut album, circa 1995, from this totally WTF? band has just been reissued on vinyl, yay! Looking back, we see that though we're big fans of this, shall we say, unique, Chicago avant-indie rock ensemble, and we've reviewed every other U.S. Maple release, we never actually reviewed this first one. Even though we know we loved it. Well, maybe it just took a while for us to figure out how to put the U.S. Maple "thing" into words. In our reviews of their later albums, we've said things like: "A seeming haphazard mess of gimpy sonic bumps and bruises" or "mathrock made with melted slide-rules", always emphasizing how abstract and confusional their unusually hard to describe compositions are.
This one, though, is their most skronked but still identifiably ROCK effort, and definitely a good starting place for anyone new to the USM experience. Exploding with spiralling shards of guitar and breathy bursts of weirdass vocals, Long Hair In Three Stages is a delightfully counter-intuitive take on heavy mathy noise rockin', like if Captain Beefheart were on AmRep or something. Though as always that really doesn't describe it - and that's a testament to what a great band these guys were, they're their own dang thing for sure. Highly, highly recommended!!!
FYI, Skin Graft also reissued this in two different, deluxe METAL cover editions, but both were a wee bit too expensive for us to just stock, like seventy bux retail. Might still be able to get you one though if you want us to check, though, just ask.
This review of Purple On Time isn't so on time itself, as US Maple's latest has been out for over a month now...but, it has taken a while to absorb, as is so often the case with good albums, and this is not just good, it's great. Plus, US Maple's style of what I can only call 'counter intuitive' indie-rock is so deliberately strange and unique that it's always tough to capture in words, even by a person who is always looking in vain for the 'US Maple fan' box to tick when confronted with demographic questions on surveys and government forms. But I can tell you that, as always, the crucial elements of their sound are vocalist Al Johnson's odd bark (which has mellowed into more of a hoarse whisper), and the instrumental smear of sound made by the guitarist and rhythm section. It's a crazy, cosy quilt of guitars, drums, bass, and Johnson's curious croon, which maybe reminds us of Iggy Stooge at his breathiest. Mathy tangles of guitar strings and drums, dripping with notes, but restrained as if the whole the band is murmuring into your ear, seldom but sometimes unwinding into 'grooves' wracked with volume and ferocity. Confusing, comforting, complex, and quite lovely. And we're not just talking about this album's cover version of Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay"!
As I said, hard to describe. Hmm, how 'bout Codeine meets Beefheart? Naw, that's both obscure and inaccurate. Anyway, US Maple are underrated originals of rock who yet again prove their genius with this release. Recommended. And the packaging is deluxe as we expect from Maple releases, the cd booklet paper providing particular tactile satisfaction, while the vinyl version's got that 180 gram heft.
If you're a fan of Funkadelic, you've for sure had some hardcore jollies of late. First, a few weeks ago, there was that collection of unreleased Funkadelic jams entitled Toys, and now, Westbound has gone back for another dig through the vaults, unearthing this 1972 recording by a group from New Jersey called United Soul, aka US Music with Funkadelic, so called 'cause they were produced by P-Funk ringleader George Clinton (he was their homie, hailing from the same town in NJ), and featured various Funkadelics like Bernie Worrell and Fuzzy Haskins backing 'em up on these sessions recorded in Detroit and Toronto. Funkadelic also drafted some of the members of United Soul into their ranks, including vocalist Gary Shider. So basically this IS Funkadelic, make no mistake.
This material was originally meant for a United Soul album that was never released, though some of it found its way to the ears of Funkadelic fans in different forms. Two of the tracks, the mellow R&B number "I Miss My Baby" and the more uptempo, gospel-tinged "Baby I Owe You Something Good" were issued on a 7" single (and appeared on the Funkadelic 45's collection Music For My Mother). The latter was also reworked and rerecorded for inclusion on Let's Take It To The Stage three years later. And "This Broken Heart", a doo-wop tearjerker, preceded the version found on Cosmic Slop in '73.
But then there's a couple more rocked-out, psychedelic cuts here too, that any self-respecting Funkadelic fan is gonna freak over, both full of wild guitar: "Be What You Is", and (especially) "Rat Kiss The Cat On The Naval" [sic]. That one's a truly killer slab of funkariffic badassitude nearly 8 minutes long. It's got yr typical P-Funk drugged out nursery rhyme lyrics, over a fuzzed-out groove and the manic, looped cry of "Haa!!" which is soon overrun by some serious, searing, acid-drenched electric guitar soloing. And it just gets more and more intense as it goes along. Damn. Sometimes I (Allan) get to DJ sets of obscure early '70s heaviness, and you know that this is gonna get played next time I have the chance... It would fit right in with Doc Dail's "Aere Perennius", ferinstance. Or even the recently discovered Death's "Politicians In My Eyes".
Not sure if this disc really qualifies as an unreleased album, it's only five songs after all (seven tracks on the cd, but the extra two are merely the mono single versions of the two "Baby" numbers from the aforementioned 7"). But it sure does qualify as a way cool Funkadelic artifact indeed, and those don't appear every day even though right now it might seem like they do.
The last AQ list was a good one for fans of Japanese prog maniacs the Ruins... there was the Vrresto reissue and their new split 7" with High On Fire. Keeping up the pace, this time 'round we've got another Ruins-related release...
This energetically, entertainingly exhausting double cd set sees sees Ruins mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida teamed up in an improv duo with Kazuhisa Uchihashi (of Altered States and Ground Zero fame). Hence the title, Improvisations. But these aren't improvs that only jazz-fanciers would like. Nope, this is ROCK improv. Prog rock to be precise, of course. Hectic and crazy and complicated. It's mind-scrabblin' stuff let me tell you. With so many musical ideas firing off in an ADD frenzy, for so long... 146 minutes, 25 tracks! And they're at a level of complexity and catchiness that makes it really hard for us to believe that these are improvs, and not carefully-thought-out compositions, actually!! But we're told thery're all improvised, all recorded live at several venues in Japan.
Chances are you're familiar with Ruins and already know Tatsuya Yoshida to be a monster drummer. Uchihashi is perhaps less-well known, but his guitar (and effects) prowess is prodigious, take it from us. Together these guys are a dream-team. If there was such a thing as gladitorial improv-rock combat, these guys would be unbeatable in the duo catagory. Very impressive, very insane. A veritable cornucopia of perplexing progged-out riffage and ridiculousness.
A word about the packaging -- it's aesthetically pleasing (with nice stone photos by Yoshida, who is skilled at graphics and layout) but, well, it's a two disc set with both cds stacked on top of one another, on the same little foam-rubber nub attached to a tri-fold cardstock sleeve. My discs haven't gotten scratched, yet, but still...probably not the best idea! The packaging police should issue these guys a ticket. Playing them this music though would be an adequate insanity defense...
- MPEG stream: H
- MPEG stream: N
- MPEG stream: T
Last list we reviewed Guru Guru's UFO. This UFO has nothing to do with that, but at the same time more than you might think, considering the obvious connection between the genres of krautrock (Guru Guru) and space rock (UFO). If necessary, ignore the goofy bigfoot-emerging-from-crashed-flying-saucer artwork that they've put on this package (though, actually we kinda like the concept if not the execution of that image) and just please read the following, fans of heavy '70s stuff...
Although this is called Beginnings, it also represents an entire, complete oeuvre - the early '70s proto-metal/psych era of this band, whose more commercially successful, pop-charting output afterwards was quite a bit different (but awesome in its own right, in fact, most folks only know that stuff and haven't heard this material). Later in the '70s, on albums like Phenomenon, Force It, Light's Out, and Strangers In The Night, they became hard rock royalty, showcasing guitar whizz kid Michael Schenker (originally from Germany's Scorpions). But before arena rock success, before Schnenker, UFO's guitarist was a fellow named Mick Bolton. This earlier UFO incarnation much more psychedelic and spacey, that's where they got their Unidentified Flying Object name, playing self-described "space rock". Their second album, UFO 2, was subtitled "One Hour Space Rock" in fact. That sounds totally krautrocky, doesn't it?
This double disc set is a pretty good deal, containing all the tracks from this era of UFO: their debut UFO 1, the aforementioned UFO 2, and their live album, uh, UFO Live. The 1970 debut is definitely one for the proto-metal freaks out there, having much in common with early Blue Cheer and contemporaneous Black Sabbath... it's a heavy boogie album all right. They do a song simply titled "Boogie" and boy does it, chooglin' along all awesomely distorted and heavy. In addition, they do for Eddie Cochran's '50s hit "C'mon Everybody" what Blue Cheer had done for his "Summertime Blues". And then there's their own "Evil", another brutal blues-based rawk number indeed. It's not all hard rockin', though, there's a few sluggish, spacey ballads like "(Come Away) Melinda" and "Treacle People" to up the moodiness quota and make full use of Phil Mogg's powerful voice.
It's 1971's UFO 2 where they really launched out into space, with such tracks as "Silver Bird" and "Star Storm". The latter is almost 19 minutes long, but title track "Flying" is even longer at 26:30. They don't neglect the proto-metal riffery here, with "Prince Kajuku" in particular seeing 'em kicking out that brand of jams, but "Flying" and the other extended pieces are psychedelic spaceouts akin to Hawkwind... you could also imagine Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple enthusiastically air-guitaring along to this at home!!
The 1973 live album offers more of the spacey stuff, along with the boogie, drawing from both UFO 1 and 2 for material, its tracks filling up the remainder of disc two here, along with the non-album "Galactic Love" single, making for an excellent value for your $16.98.
Interestingly, the three UFO albums represented here weren't hits in England, but did pretty well in Germany and Japan... When guitarist Bolton quit, they replaced him briefly with Larry Wallis from the Pink Fairies, then future Whitesnake axeman Bernie Marsden, before snatching the young Schnenker away from the Scorpions... and the rest is history. THIS is history too, just more the hidden kind!
Pretty sure we don't have to do much in the way of introducing this mammoth, UFO-nic Italian trio by now. They've only chalked up, what, at least two past AQ Records Of The Week honors? We've loved all of their records (and collaborations) and this latest opus was eagerly awaited, especially after seeing 'em play live for the first time here in SF this past winter, which was, wow, HEAVY. Of course. And Eve does not disappoint.
We've described this outfit as "druggy doom-from-space" and this slipcased new disc is yet another excellent (but different) example of their cosmic and compelling sounds. Rather than descending from outer space to jam out on Earth, this time it definitely seems like you're riding with UFOmammut INTO the deeps of space, being swept along on the cosmic rays, into some sort of swirling spinning black hole vortex, kinda like the psychedelic beginning to those old Dr. Who TV episodes. After a dramatic intro (huge monolithic thudding... swooshing space-FX sounds... Hawkwind blowing... feedback and distortion) it's a slow build, the first couple tracks starting off relatively quietly and calmly, up to a point, generating unsettling ambient atmospheres, with spacey keyboards, faintly chanted vocals, and restrained percussive rhythms building up... and up... to the massive heavy guitar riffage you know is about to be unleashed, and soon IS. Wham! Blast off! Track two hints at the band's '70s Italian prog ancestry, with drifting female (?) vocals, and piano, before the tribal drum pound kicks in full bore, and it's dooooom in SPAAAAAAACE time, kids! Like music for martial marching Martians, or armies of astronauts in jackbooted spacesuits. It's hypnotic and heavy, indeed. The next track dispenses with the buildup, jumping right into the fray...
The five (long) tracks on Eve tend to seamlessly segue from one to the next, it's almost like one piece, stretching to infinity... it's actually 45 minutes total but if it could go on and on we'd let it, happy to get lost in UFOmammut's deeps of space (and the deeps of their bass!). A beautiful thing to our ears (remember in a past review, when we told the story of how we accidentally played a UFOmammut dvd disc, thinking it was the cd, and were mesmerized by the dvd menu music, not realizing it was on an endless loop?).
