Boston metalcore band Cave In was once described as being a mixture of Slayer and Radiohead. And usually the Radiohead part was just 'cause of some weird proggy electronic leanings, but the Slayer tag was the more accurate one. But now, with "Jupiter", they've gone and morphed themselves into a pop band. Seriously. And they're damn good at it. Amazingly, they still tour with the likes of Neurosis and Dillinger Escape Plan, playing their new, art-pop material exclusively! And the kids like it! Ornate, lengthy songs complete with falsetto vocals, and amazingly catchy melodies. Previously, we've enthused over Muse and Justin Clayton, as Radiohead clone bands par excellance, but this might just take the cake. But unlike the Radiohead clones, Cave-In don't seem so much like they're copying Radiohead, more like they're contemporaries, albeit way heavier and way more rocking. We're just so blown away by this band's transformation and metal-forged skill at creating this stuff. Perfect proggy pop, mixed with healthy doses of Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Yes, etc. Fans of the old Cave In might be a bit disoriented, but give it a chance. Heavy doesn't always mean distorted guitars and satanic growling.
So recommended.
Super limited ep from AQ faves Cave In. Having fully shed their metalcore skin, and become what can be best described as the heavy metal Radiohead, this ep moves even further to the proggy pop side of things. Four tracks from the their recent Jupiter record, one, very slightly reworked, and three radically different 'piano versions'. And obviously, the piano versions are the reason to
The return of Cave In. Or maybe more accurately, ANOTHER return of Cave In. We might be some of the only folks who never stopped loving this band. From their crushing metallic early years, to their epic pop prog Radiohead style flirtation with major label years, to their return to indie label / heaviness, to Cave In front man Stephen Brodsky's curious but totally compelling jangly psych pop solo records, and now this, another return that sounds a lot like the under appreciated Perfect Pitch Black record from a while back, the band melding their two disparate sides, the poppy polished side, and the chugging metal side. And fuck if it doesn't still sound great. In fact, it's the sort of thing that could, or maybe SHOULD find it's way on to commercial radio. As the climate is way more accepting of metal, and heaviness in general, and Cave In have a sort of Muse only more metal thing going on, with the right push, as we've said before, these guys cold be huge.
"Cayman Tongue" opens up with some soaring guitars, big stadium drums, and Brodsky's soaring croon, and some serious chug. We're definitely hearing some Muse, but with that distinct Cave In vibe and way with melodies, before it gets seriously crunchy and the gruff vocals come out, and things get mathy and gloriously chaotic, and then for MINUTES, the band get all spaced out and doomy, letting their guitars feedback and buzz, interrupting the tangled guitar gnarl every few seconds with a big metallic crush, before a seriously grinding intense Coalesce-style outro.
"Retina Sees Rewind" has a killer main riff, all tangled Maiden-y squiggles and crunchy chug, wild psychedelic leads, and a chorus that sounds a bit like Torche meets Rush meets Queens Of The Stone Age. "The Redtrail" is all frantic punk rock with shrieked vox and tangled guitars, Greg Ginn-ish riffage and a total old school punk rock breakdown right in the middle. And "Air Escapes" finishes things off with another perfect blend of mathy metallic heaviness and quirky psych pop, Brodsky's nimble vocals draped over angular guitars and tribal drumming, that gets more and more Voivod-ish as the track progresses which is never a bad thing.
We still love these guys, hard to understand why everyone doesn't. One of the few bands as adept at pummeling metal as they are at crafting epic arena pop, and the fact that they can somehow do both at once, only makes them that much more special.
Incredible packaging as with most Hydra Head stuff, gorgeous metallic printing on the jacket and on the inside sleeve, pressed on ultra thick vinyl, and most likely very very limited.
Brutal but occasionally beautiful metallic hardcore, for fans of Coalesce, Deadguy and that ilk. This has been described as a mixture of Slayer and Radiohead (!) and I can almost see why. Andee approved.
Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff.Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it...
Cavendish Sanguine is the work of Fflint co-mastermind Barry Williams, and is certainly the least abrasive. But that's not to say it isn't harsh in its own way. Huge swarming walls of buzzing and humming, dissipate into sublime, murky low-end atmospherics. Dark pulses and repeating figures (ala Charlemagne Palestine) slowly become less and less cohesive until they too begin to drone and hum. This one is definitely for the drone minded among you. Fans of Jonathan Coleclough, Andrew Chalk, Mirror, etc.
Another installment in Fflint Central's campaign to take over the world. Or if not the world, to at least annoy the fuck out of your neighbors! For those of you just tuning in, Fflint is a small cd-r label run by a couple of guys in the UK, who manage to put out some of the best experimental electronica we've ever heard. I'm still amazed that Warp or Lo or someone hasn't just snapped up
Full length number two from the mighty Cavendish Sanguine (1/2 of the demented team that run the awesome UK fucked-electronic label Fflint) and it's just as good as we've come to expect from everything they put out. CS was always the moodiest, least
So good.
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There's a fancy, shiny die-cut Pushead artwork cover on this disc, thanks to it being on Pushead's label - that's the first thing you'd notice. Put it on, and the visuals are obliterated by the seriously heavy south Florida sludgecore the band kicks out, ala EYEHATEGOD meets early Corrosion of Conformity. This gets the Andee seal of approval.
They just don't make bands like Florida's Cavity anymore. Or I guess maybe they do, but now they just make 5 or six bands out of the ingredients that made up Cavity back in the day. Not to sound like an old man, but these days most bands have 'A SOUND' and they stick to it. Cavity on the other hand were pretty tough to pigeonhole. Sure they were heavy. And they were metal. But also punk. Sorta grindy too. They tended toward the sludge-y end of the sonic spectrum, but in the middle of some sub Sabbath dirge they'd explode into a furious thrashing grind only to immediately slow back down to some impossibly glacial Khanate like crawl, complete with tortured shrieks, and buzzing droneguitar.
This record, originally recorded way back in 1997, sounds as fresh as it did a decade ago. Someone joked recently that super hyped duo No Age were punk rock for people who had never heard punk rock before. Which is not entirely fair to No Age as they are an awesome band, but there is some truth to the fact that lots of bands these days borrow pretty heavily from the past, without a lot of fans realizing it. No Age are kick ass and wild and fun, but they're not necessarily reinventing the wheel. That's also true with a lot of heavy bands these days. If Cavity were bunch of kids and Laid Insignificant was a super limited cd-r, or a one sided etched 12", labels would be lined up around the block to put something out by these guys, kids would be losing their shit. But just because this record is ten years old is no reason they still shouldn't. This is epic mindblowing heaviness. Furious and freaked out, sweaty and brutal and visceral. Elsewhere on this list Allan talks about Vincent Black Shadow in terms of sheer blown out sweat soaked pure rock and roll power. The same could be said about these guys, just leaning a little more toward the extreme side of the sonic spectrum. Back in the day, no band could touch Cavity live OR on record, and listening to them again, it seems like nothing has changed. The guitars are massive, the riffs incredible, heavy and melodic and thick as shit, the drums HUGE and pummeling, the songs super catchy, even when they're all tangled into buzzing blasts, or sprawled out in huge black oozing pools, the hooks remain intact. And vocalist Rene Barge has the wickedest raspy howl this side of Eyehategod. About as EMO as that kind of voice can get. Which also keeps these songs from turning into wanky riff fests. These are SONGS, dark and dense, complex and hypnotic, groovy and crushing, utterly headbangable for sure, certain to fill a pit in the blink of an eye, but at the same time, musical enough to be serious headphone bliss for the hard and heavy.
Not sure what else to say. These guys ruled. And still rule. This just proves it all over again.
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Second album of heaviness from these Florida sludge punk metallers, for fans of EYEHATEGOD, Deadguy, etc. Classy.
With this 1998 album, Cavity's Sabbath-fried sludge from the swamps of Florida really earned them their rightful place in the pantheon of heaviosity peopled by the likes of the Melvins, Eyehategod, Boris, and Electric Wizard. We liked 'em already, but this record stood above and beyond. Sheer HEAVY pummel, riff repetition chug fulla feedback and nasty vocals. There's quiet respites now and then, making the monster riffage even more monstrous. Definitely the kind of thing that just takes you over, relentless, submersive, and hypnotic. So, we can't believe we never listed this before! It was a HUGE fave among a bunch of us here when it came out on Man's Ruin a few years ago. It's been sadly out of print ever since that label folded, but now Hydrahead has stepped up and reissued a remixed version, complete with new artwork/design and what appear to be 2 new tracks (but, one's missing -- what happened to "Almost Blue"?). So apparently even if you have the Man's Ruin version, you've gotta buy Supercollider again. But this is one of those records you *would* buy again, it's that good! And if you don't have this already, and you like heaviness, GET IT. Cavity's best album (though their last one, On The Lam, was pretty great too). Thanks Hydra Head for giving us the chance to recommend this, again.
Colorado stoner-math-grind band's sample-filled, mind-melting 2nd album.
It's hard to imagine that a bunch of semi-pro pot-smokers could motivate themselves to produce music this technical, fierce, and over-the-top insane, but they did. This ain't your typical "stoner rock" that's for sure -- although there are some weighty breakdowns of riffed-out doom, Cephalic Carnage's general modus operandi puts 'em at the top of the fast n' tricky league with the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan, Coalesce, Meshuggah. Heavy metalcore mayhem w/ grunting death metal vocals, hypnotic fusion-esque guitar figures, post-rock dynamics, random electronic noises, major drum beat-downs, cryptic samples, and hyper-shred musicanship. (And some surprises we won't mention.) Anyone into metal that's avant-garde in its complexity and brutal in its execution -- the above mentioned, and also Mastodon, Gorguts, Dying Fetus, Wicked Innocence, Cryptopsy, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, etc. -- probably already knows about these guys, but if you don't, you'll be glad to get to know 'em! Metal cluttered with lyrical references to the cannabis leaf might not seem so brainy, but with this, their third and best full-length album, Cephalic Carnage prove they're possibly the geniuses of the genre. They're kinda the anti-Electric Wizard, if you know what we mean, though of course we love the even-heavier Wizard's much simpler, slow n' low odes to the leaf as well -- and both bands transcend the cannabis-connection to hook those of us just interested in the music, anyway.
