I'll be honest. No one here likes this as much as me (Andee). BUT FOR GOD'S SAKE, TRUST ME THIS TIME! I WILL NOT LEAD YOU ASTRAY! Most fans of crank call comedy should already have the first few volumes of the brilliant (-ly insipid) Longmont Potion Castle. How can you not love a guy who gets off on torturing the clerks at radio shack and is obsessed with Tandy products?! A guy who spits out the most retarded and baffling products/names/etc: gugliata, voltor, leprechanjulius!! And on a previous cd, he continually harassed a foul mouthed cantakerous old man, but by the end of the disc, they were buddies, with the old man asking how the tape was going and LPC promising to send him a copy. FUCKING HEARTWARMING! How often do you get that on a crank call record?!!? Stupid and silly and once in a while totally inspired. This was constantly in the stereo on all of our road trips and so much Longmmont verbiage became vernacular for me and all of my San Diego friends. So buy this or I'll start talkin' whip, and may even bring a tennis racket toyaleyup!!!
The final two installments in the long overdue comprehensive Loop reissue campaign are finally here. World In Your Eyes, the newly expanded 12" collection, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this right here, the final proper Loop album, A Gilded Eternity.
Contemporaries of legendary drug rockers Spacemen 3, Loop took the same sonic influences but rocked a little harder, opting out of the extended soporific drifts the defined the Spacemen, (although they were perfectly capable of blissing out with the best of them) and instead creating looped, krautrock spacejams, that were downright heavy, as well as being space-y, druggy and surprisingly catchy. Guitars were fuzzed out, vocals way down in the mix, reverb and delay EVERYWHERE, riffs often processed into stuttering textures and looped rhythms, the drums alternatingly motorik and skeletal, and pounding and explosive, all wreathed in a glorious otherworldly haze.
A Gilded Eternity, their final record, originally released in 1990, might just be their heaviest and most rocking yet, definitely their tightest, album opener "Vapour" has one of those riffs TO DIE FOR, the main melody is so completely catchy, the song a woozy, repetitive chunk of gloriously propulsive dronerock, less space-y than much of what came before, but definitely more rocking and relentless. the next track "Afterglow" pushes that new heaviness even further, sounding not unlike Swervedriver, big crunchy distorted guitars, pounding tribal drumming, the arrangement a lurching start stop, that slips into cool washed out breakdowns, before exploding right back into the stuttery groove. And so it goes, the band unfurling their masterwork, in a career of masterful works, "Blood" is total abstract minimal krautrock, the guitars stripped away, leaving just a super spare drum part, wrapped all up in processed vocals and swirling effects, another jam that easily could have gone on for 10 more minutes. But then just like that, the band slip back into "Breath Into Me", whipping up another killer riff, the track a looped space garage groove that rivals record opener "Vapour". The record proper ends with the nearly 10 minute "Be Here Now", the Loop version of a slow jam, beginning with some strange processed guitar, the band ease into a languorous groove that drifts druggily through soft focus clouds of lysergic buzz, brief squalls of wild wah guitar, but remaining locked and looped, the weary vocals drifting above the warm endless buzz.
A Guilded Eternity comes with a bonus disc as well, perhaps the least critical of the bonus material, considering it contains 5 demo tracks and 3 Peel Sessions, BUT, it also includes the Loop track "Shot With A Diamond", which happens to be Jim's favorite Loop track alongside "Arc-Light." This track provides the perfect sonic segue between Loop and the sounds guitarist Robert Hampson would later explore with his post Loop solo project Main, an ominous bit of electronic sample laced dronemusic, creepy and haunting and so fucking awesome. Previously only available as a 7" single, and as a bonus track on the original cassette version. Essential!
In fact, all four of these Loop reissues are absolutely required listening for anyone with even the mildest interest in sounds space-y, druggy, metallic and psychedelic!!!
When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop.
For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more tranquil guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut-infused space rock bliss.
Fade Out was record number two for Loop, and found the band making a definite move forward in terms of production and sound, and an obvious shift away fro a sound they shared with countrymen Spacemen 3. The sound on Fade Out is much heavier, and way louder, the guitars sharper and more jagged, the bass more present, the vocals way more prominent, the sound immediately less druggy and washed out and more rocking. "Black Sun" is a propulsive slab of spaced out garage-y krautrock, the guitars ringing out, the second guitar a buzzing over the top, the drums busy and powerful, the whole thing still wreathed in effects, but now the murk had been replaced with something much more effulgent, a strange burnished glow, suffusing the sound, less like laying in darkness and watching colors swirl and shimmer, and more like staring directly into the sun. "This Is Where You End" continues on in the same vein, with gruff almost growled vocals, over that distinctive looped guitar figure, with multiple guitars offering up extra melody and texture.
"Fever Knife" stands out as it slows things way down, and the guitars are muted, not quite as sharp, with plenty of squiggly fun house mirror guitar melodies intertwined with that main riff, the tempo, a head nodding soporific groove, definitely reaching back a bit to the sound of Heaven's End. But then comes "Torched" with a incendiary guitar sound so loud and in the red, it threatens to blow your speakers, dwarfing the drums and bass in the background, churning and soaring, white hot and blown out big time.
The title track is another slowed down druggy dirge, the main riff lumbering woozily along side a steady simple beat, haunting processed vocals, and chunks of extra guitar buzz, the whole thing downright doomy. The last three tracks are gorgeous squalls of druggy throb and crumbling guitar buzz, the record finishing up with a short stretch of shimmering ambient drift. SO GREAT!!
The deluxe reissue of Fade Out not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring a whole mess of extra stuff, alternate mixes of three tracks on the record, an awesome demo version of "This Is Where You End", the Peel Sessions from the Fade Out era, and most exciting of all a series of Fade Out Guitar Loops, from shimmering high end buzz, to whirring smears of low end rumble, definitely hinting at Hampson's post-Loop outfit Main.
SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!
When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop.
For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts Krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut infused space rock bliss.
Heaven's End was Loop's debut, released in 1987, just a year after Spacemen 3's first record (and apparently Spacemen 3 were always quite annoyed by constantly being compared to Loop), and inadvertent or not, it's the Loop record that is the most Spacemen sounding. Lo-fi, raw and gritty. The opener "Soundhead" is surprisingly rocking, with lots of wah guitar, propulsive drumming, ethereal vocals, the song that would define the sound of Loop, but it's the second track where the record really gets going, slipping into a slow motion Stooges groove, a lurching looped riff, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums a simple pound, a main refrain that's catchy as fuck, the whole thing constantly repeated over and over and over and over, totally blissed out and trancelike. The following track slips even further out, the guitars super sharp and buzz drenched, the tempo a lugubrious crawl, the drums total barebones, swirling spaced out effects, the guitar billowing out into soft focus buzzscapes over which the rest of the instrumentation seems to hover weightless. The title track is a simple garage-y pound, with the cymbals and the guitars looped backwards (hinting at some Teenage Filmstars to come maybe?), the guitar stuttering creating incidental rhythms, very druggy and mesmeric. And so it goes, each song, a simple motif, locked in and set on repeat, the core remaining near static, looped into infinity, while all around that groove various guitars and effects and voices swirl and whirl and spin and stretch and shimmer divinely. Easily one of our all time favorite records for sure.
This deluxe reissue not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring alternate mixes of two of the album tracks, as well as a killer cover of Suicide's "Rocket USA", with a cool programmed drum beat, tripped out psychedelic guitars, and hushed almost crooned vocals, and the three tracks from the Peel Sessions, included a seriously stretched out version of "Straight To Your Heart". SO AWESOME!!!
SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!
Finally!! Ever since the first two Loop records got the deluxe multidisc reissue treatment, we've been anxiously awaiting the last two, their final record A Gilded Eternity, and this one right here, many folks around here's favorite, a compilation of 12"s called World In Your Eyes. Originally released in 1987, the updated World In Your Eyes, is even better, a TRIPLE disc collection of 12"s, 7"s, bonus tracks, unreleased tracks, demos, and covers.
Seemingly always (unfairly) overshadowed by their sonic brethren the Spacemen 3, Loop managed to give the drugged out drone rock thing their own distinct spin, infusing some serious krautrock mesmer and some metallic muscle into their slow burning drones and effects drenched psychrock workouts. Slipping easily from super dreamy one riff blown out hypno rock, to in-the-red space garage pound, to hushed soft focus inner space drift, Loop were masters of modern psychedelia.
Take the 10 minute drug drift of "Burning World", with its processed guitar chug, the swirling clouds of effects, the blooping bass, the motorik drums, like the perfect mix of Can and Hawkwind. Or "Brittle Head Girl", which sounded like a spacier more tripped out Galaxie 500, its lazy drawled vocals, and woozy guitar hook, and that irresistible bassline. Or "I'll Take You There", a super fuzzed out bit of garage-y space groove, the band easily out spacing the Spacemen themselves. We could probably go track by track, every one here is a gem, and the extras! Holy shit. Where to start? Besides a plethora of demos, live tracks and the like, this collection also includes some incredible covers, A spaced out version of a Pop Group track, Neil Young's "Cinammon Girl", Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" and Can's "Mother Sky (which Andee sez is better than the original, yeah we know, we know). Then there's the Arc-Lite 12" that takes up the first half of the third disc, one of our favorite Loop eps, and the track "Arc-Lite (Sonar)" is one of the best Loop jams ever, with its relentless riffing, it's strange flurries of tribal drumming, the echo drenched vox and the swooping streaks of effects, a 4 minute song that could easily have been ten times that. The song is reimagined as the "(Radar)" version, getting sort of supercharged, heavier and fleshier, less spare and skeletal and jangly than the original. There's a third version still, that gets all remixed into something less space rocky and more tripped out and dizzying. Let's not forget the ten minute "Sunburst", a sprawling bit of lysergic minimal krautdrone, woozy and druggy and slow burning. There's also the legendary live Prisma Europa Live 12", and finally, to top it all off, Loop's Godflesh cover, from their Loopflesh split 7", where each band covered the other, one of our Holy Grail 7"s, if anyone out there has one they can part with, we will be forever in your debt, and of course it's a killer, Godflesh's "Like Rats" transformed into something much spacier but no less menacing, in fact, it's most definitely the heaviest meanest slab of Loop-age ever, while still retaining plenty of that Loop-ed FX drenched shimmer. So goddamn GREAT.
These reissues have been shuffling tracks around enough to cause a little confusion, as some of the tracks on the original issue of WIYE are left off here, but are tacked on elsewhere on the other reissues, and disc 3 here seems like it could have been included on the Gilded Eternity disc as this disc highlights one of our favorite Loop tracks, the above mentioned Arc-Light, originally a 1989 single, which was lumped onto the cd edition of A Gilded Eternity which came out a year later in 1990. But who really cares, as long as it's all here, and it's ALL here, and then some. Space rock and drone rock and psychedelic rock fanatics should buy all four, one of the most supremely transcendent and kick ass bodies of work in rock. Hyperbole? We think NOT.
Killer packaging, three paper sleeves with various reproductions of the included 12"s, all housed in a slipcover, with a booklet that includes track listings credits, but sadly, not much in the way of liner notes.
