THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Entertainment for Maniacs". Indeed. Here's the latest issue of Norway's slickest black-metal scene-zine. A must for all fans of the genre, also for fans of the totally ridiculous prose in their by now notorious review section (due not only to the English-as-a-second-language problem, but also to general weirdness on the part of the writers. A sample: "They went to Romania to record this record, when in reality they should have travelled to Mongoland. Extremely non-action music without highlights, just again and again showing us how little creativity the band have in each of two many songs." And that's one that actually makes a lot of sense...) This issue features interviews with Darkthrone, Satyricon, Angelcorpse, Dark Funeral, and more. The interviews with Norwegian bands like Darkthrone are always great 'cause the Nordic Vision guys are buddies with them and thus have some other-than-usual questions to ask. A final warning: the cheesecake "Sex & Satan" photo section is too dumb for words. Readers are invited to write in with suggestions about how the model should pose...Andee already emailed a request for her to dress up like a "Hot Dog On A Stick" girl. So if anyone wants to pre-order issue #16, let us know.
So this is one of those records where the cover totally gives away what's hiding inside. These Philadelphia drift-heads sent us this disc a few weeks ago, and we were totally blown away. The music so nicely reflects the cover photograph: beautiful, expansive oceanic horizons, almost glowing with a looming grayness. With keyboards, violin, three electric guitars and a bass, this five piece really hone in on a super liquidity, an organic, fluid type of drone composition. Their third album out of four, The Distance Brings Us Closer resonates with long, lush tones and delicate melodies that seem to blend and form chords in mid air. Always moving and turning like fog creeping along the forest floor, Northern Valentine has a distinct sound that kinda reminds us of a more darkened and coastal Windy and Carl playing with Rameses III in some giant cathedral. Very dark and mysterious, the record travels through blissed out walls of trance inducing drones and into more textural noisy Fennesz-like atmospheres. Though they call themselves a post-rock band, the guitars and instruments used are so dripping with reverb and delay that it might be more accurate to describe Northern Valentine as a dark and drifting ambient group. At least that's how they sound on this particular record, as word on the street is their other albums have drums and are more propulsive and less drifty. Either way we dig what they're doing A LOT, and couldn't wait to share it with all of you! If you like anything Type records related or that recently reviewed Elegi, you'll love this too! Completely and utterly recommended!!
You're probably getting as tired of hearing this as we are saying it, but it has to be done. THIS IS SUPER LIMITED!! IN FACT, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT!! (Arghhh. Why lablels just don't press more when they know they can sell them still makes no sense to us...) SO, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!! SO ACT FAST!
Here's what we had to say about the cd version a while back:
We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal!
Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.
Full length number two from these California drugged out psychedelic dirge rockers, who now count a member of late great Monoshock among their membership, which makes sense, as these guys whip up a similarly murky moody protopunk psychrock sound, but where NP's debut was a more noisy garage-kraut sci-fi psych rock blowout, Late Night does seem to sonically fulfill its monicker, crafting a darker dirgier moodier minimalism, the songs sprawling dark brooders, all whirring organs, pulsing processed guitars, swirling FX and reverb drenched vocals, that slip from hushed croon to almost soulful falsetto, all set amidst streaks and swirls, smears and blurs, a druggy late night sonic comedown, the record occasionally exploding into some propulsive crunch, or distorted pound, but spending most of it's time oozing and creeping, electronic rhythms wound around fluttery effected melodies, some sci-fi synths remain, adding a haunting cinematic vibe to the proceedings, pop songs melting and oozing from the speakers, for a super obscure reference, think the organ driven dour pop of the Velvet Monkeys, the same sort of moody meandery moonlit minimalism, dirgey ballads crossed with slo-mo garage rock, indie rock jangle slowed way down and transformed into something more twangy and maudlin, reminding us of times of Aussie post punkers Naked On The Vague.
We loved the first NP record, but we're digging this one even more, a killer collection of murk pop gems, hooks everywhere, but wreathed in gauzy creep and wheezy shimmer, blurred shimmery buzz and hazy spaced out psychedelia. A new favorite for sure!
As if two simultaneous full-length releases were not enough, our favorite horror-show "black metal" band spits out this two-track ep. As always, with as much humor as horror. "Give Blood...Save Lives."
One of two recent, simultaneous releases by this amazing theatrical "black metal" band...
"When you wish upon a star your wish is granted here they are..." The concept here? An end-of-the world Xmas record, combining holiday cheer with apocalyptic Y2K doom, somehow referencing both Nostradmus and Scrooge.
Notre Dame is ridiculous twisted genius, there's no denying it.
Absolutely one of our new favorite "black metal" bands! One of two recent full-length releases (the other being a Xmas album!). Masterminded by Snowy Shaw (ex-King Diamond, Memento Mori, etc.) with female vocalist/dancer "Vampirella" as well as the De Sade brothers (Jean Pierre and Mannequin). Yes, it's silly. But it's also weird, surprising, catchy, and really well-executed, right down to the horror comix artwork and clever graphic design. The music is best likened to an even more over the top, operatic Cradle of Filth, with influences from '70s Italian prog-horror bands like Devil Doll and Goblin. And, I suppose, a touch of White Zombie. If the Addams Family were a metal band, they'd be Notre Dame! We're not usually a fan of metal that's so obviously tongue in cheek, but this is so genuinely great we can't help but love it.
Novatron is the latest project from Anthony Di Franco (former noisemaker for Skullflower/Ax and no relation to Ani). Black electronics, heavy doses of malevolent feedback drone and sporadic chugs of grinding guitar & hammering electronic beats make for a particularly bleak album. If you liked Noisegate or Neurosis' most droning moments, this album is for you!
Second record from this Georgia outfit fronted by Andy LeMaster from Bright Eyes. While not as patently weird as their debut, this is still a gorgeously off kilter chunk of moody, country tinged, beat driven indie jangle and swoon. Dark and minor key, with keening vocals that soar over an amazing array of harmonies, and rich sonic tapestries. Guitars are soaked in syrupy effects, drums become electronic skitters, acoustic guitars strummed over dark and mysterious sonic chasms, melodies twist and pulse, sounds drone and twang, warble and shudder, slither and wheeze. But the vocals definitely make it. LeMaster sings in a gorgeous and rich tenor, sounding effortless but tortured, commanding even at a whisper, miserable even at a roar. A sweetly perfect amalgam of Joel Phelps (ex-Silkworm), Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. Wasn't sure we liked this as much as the first one, but the more we listen, the more we absolutely do. Features guest vocals from Conor Oberst and Michael Stipe of R.E.M.
First lp from these Florida experimental blacknoise / psychedelic dronelords, and like their Solus Patior cd-r we reviewed back in 2012, it's another terrifyingly grim landscape of haunting black ambiance, post industrial crush, and blackened grimnity. The band lacing hellish vokills over softly swirling drifts, burying strange fractured rhythms, beneath cascades of glitch and squelch, often all blurred into something downright dreamy, but just as often, splintering into something abjectly noisy and filthy. The opening track here sets the template, with some venomous vocalizations WAY up in the mix, over a bed of muted pulsations, moaning melodies, mysterious chordal smears, the background sound surprisingly tranquil, those vox transforming the sound into something much more harrowing and hellish.
The rest of the record tends toward the more brutal, but manages the nearly impossible task of crafting a noise record, that manages to be hypnotic and listenable, mesmerizing, and in its own way, blackly beautiful. The shorter tracks here are blasts of grinding glitch, fractured electronics, clouds of swirling static, monk like chants, and crumblingly distorted gristle, often settling into downright beauty, but before you know it, launching right back into another burst of blacknoise or churning power electronics. The longer tracks deliver some seriously stunning sound design, fields of sonar pings, woven into crystalline sonic lattices, of hushed samples tangled into strange textures, those backdrops, often perfectly offsetting the more bombastic and abrasive sonics up front, although in many cases, NRIII let it drift, creating haunting ambience, epic sprawls of mysterious minimalism, the vokills are often present there too, but are WAY off in the distance, buried in the mix, like another layer of static, while above it, barely there sounds hover and shimmer. In fact, much of the second half of the record tends towards the surprisingly serene, the noisiness dialed back, crafter into something more textural, it's as if side two was designed as a blissed out soft noise come down antidote for the beautiful brutality of the first side. Fantastic stuff, and the sort of rare noise that might even appeal to those who generally find noise music is not their thing.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered.
What might you expect from a collaboration between KK Null, mastermind behind Japanese heavies Zeni Geva, and UK tuba doom duo Ore (you read that right, TUBA DOOM!)? Probably not this. Two tracks of hushed, delicate, droned out ambience. Moody, muted and morose, long tones unfurling gradually in a field of sculpted soft static, and distant keening melodies, slow shifting textures, drifting serenely, over a surprisingly tranquil sonic sprawl, a sort of blackened, nocturnal drift, deftly processed electronics, the mournful moan of the tubas, stuttery rhythmic pulses, all blurred into something downright dreamy and hypnotic. The flipside is even more minimal, the processed tubas transformed into lush, layered swells, pocked with glitch and crackle, and wreathed in field recordings of birdsong, a strange mix of ominous thrum, and pastoral ambience, the sound gorgeously lustrous and thick, the low end massive, a dark slo-mo swirl, that gradually gathers subtle momentum, beneath an increasingly dense cloud of singing birds, that begins to mutate into a tangle of psychedelic squiggles, that is soon subsumed by the churning bass tones and strange skittery fields of clipped static and glitchy electronics. Haunting and sinister and at moments harrowingly heavy, yet somehow still darkly dreamy!