Besides having probably the coolest/stupidest band name ever, Brooklyn skate punks Cerebral Ballzy return with another killer clutch of songs they claim to be about more high minded topics than their first record (chicks, skating, puking, etc.) but a quick scan of the song titles reveals, they haven't pushed the subject matter too far, fake I.D.'s, skating, fast food, and chicks, all still seem to be the focal point, but what has changed is the sound. That first record was a dizzying blast of short sharp punk rock in the style of the old school classics, equal parts Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, but this time around the band have gotten downright poppy, injecting some serious power poppiness and loads of hooky melody into the jams, resulting in some seriously addictive, and seriously poppy post punk, that ends up ultimately being a lot more more sonically satisfying than that first record. More original for sure, a cool hybrid of that feral punk energy with more actual songsmithery. The tracks are longer, the sound is much more lush and well produced too, but more importantly, the songs themselves are killer, essentially pop songs in punk clothing, and we're not talking the dreaded pop punk, we're talking pop flecked punk rock, of noise pop, or fuzzy pop, or punkish pop, whatever you wanna call it, the vibe throughout touches on classic power pop of the past, post punk too, and while there are moments of straight up punk rock pound, for the most part, those parts are woven into what is essentially a killer batch of punky pop that should have fans of other like minded outfits like the Zig Zags, The Shrine, Hot Lunch and the rest, freaking out big time.
Killer debut of swaggery, gothy murk-punk / noise rock from these East Coast knuckledraggers, whose sound seems to channel everyone from the Stooges to His Electro Blue Voice, Slug to Pussy Galore, Unwound to Cop Shoot Cop. Shambolic and chaotic, wild and unhinged, a sort of bastard blooze, with loose-limbed octopoidal drumming, filthy guitars, howled feral vox, all recorded super hot and in-the-red, lurching from wild almost psychedelic freakouts, to doomy, dirge metal creep, some moments smack of classic glam rock (a la Hanoi Rocks, Smack) but doused in distorto-noise and rolled in dirt and broken glass. Even at its noisiest, some killer melodies and surprising hooks surface throughout, moments of extreme poppiness here and there, but almost always buried beneath an avalanche of crumbling distortion, strangled guitarnoise, flurries of drum damage, psychedelic squalls, out of which emerge some seriously kick ass and weirdly groovy sludge punk not to mention some unlikely and impossibly catchy, dirge-gloom noise pop. Killer stuff.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!
The one, the only, the...fucking...Champs! After three years, finally we get their second album (called "IV" on account of the couple of cassette releases that preceded "III"). Ok. Here's the run down, for those who do and who don't know the Champs (and to know them is to love them): they're a trio, they have two guitarists very interested in harmonies, but no bassist, they have song titles like "These Glyphs Are Dusty" and "Thor Is Like Immortal", they play metal but pass it off as indie rock in order to be popular (hey, they're on Fucking Drag City), and they are primarily an instrumental band. Oh, and they have lots of self-imposed problems with their name, always worried about being confused with those "Tequila" oldsters. This time, they're the FUCKING Champs (I prefer: The C'fuckin'hamps myself), but you've probably run across that amazing "III" record by C4AMP5, it's the same band of course. So, how's the new album? Well, it rules. It's a lot shorter than "III" (which was a double LP for goshsakes) at 38 minutes, and pretty much each and every one of those minutes is packed with Thin Lizzy/Maiden/Metallica/Van Halen lovin' genius. There's a lot less of the techno keyboard interludes that they did on "III", this has its gentle moments but none of that Trans Am-ish stuff. (Although it is on current heavy rotation in Windy's 1980 Firebird Trans Am [http://aquariusrecordsSF.com/windyscar.html], hey! ) It's also a bit poppier, on the whole. And in another brilliant move the Champs make you wait until the very last song ("Extra Man") to hear vocals. Drummer Tim Soete's vocals and the catchiness of the tune are certainly manifestations of their Thin Lizzy worship, but, being the Champs, even this vocal cut has a lot of instrumental sections, including a lengthy bit in the middle that seems dropped in from a hypothetical black metal math rock record. You'll be playing it over and over again, along with the rest of the disc. The Champs are probably the best (=least boring) post-rock band in the world, 'cause they're in fact a METAL band.
(And let's face it guys, if you're not metal, then you're a novelty act...but if one indie rock kid gets into Thin Lizzy or Carcass 'cause of The Champs, then more power to 'em!) Recommended, if you hadn't guessed! The perfect back-to-school rock soundtrack.
The new project from Joe Pernice is just as pretty as you'd expect from the former frontman of both Scud Mountain Boys and the Pernice Brothers. With ample doses of Leonard Cohen, Joe Jackson, and Elvis Costello, this is more 'orchestrated' than any of Pernice's previous work, with warm strings adding fullness to the sound. Also features a delicate New Order cover: "Leave Me Alone".
Gorgeous double lp reissue of Charalambides' amazing 'Historic 6th Ward' record, until now only available on cd. And this reissue isn't just for vinyl lovers, as the cd is long out of print -and- this lp version adds 7 extra tracks not found on the cd. Charalambides play hazy, dreamy, spaced out acid-drone folk, with ethereal female vocals, using minimal instrumentation and lots
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Two cds of off kilter, screaming fastcore. This collection is everything ever recorded by these crazy kids from Dekalb Illinois. Cd one contains 96 songs, in chronological order, from their stumbling retarded hardcore roots, to their emergence as the reigning kings of absolutely pummeling powerviolence. Disc two is all unreleased stuff, including a really long movie, that contains 30 second blasts of CB live intercut with scenes from actual Charles Bronson movies. With truly comprehensive and completely illegible packaging. Absolutely amazing. Essential for fans of Crossed Out, Man Is The Bastard, Drop Dead, etc.
Whenever we hear some pounding death metal, or blasting thrash metal, sometimes even some grim black metal, the one thing that occasionally wears on us is the non-singing vocals, whether they be gurgling cookie monster vocals, or hysterical hellish shrieks, or demonic grunts, we sometimes can't help but wonder how much cooler the band would sound with an ACTUAL singer.
So the other night we heard this blasting thrashing heaviness, which sounded pretty damn good, somewhere right between classic Maiden styled power metal, and something much more thrashy and aggressive and extreme, and then the vocals came in and we were knocked out, totally soaring classic clean metal vocals, actual singing, like Maiden or Judas Priest, which is a particularly apt comparison as the vocalist in question turned out to be none other than Tim 'Ripper' Owens, who did once front Priest, but is now fronting the awesomely titled Charred Walls Of The Damned, definitely his best gig in ages.
But there's more weirdness to the story of CWOTD... Drummer Richard Christy, who has played in a million bands, including Iced Earth, Incantation, Death, Control Denied, and the pitbull fronted death metal band Caninus(!), had pretty much given up music for comedy, and eventually ended up on the Howard Stern show, where he's become infamous for some seriously fucked up and funny prank calls. Not sure why he decided to start playing again, but he gathered a pretty stellar lineup, with Ripper Owens, bassist Steve Di Giorgio (Sadus, Death, Iced Earth, Testament, Autopsy) and guitarist Jason Suecof (Capharnaum, Evince, and umm, Crotch Duster), and the record these guys have come up with rules. That is if you're into classic metal, Dio, Maiden, Priest, imagine that sort of band, but supercharged, a little heavier, a little faster, with more insane technical shredding, but still super catchy, with epic riffing, blasting drums, that classic eighties metal sound, but updated, although only a little. We're particularly reminded of more modern power metallers like Blind Guardian, or especially Lost Horizon.
Charred Walls Of The Damned is quickly turning into a new favorite, we've never really lost our love for this stuff, and hopefully you haven't either, check out the sound samples, should only take a few seconds for you to figure out if this is for you. Majestic, dramatic, hooky, and super heavy. And thus, absolutely recommended.
Includes a bonus dvd featuring a documentary about the making of the record (which we haven't had a chance to watch yet)...
Another gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled artifact from Table Of The Elements. This time chronicling, albeit in edited form, the career of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose carreer seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glen Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway. Plenty to take in here. An amazingly comprehensive booklet with notes on each piece as well as a fascinating artist's diary that Chatham kept during the seventies, eighties and nineties. And three discs chock full of some truly gorgeous music. The interesting thing, to me at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, the tracks here sound a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetetive intros build and build, until the band launches into propulsive Krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams. There are also some pieces for multiple horns that are really gorgeous, repetitive and woozy. Militaristic drums underpin seasick melodies over rumbling low end bass drones with the horns playing a warbly, wavery melody over and over. Reminds me of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB's. The first disc though is worth the price of the box alone. The entirety of disc one is taken up by the piece 'Two Gongs", where two huge gongs are beaten, rubbed, bowed, struck and shaken to produce an unbelievably rich, rumbling, moaning drone, with overtones that shift restlessly and endlessly changing the emotions of the piece every second. Dark and langorous, deep and powerful. Fans of the recent Karen Stackpole gongs 12" we listed a few lists back will love this, as will fans of Flynt, Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone. But like we mentioned before, the other two discs may also appeal to adventurous post/pop rockers into Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore as well as folks into krautrock/free rock/space rock.
MPEG Stream: "An Angel Moves Too Fast To See - Prelude" [/audio/chathamangelprelude.m3u]
To truly understand our love of this band we have to go WAY back. Before they even existed in fact, to a time where we were all loving a band called the Replacements. Not that we don't STILL love the replacements. But back in the late eighties, the Replacements were everything we wanted in a rock band. Heavy, noisy, sloppy, drunk, wild and catchy as hell. But, then we discovered Soul Asylum, who had the same sort of raggedy rocking Midwestern charm, but who were a little more punk rock (having started out as a band called Loud Fast Rules after all) and with songs that were a little more fucked up. Sort of like a 'weirder' Replacements. But there was another step after that. One that probably only a handful of folks took. Sure we were loving Soul Asylum, but we were still longing for something a little heavier and weirder and more fucked up. Which was to be found in a little band called Skunk, who had a couple records on TwinTone near the end of the eighties, after which they disappeared without a trace.
Which is a damn shame. With all this indie rock crate digging going on lately, someone should definitely grab those two Skunk records and stick em on a single disc and reissue them RIGHT NOW! The Skunk song "(I'm Such A) Chump / (To Be The) Chump" is like the "Freebird" or "Stairway To Heaven" of indie rock. Super long, tons of parts, completely spic and packed with raging punk rock riffs, sweet indie jangle, Maiden-ish harmony guitar leads, and a super bad ass raspy vocal. But what does all this have to do with Chavez? Well, one third of the long lost Skunk eventually ended up in Chavez, and we can't help but hear some of what we loved so much in Skunk, in the much more modern and angular, but no less indie and jangly Chavez.