Yeah, it's a trip listening to this band, and quite possibly the "trip" they're evoking isn't into outer space as we've been suggesting, but rather inner space. Of course it is, inside your mind, their music at work on your imagination. This aspect is highlighted when in when in the final track, the beat goes into a double-tlme, and a buried bedlam of chattering voices infiltrate the sound-field. It's like Electric Wizard, or Sleep, trapped in the asylum. That feeling is accentuated by the use of insistent repetitive piano chords and piercing electronic tones out of some psychological suspense thriller.
We mentioned that we saw 'em live, and that they are a trio, yet it's sorta hard to believe when you listen to this... sounds more like hundreds of people were involved, massed in ritual observance... or maybe no people at all, no human beings, just the spaceship's onboard computer gone haywire HAL style...
Having your head dipped in some sort of molten hallucinogenic liquid...or steamrollered by a flying saucer.... or headbanging with Lovecraftian gods somewhere far out in the ocean of space... that's our meagre attempt to colorfully describe the experience of enjoying this slab of psychedelic stoner doom rock, the 1999 debut disc from Italy's UFOmammut! Chances are, though, that you have some idea already about this might sound like, 'cause UFOmammut's other album, the mighty Snailking, was immediately crowned as an Aquarius Record of the Week when it came out last year, and is still a steady seller hereabouts. Hopefully you already got one of those. This too, we've had before, but it's been out of print for quite a long time and only just got reissued. We figured that since folks liked Snailking so much, and Godlike Snake was just as good, and could easily have been missed out upon the first time around, we shouldn't pass up the opportunity to relist this and make it a Record of the Week as well now that it's back in print. After all, the whole reason we were so instantly amped on Snailking when it came out was in part 'cause we'd been waiting for it for, literally, years, after being blown away by the band's first album, this one. Our review of Godlike Snake ran something like this: "...this stoner rock band is a good 'un, taking a way spacier route to the Dopethrone than most. Wonderfully heavy and mesmerizing, with loads of effects, Moog, and (pardon the expression) "fat" churning drone-grind-groove... A new fave for us in the stoner/doom realm... Especially recommended for those that miss the old Monster Magnet sound, or relish the idea of a heavier Hawkwind." Listening to it now (which a bunch of us have been doing *every day* in the store), we're if anything EVEN MORE into it. Something we hadn't noticed before was how some tracks come across like Godflesh or early Killing Joke melded to Hawkwind. Crushing and enveloping and sooooooo good. It's like Electric Wizard gone spacerock, or an industrialized Dead Meadow.
As with its original incarnation, this includes a trippy video track for the song "Where?" for those with computers. It's now packaged in a standard jewelbox, instead of a cardboard digipack, but the artwork remains pretty much the same. If you like heaviness like we do, don't miss it this time!! Definitely to be considered an AQ doom/sludge/psych ESSENTIAL.
The new issue of Ugly Things, celebrating as always "wild sounds from past dimensions" is here, hooray! Ok, we haven't been getting this magazine since the beginning, but if we had, up to 33 of the best days of our lives would have been when the new issue of Ugly Things landed in our mailbox. If you're like us, and love psych, garage, punk and other gunk from the heyday of back in the day, then you'll agree, this is a need-to-read periodical.
In this ish: Arthur Lee's Love (with a big interview with lead guitarist Johnny Echols), Ed Sanders of The Fugs, Hungarian psych/prog treasure Illes, Holland's trippy Group 1850, proto-punks the Electric Eels (or, the electric eels, as they preferred the lower case, please), The Syndicate, The Poets, Wildwood, Barrence Whitfield, The Leopards, and much more. There's a piece on the origins of the term 'Freakbeat', along with features on Freakbeat's finest, Wimple Winch and The Craig. There's an article about forgotten '70s glam rock gems too. And Cyril Jordan from the Flaming Groovies starts a new column of reminisces, wherein among other things he tells the story about the time in '74 when he and his bandmates encountered Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, who took them to his house to hear his arrangement of "Johnny B. Goode" in C Minor!
And, amidst all this obscurity, there's also an essay about the merits of Led Zeppelin ("The Most Bonkers Band That Ever Was"), from the perspective of someone who first heard 'em back when their debut album came out, and who has an amusing way of putting things as well, like: "as for Bonzo - only another drummer can judge his technical proficiency, and the rest of us - in our teeming millions - would rather stick a pill up a cat's arse on a fork than listen to one drummer's opinion of another."
Plus of course, TONS of reviews of reissues, and books and dvds and some new records too. 176 glorious pages in all. Yowzah!
"Wild Sounds From Past Dimensions", indeed -- this thick tome (192 pages) of a magazine covers in great depth all sorts of psych, garage, proto-punk, etc. rock n' roll from decades past. Definitely one of our favorite magazines! Whether you're familiar with the subjects or not, their features, full of information and anecdotes, are always fascinating. This time, attention is paid to The Yardbirds, Love, Eater, Public Nuisance, The Treniers, The Misunderstood, and many more. Plus, "Food and Wine" editor Johan Kugelberg offers part 2 of his DIY 7" overview (required reading for those of you into Hyped To Death's Messthetics cd-r comp series) and, in the print reviews section, is sure to rile some tempers with his delightfully brutal rip on Sonic Youth and Steve Albini (in his review of Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life). Oh yeah, record reviews, there's lots of those too. A solid week's worth of reading there, I'd think. Mike Fornatale's reviews deserve special mention: #1 he's hilarious, #2 he makes you want to jump up and slap on whatever record he's writing about, his enthusiasm is so infectious. Kudos to editor/publisher Mike Stax and co. for once again demonstrating how good a music 'zine can be.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Allan's favorite music magazine strikes again! Ok, maybe if you absolutely hate all (good) rock music from 1960-1980, you won't find anything of interest here. If you ain't got no use for psych, punk, garage, exotica, etc. then yeah go elsewhere for your reading pleasure. But if you're even marginally interested in those genres -- "wild sounds from past dimensions" as the mag's masthead so broadly and enticingly puts it -- then we'd suggest picking up a copy. If you're a music fiend like us you'll soon find yourself absorbed in a story about some obscure '60s band you've never heard of before, but now will be searching out reissues by... In this installment, the Ugly Things crew delves into the dim past to bring forth fascinating facts about Brian Jones, the Pretty Things, the MC5 (actually about the recent 'reunion' tour), Plastic Bertrand, Ace Kefford of The Move, and even Columbian crazies The Speakers. Among much else, including a gizillion often quite amusingly written reviews. And of course there's the continuation of editor Mike Stax's epic story of The Misunderstood. Part III heads off on some strange tangents but if you've come this far the saga remains a page-turner. And all the stuff in there about the draft (and draft-dodging) suddenly seems sadly so much less historical and even more messed up. For us, an issue of Ugly Things is kinda what we hope in a much much smaller way getting an AQ-list email is all about...a visit with some friends who are sharing their enthusiasms and passions about some probably rather obscure music in an interesting way... I personally can't get enough of it and whenever a new issue of UT lands here at AQ it's tough not to just sit down immediately and dig in. Certainly there's a lot of meat here, and we're promised (perhaps) another issue sometime soon in 2005! Whoo-hoo.
Whoo-hoo! As always, the latest issue of editor/publisher Mike Stax' well-researched magazine devoted to "wild sounds from past dimensions" is a major event here. Aware of its impending arrival, we had to block out some time ahead of time just to spend reading the thing, which surely does require some hours indeed, as each ish is bigger (and maybe even better, tough as that's got to be to achieve) than the last. #24 weighs in at 208 pages, more than 50 of 'em filled with small-print reviews of desirable reissues of rare old albums and so forth, the '50s / '60s / '70s garage punk psych beat r&b stuff we need to hear about. A great resource. The rest of the magazine's got the usual columns and features, including super in-depth articles and interviews dealing with various obscure and semi-obscure bands. This time around: The Mustangs, The Bush, The Phantom Brothers, Sweetwater, Stiphnoyds, The Flamin' Groovies, The Rubber City Rebels, Mike & The Ravens, and more. Haven't heard of most of those? Well for just $7.95 you could become an expert on 'em. Seriously, we -always- find something of interest in these stories. A couple of the other features this issue that caught our attention: Johan Kugelberg discusses the joys of what he terms Australian "grillfat rock", Mike Stax waxes enthusiastic about vintage radio show airchecks, Randal Wood runs down the Peruvian '60s scene, Patrick Lundborg lists twenty hard to find collectibles that he'd like to see reissued, and Jeff Jarema talks to the recording engineer who worked on the first Blue Cheer album. Turns out the guy was talking time off from his job as a police officer, of all things, and lets just say didn't quite appreciate the pro-drugs, proto-metal heaviness churned out by the 'Cheer!
Now we count the days until #25 comes out...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Curses! It's the worst when a new issue of one of our favorite magazines, Ugly Things, shows up on a "list week"! All we want to do is sit and read the darn thing -- and there's A LOT of it to read, this ish is up to 224 pages -- but instead we can only skim thru and save it for next week when we're not quite so busy writing music reviews. Yeah there will be a lot of work to do then too, but we'll MAKE time to relax and read our Ugly Things. After all, it's about a lot of our favorite types of music: '60s psych, garage, freakbeat, proto-prog, "wild sounds from past dimensions" as they say on the cover. This time around, there's features on The Music Machine, The Attack, Radio Birdman, The Namelosers, Freedom's Children, The Light, The Rubber City Rebels, and much much more... some of these bands more obscure than others but in all cases, whether we'd heard of 'em before or not, totally fascinatin' reading (well, what we've gotten to so far anyway, but we know all of it's gonna be good). We did delve into the articles about South African psych legends Freedom's Children, which included a interesting tidbit about the use of psychedelic lighting at their live shows. Apparently they'd gotten someone to rig up a primitive strobe light, without realizing the effect it might have on people prone to epileptic seizures... soon they figured that out and put warnings on their show posters, but funnily enough non-epileptics, who just thought it was "cool", would go on and have "seizures" anyway, they'd call it "having a frothy". Crazy hippies!
A few other articles of note: there's a fascinating piece entitled "Everything You Know About 'Louie Louie' Is Wrong" (by Bruce Duff -- is he the Jesters Of Destiny Bruce Duff we wonder?).... And perhaps the most bizarre and interesting investigation this issue, is the article about the sneaky "karaoke rock" of Steve Kaczorowski, a possibly delusional wanna be rock star from Long Island who released several now-collectable records of himself singing OVER other people's music, totally uncredited... you got to read it to believe it. Of course, there's also the usual informative and entertaining pages and pages and pages of music, dvd, and book reviews, among which you'll find Johan Kugelberg's offering: "Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Good Records That Came Out During The Suck Years", delving into some personal faves from 1983-1997. Ok, gotta stop flipping through this and get on with my other reviews, though I don't want to...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Egads. As usual, our favorite magazine (a thick as a brick magazine, 224 packed pages, more like a tome!) shows up on a "list week" when we're too busy writing our reviews to do what we WANT to do, which is curl up with this new issue and enjoy all of their reviews, interviews, articles, and whatnot. That's what we'll be doing Saturday for sure, this rainy weather is perfect for that. Giving it a skim (and tearing ourselves away from it to get back to work), we can tell you that this ish is, as usual, full of good stuff pertaining to garage, psych, punk, freakbeat, acid folk, and other "wild sounds from past dimensions" as it says on the cover. Some of the contents include a 1988 interview with the late Rob Tyner, singer for the legendary MC5, a history of UK folksters Trees, an extensive, informative piece on the amazing '60s Norwegian scene, another about Napa Valley's, interviews and essays about the likes of The Sons Of Adam, The Pop Rivets, Jeff Simmons, Fire, Cedars, and as always a Pretty Things update. And, unbelievably, much more. Notably, Chris Stigliano shoves Julian Cope aside to present a "Beginner's Guide To Les Rallizes Denudes". And the 13 pages devoted to Johan Kugelberg's expert fan feature on "Punk Before Punk" is probably worth the price of admission alone, looking forward to delving into that one!
