We first discovered Kohn, aka Jurgen DeBlonde, via his contribution to the Western Vinyl 'Portrait' series, in which each artist was to pick an individual, write songs about said individual, and provide a drawing for the cover. Kohn picked Bruce Willis, so we could hardly resist when we saw this weird record in the racks with this scrawled portrait of BW on the cover. We were then pleasantly surprised to discover that there was more to the record that the concept/cover, and in fact, it was a gorgeous disc of glitched out folkiness and droney melodic abstractions, trippy loops and blurred collaged soundscapes, it was so good that we went searching for every release we could find.
And not soon after, this showed up, the latest from Kohn, an lp on Kraak and one that finds him exploring the concept, as the title suggests, of random patterns, recorded with just an organ, and with minimal edits, improvised variations on simple random patterns, designed to be listened to, again according to the liner notes, while doing something else, reading, meditating, driving, and it does sound perfect for that. Obviously influenced by Reich, Riley, Glass and the like, this is moody hypnotic, almost new age sounding kosmische mesmer, four long tracks, that over the course of each, gradually shift and transform, from murky looped churn, to glistening melodic shimmer, and from lush chordal thrum, to percolating sci-fi arpeggiations, that sound very cosmic and soundtracky, the sort of stuff that should definitely appeal to everyone into the current crop of retro futurism, Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Blizaro, etc, although this is definitely more minimal, and in places definitely has a Zomes vibe, a similar sort of spaced out zoner vibe, perfect drift off, zone out, late night soundtrack for sure.
Housed in a super swank four color silkscreened fold over jacket, with a printed insert with liner notes detailing the motives behind the music, and Kohn's ideas and intentions in creating these random patterns.
From the very first notes of Assume Crash Position, we're immediately transported right back to Kinshasa in the Congo, a bustling town square, people going about their business, cars zooming past, children playing and shouting, people sitting at tables on the sidewalk drinking, eating, catching up, birds perched in the trees, chirping, just a regular bustling African city, except maybe for a certain group of musicians, creating their own soundtrack to daily life, conjuring up a gorgeous, rhythmic, hypnotic and strangely psychedelic racket, equal parts classic African folk music, High Life, and junkyard percussion. The musicians are wielding a strange array of hand built instruments, there's lots of rusted metal, car batteries, old cracked loudspeakers, various drums, and most notably, some fantastic looking, and even more fantastic sounding amplified thumb pianos. By now, regular readers of the aQ list most likely know we're talking about the truly amazing Konono No.1, quite possibly one of our favorite African ensembles ever, past or present. When we first hear them a few years ago, we were blown away, the super distorted thumb pianos spitting out clouds of rapid fire chiming notes, tangled melodies, all locked into super hypnotic drum driven grooves, call and response vocals, simultaneously festive and danceable, dark and mysterious, raw and feral, primitive and DIY, lush and melodic and like nothing we had ever heard before.
When we first threw on Assume Crash Position, our first thought, was that very little had changed, and to a certain degree that's true, all of the above mentioned elements are still present, the wild thumb pianos, still the focal point, their sound curious but so warm and sweetly melodic, the call and response vocals, the tribal percussion, the groovy rhythms, but from the first track it IS in fact evident that some things have changed. That opening track, "Wumbanzanga", is far more melodic, far more pretty and almost more like some of the other traditional African music we've heard in the past, with great female vocals, the vibe super festive, but those thumb piano melodies definitely add a distinctly Konono vibe. Then the next track, "Thin Legs" explodes in a frenzy of whistles and tribal drumming and vocals, that's it, but it too manages to be super melodic and totally effusively celebratory.
It's not until "Mama Na Bana" which opens with that Konono style stop start THRUMP THRUMP THRUMP, where the whole group locks in, before launching into classic Konono, it's really hard to describe, but those fuzzy buzzing metallic melodies wrapped around the repetitive rhythms and the super emotional vocals, the whole rest of the record is classic, albeit a bit more polished and melodic, Konono junkyard Congotronics...
Some of the highlights this time around include "Makembe", with its buzzing melodies, crooned vocals, and the sounds of kids playing and birds chirping, before there's a BIG crash, apparently the sound of a concrete wall collapsing, a wall the vocalist was moments earlier leaning against, and then the band launches into one of the best jams on the disc. Or the gorgeous closing lullaby of "Nakobala Lisusu Te", with muted thumb pianos, super tangled melodies, and a sweet soulful croon, so dreamy and blissful, the perfect way to unwind after a wild, sweaty, funky, groovy, Congotronic workout.
The packaging is cool too, with tons of photos of the local scrap yard / junkyard, where the band gather up most of the material they use to build their instruments, not to mention a shot of that collapsed wall that crumbled mid-song. As with past Konono's, utterly and absolutely wholeheartedly recommended!
We have been totally obsessed with these guys (as have the rest of you judging from how many folks have called and emailed about them and already bought a ton of copies from us before this review even was written) for at least a year if not more and until now there hasn't been a thing (other than a minute long mp3 sample available on Crammed Discs' website) which has been taunting us with the promise of a full length from these guys. So until that fabled Crammed Discs release actually comes out we've got this little nugget to tide you over. And it's no small shakes neither. Though we only learned of them recently Konono No.1 have been around for some 25 years. Hailing from Kinshasa, Congo, Konono No.1 are true African punk rock. They are real D.I.Y. Not putting on shows and printing zines, no, how about building their own instruments from found scraps and dismantled machinery and retrofitting and electrifying traditional instruments! For instance the lead musician Mingiedi Mawangu has taken his likembe (thumb piano), rigged it up to pickups (self-built from hammered parts purloined from car starter motors) and amplified it with a custom built amplifier driven by a car battery, using microphones built out of copper wire and branches. How cool is that! And the sounds these instruments produce is amazing. The likembe, with its muted gentle melodic thrum, is turned into an overdriven buzzing melodic powerhouse that sounds like nothing you've ever heard. Well, sometimes it sounds a bit like some sort of psychedelic alien fuzz guitar, but mostly it just sounds amazing and bizarre. The songs are all very melodically similar and mesh into one massive hour long jam, with wild percussion, chanted vocals, and of course the wailing Likembe. So completely amazing. Every time we play this in the store, someone buys one. Immediately.
Seven extended tracks, recorded live and released on the Ex's label Terp.
This record is so goddamn beautiful. Hard to know how to describe it. It reminds me of the sonic equivalent of those time lapse films where you watch the seasons pass in a matter of minutes, sunrise, sunset, plants slowly unfurling and blossoming, before wilting and falling to the ground, snow and then rain and then sun, everything moving at an accelerated pace, but blending and merging into a completely mesmeric and hypnotic fugue. Sort of like that. The tag on the cd mentions Godspeed and the Rachel's, and while those are the easiest comparisons (Godspeed because it's so epic, and the Rachel's because it's sort of chamber music) they don't at all hint at the complexity and depth of this Kopernik record. Thick and throbbing, undulating bass is the foundation, cellos, and upright basses, double basses, bowed and plucked, create a viscous and dense bed of rumbling, pulsing low end over which delicate, glistening melodies are sprinkled. This is ambient music, but so rich with layer after layer of delicate sound, that form an impossibly complex and challenging and beautiful listen. While rooted in this bass heavy, epic classical ambience, these songs do stretch in all sorts of improbable directions. Gorgeously lush chamber music, with digital glitches and hiccups, reminscent of Oval's Diskont, but instead of sounding underwater it sounds like it's floating in midair. A medieval court music, sort of grand and pompous, but also a bit forboding, like a much more GRIM Penguin Cafe Orchestra with burbling bass and loping melodies. Dark and cinematic, suspenseful and harrowing noirscapes with thick walls of lower register thrum with heavily affected backward vocals. Lonely and desolate, but so sincere and emotional. A perfect late night record of soothing dreaminess and nocturnal mesmer, but unlike many similar records, it can stand up to serious listening, offering even more when time is taken to explore its rich mysteries.
After a flurry of contemporary releases, Chris Connely, Chicago Thrash Ensemble, Mako Sica, PlusTapes returns with another mindblowing archival release, this one comes from Korea, and is the collected works of an all girl trashy rock and roll garage band called the Korean Black Eyes, who totally kick ass. Brash and snotty and groovy. The opening jam, is all buzzing bass, reverbed surf guitar, pounding drums, bleating sax, and some seriously raspy bad ass lead vocals, complete with wild throat shredding screams, her voice rough and raw and so passionate. The second track finds the Black Eyes getting all groovy and funky and soulful, adding some warm whirring organ to the mix, channeling Sly Stone and Funkadelic, but giving it their own twist. The vocals are amazing, and pretty much make the band, sung in English, but with a SUPER thick accent, and it's that total rock bad girl voice, weathered from whiskey and cigarettes, but still so sexy and sultry.
The interesting thing, as with many of these bands, is how did a band like this survive in Korea in the early seventies? In a time when this sort of rock was not at all encouraged. And most certainly not by women.
But we're so glad they did. And we're so glad PlusTapes tracked this stuff down. The B side even gets all ballady, opening with a Moody Blues cover, but it's not at all cheesy, their version is smokey and mysterious, sung in Korean, the sax slithery and slippery, the sound humid and heavy. And then they go off and finish the record with "Jesus Christ Superstar", epic and groovy, and subtly psychedelic, and again the vocals just seal the deal. It's criminal how good these women are. In different circumstances they could have been, should have been huge, and certainly the vocalist would have been a superstar with her tough and sexy Tina Turner / Janis Joplin yowl. Total kick ass bad girl garage rock and roll genius.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Pink tapes, each one hand numbered and hand decorated, with cover art by Plastic Crimewave.
A lot of the soundtracks we review, are for movies we haven't actually seen. In some ways that's sort of liberating, at least from a purely musical standpoint, hearing the sounds solely for what they are, instead of having those sounds inexorably linked to specific images. And in a lot of cases, we have discovered some incredible films via their soundtracks, and not the more common other way around. We got this soundtrack to this 1981 French horror/thriller (directed by Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, and scored by his longtime collaborator Andrzej Korzynski, also Polish, but more on that in a second) in a few months ago, and instantly, become totally obsessed, spinning it multiple times a day, inevitably folks in the store would ask what it was, because it's so goddamn good. And creepy, and twisted, and pretty much the perfect score, but for what, we weren't sure, as we had not seen the movie. And while are obsession proves that you needn't see the movie to love this, once we actually DID see the movie, we flipped for that too, wondering how the hell we could have missed out on it all these years. It's literally one of the weirdest, most fucked up films EVER. And the soundtrack we had become so familiar with over the last several months, finally viewed in the contest of the film, made both even more bizarre and amazing.
So the film itself, banned until 1991, and at the time classified as a "Video Nasty", stars an American, Sam Neil, who becomes convinced his wife, Isabelle Adjani, is cheating on him, which she is. Neil hires a private investigator, eventually meets the lover, and the lover's mother, but there's so much more to the story, there's a crazily neglected child in the mix, some truly twisted parenting, and SPOILER ALERT!!!! Some sort of super gross oozing monster that lives in an abandoned building that Adjani is in love with, or is at least having sex with? There's tons of screaming and hitting and fighting, and one of thee most dramatic freakouts EVER, with Adjani losing her mind in a tunnel, and ending up spewing and oozing all sorts of weird fluids, there's a particularly psychedelic denouement as well, lots of crazy scenery chewing, the whole thing is utterly and unabashedly over the top. Even right after seeing it, we weren't sure what the fuck just happened. But we did know, we loved the movie, and suddenly, loved the soundtrack EVEN MORE.
Korzynski's soundtrack is a series of short cues, most less than a minute, that find the composer experimenting with synthesizers, drum machines, primitive electronics. It's actually quite progressive, and in places is reminiscent of Carpenter or Goblin, especially in the movie's 'theme'. Check out the opening track "The Night The Screaming Stops", and it will be stick in your head forever, the tense strings, the pulsing rhythmic throb, the mysterious percussion, the swirling synth, and the creepy sci-fi sound effects, not to mention the melody. It's so haunting and creepy, but in the film, it's over the most innocuous sequence, and it's that juxtaposition that makes it so effectively chilling. Seriously if this soundtrack was 2 minutes long, and consisted of that first track, we'd still want a copy!