So here we have the ultimate, and as far as we know, absolutely comprehensive, Chavez collection, gathering up both the albums, Gone Glimmering and Ride The Fader, all the b-side tracks from every single, an unreleased studio track, two videos, and a tour documentary, TWO massive books with all the art from the albums, the singles and tons of extra liner notes and photos. We did list the two Chavez records a while back, two records we loved but that predated the AQ list, and even then we thought about making them records of the week, but they were nearly a decade old, so it seemed a little strange. But now with this deluxe double cd / dvd reissue set, the kind folks at Matador have presented us with the perfect opportunity to make -both- records record of the week AT ONCE! Which makes perfect sense really. Gone Glimmering and Ride The Fader are the perfect one-two punch. Two discs of thick angular guitars, strange start stop riffing, a sort of indie rock AC/DC. Catchy and heavy, but so subtle and jangly and pretty weird too. We love them both equally, so this set is a godsend. But let's dip into the reviews of the individual records for more on just how dang great these discs really are.
Gone Glimmering: Chavez were hardly unknown, or even underground -- this record was released on Matador after all -- but they were one of those bands that just seemed to sort of slip under everyone's radar, which is unfortunate (or perhaps for the best) as they could've easily been massively huge MTV stadium stars next to the likes of Nirvana and Soundgarden. They had the heaviness and the catchiness that came to define grunge bands of the time, but Chavez's approach to song-writing was still idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable -- they have a way of just having the guitars and drums going, the guitars playing a simple ringing repetitive not-quite harmonic, building an eerie sort of drone until the bass finally cuts in, leveling buildings and setting the groove. This unique separation of instruments on tracks like "Break Up Your Band", "The Ghost By the Sea" and the minor-epic closer "Relaxed Fit" creates the perfect counter-point of tension for the eventual explosive cohesion when the four members coalesce into an insidiously catchy chorus. And then there's "Pentagram Ring" -- the best song Nirvana never wrote and one of the all-time catchiest jump-around-and-smash-your-bedroom-to-shit teenage angst anthems ever!
Ride The Fader: This 1996 album from Chavez is a decidedly mellower affair than the noise-drenched assault of their riveting debut Gone Glimmering. Ride the Fader is a logical and dare we say more mature follow-up, with better and almost heavier production than before. Now when we say it's mellower that's not meant to imply lazier or less intense, instead, the band has loosed some of its Nirvana-inspired grunge trappings and opted for a more patient and understated tone, mixing menace and melody not unlike a heavier Slint. Not to say that the quartet can't still kick out the super whacked-out feedback fuzz on such house-levelers as "Tight Around the Jaws" and the epic harmonic heaviness of "You Must Be Stopped", once again leaving their most massive riffage for the mighty album closer. But mostly these are elegantly pretty, finely crafted and astutely affecting songs that stand alongside other practitioners of 'slow rock', from a band interested in both the subtle hook and blown amps. If mixing Floor, Low, Slint and Nirvana makes sense to you, this record has everything you want.
So there you have it. Anyone who missed out on Chavez completely are in for a big ol' treat. And fans of the band will absolutely want this too, remastered sound, tons of liner notes, all the singles tracks in one place, videos, an unreleased song, plus you won't have to feel too bad about rebuying 'em as this double cd / dvd set is priced like a single cd!
Hot on the heels of the totally mind blowing Orient reissue comes another Don Cherry gem that was originally released in 1971 only in Japan and that has been totally unavailable for years. Reissued on cd and gorgeous double lp, the line up for this record is the trio of Cherry, Johhny Dyani and Okay Tamiz. The first track, Blue Lake is one of the most gorgeous pieces of music I have ever heard. Mournful, solo flute, dark and Eastern tinged. With shakers and bells and hand drums that get more and more vigorous as the track progresses. Brief but really really poerful. Track two is a massive 30 minute epic, that's all over the map. Co-written by Tamiz and Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) "Dollar And Okay's Tunes" sounds like a huge medley, and could well be judging from the title, from skittery free jazz to spastic fusion to tribal soundscapes to sinister filmic instrumentals to almost gospel like sections complete with chant-like vocalisations. The final track, East, also clocks in at about half an hour and is a wicked rhythmic workout. Drums and hand drums and other percussion, along with a throbbing thrumming bassline, lay the foundation for Cherry's chanting vocals. The song swings through different moods and methods, squealing free jazz skronk, dark and hyper minimal drones, Santana-ish fusion/rock, crazed drum freak outs, but always returns to the dark and tribal mood that started things off. Blue Lake is a classic as is the also reissued Orient. Buy them both.
We don't believe this is a new reissue, but it's one of our favorite jazz records ever, a real classic, and this is the first time we've been able to get a bunch to list. Perhaps it's even our most favorite Don Cherry album, which is saying a lot since there are so many of his records we love (this is the third we've made a Record of the Week) and there's been much spirited discussion around here between this one and Orient, a former record of the week from, egad, eight years ago! But hell, they're both really amazing so if you dug Orient, or the collaboration with Latif Khan we made Record of the Week a year ago, you'll definitely want to get this, and if you have no Don Cherry in your collection, you might as well start right here. Why we've never been able to list this before is a huge mystery, but let's just make up for lost time and tell you why this is so great.
Released in 1975 on the A&M label, Brown Rice is just 4 songs clocking at about 39 minutes. It's as focussed as Orient was sprawling, mining the same African, Indian, and Arabic influences, but in much tighter and dynamic, almost rock-oriented arrangements. Penetratingly deep on a spiritual level but also engaging and propulsive in its accessibility, Brown Rice is a record that gets right to the point the second the opening electric piano riff and female wordless singing of the title track begin. With wah'd out guitars and electric bongos building up into a groove, this is Cherry at his funkiest with ghostly trumpet shrieks off in the background, vocalised rhythm syncopations and Charlie Haden's underscoring bass swirling around Cherry's whispered chanting. "Malkauns", the longest track at 14 minutes lays down a lackadaisical vibe with tamboura and bass slowly unfolding a wide ground for Cherry's plaintive trumpet to eventually arrive and build up momentum with Billy Higgins' drumming pushing the proceedings upward and outward, eventually floating down back to earth. The third track "Chenrezig" begins deep and solemn with bass rumbles, chimes and Cherry's low and shaman-like vocals sometimes delving into Tuvan throat level buzz and whispering, augmented by high piano tones and lilting trumpet trills before the energy unleashes, not so much in a blind fury as it is a concentrated and feverish ritual extraction of sound. The final track, "Degi-Degi" brings us back to the driving rhythms and grooves of "Brown Rice", with Cherry's whispered chants and some of his brightest and most lyrical trumpet playing really feeling the space.
We can't help but wonder how much of Cherry's soundtrack work for the film Holy Mountain had an influence on his direction for this record, as Brown Rice is that rare hybrid of jazz, rock and film score, one we could easily see visualized on film. In the same line as Bitches Brew, Herbie Hancock's Sextant, or the recent Love Cry Want reissue, but also with the same sort of deep spiritual core we treasure so much in records by Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra. Essential!
BACK IN STOCK! We thought these Charly BYG/Actuel reissue cds were gone forever, but lo! here they are again. Dunno what's up, but get 'em while you can. This disc features the duo of Don Cherry (pocket trumpet, piano, indian flute, bamboo flute, voice, bells, percussion) and Ed Blackwell (drums, percussion, bells) doing some pretty incredible "pan-ethnic jazz outness" thing, two LPs all recorded in one day (August 22nd 1969) in Paris France. We like this one a lot. Thanks again to Charly for making these rare albums available again (again).
We rave about jazz legend Don Cherry as often as we can. Every reissue has us all in a tizzy. In the past we made his mind blowing Orient an aQ record Of The Week. And in retrospect, we probably should have made the Blue Lake reissue a ROTW as well. Cherry was continually pushing the boundaries of jazz, exploring and helping shape free jazz, and incorporating all manner of world music into his ever changing and expanding sound.
This disc, recorded in 1978, found Cherry once again reimagining the sound of jazz, and challenging unadventurous jazz fans, by teaming up with legendary Indian percussionist Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan. Cherry had experimented with Indian music before on past recordings, but this was the first full on collaboration. Two sides, one featuring Cherry compositions, accompanied by Khan on tablas, the other side, Khan compositions, the tablas more of the driving force, the sound distinctly more Indian classical, with Cherry accompanying Khan.
The untitled opener finds Cherry and Khan covering Ornette Coleman, Cherry's former band leader. It's a dark brooding shuffle, all warm keyboard grooves, and the tablas, how they change everything, the skittery rhythms, but also the strange rubbery low end, the song eventually morphs into a Cherry original, and gets a bit proggy with wild trumpets and thick organs, the tablas still driving the whole thing. It's the next track where it gets really interesting though. A sprawling rhythmscape, the tablas doing double time, the rhythm, and a pulsing sort-of-bass line, Cherry delivering abstract almost scat like falsetto vocals, dark and drone-y and spaced out and minimal, peppered with occasional bursts of wild horn skronk, but for the most part, a swirling tripped out stretch of throbbing subtly psychedelic jazz minimalism. The final Cherry composed track is another gem, all glistening chimes and high end tones, flurries of piano, distant horns, whooshing effects, and of course the skitter of the tablas, more melodic almost that rhythmic on this track. Cherry also introduces some flute, which gives the track a sort of freak folk vibe, really!
Khan's side is distinctly less jazz. The tablas way up in the mix, his dexterous rhythms totally spellbinding, intricate, and again melodic, Cherry offering up strange bits of percussion, muted keyboards, very abstract and so cool. The final track, a sprawling 13 minute epic begins with just organ, drifting in space, until the tablas come in, and holy shit, even more intense and intricate, wreathed in a bit of reverb, and slipping from loping grooves to wild bursts of impossibly complex rhythmatism, the organ, a constant warm whir in the background, and the timbre of the keyboards, continues to infuse the track with a distinctly prog feel. Making this some sort of abstract classical Indian jazz prog? Whatever you want to call it, these are some gorgeously hypnotic and meditative sounds. So very recommended. Fans of the Necks might get into this too, similarly dark minimal vibe, especially the Khan tracks, and well worth checking out for the rest of you, even if jazz isn't normally your thing.