Plus of course there's dozens upon dozens of reviews of reissues...and ads and playlists and columns and rants and (sadly) obits and so much much much more, as we keep sayin'. Recommended if you have any interest in the cool, cult, collectable music of yesteryear. And copious free time to spend readin' about it!
It's baaack! Another mammoth (216 pages!) issue of one of our favorite magazines, all about "wild sounds from past dimensions" as they put it - garage, beat, psych, punk, etc. Now, a lot of you reading this probably have some idea of what it's like to be a musician in a band today. You're in a band, or were in a band, or have friends who are in bands. But not so many of you probably know what it was like to be in a band back in, say, 1964. Sure in 2008 we have garage bands - and GarageBand too - but things were different back then. Let's see, the band you were in, did you have a manager, and were they your drummer's mom? That's part of what makes Ugly Things so interesting, the way it delves into what might be termed the "human interest" or "behind the music" stories of bands that otherwise you haven't heard, and in some cases, will never ever hear. For instance, the 30+ pages devoted this ish to a teenage surf/R&B combo from Orange County called The Spats. Remember them? And their bottom of the Billboard Top 100 hit "Gator Tails and Monkey Ribs"? No, well us neither of course, but we still enjoyed reading their detailed history here, which included regular gigging at Disneyland, and some tantalizing brushes with fame.
And of course Ugly Things isn't all about things quite that obscure - The Who and The Small Faces are also featured in this issue, with an article detailing the story of their tempestuous tour Down Under in '68. Also you get stuff about The Animals, The Koala, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, Bo Diddley (R.I.P.), Chile's Los Vidrios Quebrados, "Beat Girl" actress/singer Gillian Hills, '70s punks The Victims... There's also a glam rock/junk shop top 50 from Johan Kugelberg (as always with his contributions, a highlight of the issue), a psych top 10 from Clinic's Ade Blackburn, and the usual gizillions of reviews. Plus loads more. This will keep you busy reading for a while, though maybe not 'til the next issue is due out, in early 2009, which we're looking forward to already.
Why oh why does it seem when a new issue of this this fantastic, biannual magazine finally shows up, it's always, like, the day before we're doing a list? (Though that's better than the day after, of course.) 'Cause all we want to do is sit and read it for hours and hours, but instead we've got to write reviews instead. But, since we need a review of it too, at least there's an excuse to spend *some* time flipping through it today rather than doing other work... Ugly Things #28 is again a monster-sized (208 pages!!) installment, everything within its colorful glossy covers fully devoted to "wild sounds from past dimensions", i.e. garage, punk, psych, power pop, freakbeat, and even some prog and proto-metal, circa the '60s and '70s for the most part. There's some not-so-obscure acts covered here (with big features on The Move and The Dave Clark Five this issue, for instance) but also some bands that absolutely couldn't be any more obscure, who barely released a single 7". Some (just some) of the other bands covered in depth this ish include: The New Dawn, Roky Erickson's The Spades, The Good Feelins, Daughters Of Eve, and The Dandy Girls (an all-girl group from Norway who toured South East Asia in the late '60s!). Like we said, we haven't had time to read the whole thing yet - but we will!
So far, a few of the pieces that have caught our attention include an article about Stooges-worshipping French psychedelic punks Angel Face, an interview with shoulda been huge (or at least properly reissued) NYC one album wonders Hackamore Brick (who are back together!), a feature on "50 Reasons Not To Hate The Synthesizer" (citing everything from the Silver Apples to the Normal to, much to the writer's surprise, Uriah Heep), and a special section all about the seminal DIY fanzines of the past, including interviews with V. Vale (Search & Destroy 'zine) and Claude Bessy (Slash 'zine). Plus all the usual stuff, of course - TONS of super-knowledgable reviews, entertaining rants, intriguing ads, and few eulogies for folks (like Ron Asheton and Pretty Things manager Bryan Morrison) who've sadly passed away since the last issue went to press.
In Mike Stax's editorial, he waxes rhapsodic about some of the old school fanzines he grew up with, such as Kicks, Who Put The Bomp, Gorilla Beat, and Bam Balam, writing about how much they stoked his enthusiasm for old and underground music with information he couldn't get anywhere else, clueing him in to the existence of so many amazing, obscure records and bands, and subsequently inspired him to do Ugly Things. Well, we hope Mr. Stax really realizes that his Ugly Things itself is now just as inspirational and important of a 'zine, as far as we're concerned!
The best thing about Ugly Things' rather irregular twice-yearly schedule is that it's always a pleasant surprise when the latest issue of this magazine of "wild sounds from past dimensions" suddenly shows up here! And, somehow, it's always a day or two before "list day" so we can't totally kick back and spend as much time reading it right away as we'd like, 'cause there's work to do. And we do mean we'd need to spend time, lots of time, it's a big ol' magazine (224 pages this ish) packed to the gills with text and vintage photos.
However, since our list-work IS to review New Arrivals, and since this Ugly Things is a New Arrival, we WILL take a moment now to leaf through it... ah, maybe sit back a bit, put the feet up, settle in... whoops, better be careful, hours and hours of "lost productivity" will go by as we read about cover stars The Masters Apprentices ('60s Australian psych-pop sensations we know better in their later proto-metal mode). That article is 27 pages and it's only part 1, another of editor Mike Stax's multipart epics, to be continued next issue! Then there's several eulogies to the late Sky Sunlight Saxon of The Seeds (who passed away the same day as Michael Jackson, who gets mentioned here in Ugly Things for probably one of the only times ever on account of that). And the usual slew of obscure groups are dug up and examined, in depth - this time 'round, The Fenmen ('60s UK harmonizers with Pretty Things connections), The Reactor ('70s Mexican-American Inland Empire punk), The Nomadds ('60s Midwestern garage rockers), The Bittersweet (all girl garage from Ohio in the '60s), The Wildflower (mystical ballroom era SF "lost band"), Dentist (late '70s French punkers), and PLENTY MORE. As usual, we most often find the stories told quite fascinating, even when we've never heard a note of a band's music, nonetheless entire long gone music scenes open themselves up to the imagination, the world as it once was, somewhere, elsewhere, underground, rockin' out.
Leafing through (ok, we'll stop in a second and get back to work) it's easy to come across any number of treats, from the reprinted super-harsh one line putdown album reviews from '70s fanzine Future (a sample: "Foghat - Night Shift - The title of this LP should not include the 'F' in shift"), to the piece about recently rediscovered proto-punks the Imperial Dogs (look 'em up on YouTube!!!), to fanzine editor Phil Milstein's tale of trying to release a Nico bootleg some 30 years ago, a difficult saga which somehow manages to involve both his mom and Penn of Penn & Teller fame, as well as Nico herself of course. If we keep reading we'd find more to mention, haven't even delved into the pages and pages and pages of reviews yet, but we have other reviews of our own to write, so we'll reluctantly set aside our copy of UT#29 to pick it up again after our remaining list-duties are completed. Ah, yes, recommended. A magazine by music obsessives, for music obsessives, of almost any nostalgical variety.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Holy crap. 200 pages! And, as always, it lands here (with a weighty thud) just a day before our list. So we'll have to wait until the weekend to really delve in, but also as always we're damn excited to.
One of our favorite magazines ever, now up to its 31st fat issue, wow. If you're into almost any interesting bands of yesteryear, of the garage/punk/psych variety, you should read this magazine!! Girl groups, surf rock, freakbeat, even some esoteric prog, it's all here. (For metal bands, check out Snakepit, also reviewed this list.)
Tons of great stuff this ish, about bands both infamous (The Stooges) and obscure (The 40 Fingers). Let's see... Them, The Masters Apprentices (part 3 of a monster feature), oud master John Berberian, Wreckless Eric, Ollie Halsall, The Zachary Thaks, The Cobra Seas, The Mountain Men, The Pleasure Seekers, The Missing Lynx, Them, and others! Guaranteed each article or interview is both more in depth and more interesting than you could ever imagine.
Some of the other features that jumped out at us include a discussion of the merits of the many posthumous Jimi Hendrix records, also a piece all about the Norton Records label. And of course there's pages and pages and pages of reviews. Awesome - as always!
Oh boy. Editor / expert in chief Mike Stax and crew have done it again. Here's a fat new issue (176 pages) of our favorite magazine of ye olde rock n' roll (garage, punk, psych, power pop, and maybe a side of prog). This time 'round, there's typically in-depth, heavy duty features on a whole lot of interesting artists, some more obscure than others... Them, The Vibrators, Finchley Boys, The Sloths, Creation Of Sunlight, The Contrasts, freakbeat faves Wimple Winch, and plenty of others - including one REALLY obscure group with the amazing name of $27 Snap On Face, some Sonoma county weirdos circa '77. Along with a look at the psychedelic side of Paul Revere & The Raiders, the usual vast array of reissue reviews, the regular columns, et cetra. Oh, and a page devoted to "The 20 Worst Hard Rock Obscurities" to be avoided. And really that's just scratching the surface, as always an issue of Ugly Things requires a few solid hours of devoted study. For anyone who loves "wild sounds from past dimensions" this is sheer manna in magazine form.
Egads. As usual, our favorite magazine (a thick as a brick magazine, 224 packed pages, more like a tome!) shows up on a "list week" when we're too busy writing our reviews to do what we WANT to do, which is curl up with this new issue and enjoy all of their reviews, interviews, articles, and whatnot. That's what we'll be doing Saturday for sure, this rainy weather is perfect for that. Giving it a skim (and tearing ourselves away from it to get back to work), we can tell you that this ish is, as usual, full of good stuff pertaining to garage, psych, punk, freakbeat, acid folk, and other "wild sounds from past dimensions" as it says on the cover. Some of the contents include a 1988 interview with the late Rob Tyner, singer for the legendary MC5, a history of UK folksters Trees, an extensive, informative piece on the amazing '60s Norwegian scene, another about Napa Valley's, interviews and essays about the likes of The Sons Of Adam, The Pop Rivets, Jeff Simmons, Fire, Cedars, and as always a Pretty Things update. And, unbelievably, much more. Notably, Chris Stigliano shoves Julian Cope aside to present a "Beginner's Guide To Les Rallizes Denudes". And the 13 pages devoted to Johan Kugelberg's expert fan feature on "Punk Before Punk" is probably worth the price of admission alone, looking forward to delving into that one!
Plus of course there's dozens upon dozens of reviews of reissues...and ads and playlists and columns and rants and (sadly) obits and so much much much more, as we keep sayin'. Recommended if you have any interest in the cool, cult, collectable music of yesteryear. And copious free time to spend readin' about it!
By now, we should be able to safely assume that most AQ list-readers know who Steven R. Smith is. Not only that, but we know a lot of you are in fact big S.R.S. fans, of his solo projects under his own name and as Hala Strana, as well as for his participation in such outfits as Mirza and Jewelled Antler flagship Thuja. Certainly this should be the case after the last few S.R.S. releases. First there was his Owl album that came out a month or two ago, with his first ever vocal performance to go along with his lovely psych-drone guitar. Then two lists ago we had the cd reissue of his Anchorite album, which we made Record Of The Week in fact. And now there's Ulaan Khol. On it you can almost imagine that Steven has donned the black shades and leather jacket of the Tokyo psych underground scene, as this sounds like something that LSD-march, Up-Tight or even Keiji Haino himself might conjure. Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata Makoto too. But even then, it probably wouldn't be this cosmic and bleakly beautiful.