Probably super limited too...
When we made the newest record by An Albatross record of the week a while back, we were pretty sure there could be no band faster and more convoluted and more prog and more fucked up, but I think maybe we were wrong. The curiously named The Number Twelve Looks Like You, take the furious grind prog of An Albatross, ditch the keyboards, and focus on being faster and more complicated and more totally baffling. And succeed, BIG TIME.
Every track here is a mind blowing tangle of complex convoluted leads, super mathy, ultra complicated arrangements, some of the most impossibly dexterous drumming EVER, as well as a cacophony of shrieking vocals, downtuned chugs, blown out crumbling production, and strange almost mosh like breakdowns. Huge blasts of hypergrind are butted right up against almost catchy melodic riffing, before the two somehow collide and join forces and become some ultra impossible melodic hypergrind. Or something. We're tempted to declare this the grind record of the year, but most grindheads would be baffled. Same with metalheads, there's so much space, and weird pop, and so many what-the-fuck moments, that it's impossible to call this a metal record either. But we can safely say it's one seriously fucked up, weird and wonderful, heavy and confusional, convoluted metallic psych prog freaked out grind. Seriously heavy weird shit that just might be your favorite record of the year, if you're into seriously heavy weird shit that is.
And as if to prove our point, and maybe draw attention to their numerical monicker, the last 4 tracks are some sort of baffling Number Twelve suite. Track nine is called "Die" and is 12 seconds of silence. Track ten is also called "Die" and is also 12 seconds of silence. Track eleven, also called "Die", all silence. Track TWELVE is 12 minutes and 12 seconds long, all silence, EXCEPT for the last 12 seconds, which consist of a 12 second long drum and kazoo jam. Fuck. Yeah.
Not a new release, but newly discovered, let's call it a warehouse find, dug up a little stash of this record, a killer cd collection of all the out of print vinyl releases from these Santa Cruz backpack emo / screamo noise rock, post punks. You can tell from that many-genre'd attempt at categorization, that these guys definitely defy description a bit, but if you like your punk rock, noisy, and catchy, rife with angular guitars, wild chaotic drumming, sinewy baselines, yelped vox, brooding post rockisms, and hooks galore, these guys will do it for you big time.
Not ever hugely popular, and infamous for erratic band behavior, these guys were one of the great unsung bands of the nineties, their live shows were intense, sweaty and energetic, the band letting loose as much as the crowd, the music the perfect soundtrack for that sort of wild, unabashed, heart on sleeve musical energy, but unlike many of the more screamo bands of the time, these guys were a lot more nuanced, letting some tracks stretch way out, experimenting with tone and texture, tension and release, their sound sometimes slipping into Fugazi territory, and at other times falling more in line with the Gravity Records Bands of the time, and at others sounding like some lost midwest emo band, that somehow wandered to the west coast. Even now, this stuff oozes emotion, and for folks who grew up in the nineties, or at least spent their formative musical years during that decade, every track here is pitch perfect, easy to imagine rocking out to any of these songs in a sweaty crowd in some living room or basement, or blasting these jams on your Walkman, or including them on a mixtape for that boy/girl you've been crushing out on. It's a kind of music they really don't make anymore, and by extension, it's a mood/energy/vibe, that music doesn't seem to have anymore either.
Nuzzles don't at all sound dated, as much as they sound of their time. And for younger folks who may have missed out on all this stuff, this is the sort of band, and sort of record, that just might open up a whole new (old) world of music, and listening to this stuff again now, we sort of forgot how goddamn great these guys are. In the age of band reunions, we'd kind of kill for one more chance to see these guys. Until then, this will likely be back in heavy rotation. Again.
We made the recent reissue of Teenage Filmstars' Star a Record of the Week, and plan on doing the same for the other TF records as soon as they're reissued. Furthermore, one person who works here even proclaimed TF better than My Bloody Valentine, and sticks by that inflammatory claim! But much like MBV, TF weren't always masters of tripped out backwards space psych, in fact long before TF became a swirling spaced out bliss rocking psychedelic juggernaut, they were a kick ass, old school jangly UK punk rock band. Teenage Filmstars mainman Ed Ball, and his partners Daniel Treacy and Joseph Foster also did time in the Television Personalities, and would later go on to start the Rev-ola, Artpop! and Creation labels. That's some serious pop star power for sure.
But back then, things were much simpler, especially the sound, many of these tracks are indeed credited to Teenage Filmstars instead of O Level, but TF were a whole different beast, channeling the sound of the Kinks, the Who, the Jam, the Undertones, the Rezillos (who even get name checked on one song), all angular post punk and groovy garage-y stomp, catchy and hooky and simple and rollicking and more pop than punk, whereas the O Level tracks seem a bit more abstract, a bit more out there, than the TF tracks, which are more catchy and energetic, but to be fair, if the tracks were uncredited to one band or the other it might be difficult to tell them apart. They are basically the same band after all.
There are some amazing tracks here, the all time classic "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape", the melancholy summery strum of "I Love To Clean My Polaris Missile", the Beatlesesque "Everybody's On Revolver Tonight", some tracks even a have a bit of ska guitar here and there, lots of bloopy dubby bass, the guitars are angular and jangly, the vocals are all over, a Cockney growl one minute, a sweet croon the next, and the songs are fun, catchy, noisy, poppy, the lyrics are super clever and snarky too, sometimes sharp and funny, other times subtly dark, all in all a killer comp of seminal UK punk / pop and a brilliant glimpse at the roots of a sound and scene that would eventually blossom into a serious obsession!
Amazing packaging, all the original tracks, tons of bonus tracks, lots of photos, super entertaining and confusional liner notes, almost as fun to read as the record is to listen to.
This disc is another big mystery, but one we're thoroughly enjoying as we try to work it out. A copy was sent to us ages ago, and on first glance it looked like some disc of classic Irish music. An old sepia toned photo on the front, an Irish looking font with the text "An Evening With Danny O'Really". Hmmm. So we sort of ignored it for a while, but the photo on the front was sort of haunting, and finally we realized the man's eyes were sort of fucked up, green and alien. Bug eyed. Staring out creepily. So we had another look, and noticed the legend "Music For Unusual People". The we flipped it over to find a huge flat topped swirly eyed green demon with a forked tongue, ripping the front cover in half. Interesting. Inside a worried looking woman holding the very record we're reviewing, and then a gatefold inside, a blurred photo of a man wielding a guitar, head to the sky, hands held high. Okay, definitely weird enough to merit further investigation, so we threw it on and were totally blown away. Not at all what we expected, but not sure what we were expecting at all.
At this point we're not sure if Danny O'Really is a man or a band, or if it's a made up name or what the fuck is going on at all!! What we do know, is that this is an awesome collection of manipulated sound, of transformed guitars. It's sort of a drone record, sort of a processed guitar record, a fucked up glitched out electronic record, sort of all three of those tangled up into one chaotic whole.
The opener, sounds a bit like some sort of SUNNO))) / Fear Falls Burning style guitar experiment, but instead of murky sludge, or blissed out hum, it's an ADD explosion of skipping textures, of blown out buzz, chopped and spliced into little snippets of sound, then sewn back together into a strange grinding industrial metallic drone patchwork. Lots of hiss and shimmer, bursts of damaged crumble, aggressive and tripped out, and pretty amazing.
The second track is a tangle of skittery drums and buzzing steel strings, ringing out in clouds of metallic shimmer, bits of percussion drifting in and out, very free and abstract, eventually locking into a propulsive but unhinged buzzing blowout.
The third track, the longest at 23 minutes, is a Niblockian drone, various high end tones, sine waves, processed chords, all drawn out and stretched into slowly decaying streaks, until eventually exploding into some sort of alien jam, the guitars snarling and heaving and twisting, the drums more little bursts of hiss, the whole thing gradually growing more and more muted and gnarled, almost like the tape is decaying, the tape player's batteries dying, the speed changing, the whole song crumbling.
The last three tracks are variations on a theme, bits of high end, fragments of atonal guitar, swirls of effects, graduations of buzz and whir, disjointed melodies buried beneath, billows of metallic grind and shimmer, all spread out into a drifting cloud of soft noise.
Might be a bit much for the dronedoomdirge crowd, but definitely heady listening for free noise addicts and lovers of abstract ambience and weird dronemusic.
Probably the easiest way to describe this would be 'George Winston plays Radiohead.' And if you were me (Andee) that would be enough. I love Radiohead. And I love all things George Winston/Windham Hill. -Not ironically- I might add. But if you're not me, and thank your lucky stars you're not, then I guess we can elaborate a bit. Gorgeous shimmery solo piano versions of all your favorite Radiohead songs, from hits to distinctly-not-hits. The melodies are intact, as are the basic song structures, but the effect of -those- songs being played on a piano is quite lovely. Simplified and stretched out, strange atonal clusters of notes replace electronic weirdness, simple spacious reverb takes the place of million dollar production, and the result is a simple, soft, gorgeously serene performance that reveals Radiohead's songwriting genius and O'Riley's sympathetic ear. Definitely veers towards 'elevator music' but c'mon, wouldn't you rather hear Radiohead in the elevator than Billy Joel or Elton John? I sure would.