Long awaited reissue of this legendary 1973 lp, featuring jazz trumpeter/composer Don Cherry and legendary composer Krzyztof Penderecki, remastered with complete liner notes including an interview with Penderecki. Awesome mix of wild free jazz and 20th
Austin, Texas weirdos the Cherubs are responsible for two of our favorite early nineties noise rock classics, 1992's Icing, and 1994's Heroin Man, which was released right after they broke up. That's right, broke up. 21 years ago. But this is the age of rock and roll reunions, when it's easier to think of bands that HAVEN'T gotten back together. And while we all have wish lists of bands we'd love to see play again (The Cows, Lubricated Goat, Dazzling Killmen, Slag...), probably a lot of bands on those lists already did just that: Slint, Killdozer, Failure, Swervedriver, the Grifters. Hell, some of those bands didn't just get back together for reunions, they actually made new records, and in many cases, those records are as good as anything they recorded back in the day.
Which perhaps surprisingly, is precisely the case with the Cherubs' new one. For a band that was a gloriously chaotic hot mess the first time around, you might think they would have trouble conjuring up the same energy at middle age, as they did in their prime, and to be fair, 2 Ynfynyty might be a bit more restrained than either Heroin Man or Icing, but really not by much. And the big changes are actually for the better. For one, the songwriting is killer, like proper pop hooks and real singing, positioning themselves closer to, say, the sludge pop of Torche, fusing melody to bash and howl, and the results are pretty fucking spectacular. Opener "Sandy On The Beach", is not only heavy and buzzy, but will get stuck in your head like crazy. Some of the tracks do get a bit more wild and psychedelic, the almost crooned vox on the aforementioned opener transformed into keening wails, but inevitably the sound slips right back into some impossible and improbable poppiness, "Monkey Chow Mein", is downright dreamy, with its vocal 'ooooohs', and zoned out fuzz guitar, the wailing vocals perfectly complementing the stonery swagger, sounding sorta like a noise rock Flower Travellin' Band, hazy, hypnotic and blissfully heavy, while "Cumulo Nimbus" (Longmont reference perhaps?) sounds like under appreciated grunge second stringers Love Battery gone noise rock shoegaze. A lot of the record sounds like some unlikely hybrid of the Melvins and Led Zeppelin, which obviously is a seriously good thing, and the final two tracks add a confusional coda to the proceedings - "Party Ice" is all bass driven distorto pop, with some almost Southern rock styled swagger, which gives way to weirdly sensitive closer "Sunday Mondays", which is straight up British Invasion strum and croon, wound in a cloud of distorted guitar squall, sounding not unlike some strange, but beautiful Guided By Voices outtake.
Weird and wonderful, And a pretty perfect return to form, the kind of comeback most bands can only dream about. Here's hoping we don't have to wait another 20 years for more!
This is Vic's fourth album, and the one we think oughta be a big hit. Some of the most bittersweet heartfelt songs you'll ever hear.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We pretty much have a standing order for anything that PlusTapes releases. Much like Mississippi, PlusTapes has become the sort of label folks collect, which as we've mentioned before is pretty remarkable for a label so young. But so far, almost every release we've gotten from PlusTapes has flown out of here. And like Mississippi, they've also decided to dabble in more contemporary sounds, along with their ambitious reissue campaigns. Supporting their local scene, while paying homage to the past. Such is the case with these two latest releases, both limited to 100 copies, and we got less than 20 of each.
PlusTapes really couldn't get more eclectic. Indonesian pop, surf music from Singapore, dramatic cabaret folk from former industrial icons, Peruvian garage rock, and now thrash metal from Chicago. Hell yeah!
The appropriately named Chicago Thrash Ensemble are a furious thrashing four piece hell bent on wreaking utter musical havoc, blazing riffage, furious drumming, lightning speed tempos, raspy glass gargling vocals, some little bits of shred here and there. All recorded super raw and lo-fi and in-the-red like some lost eighties demo, what more do you need to know. How about it, the tape is blood splattered (okay, maybe it's red paint, but still!), the covers feature a weird hand drawn heavy metal kid binder beast, with the band's name in the mouth, and the evil eyes glowing red, thanks to an extra set of red eyes pasted on to the plastic case. Oh and they totally shred, it's hard to tell if these guys are true metalheads, or indie kids getting their thrash ya ya's out, but it hardly matters, it's heavy, thrashy, with plenty of nods to Slayer of course, with some wannabe "Raining Blood" and "Angel Of Death" moments, what's not to love? These guys probably destroy live, Chicago folks should definitely check them out. The rest of us will just have to make do with this little plasticky bit of old school thrash, and enjoy the vio-lence vicariously!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have less than 20. Cool hand drawn covers, lots of beasts and creatures, glowing red eyes pasted onto the tape case, the tapes themselves 'blood' splattered, each one hand numbered.
The third brilliant album from Finland's finest purveyors of keyboard-intensive, fist-in-the-air METAL. Mixing melodic death metal (in the vein of Gothenburg greats like In Flames and At The Gates) with light-speed neo-classical keyboard runs and accompanying Yngwie-style guitar heroics, Children of Bodom (rhymes with "modem", apparently -- don't say "bottom") have crafted a sound all their own. Raspy black-metal style vox, rock n roll attitude, brutal riffing and -- most importantly -- fleet-fingered instrumental interplay are the hallmarks of this band. Imagine a cross between Destruction and Return To Forever... This is a band those who find most of the current wave of European power metal too "lite" (with the usual wimpy vocals and choruses) but kinda like it for that genre's usual head-spinning virtuosity, speed, and headbanging metal purity. Conversely, Children of Bodom is also a band for those who find Norwegian black metal too dark and monotonous and want something with a bit more melodic "sparkle", where the keyboardist is utilized for more than just "atmosphere" (Children of Bodom's keyboardist even released his own mostly-instrumental solo album last year). In other words, they are the current metal masters at splitting the difference between "brutal" and "noodle". Their short career now already spans three albums, and, as this disc and those of us who saw 'em at this years' Milwaukee Metalfest (that'd be Allan and Andee) will attest, they're still kicking ass. Bonus track: an nonessential-but-fun WASP cover.
While we're still wringing a lot of reading enjoyment out of the 120 pages of the most recent issue of this cult metal 'zine, #3, reviewed here last list, we also have been excitedly perusing the two back issues we got in as well, #1 and #2, collect 'em all! As we said in our review of the latest, this is a great 'zine - the kind of 'zine that makes us wanna do 'zines again, actually. Edited by the inimitable Stewart Voegtlin, whose drunken hesher gone grad school writing style is the standard for all the magazine's enthusiastic & clever contributors, Chips & Beer's non-ironic love of underground metal past and present, the real good stuff, is abundantly evident throughout these first two issues.
#1, at 96 pages, features the likes of Manilla Road (an interview AND primer), Pentagram, Christian Mistress, Negative Plane, Cauchemar (with cocktail recipes), Vanhelgd, gore artist Matt "Putrid" Carr, and more! Buy this to read about the time Bobby Liebling met Iggy Stooge...
Issue #2, is up to 120 pages, crammed with stuff on Twisted Tower Dire, Thrones, The Mentors, Deceased, Midnight, Obsequiae, and much more, including a chat with our pal Ian Christie, of Bazillion Points Books. Plus, the primer this time is on King Diamond/Mercyful Fate.
And both issues of course feature editorial rants, peurile cartoons, clever comix, and plenty of opinionated, if sometimes cryptic reviews. We don't always agree with 'em (when we can even figure out if they like something or not) but find their viewpoints worth considering, and certainly amusing to read.
Blogs are great and all, but, well, screw 'em. Nothin' like a real 'zine! And especially nothin' like Chips & Beer.
While we're still wringing a lot of reading enjoyment out of the 120 pages of the most recent issue of this cult metal 'zine, #3, reviewed here last list, we also have been excitedly perusing the two back issues we got in as well, #1 and #2, collect 'em all! As we said in our review of the latest, this is a great 'zine - the kind of 'zine that makes us wanna do 'zines again, actually. Edited by the inimitable Stewart Voegtlin, whose drunken hesher gone grad school writing style is the standard for all the magazine's enthusiastic & clever contributors, Chips & Beer's non-ironic love of underground metal past and present, the real good stuff, is abundantly evident throughout these first two issues.
#1, at 96 pages, features the likes of Manilla Road (an interview AND primer), Pentagram, Christian Mistress, Negative Plane, Cauchemar (with cocktail recipes), Vanhelgd, gore artist Matt "Putrid" Carr, and more! Buy this to read about the time Bobby Liebling met Iggy Stooge...
Issue #2, is up to 120 pages, crammed with stuff on Twisted Tower Dire, Thrones, The Mentors, Deceased, Midnight, Obsequiae, and much more, including a chat with our pal Ian Christie, of Bazillion Points Books. Plus, the primer this time is on King Diamond/Mercyful Fate.
And both issues of course feature editorial rants, peurile cartoons, clever comix, and plenty of opinionated, if sometimes cryptic reviews. We don't always agree with 'em (when we can even figure out if they like something or not) but find their viewpoints worth considering, and certainly amusing to read.
Blogs are great and all, but, well, screw 'em. Nothin' like a real 'zine! And especially nothin' like Chips & Beer.
This is super cool. Chips & Beer is a real 'zine, on newsprint for goodness sakes, 120 pages, chock full of more metal than thou madness, deeply nerdy, enthused about an aesthetic that most ordinary metal fans let alone regular folks don't 'get', but if you do, this is for you!!! Not sure how this rag got all the way to issue #3 without us knowing about it, it's totally up our alley, being all about the type of truely cult, truly METAL stuff we dig. Fortunately we got a clue and got it in, with this brand new ish hot off the presses. It's just the thing to be reading when cranking the great new Dawnbringer album (which we just got in, to be reviewed next list) loud, 'cause there's a big interview with 'Professor' Black in here. It's also good readin' to go with crankin' just about ANY old school (or new wave of old school) metal: thrash, death, doom, true, etc.
Along with the interview with Dawnbringer/High Spirits mastermind Chris Black, in this issue Chips & Beer also kicks back with Finland's Krypts and Swallowed, Australia's Cauldron Black Ram, and others... The historical side of things is also well-represented, one of the features being a lengthy piece on the epic '80s metal legends known as Cirith Ungol. And the issue's centerpiece is a massive "New Yawk Street Metal Special", a lovingly in depth look at NYC's (and Long Island's) contributions to the majesty of metal, including interviews with Twisted Sister's Jay Jay French, Manowar's Ross The Boss, the band Frigid Bitch, Dan Lilker of Anthrax/SOD/Nuclear Assault/etc.; also there's a run-down on all the KISS albums up through Music From The Elder (just like we did!), a piece about the movie Maniac, and more.