Suitably majestic sounding, as part of a proposed three album trilogy, Ulaan Khol I consists of nine untitled, instrumental tracks made with guitar and organ. It's a spacious drift of big fuzzy distortion and fragile drone bliss... utterly entrancing. The sort of thing that you just want to keep going, and going... well thank god there's another two volumes of Ulaan Khol yet to come! Recommended.
It may be odd to single out one component of a series for Record Of The Week, especially when it's the second of a proposed three record trilogy. It's not that we didn't love the first installment, we did very much! And it's not like the Academy Awards where we're belatedly acknowledging the first installment by rewarding the second. It might be just that we didn't realize at the time the magnificent depth and far reaching direction in which Steven R. Smith would take his latest project. And as we have heaped tons of praise on his past work, we wanted to single out this project and particularly this installment as something utterly amazing and wholly breathtaking.
Despite the tons of killer music that goes in and out of the aQ doors, it's not everyday we get an album that really lifts us out of our seats and straight into an alternate dimension. The latest release under the Ulaan Khol moniker is a celestial trip into desolate plains where the water rises and the skies are ripped open.
A prominent member of the Jeweled Antler family, Steven R. Smith has been seriously influential in defining the California psych/drone sound for over a decade. We've mentioned it in plenty of reviews, so folks gotta be by now pretty aware of Smith's extensive discography, ranging from countless solo records to his releases as the Eastern European-tinged Hala Strana or with the famed JA flagship act Thuja.
The first Ulaan Khol record, though made up of nine untitled tracks, felt like one spacious drifting piece of big fuzzy distortion and fragile drone bliss. Something like the gorgeous feedback-laden free music of Les Rallizes Denudes or others from the Japanese Underground scene. We loved it a lot, but didn't go into extensive detail about it, probably because we had also just reviewed his Owl record (released under his own name) around the same time.
On II, we hear a lot more range. There are still the big swaths of massively distorted psych heaviness, but the eight untitled tracks feel more distinct and structured. Some tracks have faster Spacemen 3-like tempos and fuller driving progressions with pummeling drums mired way deep in the mix, while others feature more calm, drifty drones made up of intimate guitar, electric violin and organ passages that conjure up gorgeous swells of luminous sound. The pieces are more varied and layered, dense yet melodic and at times more rock-ish. The majestic guitar radiance Smith manages to create is not unlike the solo work of Kawabata Makoto or Tom Carter, but here we also hear shades of Roy Montgomery, Flying Saucer Attack and even Asa Osbourne from Zomes and Lungfish (Zomes being a recent Record Of The Week too).
As with the first disc, there are no liner notes, just an abstract painted cover, this time in bleak blue-grey winter tones. And inside the sleeve is an awesome painting of a lamp-holding monk (perhaps the same skull contemplating monk from the first disc) at the mouth of a giant cave! Yes!
Strange Norwegian Black Metal band's third album, subtitled "Eight Hymnnes to the Wolf in Man". Unlike their previous record, which was an entirely acoustic folk music, this is an almost all-electric onslaught, recorded in such a (demented?) way as to make the guitars sound like giant bees. The electricity of this record is highlighted also by the way each and every track seemingly stars with the sound of their instruments being plugged in. Utter Darkthrone worship, but better!
Spooky vibes here, folks, spooky vibes. Of course, cuz it's the new one from soundtrack-ish synthesizer maven Umberto! Alienation takes things into some especially bleak and beautiful territory, turning up the ambience, doing something a little different. Yes, this could still be the soundtrack to a horror movie, but only a few tracks fully dive into the creepy, claustrophobic giallo groove Umberto usually conjures, fuzzed and frenetic. Instead, a lot of this is as blissful as it is eerie, with ethereal swirling synths and echoing beats also occasionally joined by male and female monk-like vocals, drifting and droning in the mix on certain tracks (apparently singing lyrics "inspired by condemned Russian poet Anna Akhmatova"). Some songs, like "White Light", are positively lovely; others, unsettling. All in all, Alienation is some kind of 'new age nightmare' music, with dynamics that encompass both the bombastically cinematic and the serene. A good Umberto album (as they all are, really) for fans of Emeralds, Steve Moore, or stuff on the Miasmah label.
Doubtless many movie (and music) buffs would agree that Italian '70s and '80s "giallo" (horror/thriller) cinema, from directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, had soundtracks usually as evocative and inspirational as any visual aspect of the films, soundtracks which often stand as effective works of art all on their own. The scores by prog band Goblin being perhaps best known, influencing such modern day bands as Zombi and Crime In Choir. Now here's another, utterly blatant and most excellent example of Italian giallo soundtrack worship by a current artist: Umberto!
Umberto is actually a one-man band, that man being Matt Hill, live collaborator / touring member of AQ faves Expo '70! Under his guise of Umberto, he has just released his first album as limited edition cassette and cd-r on the Sonic Mediations label run by Expo '70 mainman Justin Wright. While Expo '70 has proven to be especially adept at channelling the heavy kosmiche bliss of prime '70s krautrock a la Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Umberto is equally savvy at conjuring the dark, suspenseful soundtrack-y sounds of Goblin and the like. With, some cosmic Klaus-y krauty-ness thrown in as well. This definitely sounds like it could be an actual soundtrack, in fact, someone should MAKE a film just to use this as a soundtrack. You can certainly do so in your imagination, aided perhaps by the cinematically suggestive track titles, which include "Running Blade", "Intermission", "Dream Sequence", "Shower Scene", and "End Credits" (the only track here with vocals, otherwise it's all instrumental... and the vocals on this last track are some sort of hard-to understand, chant-like invocation). Listen with the lights off for best results.
Umberto has a heavily synthesized sound, keyboards buzzing and droning and squelching, crunchily distorted or eerily ethereal, sounding at once like ominous Gothic organ music and also spacey futuristic electronica. Mechanical drumming plods along, propulsive beats adding to the menacing atmosphere. There's also plenty of fat disco synth-bass, and we bet folks into Italians Do It Better 12"s, or Black Devil Disco Club, or even skweee would get a kick out of this too, not just Goblin fanatics... but yeah Goblin fanatics (and John Carpenter and Zombi fans too) REALLY ought to check this out! Very cool, very creepy, and even at times kinda catchy-groovy.
We LOVED the previous Umberto album, From The Grave, and are stoked that he/they/it have finally returned with another full length packed with oodles of Goblin-y goodness, just in time for Halloween!!
But the sound of the Expo 70-associated Umberto is not strictly that scary, at least not all the time, in fact, like Goblin and other '80s Italian fright-film soundtrackers, most of the scary stuff here is really just an *underlying* un-ease, a sinister suspenseful undercurrent over which more "groovy" stuff gets down. And way more groovy this one most definitely is, some serious haunted dancefloor action, or horror movie disco, or whatever you want to call it, but Umberto has for sure upped the funk/groove quotient, lacing the usual cocktail of thick, tense, pulsing synth throb, minimal motorik rhythms and heavy ominous drones with plenty of funky basslines, crunchy modulated keyboard buzz, soaring synths, chanted voices and propulsive grooves... Here and there, the sound gets all stripped down leaving just gurgly, crumbly distorted low end peppered with spaced out booming rhythms, or creepy ambient atmospheres, but the songs tend to slip quickly back into haunted shuffly rhythms, woozy horror movie atmospherics, ominous strings laced funky grooves and dark descending bass blarp.
The second side begins with one of those tracks that sounds like the music that always introduces us to the main character in all those seventies thrillers, the little girl playing with her dollies, the old woman in the garden, the sound is tranquil but subtly sinister, here it's a music box like melody, plinking dreamily beneath haunting strings, and soft swirls of creepy voice like synth, total horror movie soundtrack shivers for sure.
After that it's back to wah guitars, chiming bells, groovy Italo funk haunted dancefloor grooviness, but this time with some cool washed out M83 style female vocal textures, a shoegazey gauze over that propulsive Goblin-y groove.
If we had to pick a single song that was THE ONE here, it would probably be "Someone Chasing Someone Through A House" which sounds exactly LIKE THAT, pulsing throbbing synths, electronic squelches, deep ominous drones, dark swells, foreboding and creepy and tense and SCARY!
The album ends with an upbeat track entitled "Everything Is Going To Be Ok", all sun-coming-up, yay we survived the zombie onslaught good cheer & cheesiness. The sort of music that plays over the closing credits, or even better, over the final shot which lulls you into a sense of false security, before a decaying hand bursts through the ground, or a beast explodes from the water and drag our heroine out of the boar, some sort of shock to let you know that evil won't stay buried... which of course usually leads to a sequel, and we are definitely looking forward to the next installment of groovy Gobliny sonic scares from Umberto!
Even if we weren't already Umiliani fans, we'd have been sold on this from the cover art alone - the painting looks a bit like a still from some psychedelic science-fantasy animation, like La Planete Sauvage, and the creature in the foreground with the one big eye reminds us of a 'minion' from Despicable Me wearing a black leather/latex bondage suit! So there's that. And, there's the music - also cool and strange and not that far removed from La Planete Sauvage stuff either. This album, which was originally released circa 1980 (supposedly, though some sources state '81, and others 1976), was made by Italian soundtrack/library music composer Piero Umiliani, here operating under the "band" name Moggi. We've always loved Umiliani, best known for his nonsense hit "Mah Na Mah Na", made more famous by the Muppets. He's a 'Space Age Bachelor Pad' music maestro, and here, with drums, bass and hella Moog, gets especially spacey, these retro-futuristic ditties approaching kraut-electronica status (a la Cluster), often sounding quite ahead of their time. It's a real wondrous romp of experimental synthesizer poppiness, chock a block with quirky, groovy instrumentals, squelchy and super-catchy and synthed out to the max, with mesmeric melodies, percolating percussion and other splashes of jazziness along with the avant-garde electronics and FX. Utterly delightful.
First time reissued on vinyl, limited to 500 copies, and goin' fast - in fact, we can't be sure if we'll be able to get more at all when we run out. (Oh, and nice label name, by the way!)
Last list, you may recall, we had as one of our Records Of The Week, what was more precisely a Cassette Of The Week, a tape on the Black Horizons label by a band of sonic surrealists from Santiago, Chile known as Un Festin Sagital. In that rave review, we mentioned that Un Festin Sagital had a full-length upcoming on the Beta-Lactam Ring label - which made perfect sense, what with Beta-Lactam putting out such weirdness as Nurse With Wound reissues among other things. Well, what we hadn't realized, is that Un Festin Sagital ALREADY had a couple Beta-Lactam cd releases to their credit, that we'd somehow overlooked. So, naturally, we need to review those too. This one's their most recent, from actually just a few months ago - a sprawling double cd set, one studio, one live, packaged in nice gatefold mini-lp style sleeve.
And it's just as crazy and compelling as that tape that turned us on to 'em. We previously described UFS as a "occult prog-metal / angular post-punk / psychedelic free noise / black ambient orchestra" and that's still a good, broad description of what this experimental musical collective is up to - namely WTF? weirdness with a dark, moody vibe to it.
The first disc's epic eight-part, 22+ minute opening track, "El Nino Ateo" should thoroughly infect you with Un Festin Sagital's lysergic musical sickness - or else cause the less stout of heart and eccentric of taste to flee in terror! It's like a sinister soundtrack, part symphonic 20th century classical, part distorted industrial churn, part krauty synth throb. There's eerie Magma-esque choral parts, mumbled incantations, screams, Satanic-sounding chant (shades of Igor Wakhevitch for sure); ominous haunting stretches of avant-classical murk replete with groans and drones and sudden, stabbing piano chords... Clearly "RIO" avant-prog chamber rock a la Art Zoyd is an inspiration, but Un Festin Sagital take it to absurd extremes. You could kind of imagine this is what modern-day aQ prog faves Guapo (who also have a fine new album reviewed this list) might sound like, if only they dwelled in some far off South American mountain village, wore animal masks, and chewed on hallucinogenic jungle plants all day.
