The Andromeda Strain was Michael Crichton's first book published under his own name, and told the story of a military probe returning to Earth bearing a lethal, microscopic virus, that proceeds to wiped out an entire New Mexico town, as scientists frantically try to devise a way to destroy the ever mutating virus, eventually considering detonating a nuclear bomb, sacrificing their lives to destroy this insidious interloper. The book was a huge success, as was the movie that followed, retaining the book's documentary-like vibe, hiring unknown actors as well as using graphic footage of virus victims dying. Long a cult favorite, the movie was most notable to music geeks for two reasons, its trippy electronic musique concrete score, and that score's original lp release, which found the record housed in a cool octagonal sleeve, mirroring a recurring shape in the film.
The music, composed by Gil Melle, is incredible, minimal and abstract, but haunting and ominous, even removed from the visuals, it's a harrowing listen, much of it performed on an instrument called the Percussotron III, the FIRST instrument ever designed and built specifically for a film score, some sort of primitive synthesizer we'd assume, percussive as well judging by the name, but details and history aside, this is just a simply fantastic piece of music. Strange electronic chirps, ominous low end thrums, helicopter like whirs, deep swirling drones, spidery squiggly high end melodies, blooping and bleeping glitch skitter, some mechanical percussion, plucked strings, crunchy buzzing swells, haunting bell like tones, militaristic snares, clipped and truncated scrapes and bleats, moaning strings, shimmering synth buzz, tinkling piano, clouds of music box like chirps and whistles, blurred and smeared into a whirling cloud of intertwined sine wave tones, grinding rumbles over swirling streaks of hiss, chromatic melodies unfolding into atonal shards of jagged crumbling sound, cool stuttery machine like rhythms over tangles of bass warble and clouds of glitch, and huge psychedelic swirls of interlocking prismatic tones, all the various elements woven into a truly otherworldly soundtrack. One that sounds like some legendary lost musique concrete artifact, as much as it does a chunk of kitschy sci-fi weirdness, when in fact it's most definitely both.
Unfortunately this reissue doesn't replicate the awesome octagonal packaging, but it makes up for it with a massive booklet, featuring tons of photos, liner notes about the movie, the soundtrack, the composer, each individual song, as well as all of the original lp liner notes. So awesome. We'd been waiting for a proper reissue of this FOREVER. So totally recommended.
Lubomyr Melnyk is one of our favorite modern composers. The inventor and master of the Continuous Music technique, which has made him the Guinness-recognized fastest piano player in the world. But was we mentioned in other reviews, this speed and mastery is deftly employed, to create lush clouds of billowing chordal shimmer, the sort of dreamlike divine sound that should have Melnyk spoken about in the same sort or reverential tones reserved for legends like Reich and Riley and Palestine. Melnyk's method involves keeping the pedals on the piano depressed, allowing notes to ring out, bleed into each other, creating lush expanses of constantly shifting overtones, sounds layered and bleeding into one another, creating huge swaths of organic sound, a sound that seems to be alive, full of energy and emotion, not just Melnyk's technique, but his compositions as well, a true master who has created some of the most amazing modern piano music we've ever heard. The sad thing is that his records are quite difficult to find, and the fact that he has composed so many pieces, and his interest is in allowing people to hear as much of his music as possible, most of those records exist only as cd-r's. But gradually, it seems, interest in Melnyk has been growing, we've certainly been doing everything we can, constantly proselytizing, telling everyone we know about Melnyk and his music, reviewing them on our list, and getting as much of his music as we can into the ears of folks we think need to hear it, which we think is many of you.
So we're super excited whenever one of his records gets a proper worldwide release, and thus, we were thrilled when we first heard about Corollaries. Which besides being one of the few non-cd-r Melnyk releases, is also of note as it's the first collaboration we've heard from him. Even on past records where multiple pianos were used, Melnyk played all the parts. But here, Melnyk is joined by Peter Broderick and Martin Heyne, who give Melnyk's music an interesting, sort of washed out gauzy production, which really suits the sound, but beyond that, also contribute synthesizer, violin and vocals! We weren't at all sure what to expect, but were actually quite pleasantly surprised.
The opener here "Pockets Of Light" finds us in familiar territory, with Melnyk laying down a lush landscape of swirling notes, and lush chordal shimmer, and as we (and many of you) know by now, that's all we really need, Melnyk and his Continuous Music method are more than enough to fill the speakers, and your headphones and your ears with a wild field of sound, one that is so easy to get lost in, but here, the addition of violin, adds a fantastic element, a bit of a drone, and a melodic counterpoint, also complimented by the dreamlike production, we were pretty skeptical about the vocals, but when they come in, the sound is transformed into a gorgeous, shimmery sort of slowcore, Broderick's vocals high and clear, warm and emotional, drifting atop, Melnyk's lush landscape of chordal swirl, the more we listen, the more we realize we actually might have liked more of the songs to have vocals. Imagine Low with clouds of piano shimmer and you might be close. Divine and dreamlike and utterly mesmerizingly lovely.
"The Six Day Moment" is Melnyk solo, and is a delight of course, a dense, intricate classical music, that almost sounds like multiple players, but it's never too busy, or too chaotic, it's instead lush and lovely, melodic and moving, lyrical and haunting, we could listen to Melnyk play forever, and listening to this, we begin to wonder why someone hasn't asked him to score their film, the sound so evocative and cinematic, epic and intense. "A Warmer Place" finds Broderick returning again, this time playing violin, Melnyk's playing spare and minimal, demonstrating, that it's not just about speed or notes, lots of space, ambient and ethereal, Broderick's minimal melodies perfectly underpinning Melnyk's delicate crystalline arrangements, wintery and wonderfully melancholy.
"Nightrail From The Sun" might be the biggest surprise here, with its casual conversation laced false start, to the hypnotic piano/guitar interplay, some serious Reich/Riley style melodic mesmer going on here, Broderick adding some heft and background color via synth, but for the most part, it's the interplay between Melnyk's piano and Martyn Heyne's guitar that makes this so stunning, and like the other tracks, we find ourselves wishing for a whole record of this. And when Broderick amps up the synth, the sound becomes super dramatic, almost Godspeed-like in its brooding intensity. In many ways, it's like an even more intricate avant version of the recent collaboration between Melnyk and James Blackshaw. And finally, the record finishes off with another Melnyk / Broderick duet, this one with a distinctly mournful almost country feel, the violin unfurling an aching minor key melody, while Melnyk underpins Broderick's violin, with sweetly understated piano, the sound building to something extremely emotional and moving, again, evoking all sorts of images and emotions, and again making us wonder why Melnyk and Broderick aren't scoring films, the closer so cinematic, and expressively cinematic, lush and so so lovely.
Like everything we've heard from Melnyk, and absolute treasure, and a fantastic collaboration, that we hope will inspire many more, and will finally get the rest of the world to discover what we already know, that Melnyk is a genius. This record is simply more proof of that.
This is the fourth record we've reviewed from Lubomyr Melnyk, pianist and inventor of the Continuous Music technique. A customer suggest we check him out describing him as sounding like three Terry Riley records being played at once. And it does. And it's amazing. Anyone who owns any of the other three will most likely want this one too. It's definitely similar as are all the pieces utilizing Melnyk's technique, but it has its own unique sound and arrangement that makes it just as special as any of the other recordings we've had. And as with many things we just can't get enough.
For those of you who missed the titles we already listed or are new to the AQ list, here's a little info about Melnyk and his amazing technique:
In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. At once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away.
Just re-reading that gets us excited all over again. This music is indeed amazing and incredibly unique. A dizzying swirl of solo piano. So dense and deep it doesn't sound like it could possibly be coming from just two pianos. It's almost like someone took a million pianos, removed every note from each piano, placed them in some sort of giant container, shook it up, and then dumped all the notes over our heads. But somehow, the notes fall in perfectly predetermined patterns creating impossibly complex melodies and totally breathtakingly lovely textures and arrangements.
"Remnants Of A Man" was recorded in Stockholm in 1985 and is probably the least abstract and most directly dramatic piece we've heard. Beneath the flurries of high notes are huge resounding minor key chords. So dark and ominous. Within the piece is included a direct melodic reference to Beethoven, a short bit from his 9th symphony, Melnyk's tribute to Beethoven and his unhappy life. In fact the piece is themed around the futility of love, and you can totally hear it in the notes. Sad and sorrowful, intense and so emotional.
"The Fountain" is more of what we might consider traditional Melnyk, the cascade of notes composed to sound like the water of a fountain. And unlike most of his pieces, the first half of "The Fountain" is performed without the sustain pedal depressed, which means the notes are dry and there are no drawn out overtones, it's remarkable to hear the complexity of performance and composition. Almost like looking up into a sky full or raindrops or snowflakes.
The final track "Niche" is an excerpt from a longer piece and is an example of solo piano in the Continuous Mode, a glistening, sparkling, shimmering world of lighter than air melodies, gentle drifts of notes, cobwebby tangles of delicate melody, completely effervescent and dreamlike. Awesome.
Lots of super technical liner notes as always, with a brief history of Melnyk and the Continuous Music technique. Be sure to check out Wave-Lox, The Voice Of Trees and the Legend And Song Of Galadriel too!
It's been a while since we've heard from pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, master and creator of the Continuous Music technique, a playing style that involves incredible dexterity, the player creating swirling flurries of notes, in fact, Melnyk holds the record for most notes played per second! But as we've mentioned in past reviews, Continuous Music is no mere gimmick, Melnyk uses his technique to create dense shifting soundscapes, almost like a 20th Century Classical Oval, notes and melodies constantly in flux, dizzying and dreamy, a massive shape shifting organic whole, that seems to constantly change shape and tone and timbre. But the music of Melnyk is not difficult listening, just the opposite. His music is serene and hypnotic, mesmerizing and gorgeous. You can read way more about Melnyk and his technique in some of the other reviews, but needless to say, every new release is a thrill. And yes, it's another cd-r, but according to Melnyk and the label, there are so many pieces, that they'd rather make them all accessible, instead of making 1000 copies of just one. Who are we to argue? Besides, there's the fact that aQuarius is one of the only places in the world you can get Melnyk records.
Anyway, The Lund-St. Petri Symphony is another example of Melnyk's incredible skill and his deft arranging. This piece, originally composed and performed on organ, is recorded here on solo and double piano and is another shimmery expanse of Continuous music, with Melnyk sustaining a speed of 11-14 notes in each hand for the entire duration of the piece! What's even crazier, is it was meant to be played on THREE pianos (or organs), but was never recorded due to the fact that according to Melnyk, that much sound would not translate to modern recording techniques. There were plans to record the third part and release it as a separate lp so folks with two turntables could experience it in all its 3 piano glory, but it hardly matters, even on one piano, the sound is stirring. Minor key and melancholy, the notes glisten and glimmer, the melodies dense and ever shifting, the whole thing so completely entrancing. If you can imagine Pop Ambient music being created with just pianos, it would probably sound something like this.
As always, WAY recommended, this one only available at AQ as far as we know, and limited (maybe only 50 copies?). You like Oval, Eno, new age, Pop Ambient, or just wondered what it would sound like to hear 10 or 12 'normal' piano players all playing the same piece simultaneously, well, a little like this. Divine!
We've long been fans of Ukrainian pianist and composer Lubomyr Melnyk. Have a quick look at the aQ site for much gushing, and a way more detailed of Melnyk and his 'continuous music' method of piano playing, which he invented, and involves the sustain pedal continuously depressed, turning Melnyk's rapid clusters of notes into gorgeous almost psychedelic sounding flurries, lush swirling clouds of sounds, which are once again in full effect here, which by the title, you can surmise does consist of three solo pieces, just Melnyk and a piano. Proper Melnyk releases are a rarity, since he decided long ago, that with so many releases, he would press up cd-r's, as a way to affordably have all of them available. But recently, Melnyk has been getting much more attention, having released a fantastic collaboration with James Blackshaw, and having several proper releases on actual labels.