AQ was (and still is) totally obsessed with DJ Screw the Southern Fried DJ that slowed all your favorite hits down to a crawl, making MTV hits into murky musical nightmares. When Screw passed away a few years back, there was a line around the block of DJ's willing to 'screw' tracks for a buck. And of course with that came some variations on the Screw formula. So here's a record of Southern underground hip hop skrewed ('k' instead of a 'c' just so we're not confused) and chopped, which from listening to this disc, we take to mean, the dj stops, scratches, and rewinds the -whole- record. The record which has already been slowed down (skrewed). None of this scratching over the top as embellishment, this is stopping the whole record...shka....shka...shka.....and then it starts up again. Pretty cool. Not as fun as hearing the big hits chopped and screwed but pretty damn cool nonetheless.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
San Francisco's electronica maverick O.S.T. has unfortunately not been doing as well career-wise as he deserves, as several records which were originally intended for release Plug Research and Reflective got shelved by the labels. Not too smart on their part, as all are great. And thankfully, at least this one got a proper release at last. On the Pthalo label, Chris Douglas (aka O.S.T. as well as Rook Vallard) presents his third album as O.S.T. "Death Notice," which despite its morose title is his most delicate record. It's a collection of poetic vignettes of delicate electronica melodies. While the palette used is similar to O.S.T.'s previous abrasive work, there is an interest not so much in the caustic but the beautiful, resulting in an album not unlike Coil's rejected "Hellraiser" soundtracks or Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2". Recommended!
The same people who have been going on and on about the death of the record store, have also been heralding the end of print media. But you know what, screw them. Who wants to spend their whole life sitting in front of a computer? Listen to music at your desk, shop for mp3's, read that article on the laptop... whatever. Sure that stuff is convenient, and we all partake a bit, but nothing will ever replace your local record store, thumbing through bins of lps or digging through stacks of cds, just like a gorgeously designed and laid out magazine will never be�replaced by a website. Especially a magazine as gorgeous and jam packed with black metal weirdness as Oaken Throne.�
Beginning life as a super strange, WAY oversized zine, impossible to ship, and difficult to display, but brilliant in its obstinacy, Oaken Throne has just gotten better and better, easily the best magazine devoted to underground black metal and strange heavy musicks. With amazing writing, great art, and some of the most stylish, but subtle layout and design of any magazine we can think of. The cover is always metallic silver on black, inside, the ads are often as striking as the illustrations accompanying the articles (which makes sense considering one of the two OT head honchos designs many of the ads as well). But Oaken Throne is not just another pretty corpse painted face. Nope, it's packed with articles and interviews on and with some of the most infamous artists in the black metal (and generally heavy) underground.�
This time around, a bunch of AQ faves: Asunder (featuring John from Weakling), Harvey Milk, Wold, Portal, Moss, Coffins, Caina, as well as some other amazing groups who have yet to get reviewed on the AQ site:�Acrimonious, Adorior, Archgoat, Blacklodge, Cult Of Daath, Dapnom and Necromorbus...
Tons of killer photos and yet another amazing illustration from AQ pal Justin Bartlett (whose art has also adorned a bunch of SUNNO))) and SUNNO))) related records). In addition to all that, there are a bunch of record reviews too... easily one of the best mags, metal or otherwise going today...
This is the first issue that includes comes with a cd, containing tracks from each of the bands featured in the magazine, none of them exclusive or rare really (except maybe the Asunder track, recorded live on KFJC) but a pretty killer metal mixtape (er... cd) for sure... As always, totally recommended and essential.�
We know, we know, it's too much to hope for, and it's never gonna happen, but somehow we just can't seem to stop thinking about it, and we're sure these guys are sick of hearing it too, and will no doubt be annoyed that it gets mentioned in ANOTHER review, but heck, that's what happens when your frontman fronted one of the greatest post punk bands of all time! And yeah, we're talking about a Drive Like Jehu reunion, and yeah, we called them post punk, cuz what else do you call a band like that, a band that is essentially sounds like no one else. But whatever, we're wiping it from our minds. Then though, there's Hot Snakes to contend with Rick From Jehu's post-Jehu and pre-Obits combo, who were nothing like Jehu, but instead were a raw, sloppy, garage-y ball of super rocking fire. Which brings us to the Obits, who on first listen do in fact sound quite a bit like the Hot Snakes, due in no small part to the fact that it's Rick Froberg (or as Rick From Jehu as he's still know to many) singing and playing guitar, but this is altogether something new, a bit more refined and perhaps, a little like an older wiser Hot Snakes maybe, where the Hot Snakes were all pent up aggression, and wild thrashing garage stomp, the Obits traffic in something much more measured, but no less rocking. Still garage-y and super stomping, but tighter, more varied. Froberg sings as much as he howls and wails, the guitars here don't just crash and clang, they shimmer and twang, there's definitely a surf element, the drums crisp and tight, the guitars spidery and crystalline more than crunchy and heavy. These guys played at our SXSW showcase and were awesome, so kick ass and energetic, and so so tight, taking that garage rock thing they have down pat and adding in all sorts of unlikely -other- stuff, some Beefheart bits, plenty of Mudhoney rawk swagger, but all filtered through the Obits unique take on rock and roll, and that's basically what this is, rock and roll, not punk rock, not post punk, not post rock. Just rock, or okay, maybe RAWK.
Needless to say, if you're a fan of any of Froberg's bands, especially Hot Snakes, this will definitely hit the spot. But even if you don't know what the hell we're talking about, Jehu this, Hot Snakes that, as long as you're into bad ass rock and roll, groovy garage, indie jangle, or any combination thereof, you should definitely check these guys out.
Cool packaging too (Froberg's an incredible artist as well btw!), all vintage and old comic book looking, the cd is in a cool Japanese style mini gatefold jacket with an equally cool (sort of creepy) printed inner sleeve, the lp similarly housed...
Regular readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, how obsessed we are with Obnox, aka Lamont Thomas, drummer for psychedelic noise rockers Puffy Areolas, who on his own, has been kicking out jam after jam, a body of warped, distortion drenched soul infused garage punk that is quickly eclipsing that of the Areolas mothership. Due in part to the relentless release schedule for sure, about a million records in the last year, but also, there's just something about Thomas' solo stuff, noisy and weird as fuck, home brewed and constantly on the verge of collapse, but also impossibly catchy, twisted idiosyncratic noise pop / garage rock, that doesn't shy away from slipping into blown out hip hop / punk hybrids, or delivering some straight up fuzz pop, or some wah wah guitar dosed soul punk, a sound that combines the noisiness and psychedelia of PA, with something much more personal and WTF?!
The opening one two punch here, "Prime Time Sista", might be the catchiest Obnox jam yet - fuzzy, dirgey, noisy, heavy, a little druggy droniness, a little stonery swagger, but melodies galore, and a hook / chorus most bands would kill for. But then comes "Molecule" which sounds like a garage punk Cypress Hill, all staccato groove, FX heavy wah guitar, almost rapped vox, but noisy as fuck and super lo-fi. imagine Rage Against The Machine covered by Rusted Shut! That fucked up, that weird, and that cool. And on it goes, the record veering wildly from jams like "Raindrops", another blast of fuzzed out garage pop bliss, this time rife with some super dramatic over the top vox, to tracks like "How To Rob (The Punk Years)" which is straight up lo-fi punk rock hip hop, and in between, all stripes of fuzzy punk, groovy noisy psychedelia, funk flecked garage rock, shredding epic jammage, short sharp punk-buzz stomp and distorted soulful ballads. Check out closer "Feeling Real Black Today", a distorted soul-punk dirge/ballad, that sounds like it could have come off that killer Forge Your Own Chains comp. Fuck yeah. Best Obnox yet for sure, every record he just keeps getting better and better...
Includes a download code too!
Another killer blast of blown out garage-soul punk-blooze from Lamont Thomas, who might be better known as the drummer for psychedelic noise rockers Puffy Areolas, but who on his own has been cranking out release after release of amazing hook heavy noisiness that manages to fuse the wild psych stomp of the Areolas with some impossibly deft lo-fi pop-smithery and some serious soulfulness.
After a brief blast of punked out reverb drenched noise, "All Hail The Deejay" is all seventies swagger, slathered in distortion and FX, a glammy falsetto sung stomp that sounds like it could have been plucked off the last Ty Segall Record, albeit a bit more rough around the edges. "Sit Yo Ass Down" is even better, doused in feedback, with a stuttery, almost funky groove, all wreathed in thick, distorted guitar buzz, and with another falsetto chorus that KILLS. "Thanks For Yesterday" dials back the buzz for something bordering on balladic, but then in swoops "(Do) The Clap" which sounds like an even noiser, sweatier, more chaotic and sweat soaked Oh Sees, the whole thing finishing off with the brief speaker shredding blast of "Buzz Clique", a dense tangle of super distorted backwards noise-psych, that almost sounds like a garage punk version of Teenage Filmstars!!
Includes a download code too!