"El Nino Ateo" ranges from sheer mesmerism to utter mayhem and back again, as does the rest of this disc, the other three tracks dabbling in gentle acoustic folk ritual, exploding with spastic prog nuttery, and experimenting with atmospheric neo-classical soundscapery. And then there's the second disc, entitled La Muerte Solar, which was recorded live, but you wouldn't know that but for the occasional outburst of applause from the audience - which in UFS's strange sound-world, could easily be mistaken for just another intentional, sampled element of their collage-like compositions. Their 12+ minute rendition of "El Nino Ateo" here is a true tour de force, and the whole disc is easily the equal to the set's studio half.
At their heaviest, they kind of remind us of Orthodox or Blizaro, at their spazziest of Uz Jsme Doma or The Ex, and at their weirdest of NWW or even Reynols (whose Alan Courtis has in fact guested on one of Un Festin Sagital's other albums). Throw in some Circle at their most "operatic", and one of Tatsuya Yoshida's improv groups, roll all that into a ball and smoke it, and you've got some idea of how freaky this shit is! Not every single moment here "works" but overall, yeah, it sure does.
Hell yeah, at last! When this now-semi-legendary album was first released by UK heavy psych doom metal specialists Rise Above in 2011, it came out in an ultra limited edition of just three hundred vinyl-only copies, which proved almost impossible to come by. That first edition sold out instantly and those lps started trading for seriously ridiculous amounts of money on eBay and elsewhere. Even though, really, who the heck were Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats? Well it wasn't just the cool band name generating a buzz, the music was awesome, as we later were able to ascertain. Eventually Rise Above did a repress, of which we were able to get a few, though those were expensive too and we were never able to get enough of 'em to actually list. But, we did figure out why this record was in such demand (as we'll discuss in more detail in a moment). We also learned that Blood Lust had also come out on compact disc, but oddly enough via a small Finnish label instead of Rise Above, and again we never were able to get enough of those to list, either. But we had hope that someday, somehow, we'd be able to review this for you, 'cause eventually most Rise Above stuff gets released in the USA by licensees Metal Blade, and while its been a damn long time, we're now pleased to, ta da, finally have Blood Lust on cd at a domestic price. Record Of The Week? You bet!
So, what we thought we were in for, way back when all we knew about band was their name & label, was some lysergic sludgey doomy jamming, like maybe Electric Wizard (another Rise Above band) or UFOmammut. Which we would have been perfectly happy with, of course. But, instead, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats proved to be a lot more song-oriented and more melodic than we expected, with a kind of poppy '60s garage psych rock side to 'em, amidst their heavy fuzz-filled riffage. The singer (that's ol' Uncle Acid himself, natch, also on guitar in this power trio, and mellotron and synths too) croons his twisted tales of witchburning, black magic, and murder, in a languid whine, his voice nasally pinched and reverb effected, reminding us a bit of Kyle Thomas of aQ faves Witch (and King Tuff and Happy Birthday too by the way). His delivery lends a delicate, decadent touch to the band's brand of both despondent plod and swinging catchiness, able to render lines like "I was born a bitter man, no hopes or dreams / I get my kicks from torturing and screams / I lust for womens blood, and their evil ways / I twist my words to what the good book says" with sick sincerity -and- showmanship, in a way that is surprisingly not very much metallic, instead staying (despite the music's undeniable heaviness) more in the pop realm, though one obsessed with vintage horror films.
These rollicking, but dread-infused tunes are further full of ripping fuzz guitar leads, and lumbering downer riffs. Without a doubt, doom originators Black Sabbath are a major factor in this band's sound, but they're doing something rather different with that particular inspiration than most do. And we're also reminded of some other British '60s/'70s proto-metallers like Stray, High Tide, T2, and May Blitz, who were quite heavy but psych-pop catchy as well. Perhaps very early, very psychedelic Alice Cooper could be added to Uncle Acid's roster of influences too, we're thinking of the way the song "Ritual Knife" marries a pounding tribal beat and urgently chugging ominous riffery with glorious bursts of shining melody come chorus time.
One much more recent band that these guys also remind us of, is Swedish occult rock sensations Ghost, another act whose "pop side" is so effective as to possibly threaten their "metal cred" among the more closeminded. We'd also recommend Uncle Acid to fans of that other recent, equally retro stunner from Rise Above, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. And, like last week's Record Of The Week by Golden Void, this has that laidback classic sounding '70s psychrock vibe, immediately familiar, though Uncle Acid comes across as much more dark and sinister to be sure. And lastly, fans of Witchcraft should pay attention - we'd rank this up there with that band's celebrated Rise Above debut, we're pretty sure this is gonna be considered a classic too. We're sooooooo glad they didn't just press only those 300 vinyl copies and leave it at that!! You will be too.
This cd reissue includes a bonus track not on vinyl, which provides a nice coda to the record proper, relinquishing the fuzz guitar for acoustic strum and hand percussion, Uncle Acid doing their doom-pop-psych in a more folky style a la, say, Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Now available on domestic PICTURE DISC vinyl!
Hell yeah, at last! When this now-semi-legendary album was first released by UK heavy psych doom metal specialists Rise Above in 2011, it came out in an ultra limited edition of just three hundred vinyl-only copies, which proved almost impossible to come by. That first edition sold out instantly and those lps started trading for seriously ridiculous amounts of money on eBay and elsewhere. Even though, really, who the heck were Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats? Well it wasn't just the cool band name generating a buzz, the music was awesome, as we later were able to ascertain. Eventually Rise Above did a repress, of which we were able to get a few, though those were expensive too and we were never able to get enough of 'em to actually list. But, we did figure out why this record was in such demand (as we'll discuss in more detail in a moment). We also learned that Blood Lust had also come out on compact disc, but oddly enough via a small Finnish label instead of Rise Above, and again we never were able to get enough of those to list, either. But we had hope that someday, somehow, we'd be able to review this for you, 'cause eventually most Rise Above stuff gets released in the USA by licensees Metal Blade, and while its been a damn long time, we're now pleased to, ta da, finally have Blood Lust on cd at a domestic price. Record Of The Week? You bet!
So, what we thought we were in for, way back when all we knew about band was their name & label, was some lysergic sludgey doomy jamming, like maybe Electric Wizard (another Rise Above band) or UFOmammut. Which we would have been perfectly happy with, of course. But, instead, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats proved to be a lot more song-oriented and more melodic than we expected, with a kind of poppy '60s garage psych rock side to 'em, amidst their heavy fuzz-filled riffage. The singer (that's ol' Uncle Acid himself, natch, also on guitar in this power trio, and mellotron and synths too) croons his twisted tales of witchburning, black magic, and murder, in a languid whine, his voice nasally pinched and reverb effected, reminding us a bit of Kyle Thomas of aQ faves Witch (and King Tuff and Happy Birthday too by the way). His delivery lends a delicate, decadent touch to the band's brand of both despondent plod and swinging catchiness, able to render lines like "I was born a bitter man, no hopes or dreams / I get my kicks from torturing and screams / I lust for womens blood, and their evil ways / I twist my words to what the good book says" with sick sincerity -and- showmanship, in a way that is surprisingly not very much metallic, instead staying (despite the music's undeniable heaviness) more in the pop realm, though one obsessed with vintage horror films.
These rollicking, but dread-infused tunes are further full of ripping fuzz guitar leads, and lumbering downer riffs. Without a doubt, doom originators Black Sabbath are a major factor in this band's sound, but they're doing something rather different with that particular inspiration than most do. And we're also reminded of some other British '60s/'70s proto-metallers like Stray, High Tide, T2, and May Blitz, who were quite heavy but psych-pop catchy as well. Perhaps very early, very psychedelic Alice Cooper could be added to Uncle Acid's roster of influences too, we're thinking of the way the song "Ritual Knife" marries a pounding tribal beat and urgently chugging ominous riffery with glorious bursts of shining melody come chorus time.
One much more recent band that these guys also remind us of, is Swedish occult rock sensations Ghost, another act whose "pop side" is so effective as to possibly threaten their "metal cred" among the more closeminded. We'd also recommend Uncle Acid to fans of that other recent, equally retro stunner from Rise Above, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. And, like last week's Record Of The Week by Golden Void, this has that laidback classic sounding '70s psychrock vibe, immediately familiar, though Uncle Acid comes across as much more dark and sinister to be sure. And lastly, fans of Witchcraft should pay attention - we'd rank this up there with that band's celebrated Rise Above debut, we're pretty sure this is gonna be considered a classic too. We're sooooooo glad they didn't just press only those 300 vinyl copies and leave it at that!! You will be too.
This cd reissue includes a bonus track not on vinyl, which provides a nice coda to the record proper, relinquishing the fuzz guitar for acoustic strum and hand percussion, Uncle Acid doing their doom-pop-psych in a more folky style a la, say, Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Hammers Of Misfortune fans strap yourselves in and get ready to bask Under Satan's Sun!
A while back, drummer and leader of the No Neck Blues Band, Dave Nuss, emailed us wanting to send us a copy of his new band's first record. He thought it was definitely something we would dig. We got it, threw it on, and were blown away. Big time! Classic, epic, blackened TRUE METAL, that definitely sounded a bit like local operatic metal heroes Hammers Of Misfortune. Well, we would later discover that not only did the band indeed LOVE and draw some of their inspiration from Hammers (one band member even sports a HoM shirt in the band photo), but they were in fact fronted by singing sisters from right here in San Francisco. Weird. But it sort of makes sense. SF's fertile metal scene has not only spawned Hammers, but helped nurture East Coast transplants Slough Feg, as well as spawning a whole bunch of bad ass metal bands like Weakling, Ludicra, Leviathan, Horn Of Dagoth, Asunder, we could go on and on. Needless to say, there is no wanting for metal around these parts. SO it makes perfect sense that two sisters from SF might go digging for likeminded metalheads in NYC. Who would have thought that some of those kindred spirits would be Nuss of No Neck and legendary underground painter Arik Mooonhawk Roper among others...?
Regardless of who or why or how, this is simply some seriously epic blackened true metal. Plenty of Sabbathisms abound, the riffs go from buzzing and blasting, to classic eighties crunch, with leads soaring, and some awesomely tangled Maidenesque harmonies, the drumming is powerful but simple. The songs are subtly catchy, epic and majestic, mysterious and classic. But as with most metal bands, it comes down to two things, the riffs, which here pretty much rule, and the vocals, which Under Satan's Sun have down cold, how could they not? Two female metalheads, one able to emit a hellish demonic screech, both able to croon in perfect harmony, occasionally weaving haunting Comus-y parts that totally captivate.�
The best tracks are the ones that sort of push the boundaries, taking the obvious Maiden / Sabbath / Hammers influences, and adding weird proggy workouts and haunting seventies folkiness, "Stand Up And Fight" and "Confessing A Murder" being the best examples, both total classics, the perfect blend of classic eighties metal, seventies style British electric folk, and modern blackened buzz.�
This should definitely hold you over until the next Hammers disc. Or at least until the next Under Satan's Sun record...
We have been massively obsessed with the mysterious doom duo Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. Two musical cavemen, one wielding some sort of primitive keyboard, the other a bass tuned so low it sounds like the tectonic plates slipping. Together they weave a sprawling and expansive world of minimal sludge, an epic slow motion doom crawl, equal parts Skepticism, Thergothon, SUNNO))) and Earth. Glacial riffs that slither and lurch, moving so slow they seem to almost be standing still. The keyboards adding the occasional melodic flourish to the duo's black hole dirges.