When Uncle Tupelo broke up way back, their fans were split into two distinct groups. Those that sided with Jeff Tweedy, and preferred his voice and his songs. And those that were Jay Farrar boosters all the way. Around these parts, we pretty much all fell into the latter camp. Farrar's desperately ache-y, whiskey soaked drawl beat out Tweedy's reedy whine every time. And post UT, it could've gone either way, the first Son Volt was perfect, exactly where we wanted to see Farrar go. But then the first Wilco was no slouch either. But we quickly lost interest in Wilco as record after record continued to become more bland and pointless (regardless of critical praise). But then unexpectedly, Jay Farrar took a horrifying detour into what we can only describe as adult contemporary country rock. Mediocre. Boring. Bad. And then out of the blue, Jeff Tweedy made a similar about face, but instead of sinking into radio friendly pap, he turned towards US, you and me, the ones that love weird, beautiful, fucked up, experimental goodness, with arms outstretched. And thus, we were given Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a beautiful record for sure, but beautiful in a way that wasn't always obvious. Kind of like the "ugly" girls in movies who are actually totally hot, but just happen to be wearing glasses and paint splattered overalls and pigtails. And if you're like me, she's always WAY hotter than the "pretty" girls. Anyway, a totally great record. Not so experimental that there couldn't be good songs. And catchy songs that only seem to be helped by their experimental surroundings.
So now we have Loose Fur, which sounds just like you imagine it would seeing as it's 3 folks from Wilco, two of which, Jim O'Rourke (unofficial Wilco member and Tweedy cohort) and Glenn Kotche, are hugely responsible for Wilco's new sound and direction. Loose Fur sound a lot like Wilco kicking back and jamming for fun, recording on an eight track with some beer and some take out BBQ instead of in a $5000 a day studio with a catered buffet and a 'producer', recording in the basement or at home, whenever the mood strikes 'em. Like a fuzzed out, druggier, dreamier, more lo-fi Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. A sweet and unassuming mix of pop, country, folk and psychedlic weirdness. Really really great! The perfect thing to hold you over until the new Wilco, or to drown your 'what-happened-to-Jay-Farrar-well-at-least-we-have-Jeff-Tweedy' blues.
Some time back, AQ prankster Andee thought it funny to put a empty jewel case out on the shelves with a tag stating that the audio content was so minimal that it didn't even exist. Little did we know that this high art/bad joke concept was paralleled by the very first Reynols record -- which was a 'dematerialized' cd. With that lengthy precursor, we are happy to say that this Francisco Lopez record is NOT another in the continuum of sub-audible recordings. Rather "Untitled (1993)" is a collection of live collaborations between Lopez and a handful of guests (John Hudak, Michael Gendreau, Michale Northam, Gen Ken Montgomery, Steve Peters, and Zan Hoffmann). Lopez manages to corral all of the diverse aesthetics of these artists into the more audible spectrum of his own sound of lengthy environmental drones. Like all of the records you actually can hear by Lopez, "Untitled (1993)" is pretty fantastic.
This document of raw and primitive American black metal has been resurrected and reissued on vinyl by the Dais label. An unlikely choice, considering the rest of the Dais catalog, but in its own way, this collection of outsider blackness is a pretty good fit. This Kentucky one man band recorded only two cassette demos, between 1993 and 1994, only one of which was ever released. Originally thought to be a joke, the liner notes in this new edition state explicitly that "the hatred radiating from these recordings is real!", and while the man behind these sounds was known as Roach back in the day, he now goes by the name James Brown III, and is a member of LA black metallers Harassor (and is responsible for the awesome Moon Knight tape we reviewed a while back)!
Eleven blasts of blasting, pounding blackness, primitive and raw, fierce and feral, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums super lo-fi, boomy and rehearsal space sounding, the vokills so awesome, a sick demonic croak, all woven into short sharp bursts of true black metal grimnity, the songs slipping from mid-tempo plod to furious blast and back again, the sound fantastically lo-fi, blown out, murky and muddy, buzzy and black.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, incredible packaging, black matte finish sleeves, with red metallic foil stamped artwork, the lp is one sided, with a cool satanic etching on the B side, inside is a huge 12"x12" booklet with lyrics, photos, and two interviews with Lord Foul from way back in 1994.
Another blast of nekro-black "morbid dead metal" filth from this aQ fave, the solo project of Andorkappen, the drummer of LA black metal trio Harassor. And like the previous tape on Universal Consciousness, this is some dark, sinister, hateful heaviness, the sound raw and primitive, filthy and crusty, the sound lo-fi, but still somehow weirdly lush and LOUD, buzzing guitars, pounding practice space drumming, and some seriously sick demonic croak vokills. The sound is all over the map, slipping from super brittle and tinny, to murky and muddy and sludgey, the songs too, dirgey ritualistic creeps, frantic lightning speed blasts, pounding punkish d-beat blowouts, the sounds not at all typical, with clean effects laden guitars and warped FX, wild tangled psychedelia, field recordings, all woven into this twisted black epic. 36 minutes, 20 brief blasts, plus a super creeped out almost 20th century sounding piano dirge outro, spare and abstract, percussive and darkly ominous. The whole track repeats on both sides. The label describes this as "primitive devotional caveman soul music" and who are we to argue.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in super deluxe, embossed, heavy textured metallic paper J-cards, each one hand numbered and sealed with a sticker, each copy marked with Mr. Lord Time's actual blood!
This six-song split cd includes Mary Lou Lord performing, as she often does, a song by Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond. Also, the other half of this cd features Sean Na Na doing Andee's new favorite Pacific Northwest indie-rock hit: "Princess and the Pony". A nice surprise.
The return of this aQ beloved Mexican fuzzed out, druggy, dreamy garage rock duo, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, made up of, if you hadn't guessed already, Lorelle, who plays guitar, organ and sings, and her partner The Obsolete, who plays drums and does everything else. And like the two records that came before, Chambers is another killer collection of droned out psychedelic garage-kraut noise pop, like a heavier, fuzzier Moon Duo, or a creepier crawlier (old) Dum Dum Girls, the songs here are stretched out and trance-y, heavy and hypnotic, there's definitely a sort of classic sixties pop vibe, reminding us at times of another aQ fave, the Liminanas, but where that band went the full Gainsbourg, Lorelle and The Obsolete, take a similar sound, and run it through a bank of FX, a wall of distortion, adding some seriously drugged out Spacemen 3-isms to the proceedings. Just give a listen to the opening track "What's Holding You", with its fuzzy bass, crunchy guitar, ethereal female vox, whirring organ drones, super dark and dreamy and mesmerizing, the sound seesawing between moody stripped down verses, and blown out fuzz drenched 'choruses', but the real pay off for psych-heads, is the whole second half of the song, where the duo lock into a total Hawkwind worthy space rock blowout, delivering the sort of heady heart-of-the-sun heaviness, that should have fans of the Heads and White Hills and the like frothing at the mouth. The rest of the record follows suit, the band displaying a brilliant knack for murky noise-pop soundcraft, transforming clouds of chaotic sound into dreamy, lilting, hook laden jangle garage, the sound effortlessly straddling the line between drone-pop mesmer, swirly psychedelic garage, and full on, unhinged heavy psych, the magic being that the songs are GREAT, and just get greater as more sounds are piled on, fantastically noisy, but again, impossibly catchy and melodic, and so goddamn good. Some of the songs do slow down, and get sort of balladic, some are all swaggery and Stooges-y, and still others tap into the sound favored by the current crop of garage rockers, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees, etc. and fans of those bands, if you don't know this band already, you're in for a treat, but really, Lorelle and Mr. The Obsolete, have managed a rare feat, and taken the sound of a million other bands all seemingly trying to do the same thing, and made it ALL their own, truly unique and special, still pushing all of our garage pop buttons, as well as some of our space and psych rock buttons, but most importantly, revealing a whole bunch of other musical buttons we never even knew we had!!
We already loved this Mexican duo based entirely on the name, even more so when we discovered that it wasn't just a band name. Lorelle sings, plays guitar, bass and organ. The Obsolete plays drums, percussion, bass, Casiotone, organ, synth, piano guitar and also sings. Not sure if they're a proper couple, but they should be, so we're just gonna assume they are. And they do in fact make beautiful music together. A sort of psychedelic krautrock, noise pop, garage rock. In a way, they remind us of another recent fave Liminanas, but where that band channeled French pop, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete seem to be drawing their influence from something much more noisy and raw, psychedelic and dark. Sure it's jangly and poppy in places, but they lock into seriously hypnotic grooves, fans of outfits like the Moon Duo will be utterly enthralled for sure. They also have a bit of swaggery twang, reminding us at times of Crystal Stilts, and at others a little bit of Stereolab, albeit a much rougher low fidelity version.
The sound here is lush and warm, woozy and hypnotic, druggy and dreamy, tracks like "The December Riots" sound like the Dum Dum Girls slowed down to a gloriously murky crawl, slo-mo girl group bliss out, while tracks like "Art For Free", add some new wave to the group's garage pop crunch. All the songs here though at their core are jangly and catchy, Lorelle and her partner delivering them in varying states of decay, and varying states of tranced out drugginess. At their poppiest, this is the sort of thing fans of Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and Mikal Cronin will flip over, and at their droniest and druggiest, it's a sort of lysergic dirge that should appeal equally to fans of old school drug drift mesmer a la Spacemen 3, and more modern psychedelic noise purveyors like Carlton Melton. Although really, this is just some noisy krauty fuzzy pop, and we LOVE it. A new favorite for sure!
Much debate has occurred between the metalheads here at AQ because of this cd. Originally, we saw an ad for this record in a magazine, and knew, by the cover alone, that this was going to be the best 'power metal' record ever. Hell, maybe the best record
Let's start with the cover (and the ad we saw): four post apocalyptic Mad Max-ish war-painted metal warriors strut purposefully through the clouds above some sort of battlefield, where blindfolded human puppets are controlled by humanoids with the heads of pigs, vultures, and what appears to be badgers. The back of the cd of course shows our metallic heroes in complete control, with the animal-headed humans chained up and being whipped mercilessly by the members of Lost Horizon.
Then there's the band members names and their Lost Horizon duties: Cosmic Antagonist: "Orchestrating of thunder and seismic harmonising." Ethereal Magnanimus: "Laments of the souls and primal victorious warrior cries." Preternatural Transmogrifyer: "Keeping of the Universe's pulse and taming of chaos." Transcendental Protagonist: "Poesy of spiritual enlightenment, the entire string romanticism, soul healing euphoria generators."
And for those confused by all this, each band member has an 'earthshape' which is apparently their real name, and a 'translation for mortals', i.e. "Keeping of the Universe's pulse and taming of chaos" means -drums- to us mortals.
So if you're anything like me, you're sold already, who cares what it sounds like?
Well happily enough, this is some of the most kick ass power metal we've heard in a while. Blazing fast Iron Maiden/In Flames/Blind Guardian style epic and over the top power metal. The difference here being the extreme catchiness of the songs, the complete silliness of the band, and some really cool and quite bizarre arrangements. So for those of you already into power metal and classic eighties metal, this is a must have, and for those of you who aren't sure and are looking to try something like this, I can't think of a better place to start than Lost Horizon. They're from Sweden, if it matters -- although I think they'd prefer we thought they came from some metallic universe beyond.