They may be called Obscure, but these Norwegians are far from obscure, featuring a former member of Enslaved and offering up this, their debut long player, which is not black metal, or Nordic metal, or Viking metal, instead it's actually pretty kick ass, super catchy power metal, but not like cheesy Hammerfall sort of modern power metal, which we do like, but more old school classic '70s metal a la Thin Lizzy, heck they even open the record with a Thin Lizzy cover ("Massacre", mislabeled as "Coversensation", which perhaps appears later on the album where the tracklist says "Massacre"... whoops!) which slays, and had us super excited until we realized it was in fact a cover. But the originals here are pretty badass as well. A sort of epic doom flecked power metal with awesome guitar playing, classic riffing mixed with weird tangly leads and awesome guitarmonies, the vocals aren't super amazing but they definitely do the job, at it's weirdest, Obscure remind us a bit of Snowy Shaw's (Mercyful Fate) Notre Dame from a few years back, at it's least weird, there are some Kyuss-y moments, some serious Sabbath moments, a bit of Manowar screaming, and no small amount of NWOBHM worship, specifically Iron Maiden, even some Angel Witch.
The sound is epic, heavy, a bit doomy, a little psychedelic, the songs are super catchy, without ever slipping into cliche, or if they do, the embrace it and make it their own, managing to take tried and true metalisms and supercharging them, and twisting em up a bit into something awesomely headbangable, but still pretty weird nonetheless. Apparently they call it "doomgie" (boogie + doom?), but it pains us to even type that word, so let's stick with this mouthful: heavy groovy psychedelic doom-ed power metal!
With everyone freaking out about Isis, Pelican, Neurosis, Cult Of Luna, and all things massively and epically metal, all churning riffs and pounding majesty, it's hard to believe that most people have never heard, or even heard of German outfit The Ocean. Because in some ways, hard as it may seem to believe, they've almost managed to sonically outdo their obvious influences. The basic sound will be familiar for sure, massive guitars, pounding drums, propulsive, relentless riffing, blissed out, post rock parts that build and build and build into huge squalls of gargantuan guitarnoise, throbbing and pulsing, minor key and epic. But, in the case of The Ocean, they manage to add all sort of extra weirdness and not-so-subtle nuance than really makes Fluxion stand out. The presence of a full on string section (as well as some clarinets and other decidedly non rock instruments) is the first thing, which obviously lends the whole thing a much more stately, mournful feel, making them sound at times like a heavy metal Godspeed You Black Emperor. There's also a whole bunch of melodic flourishes scattered throughout, just here and there, that make what could be standard metal riffs become something a little bit out of the ordinary. The order of the day though is definitely metallic pummel, growled gutteral vocals over ultra thick Teutonic riffs, their German-ness shines through a bit in those instances, reminding us a bit of Rammstein, and when the keyboards kick in, there's definitely some Dimmu Borgir going on. And there is definitely a black metal vibe throughout, although it's bent and twisted to fit into The Ocean's moody metal framework. But the sound is so much more expansive and epic than most black metal, or most metal in general, especially when the guitars bliss out a bit, and strings are soaring, guitars picking out arpeggiated minor key melodies, everything eventually erupting into full on metallic bombast. And even in the midst of TOTAL METAL, the melodies are still moody and intense, the riffing is weird and the overal vibe is super dramatic and ultra intense. Fans of the 'new mood metal', a la Pelican, Isis, Cult Of Luna, as well as fans of the new metallic post rock (Conifer, Tides, Mouth Of The Architect, etc.) will be totally blown away!
Some of the most amazing packaging we've seen, a multi panel digipak, depicting a huge shcool of fish, with the band name and random spatters printed in a glossy varnish. The gatefold is a huge two panel spread of dead gutted fish, and inside all the liner notes and lyrics are printed glossy black on matte black. Wow!
Germany's THE Ocean, not to be confused with Ocean from the US, have always been a pretty impressive proposition, their soaring epic post Godspeed Neur-Isis style metallic grind, their phalanx of guitarists, their triple vocal attack, the fact that they're a sort of musical commune, but more importantly, the sound they make is MASSIVE, thick and churning and so so so so HEAVY. It boggles the mind how a band can sound this heavy, on record even, we fear for the brave souls that subject themselves to this sort of crushing brutality live.
A lot has changed in The Ocean camp since 2006's Aeolian. Where that record was moody and nuanced, majestic and cinematic, Precambrian is much more immediate, more furious and intense, the guitars downtuned and crunchy, even heavier than before, the vocals a metal howl, bordering on hardcore bark. The drums swinging wildly from monstrous pound to lightning fast blast beats. And the compositions, holy shit! Mathy and complex and convoluted, Much grindier than before, relentless and maniacal. But wait! That's only the first half of Precambrian. Ultra high concept, separated into two discs (or three lps), the first disc, if we're going by the cd (nicely designed as a 3" cd embedded in a 5" plastic disc) is short and sharp and fast and furious and is the first movement. But the second disc (the third and fourth lp) is much more of the Ocean we're used to. Beginning with some abstract clean guitar shimmering in an expanse of distant drones and mournful melodies, quickly shifting into some mathy post rock, all noodly melodies and jagged harmonies, some seriously dark riffing, even some clean vocals, piano, strings, this is epic shit, wound around gnarled bursts of furious intensity. The record is super strange, shifting from almost gypsy sounding folk, with moaning fiddles, and chime like melodies, to dens chunks of Neurosis style sludge, from expansive shoegaze-y bliss outs to full on Eyehategod howl and chug, tripped out almost-jazz to straight up chamber music, and back to punishing ultra heaviness.
Makes no sense to us that The Ocean guys are not as huge as Isis or Pelican or Neurosis. And if you dig any of those bands you owe it to yourself to get into these guys. The cd comes in a double jewel case, one normal 5"s disc, one 3" disc in a 5" plastic disc, with multiple booklets, packed with lyrics and woodcut illustrations. Wow.
But if any record was one for the vinyl nerds it's THIS ONE. So over the top. A triple lp, gatefold, the whole thing black on black, with silver and white ink, spot varnish flourishes, diecut front and back with amoeboid shapes so the inner sleeves are visible, metallic ink on matte black inserts feature lyrics and illustrations, each lp a different color, orange, dark swirled red and swirled grey. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Holy shit!!! It weighs a ton, and is so beautiful and damn if it wouldn't be worth buying just for the packaging. Thankfully the record is definitely worthy of the packaging. WAY recommended. ESPECIALLY the limited vinyl!
Who would have thought that the man behind the club destroying thud rock of now defunct Pink And Brown, the sweaty, hyper chaotic garage stomp of the also now defunt Coachwhips, the minimal metallic crush of the long buried Dig That Body Up It's Alive and the no longer with us hardcore faux-homo-house of Zeigenbock Kopf actually had a soft and sensitive side?? Well, he does, and has chosen to drop all the above mentione musical endeavors to focus all of his musical energy on the mysteriously monickered OCS.
The ubiquitous John Dwyer, for it is he, offers up two discs of home recorded madness, culled from random tapes/performances over the past couple of years, and damn if this isn't an unexpected surprise. Vascillating wildy between introspective, spaced out downer folk and gritty, hissing free noise crunch, OCS is a massive and unpredicatable ride through one man's damaged musical psyche.
Disc One, 34 Reasons Why Life Goes On Without You, or the "acoustic disc" as we like to call it, is made up mostly of solo guitar, recorded in random locations around San Francisco, so the gentle strumming and dexterous fingerpicking is often barely obscuring passing cars, slamming doors, hollered instructions to other players, and noisy housemates, adding another sonic layer to the already thick brew. Think: a seriously fucked up Fahey, armed with a four track, a casio, and an old beat up guitar. Think: an old Folkways 45 being played on a Fisher Price turntable and run through a bank of cheap effects. Gorgeous and shambolic, meandering and lovely, dark and unpredictable. The acoustic passages are constantly doing battle with an array of sonic intrusions, random snippets of found sound, bursts of angry buzz, tape drop out, random ambient happenings, malfunctioning casios, and distorted crooning. Mysteriously compelling.
Disc two, 18 Reasons To Love Your Hater To Death, or the "noise disc" as we like to call it, is a much more challenging affair, channelling the spirts of Borbetamagus, Skullflower, Albert Ayler, Throbbing Gristle and 100 years of NOISE into a shifting sonic noisescape of harsh squealing feedback, gorgeously gauzy and shimmery drones, ear piercing sine waves, distorted low end rumbles, huge washes of effected guitars, rhythmic pulses, darkly muted ambience, subtle barely-there melodies, inhuman vocalisations, massive Merzbow-ian walls of pummel, hyper minimal music concrete, alien lullabies and dreamy stretches of stygian gloom punctuated by bursts of hiss and hum. Intensely beautiful and challenging.
Ah, the many moods of John Dwyer, stepping outside the realm of costume rock and drunken swagger to lay bare a sensitive, if still sometimes quite noisy, soul.
Around here at aQ we live for the moments of musical discovery that seem to appear out of nowhere. On a rare occasion those moments are created by an artifact dropped off in the store by the creator himself. In our age of internet buzz and blogosphere strip mining, it's exciting and refreshing to be floored by a piece of proper wax passed on in person, without us knowing a damn thing about it beforehand. This record represents one of these moments, and Laws, the brand new lp from LA's William Marshall, aka Octavius, is really blowing our minds right now, so much so that we absolutely had to jump on the chance to make it record of the week! A dizzying assemblage of fucked up outsider post witch house, damaged and deranged avant industrial and whispered, hiss-wreathed melancholic brooding downer experi-techno-pop!