Plus, Chips & Beer's got all the other usual stuff you'd expect in any self-respecting 'zine: tons of uber opinionated album reviews (we don't always agree with 'em, but they're fun to read), a letters page, ads from underground labels, and even some comix! And C&B boasts an excellent stable of headbanging writers, including noted scribe Stewart Voegtlin, the editor in fact, whose fevered writing is always abstruse but amusing, a hesher beatnik academic hybrid. Recommended!
So, not only are we looking forward to issue #4, we've also gotta hunt down the back issues...
As much as we love all the indie rock and noise pop that's been coming out of China, and we do, hell, check elsewhere on this list for a couple new Chinese bands, we tend to become super obsessed with the more out there, experimental groups and records that have also been coming from the same scene. We made the latest record from White+ our Record Of The Week a while back, the sound like Yellow Magic Orchestra crossed with Neu!, or so the label suggested, to our ears it was way more far out and psychedelic. Out latest discovery / obsession comes from this Beijing based experimental four piece called Chui Wan, who according to the label, count Beach Boys, Arthur Russell, Les Rallizes Denudes and the Sun City Girls among their primary influences, but as always, there's no way a band could possibly sound like that, and Chui Wan, to our ears at least don't really sound like what we imagine that band math would produce, but that's not to say we don't dig it, we do, a LOT, in fact this is one of our favorite of all the Chinese records we've gotten in recently, but the sound is a bit harder to pigeonhole, the opener is a sort of loping, instrumental jangle pop jam, all blooping basslines, shimmering guitars, and motorik rhythm, surrounded by burbling cascades of swirling melodies, and chiming spidery guitars, so we were kind of prepared for a whole record of that, but then the second track swoops in, all distorted guitars, and driving drums, not to mention some strange echo drenched vocals, lots of swirling psychedelia, the track veering from spaced out mesmer to heavy, chaotic freakout, with brief bits of mathy angular pop, it's a weird mix, but it somehow works, at times sounding like a warped WTF version of Television, maybe with a little Boredoms mixed in, with plenty of spaced out psych jamming, and hypno-kraut grooves.
And amidst all this krautgroove and psychedelic drift, the band add swoonsome viola melodies, soaring ethereal vocal harmonies, plenty of almost proggy arrangements, subtly deployed samples, Eastern melodies, swirling electronics and FX, with some tracks sounding like psychedelic ragas, others blossoming into horn flecked almost-klezmer, and still others field recording laces tribal dirges. The record finishes with a nearly eleven minute closer, that's like some sort of doom-prog / kraut-folk, epic and majestic, weirdly recorded so the sounds are all blown out and crumbly, the arrangement strange too, in constant flux, the whole final half of the song peeling back all the noisiness, leaving just a gorgeous sprawl of processed horns, pointillist pianos, swirling synths, layered electronics and strange samples, super heady and hypnotic, tripped out and utterly mesmerizing.
WAY recommended, for fans of space rock, psych rock, experimental avant pop, and the weirder side of the new wave of Chinese indie rock...
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Okay stoner metal serial killer obsessives, you know who you are, even if you're loathe to admit it, time to rejoice as the masters of SKSR (serial killer stoner rock) return, Japan's Church Of Misery.
This ep focuses on UK killer Dennis Nilsen, a serial pedophile and killer, which prompted a conversation about what these guys would do when they ran out of killers to immortalize, but we were saddened to realize that it's pretty unlikely that will ever happen no matter how many records these guys put out.
But fuck it, you don't need to be obsessed with killers to dig this shit, just killer riffs. And the riffs as always are indeed killer. Huge bassy, sludgey, groovy, in fact the opening track on this 12" is so groovy it almost sounds like a more metal ZZ Top. Sabbathy to the Nth degree, lumbering rhythms that either plod or swing depending on the track, the vocals a growly croak buried way down in the mix, sounding not unlike Michael Gerald from Killdozer, super dynamic and stoned. Lots of break downs where just the bass and drums groove, before the riff swoops back in. Wild leads, lurching stop start bits,wild almost space rock outros, and of course, plenty of clips of Dennis Nilsen talking as well as various news reports. Technically this is a full length, even though the B-side is a single super extended stoner metal drug jam, and thus is only three tracks. Sabbath, Kyuss, Green Machine, Acrimony, Solar Anus, Ox, Bongzilla, if that stuff is your cup of THC laced tea, then you are definitely gonna want this.
Beautiful matte finish gatefold sleeves, and of course super limited, only 500 or 600 copies, and CoM records always go crazy fast.
BACK IN PRINT! Previously this was an import from the Japanese label Leafhound, sadly now defunct. But fortunately someone has just reissued it, domestically! Here's what we said about this essential anthology back when we first listed it in 2004:
Will the Japanese stoner sludge serial killer onslaught never end?? We sure hope not. We're finally able to list this double cd collection of old, rare, unreleased and out of print tracks from one of the heaviest bands in Japan. Corrupted may have the market cornered on sludge, and Boris definitely has the drone-dirge segment all sewn up, but that leaves Church Of Misery to duke it out with the equally brutal Green Machine for the groovy, druggy, sludge-y stonery BIG RIFF contingent. Early Works definitely helps the cause, with two discs bursting with splattery serial killer soundbites, plague-of-locusts riffery, skull crushing drumming, and a truly hellish howl of a lead vocalist. Plus unlike many of their metallic brethren, CoM can indeed SHRED, and whip out squiggly acid soaked leads at the drop of a hat, giving the proceedings a classic psych-rock / drug-rock feel, on top of the already suffocatingly heavy sludge already oozing from every crack. Disc one collects the long out of print split with sHEAVY, featuring odes to Manson, Charles Whiteman, and Jim Jones, as well as the Taste The Pain mini-album with songs about Dahmer, Graham Young, and Ed Gein, as well as an insane version of Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vidda." Disc two collects lots of random compilation tracks including a Trouble cover, a Black Widow cover, a Death SS cover and an unreleased track. Church Of Misery are so amazing, it's too bad that their singleminded obsession with serial killers, and their continued use of serial killer soundbites keeps them from appealing to a wider audience. It is too bad, but who can argue? The music is strangely and perfectly suited to CoM's tales of murder and mayhem, victims and killers.
A killer live DVD from our favorite Japanese, serial killer obsessed, stoner groove doom lords, Church Of Misery. We've gone on and on in the past (and elsewhere on this list, their debut was just reissued) about how much we love these guys. Some impossible mix of Sabbath, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Antiseen and Boris. Heavy as fuck, groovy and spacey, blown out and super psychedelic. Live it's everything we would have hoped for. A band of crazy Japanese hippies in ripped concert shirts, bell bottoms, berets, dreadlocks, furry coats, big ol' silver rings on every finger, flying V's, on a tiny stage, heads banging, hair swirling, in a closet sized dark club, packed to the gills with a heaving, sweaty, head banging crowd. The sound is amazing. A truly MASSIVE guitar sound, huge blown out crumbling riffs, the band a whirlwind of lurching groove, and a bass player who wears his bass lower than anyone we've ever seen (even the Ramones!). SO low in fact, that the body of the bass is at shin level and he ends up sort of playing way up on the neck. Awesome! Three live shows filmed over the last two years, a handful of CoM classics as well as some free form freaked out space jams. Also included are videos for "Filth Bitch Boogie" and "I, Motherfucker" (best song title ever maybe), both look quite similar, filmed in creepy black and white, on fuzzy degraded film stock, haunting shots of two emotionless girls making out, dead bodies in forests, plenty of violence and gore (mostly perpetrated on the band themselves) and of course the band trudging through mysterious woods all very Sabbath-like. So cool.
Packaged in a blood red Japanese style DVD case. NTSC and ALL REGION!
AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!
Finally one of our all time favorite Circle records back in print! We first listed this way back in 1999, and it was for many people their first exposure to this amazing and mysterious, dreamy and hypnotic, modern spaced out krautrock band from Finland. By now, Circle is practically a household name, at least for those of you living in a seriously cool music household, having released about 15 or 16 records since Andexelt. But way back in 1999, Circle were a a brand new discovery for most American weird rock fans, and Andexelt knocked everyone on their asses.
A delirious dose of droning, hypnotic neo-kraut rock that effortlessly managed to out-post most post rock bands and out-space most spacerock bands. Circle were (and are) the northernmost heirs to the Krautrock tradition. On Andexelt, the band were taking basic riffs, stretching and reshaping them, twisting them into brand new shapes, creating bleak, ever shifting underwater grooves and dizzyingly repetitive rhythms, sounding like an otherworldly This Heat or a more damaged Can. A mesmerising wall of sound delivered with the sheer force of Loop or Godflesh, but with dark precision and melodic restraint. Mellow, delicate jazzy passages intersected with crushing Bonham-esque beats. Fans of Circle's other great records, past and present, can already guess that this is completely amazing and absolutely essential!!! While fans of Salvatore and Tortoise and Mogwai and�TransAm and all other practitioners of epic bombastic hypno-rock, mesmeric math rock and even the current crop of sludgy metallic post rock, would do well to pick this up if they missed it the first time around. Andexelt is the perfect mix of their current more metallic drone rock pummel and their older more mesmerizing krautrock groove bliss. So absolutely brilliant and completely and utterly essential.
Exactly the same as the original tUMULt pressing, including the 10 minute bonus track and kick ass secret song not included on the import version, originally released on Finnish weird-prog label Metamorphos. SO AWESOME!!!!!
Delicate? Calm? Circle? Yes. Listen up. You'd think that for a band with, no less than, what, twenty albums to their name AND who always write songs with an invariable central musical concept (circularity, natch, the repetitive pulse that all their songs share no matter what else is different betwixt 'em) we'd by this point feel like we'd heard it all from them already -- even if their all is ALL really great. But no. This new album surprised even us. And it too is great. Really great. If you're expecting the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal) stylings of Tulikoria or Sunrise, or the motorik krautrockiness of Alotus or Guillotine, or the heavy prog of Prospekt, or the spacey jazzy dubbiness of Pori, or all of the above (as these descriptors actually apply to pretty much all their albums to varying degrees), well that's NOT exactly what you get with Miljard. There's really no comparisons this time to Neu!, Can, Tortoise, or Hawkwind, let alone Judas Priest! Instead we'll mention Thuja, The Necks, Morton Feldman, Bohren und Der Club Of Gore, Philip Jeck, 3/4hadbeeneliminated... But it's still definitely Circle. It's just that, as Ektro's website puts it, "rocking has been traded for some quiet reading on the couch at home". And boy is this hauntingly atmospheric, instrumental music PERFECT for such activity.