Three Solo Pieces is as gorgeous as you might expect, the opener "Marginal Invitation" is brooding and melancholic, the playing measured and minimal, at least until a few minutes in, when the sound seems to transform, and suddenly, the listener is surrounded by warm, lustrous notes, and constantly shifting textures and melodies, the most dramatic part being where Melnyk abruptly lets up on the sustain pedal, and the notes suddenly snap back into a staccato framework, the notes still rapid fire, a different sort of swirling arrangement, dizzying and dramatic, Melnyk, slipping easily back and forth between the two. "Corrosions On The Surface Of Life" is atypically atonal, sounding much more '20th century' than most of his pieces, but no less compelling, a continuous cascade of notes and melodies, a blurred swirl of sound, tense and intense, the angular feel adding a sinister vibe to the proceedings, but before you know it, the sound is transformed, gradually shedding the more atonal elements, until it's downright lovely, before those dissonant notes gradually creep in again. The 18 minute closer begins like some famous classical piece you just can't put your finger on, the magic of Melnyk's mastery, conjuring up a piece at once utterly unique, but at the same time, one that sounds so familiar, the arrangement ingenious, as the low notes seem to be gradually shed over the course of the song, upper register melodies gradually coming to the fore, until finally, it almost sounds like music box melodies, dizzyingly repetitive, and mesmerizingly trancelike and tranquil. Fantastic!!
Now on vinyl! A new record from spazz-prog-punk rockers Melt-Banana and while the overall sound is not all that different, they continue to get better and better, and dare we say more listenable with each record. Less ear splitting high end skree this time around, and a much warmer production, as well as some really catchy songs and great riffs make this possibly the best MB record yet. Plus there's a bunch of strange midtempo 'breakdowns' as well as some bizarre production and electronic fuckery that add even more dimension to MB's already unique sonic palette. But fear not, still present are the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard guitars and the hyperspeed chipmunk vocals and the spazzy rhythms, it all just sounds much more refined. Allan thinks the new Melt-Banana sounds like a bizarre hybrid of three other records on this weeks list: the Simply Saucer, the Agoraphobic Nosebleed and the Cats And Kittens cds. Which is actually not all that far off the mark!
We were looking back at our review of the last Melt-Banana record we reviewed, Initial T., which we listed way back in 2009, and yeah, it was just an ep, but even then we were bowled over by how these masters of grinding math pop / noise rock, continued to reinvent themselves and surprise us with every record. The surprise that time was a dramatic shift, into a sound more electronic, one that at the time we described as sounding like a sped up Deerhoof, or like Fuck Buttons. And goddamn if they haven't taken that sound and pushed it even further, transforming their sound, which was already insanely unique, and ridiculously difficult to describe, and literally unlike ANY other bands out there, into something even MORE. Just the first track alone should convince you, it's a total mind blower, a dizzying collision of a million different genres, and so many seemingly incompatible sounds, brilliantly woven into some total next level electro-metal-grind-pop weirdness, that manages to be both the weirdest thing we've heard from M-B, which is saying a LOT, and possibly also the catchiest! That track bears some in depth description, since it pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record. Opening with some glistening kosmische shimmer, some field recorded waves lapping on the beach, some swirling heavily effected guitars, those guitars gradually coalescing into some seriously crunchy riffage, laced with thick sinewy bass-lines, kick ass drumming, weird sound effects and wild FX, before splintering into insane mathiness, the song swinging wildly from indie rock groove, to mathy psychedelic tangle and back again, those super distinctive ultra high chirped vox, before the song breaks down, the guitars locked into digitized loops, peppered with blasts of metallic guitars, more swirling sci-fi FX, some wild double kick drumming, that drumming getting more frantic and chaotic, slipping into full on metal briefly, before launching into a final burst of mathy psychedelic noise pop. It's insanely complex, and impossibly dense, and how the fuck do they cram all that into just 4 minutes? No idea, but we LOVE it. And we won't say it gets weirder, or better, cuz that's not really possible, but it DOES stay that weird, and that good, which is a feat in itself, frenetic, hyper, chaotic, mathy, metallic, poppy, crazy catchy, confusionally fractured, some songs slipping into impossibly soaring epic electronic flecked majesty, others collapsing into dizzying grind-pop freakouts, still others getting all avant experimental WTF? Boredoms style noisiness, and even still others exploding in gouts of wild electro-punk jangle-metal weirdness. A few songs find dreamy guitar shred devolving into long stretches of field recordings, or blossoming into super melodic pop experimental video game krautpop, what a fucking amazing and totally weird record! After all these years, Melt-Banana continue to confound, confuse, inspire, freak out, inspire and blow us the fuck away. Every M-B record is so good, it's hard to proclaim this as their best yet, but you be the judge, cuz, really, we're beginning to think it most definitely is. So totally and absolutely recommended!
Boy, did we get lucky. We heard about this and at first wrongly assumed it was Mike Patton with the Melvins. And as much as we love Mike Patton, we were pretty tickled to discover that in was in fact, Patton Oswalt, one of our favorite comedians, sharing this split with the Melvins.
The thing is, this was never technically available to stores or distros. But we did manage to track a handful down for our AQ faithful. Unfortunately, because of the scarcity and the fact that technically they weren't available wholesale, the price ended up being a bit steep. But hey, $16 from us is is a whole heckuva lot better than $75 on eBay!
So act fast, these will disappear in a blink of an eye.
As with all Chunklet stuff, gorgeously packaged with killer (and hilarious) Jay Ryan cover art, screen printed onto thick cardstock sleeves.
And like with all ultra limited stuff, only one per customer please...
tUMULt seems to have been unfairly pegged as a purely black metal label lately. Easy mistake to make really. For sure BM is a big part of the tUMULt universe. Weakling, Leviathan, Crebain, Draugar, Diamatregon... But at the risk of committing heresy in the eyes of the black hordes, there's more to musical life than black metal alone. And by that we mean specifically, POP MUSIC. Before there was black metal, heck before there was even metal for us, our musical world was defined by pop music. And that pop side never went away, a list of all time favorite bands would still be packed with groups like Sloan, Redd Kross, the Posies, the Swirlies and a little group from Canada called Eric's Trip.
Anyway, the black metal hordes are just gonna have to move to the back of the bus and let the pop kids sit up front, as we're in for a little flurry of genius pure pop, branded with the tUMULt logo, the debut full length (actually THREE full lengths crammed onto one cd!) from SF's very own Ovens, coming soon, and this, record number two from The Memories Attack, which just so happens to feature Chris Thompson of the mighty Eric's Trip as well as long time aQ customer and indie rock luminary in his own right Ron Bates.
The Memories Attack are a duo, augmented by an occasional drummer, who sound like they were transported to 2008 directly from the early nineties, bringing with them all the jangle pop, lo-fi bedroom folk, crunchy distorted guitar, gorgeous vocal harmonies, busted effects pedals, old synths, incredible hooks, and catchy songs they could stuff into an old beat up suitcase. Bates plays in a band called Orange Glass, Thompson performs solo as Moon Socket, but it would be silly to not look back to Eric's Trip, one of THE Halifax pop bands who ruled the nineties indie rock world along with Sloan, Jale, Hardship Post, Superfriends, Thrush Hermit, and a bunch more, as the sound of Eric's Trip as well as other bands of the era (especially Sebadoh) totally inform the music of The Memories Attack.
And the thing is, they just don't make bands like TMA that much anymore, a couple guys, with a four track, a guitar, a beat up old drum set, and a head full of hooks. With Pro-Tools and laptops, home recording is a totally different process, and now pretty much everybody has some sort of drone record, or an abstract black ambient band, or a solo project of buzzing synthscapes, and don't get us wrong we love that stuff, but there's something to be said for songs, for POP songs, the kind that get stuck in your head, find their ways onto mix tapes, are forever stuck in the car stereo, the soundtrack to every roadtrip, whether it's across country or just to the 7-11. Take "Peaks & Valleys". It is THE jam of the summer, if it was in fact summer, and if it was actually 1995. Fuck it. This is the 2008 winter jam of the year, so there. All fuzzed out guitars, chiming melodies, blown out drums, gorgeous drawled vocals, and a chorus that KILLS. We literally have listend to this song about 100 times since we first got our hands on these recordings.
Or take "The Raft", beginning with a laid back lope, all spidery minor key guitars, falsetto vocals, distant shimmery drones, underwater bass, until the chorus kicks in, a massive churning chunk of heavy as fuck crunch, a killer riff, all wreathed in crumbling distortion and wrapped around an angular almost looped sounding countermelody, and tempered with gorgeous high high vocals, the sort of jam that you never ever ever want to end. "Collapso" is a minute long blast of scrabbly high end guitars, dueling vocals, splattery drums, all treble, a swirling glorious high end blowout. "Beautiful Sound" begins with a chugging metallic groove, pounding drums, very hypnotic and heavy, before slipping into a soft glimmering droney drift, vocals hovering above cymbal shimmer, and little flurries of clean guitar, before the heaviness kicks back in again. Record closer, "Exploding House II" is all folky and fluttery, a gorgeous steel string guitar workout, twangy pick and strum supporting dreamy world weary vocals, long streaks of fuzzy chordal whir drifting in like thick clouds in a bright blue sky, so so lovely.
Every track here is some glorious strain of perfect pop, whether it's a chunk of old school college rock jangle, a burst of synth infused almost metal crunch, wild wooly lo-fi garage-y stomp, or hushed intimate bedroom pop, it's all so catchy and rocking and irresistible. And it's all held together by some sort of mysterious pop music magic that few have mastered and even fewer understand, but which never fails to totally and utterly entrance us every time.
Needless to say WAY recommended. Most definitely another contender for pop record of the year!
Some bands are considered 'punk' or 'underground' or even 'alternative' based more on lineage, their record label, or membership than actual sound. And weirdly, we find ourselves often digging more mainstream sounds made by those underground bands. Not sure if it's a lifelong aversion to 'the man' and his 'corporate rock', or maybe more likely, it's that popular music is popular for a reason, but when an artist makes 'popular' music and comes at it from a whole different direction, with a whole set of non-popular sonic references and resources, that just makes for something more original and compelling and interesting. A perfect example is the recent Orange record from Diamond Youth. A record we originally bought cuz it was on the same label as another band we love, one that's super punk and noisy and screamo, but the fact that Diamond Youth sounded like something you could hear on the radio, maybe SHOULD hear on the radio, only made it that much cooler.
Which brings us to Men Of Fortune, who we've raved about on the list before, and who are on a cool weird underground label, and who play shows with all sorts of heavy rock and punk bands, but whose sound is maybe closer to outfits like Kyuss or Queens Of The Stone Age. Or at least it was last time we heard em. But this time around, the label references Santana and King Crimson as well. Which at first blush we thought was sorta ridiculous, but the more we listen to Time Lovingly Bled, the more the weirdness, and proginess, and tripped out jamminess shine through. The split we first heard these guys on, they came across more as a sort of stonery noise rock outfit, but here, the band have stretched WAY out, and transformed their sound into a kind of sprawling stoner prog psychedelic space rock. Churning riffs and pounding drums give way to epic droned out psych-dirge drifts, the sound slipping sometimes into near metallic crush, but just as often, getting super spacey and abstract, meandering post rock psychedelia, the kind of thing that wouldn't be out of place on Agitated or Rocket or Cardinal Fuzz. And it's sorta funny, all that talk above about weird underground bands playing popular music, well, with every spin of this record, the actual sound becomes more and more tripped out, proggy, tangled and fucked up, which maybe speaks to the power of MoF's vision, cuz really, some of the moments here are catchy as hell, lots of moments in fact, but those moments are surrounded on all sides by strange swirls of buzzing synths, or tranced out hypno-rock blowouts, or brooding post-rock creeps, the arrangements dense and intricate, the prog vibe looms large, as does the sort of Isis / Neurosis style post metal, although these guys are less about bombast as they are about mood and vibe, texture and tone, some of the jams here, we could get lost in for hours, the band laying down dense tribal rhythms beneath skies full of swirling spidery melodies, and blurred chordal shimmers, the bass thick and sinewy, but the songs always seem to coalesce into proper songs, and in places, those songs verge on classic DOOM, just check out "The Passing Shame", which sounds like modern day Cave-In playing doom metal, and as unlikely as that may sound, the actual SOUND of it is pretty fucking excellent.
We definitely dug the previously reviewed split, but this full length has won us over big time. If you dig progged out heaviness, droney space rock, and all strains of psychedelia, and aren't averse to a little poppiness and proper songcraft, Time Lovingly Bled should push all your musical buttons. Pressed on 180 gram, 100 percent virgin vinyl. Includes a download of the whole record, as well as tracks from MoF side project Leaves Aflame!!