Laws is a multidimensional excursion through the depths of urban isolationism. The dead dreams of metropolis living and lifelong plans falling apart seem to be woven into the sonic fabric. You're all alone in this burned out city, and it's a dark, dark time. The sound is grinding, buzzing, thumping and industrial. The beats are constructed with rusted rebar shards, rattling about the charnel house floor, like some subwoofer-shook bones long forgotten. Octavius' caustic and restrained sound world creates an intensely claustrophobic mood. On tracks like "Apartments" and "Of Mask and Money", the sounds of sharpening knives and blistering white noise blasts commingle with a tense, gasping for breath vocal delivery. As the songs flow onward, layer upon layer of noisy mechanical skree stack up against beautifully stark and forlorn melodies. Haunting, discordant synth stabs add subtle harmonic depth to the tunes, as the vocals, seemingly hacked to bits, syllables left out or cut short, writhe to the beat. The sounds are abrasive and damaged and robotic, but there is never too much going on at one time and everything sits in the mix in such a way that the songs really breathe. It's got that hypnotic sonic subtlety of Berlin era Bowie mixed with the pulsating noisy gnash of Throbbing Gristle. Speaking of Bowie, one of the raddest moments on Laws comes in the form of a "cover" of "Breaking Glass". The low slung, heroin sheen funk of the original is replaced by a fiercely mechanical drum machine stomp, some heavy as fuck JK Flesh-like digitally distorted guitar chugs bashing with the beat, while cascading doppler blips and scraping synths swirl around the stereo field. The only recognizable element are the lyrics, although delivered in the by now signature manner in which Octavius uses his voice, and that is to say fractured and corrosive, hissing hypnosis. Totally bent and completely AMAZING!
There are moments of dark meditation, such as "CCC CCC" and "331 155". Moody, drifting soundscapes of splintered metallic klang, ping-ponging singing bowls, bolstered with aphotic, creepy crawly Carpenter-like synth drones. Beautifully oscillating cinematic ambience laid over what sounds like a far off string section unfurling some somber, elegiac melody. Psychic TV's "Silver and Gold" comes to mind, except with a mechanical bass drum throb twisting beneath the surface. These hazy, murky moments of sonic darkness serve as tension builders. Haunting and anxious and mesmerizing respites from the churning corrosive elements that make up the bulk of Laws.
"Liars & Thieves" is definitely the centerpiece of Laws. Abusive electro-psychosis, uncomfortable and polluted with an industrialized cacophony, and scrap metal pounding rhythms, Octavius allows his reflections on failure and anonymity to unravel in a harrowing, stream of conscious cypher. Imagine Tricky rapping over Coil's "Fire Of The Green Dragon". Paranoid and demented, the noise and words melding to create a bleak miasma of isolation. Moody and tense and wholly original.
Laws pushes all the right buttons for us. It references the WAVES (minimal/NO/cold/synth), without getting mired in any particular sub-genre. It's noisy and abrasive and grim, reminding us of the gnarlier moments of Coil and TG, but produced in such a subtle manner that new layers of sound present themselves with each listen. It's got enough Suicide like swagger as not to get totally bogged down in its mechanized, vitriol pummel. Hypnotic and tensely mesmerizing, the album as a whole is so consistent in its vibe, we find ourselves listening to it over and over and over again, just to get lost, deeper and deeper, in its seedy sonic underbelly.
Packaged lovingly in a minimalist, silver embossed white card stock sleeve, with a beautiful 16 page book of lyrics as well as some killer collage work by Brooklyn based artist Justin Sloane. Do yourself a favor and snatch this twisted gem up quick, really some of the most mind fuckingly special and original music we've heard around here in a long time!
Michael Lloyd, the creative force behind October Country, might be more familiar to some AQ customers as a member of the legendary West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. While OC is not nearly as drug addled and far out as the WCPAEB, their sunshine-y, shimmery soft pop, equal parts Beach Boys, Beatles and Byrds, is still flecked with hints of lysergic psychedelia and brief glimpses of jangly trippiness.
Lloyd was a musical prodigy: publishing deal at age thirteen, composed the soundtrack for Spielberg's first short film, played in a group called the New Dimensions as well as the WCPAEB. Through some random circumstances he began writing songs for the newly christened October Country (after a song he wrote, they were formerly the Last Two) and eventually became their primary songwriter and a sort of de facto band member.
The sound is light and breezy, sunny and care free. Think the Free Design, the Hollies, the aforementioned three B's. All bubby bouncy bass, jangly guitar, playfully honking horns, occasional sweeping strings, and lots of glorious harmonies.
Definitely not a 'weird' record at all, just a really awesome lost pop classic!
Loren Chasse, one of the chief swamis of the collective Jewelled Antler sound through such projects as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Franciscan Hobbies, Ov, and too many more to list (boy, they used to crank out those cd-rs!), records solo under the moniker Of (the similarly named Ov being the duo of Chasse with his wife and AQ-employee Christine, full disclosure). Simply put, we love Of (and Ov), of course... and are always happy when Chasse takes some time away from his other activities (the somewhat less musical of which being his day job as a public school teacher) to craft a new Of album, a phantom tendril from his own personal dreamworld reaching through our shared reality to caress our ears and cause imaginary crystals to glow softly somewhere within that part of our minds attuned to such blissful vibrations. Not to make this sound like any sort of New Age fluff though, as while as ethereal and meditative as this is, Chasse always incorporates some primitive grit into his work, his music full of feedback hiss, quiet distortion, ambient elemental field recordings of nature, the magnified rubbings of rocks and plants, objects close to the ground, part of the earth, illuminated (and given shadow too) by the radiation of a far-off, flaming star.
The music of The Sun and Earth Together is akin to a slowly turning mobile, as if it were giving off drones and tones as well as glinting with color and the reflections of light. As light shimmers, so does this music. As light dims, it dims too. The abstract sculptural shapes of this imagined mobile move in beautiful indeterminate patterns, much as the sounds Chasse conjures from disparate sources* as cymbalom and stones, autoharp and voice, bells and bowls, guitar and zither all drift delicately, and droningly, in phosphorescent clouds and constellations. This disc clocks in at 51 minutes, consisting of four tracks, each one longer than the last, from the three minute opener "Ignimbrites" to the 26 minute closing title track. All composed of tingling, whispered layers of lo-fi loveliness, gentle and graceful and ultimately glorious.
*we're guessing on some of these...
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Rocks Will Open is Chasse's latest, brought to us by Digitalis in an ultra limited arts and crafts edition of 100!! Yes we said limited! While the disc is being released in a larger pressing of 500, the first 100 copies (which we got 30 of!) come with a mind blowing exclusive tape called Morphological Echo! Yes! Basically a whole extra record!!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release AND the special limited edition cassette that comes along with it!! Once we run out of the limited version with the tape, which will most likely be sooner rather than later, folks who order Rocks Will Open will then get the cheaper tape-less cd version.
These outrageous '70s-sounding stoner rockers from up in Maine are back at last, after like a six year absence, with an excellent new opus of their over the top, hard riffing retro-rock. As we had expected, it's a doomy, proggy concoction, lots of Sabbath goin' on (the wailing, nasal vocals sound a bit like Mike Patton doing an Ozzy impression). Ogre don't hold anything back, this is a wild ride of unabashed old school heaviness with a theatrical flair, and lots of fuzz and wah.
Lyrically, the songs concern themselves with a range of subjects: the science-fantasy works of Roger Zelazny, Greek myth, the French and Indian Wars, drugs, madness. And then there's one mellow instrumental named after an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module.
Of further note, the song "Soulless Woman" is a cover, originally by an even more obscure band also named Ogre, who were actually from the '70s, and its sure seems to be a lost garage psych classic, giving this album a bit of a detour into more of an Uncle Acid or Satan's Satyrs direction, not that they were too far removed to begin with.
Italian import, on the label best known as the home of cult doomster Paul Chain. Gatefold miniature-lp style jacket.
It seems like the demise of SF's favorite garage rockers has been greatly exaggerated, considering there's now this, a brand new record, and the fact that the band are about to embark on another massive tour. So we can all breathe a sigh of relief, save our mourning for some future date, and for now, can revel in yet another blast of garage pop brilliance from John Dwyer and company, whose latest, Drop, is as we might have predicted, a doozy!
After a brief bit of percolating synth shimmer, which had us thinking that maybe Dwyer's solo record as Damaged Bug might have bled over into his main project, the song explodes into what might be the heaviest hookiest jam yet from these guys, but fuzzed out guitars, swirling sci-fi synths, almost stonery and spacey and psychedelic sounding, but as always rife with melodies and hooks galore. And from there on out, it's just classic Oh Sees, fuzzy, jangly, hooky, albeit with a bit more synth than we remember (seems like maybe that whole Damaged Bug thing did have an effect on Thee Oh Sees!), "Encrypted Bounce" adds wild tangled angular guitars, and squiggly synth shimmer, to a stripped down garage groove, as does "Savage Victory", all spaced out and laced with strange sound effects, big blurts of fuzz guitar crunch, all trippy, and very psychedelic, with fields of swirling backwards guitars and affected noisescapes, that experimental noisiness all over Drop, the band crafting some of their catchiest music yet, but then going hogwild on the psychedelia, creating a sound that's at once totally beholden to the classics, but all tangled up and twisted into new, weird, far out shapes, and Dwyer not shying away from whatever the fuck he wants to do, whether it's the strange horn blurts on "Put Some Reverb On My Brother", the almost Redd Kross sounding sixties buzz pop of the title track, the lysergic Beatles-esque baroque pop of "King's Nose", or the synth heavy shoegaze trip out of "Transparent World". And yet, it all remains distinctly Thee Oh Sees. And we say it every time, but this really might be the best record yet from these guys, and if it really is the last one, what a way to go. But here's hoping, that even with Dwyer's move down south, they can keep this going, cuz we're already playing this to death, and already looking forward to more...