So why would the two mysterious members of Trollmann, Belegur and Thundarr, masters of "Cosmic keys to gates unknown" and "Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come" respectively, start a new band, with the tongue twistingly Lovecraftian monicker Ungl'Unl'rrlh'Chchch, and with the exact same members?
Well how about if the glacial doomic trudge of Trollmann was just NOT slow enough, NOT low enough, what if the two members wanted to jettison melody completely, and perform strange magickal rituals with low end sound, conjuring up vibrations of doom, from deep within the center of the earth. A huge booming, cavernous, resonant rumble rife with overtones and subtle sonic shadings. A doom metal Phill Niblock if you will. Simple tones, distorted and murky, stretched into huge expanses of drone, allowed to slowly shift, various low end frequencies beating against each other. So glorious!
Well, that explains the epic opening track, but then what about track two? A dreamy expanse of pointillist piano, wrapped in reverb, a flurry of twentieth century piano abstraction dropped into a shimmering swirl of empty space. Track three makes a bit more sense combining the two, little bits of piano melody subsumed by a massive wash of low end rumble, a wave of monstrous drones, dense and multilayered, strange monk like chants buried in the roiling murk, before a haunting high end melody surfaces becoming more and more intense, building and building into a sort of Birchville style ur-drone.
The ten minute 4th track is another low end ritual, this time a simple rhythmic throb anchors a shimmering thrum, beneath which strange vocals hum and murmur, a deep dark and very ancient sounding sonic ritual for sure.
Finally, the record closes with the title track, a brief blast of doomdronedirge wrapped in white hot sheets of coruscating feedback, a snarling squall of hiss and fuzz, sizzling and buzzing, a blinding ball of sonic fire with a massive black hole center.
All bow before the mighty and mystical low end lords of Ungl'Unl'rrlh'Chchch!!
Some of you may have heard of Unholy Cadaver. But a LOT of you have heard of Hammers Of Misfortune, San Francisco's best rock-operatic political power prog metal (and more) band, featuring members of Ludicra and (formerly) The Lord Weird Slough Feg, among others. Our own Andee's tUMULt label put out their first album, The Bastard, in 2001. That's been followed by three (or four, depending on how you count, 'cause one was a double!) albums for Cruz Del Sur and Profound Lore. Their entire discography was then recently reissued by Metal Blade, who also signed the band for a new, upcoming opus.
Well, not quite their entire discography... 'Cause before The Bastard, Hammers Of Misfortune were known by another name - Unholy Cadaver. Who recorded an unreleased album back in 1997. They put out a rare demo cd-r at the time, with just three of that album's nine tracks on it, none of which sound like "demos" despite being recorded in the band's practice space. But until now, the entire hour-long recording - which includes a song called "Hammers Of Misfortune", by the way, a nearly 15 minute epic, all of side C here - has never been properly released. The always on top of it (when "it" is cult metal) Shadow Kingdom label has rectified that, and then some, with this limited, deluxe edition of what's essentially the real Hammers Of Misfortune debut, done as a double vinyl lp with cd version also included!
This is where it all started, mastermind John Cobbett & Co.'s unusual, amazing mash up of epic / traditional stylings with "extreme" metal mayhem, with loads of guitar shred, dramatic dynamics, majestic bombast, and an influx of avant garde / black metal weirdness. Unholy Cadaver's line up consisted of Cobbett (guitars/vocals), Chewy Marzolo (drums), still the core of Hammers today. They enlisted several guests for the male and female "operatic" singing parts: Mike Scalzi (of Slough Feg), Erica Stolz (of Lost Goat), and Lorraine Rath (currently in Worm Ouroboros, formerly of The Gault), who also did the cover art and logo. In some sort of quid pro quo, Cobbett joined up for a stint in Slough Feg on 2nd guitar not long afterwards, and Scalzi stayed on with Hammers for their first three albums, playing guitar live as well as singing.
The prototypical Hammers herky-jerky stop-start loud-soft songwriting style is already in full effect, incorporating glorious guitar harmonies and bludgeoning brutality both... with social commentary (and a sense of humor) hidden, or not so hidden, in the often allegorical fantasy lyrics. Signs of their origin in "abso-futurist" metalpunk band Thunderchip remain, both the presence of John's rasping black metallish (and guttural death metallish) vokills (which were dropped entirely after The Bastard), and seemingly silly (but actually serious) song titles/concepts like "Fuck The Galactic Police".
John and Chewy also do clean, sorta chant like vocals on some of the tracks, presumably written/recorded before they had availed themselves of Mike's triumphant baritone, the inimitable sound of which you'll hear here, appropriately enough, on the aforementioned epic "Hammers Of Misfortune", that's where they really become Hammers Of Misfortune! Not that the rest of this doesn't sound like Hammers, it sure does, but the male-female mock-operatic thing utterly comes to the fore, on that tour-de-force of a track (which also features a surprising amount of profanity from Rath's "caged princess" character).
We should also mention the final cut, all of side D, the nine-minute "Kloven Septum", which is more of an experimental, freaked out "noise" composition, but still metal. We expect the unexpected from 'em, but yet it's unlike much else in their discography, and actually we could do with a whole album of this, too! It and the other extreme metal aspects of Unholy Cadaver perhaps could be seen as feeding in to Cobbett's Ludicra project later on, as well.
Eventually Janis Tanaka took over the female vocalist/bass player position from Erica, and with a solid, full band lineup instituted, they relegated these early recordings to the vault, changed the name (good call) and plunged ahead into forging The Bastard... but Unholy Cadaver's long lost album was definitely more than a warm up, hearing the whole thing now we wonder why it took so long for this to finally see the light of day.
Considering that The Bastard happens to be our favorite of the Hammers albums, and this is what led up to it, a most welcome and highly recommended release! And we're guessing it's kind of limited, too. The packaging is quite fancy, a double gatefold lp, with one of the inside panels holding the compact disc version. There's also a 12"x12" insert on some sort of glossy photo-paper, with old b&w pictures of the band back then, complete lyrics, and new liner notes giving the history of UC/HoM. The cover features L. Rath's painting, originally used for the demo cd-r, bigger and better than before, 'cause it's now in full color. Oh and both the vinyl and the cd versions have been individually remastered! Nice work. Epically recommended!!!
Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
And Community Library have done a really nice job of it, the gatefold cd sleeve containing a thick 32 page cd booklet with elaborate colorful collage style liner notes by bandleader Scott "Dr. Tex Nology" Ryser, a Units manifesto of sorts, he also talks about the wild and crazy San Francisco of the '70s/early '80s era, and also there's several pages of old fliers for Units gigs at the Fab Mab and other SF punk venues... we noticed one for the Warfield too, with The Units opening for OMD and Gary Numan. Also shows with Romeo Void, Dead Boys, Soft Cell, Psychedelic Furs, Dead Kennedys, Crime, Screamers, Iggy Pop, the Police, Tuxedomoon... Definitely makes us young 'uns wish we'd been around in SF back then. (Another note about the packaging, it says copyright 2007 on the back but that that's a mistake, it's when the artwork was initially prepared, this is indeed a brand new 2009 release, with also a vinyl version upcoming as well, not sure when, though.)
This past Record Of The Week NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! There's fewer tracks than on the cd version, but at least the lp includes a download code to get mp3s of ALL of the tracks from the cd reissue. No booklet unfortunately (although it seems some of the booklet is reprinted on the cover), but there is an insert, with some liner notes, as well as an explanation for the song choice on both the cd and lp, the lack of the Units' major label material and the reasoning behind less songs on the lp. Regardless, totally essential, especially now that it's on vinyl. Here's what we said about it before:
Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
Dark, heavy Japanese guitar psych!! We love it. If you do too -- we're talking bands like Fushitsusha, White Heaven, Kousokuya, Shizuka, and grandaddies of 'em all, the deservedly-legendary, decades-old Les Rallizes Denudes -- then this new release on the Alchemy label by Tokyo's Up-Tight comes highly recommended. We reviewed their US debut release, the aptly titled Five Psychedelic Pieces, just a few months back, and have been looking forward to this new album, a Japanese import, ever since. It doesn't disappoint. If anything, a lot of this has got an even heavier, dronier edge than what we heard on the last one. Super fuzzed guitars, sad ballads, grinding distorto epics. Not to be messed with. Along with that other great up-and-coming Tokyo psych outfit with an admittedly better name whom you probably also dig, LSD-march, these guys are the heirs to Les Rallizes' black-clad, acid-fried, downer dirge throne. Drop the (figurative, laser) needle on this and soon you'll be transported to the cloudy peak of their majestic solid rock night-black mountain, where maybe you'll find a guru willing to show you how to conquer your fears and walk on those clouds... Five tracks, four in the 8-10 minute range, culminating in a final 23 minute tour de force.
This here elpee is a pretty killer proposition for any/all of you who're into heavy, heavily FX laden, super synthed-out space rock, Swedish unit Uran coming across like sorta like mutant soundtrack to a hypothetical Hawkwind Atari cartridge, if that makes any sense. Like we said, heavy, pulsing, synthesizer overlord overload. It's distorted, grinding and gritty; played with a punkish energy, gleefully weird... Space rock that sounds like it's not just from space, but is in fact performed by aliens, y'know, green or purple ones with little antennas growing from their heads, waving around as they manipulate the machines (synths) making all these sounds. Whoosh swoosh zap whirr, all knobs twisted 'til they fall off, though there are moments of melody too, like the pretty little intro to, uh, "Fatfucker" before it stutters into the more typical tripped out set the controls for blowing up your brain style stuff. For fans of Gnod, or can you imagine an instrumental Circle gone sorta Skweee, perhaps? This was originally released as a cd on Germany's stoner rock Sulatron label in 2009, now unleashed on limited (to 499 copies) "radioactive yellow vinyl" by Swedish imprint Hoga Nord Rekords. We've only got, like, 3 of 'em and aren't too sure if more will be forthcoming or not, just FYI.
We're excited to get this brand new second release from England's Urthona, bursting with more of what we termed "shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone" in our review of their first disc. The liner notes credit "all sounds, including field recordings in Devon and Wiltshire" to Neil Mortimer, he who is one man mystic band that is Urthona. Ah, field recordings. You know we love nature sounds here at Aquarius. Wind, water, uh... massive howling psychedelic electric guitar blow outs? Since when did you need earplugs for an out of doors ramble? Well, maybe you do, if it's with Urthona! After all, the cover for Urthona's first album I Refute It Thus showed Mr. Mortimer standing atop some Cyclopean stones out on a moor, posed with his Gibson Les Paul guitar thrust downwards like he was summoning feedback from the granite, and the cover of this one depicts an waterproof-anorak-wearing Mortimer again with guitar on a mossy green rock in the middle of a series of cataracts somewhere on a wooded mountainside deep in the wilds of Dartmoor. Does Neil Mortimer always take his electric guitar along on hikes? When he's hiking with his pal, druid dude Julian Cope (who took the photos), apparently so...
Thus, while woven into these tracks there are some environmental audio samples taken from Mortimer's soggy tramps about the West Country, including "footfall squelches" mentioned in the liner notes, there's also mega amounts of amped-up guitar (played through his favorite "Durham Electronics Crazy Horse fuzz pedal"). Of course, he's not really recording the guitar out in the great outdoors. But definitely when he's back in the studio making Urthona music, he's got the ancient English landscape he so loves on his mind, channelling that earth energy into waves of glorious rumbling guitar fuzz. There's moodier moments, but mainly what Urthona unleashes is an ever expanding, exploding, grinding white light distortion drone meant to be played loud, generating vibrations as physical and solid as those giant rocks and stones found on the album covers. Amidst which, once acclimated, listeners will discern melodies slowly moving, gentle and glacial. It's something like a more organic, psychedelic, pastoral SUNNO))). Remember think global, act local? Urthona thinks local, acts cosmic.