We've are so psyched on this comp, a 'greatest hits' collection of sorts from the late Jay Reatard's pre-solo, post Reatards, garage-rock synth-punk group, Lost Sounds, a band legendary for their insane live shows, whose sound was a supercharged mix of power pop jangle, garage rock crunch and post punk synthbuzz, the songs frantic and frenzied, sweat soaked, bruised and bloodied, even recorded, these songs exude the sort of energy that few bands can muster, even live. Dueling boy/girl vocals over wild chaotic drumming, with some seriously killer songs, which definitely foreshadow Reatard's eventual shift to full on pop, but that pop element here is wreathed in ominous buzz and crusty garage rock creep, the sound is alternatingly wild and loose, brooding and tense, often both at the same time, and while they were definitely loved back in the day, had this band been around today, they would rule the scene for sure, this is the sort of supercharged garage rock synth pretty much every band is shooting for these days, but even the best of them can barely touch the magical mystery of these blown out blasts wild and wooly garage punk bliss. Imagine Blasted Canyons meets Black Bug meets the Fuzztones, and you're getting close, sorta the perfect mix of Reatard's early feral punk rock leanings, and his later power pop proclivities, but the synth really changes everything, transforming already super catchy kick ass garage rock into something almost next level.
We were secretly hoping this would in fact be some sort of complete collection, with everything these guys (and gal) every recorded, but it's still pretty bad ass, a compilation of Lost Sounds' finest moments as chosen by the surviving members of the band. Should definitely inspire you to track down the rest of their records. Pretty much every thing they've released RULES. And anyone who dug Blasted Canyons (last list's Record Of The Week), should definitely check this out.
Another transmission from the strange sonic universe of UK psychedelic space rock weirdos Gnod, this one from a particular member of the group and his friends, a twisted offshoot of the mothership's sound, we first heard via the Gnod record Presents Dwellings & Druss, and at the time, we had yet to realize, that both Dwellings and Druss were in fact each single members of the group. Which in retrospect is a bit obvious considering how freaked out and UNlike Gnod that record really was. Well Druss returns, this time teamed up with a mysterious Russian duo called Love Cult, and the three of them craft a truly creepy soundscape of drones and psychedelic collages, of twistedly rhythmic anti-grooves, and wild experimental FX drenched noise. Apparently the tracks are split up between the groups, some Druss, some Love Cult, some both, but really you'd be hard pressed to tell, as all the songs bleed into one constantly shifting whole.
Deep rumbles ooze ominously out of the speakers, before a voices is chopped up and layered into a maddeningly looped pulse, wrapped in streaks of hiss and static, peppered with abstract percussive thwacks, eventually coalescing into a sort of abstract, drugged out alien house music maybe? From there the sound darkens and drift even further into the shadows, the vibe distinctly hauntological, fans of Demdike Stare will find much to dig, dense pulsations, synth squelch blurred into chordal thrum, multiple voices whispering ominously, a strange fractured rhythm anchoring the proceedings, a softly churning, ritualistic, blackened electronica that gradually grows more and more tweaked and twisted.
Elsewhere, the sound slips into a hazy almost Pop Ambience, all washed out and ethereal, a motorik throb, buried beneath layers of shimmer and softly gristly gauze, the sound disappearing beneath a cascade of blurry, bleary low end, before blossoming into some spaced out electro. The record fragments into wild psychedelic soundscapery, jittery and frenetic, before devolving into a weird retro electronica, that sounds like a super creepy, damaged take on Paul Hardcastles's "19", the final trilogy of tracks slips from grim, rib cage rattling buzz, wreathed in cinematic swirls, to another batch of electro, but something more akin to John Carpenter electro, with a little witch house mixed in, and then finally, some super minimal dubbed out electronica, all blurred voices, wobbly almost dubstep bass, and a hazy voice like melody, the vibe simultaneously tense and intense, washed out and dreamy!
As always, includes a download with the whole record, as well as two extra digital tracks. And as always, very very limited!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
I've actually been waiting for Lovely Midget's debut album for some time, after a brilliant 10" on Ecstatic Peace a couple of years back. Lovely Midget is the work of New Zealand's Rachel Shearer, whose resume includes a few releases for Siltbreeze and Xpressway as Queen Meanie Puss and Angelhead. Whereas those projects were firmly entrenched in the magical avant-pop strum shared by fellow NZ musicians like Alastair Galbraith, Lovely Midget's gritty drones barely have anything to do with the song, capturing a antiquated sound similar to Movietone or Kjetil Brandsdal's Corpus Hermeticum release. The layers of guitar feedback, slowly tumbling percussion, and sunbleached vibrations could easily have resulted in the crystalline sleepiness of My Bloody Valentine but instead have been covered with 10 years of dust and cobwebs blurring the melodies with murk and mire. Interestingly, this muddy, droning din was created digitally, although there certainly isn't any indication that any digital production was used, and Lovely Midget would never get confused with the sterile electronica found on Raster or 12K. Rather this has all the trappings of a fantastic lo-fi 4-track recording... it's beautiful, dreamy, and highly recommended.
Holy shit... they did it again! Two plus decades into their career and Low have managed to make yet another breathtaking record, a collection of songs that even on first listen, induced the sort of chills that only the most special records ever do. Along with Yo La Tengo, Low have proven to be one of the most consistent and reliable bands to emerge from the indie landscape in the last twenty-five years. Pioneers of the slowcore sound, their music has always been rich with wrenching emotion and a relentless power.
Over the years, they have experimented with more rocking and poppy directions, but even then, their slowcore roots remained, and somehow they always ended up, if not back where they started, at least sonically expounding on all the glacial beauty that came before. With Ones & Sixes, Low they have created maybe one of their best records yet, one that most definitely belongs with other Low faves of ours, alongside Long Division, Secret Name, and Things We Lost In The Fire. Everything we love about Low is in full flower here. Alan and Mimi's aching vocals, soporific songs that unfold like slowly blossoming flowers, with melodies that have us humming along - and in a perfect world, could/should/would be all over the radio. Low have never compromised their singular vision, and like the rest of Low's records, this is exactly it sounds like when a band remains connected to their truth and purpose. Brilliant!
Most of the time, the cds that come with magazines are a waste of time, you might discover a song or a band, but more often than not, it's some paid promotional thing, where the bands with the most money, or at least the ones WILLING to pay, are the ones featured. But recently, Mojo magazine did an issue about the new country, or the new folk maybe it was, and included a cover cd, that we never really bothered to listen to at first, but eventually threw on, just to check it out, and BAM. It was like the best mixtape we'd ever heard. Incredible songs, great bands, perfectly sequenced, we couldn't stop listening to it. With a million songs to choose from on our iPod, we found ourselves constantly playing the Mojo comp. WTF? Fleet Foxes, Yeasayer, Iron & Wine, Alela Diane, the Dodos, Animal Collective, Akron/Family, Papercuts, The Pink Mountaintops, Vetiver, Bill Callahan, J. Tillman and these guys, The Low Anthem. Never heard of em before, but their song in particular had us smitten, a dark brooding deep folk number called "To Ohio", which is included here, and still, even after a hundred plays, has lost none of its magic. Delicate acoustic guitar, sweetly moaning cellos, and rough but warm and sweet vocals, harmonica, lovely harmonies, it's been stuck in our heads since we first heard it.
But there's plenty more. "Charlie Darwin" is another sun dappled dream folk number, but with lush lustrous falsetto vox, hushed and intimate with some super bittersweet harmonica here too. And while most of the record is on the quiet side, a super intimate affair, there are some more stompy bluegrass numbers, some almost rocking workouts, but it's never long before they settle back into something dark and languorous and dreamy. And be sure to stick around for the "To Ohio (Reprise)", which adds extra reverb and gives the song some extra bass, a muted driving rhythm, and some violin, making the song even darker and more psychedelic. So good.
We don't sell a lot of comic books here, although maybe we should as a bunch of us are way into comics. Goon, Hellboy, B.P.R.D., The Walking Dead, Preacher, Y, Exterminators, we're almost as nerdy about comics as we are about music. And once in a while a comic comes along, that just hits the spot. Not about a superhero, not a super extended narrative, not violent or bloody, just goofy, funny, fun and bizarre. And since we figured that some of the music nerds who read our list also dig comics, so well, what the heck...
The comic in question is the cutely titled Wuvable Oaf. The story of a huge hairy bear man, who spends a good amount of his time naked, or at least shirtless. And is constantly surrounded by his pals, and lots and lots of kitties. There's plenty of goofy dancing, man love, saucy almost sex, penis shaped birthday cakes, high fashion, reality TV, feline birthing, and an art�punk band called Ejaculoid. You don't need to be into big hairy dudes to dig the comic, but you should at least be into kitties, and into some super awesomely detailed artwork. The hair factor alone is amazing, it must have taken months to illustrate Oaf, let alone his equally hirsute pals. The comic is not heavy on story, the vignettes are brief and fleeting and funny, but it's all about the art. Intricate and complex, incredible detail, the panel that shows a Victorian with the Twin Peaks antenna tower in the background is perfect right down to the defaced poster on the building next door. And did we mention the HAIR! So much hair, torsos, arms, faces, shaved and on the floor, it's everywhere!�
Anyway, check it out, locals will probably recognize some of the characters as they are modeled after real folks, one in particular is a long time aQ pal and sometime list contributor. They have amazing shirts too, which you might see AQ staffers sporting once in a while. You can read and see more here:�http://www.wuvableoaf.com/
Oaf, his pals and his kitties get a big wuvable thumbs up fom aQ!
The return of Wuvable Oaf!!! If you remember a few months back when we listed the first issue of the Oaf (#0 for those keeping track), we gushed over the goofy funny story, the incredibly detailed art, the many many kitties, and did we mention the hair? ALL that hair!!
The first issue, if you don't remember, contained plenty of goofy dancing, man love, saucy almost sex, penis shaped birthday cakes, high fashion, reality TV, feline birthing, and an art punk band called Ejaculoid. The life and times of a big bearlike creature called Wuvable Oaf, and his friends, and his cats, and his dolls stuffed with his own body hair. Now seems like a good time to revisit the hair. The art is so intricate and detailed, all the characters so hirsute that it really must take as much time to draw the hair as it does the rest of the comic. But it's worth it, so over the top, and so completely and awesomely ridiculous.
So this issue gives us a glimpse into the creation of Oaf's stuffed little creatures as well as his ability to regenerate body hair just by 'forcing it', various 'worst' dates throughout the years, 1986, 1992, the origin of the Oaf, from his birth (his actual birth, euuw) to his misfit early years and eventual adoption, a visit to the gym, another feline misadventure, as well as a run in with punk rock band Ejaculoid, culminating in a visit to AQUARium records!! Hmmm. And that guy behind the counter, looks suspiciously like, OK, heck, it is! It's our own ANDEE, in all his Oaf drawn glory, surly and standoffish (not at all like the real Andee btw), giving Ejaculoid the cold shoulder, spouting his timeless catchphrase "I hate your band". Beside the thrill of being drawn into the Oaf universe, the record store is another example of artist Ed Luce's incredible eye for detail, the various records behind the counter, the posters on the wall, the band t-shirts, it's pretty amazing.
We're dying to see what happens as Oaf pursues his Ejaculoid lead singer crush, and of course we can never get enough kitties, drawn or otherwise, there are big plans in the works for Oaf, including more kick ass merch (check it out: http://www.wuvableoaf.com/) as well as an actual single from the imaginary(?) Ejaculoid.