Only on cd for now, lp repress coming soon!
Listening to Help, it's almost impossible to hear anything but mere traces of the chaotic noise rock path John Dwyer followed to make it to Thee Oh Sees (aka OCS, and Ohsees), but it's that noisy past, and penchant for musical shit stirring, that informs the jangly garage pop on Help, and transforms the band's jangle and shuffle and pound into near perfect buzzy fuzzy catchy retro pop, and makes it easily the best Oh Sees record yet. And a definite contended for (garage) pop record of the year.
Most of us were introduced to Dwyer via his two piece noise rock costume rock combo Pink And Brown (after brief stints in some well known Providence outfits), but unlike most of the costumed joke bands at the time, P&B offered some serious songsmithery along with the unhinged live shows and audience baiting. A brief stint drumming for SF grindlords Burmese led directly into the band that brought Dwyer to worldwide attention, the Coachwhips. Arguably one of the best live bands around, the Coachwhips made up for what they lacked in actual songs with sweat and alcohol soaked performances, utter chaos, and sometimes literally, ultra destructive houseshows. Coachwhips shows were all about the energy, the vibe, jumping around, flailing wildly, getting wrecked and having a blast. Sometimes though, that energy was difficult to translate to home listening. Take away the sweaty throng and the deafening volume and, well why would you want to do that?
And so came the Oh Sees, originally called OCS, and a double cd release on Andee's tUMULt label a few years back, essentially a solo record, one disc of folky fluttery lo-fi twang flecked pop, another of corrosive textured noise experiments, which ended up being, for many of us, one of our favorite post Pink And Brown Dwyer documents. OCS transformed into The Oh Sees and became a real band, and seemed poised to follow in the sonic footsteps of the Coachwhips, stripped down garage rock, super lo-fi, lost of brittle high end, yelped distorted vocals, tribal drumming, but there was definitely something more, more refined, more catchy, more timeless sounding, something much more than garage rock, a sound that reminded us of sixties girl groups, of Phil Spector productions, raw and primal, but lush and expansive and catchy. But that catchy lush side of the Oh Sees remained hidden beneath squalls of tweeter abuse and fractured effects, a wall of fuzz and buzz more than an actual wall of sound. Until now.
Help finds the band making their first record for garage rock stalwarts In The Red, which is ironic as this is Thee Oh Sees' least typically garage rock record yet. Instead, the sound is total pop, plucked fresh from a time capsule buried in the sixties, the guitars jangle as much as crunch, lots of reverb, the vocals wreathed in a haze of delay, lots of female vox, the choruses are lush, the drums are still tribal, but much more measured, often quite spare, the arrangements though are anything but classic, sometimes getting super abstract, but never losing their catchiness, sometimes adding all sorts of extra distorted overload, but just as quickly slipping into something smooth and groovy. Minus the weird moments and the fucked up productions, some of these songs do really sound like they were just transported forward four decades.
"Meat Step Lively" starts off all Cramps-y, with a fuzzy grinding main riff, simple pounding rhythm, but adds some awesome female vocals and background 'ooooohs', some spidery lead guitars, and coolest of all breaks it down with about a minute to go into a swinging sixties smoke-y jazzy flute flecked groove. "The Turn Around" is a minute of blown out drum damage and fractured effects, but wrapped around a sing songy main riff, and some cool distorted and reverbed vox, in total Guided By Voices fashion, they truncate what could have been the jam of the record, and launch into "Can You See", which is all slithery and washed out, with angelic background vocals, shuffling drums, and a cool dreamy bridge, but the whole thing still manages to sound ominous and intense and weirdly sexy.
The record closes with "Peanut Butter Oven", which we first heard on the recent (and sadly now out of print) Awesome Vistas 12", and it's obvious why this was the single, it definitely is THE jam of the record, with it's simple stripped down jangle, workmanlike drum beat, and soaring minor key strings, and let's not forget the gorgeous harmony vocals draped over the singing strings and that irresistible main riff.
And so it goes, every track here is a gem, each one offers up something new, some twisted take on that classic sixties garage rock sound, but it's that sound revved up and filtered through Dwyer's gloriously cracked pop sensibilities, bathed in buzz and fuzz or stripped way down and left shimmery and crystalline, sometimes wrapped in HUGE hooks or allowed to simmer and slither, the catchiness subtle yet so irresistible, and unlike past efforts, even at its noisiest, the noise element seems more an organic part of the sound, and is often shaped into something barely recognizable as noisy.
We knew Dwyer and company had it in them, and now they've proven it, BIG TIME. Dying to see what they come up with next, if they could possibly one up this here disc, but hell, for now, Help has us way satisfied. And records like these are exactly why they invented that repeat button on your cd player. Folks with turntable will just have to get up and flip the record over and over and over, again and again and again.
WAY recommended.
More spaced out free noise racket from the amazing Last Visible Dog. OHM are a New Zealand free rock outfit treading similar territory as the Dead C, but the sound is more sparse and spread out. Sputtering drums and droning guitars, warm feedback and dreamy peals of high end squeal. Warble guitars and shuffly jazzy drums, played in the middle of a huge empty hall while sharp bolts of guitar hum and amp buzz are deflected by gentle strumming and whispery melodies and multiplied into occasional walls of bzzzzzbrrrrrghhhhh. This single 40 minute track basically documents the entire existence of the band OHM. Gorgeous and spare. Campbell Kneale (Mr. Birchville Cat Motel) guests. Features a hilarious cover spoof of the Who's maximum R+B logo!
After a self released 7", and a split single with recent Record Of The Weekers, weirdo biker metal ne'er-do-wells Satans Satyrs, Canadian noise rockers / metal punks Ohmwar deliver their first full length, and it's sonically quite surprising, super polished and all over the sonic map, taking the Maiden / Motorhead / Speedwolf sound of their 7" and infusing it with a surprising amount of poppiness, crafting a record that manages to be heavy, and punky, but also impossibly catchy, the opening track begins with some chiming Sonic Youth like guitars, and thick fuzzy bass, before eventually erupting into something more punked out, and that's not even mentioning the strange almost reggae sounding outro (!)...
The second track starts off crazy poppy too, with some almost NWOBHM sounding guitar harmonies, which blur into feedback drenched tones wrapped around some galloping punk rock crush, peppered with little blurts of tangled progginess. And it really doesn't settle into a single sound for the rest of the record, although in not settling, they seem to be defining their own super distinctive sound, a dizzying hybrid of post punk poppiness, mathy metal, and fierce punk rock stomp. Tracks like "Blithe Reaction To An Unfortunate Life", begins all slow burn majesty, and almost Godspeed like slow build, before transforming into a strange (at least for metal/punk) bloopy guitar melody, draped over another galloping rhythms and some thick, rumbling bass buzz, the guitars then splintering into atonal/angular shards of keening high end, the sort of sound that at a slower tempo, minus the gruff vox, could easily end up being some twisted avant art rock, and even in its punkier incarnation, much of that art rockiness remains, and then mid song, there's a killer little guitar lick/melody, that will stick in your head like crazy. And so it goes, most of the songs clocking in around the two minute mark, but these guys cramming as much as they can into those two minutes, with almost every song offering up some sort of unlikely sonic surprise, transforming, what could have been straight ahead metallic punk, into a way more twisted and progressive record, pop punk collides with chugging metal, nineties style math rock bleeds into pounding hard rocking, Refused sounding anthemic post-hardcore mixes with straight up heavy pop, all wound up into something pretty goddamn great.
Awesomely over the top, black and white Nick Blinko style cover art, but Blinko by way of Bosch, a twisted punk rock underworld of mouse headed hipsters, people with exposed spines, astronauts on rafts drifting across lakes of blood, insects on swings, man eating fish, alien swamp sound systems, wheelbarrows full of teddy bear skeletons, creepy cave eyes and more. Includes a massive glossy, fold out poster/lyric sheet, with more of that gloriously gruesome and garish artwork.
A beautifully chaotic, spastic slab of plunderphonia from our pal Chris' Soft Abuse label. Old Bombs are one of those bands that all live in different cities and therefore compose and collaborate through the mail. An ideal working method for a music so inherently fractured and schizophrenic. Chopped and reassembled, reappropriated and reimagined, this is a complicated rhythmic sound collage that hints at IDM, abstract sound art, wacked out noise rock and all stops in between. Stuttery rhythms are constructed from old radio clips and ambient backdrops are woven from found sounds and bursts of instrumental chatter. Glitched out electronics collide with random instrument buzz and tape drop out while melodies deftly weave between the wildly careening sounds, trying desperately not to be noticed. Fucked up and awesome. Equal parts Wolf Eyes, People Like Us, Autechre, Merzbow, Lesser but somehow nothing like any of them, Old Bombs make a truly damaged and beautiful noise.