Brand new full length from this Brooklyn postpunk / noiserock quartet, who take the whole gloomy, gothicky dour eighties pop sound that is so popular with the kids these days, and twist it all up, supercharging it, dousing it in noise and transforming an overfamiliar sound into something super exciting and fresh, blown out and psychedelic, wild and chaotic, a collection of crashing, bombastic pop songs, tripped out droney instrumentals, and furious super saturated noiserock blowouts, that while in fact do occasionally hint at the aforementioned sound, seem to shed bits of that sound as the record progresses, and even moreso with every play, ultimately revealing the twisted, noisy, and wholly original sound at The Men's gloriously distorted core.
The opener starts with a misleadingly tranquil stretch of softly swirling psychedelic guitars, warbly ambience, and effects laced shimmer, it's over three minutes before the song proper kicks in, but when it does, holy shit, a blinding, head spinning kaleidoscopic blast of thick shoegazey guitars, super distorted drum pound, all tangled melodies and swirling harmonies, the main riff sounding strangely like Big Country, albeit more warped and woozy and noisy, and then the vocals swoop in and it's pure pop, all supercharged dreamy hazy multitracked vocals, everything wreathed in a crumbling almost Elephant Six style production, it's like a dirgey noiserock Neutral Milk Hotel record, melting in the sun, and blasted through some hood mounted loudspeakers as you do doughnuts in the middle of a busy intersection on a hundred degree summer afternoon, fantastically fuzzy and blissed out, but still crunchy and heavy and dreamily noisy.
The rest of the record follows suit, mixing in healthy heapings of pop soaked punkish pound, but even then the sounds are warm and in-the-red, and the sounds seem to ooze and warble, the riffs slippery and the songs laced with loads of subtle (and not so subtle) subtle harmonies. Much of the record is actually instrumental, which in the hands of most bands would bore big time, but these guys kitchen sink every song, often sounding like multiple Polvo's playing at once, thick and dense and gnarled and gloriously twisted, the songs constantly switching gears, whether it's feedback doused almost-sludge, wrapped in wild squiggly guitar leads, or dirgey near Brainbombs sounding cacophony, or even strummy psych pop blowouts that seem to explode into swirling squalls of free-psych shreddery, the sounds all merge into one glorious noise pop blur.
"Bataille" is the hit here, and it's obvious why, all of the above mentioned sonics, harnessed to a low slung chunk of Sonic Youth worthy post punk, all angular guitars, dense layered melodies, howled throat shredding vox, and dense propulsive drumming, the song rife with crazy hooks, droney-cyclical riffage but also some seriously killer gloomy new wave-isms. And while we love that track, our favorite (besides the opener), might just be "Shittin' With The Shah", a smoldering, sun baked, wide eyed bit of hazy psychedelia, all simple skeletal drumming, and chiming echo drenched guitars, woozy and dreamily druggy, a soft slow build to a final one minute blast of gloriously blown out in-the-red, sweetly melodic, but speaker shreddingly noisy shoegazekrautpopnoiserock swirl.
Needless to say, quite a surprise, even from a label we dearly love and who rarely disappoints. Most definitely a new noise pop / psych rock / post punk favorite, that we can't seem to stop listening to!
Some of us were lucky enough to go to the Stella Natura festival recently, and one of the bands we were most excited to see was Hell. Longtime readers of the aQ list no doubt remember reading reviews of the first two Hell lps, both oozing blackened ultra-doom, and live, they were awesome, especially the drummer's backwards-pig vocals, but then a strange thing happened, a Hell related band ended up stealing the show. This band in fact, Merkstave, who take the already depressive doom of Hell, even further into the ether, self described ' cosmic funerary drone', Merkstave deliver three epic cosmic crawls on this, their debut lp, which finds the band reworking some tracks from earlier and impossible to find demos. And their sound on record, like live, is stunning, achingly mournful, the first few minutes of the two part nearly 30 minute epic "Lament For Lost Gods", is a woozy sprawl of slowcore creep, lots of space, the notes suspended in air, the drums minimal, the whole sound delicate and tenebrous, even when the heaviness kicks in, somehow the sound remains spare and spaced out, the guitars distorted and crumbly, brittle and blackened, the vocals, a monstrous bellow, the notes ringing out, the sound at times almost choral, especially when the clean vocals join the grim vokills, reminding us a bit of Bell Witch, the same sort of heaviness meets slowcore beauty. Although Merkstave's sound is by far more grim and abstract, depressive and harrowingly haunting. Then suddenly, about 10 minutes in, the song explodes into full on black metal blast and buzz, the vocals transformed into a super dramatic shriek, the sound blurred and blackened, a smeary expanse of furious churning heaviness, before slowing down again and slipping into some tarpit ultra doooooom sludge, the vokills shrieked, the drums flitting from caveman plod, to weird motorik pound. The second movement/part opens up with more clean guitars, draped over simple rhythmic drum pound, the vibe her more trad doom, super melodic, epic and majestic, before transforming again into a churning, chugging classic metal workout, replete with pinch harmonics, and some seriously murky riffage. The final track is a dense sprawl of crumbling doom / sludge that oozes ominously, and is laced with some soaring melodic guitars, the sound almost psychedelic, with the occasional clean part, super melodic interludes interspersed between the downtuned doomic bombast, and then finally, a haunting piano outro. The cool thing about Merkstave is the sound versus the sound, as in they've crafted this majestic, uber epic ultra doom, but the recording is really raw and low fidelity, the guitars brittle, it's an idiosyncratic heaviness that perfectly suits the bands strange sonic brew.
As with all Pesanta Urfolk releases, the packaging is stellar, heavy vinyl, full color heavy sleeves, the whole record mastered, produced and recorded completely analog. And who knows, probably pretty limited too...
Not sure who Todd Merrell or Patrick Jordan are, but we sure as heck are familiar with the third part of this drone trio, the Baker in question is none other than Mr. Aidan Baker, he of Nadja, Arc, and a million or so releases under his own name.
This live set finds Baker handling guitar duties, but you'd never know it from the sound, augmented by short wave radios, electronics, and various bits of processing, the sound here is deep and dark, a crumbling and epic expanse of rumbling shimmering low end. Roiling clouds of murky melodic fragments, distant swells, throbbing low end pulses, barely audible bits of static and washed out glitch. Very cinematic, if you were watching a film that was almost entirely dark, with just barely visible shifts in the various shades of black and grey. Lovely though, minimal and haunting. Think Coleclough, Chalk, Lustmord, that sort of ambient darkness.
But the second track is an entirely different beast. Simple guitar strums, minimal melodies, the strings struck softly, the metallic buzz and clang ringing out into the ether, some sort of underwater slow motion Fahey, smeared and soft and dark and dreamy. The final half of the track, the guitar disappears completely, leaving streaks of feedback that sound like the cries of gulls, grinding slow motion slabs of shifting low end, whirling windlike whirs, almost like a manufactured nature recording.
The guitar returns for the third track, drifting gently, while the background noise builds into a slow motion wash of sound, the track culminating in a cloud of chimes and reverbed percussion, seasick swirls and struck steel strings, before slipping languidly into the final track, a lugubrious underwater crawl, all of the sounds muddy and indistinct, a sonar like ping buried way down in the mix, underneath it all a thick blanket of constant whirring drones, quite lovely.
Packaged in one of those cool, 6 panel, gatefold aRCHIVE sleeves, glossy paper, super striking image of forest and clouds, LIMITED TO 600 COPIES!!
The long awaited second installment in the who-knows-how-many-parts Patikel series, which features a collaboration between AQ fave Swedish dark ambient, militant folk, black metal noise technician Nordvargr (Toroidh, MZ412, Folkstorm, Goatvargr, HH9, etc...) and Japanese noise legend Masami Akita aka Merzbow.
Strange bedfellows maybe, but the results here, as on the first installment, are pretty mind-blowing. Akita generated the sounds, Nordvargr took those sounds and twisted them into completely new forms, the result some strange noise/drone/rhythm hybrid that is WAY more listenable than it has any right to be.
The opener sets the tone, a twenty minute crumbling distorted noisescape, like bits of old Merzbow records all chopped up and assembled again Frankenstein's monster fashion, that veers from full on near-metallic crunch, to strange skittery almost IDM, but even at it's calmest, the track is still rife with strange sounds and damaged FX, bursts of harsh noise surfacing here and there amidst an alien landscape of stutters and shuffles, of creaks and squeaks, almost like a black metal Mouse On Mars if one could even imagine such a thing.
The second track sounds heavier on the Nordvargr than the Merzbow, a rumbling shimmering low end, that creeps and drifts before splintering briefly into another rhythmic glitchscape, just as quickly transforming into a buzzing snarling fuzzed out drone, thick and corrosive, subtly rhythmic, but intense and crackling with energy. Deep cavernous tones swell in the background, while above the blurry buzz, strange crunchy electronic pulses mark out a simple static rhythm.
The third track is Part 2 to the opener's Part 1, and takes the openers skitter to a much meaner, much harsher place, a swirling high end cloud of hissing static and keening sine waves, over a relentlessly pulsing backdrop, that changes pitch, and tempo, stuttering and hiccuping, creating a gorgeously confusional rhythmscape, eventually breaking into a near-groove, a loping downtempo slither, but still wrapped in all manner of electronic detritus and squalls of fuzz and crackle and whir.
The closer winds things down with more of a whisper than a scream, the glitchy rhythms are still present, but they are ultra minimal, skeletal, almost like shortwave interference, beneath a tidal swirl of murk and blur, a dark ambient buzz that stretches lazily into long expanses of slow shifting sounds. Over the course of the track, little bits of melody surface here and there, the rhythms get more agitated before drifting back beneath the surface, and mysterious voices surface amidst sparkling sonic glimmers and moaning ambient rumble, a dreamy dark ambient coda to an intense slab of droning skittering buzz and crunch, shimmer and swirl.
Partikel II is IDM for the demon set, a blackened noise drenched skitter, an abstract metallic free-electronica, and a definite droney dancefloor filler, that is if you want your dancefloor filled with shuffling zombies, growling beasts and unspeakable denizens of the underworld...
And who doesn't?!
Krautrock like they used to make, from these modern-day heirs to the glorious kosmiche tradition. The German collective Metabolismus has actually been around since the '80s, but this is only their second domestically released album (available last year on LP, but now on cd). Indeed, most of their other releases have been super-obscure rarities. But with their "Terra Incognita" album released on US label Blackjack a few years back, they turned a few ears around here, and we were excited to see the followup make it to cd. Wonderful, psychedelic stuff, mostly-instrumental explorations, experimental yet pretty, proving that the heyday of Faust and Can and Popul Vuh and Cluster and the like is not forgotten.
Dethklok is back!!! Our favorite animated purveyors of apocalyptic metal destruction have returned to face their demons both mighty and petty. In season two, they venture into the horrors of fashion, P.R., detox, the dating scene, state politics, as well as staging the largest public criminal execution of all time and of course botching it big time. This season they are faced with new mortal enemies from the Tribunal (one voiced by Malcolm McDowell), as well as an army of disfigured and damaged former fans called The Revengencers. Can Dethklok finally release their new record to save the World Economy, or will they be crippled by their childish infighting and developmentally challenged destructive behaviors? We never listed the first season, but we were all pretty much OBSESSED. The music is amazing, so good it's hard to believe they're not a real band, and the band members various accents are SO impossible to understand which almost makes it funnier and will probably have you turning on the subtitles, and the carnage, oh the carnage, so much blood...
Brutal!
We had never even heard of Canadian noise rockers Metz, until this record just showed up, but holy shit is it kicking our asses. Heavy and hooky, weirdly groovy, a bit mathy, a psychedelic grinding, churning, pounding blast of drum heavy crunch, the vocals all but buried in the mix, but still an integral part of the sound. The coolest thing about the record though might have to be the production. Instead of being super blown out, or ultra heavy, the sound is weirdly abstract, murky and muddy one second, blisteringly loud the next, certain parts smoothed out into tranced out hypno-rock, others exploding into prismatic noise pop freakouts. And yet somehow every track here manages to be impossibly catchy. We've read comparisons to Jesus Lizard, which might be the most apt, but while Metz are no doubt influenced by JL, their sound is much murkier, much more minimal, with many of the songs collapsing into weird drum-centric breakdowns, a pounding rhythm surrounded by swirls of effects, or some sinewy drum and bass lope, or something similarly abstract and stripped down, only to explode right back into another bout of melody infused near metallic churn. The label talks about how these guys have one of the loudest drummers ever, and while it's usually pretty impossible to capture that sort of thing on record, the drums here are definitely a HUGE part of the sound. They always are in a trio, but the drums here pretty much define the sound, driving, powerful, not overly bombastic, but recorded in such a way that they crush, that aforementioned weird production applied heavily to the drums, causing them to be muted thumps one second, rib cage rattling booms the next, the guitar and bass treated similarly, thick, gristly buzz on some tracks, detuned murky twang on others.