But dig in, there's plenty more, haunting swoonsome strings, drifting over a lilting organ melody, dreamy and drifty, but so subtly ominous, there's some full on synth prog, again revisiting that opening melody, but with more heft, as the soundtrack unwinds, there's lots of percussion, shakers, little flurries of synth shimmer, deep drones, the orchestral theme is particularly stirring, a refrain of the opening credit sequence, but so much more creepy and hauntingly stately. There are also lots of brief blasts of synthy psychedelia, appropriately titled things like "Detective's Desserts" or "Bloody Embrace", and part of the reason these cues are so short, is that much of the movie is sans incidental music, so the cues come in to accentuate certain events, the sonic equivalent of jump-scares, but super effective, and they add a whole other level of surreal psychedelia to the proceedings, very 'Euro' for sure. The series of "Kreuzberg" variations are particularly freaky, sinister and mysterious, grim ambience and super tense orchestral weirdness. Oh did we mention "The Man With The Pink Socks"? Another perplexing plot point, and one that here gets the bookending closing sequence, revisiting "Meeting With A Pink Tie". Adding some extra wah guitar, and both revisiting that opening theme.
Listen to the sound samples and see if you can resist. But really why bother? You won't be sorry. Even removed from the movie, this score is fantastic, psychedelic, orchestral, proggy, tripped out and bizarre, and no doubt will have you headed to the video store to experience the baffling brilliance of the film, once your sated on the equally baffling and brilliant score.
Like all B-Music / Finders Keepers releases, includes a huge booklet with lots of liner notes and tons of rare photos.
What might one expect from a band called Kosmonaut, and a record called Future Machines? Some serious psychedelic space synth obviously. A kosmiche songsuite beholden to the early masters: Froese, Schnitzler, Pinhas, etc. And aligned with present day practitioners like Umberto, The Slasher Film Festival Strategy, Zombi, Majeure, Expo 70, M. Geddes Gengras, Roll The Dice, etc., as well. But for all the sonic similarities Kosmonaut shares with his space synth brethren, he's managed to conjure up a sound that is nothing like any of them. Sure there are pulsating arpeggiated synths, shimmery celestial swirls, motorik rhythms, but Kosmonaut's sounds are dirtier, gristlier, noisier, opener "City Deterioration", is like a crumbling Carpenter score, especially part way through when the sound shifts and becomes a churning low end buzz, laced with swirling faux strings and jagged melodic shards. And that's just the beginning, the albums trajectory swinging wildly from the furthest reaches of deep space ("Prime Meridian"), to a 2am chase through rain slicked back alleys in some seedy big city ("Haus Maschine"). The synths employed get totally abused, and often instead of dreamy cosmic shimmer, the sounds are garbled and crunchy, distorted and dirty, check out "Wings Of The Sun", the first two minutes of which, sound like Sun Ra going apeshit on the synths, and trying to conjure up some celestial deity, that is before in swoop the shimmers, but even then the shimmers are soon swallowed up, but layer upon layer of sci-fi zoner synth buzz and roiling rhythmless pulses. For all the more 'easy listening' synth music out there, the music of Kosmonaut is actually quite challenging, dark and twisted, off kilter and experimental, avant and abstract, the various space/synth tropes utterly subverted and transformed into something urgent, dangerous and dark, at times frantic and frenetic, and at others brooding and wreathed in shadow, and only occasionally bathed in the prismatic glimmer of deep space starlight.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. Housed in screen printed fold over sleeves, includes a printed insert, as well as a download card, that includes not just a digital version of the whole record, but also six download only bonus tracks. Warning to anal record collector nerds, all of the sleeves came slightly damaged, mostly just rumpled corners, and there are no more sleeves in existence with which to replace them, thus, all the copies we got, have slightly bumped / rumpled corners, so if that sort of thing bothers you, steer clear, if not, grab one of these beauties before they're sold out and gone for good!
Man, do we at ever AQ love that Japanese '70s group the Taj Mahal Travellers! Masters of organic drone, utilising bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material. And we've been blessed of late with the reissue of lots
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The day we first got this in stock, it was pouring rain -- appropriately enough, because playing this made it seem like it was raining in the store as well as outside, quite a lovely effect we thought. Truly, this is a stunningly beautiful concert/field recording, the culmination of a series of concerts held at (the very rainy) Koukiji temple in Japan. The concerts were organized by Yasushi Utsunomia -- whose claim to fame was as recording engineer for art rockers After Dinner. According to Utsunomia, his initial efforts were unsuccessful due in part to demanding and flaky performers (apparently all rock bands) and a crappy sound reinforcement system supplied by the temple. In the end, the first problem was solved by turning to traditional musicians and the second by constructing a sound reinforcement system worthy of such a space (a detailed diagram of the performance space and speaker locations is included on the back of the booklet's cover.) The performances heard here are on shakuhachi, ryuteki (both Japanese bamboo flutes), sitar and stone flute (played by the legendary shamanistic composer Akio Suzuki). All are accompanied by rain, from soft patter to heavy downpour. At times the rain is so loud it completely drowns out the soft playing of the instruments, essentially being an instrument itself -- and as a warning to those who would say otherwise, says Suzuki: "I'll tear out the ears of whoever says this is just rain." For its part, the electro-acoustic elements added via DSP and Utsunomia's custom built horn loaded speaker array are all but completely transparent for much of the concert. During Korei Deguchi's ryuteki performance is when the processing is most noticeable, with what sounds like the work of a harmonizer. Aside from that, the musicians' playing, the space, the rain and Utsunomia's equipment are seamlessly wedded and, if nothing else, you'll feel drenched by the time you finish listening. This numbered edition comes beautifully packaged with a nicely printed cover drawing (some thick rubbery ink that feels nice to pass ones fingers over) of a couple of cats performing for an audience of felines, and is hand-stamped on the inside. Also it includes a printed fold out with liner notes in Japanese and English. The whole thing -- package, idea, music -- is simply beautiful. Several of us here (Andee, Byram, Allan, at least) have already taken copies home...
What more do you need to know, than this is two of our favorite heavy bands, doing killer (and WAY unlikely) covers, on by Low, and one by Soundgarden? OK, how about the fact that this was a super limited installment of a subscription only series, really the only way to get your hands on one of these was to subscribe, unless, the guys in KWC offered us a little handful of their copies, the LAST copies in fact, so you should know what that means by now, grab one before they disappear.
KWC tackles Low's "July", and besides cranking up the guitars, and adding some downtuned crunch, stay pretty true to the original, and wisely got a guest vocalist, Lisa Papineau, who we had never heard of before, but who has sung for Air, M83, Farflung and others, but who is the perfect fit, here vocals emotional and powerful, darkly tinged, one of those rare, practically perfect covers, where the cover manages to be as good as the original, different enough to be interesting, but faithful enough to make not singing along impossible.
Thou take on Soundgarden's "4th Of July", and like KWC, stay sort of faithful to the original, and like with the KWC track, via the vocals. In place of Thou's usual throat shredding shrieks, the band unveil some seriously powerful crooning, a kick ass voice that definitely has us wondering what these guys would be capable of if they chose to go in that direction. But fear not, not only is the main riff an oozing, downtuned creep, but after that first verse, the more recognizable Thou vocals come in, but instead of replacing the clean vox, they team up, for a really bizarre duet, and some twisted not-quite harmonies, the song itself, unfurling as a lumbering, surprisingly still super melodic, dirge doom monster.
Rare that we dig both sides of a split this much, but both these tracks totally KILL. And again, super limited, we have about 15 copies, these are the last ones we'll be able to get. Not sure you can even still sign up for the subscription series, so probably better to get one now, before you're kicking yourself later. Insanely gorgeous cover art / design as well!
Thee latest blast of confusional sonic chaos from this sort-of black metal supergroup, featuring avant outsider axeman Mick Barr (Orthrelm, Ocrilim, etc.) and bass shredder Colin Marsten (Behold The Arctopus, Dysrhythmia, etc.) is Krallice album number three, the follow up to the awesomely titled Dimensional Bleedthrough, and it's pretty much another opus of epic, soaring and majestic, yet convoluted and confusional black metal as only these guys can play it. There are moments, where you might, MIGHT think this could be some other black metal band, but those moments pass, and before long, when the band lock into their blazing blasting fury. As with the other records, the real surprise is how melodic Krallice can be, judging from the pedigree, one might be forgiven for assuming this would be incredibly difficult, and it is, in some ways, but it's also weirdly catchy, a pretty good mix of classic black metalisms, and the player's obtuse and obviously idiosyncratic take on the genre. The sound this time around actually seems a lot cleaner, and arrangements a bit more straight ahead, and the melodies much more pronounced, and it definitely suits them, but just when we begin to think that, the song we're listening to will fracture into some impossible tangle, or some super tripped out sort-of guitar lead, before slipping right back into more soaring buzzing melodic black metal. Which is just fine with us. Be sure to check out the epic 15 minute closer "Forgiveness In Rot", which is maybe the most melodic thing they've done, with some impossible hooks, and some subtle poppiness, all woven into the buzzing and blasting, almost like Krallice channeling Alcest AND some sort of epic post rock!
We first discovered Krohm after Wrest from Leviathan suggested we check them out, if we were in the mood for some super dirgey, cold and miserable, almost doom-like suicidal black metal. When aren't we? And whaddayaknow? He was right. Nortt, Xasthur, even some Leviathan are the main touchstones for Krohm's super mournful doomic black metal. Nary a blast or furious riff to be found. Instead this is midtempo buzzing blackness. Like Malefic from Xasthur, Numinas from Krohm, weaves a bleak depressive instrumental back drop, all fuzzed out guitars, simple martial drumming, thick slabs of bass rumble, above which he drizzles haunting and heart breaking guitar melodies, peppered with his way down in the mix howls. This is a sea sick drift across a pitch black sonic ocean. Lurching and loping, riding the gentle swells, each track a sort of sea sick waltz, or a death march across a muddy swamp, trudging head down, eyes cast Earthward, body racked with sorrow, a sky full of cold rain. A soul as black as your broken heart, dead and done beating forever, walking and wandering and waiting for the ground to swallow you whole. So awesome.
Essential for fans of Xasthur and Nortt and all manner of depressive black doom...
Brand new music from German outsider sci-fi pop weirdo / visionary, whose "particle accelerator pop" positions somewhere between a sort of naive, alien Gary Numan, and a time traveling Brian Wilson cyborg, his pop music meticulously crafted from the detritus of classic pop music past, fused into some impossible space aged future pop, Kubin a Joe Meek like studio mad scientist, transforming pop music into something strange and wondrous, even when working with someone else's music, just check out the opening track, a killer and fantastically confusional cover of Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes", which turns the original into a near operatic robotic future funk, channeling the spirit of Klaus Nomi (who also does a killer version of the song), but Kubin has no shortage of his own mini masterpieces, beginning with "Atomium Vertigo", which sounds like Serge Gainsbourg played by an all robot band, a krauty drum machine kraut-groove beneath fields of FX and static, while Kubin delivers his sultry spoken word, oh yeah, and of course there's the bleepy bloopy vocodered chorus. And so it goes, every track here a twisted future pop gem, from the avant electro-kraut exotica of "Nachts Im Park", to the 8-bit skitter of "Flies Without Memory", to the garbled electronic jazz collage that is "Restez En Linge", to the banging synth hop of "Piscine Ressonenzi", which has us envisioning Kubin as a producer and beat maker for the current crop of pop stars like Ke$ha, or Beyonce, or Britney... if only! And Kubin never lets up, the second half of Zemsta Plutona as chock full of electro future pop weirdness as the first, flitting from plunderphonic style forties jazz to maniacal alien electro, and from murky minimal avant-kraut weirdness to Perry & Kingsley style electronic experimentation, and beyond!