God, I love Ol' Dirty Bastard. Remember on that awards show, where he was so messed up he nearly walked into a fountain of flames? Or remember that other awards show where ODB ran on stage and started rambling incoherently about the Wu-Tang while some poor
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Awesome. Simply awesome. Subtitled "A Sound Wave Replication Dissertation On Alien Simian Technology in 13 Chapters", Old Man Gloom's album is a schizophonic album with ultra-heavy post-hardcore/grinding metal in the tradition of Cave-In or Cavity interspersed with deep dronological investigations that could have easily been an Organum or Jonathan Coleclough record. Hydrahead couldn't make this fit with the rest of their catalogue, but released it on their Tortuga subsidiary. Drones, metal, and monkeys... everything that Andee could ask for in an album.
The second of two new releases from the always kick ass UK label Paradigms. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the debut from black doom crust heavies Bosnia, and here we have the debut from UK doomsludge duo Old Mayor, just guitar and drums, these two whip up a fierce frenzy, that the label compares to both Burning Witch and Slint, which makes sense, the band slips easily from moody post rockisms, into full on blackened metal meltdowns, the vocals, howled and harsh and hateful, the guitars unfurling soaring mournful melodies, and thick corrosive chords, the band lurching through reverb drenched fields of downtuned chug, gorgeous crystalline harmonics, pounding drummage, before turning on a dime and stretching out into some long languid shimmer, that actually reminds us more of Engine Kid than Slint, before exploding again into a pounding minor key dirge metal blowout.
Here and there things slooooow waaaay doooown and the band do get all Khanate, the guitars ringing out, the drums a sporadic plod, but those stretches of slow motion heaviness are perfectly balanced by the hushed post rockisms, and the sheer epic melodiousness of even the most crushing brutal parts. The recording is really strange too, turning the stripped down minimal instrumentation into something almost orchestral, the guitars are thick, massive, dense, the drums LOUD and way up in the mix, both alternatingly wound tight, or sparring dizzily. And when the band lock in tight, the song is transformed into something else entirely, woozy waltzy post doom math sludge bliss.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
As of the writing of this review, it's the day after Christmas, and as is befitting such a holiday, this list is HEAVY on the black metal, our little way of helping those black hearted souls and accursed spirits out there celebrate in their own demonic way. But what that also means, is we were down near metalled out. There's only so many ways you can describe something that is black and buzzing and grim and brutal and frosty and kvlt....
But the second we threw this one, none of that mattered. This was the only black metal there was, virtually erasing all that came before, a sound so powerful and unique and YES, black and buzzing, that we were immediately reinvigorated and filled with sinister black glee. If glee can in fact be either sinister or black.
Since we first reviewed Old Wainds a while back, people have been obsessed, and as we mentioned in the other reviews, OW are one of the few bands that virtually ALL other black metal bands seem to worship. Whatever it is abut these mysterious Russians, they've tapped into something magical that no one can seem to get enough of. For a brief period we had all the Old Wainds records, but gradually it become harder and harder to get them back in stock. Until now. Finally a US label has taken up the mantle and embarked on a comprehensive OW reissue program, elsewhere on this list you'll find the mind blowing Scalding Coldness, reissued, and WAY cheaper, and almost more exciting than that, this record right here, their first full length from back in 2001, Religion Of Spiritual Violence, was the only one we had never been able to get. So for a lot of you, this will be the first time you'll get a chance to complete (or begin!) your Old Wainds collection, and needless to say for fans of all things buzzing and black, this is IT.
It's really hard to put into words exactly what makes Old Wainds different than the hordes of other BM outfits, they definitely have an old school Darkthrone vibe, sort of punky, but they're just as likely to explode into a burst of impossibly fast blasting blackness a la Immortal or something. The vocals are super strange, less a demonic howl and more a sort of evil croak, and the lyrics are in Russian which makes it even cooler. But the music, while no doubt indebted to other BM bands, manages to sound like nothing else. Swirling chaotic riffing, strange mathy drumming, the cymbals super loud in the mix for some reason, as are the vocals, almost like the buzzing guitars are just a sheet of fuzzy blackness, a backdrop for the satanic invective and the barrage of crashing cymbals.
This is indeed grim and harsh stuff, whether churning along in a midtempo Burzumic pound or spraying black fury within a flailing blast, the sound is just so NOT normal, on the surface it sounds like 'black metal', but it's twisted, cracked, infused with a harrowing anger, with a utterly bleak worldview, with a unfailing misanthropy, which leaches into the sounds, and beyond all that, as with any black metal that demands repeated listening, there's tons of stuff going on, including a ton of hooks, sure they're bent and blackened and buried beneath layers of grit and grim and buzz, but they seep out, some of these riffs are as catchy as any pop song.
Just listen to the sound samples, read the other reviews for more about the band, their records, their sound, but odds are, like us, you'll be forever in thrall to the grim black majesty of Old Wainds, a convert to their Religion Of Spiritual Violence.
We once mentioned that the best way to discover the most amazing music in any genre, is to check out what other musicians are listening to. Never has that been more true than with black metal. A genre predicated on bands' underground status or level of grimness, how cult or frosty they are. Which means, some of the best bands aren't often heard outside of tiny circles, many times just other bands and close friends. Limited tape releases, cd-r's, demos. You have to be super tenacious to really be on top of the latest greatest grim horde from Bolivia or Paraguay who only have a single cassette release, and it was limited to 10 copies, each one doused in the band's blood.
Such is the case, although not quite so dramatically with Russia's Old Wainds. Ask any of the BM elite. Ask Wrest from Leviathan, Ancalagon the Black from Crebain, Hildolf from Draugar, Azentrius from Nachtmystium, and any one else you can pull from their blackened crypts, who their favorite black metal band is, and odds are all or most of them will tell you Old Wainds. And we might have to concur. The frustrating thing is most of the Old Wainds discs are only available on eBay at totally exorbitant prices. But you know what, it's completely worth it. Old Wainds play some of the most primal, furious, gloriously buzzy black metal we have ever heard. Although it might be better to start here, with this normally priced cd reissue of the bands Withers Of The Wainds demo.
Each track a blast of cold black winter winds, swirls of murky buzzing riffage, thrashing drums, and super insane vocals, that are strangely processed / affected so they sound like some strange death rattle, drenched in reverb, like the battle cry of some pterodactyl / rattlesnake hybrid. So completely alien and harshly harrowing. But perfect for the bleak buzzing blackened landscapes below. Killer riffs (you can pretty much boil ALL metal down to their main component, the riff), a murky production that swaths everything in a gauzy black veil, and those insane over the top vocals, all whipped into an impossibly furious black attack.
Absolutely and utterly essential black metal. We'll do our best to track down the rest of the Old Wainds discs that are available (not many? none?), and we'll wait patiently for the out of print ones to be reissued (or reissue them ourselves, if Andee can get in touch with the band), but for now, hails to Arma Diaboli for reissuing this disc and saving us all $50, and allowing us the opportunity to finally bask in the unearthly black glow of Old Wainds!!
We've long been shrieking and demonically howling the praises of Russian black metal horde Old Wainds, but until recently, we had been unable to track down any of their releases. One of their old demos was re-released (Withers Of The Wainds) which was much easier to get, and then slowly but surely we managed to track down the rest of their releases. We reviewed the godlike Scalding Coldness a few lists back (we're still waiting for our restock, thanks for being patient) and this time we've got a killer split, between Old Wainds and their fellow countrymen (and Old Wainds offshoot) Nav. We reviewed the full length lp from Nav a while back but were unable to get their cd (we're still trying) so for lots of folks this may be your first chance to hear Nav.
Anyway, like we've said in the past, a true measure of a band, is who is listening to them, especially when it's other bands, so when we say Old Wainds is EVERYBODY'S favorite (and we're talking Crebain, Leviathan, Xasthur, Nachtmystium, Andee!!) that's pretty high praise indeed.
And not at all unwarranted. Old Wainds are the Blizzard Beasts of the East. A howling buzzing blast of frosty fury, so intense and relentless, a completely epic black buzz, but with incredible riffs, amazing arrangements and some seriously intense vocals. Not as bizarre as they were on the Withers Of The Wainds demo, but much harsher and hellish than on Scalding Coldness. Through The Chaos To Eternal Winter (Old Wainds' half of the split) is 18 minutes of unbridled brutality, black beauty, so gloriously heavy, recorded way back in 1999, this sounds as heavy and intense as most of the bands peddling their black metal wares today. Three blasts of buzzing black brilliance, the fourth a haunting ambient folk drift, complete with dirgey downtuned guitar and disembodied minor key piano, and harsh reverb drenched vocals.
Perfectly matched, and in some ways maybe even better than the Wainds (gasp!), are Nav, the project of Old Wainds drummer Izbor and featuring at least one other Old Waind in its ranks. The sound is similar, grim and frosty, but somehow the buzz is bigger, thicker, with even less melody than Old Wainds, and more blast, the vocals are distorted and buried in the mix, the songs are peppered with bursts of lurching midtempo Burzumic buzz, but Nav spend most of their time buzzing along at hyperspeed, the blackened buzz so thick and relentless, it becomes a fuzzy drone, mesmerizingly blurry and blown out. the drums so fast they are like another layer of sonic fuzz. But it's not just buzz, the riffs are killer, the melodies are there, and are catchy as hell, just completely suffocated by the icy black buzzing of the relentless guitars and nonstop blasting beats. The final track begins with some reverb drenched acoustic guitar, quite lovely and dreamlike, before being engulfed by a strangely melodic and dramatic minor key black blast, almost like a black metal Godspeed, epic and keening and oddly enough, really really pretty.