Just as with Urthona's previous disc, this one also consists of three loooong instrumental tracks, this time they are: "Urthona's Barbaric Yawp Sounds Over The Roofs Of The World" (19:06), "The Waters Of The Fen Have Brought Forth Flowers" (17:43), and "Born Psychedelic" (19:56). Each one makes you glad to be alive and appreciative of such "barbaric yawp", indeed! (At least, if you too were born psychedelic.) It's on cd-r rather than cd this time, but the packaging is still super fancy, just like that of the debut, in a tri-fold eco-friendly wallet with insert cards of William Blake artwork and various evocative quotations.
"Feedback-laden West Country psychedelic free-noise garage metal" eh? Released by the record label division of druid rock dude Julian Cope's indispensable Head Heritage website? Gotta check that out!! And so we did, and so here it is... Urthona's I Refute It Thus.
The cover of this disc bears a picture of a giant granite outcropping on a remote moor in England, beneath white clouds and a curiously pink sky. These massive, lichen-encrusted rocks have loomed over this particular Dartmoor hilltop for untold ages. If you look closely at this photograph, you'll see the figure of a long-haired man standing amidst the stones, facing the dawning sun, holding an upside down electric guitar, headstock jammed into the earth. Now imagine that his guitar is actually powered up, feeding back, plugged in somehow to the cyclopean stones, themselves both a source of earth-energy and also an obvious visual parallel to a wall of Marshall amplifiers... well, that's just about what the music on this cd sounds like!! Rock, from the rocks. (Except, Urthona use Fender amps not Marshalls... the liner notes also tell us Urthona play Les Paul guitars, and "make frequent use of the Durham Electronics Crazy Horse fuzz pedal", aha.)
There's three long instrumental tracks on this mystic silver disc... beginning with the woozy, vertigo-inducing electric strum and howl of the ten minute "Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed", which sorta sounds like the Dr. Who theme being played on primitive feedback guitar by krautrock hippies Amon Duul... nice. Track two, "The Bright Burst Of Morning" (19:34) is dronier, calmer, yet expectant with doomic potential. And finally, the third track, "Sun And Moon So Heavy" (21:44) does indeed do justice to its title. Waves of deep, grinding, spaced out guitar, so heavy indeed. Blissful at low volumes, vibrationally destructive at louder ones... seriously you need to be carefully turning this disc up! It's certainly heavy, but in an in-the-red atmospheric way that can reward a quiet listen...
The primal sheets of shrieking skree and dense distortion unfurled by Urthona's guitars (multitracked, as it's a one-man-band; Neil Mortimer take a bow) are also intertwined with pretty, folkish melodies, with also brief bouts of hand percussion or field recordings of gurgling waters mixed in... We're put in mind of the gritter moments of Steven R. Smith's Ulaan Khol I. Or perhaps a heavy Keiji Haino session, if he were channelling some cosmic acid-folk concept in his mind's ear. The other Neil (Young) and SUNNO))) could be further comparisons.
This cd comes in a unique eco-friendly tri-fold cardboard sleeve, with card inserts bearing details of art by William Blake and quotations from Walt Whitman and Albert Einstein, amongst other thought-provoking text found here. The photograph of the "Hound Tor" on the front is by J. Cope himself... The packaging, designed by like minded pagan droner and fellow Cope associate, Holy McGrail, is fantastic, except that we have preferred if the cd itself had been given its own paper sleeve. The pocket it sits in, along with the two inserts, isn't snug enough to hold it completely securely, and some minor cosmetic scuffing might occur to the disc's playing surface as a result.
Bah, but that's a minor complaint, and interferes not a whit with our enjoyment of Urthona's glorious shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone!! We love this, and a lot of you are sure to, too.
Some seasons have passed, earth energy forces have again gathered, and now we are happy to herald the return of Urthona - aka Neil Mortimer, guitar-wielding Briton from the West Country, a man who channels the pagan spirits of his native land in the way the ancients intended - with massive psychedelic electric guitar/amplifier feedback! Just ask Urthona's sometime accomplice, the archdruid dude himself, Julian Cope, he'll tell you. Or ask us. We've raved about Urthona's "heavy rural sound" over the course of several releases. For this one, Urthona conjures up a storm, seriously, that's the idea - this is a concept album about a historic storm that swept across the southern British Isles in November of 1703, or so we're told (we didn't consult an almanac). Must have been a doozy to deserve this disc, which consists of a single epic track (38 minutes and 3 seconds, no more no less). Don't get the wrong idea - this "storm" is portrayed with a lot of nuance, moments of respite, suspenseful dynamics; it's not a full-on blow-out for the duration. All-instrumental, as always, this begins with the (ominous) calm before the storm, a mix of windy, watery field recording ambience and quietly keening guitar feedbackdrone, slowly building, surging, unfurling, as the storm approaches. Mortimer's carefully collected and edited environmental field recordings lend verisimilitude, concept-wise, but it's how they blend with the howl of his guitar that gives this its amazing power, you hear the wind and rain but also what the imagination can only conceive of as celestial sounds, like sad angels singing wordlessly (don't laugh). 'Tis glorious stuff. Imagine, if you can, a Caspar Brotzmann / Chris Watson collaboration.
Even at about ten or twelve minutes in, the storm hasn't fully struck, in fact, maybe there's a break in the clouds, some sun shining through, but you know that's not going to last... no, but it's another tantalizing and beautiful feedback-sculpted ten minutes or so more, before the drones of Mortimer's guitar and ambient weather recordings truly build into storm-of-the-century proportions, at the tempestuous climax of which Mortimer's abstract axe/amp wrangling (talk about guitar "squall") is further augmented with some "destroyed drumming" (or maybe this is when the drumming really kicks in, it could have been there all along, just buried under / indistinguishable from the distortion). Better batten down the hatches if you haven't already. And then, at the end, feel cathartic peace, the (sonic) storm having washed away all cares. Altogether a lovely experience for those who dig the elements: wind, water, electric guitar.
We're always impressed with the amount of thought and care that Urthona/Mortimer puts in to his music, conceptually and compositionally - and that's carried through with its packaging every time as well. So once again, a super nice physical artifact, the disc coming in a T-shaped four-panel folding sleeve bearing color photos of Mortimer in a red anorak, with his trusty Les Paul, clambering around on WWII era anti-tank defenses on a beach in Dorset. It includes two inserts, a small hand-printed one and a larger, folded one; the latter with b&w photos of stones accompanied by some intriguing quotes.
Time once again, we're honored to announce, that we all are enabled to plug directly into the Earth's own Ur-Drone, 'cause we've got the new album from England's Urthona, psychedelic drone warriors heavily inspired, or even empowered, by the mythic natural landscapes of their rural West Country home, a green and pleasant and pagan land...
Previous Urthona missives have all contained long, epic tracks, but this one takes things further, as it's but one single piece, clocking in at 47 minutes, 59 seconds, conceptually concerned with the "elemental cyclic seasons" and patterns of weather in the Southwest of England. "Super-Heavy Hamoazian Reverie" lives up to its title, and you don't even have to know what "Hamoazian" means (The Hamoaze is a stretch of river in Devon and Cornwall, it turns out). There's field recordings from the area's moors and ancient tors woven into/buried under the hazy, echoing guitar distortion, feedback and assorted electronics of the main Urthona dude/druid Neil Mortimer - whose usual amped up, windswept guitar and synthesizer is augmented by more modular synth from prior Urthona collaborator The Asterism, as well as for the first time on an Urthona recording, drums! Though we feel like we've heard some subtle hand percussion on other Urthonas, before. The drums here, though, are more to the fore, when unleashed - while much of this is droning, drifting drumlessness, when they do start pounding the skins, additional krautrocking power is manifested, and maybe it's no surprise that one of the guest drummers here is longtime Urthona associate Julian Cope, who knows a thing or two about ritualistic rock n' roll. The other two (!) drummers are Mr. E from Cope's band Braindonor, and one Albert Snazz. We're beginning to think of the Boredoms, say circa Super Roots 5. And as always, we'll mention Ulan Khol, Keiji Haino, and maybe Neil Young a la Arc.
Cope you may remember once appeared on a SUNNO))) album, spouting pagan poetry... and while this is all-instrumental (they confine the poetry to the text found on the cd's sleeve and its inserts), Urthona could definitely (again) be compared to a pastoral SUNNO))) of sorts. This album is a sometimes blissful, but often blistering, trip, certainly meant to be played LOUD for full submission/submergence. There's feedbacky frenzies and quieter, calmer stretches too... sometimes The Hamoaze is flowing strongly, water roiling, other times it meanders gently, into an estuary with "strange eddies and weird tides", where you could certainly still slip beneath its placid surface and drown, down among the "conger eels and U-boat nets"... we're quoting here from the text that accompanies the cd, which is packaged, as with previous Urthona releases, in a handsome, eco-friendly cardboard tri-fold sleeve, with lovely photos/art, including two card inserts bearing quotations from William Blake and Fredrick Douglass.
Chuffed to get another gorgeous transmission from the pagan UK dronester known as Urthona! Previously we've enjoyed the heavy organic sounds of his J. Cope approved "shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone" via Urthona's I Refute It Thus cd on Head Heritage and Amid Devonia's Alps cd-r on Further. Now he's back, teamed up with a likeminded mysterious entity known as The Asterism, for a cd (not cd-r) on Further called Murmurations. There's two tracks here, "River Severn Bore" clocking in at 24 minutes 20 seconds and the title track, a mere 19 minutes 50 seconds... about what we'd expect, epics! Both pieces are titled after natural phenomena that even though admitting of scientific explanation, still may appear mystically significant even to modern day observers.
"River Severn Bore" refers to an unusually high wave that in ancient days inspired legends, "Murmurations" are what vast swirling swooping flocks of starlings are called, as they dance in the air, seemingly synchronized in their movements. Both titles make for excellent inspirations for the sonics here, Urthona and The Asterism's amped up guitars building buzzing drones massive enough to match such awesome spectacles, with their own field recordings captured on hikes in the English countryside mixed in perfectly, the electronic fuzz eventually morphing into a wash of rain/water sounds at the end of "River Severn Bore" ferinstance. That's the denser/darker of the two pieces, throbbing thickly, grinding drones licked with feedback, SUNNO))) and Boris fans should bow down... "Murmurations" is heavy too, but as befits its subject, displays more agile, active movement, sounding somehow exotic and raga-like, with delicate high-end shimmer from guitars and amps echoing the cries of birds from the field recordings that are also present in the mix, as is, we think, some gentle percussion... it falls somewhere between James Blackshaw and Bong, perhaps. Quite lovely -and- fuzzy.
Packaging is again a trifold "eco-wallet" affair, recycled cardstock, vegetable based inks, these fellows nature worship taken pretty seriously, in more than just the music...
Mathy, maddening, totally infectious protest rock from what's now the Brooklyn-based duo of Tom Hohmann (drums, keys, vocals) and Colin Matthews (guitar, vocals). We've had some of their hand-decorated LPs and cd-rs before, and were happy to see 'em show up on Load with this amazingly 'produced' effort. Their brand of post-hardcore art rock is hard to describe. Maybe a metallic (not metal, just metallic) Deerhoof? Their complexity and power remind us a bit of Ruins, and definitely Lightning Bolt and other Rhode Island spazz rock. Tasheyana Compost is all about rubbery spiraling grooves constructed with cheap keyboards, tinny, twangy, trebly guitar, and energetic drumming. 'Spoken' styled vocals and chants mostly accompany the music, but then in track 9 ("Pastures") some quasi-operatic by comparison vox surface -- cool. Their vibrant music is matched by the day glo pink cd cover with an American Indian drawn on it...they're down with Native Americans and other oppressed peoples, as near as we can tell from the cryptic lyrics. They kinda have a hippy punk political thing going on, I guess? Their great band name is of course a tip off. Allan says: this really freakin' grew on me. I thought it was gonna be all noisy and sloppy but instead, in it's own way, it's *tight* and catchy as heck. Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yes, just what it says. Twelve ordinary office dot-matrix printers printing ASCII files from twelve computers, networked to a server (the symphony's "conductor") indeed create a rhythmic "symphony" of familiar buzzing/clacking sounds. That conceptual gimmick alone might make this worthwhile, but better still, the vaguely techno/electronica styled music is pretty cool regardless of the unusual source. Pretty neat.