Like all Omni releases, Zemsta Plutona is beautifully appointed, there's a big full color booklet, with liner notes and plenty of photos!
How rad is this? One of our favorite Record Store Day items this year was not a record, but a book! A hefty, 508-page tome that thoroughly chronicles the history and obsessions of one of the largely misunderstood and under-appreciated niches of recorded music, the "vanity record" - also known as "private press recordings". Enjoy The Experience, edited by noted collector Johan Kugelberg, delves deep into the uniquely 20th century phenomena of the custom-made record and the little-known artists who made them, as well as the collectors and reissue labels that have obsessed over them and ultimately prevented them from fading into obscurity. A lot of our faves are here, including many we have reviewed over the years like The Shaggs, Michael Farneti, Gary Wilson, Jr. and His Soulettes, Bob Chance, Luie Luie, and Hans Edler, many with extensive back stories about their creation. But there is sooooo much more. Including Christian family recordings, ventriloquists, creepy loner folkies, restaurant /resort entertainers, over-the-top lounge singers and just outright bizarre musical artists who just wouldn't have been able to release a record any other way. There are pages and pages of beautiful color reproductions of the cover art to these home made records, some even hand drawn, in all of their earnest naive glory. There's even a chapter on Century Records, one of the most well-established custom record manufacturers, who provided stock album covers for individual artists - and it's funny to see how many different albums utilized the exact SAME cover (including the one seen on the front of this book!). Enjoy The Experience is a joy to behold and will renew your faith in the self-released record.
Comes with a download card for a 20 song playlist including a song from a hopefully up and coming aQ Record of the Week, when it gets reissued - try and guess which one! While supplies last, this special RSD edition also comes with a clear vinyl 45 reissue of a recording by the Century Records marketing department, on how to customize and create your own record. So Awesome!!
This brand new 7" from Swedish depressive black metaller Kyla sounds exactly how you might expect, considering the man behind Kyla is also responsible for the equally black and depressive Hypothermia, as well as counting himself a member of damaged black metal pop weirdos Lifelover.
Kyla traffic in a sound we love, a woozy, super distorted, melancholic, minor key buzz, which begins all warbly and minimal before giving way to a mesmerizing trancelike not-quite-blast. The vocals are howled and anguished and echo drenched and nearly hysterical sounding at points, but they surface only here and there, leaving most of the record to pound out a hypnotic blackened dirge. The guitars are downtuned and almost sludgey sounding in tone, the drums muffled enough to blend in with the blurred guitars and rumbling low end, the B-side has a weird pop vibe running through it, and a killer main melody, reminding us big time of Lifelover, but the vocals are even more unhinged, exploding in squalls of terrifying shriek.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in super striking black and white sleeves, and of course VERY LIMITED!
They may have taken two years between their first and second records, but here comes number three, mere months after we raved about number two, Stahlhartes Gehause. Malefeasance is another stunner, again mixing all manner of experimentation and soundscapery with a core grim black buzz, but L'Acephale move ever farther from the constricting tropes of black metal here, instead utilizing those sounds and styles to their own end, i.e. creating some of the most mysterious and darkly compelling abstract buzz drenched heaviness we've heard in ages.
Where Stahlhartes Gehause was still essentially a black metal record, Malefeasance feels like anything but, with much of the record buzz-free, and even when the band do create some seriously harrowing grimnity, it's abstract, and obtuse, avant even, bordering on a sort of sculpted noise, utilizing bits of blackness to enhance each track's mood and menace.
Album opener "Vainamoinen Nacht" is an epic 10 minute chunk of blackened drift, hushed and shimmery, laced with strange samples and nits of found sound, ominous and haunting, eventually, the song culminates in a flurry of hiss and static and crunch, leaving just some strange bit of European choral music. The following track, "Hitori Bon Odori", harkens back to L'Acephale's Mord Und Totsclag record, offering up some apocalyptic folk, replete with steel string strum and martial snares, whirling winds, and deem ominous wordless vocals. "A Burned Village" is the first time the band explore any black metal, although the track begins with a haunting funereal drum dirge and deep monk like chanting, which continues throughout the track, which consists of buzzing insectoid riffage, harsh vokills, and no traditional blasting drum beats, instead, more martial snares and that same opening percussion. Heavy for sure, and black, but not necessarily metal, more like some sort of metallic black ambience.
The last three tracks, clocking in at 18:09, 14:17 and 23:00 respectively, make up the bulk of the record, the first, "From A Miserable Abode" explodes in a squall of swirling downtuned guitars, super distorted and saturated vocals, a heaving Merzbowian freakout, tons of effects and stuttering sonic fragments, there do seem to be drums, but they're buried in the mix, instead the track seems to expand ever outwards, a huge dense cloud of frenzied sound, all underpinned by a moaning, keening high end drone, which later on reveals itself as a bagpipe or some sort of horn, the metal and noise fading out, leaving just a glorious Eastern style high end ur-drone, mesmerizing and meditative and very very mysterious. "Sleep Has His House" is another 'metal' track, but again, there seems to be very little forward momentum, very little propulsion, instead, the band whip up supercharged drifts of noise drenched high end skree, while underneath, a guitar is locked in a motorik hypnotic loop, the result a sound like some Finnish forest drone folk outfit remixed by some harsh noise combo, the two disparate elements melding into something wholly original and hauntingly listenable.
Finally, the record closes with the 23 minute "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted", a deep drone / soft noise exploration, beginning with some subsonic rumbles, some streaks of feedback and brittle high end, and finally an extended doom folk dirge outro, a simple minor key guitar figure over a backdrop of his and whir, the whole thing strangely textural and visceral, ominous and dense with menace.
It's definitely strange that what might be the best L'Acephale record so far, also happens to be the least metal. So much so that we can only recommend this to the most adventurous of metalheads (which we like to think would be the majority of metal loving folk that read the aQ list), but fair warning to the rest, that this is not really a black metal record at all, instead, it's some gloriously abstract, blackened ritualistic collection of dark metallic drift and alchemical doom folk, of blacknoise and apocalyptic dronemusik, and thus, metal or not, is WAY recommended.
It's taken two years, but L'Acephale have finally returned. This Northwestern black metal horde, whose debut was a massive hit around here, after it mysteriously showed up one day, has risen from the murk once again, dragging an army of deacaying flesh with them, hidden from view in the Cascadian forests, the then proceeded to conjure up all manner of sounds and spirits, capturing them only to flay them alive, spread them out beneath a black sun, guts and all, carefully and meticulously crafting the sonic abomination that is this, their second blackened gospel. Another distrubing hybrid of militaristic martial folk, and furious blasting raw blackness, four songs, long songs, the shortest 12 minutes, the longest nearly 25, the opening, a haunting bit of sampled vocals, militaristic percussion, dense drones, haunting chorales, that goes on for nearly six minutes, building the tension, sprawling out like some black military slowly moving machine like toward their next conquest, until finally, the band explode into action, a black cloud of furious buzzing riffage, blasting beats, grunting growling vocals, all wound up into a woozy dizzyingly blasting bit of lurching blackened metal. And then out of nowhere, the buzz and blast drop away, leaving some dark folk, soft strumming, crooned dramatic vocals, moaning violin, the sound definitely reminiscent of Der Blutharsch or Death In June (or perhaps Blood Axis or Waldteufel, seeing as Markus Wolff, one of the drummers, plays in both), gorgeous and languid and darkly haunting, until the rest of the band joins in, splattering the tranquility with chatoc blasts of wild drumming, and more frenetic riffing, finally dropping out, leaving just the sound of wind, and a woman, singing some sort of folks song. Really intense and mysterious. And that's just the first song!
The other three tracks are just as dense and tangled, with sampled soundtracks, to convoluted Deathspell style blackness, laced with haunting acoustic guitars, the band locking into some seriously intense bursts of mathy buzz, languid stretches of string laced dark ambient folk, simple strum, and mournful melodies, soaring epic sounding black doom, majestic and mighty, suoper chaotic black psychedelia whipped into a frenzy and wrapped around a women's chorus, like some fucked up black metal opera, deep lumbering minimal drones, sprawling out endlessly, beneath strange bits of creak and groan, and deep intoned voices, some sort of incantation, creepy bits of piano parlor music, all wrapped up in, and surrounded by, jagged shards of grim frosty blackend buzz.
A seriously twisted and magickal collection of ritualistik black art, a litany of musical blasphemies, as lovely and mysterious as they are hellish and haunting.A black covenent scrawled in flesh and blood, and rendered in pure audial evil.
Incredible packaging, 6 panel digipak, with a massive booklet, which tons of diagrams, photos, lyrics, liner notes, as well as text about the meaning behind each song.
Yet another new (to us at least) release from Northwestern apocalyptic folk / black metal horde L'Acephale, whose new record Stahlhartes we raved about on the last list. These two tracks were recorded back in 2005, when this record was actually released, predating even their first demo / full length Mord Und Totsclag.
And anyone who dug either or both L'Acephale's records will probably need this too. Both tracks unreleased, exclusive to this single, not so much folk here, instead, barring some creepy choral intros and a haunting ambient hymn like outro, this is full on raw and harsh old school black metal, furious and frenetic, pounding and thrashing and blasting, the vocals chaotic and off kilter, the riffage brittle and buzzy, the drums dense and often buried in the mix. There are some strange arrangements, some almost militaristic breakdowns, a bit of post rocky mathiness here and there, but those moments are subtle and barely discernible within L'Acephale's blown out sonic squall, a furious and relentless, grim and blackened two part plague delivered from the depths... glorious, soul shearing pestilence in sound.
Beautiful packaging, a black and red gatefold sleeve, with lyrics, credits, some amazing black and white photos of skulls and catacombs, also a printed insert, pressed on red vinyl, and limited to 1000 copies, each one hand numbered (and the numbers are getting up there, so odds are these are almost gone).
We're so excited to finally be holding this long in the works release in our grubby little paws. A long term collaboration between Loren Chasse and Ray Guillette, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing was originally intended to be released as a picture disc on tUMULt, but through a series of strange circumstances, the picture disc series was put on hold indefinitely, and the L/R record just sort of languished on a dusty shelf somewhere, which was an absolute shame as this is a beautiful piece of work. Thankfully, the folks at Paha Porvari tracked this record down and decided to give it a proper release. While we sort of wish they had pressed this as a real cd, the cd-r format's transitive nature is perfectly suited to the record's sound and theme.
Culled from a series of field recordings collected at the site of a ruined factory in South San Francisco way back in 1996, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing is the document of several live performances in 1997 and 1998 assembled from those sounds.
L/R explore a world of thick washed out drones, swirling seas of whir, gorgeously shimmery expanses of sun dappled sound, all peppered with crackle and glitch, cavernous windblown soundscapes, haunting metallic chimes and muted percussive events, jagged shards of sound, recontextualized into haunting rhythmic grooves, a constantly shifting soundworld of mystery and magic, alternately jagged and caustic, soothing and dreamlike. Incredible stuff!
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized black on black cardstock sleeve, inside lots of beautiful full color inserts, drawings and etchings and paintings reproduced on super nice paper, as well as two delicate vellum inserts with liner notes and credits.
Ghana must be a really loud place. Even just based on the amount of honking that that goes on there. Vehicles honk often and repeatedly, to shoo pedestrians or cyclists out of the way, to signify annoyance with slow traffic or blocked roadways, to signify a desire to change lanes or pass, to get the attention of other drivers or just because they're so thrilled to be driving. Taxis honk rhythmically to attract fares, buses also honk rhythmically while their drivers sing out the various destinations. But there's more than just honking, sound systems blast music, stalls selling their wares broadcast songs and sounds, prayers are broadcast through large speakers affixed to the outsides of mosques...
Sonic chaos certainly. But at the same time, all of these sounds merge into a strange sort of music, the sounds of a city going through the motions of daily life. Chaotic certainly, but also vibrant. Unique. And so alive. A joyful celebration of everyday activities.