Miljard NEEDS two discs, because this music is so spacious and expansive, a slow-moving stream, or the ripples in a pond. The pond, perhaps, frozen in the Finnish winter, in a twilight landscape softened with snow... The first track on the first disc, "Parmalee", is a twenty minute piece that sets the relaxed and gorgeous tone of this record. Meandering, pretty piano, reminding us of Rob Reger's playing in Thuja, quietly joined by abstract electronics and guitar...and Circle's usual repetition and pulses are still there, at about 11 minutes the pulse becomes more noticable, by that time you're absolutely entranced... already we're convinced, this is a fantastic record, and there's still 1 and 2/3rds discs to go!! The next track, "B.F.F." is slightly more uptempo, but still has the classical vibe from the piano. And then another twenty-minute cut "Duunila" comes on, a whispery dark drone, hushed, with some sparse clatter, and gentle bass notes. Oooh, sheer beauty. And on it goes, all the way through to the gauzey, vaguely gamelan-like 20-minute "Viitane" which closes out disc two, nearly two hours of amazing music, the soundtrack to a limpid dream from which we'd never hope to wake.
Out of the whole Circle discography, the atypically riff-less stuff here comes closest to the material on side one of Mountain, a very brooding and unusually ambient live set which not everybody got to hear 'cause it was a limited, LP-only release. This at least is not so limited.
Geeze, what *can't* they do? With Miljard we're pretty sure Circle have cemented their status as just about the best band ever, as far as we're concerned. Ok, the AQ universe of best bands ever is pretty big, but Circle might just be the best of the best... Recommended, people!!!
One of the more recent Circle records finally released on vinyl by our pals at Static Caravan. Good thing too since the cd is out of print. Double lp, colored vinyl in a nice gatefold sleeve with some of the most tripped out artwork we've seen in a while, different from the cd version. Here's what we had to say about the cd when it first came out.
Is there such a thing as Circle overload? We don't think so. In their case, you can't have too much of a good thing. A brand new disc of their hypnotic avant-rock compositions. Newer than their recent "Andexelt" album, and just as good. Not as sparse and dubby as that disc, "Prospekt" is rather heavier and denser, mesmerizingly repetitive as always, and kinda startling, with some incredible vocal acrobatics / operatics in the opening track "Dedofiktion". Really great!
A long lost Circle album??! Sort of. One of Circle's best albums?! Definitely. The deal with Taantumus is that it came out on the Finnish label Bad Vugum back in 2001, falling betwixt Prospekt and Sunrise (approximately, it's hard to keep track) in the ever-expanding Circle discography. At the time, there was talk of Taantumus getting a domestic release in the US, so we never imported any copies from overseas. Well, that domestic release never ever happened, but thankfully, years and years later, this amazing "lost" (to most folks outside of Finland, anyway) Circle album has been reissued by the band's own Ektro label, now crowned with the 9:21 bonus track "Veitsi"!
Now, you should already be aware we LOVE this hypnotic Finnish space/prog/psych/metal/kraut band. If we could marry them, we would! So of course we're excited by any release of theirs. However, this one is definitely extra-deserving of Record Of The Week honors, as it's really one of their best efforts (though we'd be hard pressed to agree upon a definitive Circle top ten, let's not get sidetracked).
One listen should convince. To one track, even. The first track, "Kultaa", that's IT. Right there. Damn. Hit Circle song, in the universe where Circle could have hit songs, which is our universe, as far as we're concerned. Boom boom on the floor tom, the guitars hitting the same chord over and over again. Repetition, repetition, repetition. But utterly energizing and maddeningly catchy. And then, the vocals - Meronian monks whooping it up.
Track two, "Kekkone", tick tock drums and electronic flutter, with melodic guitar lines tiptoeing across the stereo field... utterly exquisite! Track three, "Valtaisa Hahmo", another monster motorik HIT. With whistling FLUTE, well maybe it's a recorder, and droning synths. Track four... well heck we're not gonna go through 'em all. What's the point, you already know you want this, right?? So get it and listen for yourself, at home, cranked up LOUD. (Not that this is loud music, per se, some of it sure is, but lots of it is subtle, stuff that if listened to at volume will simply allow one to more easily bask in its glory). That way you can find out about the kick ass harmonica jam of track 9, "Morn", all on your own. (Shades of Itavayla there.)
Rest assured, Taantumus is stocked with plenty of Circle's trademark mantric riffs, throbbing bass, precision timekeeping, cosmic shimmer, and curious noise. OK, we'll mention a few more of the many treats to be found on this 66 minute disc... Track 5, "Suopea", brings in extra distortion and heaviness, contrasted with a haunting vocal choir that floats over, of course, a tight percolating rhythm. Track 7, "Lyhytaallosta", is a slab of bass heavy angular postpunk, Circle style, with chiming no-wavey guitars and deepvoiced Viking vox - plus weird glitch and gurgle. Into the more "metal" side of Circle? Try track 10, "Siivet", a killer "speedkraut" cut foreshadowing their later Panic disc, albeit with piano. And Mika's operatic vocals, something first unleashed on the preceding Prospekt disc. Heavier still is "Pelqton", which sounds like Circle doing abstract Isis... but, again, with piano. Oh, and yeah the bonus track is awesome too. Droning density that skitters into deep grooves with some near spoken singing. Actually, elsewhere on the album there's mysterious vocal bits in the background that somehow sound like they could be a song from The Mighty Boosh, if you are familiar with that British TV comedy you'll be scratching your head too.
So, wow. This is the sort of album that leaves us puzzled - why isn't Circle the biggest band in the world? (Maybe they really HAVE hypnotized us.) But really, aside from being really WEIRD, and not widely released, you'd have thought that an album like this would have made Circle megasuperduper stars. I mean really, what do they gotta do, besides being one of the best bands ever? You think that'd be enough. You'd think Taantumus would be enough. Well whatever, in our universe it is.
Certain bands around these parts don't really need much more than a "NEW RECORD OUT NOW" style announcement to get their fans all in a tizzy. Those groups engender a certain sort of slavish worship and maniacal obsession, that used to be reserved for top 40 bands and their teenage minions. But heck, what's wrong with loving a band enough to want it all?! Everything they do, every cd, ep, lp, 7", whatever. A list of those bands will probably look mighty familiar to most of you, and will quite possibly elicit that record nerd Pavlovian response that even we can never quite seem to shake. SUNNO))), Boris, Corrupted, Earth, and yes of course Circle. Longtime readers of the aQ New Arrivals list are well aware of our obsession with Circle, odds are most of them share it, as well as a certain obsession with Finnish music in general, but Circle are for sure our favorite group of musical Finns. And for good reason.
Going on two decades, Circle have managed to take a simple sound, and twist it all up, keeping it fresh and exciting and surprising, a sort of hypnotic and yes CIRCULAR sound, simple arrangements, repetitive riffing, motorik drumming, a little kraut rock, a little space rock, but Circle have taken those sounds and run them through the wringer, transforming them into murky mantra like hypno rock for one record, bombastic eighties style metal for another, long brooding dronescapes for one disc, majestic triumphant over the top prog for another, and never hesitating to mix and blur and blend their various sounds and personas to suit their whim and whimsy.
For those folks who have seen Circle live, they understand the magic of this band, the improvisation, the incredible stage presence, the killer riffing, we never would have thought a weirdo space-kraut-prog rock band from Finland could get US audience losing their shit, but we've seen it. Heck at one show, bass player Jussi Lehtisalo ripped his shirt off midsong, and we were nearly deafened by a gaggle of shrieking girls right in front of us.
But we digress, Circle rule. You know it. We know it. Live especially, which is why there are so many live records in their discography, because those songs that you've listened to a million times, sound totally different live. Thus we have Triumph, a vinyl only double lp documenting Circle's second time performing live on WFMU (the first was released as Arkades back in 2006).
Triumph was recorded in New Jersey, in 2007, on Brian Turner's show on WFMU, and finds the band tackling a couple live Circle classics, and offering up a bunch of new stuff to boot. The record begins with "Virsi", which some of you may remember from Rakennus, another live album, a total live set staple, "Virsi" finds Circle at their bombastic prog rock epic best, totally dynamic and majestic, Mika Ratto's vocals even more unhinged than usual, slipping into an almost black metal shriek, when not crooning dramatically, such a killer part, you kind of want it to go on forever, but the band slip smoothly into a super minimal circular groove, with atonal piano, and the bass and drums locked tight, sounding like some cocktail jazz combo gone krautrock, before returning to the opening bombast to finish it off.
The shorter second track is so awesome, and is either a new song, or a dramatically reworked version of an old one, but finds the band unfurling lush strings and shimmering effects, simple drumming, very proggy and dramatic but understated and smokey, very Scott Walker or Serge Gainsbourg, like some lost sixties ballad, albeit slightly tweaked.
The flipside is all spidery guitars and skittery jazzy percussion, with wild speaking-in-tongues vocals, a massive tripped out psychedelic drift, super spare and minimal, but with a relentless groove hovering right below the surface.
The second record begins with a gorgeous deep resonant shimmery drone, laced with delicate melodies, whispered vocals, spacey FX, the vocals eventually getting deeper and more dramatic, the whole thing building to an abstract almost free jazz sounding climax, a bit like a space rock torch song gradually going haywire.
Flip the record over, and we've got what might be our new favorite Circle song, a looped music box melody (or maybe a toy piano), all tangled up with soft flurries of real piano, a strange push and pull between the fluid melodies of the piano, and the mechanical loop of the toy piano, the end result sounds a bit like some strange hybrid of Lubomyr Melnyk and Pierre Bastien. Machinelike, meditative, repetitive and hypnotic, the various notes and tones building into a gorgeous swirl of melodic fragments and splintering sonic overtones. So awesome.
And finally, the band finish off with another live staple, "Murheenkryyni", also found on Rakennus, but again, it's a whole 'nother beast here, the heaviest of the bunch, a total classic rock prog rock dirge, with crunchy distorted guitars, bombastic drums, and Mika's operatic howl. Yowza!