Remember that rad White Lace And Strange compilation we highlighted not long ago? Some killer late sixties, early seventies psych rock from the USA, garage bands gettin' "heavy". Well this disc, on the same Nick Saloman-affiliated label Psychic Circle, is in some ways a sequel, featuring similar bands of the era from the UK (and one Israeli band that recorded in London, to be perfectly accurate). With the subtitle "20 Gems From The Early Years Of Prog", it's billed as a collection of obscure "progressive rock" tracks... but the stress is on the rock. After all, Black Sabbath was once considered a "prog" band too. Sure, there might be some keyboards, but there's lots of raw, raucous energy here, both singers and guitarists wailing away in full fuzzed-out psychedelic proto-metal glory, when they didn't know from headbanging but knew how to boogie! Being a comp, of course some of this is better 'n the rest, but quality control is pretty high. Some faves include the punkish Helter Skelter (ex-Crushed Butler), the powerful axe-action of Israel's Jericho, and the heavy blues thud of early UFO, among other treats here to be heard from these bands (some we already knew, some new to us): Treetops, Mousetrap, Deadwood, Fuzzy Duck, Incredible Hog, Mouse, Beggars Opera, Kingdom Come, Little Big Horn, Strange Fox, Onyx, Spontaneous Combustion, Sheephouse, Pussy, Axe, Sunchariot, and Kansas Hook. The liner notes provide interesting tidbits on each artist (ferinstance, if you're as much of a proto metal geek as Allan, you'll be excited to get the track by Pussy, a later incarnation of one-album wonders Jerusalem).
Here's a cool comp of rare vintage '60s garage psych gems, that itself is a reissue of a long lost album, Acid Dreams having first been released back in 1979 on vinyl in an edition of just 77 copies, we're told. Apparently that record was compiled by the owner of a record store in Berlin, who thought that the then-current crop of new wave punk rock fans needed a lesson about the original wave of snotty, freaky, DIY "punk" from the previous decade... And indeed the nameless compiler picked some killer cuts from his collection of U.S. '60s psych singles for inclusion here, full of distortion and attitude ready to go toe-to-toe with the class of '77. Loads of fuzzed out guitars, urgent drumming and trippy lyrics burst forth across the 18 tracks here, most of 'em energetic yet moody 2-3 minute blasts, including songs from Zakary Thaks, Faine Jade, Music Machine, Mystic Tide, Painted Faces, Balloon Farm, Outcasts, Beautiful Daze, Caretakers Of Deception, Teddy & His Patches, Minds Eye, White Light, Remaining Few, Stereo Shoestrings, Unrelated Segments, Velvet Illusions (who get not one but two tracks on here, both awesome), and Vejtables (who were from San Francisco - hmm, could the spelling of their name maybe have been an inspiration to Wooden Shjips?). As you can see, all acts for the most part pretty obscure outside the collectors' realm, really. Poppy stuff, but probably too freaky for the masses, though it's not all hard acid wah wah guitar frenzies here - when not stormin' and stompin', Acid Dreams provides plenty of pleasant psychedelic swirling jangle as well.
Reissued now on cd by the same label that brought us the Electric Asylum comp listed last time, the no frills design of the original private press LP has been augmented with photos and brief liner notes on each and every track in the cd booklet.
Are you ready for some darkness? 'Cause here's a tribute to Norway's kings of darkness -- no we don't mean Emperor or Dimmu Borgir or any other black metallers, we mean those bastard spawn of the MC5 and the Village People, the one and only none-too-PC-punks
Two words: Fuck Yeah!! Three more words: Fuzz fuzz fuzz. Another word: Word.
Oh okay, let's see, you probably want to know who's on this comp, like it matters, have you heard of any of these obscure bands? From A to X: Albert Band, All & Nothing, Ciclon, Expresion, Galaxia, Ibiza Sound, Madera De Cipres, The Matches, Modification, Pinonate, Shock, Skorpis (two cuts from them), Unidades, Rudy Ventura, and Xetxu. Fortunately, the 20-page cd booklet provides useful notes (in both English and Spanish) on all of 'em, plus full-color thumbnail repros of the original rare 45 rpm vinyl sleeve art. This is another excellent addition to the ongoing bounty of -sweet- Spanish psych/prog reissues we've seen lately, from Agamenon to Zarpa... "The Spanish Trip" (another cool comp) keeps on tripping! So what are -these- Andergraun Vibrations all about? Some of 'em groovy, some of 'em poppy, some of 'em melancholic, some of 'em heavy, some of 'em funky, some of 'em all of the above... there's disco horns and proto-metal both. Prog flutes and acid rock guitar. Dramatic vocals and garage scuzz. All sorts of retro coolness in other words. What Who Will Buy These Wonderful Evils vol. III was to Sweden, this is to Spain. Oh and despite the date range of '70 to '78, twelve of the sixteen tracks are from '73 or before, and most of 'em sound even earlier (more '60s than '70s).
FYI: 'twas originally released on expensive import vinyl (in two volumes, out of print) with this cd comprising all of the 1st and about half of the 2nd volume.
Since 1991, Japanese label PSF has brought us six volumes in their essential underground psych-rock-noise-improv sampler series Tokyo Flashback. Now they've released a new compilation that's similarly cool, but broadens its geographic scope to include artists from Korea and China as well as Japan, most of whom we'd never been exposed to before. Some of the only familiar folks appear on the very first track, a live-in-Tokyo "improvised trio showdown" featuring Chinese guitarist Li Jianhong (of the noise band D!O!D!O!D! who have a disc out on PSF, and who also had his own awesome solo cd on aRCHIVE recently) teamed up with free jazz drummer Shoji Hano and High Rise guitarist Narita Munehiro, both from Japan. That's an amped-up freakout as you might expect. There's also a noisy D!O!D!O!D! track on here too, but beyond those, it's all new names to us. From Korea: Mustangs, Kim Young Jin, Amature Amplifier, and Soonie. From China: Mafeisan, Xiao He, Li Daiguo. From Japan: Kiyasu Orchestra, Sato Yukie, Yoshiteru Koga Jizo. Also there's a boy-girl Japanese-Korean project called 10, whose track "U-A-U" is a hissing, droning, throbbing backdrop to bizarre vocal expression.
All the tracks are interesting, it's an eclectic mix of experimental/underground styles, from full-on noise chaos to mellow, minimal acoustic guitar balladry, all sorts of stuff... ferinstance the energetic squawk of Kiyasu Orchestra's psychedelic free jazz exotica sits side-by-side here with the Mustangs' sixties style garage psych rock. And perhaps most surprisingly, there's even a dreamy, indie-folk cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" by Korean chanteuse Soonie at the very end of the disc.
The booklet boasts brief liner notes about each contributor, in four languages (English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese). Let's hope that this Asian Flashback is just the start of another series! PSF's antidote to all the mass market J-pop, K-pop, and HK-pop karaoke blandness out there.
Oooh. A great dub/reggae comp always brightens our day. This one had us smiling all week. As the title indicates, it comes to us from Basic Replay, the reggae reissue subsidiary of Germany's Basic Channel techno label (shared with another great imprint, Honest Jon's of the UK), who are dedicated to bringing back crucial Jamaican jams (both hits and obscurities) that align with Basic Channel's dubby aesthetic, whether in the raw dub or digital dancehall genres... Over the past few years, they've brought out a bunch of great recordings from the '70s, '80s and '90s, and this is essentially an essential sampler of the label's releases, featuring 16 killer tracks from 13 artists, all of it (except for the White Mice and Keith Hudson cuts) on compact disc for the first time, as most of Basic Replay's releases have been 12" vinyl only. So now the turntable-impaired can get in on the action - or those who simply missed the 12"s. We should have been listing them all along, but didn't, though we have stocked a few in the store. This cd provides a convenient way to get with the program.
Straight out the gate, Basic Replay proves how fierce this can get with the machine gun mayhem of Ackie's catchy "Call Me Rambo". Tough indeed. The rest of the disc's sixteen tracks are put on notice, and rise to the occasion. It's all such solid stuff, ranging from uptempo bangers like Professor Grizzly's even catchier "Fight The Professor", to mellowed out, slinky soulful cuts like Ijahman Levi's "I Am A Levi" (parts 1 and 2)... There's laidback instrumentals with echoing percussive dub effects exploding like depth-charge distortion detonations (Tenastelin's "Burial Tonight Version") and blissed-out Spaghetti Western stylings with melodious vocals (keyboard king Jackie Mittoo's "Ayatollah") and tick-tock electronic Geiger counter beatscapes (Prince Jazzbo's "Replay Version") and all sorts of other treats that fans of dub and reggae (and probably dubstep too, even though that's not what's on here) ought to swoon over.
The other names on the comp we haven't yet mentioned: Chuck Turner, King Culture, Courtney Melody, Gregory Isaacs, Andrew Bees. We're not expert enough to explain how and why all these artists fit together historically and/or stylistically, maybe they don't, but the selections on this cd flow so nicely together. Superb, recommended!
20 tracks as awesome as "Ballroom Blitz" by The Sweet?? Well, no, not quite. That would be a tall order. But this Blitzing The Ballroom comp (subtitled 20 UK Power Glam Incendiaries) does boast quite a few corkers. Stormers. Blitzes. Whatever the glam slang is for kicking ass (with bubblegum stuck to yer boots). And, like the '60 garage psych before it that so many previous Psychic Circle comps have dug into, '70s glam's definitely a genre that works great in the various artists compilation format. So many one-hit-wonders (or one-hit-wannabes), you can fill a comp with killer songs from bands (or "recording projects") that made just one or two singles, taking their shot at the top of the pops and then disappeared faster than a melting ice cream cone in the summertime heat. While The Sweet, Slade, T-Rex, and a few other greats from the glam scene have stood the test of time, so many obscurities have been forgotten. And that's what this comp concentrates on, bands with such disposable, adolescent-appeal names as Frenzy, Tiger, Panther, Screemer, Giggles, Stumpy... Nope, never heard of 'em either, but Blitzing The Ballroom demonstrates they're each worth 2-3 minutes of your time. And despite the bubblegum goofiness, they are all examples of glam ROCK. The back cover blurb accurately speaks of the "harder edge" that a lot of these selections share (hence the words "power" and "incendiaries" in this disc's subtitle). Maybe not headbanging but definitely hard rockin' with a silly grin on yer face.
As per usual with the many fine comps from the Psychic Circle label (so many we'll never get to 'em all, but cherrypick our faves), this comes complete with full-color graphics and informative liner notes on each track in the cd booklet, often tracing these acts back to their members' origins in the the '60s pop psych scene, or following their fortunes forward into the punk rock/new wave era. Screemer, for instance, featured a ex-member of heavy Hendrixy NZ rockers Human Instinct. And there's a track here by Peter Dunton, the vocalist/drummer who earlier on was a member of AQ fave proto-metal, prog-psych trio T2! (His track actually doesn't seem all that glam, sounding much like the calm, melodic heavy psych of T2, but that's cool too).
Hmm. Now that they've ventured into the glam singles scene of the early/mid '70s, can we look forward to Psychic Circle bringing us a NWOBHM comp of heavier stuff from later in the decade?? We wonder...