The single "Wet Blanket" is the band at their most classic noise rock, sounding very much like a band you might have seen play with Jesus Lizard or Don Cabellero, and anyone who digs those kinds of outfits should definitely check these guys out too, but even at their catchiest, like on "Wet Blanket", they still seem to slip into that sort of almost krautrock like mesmer, churning looped cyclical hypno-rock sprawls that transform song into sound, reminding us of other similarly inclined combos like Psychic Paramount or recent aQ Record Of The Week-ers Aluk Todolo, but with Metz, those moments, as tranced out as they may be, invariably lead back to something more rocking and melodic.
Easily our noise rock record of the year. Folks who dug the last album from The Men, another aQ ROTW, but who might be after something a bit more fierce and feral, this might just be your new favorite record.
(FYI, there's vinyl too, but our copies got munched in transit, @#$%!, should have more early next week...)
The long awaited and first proper full length from this Polish black metal horde with the unpronounceable moniker (Mgla means 'fog' in Polish btw). We first heard Mgla on the incredible Crushing The Holy Trinity compilation, sharing sonic space with such black metal luminaries as Deathspell Omega, Clandestine Blaze, Exordium, Musta Surma, and Stabat Mater. At the time we had never heard Mgla, let alone heard OF them, but they definitely held their own, and then some. Soon after came their Presence ep, which continued to demonstrate Mgla's mastery of loping minor key buzz, layering the Burzumic murk with woozy melodies, and adding flurries of double kick blast beats, managing to invoke the old masters while somehow creating a black sound all their own.
So now comes Groza, a 4 part, 36 minute full length, and holy shit is it good. Everything we loved about Mgla before is present, but the songwriting has improved greatly (songwriting is not always a priority in black metal, not as much as stringing together kick ass riffs) and the sound is better to. An excellent production that manages to keep plenty of buzz, but makes the guitars burn bright, the drums don't get lost at all, especially the double kick which adds awesome percussive accents to long stretches of buzz. The opener alone is worth the price of admission. A ridiculously catchy main riff that manages to still sound grim and black. The drums a simple groove (some Khold-ish moments for sure), with brief flurries of double kick, but it's the second part/riff that truly transcends, after a gorgeous midtempo bridge/breakdown, the band launch into an incredible arpeggiated mid tempo groove, a minor key melody as melancholic as it is catchy, wrapped around the main riff, those double kick drums leaping to the fore, it's hard to explain, but it's just awesome, it has the same power as a timeless pop song, that riff is just so emotional and intense. Every time the song loops back around to THAT part, it's just perfect. Even when the est of the instruments explode into a blast, that main melody keeps swirling endlessly, and makes even the blast haunting and moving. There's also a awesome drum breakdown in the middle, before the band lurches back into dreary woozy minor key miserblist action. So awesome. It took about 10 listens before we could even review this record cuz we just kept listing to the first track over and over and over.
So imagine our surprise when the second track hit the very same spot, offering up a gorgeously mournful minor key melody, a killer groove, all wrapped around some incredible drumming, verging on mathrock, but never going quite that far, instead just pounding away, letting the riff transform the blackness into something special. And the last two movements follow suit. The more we listen to this, the more the Khold comparison seems apt. Only insomuch as there is a distinct pop element, and a groove, falling in that no man's land between blast and dirge, and the guitar parts don't just buzz, they swirl and whirl and shimmer, there are vocals too, of the growly demonic sort, but they bow before the riffs, and the beats, and unlike a lot of black metal, there is definitely some bass happening, adding to the thickness of the sound and that element of groove.
It's funny, we get so much to listen to every week, so not everything gets the amount of listening time it deserves, and when we set out to review this, actually, it was definitely going to be positive, but nothing too effusive and fawning, but on repeated listens, and on closer headphone listens, we're realizing this could very well be a contender for one of our favorite black metal records of the year....
Okay, we blew it. We did. We let this MGR record slip right under our radar. And we regret it. We do. As we've said before, the only thing better than discovering some new record that totally kicks your ass, is discovering some record you ignored or missed for some reason, only to have your ass kicked retroactively. Such is the case with MGR. And to prove just how sorry we are, not only are we listing this disc (a few months late) but we also got a super limited cd-r direct from the band reviewed elsewhere on this list.
Not sure why we didn't give this a listen when it first came out, our defense, as flimsy as it may seem, is that we thought MGR was the abbreviation for manager, so we just sort of figured, that was kind of a dumb name so why bother. MGR actually stands for Mustard Gas And Roses and is the work of one M. Gallagher from postrock metal heavyweights Isis, and is actually quite amazing.
Imagine Isis with all the bombast stripped away, all traces of metal removed, leaving only sinewy minor key guitars to drift over vast expanses of droning shimmer, skeletal but incredibly lush. Dark, moody, melancholy soundscapes, the background a warm swirl of sound, guitars drifting in the fuzzy haze above, unfurling gorgeously melancholic melodies, while all around huge swaths of sound shimmer and shift. There's some lap steel, but it's just another gauzy layer of sound, there are beats here and there, but those already minimal rhythms are processed into indistinct throbs and minimal shuffles and buried way down in the murk, making those tracks sound like some sort of post rock Gas. So good.
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: II
Amigos De La Guitarra. Friends of the guitar. Funny. Both of these guys are most definitely friends of the guitar, although neither really plays the guitar the way nature intended. Well, maybe once in a while they do. Two Mikes. One called Mare, one called Gallagher. One also known to us as Destructo Swarmbots. The other, known around these parts as MGR, or sometimes, the guy from Isis. Both MGR and Destructo Swarmbots are long time faves around these parts, both creating epic expansive sprawling guitarscapes, occasionally heavy and intense, other times shimmery and ethereal, and while we never expected to find the two playing together, now that we're listening to it, it sort of seems like a pretty fantastic idea.
One 42 minute track, that begins all moody and melodic, finger picked guitars, melodies, harmonies, lilting and almost folky, a little post rocky, moody and minor key, gradually growing more and more intense, some of the guitars billowing out into clouds of rumble and blur, while the rest keep the main melodies going. Before it gets to noisy, the drones recede, once again leaving the guitars to drift delicately, weaving subtle sonic shapes, until once again, some of the guitars begin to growl and buzz, the chords and melodies growing more jagged and abrasive, the sound a roiling soft swirl, which is when things get really interesting and suddenly some of the guitars are chopped up and sent stuttering, creating a droned out rhythmic skitter, while the other guitar soars and wails in the background. All around, sheets of feedback fold in on themselves, shot though with jagged shards of corrosive high end crunch, before finally the chaos begins to dissipate, leaving just a tangle of guitar melodies, slowly unfurling, winding down through gauzy fields of crackle and muted buzz, until just shadowy echoes of the guitars remain, and then nothing at all.
In short: A gorgeous disc of trancey blissed out ambient heaviness, from two friends of the guitar...
We usually don't pay too much attention to mainstream music mags, especially when they're pushing something as the next big thing, so we're not sure how exactly we ended up hearing this record from Miike Snow, a Swedish trio, not a person, but apologies to whoever wrote the recommendation, and whatever magazine printed it, cuz this really is fantastic. Totally quirky, super lush pop, that if we had to summarize these guys in a nutshell, we'd probably describe them as Animal Collective meets Phoenix, maybe with a little TV On The Radio mixed in (especially in the almost Peter Gabriel sounding vox), although we have seen them described as Animal Collective meets A-Ha, which might be not that far off either.
But however you describe them, the sound is amazing. Super lush, glimmering almost orchestral pop, with gorgeous vocal harmonies, buzzy synths, minimal programmed rhythms, little flurries of electronics, swirling ambience, tinkling pianos, a glistening production, and incredible hooks, the first three tracks have this record so frontloaded the rest of the songs barely stand a chance, but somehow they do manage to hold their own, which is saying a lot, just give the three sound samples a listen and you'll know exactly what we mean.
We probably haven't dug a major label mainstream pop record this much since Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and you know how much we love(d) that one, so needless to say, for the pop kids this one comes highly recommended.
Just when we thought all the weird dusty corners of strange and magical sounds had been uncovered from the vast archives of the ESP label, something new to us, shiny and unbelievably wonderful gets unearthed. MIJ is the strangely cryptic moniker of Jim Holberg, (or on second thought not so strange as we just realized, it's his name spelled backwards!) who was discovered in Washington Square Park on a hot summer day in 1969 yodeling and playing guitar by ESP label head Bernard Stoller. But this wasn't any country western or Swiss Alps yodeling, this was some freaked out high-keening spacey Martian kind of yodeling. The kind that cuts through time and space and penetrates your subconscious. Blown away by his street performance, Stoller invited Holberg into the studio the next day to record a full length album and in just three hours with an array of echo effects and a patient and agreeable engineer, the Yodeling Astrologer was born. Apparently Holberg had explained to Stoller that after being injured in an auto-accident that had fractured his skull and impaired his hearing, his perceptions became altered and he began to do things musically that he couldn't comprehend but they somehow worked, and indeed they do. With both voice and guitar reverbed to the nth degree, this is some Donovan meet Dreamies meets Curt Boetchner of The Millenium psych-folk magic. So awesome and beautiful, weird and dreamy, with well-written songs and just enough freaky yodeling that won't scare off the folks who might be put off by the concept of, well, freaky yodeling. We've been playing this nearly everyday, it's so good. So Highly Recommended!
We first heard Lloyd Miller on that amazing Spiritual Jazz compilation we reviewed recently, and while pretty much every track was a killer, Miller's "Gol-E Gandom" definitely stood out, beginning with a santur solo, that sounded like a sea of buzzing sitars, until the jazz kicked in, bopping bass, fluid piano, shuffling rhythms, somehow following the melody laid out by the opening santur solo. So magical. We were smitten and were dying to hear more. Luckily, Jazzman endeavored to put together this amazing collection of Miller's various recordings, which was no small feat, considering that even after a lifetime playing jazz, most of these songs were only available on super limited self released records, which made it into fewer hands, and ears, that would seem right considering the power and originality of Miller's music.
He grew up in America, but his father was transferred to Iran, so his family moved there when Miller was 19, and they lived there for 5 years. Then Miller finally moved to Europe, to pursue jazz, after all, Europe was where it was happening, he landed in Germany, later heading to Switzerland, all the while creating these amazing, and mostly unheard pieces, incorporating an incredible array of ethnic instruments with some seriously intense and inspired jazz.
While some of the tracks here sound like straight up jazz, flecked with bits of ethnic instrumentation, others are totally far out. "Le Grand Bidou" finds his group riffing on a single chord, while Miller inserts an Indian style tonic drone played on the micro organ, and the result is bizarre, the whole track twists and squirms and heaves, it's an odd fit, but fit it does, we can only imagine how freaked out purists must have been. and frustrated, considering the caliber of playing, but it's these twisted takes on standard jazz that makes this stuff so magical, and the fact that this was the late fifties / early sixties, it's a wonder Miller didn't become a sensation. This stuff is radical, revolutionary, considering how important the incorporation of African music and instruments into jazz became (Don Cherry, Art Ensemble), how is it that this wasn't equally if not more radical? A white kid from Utah, with impeccable jazz chops, playing all sorts of Turkish and Persian instruments, wrapping standard jazz tropes around Indian arrangements, kind of mindblowing even now.
The liner notes are super detailed, and Miller's life is fascinating, but it's really about the music, and as much as we dig jazz, and fancy ourselves, if not experts, at least super fans, we had NEVER heard Miller before that comp, and this stuff is so cool, and so unlike ANYTHING we've ever heard, from the instrumentation, to the arrangements, to modal systems, some of the tracks are Indian ragas transformed, others seem to eschew the jazz completely and sound like some mysterious magical world music, but it's where the two elements mesh where things get truly magical, tablas underpinning pianos, strange horns droning over upright bass and shuffling percussion, all woven deftly into a strain of jazz that is wholly unique and original. So fantastic, and so utterly and wholeheartedly recommended. Easily THE jazz reissue of the year, if not the decade!