Packaged in a beautifully designed heavy gatefold sleeve, with all the liner notes printed on the lp labels, including a brief missive from Jussi of Circle about how he's worried that Brian Turner might just be losing his mind haha....
We made the cd version of this Circle disc our Record Of The Week a while back, only for it to go out of print WAY quicker than anyone expected. So now, Tyrant is available once again, for a limited time, on vinyl, a double lp to be precise. But again, like all Latitudes stuff, very very limited, and add to that the fact that it's Circle, well, you should know what that means. Here's what we had to say about Tyrant when we first got it WAY back in 2006!! Be sure to read to the end though, as there's some extras with the lp edition....
BRAND NEW CIRCLE ALBUM!!! TYRANT!! INCREDIBLY LIMITED LATEST INSTALLMENT IN THE LATITUDES SERIES!!! IT'S HERE!!!!
Okay, just wanted to get your attention. We've been waiting for this for a long, long time. As have many of you, we imagine. We've all been loving the Latitudes series of ultra limited releases from bands like Ginnungagap, Shit And Shine, the Grails, Ariel Pink, Sir Richard Bishop... so when we heard that Finland's gods of metallic hypno drone rock were going to do one, we were so psyched, and so we waited anxiously, but patiently, until finally, after months of waiting, they arrived, just a few days ago, and as if we even have to tell you, IT'S AWESOME!!!
But this declaration of awesomeness does require a bit more elaboration, as Circle have a wide variety of awesome sounds: murky propulsive modern day krautrock, wild guitar heavy NWOFHM proto-metal, extended ambient drones, loping mesmeric jazzy shuffle, it's really hard to know where the band will head next. As if it were too much to wish for, Tyrant, somehow manages to combine all of their disparate sounds into one practically perfect whole, and some of us are declaring this our favorite Circle record in ages (no mean feat, since their last one, Miljard, was fantastic, a Record Of The Week too). Three 15 minute tracks, each one a slow building epic, droning, dense, dark, hypnotic, but each with its own unique elements.
The opener, "Screaming Luovutus", is an endlessly looping space rock drone mantra, a relentlessly throbbing bassline, haunting little swirls of fluttering keyboard melody, little bits of guitar filigree, simple propulsive rhythmic shuffle, all woven into a endlessly throbbing krautrocky swirl, when suddenly over the top strange whispery demonic growls surface, super distorted, another layer of fuzzy sound, howling and whispering all ragged and harsh, almost like Circle covering Abruptum or a black metal Necks, if that makes any sense. Dizzying and weirdly heavy, a black ambient krautrock drone groove, if such a thing were possible. And if it were, you know Circle would be the ones, ahem, ARE the ones to make it happen.
The second track, with the very metal title "Steel Torment Warrior", is maybe the least metal of the batch. A super creepy, almost jazzy, soundscape, of muted rumble, bursts of super effected dubbed out drums, flurries of spaced out FX, hushed hissed vocals, splattery free jazz skitter, warbly, seasick guitar tangles all wrapped in a druggy blissy ambience. It's like a less propulsive Necks, a damaged jazzy shuffle looping into infinity, but twisted into a uniquely Circular shape.
The closer, with the even MORE metal title of "Amputation Crusade", is the grooviest and space rockiest of the three, a simple darkly melodic guitar figure, loops lazily above a slow slithery bassline and a super laid back, barely there rhythmic shuffle, like Can or Faust in extreme slow motion... you can hear the Necks again, but the band add some extra druggy fuzz guitar, and the laid back riffing is pregnant with the possibility of imminent explosion. Strange vocals lurk below the surface, the whole thing an epic trawl through some jazzy black space rock soundscape. Near the end, things build to a bit of a subdued climax, the guitars ringing and chiming, the drums pounding a bit more, very epic and majestic, but still somehow muted and laid back, petering out into a creepy little coda of guitar FX and gurgling monster vocals...
Wow. Seriously, we love Circle and everything, more than most folks, but this disc is an absolute killer!! Heavy and droney, groovy and jazzy and completely epic and mesmerizing and amazing!!
Comes packaged in the usual black and white Latitudes diecut 12" sleeve, includes the same black and white insert from the cd, featuring the band posing with spiked gauntlets in front of Stonehenge!!! Well, actually, in front of the chainlink fence in front of Stonehenge, which somehow makes more sense. The inner lp label has two strange NWOFHM / Tyrant (the 't's in tyrant are battle axes of course) hooded knights. And as if that weren't enough, the second disc is a PICTURE DISC, one side features the Stonehenge band photo blown up, the other side is an image of... well, an lp, in fact the -other- record in the set, complete with the hooded knights in the center and printed record grooves, which while actually being playable grooves, seem to be there just for show....
Either way, one more chance to pick up this kick ass Circle record, and on vinyl to boot!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!!
BRAND NEW CIRCLE ALBUM!!! TYRANT!! INCREDIBLY LIMITED LATEST INSTALLMENT IN THE LATITUDES SERIES!!! IT'S HERE!!!!
Okay, just wanted to get your attention. We've been waiting for this for a long, long time. As have many of you, we imagine. We've all been loving the Latitudes series of ultra limited releases from bands like Ginnungagap, Shit And Shine, the Grails, Ariel Pink, Sir Richard Bishop... so when we heard that Finland's gods of metallic hypno drone rock were going to do one, we were so psyched, and so we waited anxiously, but patiently, until finally, after months of waiting, they arrived, just a few days ago, and as if we even have to tell you, IT'S AWESOME!!!
But this declaration of awesomeness does require a bit more elaboration, as Circle have a wide variety of awesome sounds: murky propulsive modern day krautrock, wild guitar heavy NWOFHM proto-metal, extended ambient drones, loping mesmeric jazzy shuffle, it's really hard to know where the band will head next. As if it were too much to wish for, Tyrant, somehow manages to combine all of their disparate sounds into one practically perfect whole, and some of us are declaring this our favorite Circle record in ages (no mean feat, since their last one, Miljard, was fantastic, a Record Of The Week too). Three 15 minute tracks, each one a slow building epic, droning, dense, dark, hypnotic, but each with its own unique elements.
The opener, "Screaming Luovutus", is an endlessly looping space rock drone mantra, a relentlessly throbbing bassline, haunting little swirls of fluttering keyboard melody, little bits of guitar filigree, simple propulsive rhythmic shuffle, all woven into a endlessly throbbing krautrocky swirl, when suddenly over the top strange whispery demonic growls surface, super distorted, another layer of fuzzy sound, howling and whispering all ragged and harsh, almost like Circle covering Abruptum or a black metal Necks, if that makes any sense. Dizzying and weirdly heavy, a black ambient krautrock drone groove, if such a thing were possible. And if it were, you know Circle would be the ones, ahem, ARE the ones to make it happen.
The second track, with the very metal title "Steel Torment Warrior", is maybe the least metal of the batch. A super creepy, almost jazzy, soundscape, of muted rumble, bursts of super effected dubbed out drums, flurries of spaced out FX, hushed hissed vocals, splattery free jazz skitter, warbly, seasick guitar tangles all wrapped in a druggy blissy ambience. It's like a less propulsive Necks, a damaged jazzy shuffle looping into infinity, but twisted into a uniquely Circular shape.
The closer, with the even MORE metal title of "Amputation Crusade", is the grooviest and space rockiest of the three, a simple darkly melodic guitar figure, loops lazily above a slow slithery bassline and a super laid back, barely there rhythmic shuffle, like Can or Faust in extreme slow motion... you can hear the Necks again, but the band add some extra druggy fuzz guitar, and the laid back riffing is pregnant with the possibility of imminent explosion. Strange vocals lurk below the surface, the whole thing an epic trawl through some jazzy black space rock soundscape. Near the end, things build to a bit of a subdued climax, the guitars ringing and chiming, the drums pounding a bit more, very epic and majestic, but still somehow muted and laid back, petering out into a creepy little coda of guitar FX and gurgling monster vocals...
Wow. Seriously, we love Circle and everything, more than most folks, but this disc is an absolute killer!! Heavy and droney, groovy and jazzy and completely epic and mesmerizing and amazing!!
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert (featuring the band posing with spiked gauntlets in front of Stonehenge!!! Well, actually, in front of the chainlink fence in front of Stonehenge, which somehow makes more sense). The cover has two strange NWOFHM / Tyrant (the 't's in tyrant are battle axes of course) hooded knights silkscreened on the front and each copy is hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, about 250 of which made it HERE. That's right, we got an entire quarter of the pressing. And we're pretty sure that still won't be enough, we guarantee these will not be around for long...
Everybody knows that we at aQuarius are HUGE fans of the Finnish space/prog/hypnorock band Circle, right? We have raved about 'em for years, even had 'em play our 35th Anniversary Party back in 2000. So, naturally we get lots of folks, just starting out with their own Circle obsession, who ask us, which Circle album is The One To Get? 'Cause there's at least, like, over thirty albums in Circle's vast discography, thus far (though not all are still in print), and they're all pretty great. Well, among the longterm Circle fans here at aQ, the answer to that difficult question is, when it comes down to it, if we have to chose: Zopalki, Circle's second album, originally released back in 1996 by the Bad Vugum label. For a lot of us, it's arguably Circle's best ever record, among many great ones. And, significantly, it's also the one that we first heard, that first caused us to totally freak out about Circle, and led us to become such ardent fans, ever after. So, yeah, Zopalki! But, for years and years, it's unfortunately been one of those out of print titles. Kind of a holy grail for latter day Circle initiates. Until now - because we just got the brand new remastered, reissued version on Circle's own Ektro label in the mail. And thus, an automatic Record Of The Week!
Like we said, this is The One that, so many years ago, turned us on to Circle's unique brand of rhythmic psychedelic hypnosis. It's heavy, it's atmospheric, it's tight, it's sprawling, it's incredible. The staccato Helmet-like riffage of their debut Meronia is still in effect, but even proggier experimentation is afoot, with a darker, murkier, neo-krautrock, chamber rock vibe pervading the proceedings. There's choppy guitars, dubby drumbeats, sinister string arrangements, and eerie Gregorian chant style vox (yes, this was many Circle lineups ago, long before current operatic weirdo Mikka Ratto joined the band, but the vocals are still quite unusual).
Originally released on vinyl also, as a double lp (the new liner notes in this edition amusingly explain the "negotiation" with their record label that resulted in this being a double), it's got a dozen tracks stretching over 72 minutes. They range from explosive & percussively propelled to the dolefully droned out (often accomplishing both feats in the same epic composition). "Bonoroid" is among the most blissful, "Sector" the most psychotically hectic, "Argont" perhaps the most grindingly heavy, but heck we just picked a favorite Circle album, don't make us pick a favorite song too!