At the root of all of this sound is Por Por, the honk horn music of Ghana. Por Por, pronounced 'paaw paaw', an onomatopoeic description of the local drivers' honking squeeze-bulb horn music, was initially just that, the sounds of a city in motion, but eventually, the drivers who helped keep the city moving, took the sounds of their work day and turned it into music. Horns honking, found percussion, wrenches on tires, pipes on concrete, drums, pumping up tires, singing and shouting, those sounds became ritualized, and became their own music, with particular sounds and rhythms and arrangements, and a specific purpose. This music while a reflection of the city around it, was rarely performed in public, but instead, was almost exclusively performed at union drivers' funerals, those funerals very reminiscent of the New Orleans jazz funeral, replete with processions, music obviously, and coffins modeled on the various buses and trucks carrying the dead to the afterlife. The story of por por, of Ghana and its independence is a long one, far to intricate and complex to get into here, but La, the province from which these drivers and horn honkers hail, was critical to the resistance to colonial rule, refusing to pay taxes, fighting a proposed ban on por por horns, a strong sense of community, were all critical to the region's struggle for independence.
So in honor of this year's golden anniversary of Ghana's independence, for the first time, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group gathered to record the music that had been such a part of their culture and their life. Recorded outdoors, in backyards, the sound of the city, the traffic, all around, the music of por por spills forth, effusive and celebratory, joyous and spiritual, complex and strange and like nothing we have ever heard before.
A gorgeously ramshackle rhythmic workout, metallic percussion dense and spidery, a lush framework of intricate rhythms, beneath amazing vocal arrangements, but it's the por por that make this music so unique, honking rhythmically, strange melodies, sounding a bit like geese, an orchestra of squeeze-bulb horns, locking into looped rhythmic structures, hypnotic and mesmerizing. Like traditional African music being performed during rush hour in the middle of a busy intersection. Like Konono No1 but with horns instead of amplified thumb pianos. Most of the tracks seem to be more focused on the vocals, or the hypnotic rhythms, with the horns acting more as a melodic counterpoint. But some tracks, like the opening track "Por Por Akwaaba / Welcome" are entirely about the honking horns, sounding a bit like Philip Glass or Steve Reich composing for automobile horns, rhythmic and strangely catchy, and that is when Pop Por completely captivates, when the horns lock into strange cyclical melodies, all tangled up with the vocals, complete transporting us to the dusty streets of Ghana, horns in hand, honking joyously, letting the sound and the rhythms carry us away.
The final track is especially stirring, with the Por Por group heading into the city, and setting up outside the union office, enlisting all of the drivers present, as well as enlisting the help of various passing vehicles, for a call and response salute to their Independence, the por por horns honking rhythmically, regular car horns held down, underpinning the proceedings with long keening drones, folks singing long drawn out tones, almost wailing, a dense swirl of droning honking mesmer. So intense. And moving.
As with all Smithsonian Folkways releases, there is a huge booklet, with tons of amazing photos, extensive liner notes, as well as notes on each track.
Yet even more silly (but awesome) Dungeons & Dragons / Lord of The Rings metal. This is like the almighty Children of Bodom (blazing fast, duelling lead guitars AND duelling keyboards) but swap the harsh death metal vocals for high melodic New Wave of British Heavy Metal style vocals. Maybe a bit cheesy but still pretty fantastic.
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This record is one of the most amazing we have ever heard, and of course, it's been practically impossible to get back in stock. But now we have it, and you should buy it. It's pummelling and heavy and beautiful. Not sure how long we'll have this in stock.
An ex-Dazzling Killmen (Blake Fleming) takes his penchant for angular discordance a step further, forgoing the ferocious heaviosity of his former outfit, and instead, explores lengthy semi-improvisational psychedelic freakouts and repetetive hypno-krautrock instrumentals ala Circle. Post rock jamscapes littered with shrieking and droning Albert Ayler-ish sax, jabs of no wave guitar, an overwhelming over-saturated super-distorted production and absolutely crushing drumming. Totally essential.
Another winner from AQ fave Phil Niblock's always eclectic and engaging IX label. While sometimes stuff on IX tends a little too much toward the academic (and maybe this one is no different), the music on 'Ten Thousand Shades Of Blue' sounds much more
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Finally, we've managed to restock Alan Lamb's Night Passage, one of the most evocative and sonically engaging dronescaping records that has ever passed through these doors. This Australian composer's sole source material is the sound of wind blowing against telephone wires. In recording the raw material, Lamb simply attaches contact microphones to telephone poles, sits back, and lets the weather blow through the wires how it sees fit. The resultant drones are sublimely rich in their metallic timbres and amazingly complex reverberations, that is not all that far off from Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures. I (Jim) actually had a very hard time believing that they were what Lamb said they were: unprocessed wire music. That is until one cold, blustery summer afternoon on the craggy coastline near Point Reyes north of San Francisco, I heard those exact same sounds from the wind raking across the telephone wires that extended out to a distant lighthouse. These sounds were eeriely beautiful, yet unsettling as they vibrated the air with such ubiquity that their origin was impossible to pinpoint.
For Night Passage, Lamb's recordings originate with the Faraway Wind Organ, a half mile of abandoned telegraph wires in the outback of Western Australia. Unfortunately, this network of wires has collapsed due to lightning and termites, making Lamb's recordings a very rare documentation of an amazing naturally occuring sonic phenomenon.
Also included with this double disc package is the Demixed album, in which Thomas Koner, Lustmord, Ryoji Ikeda, and Bernhard Gunter were given Lamb's raw recordings to treat and compose with. Where Lamb's compositional sensibility privledges the intrinsic qualities of his recordings with just crossfades and equilization, these four blurred the source material that reflected their own signature sounds. Koner leans to expansive gaping drones; Lustmord collapses everything within a bleak catacomb of oppressive ambience; Ikeda ruptures the sound into a subtle piece of minimalism; and Gunter stretches the boundaries of perception. This is one of the best all around remix albums, completing what is otherwise an already impeccable document.
Lambchop's debut full length from 1994 is, in Windy and Andee's opinion, also their very best! Trembling mandolin, moody horns, bandleader Kurt Wagner at his most lucid, and heartbreaking melodies. A sort of dark gothic twangy lost gem of an album. God I love this record!
We've been meaning to review something from these modern retro power poppers for a while now. We first discovered Lame Drivers via aQ faves Home Blitz, whose O.ut O.f P.hase record we made Record Of The Week back in 2009, and who played our first South By Southwest showcase around the same time. At some point, Jason from Home Blitz struck off on his own, and took all the power popisms of Home Blitz, of which there were many, and honed them to perfection, so much so, that most Lame Drivers songs sound like they could have come straight off some obscure Yellow Pills style power pop compilation from back in the day. This flexi-book is in the style of those Castle Face Group Flex compilations we reviewed a while back, a little 7" book, with five flexi discs, assembled into a little playable book, seven songs, killer artwork from a handful of different artists, but really it's the songs that makes this essential. The Yellow Pills comparison is the most apt, think classic seventies power pop, Dwight Twilley, Cheap Trick, crunchy, fuzzy, jangly, catchy choruses, even catchier verses, fans of more modern retro power pop revivalists like Warm Soda and Bare Wires, will flip their lid for Lame Drivers too, and the packaging is ace to boot, the artwork eye popping, and sort of an essential music nerd object, that just happens to also be musically kick ass. WAY recommended, and crazy limited too, so grab one quick before they're gone...
Few cosmic sonic explorers can evoke the mysterious druggy sounds of the astral plane quite like New Zealand space drone raga one man project Lamp Of The Universe, who has returned once again to guide us on this, our latest journey through a warm whirling tripped out soundworld of acoustic guitars and buzzing sitars, of chantlike vocals and simple hypnotic rhythms, of glimmering effects and washed out dreamlike drift.
It's been almost two years since we reviewed the last LOTU, and since then the Lamp seems to have undergone a bit of a change, most of the sounds are still present, and still sound divine, but now vocals play a way bigger part. We were wary for sure, we prefer our spaced out dronerock instrumental generally, or if there must be vocals, then just chanting or some sort of wordless vocalizing, but LOTU manages to pull it off, there is in fact actual singing. LOTU mainman Craig Williamson has an appealing reedy croon, that is not heavily effected, but just enough, draped in reverb and echo, there are plenty of oooooh's and aaaaah's, but the vocals proper are pretty cool, in fact, the main thing the vocals do is make this sound less like some abstract space drone record, and more like some lost seventies raga folk record, which is definitely a good thing.
While some of the tracks are still washed out drifts of buzzing synth and sitar, others are haunting laments, populated with banjos and fluttering flutes. Gorgeous.
If you ever wondered what it might sound like if some seventies British raga folk got all tangled up in some dreamy ambient drone-y space rock, well then this will most definitely hit the spot.
Another excellent reissue from local label Water. This time from Byard Lancaster, who somehow I had never heard of, even though HE PLAYS THE FLUTE, and he would go on to play with Roland Kirk (my favorite!), as well as Sun Ra, McCoy Tyner, Sunny Murray and loads more. Originally released in 1968, and produced by long time Roland Kirk sidekick/confidante/producer Joel Dorn, It's Not Up To Us finds Lancaster hooking up with legendary guitarist Sonny Sharrock and original Weather Report drummer Eric Gravatt. And while this IS jazz, it's pretty wild and all over the place, mixing in psychedelic rock, dirge-y rhythmic drones, abstract free skronk and rollicking fuzzy funk. The sound is surprisingly contemporary though. In fact everytime we play this in the store people come up to ask what it is, and are surprised to find out it's over 30 years old. And of course, there's wailing flute ALL OVER! This may just be a contender to enter the pantheon of my all time favorite flute records, of which there are an elite few!! So check it out.
Byard Lancaster was a revelation. An aQ customer turned us on to him, as a flute player, it might have even been Porter Records head honcho Luke Mosling, which would make perfect sense, regardless, the music of Byard Lancaster blew our minds. We're (not so) mildly obsessed with flute music, especially jazz, so hearing Lancaster completely own the flute, pulling off Roland Kirk style sing/shouting through the instrument and then smoothly slipping into so soft fluttering groove, we were immediately obsessed. And even more blown away to discover it wasn't just the flute Lancaster had mastered. Piccolo, clarinet, sax, piano. We knew we had to hear more. The bad news being that most of Lancaster's recording were impossible to find. Which is why we were so excited when Mosling started up Porter, specifically with an eye to re-release all the lost Lancaster titles. So here's the first one, Personal Testimony, a collection of solo recordings originally released in 1979, and so amazing. From the soulful piano groove of the opener, with softly crooned vocals and dark swirling melodies, to the ethereal drifting fluttering flute of "In Lovingkindness", the melodies moody and mystic, multiple fluted interwoven and gloriously and complexly entangled, to the wild funky soulful flute jam that is "Dogtown", you can almost imagine the bad kicking in behind him, as he whips up impossible clusters and flurries of notes, occasionally offering up James Brown style grunts between breaths, to the deeeeeep droney low end moan of the big horns in "Brotherman", the tones reverberating and rumbling gloriously. There are a handful of sax tracks too, some skronky and FREE, others smooth and jazzy, some all tangled up with other overdubbed horns, all of them amazing. Some of the most intense and beautiful solo recordings we've heard for sure.
This reissue has six new tracks tacked on as bonus material, recorded last year, a sort of 'now' to the first half's 'then'. Not so into the a capella opener, maybe a little too soulful scat, but soon we're back into some serious flute territory, laced with hand drums and shakers, various vocalizations, and some wild playing. Three tracks worth of kick ass, wild and free, fluttery and free flute action, that sounds almost as good as the first half. The second to last track is solo piano, dark and moody, some gorgeous flurries of notes, dense clouds of thick chords, wild free explosions of sound, eventually building to a super chaotic wild piano freak out, pounding, with all the pedals down, before drifting back into more tranquil territory. The final track is hymn like, soft fluttery flute, delicate piano, and crooned vocals, lilting and melancholy, and quite lovely.