When we first heard about Millie & Andrea, the duo of Miles Whittaker aka Miles, whose brilliant Faint Hearted record we raved about here a while back, and Andy Stott, whose gorgeous, ultra minimal techno we've been raving abut forever, we were expecting this collaboration to be some fusion of the two - skeletal, abstract, ambient, hauntological, ultra minimal. For the first few seconds, our guess was pretty much right on, the first track beginning with a field of reverb heavy clattery rhythm, deep bass pulses, but with something lurking just below the surface, as if the sound could take off in any direction. The sound grew more dense, more secondary rhythms surfaced, the results super hypnotic almost trancey, but still plenty spaced out and abstract... So, we were settling in for an extended occultic electro bliss out, when track two kicked in and BAM, suddenly, we're transported directly from our insular listening space, to some nineties dancefloor, the duo laying down some skittery, swirly, crunchy, clattery techno, with super distorted synth sweeps, and stuttery hiccuping beats, the vibe hovering right between old school ravery, and something more modern and freaky, some heavy IDM influences too, as well as jungle, drum and bass, garage, but the production changes everything, fantastically blown out and in the red, which gives every sound a weird psychedelic feel, like some weird sonic halo, transforming what could have been straight up dance music into something noisy and trippy and fucking awesome! The next few songs offer up variations on this way back electronic time trip, with "Temper Tantrum" getting straight up jungle, pretty sure that's a mutated 'Amen' break, but again Whittaker and Stott fuck it up big time, adding all sorts of rhythmic filigree, and part way through, some swoonsome synth swirl. "Spectral Source" is another fantastic throwback, with a stuttery vocal snippet peppered amidst synth squelch, hand claps, gristly bass buzz, and a murky pulse, all transformed by the gloriously cheesy late night chill out synths, which like much of the record, finds its niche in this weird push and pull between avant electronic experimentation, and pure, sweat soaked dancefloor groove from back in the day.
"Corrosive" begins all robotic electro draped over a background of blooping bleeping melodies and gurgling low end before exploding into full on No U-Turn style tech-step, a killer blast of distorted noisy jungle that no one makes anymore, but we still LOVE. The title track two, a churning bass heavy slab of classic jungle/drum & bass, albeit plenty fucked up, and of course midway through, they fuck it up even more, pulling it apart, and cranking up the bass, thick buzzing, undulating rumbles and whirs.
Nearing the end of the record, things seem to start drifting closer to the sounds we were expecting from Whittaker and Stott, albeit fused to the jungliness that came before. "Back Down" is all murky swirling melodies, hazy vocal harmonies blurred into black smears, churning, grinding bass, skittery rhythms, all wreathed in a dense sonic murk, sounding almost industrial, industrial via Huperdub maybe, and finally, the closer, wraps things up with a gorgeous bit of haunting ambience, swirling Basinski like loops beneath weird bits of rhythmic clatter, gristly tape hiss, static and glitch, all washed out, hazy, druggy, dreamy and divine.
We haven't gotten any of these in yet, but figured some of our weirdo music / obscure art-vinyl obsessives might want one of these, especially folks into the whole Trunk Records scene of strange lost audio from yesteryear. These are EXTREMELY expensive, but exquisitely handmade, so this is in fact a pre-order, cuz we'll only be getting as many copies as we get orders for, so if you want one, and order one, we'll charge you for it now, and ship it in a couple weeks when it comes in, either on its own, or with whatever order you have pending at the time.
So here's the skinny. The Trunk Records label is definitely a good reference point, as this record really does seem like it could just as easily have ended up on Trunk. Mary Millington was the most famous pornstar in 1970's Britain, appeared in all the most famous adult magazines, even had some film roles in proper non-pornographic films. Around the mid to late seventies, Millington began to record 'porn audios' which were included with many magazines at the time, which were, as you might imagine, Millington simply talking dirty, playful and casual and conversational, telling sexy stories, being nasty, stories about peeing on her suitor, and being peed on ("Lovely Little Tinkle"), giving blowjobs ("The Longest Tongue In The World"), and giving underwater wanks ("Come Play With Me"), laced with little aside ("Ooooh, it's hot!", "I've got pubic hair in my mouth!"), and all set to groovy, soft focus psychedelic jams, all remastered from the original tapes and some of the flexi-discs included with the above mentioned magazines.
If you were a fan of the Flexi-Sex release on Trunk, which collected some of Johnny Trunk's favorite sexy flexis, you'll have an idea of just what you're in for, sexy, goofy, funny, playful, weird, total outsider audio from a lost era.
And as mentioned above, the packaging is super super deluxe, pressed on 140 gram 10" opaque blue vinyl, housed in fancy gatefold sleeves using recycled card stock and conservation glue, hand pulled screenprint artwork by Walden Press on the front and back, as well as a saucy full length image of Millington inside, on 1970's style newsprint.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! We can probably only get a handful, so (pre)order now if you want one!
Pseudo Arcana head honcho starts this disc off with some real Raster-Noton style static clickery but manages to sound way more organic, with throbbing pulses of low end that abruptly cut out and become a dreamy, thrumming, humming wash of warm drones ans slowly shifting spaced-out swish and whir. The rest of the record runs the gamut from noise-y drone ala the Dead C, with bursts of harsh noise and looped samplesforming loping 'rhythms', to all out N O I S E, to dreamy subterranean dronescapes reminiscent of Birchville Cat Motel, to almost-pop buried under fuzz and hiss and distrorted to the point of being pop-no-more.
Four tracks of droning dreaminess. Track one is a stuttering, wheezing violin drone over absent mindedly strummed, downtuned guitars sounding like a doped up Roy Montgomery. The second track is an industrial landscape of machinery buzz and electronic hiss
For some reason, we always thought Mind Spiders were from Australia. They definitely have that Aussie post punk vibe, but they are in fact from Denton, Texas, and our description in our review of their last record, still pretty much applies:
"Imagine Thee Oh Sees via Gary Numan, or the Ramones if they were on Captured Tracks, or maybe even Bare Wires covering Snowy Red..."
If anything, this new one is more stripped down, more old school power pop, with swirling synths, and drum machines augmenting the group's kinetic garage pop crunch. Just check out "Suicide", which doesn't sound so much like Suicide as it does Cheap Trick or the Cars. And in fact, those two bands are pretty good reference points, although some of the record gets more buzzy and fuzzy and punk, but even at its most revved up, the songs here are still CRAZY catchy, hooks galore, these guys tossing off timeless popisms that most bands would kill for.
But the record IS kinda all over the map. "City Stuff" sounds like it was plucked from a different record, even down to the production (and volume!), with its Casio-core rhythm, wheezing synth swirl, and Wall Of Voodoo guitar, but then it slips right back into almost Ramones sounding punk stomp, still shot through with plenty of Yellow Pills power popisms, but then a song or two later, and the sound blossoms into a sort of FX heavy psychedelic space garage, a little bit Moon Duo, a little bit T-Rex, a killer slice of kraut-glam, garage-synth, fuzz pop that KILLS. And then like the last record, the band deliver the coup de grace, another record defining jam, this time around sounding like a modern fuzzed out garage rock Gary Numan, swirling and sci-fi and psychedelic and swaggery and crazy catchy to boot. Goddamn we wish we hadn't already finished our 2013 top tens, cuz had we known, you can bet this would have definitely made it, and probably been right near the top!
Wow, so many cool little labels all over the world. Each with it's own strange little niche. None stranger than Japan's Spekk label, who we first discovered when they released a compilation of out of print demos by local outfit the Alps (featuring our very own Scott). In the process of getting Alps cds, we also discovered they had released a cd from Jefre Cantu of Tarentel, as well as an amazing compilation of Small Melodies, featuring a handful of AQ faves composing gorgeous lullaby like tunes. They were also responsible for an old out of print disc from AQ fave William Basinski.
So we were more than a little excited to get wind of a new batch of Spekk releases, especially when we heard about this one, Textures In Glass Tubes And Reed Organ, by Minoru Sato and ASUNA. The liner notes are a little too dense for us to truly understand what was going on when this music was created, but the vibe we got, was similar to that of another AQ fave, Toshiya Tsunoda, who records the sympathetic vibrations running through huge objects, bridges, pieces of metal, docks, handrails, wind...
For the first track, five harmonic states were recorded separately, using a chord organ to cause sympathetic vibrations in glass tubes, or something like that. Regardless, the result is a dense, subtly shimmering near static drone. Five tones, each layered upon the other, woven into a reverberating tapestry of sound, a glistening dreamlike blur, very Niblock like in it's swirl of subtle overtones, the various tones beating and pulsing almost imperceptibly, 38 minutes of pure glimmering sun dappled soft static bliss.
The second track, utilizes an entirely different method for producing the sound, still with chord organ and glass tubes, explained in detail in the liner notes, but still a little dense for us to truly understand the method, it almost doesn't matter, this track too is a gorgeous slab of slow shifting minimalism, a muted hum, streaked with various subtle tonal variations, again the multiple layers of sound pulsing and rippling, giving the track some sort of invisible propulsion, the sound of light traveling through water, shimmering, shifting, sparkling, but sort of suspended and frozen in time, moving but so slowly it appears to just be vibrating in place, and just like the first track, total bliss out minimalist mesmer.
Packaged in a cool, sleek oversized digipak style folder, with photos of the instruments and extensive liner notes on the creation of the music within.
First we've heard from these local math/post/kraut rockers since their The Ringing Silence Between Your Ears 7", which we LOVED, and even then we were already hankering for more, so here we finally have a new full length, five new songs, clocking in at more than 30 minutes, and all it takes is about a minute of the first track to remind us of why we love these guys so much. If this was 1995, these guys would be HUGE, and fuck it, even in 2013, these guys should be. Equal parts old school math/post/noise rock and more modern slow build heaviness a la Mogwai, Minot are masters of nuance, so tight and controlled, the sound intricate, rhythmically complex, heavy as fuck, and somehow, totally crazy catchy, a tough feat for sure when you're all instrumental, but after repeated listens, we find melodies and riffs stuck in our head like crazy. Progged out mathiness fused to moody jangle, all wound up into sprawling hypno-rock mesmer. The opener manages to be alternatingly dizzying and moody and melodic, while the second track dials the math back a bit (except for the drums which seem to be in constant motion) unwinding a fantastic sprawl of mesmerizing minimal post rock, the track already locked into a super dramatic slow build, atmospheric, majestic and epic, but these guys mix it up like crazy, the track constantly shifting into dense rhythmic tangles, stuttering start/stops, some seriously dense metallic mathiness, somehow all the while remaining utterly catchy.
The rest of the record follows suit, the band deftly weaving super intense soundscapes of chiming harmonics, busy drumming, angular guitars, thick super melodic basslines, even some electronics, the band nimbly flitting from dense brood to majestic metallic swirl and back again, loping post rock waltzes that morph into psych-prog jams, woozy droney dirges that lead directly into minimal mathy skitter, only to somehow get even mathier, but again, remaining kind of melodic and catchy. Rare is the band that can pull that off, and pull it off so consistently, but if you haven't figured it out by now, Minot is one of those rare bands. Totally recommended. Essential listening for fans of mathrock / postrock then AND now!
What the world needs now is... more BATHTUB SHITTER!!! And what the world needs, our shit obsessed grindmetal pals from the East are here to provide. Two brand new blasts of grinding freaked out, spazzy and shrieking grind metal, occupying some impossible musical space between Brutal Truth, the Boredoms, Cannibal Corpse, skate thrash and eighties hardcore. So weird and so fucking awesome!!! We kind of want to figure out a way to fly the guys in Bathtub Shitter to the US so they could be the AQ house band, blasting and bleating dissonant serenades to our customers 24 hours a day. Okay, maybe not, but we still love 'em!
The 'Shitter are teamed up here with Maryland's own grindmetal destruction crew Misery Index, who unleash one track of downtuned grinding nirvana as well as a blown out blast that is a Napalm Death cover.
Comes packaged in a super swank gatefold 7" sleeve, with BS's side a haunting airbrushed watercolor batwinged, horn headed child demon flipping us the ubiquitous peace sign hand gesture (although his hands sport huge demonic talons!). Cool!