Punk rock, kitties, lots and lots of hair, and of course big muscly dudes, what's not to love???
Once again, the big, hairy, doll making, lovestruck punk rock behemoth better known as Wuvable Oaf returns! We've been champions of Luce's crazy creation since the moment we first laid eyes on Oaf and his equally hirsute cadre of pals and lovers and hangers on. Not to mention the kitties!
For those new to the Oaf, in a city, suspiciously like San Francisco, lives the Wuvable Oaf, who spends his days making cool little stuffed dollies, filling them with his shaved body hair, living in a house full of kitties, and pining after Eiffel, the diminutive lead singer of the band Ejaculoid, who are constantly battling their arch rival band, Spincterine, and that's just scratching the surface. There's lots of unrequited love, nightmarish dream monsters, wild punk rock gigs, nightmare dates, aggro-massage, jilted evil ex-boyfriend chefs, blind dates, bands with names like Muff ' N' Top Grrrlz and Wasp Women, a broKENCYDE shirt pops up during a show, so do the bad guys from Superman 2, as does our very own Andee!
It's definitely a wild ride, the art is amazing, super detailed, over the top, there's so much hair everywhere, on the big beefy dudes, on the kitties, it's no wonder why it takes Luce ages to finish each issue, but it's well worth the wait, funny, and fun, and sexy and silly, now we're dying for issue 3, especially after the back page teaser, a big hairy, horned, devil tailed man-beast with the legend "Who is Gote Blud?". Well?? WHO IS IT??????????????
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Their second album from '72, as great as the self-titled first one. This one is a bit weirder, more proggy, now more like Queen than Zeppelin. The complex arrangements and overall heaviness again make us wonder: why isn't this band a lot more famous? An instant favorite from the moment we heard it. I guess it is nice to know that there's always the undiscovered gem out there awaiting. Again, recorded by Conny Plank.
From the vaults of the legendary krautrock label Brain comes another cool digipacked reissue on Revisited. We've been fans of this particular album for a long time, previously stocking a Repertoire reissue when we could get it. In fact, looking into our archives, we see that we reviewed it on two separate occasions, giving it quite similar but different reviews. Well, here's a third, based on those.
This self-titled 1970 debut album is one of the two early Lucifer's Friend albums we recommend, the other being its 1972 sequel, Where The Groupies Killed The Blues, which perhaps will be reissued again as well. After that, the records we've heard aren't as good. But THIS, this is a great piece of '70s proto-metal very much akin to Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Budgie, and (especially) Uriah Heep! Some psychedelic weirdness, lots of heavy riffing (on guitars and organ) and total wailin' rock god vocals (courtesy of British singer John Lawton, who later DID join the Heep). As krautrock goes, they're more like early Scorpions than the more out there stuff you might be thinking of (Faust, Can, Kraftwerk, Cluster...) but this -was- recorded by Conny Plank.
The first track, the triumphal rocker "Ride The Sky" (recently covered by doomsters Trouble on their abortive comeback Simple Mind Condition) begins with a trumpeting French horn motif that will definitely make you think of Led Zep, sounding uncannily like the "ah ahhhhhh ahh" intro to "The Immigrant Song", though this came first. There's a cool live video of this track on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5DpOdf-_yM&feature=related.
If you dig that, you'll dig this album... !!!
(FYI, Revisited has included 2 bonus tracks this time 'round.)
And here we go, further into the shadows, down the black hole of minimal mutant techno. We've become downright obsessed with this twisted, grim, bleak strain of electronic sound, as is evidenced by recent Record Of The Weekers Akkord and Basic House and this week's Echologist, also killer releases by Vatican Shadow, Silent Servant, Prurient, Haxan Cloak, Terrence Dixon, Shed, we could go on, but needless to say, even the former technophobes here at aQ, have been fully converted and indoctrinated into the cult, now we find ourselves on a mission to dig up the darkest of blackened house, the wooziest, warped techno, the sound of spare skeletal skitter and haunting electro-creep mood music, all that we crave. Our latest discovery is provocatively titled Churches Schools And comes to us from Lucy, who is not in fact a woman named Lucy, but some mysterious guy, who is a master and crafting suffocatingly sinister techno, pulsing sprawls of blurred murk, looped and layered rhythms, opener "The Horror" is indeed horrifying, a grim field of glitch and gristle, laid over a field of rumbling swells and wreathed in grinding black static, super tense and intense, an intro maybe, but the sound oozes ominously into the rest of the record, which plays out like some alien mutant dub, long stretches of muted thrum, peppered with fractured beats, and swirling synths, bizarre samples, geiger counter like sputter, all blurred into something hazy, and dreamily druggy. "Leave Us Alone", sounds like a more blissed out Silent Servant, or a Kompakt track gone very very bad. "The Self As Another", buries its beats under ethereal swaths of chordal shimmer, the whole thing gauzey and ephemeral, as if being listened to from a great distance.
"Human Triage" is like electro-dub melted down to its very essence, laced with weird bits of crumbling FX, and gradually growing more and more frenetic, but simultaneously, the sounds getting more and more indistinct, as of the whole thing would eventually blur into a single smear of sound. "Follow The Leader" is all gristly slo-mo house, throat singing, record crackle, and muted pulsations, fashioned into something hauntingly hypnotic, while "Catch Twenty Two" might be the grooviest of the bunch, but its still all crackle wreathed minimal murk. The rest of the tracks, deliver fantastic variations of Lucy's crumbling, crackly, techno-dub creep, culminating in the surprisingly blissful closer "Falling", which stretches ethereal female vocals, into a spectral chorale, all over soft focus flurries of glistening finger picked guitars, and swirling clouds of prismatic glimmer, wreathed in fuzzy barely there shimmer, and crafted into gentle swells, the end result sounding almost like a Grouper track, produced by The Field!
Finally, the debut record from this fearsome local black metal fivesome sees the light of day. Ludicra is yet another project from the fertile metal mind of John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Iron Cemetary, etc.), this time with the help of local rockers/scene fixtures Aesop (Hickey, Dr. Dre Del, etc.), Christy Cather (Missile Command), Ross Sewage (Impaled), and Laurie Sue Shanaman (who works at the veterinarian where Andee's girlfriend and Erik his housemate take their cats!).
Ludicra's debut reveals them to be a highly advanced black metal creation. They're complex, moody, darkly psychedelic, and 'post-rocky' like AQ-faves Enslaved -- a very good thing. The droning savage trance rock of another AQ black metal fave (and fellow San Franciscans) Weakling is also evident. Maybe it's Aesop's punk-derived drumming, or the song-writing dynamics, but while this is very metal indeed it also betrays an awareness of other strands of underground rock. And of course it's heavy, textured, and exceedingly well-crafted, as you would expect from the pen/plectrum of Sir Lord John Cobbett.
Ludicra has two singers: Christy (who also plays guitar) and Laurie Sue, and while both vocalists are women, you won't hear any of the sweet singing that Hammers of Misfortune's female vocalist does. No, it's all very extreme -- except for some wordless background choruses and an interlude or two of gentle chanting, they mostly deliver scary throat-shredding screams that upend gender stereotypes. But, like Hammers, having more than one vocalist allows for interesting variety and dynamics. Lots of acoustic interludes and dark and rhythmic breakdowns that hint at the band members' diverse indie rock/post punk/punk rock backgrounds. That, and Ludicra's ability to yet generate at the same time such a convincing black metal atmosphere, makes for a very satisfying and compelling listen.
The care Ludicra took with their music also extends to the packaging. "Hollow Psalms" comes in a standard digipack, but upside-down/reverse so that it opens more like a book (with the cd tray on the inside front cover, and the booklet on the right side). The art on the cd even says "Ex Libris" with a space for your name, in keeping with the storybook theme. The handlettered booklet includes lyrics and is illustrated by bassist Ross. We're very impressed, all around.
Gorgeous, lo-fi, space-y, almost ambient free-rock, dark and langorous. Minor key and strangely melodic, almost sitar-ish guitars crawl lazily over deep reflective drones and muted feedback. Late night, bliss out, doped up dream music. Think the Dead C
Lugois were responsible for one of my favorite CPP cd-r's, Golden Five Aluminum Lake. But fear not, Monarch is just as fantastic. Originally released as a cassette in 1988, Monarchg features CPP head honcho Campbell Kneale and his cohorts Andrew Savage and Leon Schultz. These four tracks were recorded in a NZ church and the sound reflects it, sort of liturgical and spiritual. Using guitars and synth mostly, these three offer up their worship, not to God or Buddah, but to their forefathers, the gods of NZ noise: the Dead C, Omit, & Gate, and make their offerings to that holy trinity. (Or the other holy trinity: Cale /Conrad / Maclise.) Simple, whirring drones, sounding like an army of slow motion squeezeboxes, with plaitive little melodies fighting to get their tiny heads above the thick ocean of drones.
A classic release of "Boersk Blek Metle" from Belgium's carrot-brandishing metal mavericks Lugubrum, one of our favorite black metal (blek metal? brown metal?) bands ever! We just listed their new one, De Ware Hond, and when re-ordering more of those direct from the band's own Old Grey Hair label, we decided to get some of Bryune Troon too 'cause we'd somehow never had this particular disc in stock before. It's a 2001 release, recorded 'round about the same time as their now out of print Al Ghemist album, which was the one that started our sick fascination with this bizarre band in the first place, and if you like Lugubrum as much as we do, you're gonna want it.
Unlike some of their more recent output, Bryune Troon strikes a balance of metal vs. not-metal weighted more towards the metal side of things. You won't hear much saxophone, for instance (though we think maybe we hear it on the track "Low Dog", is that what's credited as "Lovendegm chainsaw vomitor"??), but there certainly is plenty o' weirdness creeping in around the edges of everything here, Lugubrum's blasting, wretching black metal already twisting away from the Darkthrone/Emperor/Mayhem template into beyond-Ved-Buens-Ende madness. "Recorded...under handicapped and alcoholic conditions", this incorporates loping, lumbering low-end dirge, atmospheric drone, weird watery field recordings, banjo riffage, scatological subject matter, Viking stoner psych ("Holebeard Blues") and gypsy folk... plus gobs of fuzz and buzz in the best black metal tradition. All this and more has swirled down into the clogged-pipe-plumbing of Bryune Troon, leaking brown liquids all over "side midget" and "side dung".
As we've said before, Lugubrum MIGHT be joking around. They almost have to be. Yet when you listen, it's not silly. It's serious, even scary. Some of the songs here are sung in English and the lyrics, about "moldy cloaks" and "flab" and "red hot sauce" that we can understand...we can't understand. Any jokes they're making are the obverse of funny ha ha in -our- universe, which surely ain't where these folks dwell.
LUGUBRUM. The name belongs in all-caps cuz Allan and Andee have concluded that Lugubrum are the greatest black metal band EVER. Maybe. After becoming utterly enamoured of their split with their own side project Finsternis (reviewed on list #144), the two of us ordered some of Lugubrum's self-released cds direct from Belgium, for our own collections. Such sudden, massive Lugubrum exposure proved one thing: the totality of their music, their art, their concepts -- are all beyond normal mortal understanding. We must bow down to the totally fucked Lugubrum aesthetic. Yes, they are obsessed with drinking beer and eating carrots. (Yes, we just said eating carrots -- there's a spiked carrot in their logo, their motto is "Beer Us Or Die!!!"). Yes, they make music from the bowels of Hell. Yes, they have some seemingly silly songtitles ("Midgets of Evil"? "Beard Of Disease"?) -- but with totally grim and twisted lyrics, however. Being so paradoxically silly AND serious is the sort of weirdness we truly admire.