An awesome and essential reissue, well worth it for just the '79 release alone, but the bonus tracks make it just that much sweeter. Lots of liner notes, past and present, as well as a bad ass photo of Lancaster shirtless, in tight white pants, wailing on the sax!
So far we've only reviewed a single 12" from Mr. Neil Landstrumm, which is weird cuz we've been pretty nuts for his fractured electronica, especially his last record Restaurant Of Assassins, which melded drill and bass, old school jungle, electro skitter, and video game sounds into something totally tweaked and fucking kickass.
This new one follows the same template for the most part, but with a bit more focus on dubstep this time around, which is fine with us, as Landstrumm's take on dubstep us pretty demented to say the least. The opener is a dubbed out low slung jam, complete with deep reverberating bass, eighties Goblin-y Knight Rider synths, cinematic strings, and chopped up and processed vocals. A sound falling somewhere between Richard D. James and Venetian Snares, but a bit more dubbed out. The second track has 'Krunk' in the title, but if anything it's even more dubby and stripped down than the opener, the main melody a whirring grinding bass synth, and some playful bleeps and bloops, the rhythm stuttery and skittery.
Dubstep really is the cornerstone for the whole disc, that wavery bass buzz anchoring most of the songs, but it's what Landstrumm adds to the mix that makes things so cracked, whether it's a barrage of malfunctioning video game glitchery, haunting orchestral 8-bit swells, Miami bass handclaps and slithery fuzzy keyboard stabs, super blown out rumbling low end rumbles, whatever it is, it all gets tangled up with whatever dubbed out bass heavy groove Landstrumm has assembled mad scientist style, from stuttery loops, old drum machines, analogue synths, bass guitars, and lots and lots of video games. Might be our favorite dubstep record of the year, if it wasn't so unlike most other dubstep records...
A fantastic career retrospective of long time aQ fave Mark Lanegan, two cds or three lps collecting tracks from most every one of Lanegan's solo records, going all the way back to our favorite, his debut The Winding Sheet, originally released on Sub Pop way back in 1990. But we've been fans of Lanegan since he fronted classic grunge combo Screaming Trees, where his deep, dramatic, smokey and soulful vocals helped define that sound, but solo, with a more stripped down minimal sound, those distinctive vocals are front and center, right where they belong. You'd have to be a pretty obsessive fan to want this, since most of this is culled from records you probably already have, but most of the Lanegan fans we know (ourselves included) are in fact pretty goddamn obsessive, so having what is essentially a killer greatest hits, or a practically perfect Lanegan mixtape makes it worth picking up for sure. PLUS, there's also TWELVE unreleased tracks, all of which are pretty goddamn great. And hell, if you're new to Mark Lanegan, this is a pretty stellar introduction, we have trouble imagining ANYone not being totally mesmerized. The music throughout, is pretty consistently stunning, dark, and brooding, haunting and moody, simple and stripped down, laced with subtle slide guitar, bits of twang here and there, it's a dark, smokey, late night, softly psychedelic back room blues, all heartbroken balladry and tragic slowcore miserablism, but really it's all about THAT VOICE, rough and ragged, a warm whiskey soaked rasp, that's so perfect. And that's not even mentioning the classic songsmithery at work here, and when Lanegan teams up with other vocalists, PJ Harvey, Isobell Campbell, etc., the results are pretty goddamn fantastic, like a darker more demonic alternate universe Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. And we should mention the cover of the Leaving Trains' "Creeping Coastline Of Lights", which was already one of the greatest songs EVER, here, made even slower and darker, with vibes and xylophone, and woozy guitar shimmer, total wasted, rainswept, Hollywood wasteland, nothing-to-lose grim heartbreak balladry that is untouchable.
As mentioned above, the bonus tracks are killer too, unclear how they ended up being left off the records proper, another set of brooding balladic blues and swampy twang flecked stomps, that are honestly as good as anything on any of the albums proper, and Lanegan obsessives will not want to be without ANY of them.
Both the cd and the lp version comes with a big booklet full of rare photos and hand written lyrics.
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When one of our friends told us about this little cd containing an experimental piece using the sounds of a Zamboni, we got very very excited. A Zamboni! (That's that unusual machine that resurfaces the ice in hockey rinks.) Upon hearing it, we were even more thrilled, 'cause it's an amazing 20 minute drone work! And practically everyone who works here has bought one by now...
This cute 3" cd, released through Metamkine's esteemed 'Cinema Pour L'Oreille' series of electro-acoustics and musique concrete, contains one track, "Mantra", which opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. While it would be nice to believe that these movements coincide with a Zamboni circling a really nice binaural microphone, it's more likely that Laporte exercised his artistic license with a judicious use of crossfading and stereo panning upon his field recordings. As the disc draws near its end, it sounds as if a screw or bolt is loosened by the vibrations and two pieces of metal begin a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda.
Back to the Zamboni issue: we'd been told by 'reliable' informants (Loren Chasse who heard about it from Ferarra Pan who heard it on Scot Jenerik's radio show) that the source material for Jean-Francois Laporte's "Mantra" was a Zamboni. As the liner-notes (all in French mind you) indicate that Laporte incorporated the sound of an air compressor from an ice-skating rink, it didn't rule out the possibility that indeed that air compressor could belong to a Zamboni, but it didn't actually say anything about Zambonis. (Are they even called Zambonis in France, anyway?) As you can tell, we Aquarians like the Zamboni and would really like to believe that the Zamboni was responsible for this album. Thus, we contacted the label, who merely sent us an English translation of the original liner notes, which again stated the source material to be an air compressor. Thus, we are left to ponder the quandary: is it or is it not a Zamboni?
Putting this grand existential question aside and the true origin of the source material out of sight for the moment, what's true is that Laporte has indeed sculpted one of the most compelling drone compositions that we've encountered in quite some time. For loyal readers of these lists, that's no idle comment as artists like Oragnum, Jonathan Coleclough, Mirror, John Duncan, and Francisco Lopez still rank highly for us in the pantheon of dronescapers. Not only as working model but also as a something of belief system, Jean-Francoise Laporte applies the ideals of the mantra to the urban landscape. To him, the hypnotic audio elements of refrigerators, motorcycle engines, and in this case the Zamboni / air compressor rise above their mundane properties to become something that can be meditated upon and hold transcendent properties.
A very, very nice recording, Zamboni or not. Even if you don't normally buy all the weird, droney experimental stuff we recommend, you might want to take a chance and try this out. After all, it's only 20 minutes out of your day and eight bucks. And, maybe it's a Zamboni!
We've been meaning to review something from this SF duo for a while now, the mysteriously monickered Z.V.H. and V.J.C, who make up the equally mysterious Lascoviec (formerly Angkor Vat). But their demos disappeared before we had the chance, and we've yet to receive the forthcoming split with Hungarian black metal masters Marblebog, but thankfully, Dark Hidden Productions has compiled their first two demos, Gesamkunstwerk and Gunshots Ring Out Over Vinland Streets, both originally released in 2006, onto one cd, and added a few bonus tracks to sweeten the deal.
Lascoviec traffic in droning, hypnotic, trance like black metal buzz, the guitars long washed out streaks, the vocals a distorted croak, often sounding like another layer of static, the melodies are melancholy and sorrowful, some tracks have programmed drums, pounding away machine like under a buzzy blurry blanket of epic majestic chordal whir, others are harsh and chaotic, with the drums lost int he mix, leaving just a thick undulating sheet of acid riffing and tortured vokills. There are plenty of clean guitars, and tranquil folky interludes, but just as many grinding ultra raw blackened dirges, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals more of a animalistic hiss, the drums a buried throb, here and there dreamy washes of synth surface, but far from being tranquil, they're fuzzy and distorted, and slightly ominous, with a definite Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck vibe. Elsewhere the band craft weird sort of new wave sounding reverbed guitar jam, but still subtly creepy and haunting. Swirls of strings build ominous tension before exploding into super sharp jagged shards of weirdly blown out clean guitar riffing over relentless blastbeats.
And that's sort of what's so amazing about these guys, their sound varies so dramatically, from record to record, but even from song to song, sort of like the EEE stuff, the texture and the production are as critical as the songs and the riff, some are muted and murky and bassy and lo fi, others are sharp and angular, the guitars sonically are all over the place, sometimes soft and subtle, sometimes downtuned and sludgy, sometimes buzzy and brittle, the drums more often than not are buried WAY down in the mix, but that just makes the songs sound freer, as if they could fall apart or drift away at any moment.
Grim and gorgeous, twisted and intense, dramatic and a bit fucked up, long sheets of buzzed out bliss butted up against short sharp raw blasts of true blurred blackness, often getting all tangled up within the same song. What's not to like, this is some seriously amazing shit. Buzzy and black enough for the grimmest of warriors, but tripped out enough for folks into freaky outsider blackness.
Fair warning: Lasoviec are on Dark Hidden Productions, a label with dubious political leanings, and with definite ties to the Pagan Front, the hub for all things NSBM, aka National Socialist Black Metal. Although the band seem to be more concerned with themes cosmic and spiritual, nature and mythology, there are definite racist implications, the link is undeniable, so regardless of the band's stance, the label's is clear, and thus, another instance where the listener has to decide if the music trumps the possible unpleasant politics.
We've been trying to get our hands on enough of these to list for ages, a killer 3 way split of obscure strangely melodic blackness, released on Hungarian label Turanian Honour, featuring long time aQ faves Marblebog, Bay Area depressive black metal duo Lascowiec and Verzivatar, another Hungarian horde we had never heard until now.
Lascowiec, whose killer demo compilation we raved about a while back (which we still have a small handful left), returns with four more tracks of washed out black beauty, darkly depressive and beautifully buzzy, the music of Lascowiec is a blurred and smeared minor key mystery, remove the distorted vokill croak, and you'd be left with a deep swirling shoegazey bit of soft focus buzz. The riffs are muted and muddy, lo-fi but still lush, locked into trancelike loops, woozy and warbly and hypnotic, about as pretty as black metal can sound without ceasing to be black or metal. Spidery tangled little melodies, wreathed in otherworldly effects, distorted but not harsh or jagged, more smoothed out and blissy, the vocals the grimmest element, but for the most part, it's the music that carries Lascowiec, gorgeously mournful, and hauntingly lovely buzzy blackness.
Marblebog offer up two songs, epic and majestic, melodic too, but with some super twisted way UP in the mix vocals, that transform an otherwise loping mysterious minor key dirge into something creeped out and harrowing. The main melody is gorgeous, almost power metal sounding, albeit slowed down and draped over a monotonous doomy drum plod, but those vocals, the perfect blend of harsh and hellish, brooding and pretty. Their second track is another strange blend, this time the guitars and drums are buried beneath thick swirling keyboards, and some fucked up demonic gurgled croaking vocals. Again, the effect is the same, a sort of woozy softly buzzing prettiness transformed into a fractured, Burzumic, off kilter depressive black dirge.
Finally Verzivatar deliver two tracks of fierce and frantic blasting blackness, but like the other two bands on the split, their sound is marked by an unlikely melodiousness, the riffs, frenetic and buzzy are also soaring and majestic, the vocals here too are weird, but less black metal, or really metal at all, more like a raspy punkish howl, or a strangled mewl. Gives Verzivatar a sort of crusty punkish vibe, reminding us a bit of French faerical black metal punks Nuit Noire. Definitely need to hear more from these guys.
All three bands offer up some seriously gorgeous melodic grimness, some surprisingly blissed out black metal buzz, unfortunately this is LIMITED TO 666 COPIES, and has been out for a while, so not sure we can get more. Each one is hand numbered, with a big full color booklet, liner notes, lyrics and the works.
First there was Death Waltz, then Waxwork, and now One Way Static throws their bloodied and battered hat into the horror soundtrack vinyl reissue ring, with their reissue of David Hess's soundtrack to Wes Craven's depraved exploitation classic Last House On The Left. We listed this on last week's special horror soundtrack vinyl in-between list, but figured we'd list it proper again this week.