Latest record from this local indie rock combo (number three by our count), fronted by aQ pal Jason Lakis, who back in the day was also the frontman for a couple other aQ fave outfits, the Red Thread and Half Film, and while those bands tended toward the more brooding melancholy slowcore side of the spectrum, Mist And Mast traffic in more of a classic indie rock, a sound that to our ears is totally timeless, although perhaps it's more that the sounds are of a different time, specifically the nineties, an era that old folks like us look back upon wistfully, lamenting the passing of the days when bands like Mist And Mast got the sort of attention they deserved. Cuz holy cow, this record is great, and this band just keep getting better with every release, the songs here more fully realized than ever, deftly crafted and meticulously recorded, the sound lush and layered, rife with subtle impossibly memorable hooks, crazy catchy melodies, all wed to a gorgeous dark and dreamlike jangle, not to mention some awesome guitar harmonies, and Lakis's vocals sound better than ever, this is the sort of classic pop that fans of groups like Built To Spill, the Comas, the Shins, Modest Mouse and all the rest, should be flipping out over. If there's any justice, this will be the record that finally perks up the ears of all the folks who should already be listening to these guys. WAY recommended for anyone into classic pop, indie rock and warm wistful jangle. Stick around for record closer, "Red, Right, Returning", which finds Lakis taking Mist And Mast into some haunting, darkly brooding Earth / Barn Owl / Morricone territory, and it definitely suits them!
Beautifully packaged in handmade digipaks, each one adorned with a different map, and each one hand stamped and silkscreened. Also includes liner notes / lyrics also printed on an old map. Nice!
We listed this amazing black metal disc way back in July '99 (AQ-list #77) but somehow it never made it on to our website database! Also, it's been out of print for about a year now -- but just this week we got newly-repressed copies from the label.
"Yes, that's plural Apocalpyses, how evil is that?! And only one key to those gates...anyway, this disc is perhaps Allan and Andee's favorite new black metal find. A one-man side project of Russian (!) Emperor-clones Nokturnal Mortum. While that band was merely ok, this project absolutely rules. One track only, an over-seventy minute long 'song' that begins with dark ambient rumblings, encounters growling wolves, delves into Burzum-like fuzz-trance, all that before erupting into truly epic black metal riffing...an hour later you'll be hiding under your bed trembling with fear (or perhaps slaking your thirst with blood and howling at the moon) but the song still isn't over! A very impressive piece of work. Triumphant evil!"
Since I wrote that, pagan folk metallers Nokturnal Mortum (who are actually Ukrainian, really, not Russian -- a distinction important to them, I'm sure!) have released some newer albums that we really liked, notably their latest, "NeChrist", which many of you bought and presumably enjoyed. Anyone that applies to MUST get this disc too if you don't already have it. Likewise for fans of other avantgarde black metal like Caacrinolas or the aforementioned Burzum and Potentiam... Let me (Allan) quote myself again, this time from the pages of, uh, Cool Beans magazine: "...this disc is amazing! Not just for the novelty of a seventy-minute 'song' that incorporates both ambient forest-rumble (I swear, you'll smell the breath of the wolf) and straight-up black metal riffarama, but for the sheer quality of the music alone! ... Perfect for staring out of a train window into a darkened, rainy and unknown landscape of a foreign land." Obviously, recommended!
We kinda went nuts for the recent Echospace record, The Coldest Season. So much so that we made it our record of the week. And judging by the response, most aQ customers dug it just as much as we did. Which makes sense really. A modern take on that old Chain Reaction sound we all love so much. Heroin House, or whatever you want to call it, muddy murky atmospheres wrapped around deep throbbing four on the floor pulses, smeared and blurred, the sound gloriously washed out and dreamlike. Super spaced out abstract dub, beats drifting in wide open expanses of FX and electronic glitch and shimmer. Dance music for those of us who loathe the dancefloor and instead lurk in the shadows. The rhythm is probably still gonna get you, but it's going to creep up on you slowly and wrap you in its inky black embrace, and pull you into the swirling fuzzy abyss.
Incense & Black Light is the new record from Rod Modell, one half of Echospace, and while everything we loved about the Echospace record is here in full effect, it's even noisier and buzzier and grittier, which can only mean we might even like it more�
The opening track is super dense and heavy, a swirling cloud of crumbling distortion, a bassline that almost sounds like some muted metal riff, but completely abstracted and disembodied, a rhythm buried beneath layers of grit and grime, the track peppered with jagged blasts of glitch and hiss, the whole thing looped into something, that despite all of it's harshness and density, is almost groovy.
The second track begins with some Pole like dub throb, drifting on a layer of gristly hiss, those big echoey crunches pulsing and fading into the mist, beneath it all a throbbing bassline and some muted percussion, sounding like a rougher more raw Echospace. After that the record drifts into much less noisy territory, dipping its toes into some Kompakt like minimalism, still dubby and dreamy, but a bit more skittery, and not nearly as dark and dense. After three songs of gauzy late night Kompakt style minimal techno, the record dips back into the darkness, a slowly shifting smear of pixilated digital crunch, long blurred waves of prickly buzz, all woven into a gorgeously gauzy sheet of sound, that seems to billow in some midnight breeze, laced with crackles and hiss, almost completely devoid of any rhythm. Almost.
The next two tracks crank the dub factor, dialing back the noise a bit, but keeping the effects distorted and the beats crunchy, a sort of Kraftwerk groove pulled apart into some alien dub, hovering over a sea of whirring hum and buried buzz, the melody clipped and bouncing from beat to beat before fading into the roiling ambient murk.
Finally, the last two tracks finish things off, the way they started, with some sort of damaged dub, via Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, the second to last a gorgeous dubby driftscape, the beats barely holding together, the sound of lapping waves another layer of hiss and buzz, the whole dub drifting into its constituent parts, so druggy and dreamy and blissed out, while the last is glimmering shimmering effulgence, sun dappled sparkles stretched into slow whirring slabs of soft fuzzy thrum, like someone took a single measure of the blissiest Orb song, and stretched it out to 5 minutes, the chords pulled apart exposing the notes within, the notes pulled apart, crumbling to pieces, just blurry shadows, all woven into some slow slippery sonic stream, gauzy, buzzy, warm and dreamlike.
If you loved that Echospace record, but wondered what it would have sounded like if it was mixed by Fennesz, or recorded by Tim Hecker, or spun in a DJ set by Philip Jeck (and who among us didn't?), then this just might be exactly what you're looking for.
From right here in SF comes this kick ass debut of fuzzy, jangly, shoegazey, noisy, bliss pop, from a group called Modern Charms, who sound like they've been studying their nineties indie rock songbooks, in particular, the Swirlies, My Bloody Valentine, Curve, Lush, Slowdive, and really, if that reads like a list of your favorite bands, then Modern Charms are gonna knock your pop-gaze socks off. A few seconds into the first track, "When We Get There" should be all it takes, muted minor key riff, chiming harmonics, angelic ethereal female vox, softly swirling guitar textures, all blurred and smeared into epic billows of chordal swirl, and shot through with shards of feedback, and wild burst of noisy psychedelia, Modern Charms have the sound DOWN, in fact, if you told us this was actually some lost shoegaze gem from the nineties, we'd totally buy it. The music is pitch perfect, right down to the production, and while much of MC's sound is wispy and washed out, the band display plenty of musical muscle as well, with big crunchy riffs, and some seriously noisy psychedelic shoegaze freakouts. But the icing on this retro pop cake has to be the super distinctive voice of vocalist Inna Kurikova, whose gorgeous vocals drift ethereally through thick swaths of noise guitar, and wrap themselves languidly around moody, brooding jangle. And it's not just the sound, the songs too, plenty of subtle hookiness, catchy choruses, the group deftly transforming simple jangle pop into something much more epic and expansive, heady and hypnotic.
A long, long time ago we reviewed this album, originally released on Up Records in 1996. Now at long last it's been reissued on vinyl, with two bonus tracks, and the review, written by our Andee, still applies, it's short and sweet and a definite thumbs up: One of my favorite records. A little Pixies, a little Violent Femmes, lyrics that make you want to cry, and a whiny cute singer boy with a lisp.
All right! It's about time this legendary slice of South American psych got a not-inordinately-expensive cd reissue we could stock. We've been into this band/album ever since a REALLY expensive but beautiful (and now long-gone) vinyl reissue came out on Shadoks some years ago. Now World In Sound makes it available on cd in a fancy thick triple-fold sleeve that preserves the great psychedelic gatefold art from the original LP -- art that Acid Mothers Temple would die for! There's a 14-page booklet with notes and photos as well. This is definitely one for all you '70s heavy psych freaks! Super fuzz wah guitar and organ jamming stoner psych-prog from Brazil, circa 1970. Nine tracks packed with sinewy jams, trippy fx, weighty grooves... definitely appealing to the same head-space as contemporaries like Iron Butterfly, Dug Dug's, Captain Beyond, Speed Glue & Shinki, Hendrix, Flower Travellin' Band, etc. And we're pretty certain that current South American stoner rock faves Los Natas must be into this album too... Also, you may in fact have heard one track from this before, on the ever-recommended Love, Peace & Poetry: Latin American Psychedelic Music comp also on Shadoks, but that track only hints at how cool this album is. (They also have a track on the LP&P Brazilian volume too.)
Here's a quote from one of the band members, the organist, that ought to give some flavor of what they were all about: "The music of Modulo 1000 had its own appeal to an audience that wanted a heavy, raw, experimental, psychedelic sound. Our kind of music did not make it to the radio stations. It was too wild. The distribution of the record was done in a very limited way. The record label directors, which probably didn't understand or even didn't like our music, did zero promotion for the LP." Thus, one darn heavy, weird, and utterly rare record!
This reish also includes seven bonus tracks (from where/when is left unexplained) some of which are freaky enough to fit with the actual record itelf, but just aren't as heavy -- more Latin groovy.
Second missive from this mysterious Ukrainian ensemble exploring the dark and cobwebby corners of free folk, shuffling rhythmic tribalism, space-y dronemusic, and splattery free rock ambience. A dreamy and expansive travelogue of endless soundscapes, glassy sheets of crystalline shimmer, warm and smooth, with melodies woven subtly throughout. Metallic glistenings, tinkling guitars and glitchy crunch struggle to disrupt the ambient dreaminess while occasional machine like rhythms chug tirelessly over atonal melodic clusters and urgently strummed angular guitar chords. Even though the band themselves describe their music as 'personal folk music', the actual sound is much closer to the drone music of AQ faves Jonathan Coleclough, Mirror or Organum, and occasionally the free ambient clatter of the Dead C or Skullflower. Really gorgeous stuff.
While the title of the new full length from these longtime aQ faves had us secretly hoping for a record of straight up, ACTUAL rave music, the first track quickly reveals that Rave Tapes is in fact simply more of the Mogwai we know and love. So after the brief bit of inevitable no-rave let down disappointment, it's impossible to not get immediately swept up in Mogwai's lush loveliness, the opener a fantastically dreamy sprawl of blissy drifty post rock majesty, hushed, and melancholically brooding, darkly dynamic, expansive and layered. But fear not, this is not just Mogwai by the numbers, or maybe it is, but those numbers have been getting progressively less predictable over the last few albums, just check out "Simon Ferocious" with its buzzing synths, driven by a hypnotic, loping slow-mo, post rock groove, the guitars bordering on metallic, settling eventually into a cool buzzy bit of krauty post rock mesmer. Or the awesomely titled "Remurdered", which is all low slung throb, muted chug and Tortoise-y rhythms, in fact, it sounds a bit like a less jazzy, more skittery electronica flecked, synth heavy komsiche hypno-rock. There's one track with a hilarious sample of anti-Satanic ranting, which is fun the first time, but doesn't have a whole lot of replay value, but that hardly detracts from the rest of the record which slips effortlessly from Godspeed like instrumental epicry, to synthy, almost Circle sounding mathiness, to sweeping moody cinematic drifts, and to murky piano driven balladry, complete with vocals, a haunting bit of slowcore that sounds a bit like Codeine / Low / Galaxie 500, but it is Mogwai, so it eventually erupts into a soaring soft-focus squall of swirling psychedelic beauty.
The final two song salvo, begins with some classic Mogwai, spidery minor key melodies, over chiming harmonics, buzzing bass, shuffling rhythms, slowly building from hushed shimmer to fuzzy muted bombast, before finishing off with the weirdest of the bunch, all programmed drums, vocodered vox, swirling synth wrapped guitars and fields of prismatic shimmer, the whole thing sounding more like Zombi or Umberto, albeit mixed with Mogwai's epic smoldering post rock tendencies, which is just as good as it sounds.