Eventually we'll try to stock their import cds, but we're lucky that now their hard-to-find-to-say-the-least 1999 masterpiece, "De Totem" has been reissued in the USA, remastered with 2 bonus tracks! This disc demonstrates that Lugubrum excel at slow-paced trudge-trawls through the doomy mire, changing up with trancey speed blasts. The sound -- their guitars, their vocals -- is so dirty nasty filthy. Makes Anaal Nathrakh sound like freshly scrubbed choirboys. The fuckin' fuzz...fuck. Such doomed, distorted, diseased atmosphere. Frosty string bends. Noisy feedback. Anguished howls. In a word: Beautiful.
And, if that wasn't enough, with the photo sessions for the De Totem booklet, Lugubrum have invented a whole new, hitherto untried look: hillbilly black metal!!! No corpse paint, rather corncob pipes, hoedown hats, shotguns, and beards. A pet hound dog, even. And yes, they actually take it so far as to play banjo on the album! Although, what's weirder is that one of the bonus tracks seems to incorporate a Jamaican dub influence... As we said, now our favorite black metal band in the world. LUGUBRUM.
Maybe it's the name, but something about "Lugubrum" makes us think of a steaming witch's cauldron. A sinister sonic stew as it were. Nominally a black metal band, these mega AQ faves definitely blend in a lot of other things into their sound. Of course there's big orange carrots floating around in there (kinda like when cannibals are trying to entice Bugs Bunny into a stew-pot) 'cause we know that these Belgian weirdos just love carrots. But in terms of musical ingredients, the Lugubrum recipe calls for everything from troo grim black metal to avantgarde jazz, from dronological doom to hillbilly heehawin'. They're utterly mad master chefs, though, so when mixed properly and brought to a boil, Lugubrum's bubbling brown stew tastes like nothing else and is thick and heavy enough to eat with a forklift. Ok, enough with the culinary/cauldron metaphor, let's give you some specifics about De Ware Hond, Lugubrum's latest (9th) album. Following up last year's Live In Amsterdam, they bring four (long) new tracks of their "musick" on this one, all of it recorded live in the studio (no overdubs). That in part explains its organic, tranced-out vibe, these songs structured, we're assuming, with plenty of room for improvisation -- particularly sounding like it on the second half of the record, when the usual guitars and drums and organ are joined by "Funhouse" style saxophone and mellow, mesmeric tablas, for even more improv-jazz, out-there-fucked-up-Eastern-psych appeal. Not at all your usual black metal! Apparently "brown metal" as Lugubrum puts it. Loping and lurching and and lurking and blurting and rasping and wretching and roiling, this could be Abruptum jamming with Oxbow, Today Is The Day teamed up with Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Neurosis playing Pharoah Sanders, or Pan-Thy-Monium vs. Dead Raven Choir... yeah it's that weird and hard to describe. But definitely dark and, dare we say it, druggily dreamy?
This is probably their least "metal" album yet, however just as Lugubrum as ever. And we're absolutely sure they were still the most metal band to appear at the recently concluded 2007 (K-RAA-K)3 Festival in Belgium, alongside such artists as Daniel Higgs, Giuseppe Ielasi, Raccoo-oo-oon, Jozef Van Wissem, Major Stars, Sun City Girls, Phil Minton, Warmer Milks, and others! OK, Witchcraft played too, they're also sorta metal. (And we just heard that the Sun City Girls were at the last minute unable to play the festival, they had to cancel for some reason. Too bad, they definitely would have liked Lugubrum we think...a band maybe even weirder than they are...)
Starting with an introductory minute of electronic drone distortion, the half of this split cd by Belgian black metallers Lugubrum, entitled "Al Ghemist" is, simply, awesome. Unlike most black metallers, Lugubrum aren't concerned with playing fast. But they do care about atmosphere. Slow, doomy, heavy, dirgey, dark, bleak atmosphere. The production is kinda lo-fi, but densely textured.
The opening noise piece leads into "Hunted Ordure", one of the best doom songs we've EVER heard. Buy it for this track alone and you'll be happy. Happily doomed. But the other Lugubrum tracks are good too. They do some faster stuff, but is still sounds like music from the bowels of the earth. The croaking vocals, fuzzed-out guitars, the weird non-standard rhythms, it's so nice. As they say, "Your discomfort and damaged speakers nourish Lugubrum eternally!!!"
Finsternis (also from Belgium?) aren't quite as odd an outfit. They play good old-fashioned necro black metal, excuse me, "alcoholic bonesaw metal" exclusively. You've heard the likes of them before. But their half of this split does provide some hateful blasting rock n' roll for those that dig this sort of primitive, grimy black metal.
Oh, thanks to AQ customer Roberto for pointing out to us that the old man on Lugubrum's "Al Ghemist" cover art appears to be holding a carrot. For some reason that didn't convince Roberto that this was amazing, but it only added to our love for Lugubrum.
We had been eyeing this record for a while. They are called Lumsk after all. And their logo is the letters in Lumsk rendered as gnarled trees and roots, and the cover features a sketchy drawing of a long haired nordic warrior, hair blowing in the wind. The name of the album and the song titles are all in Norwegian too which is never a bad thing. At best it would be some amazingly weird black metal record, at worst some beer hoisting Viking sing along metal, either way, we'd probably be pretty into it. Well, when we finally cracked one open, it was neither of those things, and so much better than we could have hoped for. The simplest way to describe Lumsk is some strange mix of Hammers Of Misfortune, Enslaved, Scandinavian folk, and the Fucking Champs. Sounds weird. Sounds impossible actually, but that's definitely what it sounds like. Lots of complex instrumental riffing, lots of loping seasick Viking rhythms, along with simple drumming and loads of organs and keyboards, occasional violin and even a choir, but then there's the vocals, male and female, both proud and majestic, soaring and weaving, definitely reminiscent of Hammers Of Misfortune. My thumbnail review was originally "a more epic, Viking metal Hammers Of Misfortune", but on further listens there's just so much dense Carcass-y instrumental stuff going on under the surface, that it makes the soaring (almost renn-faire sounding at times) vocals sound almost alien in that context. It's a little bit power metal, a little bit folk metal, a little bit doom, a little bit prog, and yeah, a little medieval / rennaisance, but put it all together and not only does it not make sense, but it makes so little sense that it makes absolutely perfect sense. To us at least. Definitely NOT death metal or black metal, way more melodic than heavy, and downright pretty at times, but still plenty heavy enough to please all the discerning metalheads around here.
First album proper from this shadowy purveyor of hauntological industrial ambience, after a handful of releases which were more like singles collections. Industriale Illuminato functions as a continuous songsuite, one that plays out like the soundtrack to some eerily romantic art film, or the score to a trip down the rabbit hole, or more accurately, some strange miix of the two. A mix of electronic and organic instruments, the sound lush, and cinematic, but also murky and mysterious, strange voices are looped into hiccuping rhythms, other voices seem to decay and crumble into the ether, while thick waves of rumbling thrum ebb and flow, synths swirl, clouds of cymbal shimmer sizzle and dissipate, clouds of blurred ambience drift lazily over a bleary, washed out landscape of bleak atmospheric sprawl. Beats surface throughout, conjuring a vibe similar to Boards Of Canada, but cast with a deathly pallor, the sounds and the beats more rough edged, the sounds oozing and bleeding, the needle pegged, and that in-the-red grit a part of the atmosphere. The vibe shifts constantly throughout, from churning industrial techno gloom, to creeping soundtrack shimmer, to straight up cinematic ambience, replete with what sound like field recordings (or clips from whatever imaginary movie it's from), while other tracks are tangled stretches of mangled beats, that seem to roil restlessly, as if trying to desperately untangle themselves. The majority of the record though is darkly serene, ominously tranquil, dreamlike bordering on nightmarish, rhythmic, and hypnotic, with some tracks slipping into downright beauty, albeit a sort of faded decaying beauty, a strangely lovely sinister sonic rot that seems to be slowly eating away at all of Industriale Illuminato, and transforming it into a fantastic collection of crumbling black hearted drone-gloom bliss.
Not sure how it happened, but we've never listed any records by Ukrainian one man black metal horde Lutomysl. Even though most of the black metal folks, ourselves included, are WAY into Lutomysl's furious black metal buzz. So let's remedy that shall we...
Sonically similar to many of his countrymen, Drudkh, Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum (of which he was once a member), Astrofaes, Blood Of Kingu... etc. Lutomysl spews raw blasting grim Ukrainian black metal of the sort we never seem to tire of, buzzing chainsaw guitars, blasting double kick beats, harsh vokills that go from weird and mysterious clean singing to full on suicidal shriek, and a surprising amount of dynamics, lots of twisted convoluted transitions, strange off kilter rhythms, all wound up into the otherwise seemingly straight ahead grim blackness. But like other Ukrainian BM, there is also plenty of melody, even at its harshest and most frenzied, the riffs are catchy, and often unravel into something almost folky before exploding back in a furious onslaught of buzz and howl.
The songs are peppered with distinctly un-black metal breaks, giving the songs a seriously avant / progressive vibe here and there, which nicely balances the relentless lightning fast drone drenched buzz that constitutes the core of Lutomysl's sound. There's also plenty of bass, or at least low end, which as we've discussed before is rare in black metal, and probably goes a long way to making this record sound so thick and heavy.
Grim and kvlt and necro, and just weird enough to keep it interesting, essential for fans of all things black and Ukrainian, and heck, probably pretty worthwhile if you just need a buzzing black soul crushing blast of sonic fury.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The latest in a long line of 'post rock' bands actually trying to stretch the boundaries of everyone's favorite non-genre. Some of the sounds are the same, but presented here, by these guys, it sounds pretty fresh and new. Ultra precise, and with a complete mastery of their chosen dynamics, Lynx mange to kick serious ass (without the unnecessary showiness of Don Caballero) while crafting actual 'songs' that you may find stuck in your head after repeated listens. Maybe not as far out or as mind blowing as AQ faves Fuehler, but Lynx still pack quite a wallop, easily out-posting their post rock peers. Definitely for fans of Shellac.
One of two new reissues from legendary garage rockers the Lyres, founded in the late seventies by Jeff Conolly, after the break up of the seminal punk rock outfit DMZ, and before he would go on to found the Monomen. And while sonically, the Lyres were only one of many bands doing that sort of organ-heavy sixties inspired garage rock, they were most definitely one of the groups doing it BEST, combining classic sixties Beatles-y pop, classic Yellow Pills style power pop, garage rock crunch and swaggery RnB style stomp, into something fierce and catchy, super rocking, jangly and groovy, slithery and snarly, elsewhere on this week's list you'll also find the Lyres 1984 debut On Fyre, but this one here is their 1985 follow up, Lyres Lyres, which has all the energy and catchiness of their debut, but is way more well produced, and is much heavier on the covers, most of them super obscure, so much so that we never even knew they were covers until recently. This record also features a different lineup than their debut, and finds Conolly's voice even more powerful, dramatic and soulful this time around.