Composer David Hess has an interesting history, having recorded the original version of "All Shook Up", before Elvis Presley's version became a number one hit just a year later. But Hess ended up writing songs for Presley, as well as Pat Boone, eventually ending up an A&R man, before finally becoming an actor / writer / director, although for us, he'll always be the serial killer and gang leader in Wes Craven's Last House On The Left, although the strangest part of this whole story, and this soundtrack in particular, is that not only did Hess star in the movie, he also composed and performed all the music! Even stranger, is that the songs are folky and poppy, and weirdly catchy and upbeat, a strangely lovely contrast to the horrific images on screen, a legendarily stomach churning display of depravity and ultraviolence, much of it perpetrated by Hess himself!! There are moments of abstract experimentation, and weird studio FX, but for the most part, the score consists mostly of groovy seventies folk, fuzzed out psychedelia, strummy, sunshiney pop ballads, funky almost Blaxploitation sounding wah guitar workouts, and yeah, the occasional bit of synthy weirdness or brooding ambience.
The packaging is super swank as well, deluxe tip-on style gatefold jackets, with printed inner sleeves, no doubt Death Waltz fans (and Waxwork fans too) will dig big time! Note, this is also eventually coming out on as a limited edition digipack cd, with 4 bonus tracks. Both formats include extensive liner notes and photos.
Uh, wow! And WTF!? That's what we thought as soon as we got a good look at these, the other day when Tyler from Ajna dropped 'em off at the store. Is this for real? This late 2011 release from the Ajna affiliated, vinyl-only cult metal reissue label Unseen Forces seems tailor made to be of immense aQuarius interest. First off, we, and many of you, are pretty into the whole Father Yod / Ya Ho Wa 13 / Source Family communal '70s psych rock thing. Pretty much everybody here at aQ owns one of those Japanese 13cd God & Hair box sets of Ya Ho Wa recordings, and we just this week hosted an instore event promoting the Source Family documentary currently screening in the SF Film Festival.
Also, several of us at aQ (and again, many of you) are keen on obscure '80s old school metal, the more outrageous and over the top, the better.
And somehow, unbelievably but awesomely, THE LAW brings those two obsessions together!!
You see, the guys in The Law were members of Source Family, followers of Father Yod. Bassist Peter Tobin and singer/lead guitarist Troy Duke at least, had played and recorded with Ya Ho Wa 13. But by the early '80s, they were transitioning from being long haired hippies to being long haired heshers! Gotta change with the times, man. Having formed a garage (more like barn, cuz they lived on a cattle ranch) band, The Law (= Love And Wisdom), in 1979, they decided to make the big step of moving from Hawaii (where the Source Family had been based since the late '70s, and Father Yod had sadly perished in his fatal hang gliding accident) back to LA, now a hotbed of heavy metal activity in the year of 1983! But they brought their interest in esoteric, psychedelic spirituality along with them, into the realm of the heavier-than-thou, glammed-up, Decline Of Western Civilization Part II, Sunset Strip scene, where they rubbed shoulders with the likes of Motley Crue. Theirs was sleazy hard rock with a mystic message, though, all right!!
Though that unusual backstory (and the picture of the band on the back of the lp, all done up in macho tight leather and studded belts) would probably have been enough to convince us to buy this, it was listening to the songs on this lp that made us decide, heck, all that AND they totally rule, in the hot rockin' department? Ok, Record Of The Week time.
These ten songs include hit single in an alternate universe "Chill The Wine", theme song "Here Comes The Law", and several with either "Baby" or "Love" in their titles, like the dirgey (mostly) ballad "Baby I'm A Mystery", the lyrics to which include the advice: "Sweet child of the fire, the only way to go is higher, higher, higher...". These songs feature plodding riffage, wailing psych guitar solos, commanding vox, low budget sound FX, and (we're just guessing here) an exploding drummer a la Spinal Tap.
Unseen Forces' ringleader Dennis Dread sez this slab of "vintage volcanic rock" is for fans of "The Rods, Oz, Blue Cheer, and Buffalo"... sure! And we'd say Dwarr, Cirth Ungol, and Iron Butterfly, too! There's paradoxically party-hardy outsidery-ness to this, The Law bringing in '60s influences (they do "Wild Thing"), astral influences, whatever, so that while it's not quite Ya Ho Wa 13 in spandex, it's sure not your usual corporate Sunset Strip LA '80s hair metal.
The power trio's sole, independently released, lp came out in 1983, and failed to become a commercial success despite (or because of) its eccentric charms, but it did eventually become a collectable rarity. This reissue probably will too!
Remastered and reissued with the cooperation of The Law's original members, also with help from Source Family historian Isis Aquarian. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl and lovingly packaged. Includes liner notes and lyrics insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! And the label is almost out of 'em, so these may well be the last copies we'll be able to procure. But we still had to make it Record Of The Week, nonetheless. How could we not? None escape The Law!!
The latest from psych/space rock label Rocket, comes from this mysterious Italian duo, who recorded their record in an old house in the countryside outside of Sicily. That's not necessarily the location where you'd expect a group to gather to conjure up some psychedelic space rock, but then Lay Llamas deliver a sound that's a bit removed from their psychedelic brethren, infusing the usual motorik pulses, and slow build smolder with twang flecked Morricone-isms, and drifting cinematic ambience, just check out the first track, which lays down a krautrock churn, beneath bongos, and electronic feedback, and winds it all around some almost Western sounding melodies, as if this was the soundtrack for a Sergio Leone Western set in space, in the future, which is actually a pretty good shorthand description of this whole record. The vocals add a different vibe, somewhere between Hawkwind, Suicide and the Residents, maybe Devo too, the second track "We Are You" has a hazy, spacey new wave vibe to it, still anchored by a krauty pulse, but definitely more poppy and synthy.
But fear not, these guys can space rock with the best of them, "The Lay Llamas" is fuzzy, and spaced out, lysergic and darkly groovy, but they add their own twist, weird layers of rumbling machine-vocals, pulsing synth fuzz, giving it the feel of some chase scene movie music, reimagined as some sort of druggy underground space rock music video. And so it goes, the band drifting easily from the tranquil drowsy haze of "Desert Of Lost Souls", with it's swooping backwards FX and wasted campfire filigree, to the murky almost Goat-like groovery of "Archaic Revival", which is a sprawling, chugging, churning, chant laced bunkurfunk workout, to the psych-funk space get-down of "Something Wrong", to the lazy, soporific Spacemen 3 channeling closer "Voices Call".
WAY recommended for fans of hazy, druggy, psychedelic grooviness, motorik kraut-fuzz twang and FX-drenched space-funk mesmer.
If you've had trouble tracking down the latest record from Swedish dirge-jazz sludge punks Brainbombs, or just wish there were more bands who shared that aesthetic, well, your wish just came true. LA duo Leather Slave sound so much like Brainbombs, it would be criminal if we didn't love that sound so much. The band lock into loping, lumbering doom-sludge-punk anti-grooves, the guitar blown out and super distorted, a single riff, grinding away, over a simple caveman beat, the vocals distorted, and sung-spoken, and again, a dead ringer for the Brainbombs, with lyrics about cutting off your fingers and then making you try on gloves, or lots of 'stabbing's, so much so that it almost sounds like these guys are taking the piss, especially when the word 'stab' is repeated, and then sort of dubbed out (or the word 'hell' on another track). But then there's something patently absurd about stuff like this anyway, which again, is probably why we dig it so much. Every track here essential a single riff, a single rhythm, with a second guitar adding some psychedelic counterpoint, very subtle though, almost like Neanderthal leads way down in the mix, the whole thing mesmerizing and menacing, like a filthy, crusty, dirgey, serial killing version of Finnish hypno-rockers Circle. Which is probably the highest recommendation we can give.
And disregard the label marking the record as 33 1/3 rpm, unless you want it REALLY sludgy, the vocals an almost death metal gurgle, while we dig that version of Leather Slave too, 45 rpm is the speed for maximum Brain-bombing. Ridiculous over the top cover art and full color insert too.
We were pretty into Dust On Common, the last record from these Brooklyn cold wave retro revivalists, but we're digging this new one even more. While much of the sound remains the same, some things have definitely changed, For some reason, we were utterly mesmerized by the opening track, "Animal Smear", which found the group sounding more post punk than cold wave, adding a sort of frenetic energy and dark propulsion to the icy detachment that defined much of the last record. The skittery skeletal drums and dubbed out production only adding even more of a dark psych vibe to the proceedings. One of those tracks, that we must admit, we probably listened to ten times before we made it any deeper into the record. But once we did, the rest of the record stacked up pretty well, sounding like it could have just as easily come out on Wierd as on Sacred Bones, finding common ground in the sonic vocabulary of Xeno & Oaklander and Cold Cave, but with a certain ineffable something that made this stuff resonate. The opening track is a killer of course, but so is the follow up "Housefire At Zumi's", a strange swoonsome synthy instrumental, all minor key, but slightly off kilter, lush swells beneath strange angular melodies, the beat stuttery and weirdly motorik. "Kaiyo Maru" too, weds dark synth drones, and chordal swirls to some dense programmed drumming, and some reverby vocals, and weaves all that into a gorgeous slab of dark electro pop, that manages to sound simultaneously modern, and like it was plucked right out of the eighties, and we hadn't even gotten to the weirdly angular chorus. The title track might be our second favorite jam here, sounding like a retro cold wave version of the Editors, deep crooned vocals, minor key, a little bit ballady, with some strange clattery percussion, and a main melody that is doleful and dour and totally mesmerizing. The rest of the record flits from pounding IDM, to playful electro-pop, from murky cold wave balladry to haunting skitter laced industrial, finishing off with some dreamy synth shoegaze that almost sounds like M83. Fantastic stuff, and another new favorite for sure!
Dig this killer blast of blackened slo-mo industrial death metal, from these Italians by way of Japan. We were pretty much sold already, they're called Legion Of Andromeda, they have song titles like "Cosmo Hammer", "Overlord Of Thunder" and "Fist Of The Galaxy", and the cover's a grim black on black band logo, a giant axehammer, and goddamn if the music doesn't live up to all the nonmusical promise. Four tracks of minimal, reductionist blackdeath brutality, almost like a black death version of Dutch instrumetallers Gore, each track mostly a single riff, hell, at times it sounds like a single chord, chugging hypnotically, driven by a programmed robotic rhythm, occasionally shifting into a sort-of-chorus, but really it's just a noisier version of THAT ONE riff. All the while, some seriously throat shredding demon grunt, grindcore style belched vokills, gurgle and growl over the top. Total knuckle dragging blackened bliss out of the highest order. Opener "Cosmo Hammer" is definitely the dirgiest of the bunch, just total slo-mo headbanging chug and churn that could (and should, and sort of DOES) go on forever. "Overlord Of Thunder", stretches out a bit, but just a bit, with a kick ass main riff, that's sort of like a stoner rock riff but way more blackened, the distortion crumbling and blown out, and while it seems like it's setting things up for some proper black buzz and blast, it's NOT, instead, LoA just lock it down, loop that riff, and unfurl a tranced out sprawl of motorik riffage, that in different hands could probably be a Pharaoh Overlord song, but here, becomes some sort of blackdeath musical mantra, modern minimalism by way of hair spinning, amp worshipping neanderthals and we LOVE it. And so it goes, the other two tracks delivering still more of that monstrously monotonous riffing, head caving, soul shearing, one-riff, drone-dirge heaviness that is totally mesmerizing, absolute hypno-death, industrial, black buzz trance out genius.
And yeah, it's a REAL cd, and it's only five bux, and it totally fucking RULES.