Our only complaint about this reissue, is we wish they'd have included the bonus track found only on the long-gone vinyl version... for a moment we thought this reissue had the bonus track, but it's just that for some accidental reason the tracklist here says the final song is "Contact" (which was that bonus track) when it's actually "Gregorium Vaernd Valerii", which closed the original cd. Whoops.
Regardless, we're SO glad to have this back. It's remastered (louder!), and the redesigned, expanded cd booklet now contains Zopalki-era photos of the band, as well as brand new retrospective liner notes from former guitarist Teemu Elo, from which we learn that "Zopalki" means "matchsticks" in Polish (though we don't learn why that was chosen for the title, or why the title was in Polish). More importantly, we learn a lot about the young band's struggle to make the record. It's worth noting that he says, "Zopalki caught most of us in the process of widening our horizons more than any other Circle album". It widened OUR horizons too...
Split cd from AQ faves Circle and Japan's Marble Sheep, recorded in 1996 (Circle) and 1989 (Marble Sheep) and released 1998. Circle contribute a stellar live set of their perfect cyclical drone rock including a haunting and breathtaking cover version of
The latest limited release from the the Handmade Birds label, a new and already insanely prolific sonic imprint run by Pyramids' R. Loren, comes from long time aQ faves, Finnish outsider black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And a new record from CoO means it's time again to wonder why we even still consider these guys black metal, since it's been several years and many records since they were a proper black metal band (if they ever were at all). We are constantly baffled by groups like CoO, who are so beloved by so much of the black metal world, and we're talking the true grim hordes, yet they continue to create music that we imagine would not be pleasing AT ALL to such folk. Maybe we're selling black metallers short. Or it means the appeal is more than purely sonic. It speaks to the spirit of the sound, the black energy put into the music, which eventually must come out, even if it does as some sort of twisted Jandekian fractured folk or some minimal synth wave weirdness, at its core, the sound is dark, black, evil.
All of this talk in some ways is moot, as this latest record finds the band doing what they do, which is sort of black metal, sort of post rock, sort of whatthefuck, but it's all objective, and this music's 'blackness', or even its 'metalness', by most typically metal measures would be found wanting, but as far as we're concerned, this is exactly the sort of metallic blackness we love, murky, muddy, washed out and woozy, warped and stumbling, equal parts dark pop, fragmented folk, otherworldly creep, oh yeah and a little black buzz.
It only takes a few seconds to realize this is not at all like any black metal you've heard (unless of course you've heard lots of Circle Of Ouroborus!), the band launch into what almost sounds like Ariel Pink playing black metal, or some murky chunk of mysterious James Ferraro style lysergic pop, which just so happens to be laced with some evil vox, the riffs are blurry streaks of melody, that almost sound more like horns or keyboards (which they could be), warbly synths wheeze and sputter, the vocals alternate between gruff growl and dramatic croon, the drums distorted and stumbly, everything wreathed in a druggy haze, the sound like some alternate universe pop, or some strange mutant strain of new waves, especially when the drums switch to an almost disco beat, the blackness really only represented by the vokills, otherwise this is some gloriously warped melodic doom pop weirdness.
The B side brings things down even further, unfurling a haunting mournful bit of balladic dirgery, the sound bleary and blurry and drowsily depressive, the vocals doused in echo, those weird keyboard/horn guitars continuing to undulate and oscillate, surge an swell, creating strange ethereal melodies, which remind us of synth guitar weirdos Xynfonica / Shevalreq, the same sort of medieval majesty, but here buried in sonic murk and mire, the vocals so expressive, and strangely plaintive, the drums slipping from lazy plod to urgent pound and back again. In fact, the B side seems pretty evenly split between druggy propulsive post pop warble, and downright dreamy drift, all ephemeral and gauzy, the whole thing laced with chiming harmonics, warped melodic tangles and weirdly fluctuating production, the sound occasionally slipping into near perfect (albeit extremely damaged) pop, but more often then not, oozing and billowing, the sound seeming to melt before our ears into a warm whirling, almost liquid sound. A strangely soporific and somnolent sprawl of blurred blackness and murky melodicism, that truly is some of the weirdest, most beautifully baffling shit you will ever hear.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking artwork on a gatefold reverse board jacket, with a big booklet, featuring hand inked artwork, black and white, with gold and silver metallic detail. Gorgeous!
Once again, Finnish 'black metal' weirdos distance themselves even further from what most of us would consider to be black metal. This compiles two 'sides' originally recorded for 2 planned split lps with another bunch of outsider black metallers, Urfaust. For whatever reason, said splits failed to materialize, thus we have this, two part bit of oddness called Old Ghosts, not a new album technically (part 3 of the Shores - Stream - Islands trilogy is coming out soon) but heck, new album or not, this is in fact a new full length from our of our favorite purveyors of damaged, off kilter blackness.
And as we mentioned above, CoO were never really the black and buzzy type, instead they took those elements and fused them with their more sort of abstract folk flecked, Jandekian stumble, the result something we found genius, but a fair amount of TROO black metal warriors found to be hard to handle. Moody, noodily slow motion almost new wave sounding guitars, reminding us quite a bit of some lost Cure demo, dark and spidery and creepy, the vocals sort of sung/spoken, often slipping into weird out of tune crooning, it's easy to see how these jams were intended to be on a split with Urfaust, the same sort of dramatic poppiness, a lurching, bizarrely rendered bit of not very metal blackness.
After the first track, the drums kick in, there's then a bit more buzz, but other than that, the sound remains essentially the same, dour and depressive, stripped down, almost jangly, more a sort of lo-fi doom-pop than black metal, very much along the same lines as the last few Hypothermia records, or maybe Dead Reptile Shrine at their most folky and poppy.
For being two different records, the two sides flow together fairly seamlessly, a sprawling collection of lumbering, loping, downtuned depressive, jangle flecked, blackened, gothic new wave pop weirdness. Further cementing these guys' position as one of our favorite groups around. Both sides finish off with short bursts of urgently strummed atonal acoustic folk, that sounds a bit like a more fucked up blackened Mountain Goats?! So cool.
Comes with a printed insert, with liner notes and lyrics, and features one of the best covers we've EVER seen on a 'metal' record for sure.
We've said it before, we'll say it again, pretty much all good things come from Finland. Okay, maybe that's us being all hyperbolic again, but c'mon, Finland blows our minds, STILL! Especially with music. Let us count the ways: Skepticism, Mieskuoro Huutajat, Vladislav Delay, Thergothon, Tiermes, Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Shape Of Despair, Kiila, Children Of Bodom, Es, Hanoi Rocks, Smack, Kroko, Kemialliset Ystavat, Anaksimandros, Avarus, Uton, Doktor Kettu, Islaja, Clandestine Blaze, Horna, Ride For Revenge, Baptizm, Cleaning Women, Paavoharju, Stumm, Chainsmoker, Tivol, Reverend Bizarre, Dead Reptile Shrine, Loinen, Magyar Posse, Itavayla, Exordium, Aaviko... Phew! We could go on and on, but what other region has produced so much weird and wonderful music, from damaged outsider black metal to dreamy foresty folk, to clattery free noise to droning sludge rock and pretty much every strange stop in between.�
But even amidst this veritable who's who of AQ faves, this lineup of damaged and demented, dreamy and brilliant and beautiful music makers, another Finnish band still manages to stand out.�Circle Of Ouroborus. Ostensibly a black metal band, but the more we hear and with every successive record, we begin to wonder why any one ever considered them a metal band at all. But that only makes us love them all the more.�
As we've mentioned in the past, it takes some serious weirdness to share a split with the buzz croon blackness of Urfaust, but CoO pulled it off easy, even managing to outweird the already impossibly weird Urfaust pretty much across the board. Their debut full length was a ramshackle stumbling blackened mess, all atonal guitars, and haphazard percussion, wailed, crooned and spoken vocals, detuned acoustic guitars, some black buzz, but for the most part it was some strange slightly metallic mix of Jandek and the Fall, the vocals constantly switching from Mark E. Smith whine to Jandek drawl, the music beneath following suit, going from fractured folk to hyperkinetic almost new wave black pop. And we dug it. A lot. It was difficult listening certainly, but it grew on us like crazy and became a daily listen.�
So we've been waiting and waiting for the new record. We were warned by the band that it was really strange and that there was some seriously not-metal-at-all moments, so we were pretty excited, but damn if it isn't weirder and way better than we expected.�
On Shores, the band sounded constantly on the verge of falling apart, blasting was an iffy proposition as they sounded like they might derail at any moment, the vocals were definitely tough to listen to at moments, and the guitars were tangled and mangled in gloriously messy clumps. And while some of that remains on streams, it's almost like a different band. The vocals are so much better, still weird and haunting and not always in key, but stronger, and more evocative, more emotional, often buried amidst buzzing guitars or crashing drums, allowed to croon and howl and the results make them sound like a real band. But what sort of real band is the real question. Certainly not a black metal band, although a few songs do have brief blasts of buzzing blackness, instead, they seem to have taken that Fall like sound and stretched it out into some weird gnarled gothy doom pop, at some points they sound like�damaged atonal psych pop like Times New Viking maybe, but most of the time, they sound a bit like a�super lo-fi live recording of Joy Division or Crispy Ambulance, albeit slightly blacker, or maybe some buzzy gothy modern doppelganger of Alien Sex Fiend or Specimen. Sounds weird, and it definitely is, but it's also pretty awesome. It's the sort of not entirely black, black metal record that will definitely appeal to folks just looking for something dark and moody and buzzy and far out. That said, the sound of Streams is about as black metal as CoO have ever gotten, some serious blasting buzz and some grimly buzzing blackness. But that blackness is always muted or smeared into shades of grey, draped over and amidst a collection of haunting and mysterious songs that while strangely connected and cohesive, range from the gloomy fuzzy drama of "Streams Of Depression" to the gorgeous acoustic Sentridoh-like "Anonym".
Definitely for fans of Urfaust, Nuit Noire, Lifelover and all of those peripherally black musical experimentalists...
Super striking and bizarre cover art, black and white pencil drawings of an old man's bald head sporting the CoO ouroborus symbol, the snake eating its own tail, as well as cool pencil sketches of the two band members inside, detailed down to one guy's Isengard t-shirt!