Both the lp and the cd come housed in super striking, retro-futuristic, psychedelically geometric, eye popping, die cut sleeves! LP includes a download code too...
(Compact disc folks, FYI, we have a few of the cd, but Sub Pop forgot to ship our order this week so more will be restocked early next week and we'll of course list it next time!)
Let's face it. When Mogwai's 'Young Team' came out, that was it. The final word on the 'quiet/loud moody instrumental indie rock' sound. They had done it. What does a band do then? Where do they take their music? While they were trying to figure that out,
So when we heard the new Mogwai, we were ready to write it off, and we sort of did. It was slow, listless, and not at all like 'Young Team' which I think we had all been secretly hoping it would be.
But once we got over all our non-musical issues, and actually sat down and listened to it. Close, we were singing a different tune. It definitely doesn't sound all that much like Mogwai. And it actually does sound quite a bit like Godspeed (or what I imagined a Godspeed cover band started by the guys in Mogwai and the guys in Teenage Fanclub might sound like) but that's not a bad thing. Much in the way that Godspeed took the Mogwai sound and made it their own, it seems like this time around it's Mogwai's turn to say 'yeah? well watch this' and take their twisted sound back, and twist it even more, into a tranquil and dreamy, beautifully lush and absolutely epic album. A record you can sink right into. Glistening shifting guitar layers and textures, skittery and lazy rhythms, dramatic minor key swells all accompanied by drowsy vocals. A lot more vocals than we expected, but dang if they aren't nice. And it feels like beneath all this grandeur and epic sound, there are actually little hidden nuggets of catchy pop, just obscured enough to keep it interesting.
On their last release it was the horrendous cover art that didn't fit the music, this time it's the title itself that's the culprit (Rock action? Hardly). Ah, but we know those Scottish lads to be a mass of contradictions. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic record. Mesmerizingly beautiful and totally essential.
IIt must be pretty frustrating being in Mogwai, 'cause no matter what you do, no matter how far you push and stretch your sound, people just want to hear Young Team. Not that we can blame them - see the Young Team review elsewhere on the aQ site, and observe us gushing appropriately over the record that probably is single handedly responsible for about half of the indie rock made today. But you know, that probably happens to every successful band. Can you imagine if you had gone to see My Bloody Valentine on their recent reunion tour and they didn't play -anything- off of Loveless, just new songs? We went to see Dio once a while back, and all we wanted to hear was old stuff (of course) but instead he played his newly released concept record all the way through. More power to him but geeze. Still, we do understand, no matter how awesome a song is, no one wants to be playing it forever. Think about the Stones playing "Satisfaction". How long have they been playing that song? 40 years? Sheesh!
Anyway, in most fans' eyes, Mogwai can do no wrong, and even if they continue to NOT make Young Team part 2, they do continue to make awesome records. Their grasp of dynamics, and their ability to make an extended instrumental not only interesting but rocking and catchy as well, far surpasses most of the bands who want to be them, and very little has changed on The Hawk Is Howling. While the record starts off with the stately and serene (and awesomely titled "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead"), the follow up "Batcat" finds the band unleashing some serious riffage, and some cool and strange guitar filigree. It's a one part song (maybe two) but boy is it a good part, and it gets looped and twisted, the band building and building, much like the more metal Godspeed they always seemed to be. Epic and crunchy and heavy and so good we probably wouldn't mind if the song was twice (or three times, or four times...) as along.
The next few tracks find the band mellowing back out a bit, letting their songs sprawl and spread out organically, a dreamy, laid back post rock, with no particular place to go, and with Mogwai it's all about the journey, not the destination anyway.
"The Sun Smells Too Loud" is a definite twist on the Mogwai formula, lots of synths and keyboards, and a slow build, slow burn, that gets bigger and louder, without necessarily getting heavier. The main hook, the guitar figure repeated again and again will stick in your head like crazy, the perfect substitute for vocals, if you were even missing them. "I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School" is classic Mogwai, again harkening back toy Young Team, all loping strum and shuffling rhythms, glistening melodies, lots of texture and ambience, until about the last minute when the band erupts into a super intense psychedelic freakout, still grounded by the melancholy melody that runs through the whole song. There's plenty more drifting and meandering dreamily before closer "The Precipice", which begins soft and breathless, before morphing into something a bit more ominous, the guitars a tad more crunchy, and finally a killer two minute outro, that features gorgeous spidery guitar lines, pounding drums, and gorgeous tangled minor key melodies.
You want Young Team? Probably best to just get over it. Go listen to Young Team. Heck we might just go listen to Young Team again. But really, at this point we're way more interested in seeing where the sounds of Mogwai take us.
There are two versions of the cd, one is the regular edition, the other, WHILE THEY LAST, is slightly more expensive and comes with a dvd, which features the creepy and haunting video for "Batcat", a cool animated fan made video for the same song, and a short, very arty, and quite beautiful documentary about the band.
It must be pretty frustrating being in Mogwai, 'cause no matter what you do, no matter how far you push and stretch your sound, people just want to hear Young Team. Not that we can blame them - see the Young Team review elsewhere on the aQ site, and observe us gushing appropriately over the record that probably is single handedly responsible for about half of the indie rock made today. But you know, that probably happens to every successful band. Can you imagine if you had gone to see My Bloody Valentine on their recent reunion tour and they didn't play -anything- off of Loveless, just new songs? We went to see Dio once a while back, and all we wanted to hear was old stuff (of course) but instead he played his newly released concept record all the way through. More power to him but geeze. Still, we do understand, no matter how awesome a song is, no one wants to be playing it forever. Think about the Stones playing "Satisfaction". How long have they been playing that song? 40 years? Sheesh!
Anyway, in most fans' eyes, Mogwai can do no wrong, and even if they continue to NOT make Young Team part 2, they do continue to make awesome records. Their grasp of dynamics, and their ability to make an extended instrumental not only interesting but rocking and catchy as well, far surpasses most of the bands who want to be them, and very little has changed on The Hawk Is Howling. While the record starts off with the stately and serene (and awesomely titled "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead"), the follow up "Batcat" finds the band unleashing some serious riffage, and some cool and strange guitar filigree. It's a one part song (maybe two) but boy is it a good part, and it gets looped and twisted, the band building and building, much like the more metal Godspeed they always seemed to be. Epic and crunchy and heavy and so good we probably wouldn't mind if the song was twice (or three times, or four times...) as along.
The next few tracks find the band mellowing back out a bit, letting their songs sprawl and spread out organically, a dreamy, laid back post rock, with no particular place to go, and with Mogwai it's all about the journey, not the destination anyway.
"The Sun Smells Too Loud" is a definite twist on the Mogwai formula, lots of synths and keyboards, and a slow build, slow burn, that gets bigger and louder, without necessarily getting heavier. The main hook, the guitar figure repeated again and again will stick in your head like crazy, the perfect substitute for vocals, if you were even missing them. "I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School" is classic Mogwai, again harkening back toy Young Team, all loping strum and shuffling rhythms, glistening melodies, lots of texture and ambience, until about the last minute when the band erupts into a super intense psychedelic freakout, still grounded by the melancholy melody that runs through the whole song. There's plenty more drifting and meandering dreamily before closer "The Precipice", which begins soft and breathless, before morphing into something a bit more ominous, the guitars a tad more crunchy, and finally a killer two minute outro, that features gorgeous spidery guitar lines, pounding drums, and gorgeous tangled minor key melodies.
You want Young Team? Probably best to just get over it. Go listen to Young Team. Heck we might just go listen to Young Team again. But really, at this point we're way more interested in seeing where the sounds of Mogwai take us.
There are two versions of the cd, one is the regular edition, the other, WHILE THEY LAST, is slightly more expensive and comes with a dvd, which features the creepy and haunting video for "Batcat", a cool animated fan made video for the same song, and a short, very arty, and quite beautiful documentary about the band.
This is it! The one. The record that launched a MILLION other records. Half the bands we love and freak out about wouldn't even exist if it weren't for THIS RECORD. Or if they did, they sure as heck wouldn't sound the way they do. Sure there was Spiderland. And the theory that everyone who heard Spiderland started a band. And the Pixies. Same thing. And let's not forget Nirvana. Between Slint, Nirvana and the Pixies, the template for angsty loud/soft indie rock was pretty much defined FOREVER. Until Young Team that is. Mogwai most definitely owed a huge debt to the above mentioned big three, but there was just something special about Young Team. The ultimate brooding post rock stumble into massive epic metallic crush record we had ever heard. This is heavy, but oh so pretty, dark and romantic, but also creepy and seriously ominous sounding. SoftÔsuper blissed-out meandering almost-ambient soundscapes, dark brooding passages of near silence, eventually shattered into a million pieces by bursts of frenzied, rhythmic noise a la Godflesh, crushing and metallic and machinelike, but always ready to drift and fade back into soft swooning tranquility. But even the loud heavy parts areÔstrangely melodic and ridiculously catchy. This record is so fucking great. Even now, a decade after it was first released, and after we've heard about a million bands do their own versions of Young Team. Maybe the best way to really drive home how massive and amazing and incredibly influential this record is, would be to list a handful of bands who would probably not exist, at least not in their present forms, if it weren't for this record. No disrespect to any of these groups AT ALL (we love them every single one of them) but you gotta give credit where credit is due... the sons of Mogwai include Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Isis, Timeout Drawer, Snowblood, the Ocean, Magyar Posse, Gregor Samsa, Aereogramme, This Is Your Captain Speaking, Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Ros, Pelican, Mono, Grails, Tarentel, Jimmy Cake, Switchblade, Minsk, Conifer, Tides, Eden Maine, Rosetta, Red Sparrowes, Indian, Baroness, Cult Of Luna, Mouth Of The Architect and we could go on and on. So if you love any or all of the above mentioned bands, and how could you not, and you've somehow never heard Young Team, you are in for it in a big beautiful way! Now's your chance. Don't blow it. You will not be sorry. As for the rest of you, who for one reason or another just haven't listened to Young Team in years, lent it lost it or whatever, now is the time to revisit one of indie rock's most epochal releases, you just may very well have forgotten how devastatingly fantastic this record is! Finally available again (as an import), after being out of print in the State for years and years!!!
We joked in some past reviews that Dutch experimental world music label Terp must be paying our salaries considering how much love we give their releases, but c'mon, you've heard them! You've bought them! LOTS of them! And like us you've played them all to death. Every single one is amazing, so exciting musically, so emotionally resonant, some of the most unique and moving music we've EVER heard. And as if to drive the point home, we have not one, but TWO new releases from Terp on this week's list, one, a live disc from legendary Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekuria, jamming with The Ex and friends, and this, a sadly posthumous live release from blind�Ethiopian vocalist Mohammed 'Jimmy' Mohammed.�
We raved about Mohammed's other release on Terp, the completely mind blowing�Takkabel! And as we mentioned before, his life story is just as dramatic and intense and emotional as his music. He became blind as a child, an apparent curse after his parents had him baptized against the warnings of a local fortune teller (God wanted him to be Muslim), spent years homeless on the streets, eventually rescued and cared for, enrolled in a school for the blind, where money was raised to help restore his sight, but the money was stolen, and his eyesight never restored, eventually becoming a nightclub singer renowned for his interpretations of songs by legendary vocalist�Tlahoun Gessesse (who you probably remember from several volumes of the Ethiopiques series).
But whereas much of�Takkabel! was tangled and angular and complex, recalling Aavikko weirdly enough, with guest drumming from improv legend Han Bennink, this live disc is much more laid back and dark, a very personal sounding and intimate recording, the band spreading out a lush tapestry of sound over which Mohammed weaves his magical moods. His voice is divine and as powerful as it is subtle,�distincitive and expressive, soaring and dancing nimbly across impossible melodies, the interplay between the vocals and the instruments is divine. The guitar like krar unfurling simple melodic fragments, the percussion simple and propulsive, a simple spare framework for Mohammed to explore as he sees fit, his vocals wild and acrobatic, intense and passionate, so mysterious sounding, but also utterly warm and inviting.�
The last two lengthy tracks are the most reminiscent of�Takkabel!, with the addition of sax, the rhythms a bit more off kilter and danceable, the whole sound a bit more funky and groovy, VERY Ethiopiques sounding. Hard to imagine the crowd in attendance not dancing wildly in the aisles...