Of all the 'electronica' labels out there, we're beginning to think Planet Mu might be our favorite, certain the most relevant. For a while Warp were unbeatable, Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher, Plaid, Autechre, and while that stuff still rules, Warp definitely seems like old guard, whereas Planet Mu has been moving forward, pushing boundaries, even the old school artists on Planet Mu seem to be similarly progressive. So compare the Planet Mu roster to the above Warp one: Venetian Snares, Shitmat, Distance, Vex'd, Pinch, Boxcutter, Neil Landstrumm, Eero Johannes, Milanese, Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble... Planet Mu is always on the cusp of whatever new sound surfaces, the home to most of the kick ass dubstep released in the US, but still supporting it's older artists, who in turn support the label by changing and transforming and progressing. All that said, we still were totally blindsided by Legion Of Two.
With a record title like Riffs, we were already prepared for something different, and a record called Riffs on Planet Mu definitely had us intrigued, but still we would have never expected this. Imagine Neurosis doing dubstep, or some ambient doom band dabbling in electronica, or a heavier, more modern and avant Tortoise, thick sheets of distorted buzz, plenty of bleeps and bloops, that awesome hoovery dubstep bass buzz, but with REAL drums, big drums, pounding and punishing and massive, just take the opening one two punch. The first track, a sort of intro, is a swirling cloud of hiss and whir, streaks of feedback, layer upon layer of gauzy distorted thrum, peppered with bursts of big booming drums, until the song finally kicks in, and it's like Black Boned Angel or something, but a bit stripped down, and instead of downtuned riffage, it's a sea of undulating synths, and rumbling low end, and shards of melody and feedback swirling all around the pounding lumbering doomic crush. We almost wish that track was the whole of the record, but then we would have missed out on the second track, which is where we got the dubstep Neurosis thing, that's not quite accurate, but for an 'electronic' record it definitely doesn't get heavier than this, a loping drum part, over deep throbbing low end, laced with little space-y squelches, and some woodpecker clicks, as well as intense bursts of in-the-red bass fuzz, and finally some techno synths laced over the top, the sound getting thicker and thicker and heavier and heavier, eventually building to a full on glitched out effects drenched psychedelic electronic freakout, the rhythm never faltering, finishing off with a fierce almost metallic dirge. Holy shit. How did these guys end up on Planet Mu, and how the hell did they come up with this bizarre sonic hybrid?
The whole record is sort of a series of rhythmic workouts, from crushing metallic dubstep, to blissed out post rock, to mathy techno jams, to deep listening laid back grooves, but all anchored by the incredible drumming, and the sound of real drums, which is probably what makes this stuff sound so fresh and organic, live drums and electronics end up creating something dense and blown out, heavy and 'live' sounding.
"Palace (Dub)" isn't so much dub, as a tangled bit of complex looped drumming, beneath a repetitive synth line and some buzzing bass squelches, and diaphanous sheets of high end shimmer in the background, tense and dramatic and cinematic, almost like a more twisted avant mathy electronic Goblin or Zombi. "Legion Of Two", is a loping almost eighties sounding groove, with some of the buzziest heaviest synth sounds ever, and plenty of tweaked effects, and soaring faux strings, and tinkling late night glimmer. Much of the second half of the record is more laid back, soporific, almost jazzy, hence the Tortoise comparison, looped and hypnotic, the drums and bass locked into totally mesmerizing jams, while all around keyboards chime and ring out, the melodies haunting and minor key, occasionally slipping into jagged bursts of stuttery noise drenched stop start riff heavy math rock, before slipping back into the groove. The lengthy "Handling Noise" finds the band doing so just fine, crafting a long slow burning creepfest, all otherworldly swells, strange electronic sounds, creepy ambience, jazzy drum skitter, all wreathed in static and crackle and hiss, exploding in the last few minutes in a full on Nadja style shoegaze, noise rock psychdrone blow out. "It Really Does Take Time" is the most electronic of the bunch, a bit house-y, with dubbed out effects, weird loops of children's voices, haunting and trippy, but this track too finally exploding in a frenzy of tribal rhythms and wild psychedelic synths.
The record finishes off with the 10+ minute "Cast Out Your Demons", which is like a dubby space rock jam, big loping drums, sizzling space-y synths, whirling effects, but within all the blissedout stargazing mesmer, subtle bits of dubby guitar, the drums really driving the track, to a gorgeous hazy drone drenched outro, definitely reminds us of White Hills or one of those modern psych combos, but infused with some weirdly abstract space dub.
Really cool stuff, and even with the preceding lengthy review, hard to describe, or at least hard to do justice to. This record has been on repeat play since the day it showed up, in the store, at home, on the headphones, at once groovy and dark, hazy and heavy, druggy and psychedelic, electronic and metallic, a gorgeous confusional chunk of psych-dub space doom free jazz noise rock. Or something. Whatever you call it, most definitely one of our new favorites...
Solo record number two from aQ pal Jussi Lehtisalo, frontman of Finnish hypnorockers Circle, Ektro / Full Contact label head honcho, and member of too many outfits to count, a few of which would include Ektroverde, Ratto Ja Lehtisalo, Doktor Kettu, Pharaoh Overlord, Rakhim, Grumbling Fur, Krypt Axeripper, Motorspandex, Split Cranium, Steel Mammoth...
Sadly, we haven't yet managed to get Jussi's first solo lp, by all accounts a surprisingly beautiful and subdued album, but we did manage to get a bunch of these, the tape version at least (there's a vinyl version as well, which we hope to have soon too), which is also beautiful, but about as far from subdued as you can get. Both side long tracks are dense and layered, and constantly shifting. In some ways taking all the disparate sounds of Jussi's other bands, and somehow mashing them all together, into something surprisingly cohesive.
The A side, "Caterpillars", starts off sounding like some sort of abstract deserty ambient experimental doom, with churning guitars, spurts of metallic crunch, clattery bicycle spoke like percussion, woozy Morricone-esque twang and spidery minor key melodies, peppered with occasional twisted little synth trills, all beneath some monstrous growled vokills, before the song transforms into something more woozy and jazzy, a little late night bluesy, with crooned distorted vox, and thick low end rib cage rattling thrum, only to then launch into some seriously twisted buzz drenched rock pound, which initially sounds like it might explode into full on black metal, but instead, the pounding and buzzing is joined by more twisted xylophone like synth melodies, booming sub bass throbs and cool blasts of rad classic metal style harmonized leads, before once again slipping back into a spacey sort of moody, woozy slowcore, driven by frenetic high hat cymbal stutter, and trippy dubbed out snare drums, still more crooned vox, the sound dreamy and washed out, laced with strange swoonsome faux horns and glistening spaced out FX before finally returning to that strange xylophone driven metallic stomp.
The flipside is equally schizophrenic, "Here March The Cranes" begins all grinding gnarled guitars in a cloud of cymbal sizzle, which is then joined by some Circle like hypnorock bass, the guitars coalescing into little soaring squalls of majestic fast picking, multiple guitars interwoven, those guitars growing more intense, unfurling wild psychedelic leads, everything getting noisier and noisier, until finally switching gears and mellowing out, into a twisted post rock sprawl, all ethereal guitar shimmer, wild jazzy drummy, and spaced out bass blurts. Soon those growled vox come back in, and the sound turns into some strange sinister epic prog rock, swirling synthy strings, a slow build, more and more intense and tense, before splintering into a stretch of cool droned out noise rock churn, that sound gradually growing more and more spacey and serene, dreamy melodies, more of those faux horns, all manner of strange percussion and swirling FX, as the noise recedes, the sound becomes a hazy, lilting bit of psychedelic dreamdrone raga like drift. Fantastic! Easily one of the coolest weirdest things we've heard from Jussi, which is saying a lot considering his whole career has basically been nothing BUT a series of cool weird releases!! WAY recommended. And limited, limited TO JUST 100 COPIES!!! The cassette comes sealed in a stickered little bag, inside a cool cd sized box, artwork affixed to the inside and outside, and sealed shut with another sticker.
Last year we raved about a cassette (and then vinyl lp) called Interludes For Prepared Beast, the second solo release from Jussi Lehtisalo, the bassist/mastermind behind our favorite Finns, those mighty hypnorockers Circle (and many more 'NWOFHM' bands besides). Those of you who prefer compact discs over vinyl, let alone tapes, might have felt a twinge of turntable envy then, since you were missing out on an amazing album (our review concluded with: "Easily one of the coolest weirdest things we've heard from Jussi", and that's saying a lot). Thankfully, Jussi, who loves cds as much as we do, has just released Interludes For Prepared Beast on cd via his Ektro imprint - and even better, the disc also includes Jussi's first solo album, from 2010, entitled Rotta, which is also (of course) quite fantastic, and was a limited vinyl release we never even got any copies of the first time around. So even more to be thankful for, and another reason to pick this up.
We'll try to be brief about Rotta, 'cause we already wrote a lot about Interludes, as you will see. Simply put, it's gorgeous. Unlike maybe what you might expect from the man responsible for so much bombastic, heavy, progged out rock, Rotta definitely represents Jussi's softer side. Intimate and twilit, Rotta is a spacious sonic tapestry of gentle drones, cyclic guitar motifs, softly pulsating bass, and ambient field recordings interwoven with hushed, echo effected vocalizations (the words all in Finnish, we assume, so we don't know what he's on about, but it sounds deep regardless) and lovely layers of shortwave static n' hiss. The opening track "Veljeni" features some occasional harmonica twang, bringing to mind the cinematic, open spaces atmosphere of the likes of Earth circa Hex. Elsewhere, on "Aikoja Sitten", the vibe gets darker, the track lashed with stormy, sinister synthesizer sounds, before dreamily concluding with monkish vocal intonations over a bed of wavering bell-like tones and other mysterious, entrancing sound-swoosh. Fans of Circle's 'soundtrackier' side, mellowed-out albums like Miljard and Tower, will be in heaven. The "circular" sound of Circle is most certainly very present within these compositions; minimalist, mesmeric repetition being Jussi's forte of course.
So that's the first four tracks here, the Rotta portion of this disc, all indeed surprisingly beautiful and subdued, music to totally lose yourself in. Then there's the last two, over a quarter-hour each, representing side A and B of Interludes For Prepared Beast. They also beautiful in their way, but about as far from subdued as you can get. Much heavier, more "gritty" and intense. Both tracks are dense and layered, and constantly shifting. In some ways taking all the disparate sounds of Jussi's other bands (among them Circle, Ektroverde, Ratto Ja Lehtisalo, Doktor Kettu, Pharaoh Overlord, Rakhim, Krypt Axeripper, Split Cranium, Steel Mammoth, and others), and somehow mashing them all together, into something surprisingly cohesive.
The A side (track 5 here), "Caterpillars", starts off sounding like some sort of abstract deserty ambient experimental doom, with churning guitars, spurts of metallic crunch, clattery bicycle spoke like percussion, woozy Morricone-esque twang and spidery minor key melodies, peppered with occasional twisted little synth trills, all beneath some monstrous growled vokills, before the song transforms into something more woozy and jazzy, a little late night bluesy, with crooned distorted vox, and thick low end rib cage rattling thrum, only to then launch into some seriously twisted buzz drenched rock pound, which initially sounds like it might explode into full on black metal, but instead, the pounding and buzzing is joined by more twisted xylophone like synth melodies, booming sub bass throbs and cool blasts of rad classic metal style harmonized leads, before once again slipping back into a spacey sort of moody, woozy slowcore, driven by frenetic high hat cymbal stutter, and trippy dubbed out snare drums, still more crooned vox, the sound dreamy and washed out, laced with strange swoonsome faux horns and glistening spaced out FX before finally returning to that strange xylophone driven metallic stomp.