Absolutely essential, as with all things Old Wainds (and Nav for that matter)...
That crude & spooky, black & white linocut (?) cover art looks like some cult black metal cassette or floorcore noisepsych lp from nowadays. But it actually heralds an album of '80s Italian underground metal weirdness, which is basically one of those obscure microgenres that we here at Aquarius might just be getting a bit obsessed with (other examples: Scandinavian skweee, field recordings of frogs, Sheffield black psychedelia, singing saw music, and the New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal). Well, at any rate we're into a few weird '80s underground Italian metal bands, previously having written about Black Hole and Dark Quarterer... We'd put Flames Of Hell in there too but they were from Iceland, not Italy, though somehow seem like they'd belong. There's also the likes of Death SS and Bulldozer, and going way back Jacula, but it's Old Yron that we should be talking about right now!
That's the band responsible for this record, originally released in quite limited fashion in 1989, though it sounds somewhat older than that (Old Yron actually having their beginnings back in 1974). Six tracks suffused with traditional metallic atmosphere and amateur charm. Being Italian, it's got a classically influenced, proggy bent to it, but that's filtered through an extremely budget DIY production, enhanced perhaps by what may be the crackle of the vinyl from which this (fully legit however) cd reissue was probably transferred.
Old Yron deliver the goods in the form of high pitched screams and Yngwiesque guitar shred, on such songs as "Old Yron", "Crazy Lady", and "Strange Vision"... strange vision indeed, as OY seem to be all about taking their mundane existence and finding something dreamlike and weird about it, particularly involving women if at all possible, in which case they are voluntarily "Slave To Dream"! Speaking of women, their regular singer's histrionic, operatic stylings are joined by the atypical "jazzy" singing of a guest female vocalist on "Window In The Dark" which is probably our favorite track here, for sheer eccentricity.
The album ends with the Paganini inspired instrumental "Up-Start", which sets us up for this cd's two bonus tracks, modern (circa 2003) recordings of classical guitar by OY mainman Antonio "Tony" Ferrari. While much slicker than the original Old Yron album itself, they can be seen as a progression from it, and/or perhaps can be considered a palate cleanser after all the very metal, lo-fi, yet cultured wailing of the album proper.
The cd booklet includes thorough liner notes by Ferrari, presented in both English and Italian. Thanks for Shadow Kingdom for digging this up, how they discovered it we don't know, but it's a unique find and we're glad to have it, it'll certainly serve as our '80s Italian underground metal weirdness fix for a little while!
Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff. Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it...
This is probably the most laid back record on FFlint, but that's not to say it isn't still intense and incessant. Tranquil soundscapes (processed field recordings made in Norht East Wales) are mixed with pulsing synths, bells and chimes, and warm drones, making for a soothing and dark and an amazingly beautiful record.
Not sure how we stumbled across this. And it seems foolish to state once again, in a review of a house music record we have been digging BIG TIME, that we don't in fact really like house music, so fuck it, we found a couple tracks by Omar S on some aQ pal's website, and were immediately blown away, apparently he's a bit of a big deal in the world of house music, from Detroit (obviously), and while most Fabric comps feature proper DJ sets, for this one, it's all him spinning his OWN tracks, which is just fine with us, we've been listening to this nonstop since we first got it in.
Needless to say, this is a variant of that kind of house music we DO like, super stripped down, minimal, skeletal, very Kompakt for sure, mostly just beats, wrapped around barely there loops, abstract melodies, tons of space, all about the pulse, just listen to "Strider's World", that's the track that sucked us in. It begins all crunchy and big beated, before mellowing out a bit, and then... what? The main rhythm is some looped video game sound (from the game Strider? We checked, being the nerds that we are, and it didn't seem like it), how rad is that? Draped over a skittery rhythm and a repeating minor key melody, it's only 4+ minutes, but we would have been psyched for it to be twice that long. Heck, we would have been happy if the whole 72 minutes was just that song, but it hardly matters, the rest of the disc is pretty much just as rad, bloopy and skittery and hypnotic. Hard to imagine people dancing to this stuff, but for chilling out, it's perfect, all blissed out and late night sounding, dreamy and totally mesmerizing. There are a couple tracks that get a bit to 'diva', but just skip those and the rest of the disc is pretty much flawless, and definitely one of our new favorites, and once again, has us reassessing our seemingly barely applicable anymore generally negative stance on house music...
Like all Fabric comps, comes in a cool metal box, wrapped in a printed slipcover. NICE.
Still more metalcore, and STILL we can't get enough. This is some seriously punishing, pummelling brutality. Plenty of death metal chug and that double kick/muffled guitar syncopation that drives me crazy no matter how many times I hear it. It wouldn't be metalcore without some sensitive emo-boy breakdowns, and there's some of that here, but those sensitive moments are brief, and before you know it are buried under a full metal crush, squealing feedback, pounding double kick, paint-peeling riffs, throbbing earthquake bass. On Broken Wings seem to have a thing for the half time breakdown, that slow-down-to-a-crawl, guitar tuned so low the strings hang loose from the fretboard, molten lava riff, with sub-human death metal grunt vocals, and Metallica's 'One' style double kick bursts. SO HEAVY. It kills me. A wicked wall of sludge, grinding and throbbing, before it erupts into a full-on metallic fist to the sternum. There's also some weirdly melodic post rock bits, but even those bits are slathered with massive drop-D (or C) riffs that mow down everything in their path leaving a stage full of destroyed equipment and a pit full of broken bodies. There's even a couple handclaps(!), that's right just a couple, dropped in the midst of the metallic maelstrom, but you'll just have to find those yourself. So good. Quite possible the heaviest metalcore record yet!
The second of two new releases on the always kick ass Paradigms label from the UK. The first being the reviewed-elsewhere-on-this-list latest release from 4AD ethereal drifters The Victims Shudder, the other, being this, the latest slab of crushing black ambience and deep dark dronemusic from Sweden's Ondo. Weirdly enough, we were already fans having dug heavily the cd-r released on 200mg a short while back, and were already pining for more, and voila. Whereas that cd-r was a single looooong song, this disc is split into distinct movements, each a bleak and caustic chunk of truly ominous ambience. Actually, there is so much stuff going on, and this is so dark and heavy, it's almost disingenuous to call it ambient music. This is cinematic abstract free noise drone music. Heavy enough to worm its way inside the ears of drone inclined metalheads, but dark and blissed out enough to keep the drone obsessed in downtuned druggy nirvana.
The label mentions early Earth, Raison D'Etre and Fennesz, and damn if all three of those don't definitely apply. Pretty melodies are buried under slabs of grinding buzz, chords are woven into undulating sheets of fuzzy sound, everything is hissy and glitchy, with a gauzy sheen. Imagine Earth 2 as reimagined by Christian Fennesz and you might be getting close. Chords and notes, churn and throb, blackened sounds pulse ominously enveloping crystalline shimmers and music box like melodies, voices and samples are chopped up and distorted, riffs are pulled apart into washed out smears of sound. Some of the tracks definitely border on serious doom territory, while others are blurred distorted dreamscapes, all skittery and smeared, dark pianos, radio distortion and amp buzz, distant melodic whir, all tangled into something creepy and beautiful, strings draped over crumbling industrial crunch, all woven around heaving heaviness, rendered in slow moving swells. Way recommended for fans of things slow and low, dark and doomy, murky and mysterious.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
This is another one of those record we've been trying to list for ages but only just now managed to get enough of. This latest offering from Swedish black metallers Ondskapt will fit perfectly right there on your shelf next to your Deathspell Omega, Funearl Mist, Watain and Nortt records (that is assuming you don't alphebatize). Super reminiscent of old Mayhem (circa De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas) this is black metal in the classic style, buzzing and furious, epic and majestic. Few modern bands can pull that stuff off and not sound like second rate clones, but Ondskapt sound straightr out of the early nineties EXCEPT for their strange penchant for doom! Amidst all the buzzing and blasting, there are all sorts and manner of doom, litling, loping, seasick bits of midtempo doominess with creepy arpeggiated minor key melodies over simple pounding drumming, droning, buzzed out slow motion dirges with Iron Maiden-ish leads over the top, stretches of doom-flecked Burzumic buzz, all wrapped in black and surrounded by brutal bursts of black metal and occasional stretches of droning near-ambient malevolence. Then there's the vocals as well, which are pretty bizarre, veering from sort of shouted, through a bullhorn, politcal rally sort of vocalizing to full on throat shredding howls, demonic shrieks bordering on total hysteria a la Weakling. That's sort of what makes Ondskapt so cool and weird, a definite homage to the classic sound of Scandanavian black metal, but mixed with a heaping helping of depressive doom, and then all that sort of weird stuff, strange vocals, obtuse riffing, convoluted song structures and creepy ambient interludes, all mixed into a bizarrely brilliant black whole!