Right off the bat, the band start off with the groovy soulful stomp of "Not Looking Back" with a blatant "Live For Today" organ riff that the band make their own, and transform into some serious garage soul swagger. They group quickly switch gears for the brooding ballad "She Pays The Rent", with Conolly singing his heart out, over effects laden guitar, simple stripped down drums and swirling organ, groovy and darkly soulful. Then the band tackle the oft covered "You'll Never Do It Baby" (maybe most famously by the Pretty Things), which is a crunchy, swaggery garage rock blowout that totally sounds like a Lyres original. "I Love Her Still, I Always Will" revolves around a "House Of The Rising Sun" riff, and blossoms into a cool swirling groove, all shimmery guitars and funky drumming,
And so it goes, the rest of the record a pretty even split between covers and originals, the sound fantastic throughout, the power poppiness of "No Reasons To Complain", the woozy waltzy druggy dreaminess of "The Only Thing", the churning distorted guitar driven swagger of "How Do You Know?, and the band's "You Won't Be Sad Anymore" a total power pop garage rock gem, all jangle guitar and whirring organ, and vocals that transform the lyrics into near gibberish, sounding a lot like a slowed down garage rock Dickies! The reissue also tags on four bonus tracks, which are as good as anything on the record proper.
So great, and a whole lot different than the group's debut, so much so, that lots of fans were freaked out, not understanding what happened to the raw feral garage rock energy of On Fyre, but listening to both back to back, they sound pretty perfect together, definitely different, but weirdly complimentary, it makes sense that they were reissued together, and while lots of folks will prefer one over the other, we're pretty sure if you're anything like us (and would you be reading this if you weren't?) odds are you're probably gonna want both!
If you've never heard the Lyres before, just listen to the sound sample below for "Help You Ann", we'll wait...
Odds are, if you're anything like us, that song is all it'll take to convince you how goddamn great the Lyres were. And are! Especially with the current crop of garage rock combos, it's easy to forget, that bands were doing something similar, and in some cases, WAY BETTER, more than 25 years ago. Case in point the Lyres (another case in point, the Fuzztones, who we'll no doubt gush over once there's a fancy new reissue), a garage rock outfit founded in Boston in the late seventies by Jeff "Monoman" Conolly, after the break up of the seminal punk rock outfit DMZ, and before he would go on to found the Monomen. And while sonically, the Lyres were only one of many bands doing that sort of organ-heavy sixties garage rock, they were most definitely one of the groups doing it BEST, combining classic sixties Beatles-y pop, classic Yellow Pills style power pop, garage rock crunch and swaggery RnB style stomp, into something fierce and catchy, super rocking, jangly and groovy, slithery and snarly.
On Fyre, the Lyres 1984 debut, is one of THEE sweetest slabs of garage rock EVER, there's "Help You Ann", which is obviously a stone cold classic, but opener "Don't Give It Up Now" is nearly as good, full of swirling organ, wild drumming, killer jangle guitar, Jeff Conolly's snarly soulful vocals. It's super energetic, intense, the sort of sweat soaked garage rock energy groups like Thee Oh Sees traffic in, but three decades earlier. But the sound isn't all fuzzed out jangle and pound, tracks like "I Confess" display the group's poppier side, lilting and jangly and catchy as all get out, hearing this stuff now, it's hard to believe more folks aren't totally obsessed with these guys. Then there's the "You Really Got Me" riff of "I'm Tellin' You Girl", the vocals super raspy and soulfully feral, that main hook splintering into a weird almost proggy stuttery breakdown, weird and so cool. They also do a killer version of the Kinks' "Tired Of Waiting", their version a bit more loose and ramshackle, but the song suits them, and totally sounds like it could have been a Lyres original.
This reissue tacks on a handful of tracks that were recorded at the same time but were left off the album proper (although they were included on an older reissue), and they're all pretty much just as good as the album tracks, the bluesy groove of "Never Met A Girl Like You", the propulsive punkiness of "Busy Body", and more more more (yep, three more!).
The whole record is brimming with garage rock classics, that sound as fresh today as they did nearly thirty years ago, and hopefully this reissue will turn a whole new generation of garage rockers on to one of the bands that made it possible for all the bands they love to even exist in the first place!
We hadn't even heard of this band until a handful of customers started mentioning them, so we figured we'd best check it out, and guess what? Turned out to be pretty fucking amazing. A huge slab of fuzzy shoegazey electronica-flecked dream pop. We've been listening to this nonstop since it came in. It's not really that new, but it's so good, we figured better late than never. Imagine the post rave swirl of the Orb, mix in the muted warmth of Boards Of Canada, the lalala Neu-worship of Stereolab, the catchy new wave of New Order, then wrap the whole thing in a thick shimmery distorted haze a la My Bloody Valentine and you'll be close. Now imagine that concoction as the soundtrack to the love scene in some super bizarre Anime. You know, the part where the girl is going into space because she can't live on earth because her tentacles keep killing cute little pandas, and her boyfriend is a giant panda, but they love each other so much her tears turn into jewels that the pandas can eat to make them invincible. It's that heartbreakingly good. This will totally hit the spot for electro geeks, shoegazers, pop kids, and everyone in between.
We probably reference M83 in reviews more often than No Neck Blues Band or SUNNO))) (okay, maybe not SUNN), which makes sense since they, almost more than any other group we can think of, totally typify that gorgeously washed out synth heavy warm shimmery bliss that infuses so much of the music we love. Their sound is seeped in gauzy smears of new age-y blur and hushed layered soft focus ambience, and even on their last record, the super eighties shimmer pop of Saturdays=Youth, that shimmer was always right below the surface, adding a distinctly otherworldly vibe to the songs.
Digital Shades (Vol. 1) in not a proper album per se, more of a project, undertaken by Anthony Gonzalez, aka M83, between recording sessions, exploring a more stripped down, ambient and new age sound. Originally released as a digital download (hence the title), Digital Shades is finally available as an actual release, the first in a series.
Playing more like fragments, or rough sketches, the songs on Digital Shades are simple and space-y, often only one or two notes, a simple melody, a breathy buried vocal, stretched out into long mesmerizing streaks of sun dappled drift. You can almost imagine these as backing tracks for soon to be M83 tracks. Remember when Pet Sounds mania was happening, and that record was released in all sorts of different permutations? Well, one version contained a whole bunch of gorgeous harmony vocal backing tracks, that once removed from their songs, sounded so strange and angelic and haunting, and such is the case here. Loosed from any sort of structure, these pieces are allowed to float and hover and swirl and slowly unfurl into sprawling expanses of billowy dreamy dronemusic. Sweeping and cinematic, yet somehow still minimal and intimate. Bird song surfaces here and there, as well as some brief snippets of more traditional M83 vocalizing, but those moments are brief, leaving just long streaks of soft sound, to unfold slowly, to blossom into delicate shapes, and to glisten in the light of a thousand suns. Admittedly, Gonzalez is paying homage to Brian Eno, and that's not difficult to hear at all, even in more traditional sounding M83 recordings, and lots of these pieces also sound quite a bit like some lost Twin Peaks Angelo Badalamenti mood music. Absolutely gorgeous. Maybe too minimal and blissed out for some, but for those of you (us!) with a soft spot for delicate drone-y new ageish ambience, and soft shimmery drones, a la Eno, Harold Budd, Popol Vuh, IASOS, Ariel Kalma, and the like, this is absolute heaven.
We'd been going through a sort of Shimmy Disc revival lately, digging out all of our old favorites, the first Gwar record, Bongwater, Dogbowl, Jellyfish Kiss... We had sort of forgotten how good all that stuff was. One of our favorites though was this little Brit pop gem by a band called The Mabuses. One of the most perfect slabs of clever hook filled pop ever. The track, "Kicking A Pigeon", has to be, all hyperbole aside, one of the greatest and most lyrically bizarre pop songs EVER. So much so that on hearing it, Allan went on a tear trying to track a copy down for himself (and fear not, Andee is trying to figure� out a way to reissue that record on tUMULt!).�
We were sort of just enjoying this pop flashback, when our pal Brian at WFMU emailed to inform us that not only were the Mabuses still in fact a band, they were playing shows AND had a brand new record. So we got in touch with the band and here it is, a glorious new record from one of our favoritest pop bands, The Mabuses.�
There's no point in comparing the sound of this record to the Shimmy Disc one, since most folks probably missed it entirely, but for those who remember, the sound is relatively unchanged, lush and slightly twee, jangly guitars, soft horns, strings, all very lush and classic sounding, with clever lyrics and dreamy vocal harmonies, but with some BITE too. Some songs are super washed out and dreamy, others are angular and propulsive. The sound borrows from much that came before, but manages to distill it all into something, that once you've been Mabused, can sound like no one else. Bits and pieces of bands like the�High Llamas, Steely Dan, Robyn Hitchcock, Cardinal, Jellyfish, that classic Flying Nun sound... that should give you a rough idea...
Every song here is a pop gem, but "Byayaba" might be the new "Kicking A Pigeon", a super catchy riff, sharp edged and distorted, the vocals doubled and delivered in a commanding baritone, like a pissed off more punk rock Magnetic Fields, then there's the strange garden party strings and horns jam of "Garden Devils", the fuzzy slithery grind of "Russian Roulette" featuring Kramer on bass, the harpsichord pounding Jellyfish jam of "Seasider"... it's just all so good...
To be totally honest, on first listen we couldn't help but compare Mabused! to their self titled record on Shimmy Disc, but the more we listen, the more this disc has grown on us, unfolding like a garden full of strange and wonderful flowers, and now, it seems to be permanently stuck in our players. Total pop nirvana! So so recommended.�
Gorgeously packaged too, a super elaborate die cut digipak, with a massive fold out poster / lyric sheet.
One of our all time ambient drone favorites, available on vinyl for a super limited time.