The flipside (aka track 6) is equally schizophrenic. "Here March The Cranes" begins all grinding gnarled guitars in a cloud of cymbal sizzle, which is then joined by some Circle like hypnorock bass, the guitars coalescing into little soaring squalls of majestic fast picking, multiple guitars interwoven, those guitars growing more intense, unfurling wild psychedelic leads, everything getting noisier and noisier, until finally switching gears and mellowing out, into a twisted post rock sprawl, all ethereal guitar shimmer, wild jazzy drummy, and spaced out bass blurts. Soon those growled vox come back in, and the sound turns into some strange sinister epic prog rock, swirling synthy strings, a slow build, more and more intense and tense, before splintering into a stretch of cool droned out noise rock churn, that sound gradually growing more and more spacey and serene, dreamy melodies, more of those faux horns, all manner of strange percussion and swirling FX, as the noise recedes, the sound becomes a hazy, lilting bit of psychedelic dreamdrone raga like drift. Fantastic! Easily one of the coolest weirdest things we've heard from Jussi, which is saying a lot considering his whole career has basically been nothing BUT a series of cool weird releases!!
All told, 78 minutes and 48 seconds of amazing music that probably one no single person but Jussi could possibly have come up with. Hopefully this disc won't remain Jussi's 'complete solo works' for long, we'd love a volume two someday. WAY recommended.
This is the first we've heard from Minneapolis sci-fi garage combo Leisure Birds, whose second lp comes courtesy of the Moon Glyph label, newly relocated to the Bay Area, and the sound Of Leisure Birds sounds custom made for us (and you we're guessing), blissed out psychedelic kosmische synthscapery mixed with trancey minimal spaced out garage rock drift, sort of Spacemen 3 doing something a bit more kraut-agey. Just have a listen to the opening track, all electronic shimmer, and slow brooding synth swell, which is soon joined by buzzing sitar like guitars, and a muted rhythmic drum pulse, the vocals come in and they're all lazy and hazy and washed out, it's like Moon Duo on tranquilizers, woozy and druggy and so divine, and then out of nowhere, about 5+ minutes in, the song bursts into something WAY more propulsive, driving bassline, pounding drums, distorted guitars, never quite exploding into full on rocking out, but seriously driving and psychedelic. The rest of the record follows suit, bloopy synths and swirling electronics drift in clouds, wrapped around motorik beats, and slithery basslines, locked into hypno-rock trance outs, peppered with lush swirls of majestic chordal shimmer, but more often drifting along soporifically, druggy and drowsy, late night space rock minimalism for gradual come downs, or all night trip outs. There are moments that get pretty rocking, but even then, the sound stays pretty washed out and gauzey, and more often than note seems to gradually transform into another gorgeous stretch of blissed out space rock drift. Most definitely for fans of Moon Duo, Spyrals, Spacemen 3, Radar Eyes, Date Palms, and all things psychedelic, spacey and kosmische...
Includes a bonus 7" with a two song epilogue to the record, and also includes a download code (only for the album proper, not the 7"). Super striking futuristic cover art too.
A lot of how you feel about a record is determined by when you first heard it, or at least when you listened to it most. Some records remind us of college, others about a specific relationship, a breakup, but it's amazing how music can embody a memory so completely. And how the same music can mean so many different things for so many different people.
A lot of folks our age, probably first heard The Lemonheads' It's A Shame About Ray when they were in their early twenties, maybe just out of college, or like some of us, just sort of wandering aimlessly instead of college. And while we're not sure if it's just the above mentioned musical memory, or if these songs actually embody that sort of shiftless rootless confusional youth. Regardless, it's a pretty fantastic record, that sounds as good, and as timeless as it did 15 years ago. The pop minded around here might rank Ray as one of the best pop records EVER. And listening to this again, we still would.
It's the sort of record that is so part of our musical lives, it's hard to review, like Slint's Spiderland, when we find out someone doesn't actually own it, we freak out and insist that whoever it is BUY IT IMMEDIATELY. So for folks reading this, who dig pop music, and who don't own this, for fuck's sake, buy it now. It's so catchy and rocking and sad and emo and pretty and hooky and perfect.
"Rockin' Stroll" is one of the all time best record openers, super kick ass and catchy, the vocals a lazy drawl over super propulsive riffing, "Rudderless" is all minor key and dissonant melody, but with a main hook to die for, and a killer chorus, "My Drug Buddy" has to be one of the best drug songs ever, sad and sweet and heartbreaking, "Alison's Starting To Happen" another rocker that subtly and sweetly reminds us of the Lemonheads' punk rock past, we could go on song by song, every one perfect in their own way. It's been a while since we've listened to this record all the way through, but immediately we were singing along, every word, drumming, air guitaring, Ray is just so fun, and so simple, but one of those records that never gets old, and we never get tired of listening to it.
It would be well worth buying even if this wasn't the super deluxe version, but since it is, even Lemonheads fans who already own it will have to think hard about buying it again, might be worth it. The record includes the original bonus track, their cover of "Mrs. Robinson", the acoustic B-side "Shaky Ground", and the whole record in demo form, really awesome acoustic sketches of each song, that manage to sound just as cool, and way more intimate than the actual recorded versions. The dvd includes ALL the music videos, as well as some live acoustic performances, all wrapped up in a fancy fold out digipak housed in a plastic slipcase, but that's all just the icing, the record's 12 songs are well worth the price of admission all on their own.
Absolutely and without a doubt, one of the best pop records of the last twenty years. Buy it. You won't be sorry.
HOLY SHIT! A new Lemonheads record. We can not tell you how absolutely thrilling that is. Sure, their last record sucked. And Evan Dando's solo stuff was pretty mediocre. And maybe he is kind of a prick. But c'mon! So what?! It's A Shame About Ray was one of the world's most perfect slabs of heartbreaking indie jangle. I don't even really do drugs but "My Drug Buddy" had me absolutely wishing I had my own drug buddy. Could anything be more romantic? Go a little further back, Lovey, Lick, Hate Your Friends, the perfect collision of punk rock brattiness and pop song perfection. And they just kept getting better and better. I can't really think of another band that occupied so much space on pretty much every single mix tape I ever made. Even covering Suzanne Vega's "Luka" which could have and should have been a disaster, ended up sounding miles better than the original. Anyway, any pop kid worth anything is at their very heart, a huge Lemonheads obsessive. How could you not be?
So a brand new Lemonheads record is a seriously big deal. And as if we couldn't be more excited, the other 2/3 of the Lemonheads is basically the Descendents!!! Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez, FUCK YEAH.
So now we've pretty much got the dream band. So how does the new Lemonheads stack up? Well, we've only had this record for a few days, but since the second it's come in we've been listening to it nonstop, and it's growing on us like crazy. Dando's voice is a little deeper, a little more scratchy and weathered sounding, but it suits him, and the new material. The sound is just so instantly familiar it's like a big ol' indie rock hug.
Shit, we've been in indie rock heaven lately. Sebadoh III, Archers Of Loaf's Icky Mettle, and now a new Lemonheads. Almost makes us feel like we're in college again. Anyway, imagine It's A Shame About Ray, a little less laid back, a little more mature, but the same sort of mix of sweet jangly minor key laments and super rocking kick ass power pop. The hooks aren't as immediately obvious as they were on Ray, but the more we listen, the more we find ourselves getting bits and pieces lodged firmly in our heads. We're guessing that after spending a few more weeks with it, this might be one of our favorite pop records of the year.
Once again, it's time to dig deep into the murky musical underground of the great white north, Finland in particular, home to sooooooooooo many aQ faves over the years: Circle, Aavikko, Pharaoh Overlord, Doktor Kettu, Islaja, Avarus, Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine, Cleaning Women, Fleshpress, Magyar Posse, Hanoi Rocks (!), Kemialliset Ystavat, Keuhkot, Smack, Mr. Peter Hayden, Death Trip, Worms, Nightsatan, Reverend Bizarre, Ride For Revenge, Skepticism, Tiermes, Uton, Will Over Matter, we could go on and on and on. Oh and let's not forget recent Record Of The Weekers Billy Boys, who seem like the perfect segue into THIS week's Record Of The Week from another group of Finnish oddballs, The Leo Bugariloves, who are most likely virtually unknown to all but the most obsessive Finnophiles, or Bad Vugum completists, their sound pretty warped and WTF? even by weirdo Finnish standards. The label mentions Suicide, the Residents, and krautrock, which all definitely apply, but the LB's also have a weird sort of lo-fi exotica vibe going on, fusing looped Casio rhythms, to warbly synths, primitive programmed skitter wrapped around angular detuned twang, deep growly vocals delivered in a gruff barked croon, bits of Morricone-ish melody surface throughout, but there's plenty of swagger too, some songs slip into full on glam rock Gary Glitter style big beats, all under fuzzy synthy swirls, and chiming almost rockabilly guitar crunch, others get all Stoogesy, bluesy and buzzy, and still others get sort of Gobliny, some tracks laced with woozy horn bleats, others with swoonsome faux strings, but always, the LB's transform the sounds into their own twisted home brewed outsider avant electro pop concoction, and it's one that's weirdly addictive, and unlike the willfully difficult damaged sonics of the Billy Boys, the music of the LB's is playful, and melodic, and actually pretty fun, sure it's dark and brooding and fractured and fucked up at times, but even then it's often shot through with goofy melodies, or gradually transforms into some weirdly abstract bit of stumbling carnivalesque exotica. We can't help but mention another past record of the week, local outsider one man band Fastest, there's much of the same sort of idiosyncratic cinematic electro rhythmic weirdness going on, but the LB's are Finnish too, so this definitely has that weird ineffable Finnish special something that transforms what could have been pure home recorded weirdness, into something that's kind of warped genius, the LB's peppering their difficult listening with quite a knack for melody, plenty of popsmithery lurking in these buzzing, skittering, twangy, quirky, fractured and fragmented electro pop oddities, so much so, that repeated listens reveal these tracks to be more than just oddities, more like some alternate universe pop gems, that seem to have maybe been slightly damaged in their transmission between universes, and odds are, you'll find yourself impossibly hooked, with any of these tracks liable to get lodged in your head like crazy.
The Leo Bugariloves features members of legendary Finnish punk outfits Terveet Kadet and Death Trip (whose collected works reissued on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label we reviewed and raved about recently) but this is about as far as you can get from either of those bands, sounding more like some lo-fi mad scientist concoction of Devo, Fastest, They Might Be Giants, Dirty Beaches and Felix Kubin all run through some cracked Finnish music filter, and then molded into some sort of surreal David Lynchian Las Vegas lounge act. This two disc collection gathers up all sort of vinyl only rarities, long out of print gems, as well as a ton of unreleased stuff, including a handful of live and demo tracks, those tracks in particular displaying more of the group's mesmeric and murky lo-fi krautrock vibe...
Twisted, and bizarre, and most definitely baffling, but crazy catchy, yet another batch of fantastically fucked Finnish weirdness that we can't recommend highly enough!
We're so glad that the world is finally waking up to the genius of Ted Leo. We have been huge fans since his early days fronting the aggro mod-pop band Chisel. And the things that made Chisel so appealing have only intensified and matured since then. Jangly, super catchy hooks, classic riffs, amazingly literate, clever and funny lyrics, and that voice! A soaring almost falsetto that is keening and straining at impossible registers one moment, belting it out at others. So awesome. The sound is still sort of mod-pop, think the Jam/Style Council, Thin Lizzy, Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson all wrapped up in a sensitive thirtysomething emo boy! And all filtered through Leo's knack for inventive arrangements and weird chordal choices. This is not easy or simple pop. This is the kind of stuff that rewards repeated listens. The hooks are there, but they aren't obvious. And the melodies are infectious, but not cloying. And to me that's the best kind of pop record. One that stays fresh and offers something new everytime you hear it. Leo is seriously one of the best pop songwriters around. And he just keeps getting better.
Ted Leo, former leader of the criminally overlooked D.C. mod-pop outfit Chisel, with his pick-up band the Pharmacists, continues on his unique pop trajectory, somewhere between the jumpy caffeinated pop of his old outfit Chisel, the mod emotion of the Jam,
Leo is joined on this record by his brother Chris (who fronts the Lapse) on drums and percussion. Brendan Canty (of Fugazi) plays some drums as does his brother James. And Amy Dominguez (who plays on every indie rock record that needs a cellist it seems like) plays cello.
This record is so good. Really.