The proceeds from sales of this cd will go toward a just-founded Jimmy Fund, created to care for his wife and his children, one of whom was born right after his death.
We're a bit crazy about Wolfgang Voigt around here, especially in his guise as Gas, whose small body of work perfectly embodies what we now have come to know as Pop Ambient, the four Gas records ranking as most aQ-ers FAVORITE electronic records ever, records which also managed to make almost every one we know, whether they liked 'techno' or not, OBSESSIVE about techno music, albeit a very specific, very un-techno sounding variant. And in fact the Kompakt label, which Voigt runs, has pretty much redefined minimal techno, and like Gas, helped convince techno haters, that they didn't in fact hate techno, they just hadn't heard the right techno.
Mohn is a new duo consisting of Voigt, and his long time collaborator Jorg Burger (The Modernist), who have recorded together in the past as Burger/Ink and Burger/Voigt, but where those records were more beat driven, and yeah, more techno, this Mohn record is something else altogether, a swirling heady mix of cinematic drones, of soundtracky ambience and haunting beat driven atmospheres, the beats here less dancefloor driven and more part of the duo's sonic palette, as they strive to conjure up some other futuristic soundworld that to our ears sounds like a mix of the dystopian future worlds of Blade Runner and Escape From New York, with the more clinical alternate futures of Logan's Run and Gattica, the record's opener setting the scene with a dense sprawling drone, woven together from deep pulsations, and crumbling distorted buzz, a blurred chordal shimmer smeared into a hazy ambience, that is at once darkly mysterious and hauntingly ominous,. The track is flecked with strange swooping electronics, and hushed barely there beats, slowly building to something majestic and sinister and downright menacing.
The vibe switches dramatically though as the second track introduces strange looped and layered almost operatic vocal snippets, over a skittery skeletal shuffle, and woozy blooping melodies, the first half nearly ambient, the second a twisted bit of super abstract ping ponging digidub, that again, is less about propulsion and groove that texture and timbre, and like that first track, it's evocative of some otherworld and similarly strangely cinematic. "Ambientot" begins as a sort of electronic slowcore, creeping and slithering, the main 'groove' wreathed in lush swirls of faux strings and swoonsome synths, that to these ears make this sound like it could be "Love Theme from Mohn", a hauntingly romantic shuffling drift, rife with strange melodies and mesmerizing (often backwards) effects. "Saturn" finds the duo drifting into Carpenter / Goblin territory, a sort of pulsing eighties VHS synthscape, which the duo quickly and deftly transform into something much more mysterious, deep doomy pulses, swirling swaths of fluttery effects, softly shimmery synths, the whole thing gradually transforming, sounding in fact a bit like an electronic/synth take on the brooding slowbuild jazz of the Necks.
The rest of the record continues to paint a sonic picture of this imaginary future, taking much more recognizable minimal electro-dub, and wreathing it in a woozy shuffling rhythm, and a thick fog of smeared synth and blurred FX, or unfurling lush gaseous expanses of hiss and hum, billowing dreamily over muted melodies, and ever shifting textures, wedding crackly buzz to Tangerine Dream like synthscapery, and wrapping it in a prismatic haze of softly roiling electronic percussion and sublimated effects. "Mohn" strangely enough might be the most 'techno' of the bunch, but even here, the sound is smeared into an almost aqueous dronescape, the beats seeming to hang weightless, drifting to and fro, as if driven by some strange tidal influence, all the while the background blossoming like a time lapse filmstrip, growing ever so much more washed out and ethereal, before finally finishing off with a dreamy, but strangely convoluted chunk of Pop Ambience, the sounds all hushed and hazy, dreamy and drifty, but the arrangement, stuttery and glitchy, the lurching stop/starts, giving the amorphous soundscape a strange sort of non-rhythm, which makes it all the more compelling, and strangely mesmerizing.
So gorgeous. Absolutely recommended for fans of all the Pop Ambient collections, as well as the Gas records, but really, anyone into dark electronic soundscapes and mysterious cinematic minimalism will easily fall under Mohn's spell.
This is not at all what we were expecting, but holy shit, is it cool. Moin is actually a side project / offshoot of Raime, whose gorgeously murky and bleak exercise in creeping, claustrophobic, electronic minimalism, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, was a HUGE favorite around here, but as Moin, that sound gets recast as something less electronic, and more, well, sort of noise rock, for lack of a better descriptor. If it's at all possible, and judging from this, it most certainly is, Moin is like a weird noise rock version of Raime, the programmed beats, replaced by dense, motorik, muscly drumming, the various loops and layers transformed into spidery minor key guitar melodies, the vibe propulsive, hypnotic, tranced out, and still very very dark. Imagine an even more stripped down Laddio Bollocko, the 'band' locked into seemingly simple hypno-rock grooves, and just churning out totally mesmerizing, shadowy heaviness. Opener "Murphy" almost sounds like a Sling outtake, fused with a little Rapeman, with some Godspeed ambience mixed in. And if that sounds like impossible band math, well, we would have thought so too. "Stacie" (all the tracks have people names, a la the first Slint record too, hmm), is much more stripped down and low slung, arranged more like an electronic track, brooding and slow building, more about the vibe, and the mood, and the rhythm, and the texture, the guitars crumbling and crunchy, but spare and sparse, melancholic and haunting. And finally "Clancy" lays down a mathy stuttery beat, beneath sheets of feedback, before the main riff rolls in, another strange sample layered over the top, the guitars jagged and percussive, very Albini-esque for sure, but even more restrained and textural, all with a sort of post punk / industrial feel, and like the other two tracks, totally trancey, minimal noise rock nirvana!
Not sure how many of you remember Richard Davies, but on his own and as one half of the duo Cardinal with Eric Matthews, he made some of the most totally brilliant, lush and orchestral pop records of the late nineties (even touring at one point with the Flaming Lips as his back up band!). Even those of you, like us, who totally loved all that stuff, may not remember Davies' first band the Moles. Originally from Australia, Davies quit law school in the late eighties to play music. The Moles moved to America but broke up in 1993 remaining relatively unknown. Their two albums remain masterpieces of shimmery, jangly indie pop. This collection includes cuts from their classic Untune The Sky record as well as several singles. The sound is sweet and spacious, dreamy and melancholy. Warbly organs, jangly rickenbacker guitars, sunny, reverbed harmonies, Davies' strange Robynn Hitchcock-sh vocals, all sorts of psychedelic production, and of course perfect, perfect pop songs. Fans of Belle And Sebastian, and similarly bittersweet pop should definitely check this out. Includes a bonus disc of rare and unreleased songs.
The Moles are definitely not a household name, at least in most normal households, which is definitely a shame. Not sure how many folks remember the band Cardinal, they only released one proper full length, back in the nineties, but to this day, it remains quite possibly one of the most perfect orchestral pop records ever released. But before Cardinal, there was the Moles.
Untune The Sky is the debut from New Zealand poppers The Moles, the band that Richard Davies called home, long before Cardinal, and while not nearly as lush or orchestral, it's a classic slice of primo late 80's/early 90's Flying Nun style experimental pop. Droning and hypnotic, with lots of jagged unfinished edges, weird almost industrial noise, Brit pop jangle and an almost Morrissey vocal drawl. But for as experimental as the Moles were, all of that experimentalism was wrapped around some incredibly catchy pop, hooks galore, not always proudly on display, sometimes nearly totally obfuscated, but just as often, set up right in front, and allowed to shine, an approach to pop that to this day still seems distinctly New Zealand.
Fans of the Tall Dwarfs, the Bats, the Clean, the 3Ds, the Chills, Straightjacket Fits, the Verlaines, could have easily missed out on the Moles, they were sort of underground even among the already underground, plus they were definitely a bit weirder, but now's the time to right that wrong, this stuff is timeless, sounding as good as ever, some incredible pop songs can be found within Untune The Sky, and half the fun is digging for them.
Originally released for this year's Record Store Day, Flashbacks And Dream Sequences collects (almost) everything recorded by these aQ beloved Aussie experimental jangle poppers. The Moles were never a household name, at least in most normal households, which is totally a shame, cuz their perfectly crafted bittersweet jangle pop sounds as good now as it did decades ago. Like lots of folks, we discovered the Moles a bit circuitously. Not sure how many folks remember the band Cardinal, they only released one proper full length, back in the nineties (you can find the review elsewhere on the aQ site), but to this day, it remains quite possibly one of the most perfect orchestral pop records ever released. And before there was Cardinal, there was the Moles.
The Moles is the band that Richard Davies of Cardinal, called home before that band was born, and while not quite as lush or orchestral as Cardinal, the sound is a classic slice of primo late '80s & early '90s New Zealand / Flying Nun style style experimental pop. Droning and hypnotic, with lots of jagged unfinished edges, weird almost industrial noise bits, plenty of Brit pop jangle, the sounds swirling and sweet and spacious, dreamy and melancholy, warbly organs, lush Rickenbacker guitars, sunny, reverbed harmonies, Davies' strange crooned vocals, sometimes Robyn Hitchcock-ish, other times closer to a Morrissey like drawl, everything swaddled in a hazy psychedelic production. But for as experimental as the Moles were, all of that experimentalism was wrapped around some incredibly catchy pop, hooks galore, not always proudly on display, sometimes nearly totally obfuscated, but just as often, set up right in front, and allowed to shine, an approach to pop that to this day still seems distinctly from that era / region. Yet seems impossibly prescient of what was to come.
Fans of NZ outfits like Tall Dwarfs, the Bats, the Clean, the 3Ds, the Chills, Straightjacket Fits, the Verlaines, could have easily missed out on the Moles, they were actually from Australia after all, and were sort of underground even among the already underground, plus they were definitely a bit weirder, but now's the time to right that wrong, this stuff is timeless, sounding as good as ever, these two discs are overflowing with some incredible pop songs, and half the fun is digging through all the psychedelic strangeness to find them.
This double disc set collects the group's albums proper, Untune The Sky and Instinct, as well as a treasure trove of singles, B-sides and unreleased rarities!
Finally reissued and available once again, thanks to the fine folks at Slumberland, this time on colored vinyl [whoops, almost all gone already, being repressed though], and CASSETTE!!
Fans of local pop geniuses the Ovens, which are a whole lot of you, but should really be ALL of you, rejoice, and enjoy another incredible blast of noise pop songsmithery courtesy of Ovens mainman Tony Molina, whose solo sound is essentially, and really EXACTLY like the Ovens, fuzzed out pop, metallic chugging, soaring harmonized guitars, a dreamy croon, and ridiculous self deprecating lyrics, INCREDIBLE hooks, and the sort of poppiness that will get lodged in your head forEVER. SO yeah, anyone who bought and loved the Ovens cd Andee released on his tUMULt label, well, you're gonna want, nay, NEED this. As always, Molina's songs (and by extension, the Ovens' as well) are equal parts Weezer, Thin Lizzy, the Beatles, Guided By Voices, Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, and pretty much every other fuzzy jangly pop band you ever loved, but all that boiled down and rendered into ultra brief, fragmented blasts of micro pop brevity, and we're talking boiled down as in thirteen songs in twelve minutes! One of those records you'll no doubt play over and over and over.
There are tracks like opener "Nowhere To Go", which sounds like it could have been plucked right off the Ovens cd proper, so much crammed into so little time, soaring harmonized guitars, the occasional metallic chug, the fuzzy main riff, the laid back vox, the melodies impossible to resist, and like many Ovens songs, blink and you'll miss it. None of that verse chorus verse shit, if you're lucky, you'll get verse chorus. Sometimes just verse! Like on tracks like "Sick As Riff", where you don't even get a riff, more like a dreamy little acoustic guitar interlude. Check out "Change My Ways", which should most definitely have J Mascis looking over his shoulder, the Dinosaur Jr vibe HUGE, right down to the guitar tone. And like we've said before, if Tony wasn't so brilliantly ADD, and could make a song longer than 90 seconds, he and the Ovens could/would/should be HUGE. But we're not complaining, it's part of their charm, the barrage of crazy hooks, perfect melodies, definitely pushing a lot of the same buttons Guided By Voices do.
So yeah, needless to say, these 12 minutes the probably gonna be our favorite 12 minutes of pop music this year, so grab one of these before they're gone, and leave a little space at the top of your 2013 year end lists, cuz even only two months in, and we're pretty sure, unless there's a new Ovens record that somehow pops up, this one's gonna be tough to beat.