We love noise. Not the face melting super nova amp destroying ear shredding noise of Merzbow and Wolf Eyes, although we do dig that too. No, we're in love with -noises-, the sounds of sound, from the warm whisper of nature,�the whoosh of the wind, the roar of the surf, the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs, to the clattery clang of industry, the roar of cars, the grind of machinery, the whir of air conditioning and and the thrum of vacuum cleaners, to the subtle sonic byproducts of sound reproduction and music making, the hiss of old cassette tapes, the warm warble of old 78's, the pops and crackle of lps, the digital glitch and fuzz of more modern musical malfunctions. On their own sure, we could listen to a symphony of frogs or the gentle hum of an air conditioner for hours, but preferably wrapped around some haunting otherworldly music, creating a glorious hybrid of subtle murky mystery.�
We've sung the praises of Philip Jeck and his creaking antique turntablescapes, the murky looped loveliness of William Basinski, the strange warm fuzzy pixelated guitarscapes of Fennesz, the dreamy electronic droneworlds of Tim Hecker, and most recently, the gorgeous post-rock dreampop haze of Swedish bedroom soundscaper Jasper TX. It's no coincidence that this record, the latest from Dutch sonic explorer (and former doom metal guitarist) Machinefabriek is on the same label as the Jasper TX. Both share a similar approach, burying gorgeous melancholy sounds beneath all manner of sonic disturbances and musical interference. After discovering the Jasper TX record, we looked a little deeper at the Lampse label and decided that we just may have found ourselves a new favorite label. Murky and pretty and fuzzy and so so so pretty. Everything we've heard so far. Instead of looking at Lampse as just the label, one can almost picture Lampse as the actual artist, and each release an epic track from some massive hours long murky muted masterpiece Each of those tracks dense with subtly varied parts and movements, each its own entity for sure, but at the same time one piece of a larger and indescribable puzzle.�
Where Jasper TX was deeply rooted in soft indie rock jangle and sleepy bedroom pop (albeit swathed in a thick cloak of blur and grit), Machinefabriek approaches the same sound from a slightly different direction, each piece a lengthy slowburn epic, brooding gradually building ambience, grandiose washes of sound, the cinematic dynamicism of Mogwai or Earth, filtered through the looped hypnosis of Basinski, pianos and guitars rendered as abstract sounds, smeared and swirled into buried minor key melodies and and slow shifting chunks of sonic mood music. Marijn is Machinefabriek's sonic travelogue of a journey through the abyss, a soundworld cloaked in fog and draped in constant darkness.��
Our first glimpse of the other side is a�gorgeous echoey world of record crackle and pop, of thick reverb and crunching creaking ambience.�
Like a beat up old record player stuck in the run out groove of an old 78, recorded at the bottom of an enormous cavern, eventually soft warm swells surface beneath the rainlike crackle, a mournful melody of delicate piano and whirring drone, the notes of the piano blown out so they distort and waver a bit like bad radio reception or some strange atmospheric interference. Some antique piano recital recorded on a wax cylinder and then broadcast from tiny blown out speakers in a huge empty warehouse, then broadcast over shortwave radio and finally heard through a battered pair of old headphones.�
The rest of the record, while not as obviously damaged (in terms of crackle and distortion and fuzz) is rife with sounds equally obscured and obfuscated, lilting lonely pianos and haunting music box melodies drift beneath some strange sonic murk, occasionally interrupted by strange crumbled digital interference and all manner of stuttery hiccuping glitch and skitter, as if some other piece of music is trying desperately to claw its way through. Eventually,�the distortion and audio damage recedes just enough to allow a simple piano motif to drift softly and subtly across a soundscape of barely there drone and hushed melody. From far off in the distance,�warm warbles and shimmering sheets of sparkling muted sound appear, glimmering softly, like the reflection of light in some undersea cavern, lit only by the glow of indirect sunlight, waves and ripples and strange patterns shiver and shimmy subtly. Then, a piano begins unfurling a funereal crawl, mournful and melancholy, before being�slowly enveloped by a digital swarm, a swirling dizzying drone, until it's almost like a blinding white wave of fuzz and hiss, but beneath it all, a sad melody still lurks, just an echo, a shadow, a warm rich whisper behind a blinding roar. The�final passage is a near 20 minute piano meditation, soft and smooth, notes drift and shimmer, simple but stately and sweetly sorrowful, nestled in a tangled bed of digital hiss, slowly swelling chordal hum and whispery keening� drones, all beneath a distant whir like some alien orchestra tuning up, the�soft cacophony building slowly into the thick wash of static and distortion slowly swallows the melody whole, until all that remains is a ghostly afterimage, a shimmery outline, a fuzzy faded memory...
It had to happen, even if only to be fair to those of us without lightning fast reflexes and supernatural senses regarding tracking down ultra limited, barely available cd-r's. Over the last 4 years or so, Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt, in addition to releasing several amazing 'proper' records, a cd, a 7" and maybe a few other things, has unleashed an impossible amount of self released ultra limited cd-r's, all in micro editions, 100 copies, 50 copies, some even less, and while we've done our very best to grab as many as we could of every single one, we missed a bunch! And of the ones we did get, they sold out in the blink of an eye. So here's your chance, a massive sprawling double disc collection, gathering up bits and pieces, the best tracks from an armload of releases, all sequenced and woven together, into what could very well have been actual Machinefabriek albums.
It's hard to tell exactly which cd-r's are included, and since only certain songs were selected, even those of you who nabbed every cd-r in sight, odds are there is plenty here that you haven't heard. Definitely lots of stuff we didn't recognize, and all of it, as we've come to expect, simply amazing. Long drawn out stretches of warm fuzzy ambience, muted glitchery, melancholy melodies, soft sweeping epics, wreathed in dense FX and thick swirls of shimmery whir and whirl. One of the masters of our new favorite sound, that sort of foggy buzzy dreamy drone thing we can't seem to get enough of. Fans obviously absolutely need this, and folks who were daunted by the limited nature of past releases, or just have a thing against cd-r's, this is the perfect introduction, a chance to hear what you've been missing.
And there -are- plenty of surprises. While both discs do flow beautifully, there are some strange sonic moments, the dreamy wheezy Eastern tinged post rock drift of "Oi Polloi", the ultra gristly and crackle infused glacial crawl of "Chinese Unpopular Song", the almost Merzbowian intensity of "Hieperdepiep", the THX-theme-stretched-into-gorgeous-metallic-drone of "Wintervacht", all seemingly strangely out of character for Zuydervelt, but in the bigger sonic picture that is Weleer, they sound perfect, all nestled comfortably amidst rich, thick sonic swells and smears. So great!
This massive remix disc from AQ dronedrift fave Machinefabriek, is composed entirely of remixes of the out of print Stofstuk cd, the shortest Machinefabriek release but quite possibly our favorite. Originally released as a�little rectangular business card shaped 3" cd and clocking in at an impressive 5:31,�Stofstuk was recorded with only a singing bowl, a contact mic, a vinyl record and a laptop, and originally created as a private pressing, and is easily one of the most gorgeous slabs of shimmery minimalism we've ever heard. It was also crazy limited and went out of print in no time. Thankfully, since all of these remixes are based on that same track, it's included here for those of you who missed out. So before we get to the remixes, best to probably quickly describe the source. For�five glorious minutes, deeeeeeeep notes are loosed, lush and resonant, allowed to billow out like sonic ripples, every once in a while, some massive bass kicks in and washes over the listener like a huge slow motion wave, it's strangely transcendent, rich with intense emotion and sonic impact. Around these cavernous swells, various drawn out notes drift and shift, soft focus layers laid upon one another, gauzy and ephemeral, all hovering blissfully over a gorgeously muted field of barely there record crackle. Wow. Like a warm and dreamy Jeckian take on Raster-Noton, or some cosmic minimal meditation music. So totally beautiful. It almost seems a shame to remix something so nearly perfect to begin with, but thankfully, the majority of these mixes manage to subtly tweak the original, retaining much of the magic, while managing to imbue the revamped version with a bit of their own subtle style.�
If you loved the original version as much as us, this double disc is pretty much a no brainer. We complained in the first one about the 5 minute playing time, and how we just set the cd player on repeat and listened to it over and over and over, and that's almost what this is, but with each repeated play subtly and slightly altered (and a few dramatically different), but it's pretty tough to argue with 2+ hours of variations on Stofstuk. Plus check out the list of remixers: Alva Noto, Mitchell Akiyama, Xela, Svarte Greiner, Lesser, Freiband, Kim Cascone, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Luigi Archetti, Julien Neto, Pita, Adam Paccione, Henrik Rylander, Gert-jan Prins and loads more. As we mentioned, most of the versions are subtle variations, you might not even be able to tell the difference if you weren't paying close attention, but a few folks mix it up, Freiband adds a thick layer of caustic buzz and grind to the then barely audible original, Aaron Martin adds some glitch and microphone noise, Xela brings out the original's muted melodies and adds voices, Lesser adds a bit of grind and crunch, Henrik Rylander buries the original beneath layers of warm whirring fuzz, Julien Neto gives his version a soft focus, easy listening sheen and�Gert-Jan Prins transforms the tones of the original into gritty buzzing grinding low end and piercing sine wave tones, but these are the exceptions, and even though the above descriptions make it seem like those tracks must stick out like crazy, in the context of a massive double disc set, they sound just perfect, nestled as they are amongst song after song of whispery droney drift. So gorgeous.�
Packaged in a soft cottony pouches, housed in a folded cardstock jacket and a thick vinyl outer sleeve.�
With the recent reactivation of legendary NZ label Flying Nun, and the spate of recent reissues, it makes a weird sort of sense that legendary NZ indie pop outfit the Mad Scene would return with their first new record in nearly twenty years. It makes a bit less sense (at least at first), that the band has been expanded to a sort of indie rock supergroup, which now features, among others, Georgia from Yo La Tengo, and aQ pal and WFMU music director Brian Turner. But to our ears, that was a great move, cuz the the Mad Scene sound as great as ever, and really relatively unchanged from the MS records of old. If someone had told us that this was in fact a lost record simply being reissued, we would have bought it in a second. Still fronted by the inimitable Hamish Kilgour (he of the legendary Kiwi crew The Clean), Blip is warm and woozy, dreamily minor key, washed out and a little bit druggy, makes perfect sense that the group got Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 to produce and mix, his fingerprints are definitely all over it, giving the record even more of a gorgeously murky haze. Beyond the sound though, the songs too are pretty magical, subtly catchy, a little bit dream poppy, a little bit twee pop, the hooks all tangled up in blurred guitar crunch, and simple propulsive drumming, the vocals buried way down in the mix, and all the songs rife with layered guitars, strap on some headphones, and hear buzzing rumbles beneath shimmery jangles, sinewy melodies atop chiming thrum, the backdrop to each track a constantly shifting guitarscape, with various elements deftly moving to the fore and then slipping right back into the mix, without ever sacrificing the group's pure poppiness. The Mad Scene somehow sound so timeless, at once right at home with the current crop of lo-fi, reverbed garage poppers, but also so reminiscent of classic twee pop, and ramshackle psychedelia, sounding in places like some lost Scottish or British pop group as much as a classic NZ Flying Nun band. So great!
Includes a download coupon as well.
This may just be our new favorite record (though, it's not that new -- we've had 'em here for months but they sorta slipped thru the cracks, review-wise, until now). Which is not at all what we were expecting. Not even remotely. The first solo release from ex-Acid Mothers Temple axeman and Acid Mothers Temple soul collective member Magic Aum Gigi, MMMM is not just another AMT related psych rock freakout. As much as we do dig almost everything AMT release, we are definitely filled to overflowing with their endless barrage of tripped out psychedelic rock. So it was with some trepidation that we prepared to review yet -another- Acid Mothers Temple related release, the 30th or 40th in the last year maybe. But HO-LEE SHIT! This record completely blew our minds. When we cracked this open, a big triangular insert fell out, printed on it was a circle with the words "Raga Metal" inside, and on each corner were the words "drone", "trip" and "music." And damn if that ain't exactly what this is. DRONE TRIP MUSIC. Or RAGA METAL. Both only begin to describe the blissy heaviness and abstract beauty of this disc.
Gorgeous, fuzzy Tim Hecker sort of blurry guitars, doused in tons of distortion and reverb, until the riffs are just indistinct blurs, almost like listening to My Bloody Valentine through a transistor radio under your pillow, all murky and muddy but still gloriously melodic and epic. But beyond that, the riffs and thick swirls of sound constantly drop out, glitching into brief crackling silences before stuttering back into motion, like it was recorded on some old, super degrade tape, or as if the needle keeps slipping off the vinyl or some dizzying combination of both. Like an even more lo-fi, metallicized William Basinski, or a blissed out dronier Faxed Head. It ends up being as much about the music as it does about the strange distortions and mysterious drop outs. Like some EVP transmission from beyond, rendered in fuzz guitars and looped murky rhythms. A super distorted slab of metallic dreammusic drenched in hiss and buzz and recorded onto a thrift store cassette with using a toy tape recorder with dying batteries. So goddamn beautiful. And we only have a few, and only will ever have these few, as it's on the out of print wagon now.
FINNISH INSTRUMENTAL CINEMATIC EPIC PROGROCK ALERT!!!
Okay, now that we've got your attention. When Andee was in Finland a few years back, Jussi from Circle took him to a tiny club to see a friend's band play, and the band totally destroyed, they were so epic, so massive, it was like seeing Godspeed! You Black Emperor play in a broom closet. Huge glowing swells of sound, totally memorable melodies, gorgeous arrangements, all swirled into majestic sweeping soaring emotional epics. Even back then, before the band even had a record out. Not soon after, they did in fact release a record, and we were immediately in love. The band was Magyar Posse, and that first record totally captured the majestic might of the band, while at the same time adding all sorts of sonic subtleties and even more dense layers of sound. A second record followed and somehow the band managed to sound even bigger and better. We had been hearing about a brand new record for a while, and were thrilled when a big box showed up a few days ago from Finland and inside was Random Avenger, the newest release from Magyar Posse. We were almost ready to be disappointed considering how much we dug those other records, or at least preparing ourselves to just be happy for more of the same, but if anything, the band have expanded their sound even further, coming up with epic soundscapes even more intense and epic and emotional than before.
This record, even more than the others, sounds like it just has to be a real soundtrack. Pop music is not meant to be so dense and rife with emotion, painting pictures with wordless music as vibrant as if there were in fact lyrics telling a story. The sound is very prog, intensely cinematic and while it is dark and dreamy it can also be strangely playful. Some moments, we're transported to some lost Bond film, others we find ourselves in some dusty Leone Western, while still others we're lost on some moonlit street running for our lives in a mysterious Italian giallo. The first track, "Whirlpool Of Terror And Tension" is a lush and dense, multilayered world of sound, with a strange sort of Bolero staccato rhythm, with strange scrabbly guitars, abstract sixties style female vocals, minor key guitar twangs, chimes and bells, keening guitars feedback, and simple propulsive drumming. The main riff is very Morricone, but is backed up by a thick wash of soaring strings and gorgeous glockenspiel, it's almost impossible not to close your eyes and see a cool sixties Mondrian style credit sequence for some Danger Diabolik style caper movie. That vibe definitely permeates the whole record, but each track definitely has it's own feel and distinct emotion. A handful of the tracks take Magyar's progressive post-rock into definite Goblin / Zombi territory with minor key strings, relentless rhythms, pulsing drums and new wave synths locked into angular krautrock grooves, while spacey sound effects swoop and swirl, strings soar and sing, and again we're just transported to whole new worlds, but worlds with totally kick ass soundtracks!
This is definitely still post-rock, and thus will appeal to fans of Tortoise and Godspeed and Cerberus Shoal and Cyann & Ben and Explosions In The Sky and the like but Magyar Posse have something totally their own going on. A unique sonic vision, an alternate musical universe, where a pair of headphones and a walkman transform you into a super spy or a wily seductress or a hired killer, and turns your boring neighborhood into 1960's Paris, or a dusty ghost town or a secret base in the Arctic. This is music as dense and as rich and as much of an escape as any book or any film could ever be, and music that can have such an incredible effect on the listener, is way too rare. And so very precious.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Every installment in Luaka Bop's World Psychedelia series has been an across the board aQ favorite. From Os Mutantes, Shuggie Otis, the great African psych compilation, Love's A Real Thing, and now we have this great introduction to the post-Tropicalia funk of the great Tim Maia.
But the music is just one part of the story, the man's life is filled with interesting twists and turns including multiple marriages, prison sentences and an avid role in a UFO-obsessed religious cult, all of which have been the subject of a best-selling biography, tv show and hit musical in Brazil. How could we not love this?!
Combining a unique twist on Brazilian popular music along with copious American soul influences have made Maia's seventies recordings long sought after and excepting a couple of pricey imports, we have never been able to find any substantial release of his early musical output. After a decade of legal wrangling and coinciding with what would have been Maia's seventieth birthday (he died in 1998 of a heart attack while performing onstage), it's great to see this 15 track compilation realized and we're loving it more with each listen.
Mixing the Latino funk of Mexican-American groups like Malo and El Chicano, the cool urban sophistication of Steely Dan (yes, we went there, and we're not apologizing!) and the soulful vocals of Jorge Ben and Gilberto Gil. Maia's music has a fervent infectious energy that is totally engaging and sexy. He's often been compared to Barry White in the fact his music celebrates love over politics, but really Maia's music made the joyous acceptance of love and life a political statement and has long endeared him to legions of fans worldwide.
The cd is housed in a mini-hardbound cd-sized book, the lp in a deluxe full color gatefold, both with extensive notes and details of his extraordinary life. And this compilation comes of course, highly recommended!
In some Spinal Tapped version of mythology, the gods of rock and roll, of noise, of distortion, of turning amps up to 11 and melting faces, having once said "let there be rock!", recently must have looked down in dismay from the heavens (where they dwell in castles made of ROCK, which float on puffy clouds generated by fog machines) upon their creation and found something in today's music scene sorely lacking. Where was the primal motorpsycho fuzz feedback rock freakery they originally had commanded? Not nearly enough of it about (and heck, even too much would never be enough). So, they summoned their loyal servitor, The Bearded One, Kawabata Makoto. As lead guitarist/guru of trippy Japanese jammers Acid Mothers Temple, Kawabata has always been a devout worshipper, doing the bidding of the gods with many, many Acid Mothers shows and releases month in and month out. But now he was called upon to do something more - to resurrect the mighty MAINLINER, power trio to end all power trios, and teach a lesson in transcendental distorto-delic mayhem to all mankind. And, lo, faithful Kawabata has not failed in this holy task!
Thus, Mainliner is back, with Revelation Space. It's been over a dozen years since the last proper Mainliner release, 2001's Imaginative Plain cd on PSF, and even longer since Mainliner made their debut with the unbeatable classic Mellow Out. The lineup has changed - in fact it's important to note that this is specifically billed as Kawabata Makoto's Mainliner, 'cause originally he was just the young hotshot guitarist in the band, which was in fact founded by bassist/vocalist Nanjo Asahito of the legendary High Rise, as an almost doppelganger version of that trio so Nanjo could go out on tour when High Rise couldn't. But now, for whatever reason, Nanjo's no longer participating in the band, presumably having given Kawabata his blessing to carry on with the name and mission. Kawabe Taigen, from new wave Japanese psych band Bo Ningen, has been chosen to replace him; and in addition to holding down the rumbling bottom end, he manages to emulate Nanjo's droning otherworldy croon quite capably.
They've had several different drummers on various releases (including Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins); the drummer here, Koji Shimura, is from AMT, has played in High Rise and many other "Tokyo Flashback" acts, and appears on several previous Mainliner releases including Imaginative Plain. Thankfully, as it turns out, the "new" Mainliner is just as over-the-top and in-the-red as the old Mainliner ever was, maybe more!! They took this seriously - it's not just yet another freaky Kawabata album (as good as they always are), nope.
The opening title track drops the listener in at the deep end and then some, immediately unleashing insane blown out crumble and stutter, the guitar sounding like it's being run through an effects box labeled both Brainbombs AND Faxed Head, but then when it's wed to simple motorik drumming, and hazy, soft focus vox, the combination is strangely beautiful. Beautiful, too, the blurts of feedback shriek, the echo-drenched squalls, the chaotic drum splatter. Really, it's less about the songs, and more about the sound. If stripped of the insanely distorted guitars, this iteration of Mainliner would be a whole different, less beastly beast. And sure, white noise psych guitar freakouts were always a (big) part of Mainliner, but the sounds here seem so much more extreme, the guitarnoise utterly relentless, the whole record wreathed in a crackly field of malfunctioning guitar / damaged amp buzz skree, almost like something Editions Mego would put out, that caustic and corrosive.
But still, let's talk about the songs. The two-minute blast of "D.D.D" is like Aufgehoben doing a Stooges cover, playing through mile high Marshall stacks, and plugged into a daisy chain of dead battery stomp boxes, this time the maniacal vocals matching Kawabata's wild noise-shred with some seriously acrobatic, near falsetto wailing. Even the 'prettier' songs, like "Taitan", find Kawabata wrapping the tribal rhythms and swoonsome shimmer in wild tangled ribbons of strangled, distorto shred and stuttering, glitched out axe frenzy, so the prettiness is not just buried, but obliterated, or so it seems, until that guitarnoise is momentarily peeled back, eventually revealing the hushed mesmer still lurking just beneath the surface. "The Dispossessed" (found on the cd only) could be some classic proto-metal groover, with its busy drumming and woozy, bluesy groove, but there, the guitars seem to explode from within, a grinding blast of Hendrixian shreddery fused to Butthole Surfers style psychedelic freakery, again balanced by some truly haunting, ethereal vox.
And then there's the final track "New Sun", a 20+ minute epic, that begins with a gnarled churn of super distorted riffage, wrapped around an almost 'funky drummer' beat, those drifting spectral vocals hovering over the top, the band locked into a weird warped groove, a lurching metallic blues stomp, that about 4 minutes in slows down to a dirgey crawl, around the same time the guitars explode into some seriously heart of the sun super nova style fretboard freakery! And when they return to the main riff, the guitar is somehow even more distorted and blown out, and they cycle through the song proper one more time, before finishing off with 8 minutes of utter in-the-red cosmic guitar god freakout, with Kawabata flying high, his axe spitting sparks, the drums and bass buried beneath an avalanche of some of the freakiest, fantastically fucked up, psychedelic leads ever, building to a finale that cranks the drums to a frantic gallop, the bass thrumming fiercely, all within a swirling sonic cloud of Kawabata's amp destroying, soul searing psych-drone shred. Whew!!
The gods must be pleased. Any Mainliner fan will be too. But this is NOT just for Kawabata/AMT/Mainliner fanboys, excited though those folks should be. Nope, 'cause there's at least one aQ staffer who realized after hearing this that they NEEDED, but didn't have, all the previous Mainliner albums. You might too, and this would certainly make a good place to begin your lifetime of worship.
Not sure what the future holds for Kawabata Makoto's Mainliner, 'cause Kawabe Taigen's Bo Ningen band is based in London, where they seem to be making a name for themselves, collaborating with the Savages and such (we'll try to track down some imports by the way). But even if this is all we get out of this trio for another 12 years, it will suffice - it just might take that long for our ears to recover!!
As some of you mighty recall, the vinyl version of this was originally meant to be a Record Store Day release this year - they didn't get it pressed in time, so it was bumped back, but it's still hella limited - 500 copies for the world, either white or swamp green vinyl, released on what we're gonna call Mainliner Day. We've got about a dozen left and that's gonna be it. The good news is, though, that the compact disc version, which isn't quite so limited, contains a 9 and a half minute bonus track, the aforementioned "The Dispossessed". Other differences: the vinyl sleeve is black with gold print, while the cd comes in a white miniature lp-style sleeve likewise with gold print. And graphically, both kind of look a lot like Mellow Out, doubtless quite intentionally.
