Ignore the embarrassing cover art and the too twee band name if you can, but definitely dig into Glaswegian trio Paws's unabashedly nineties style indie rock debut. A perfect hybrid of the all too obvious influences, mostly Superchunk, but a little Dinosaur Jr. too, heck if this record came out twenty years ago, heck, they might be indie rock elder statesmen themselves now, but these kids were barely even born then, but somehow they amassed a pretty kick ass record collection, one we would imagine included the aforementioned Dinosaur and Superchunk, Archers Of Loaf too, but we hear a lot of lesser knowns (which could just be us), but heck, if you're an old guy or gal like us, and remember loving Small (or Small 23), Further, Loomis, Throneberry, Clumsy, Tripping Daisy and all the myriad other fuzzy, jangly, indie rock bands that were the soundtracks to all our crushes and breakups and roadtrips, then Paws will push all your buttons. And these guys aren't doing anything new, in fact they're doing just the opposite, essentially channeling everything we loved about nineties indie/college rock, fuzzy guitars, soaring choruses, whiny sad boy vocals, lyrics mostly about girls and breakups and teenage things, but these guys do it so well, hooks galore, crazy catchy songs, strident and super rocking, with plenty of jangle too, it's a lot like the sound of modern retro indie rock outfits like Silversun Pickups (themselves dead ringers for Smashing Pumpkins), but played by kids, and it sounds like it, youthful and ramshackle, totally fun, the sort of sound that makes you almost unable to resist embracing your inner indie rocker, it'll take all your will power to not flail about, air guitaring and singing along. Maybe the best nineties style indie rock record, since, well, since the nineties!
Record number two from these nineties worshipping Scots, and while the nineties resurgence is in full swing all over, these guys do it better than most (and better than a lot of bands back in the day too!), and like their last record, Cokefloat, Youth Culture Forever is another glorious concoction of all the stuff we loved about that music/era, big fuzzy, crunchy guitars, hooks galore, chiming harmonics, earnest heartfelt vocals, all woven into a record that sounds like it could easily have been transported directly here from 1995, and like the previous record, it touches on the sound of all those bands we used to love, and heck, still do, Dinosaur Jr, Superchunk, the Pixies, and of course all the lesser known indie rockers trafficking in equally cool and catchy sounds, and cool and catchy is exactly what this record is. They've definitely expanded their sonic palette this time around, the sounds of the songs are definitely more varied, and the songwriting too is a bit more fully fleshed out, and not overly worshipful of the bands that came before, and really, if you had never heard any nineties indie rock, there's no reason you couldn't still love this, or wouldn't still love it, but if you DID dig that stuff, it gives this sound a little extra oomph, and just like when Cokefloat came out, we have to fight the urge to listen to NOTHING but this. And just like before, we're beginning to think, "Why fight it�?". Why indeed.
Probably best know for his boss bashing hit "Take This Job And Shove It" (written by David Allan Coe!), Paycheck began life as Donald Eugene Lytle, originally performing as Donny Young, before, changing his name to Johnny Paycheck, and falling in with the outlaw country movement, along with folks like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, etc.
In the sixties, Paycheck started his own label, Little Darlin, and released a handful of records, all pretty intense and twisted and gorgeous, and rarely heard. This killer comp collects those rare tracks, and while on first listen, this sounds like classic honky tonk country, his voice immediately recognizable, but the sounds pretty classic, listen closer, pay attention to the lyrics, and suddenly the sounds don't sound so classic, instead, they are dark, and sinister, and seriously fucked up. Or at least with a twisted sense of humor. The sticker on the cd describes Paycheck thusly: "Imagine David Lynch As A Honky Tonky Singer" which is not that far off. On the surface, everything appears normal, but just below the surface, something much more dangerous lurks. A killer. Maybe. A psycho, VERY likely. Tales of murder, suicide, death, insanity and oh yes, drinking, just have a gander at some of the song titles: "(It's A Mighty Fine Line) Between Love And Hate", "(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone To Kill", "It Won't Be Long (And I'll Be Hating You)", "There's No Easy Way To Die", "I'm A Coward", intense and spooky and menacing, but all set to killer country twang and foot stomping honky tonk.
Another winner from Omni, and like all the Omni reissues, this comes with a huge booklet, new liner notes, and tons of photos. And as always most definitely recommended.
Originally released as a super limited (and super pricey) cassette earlier this year, Das Tor is the latest blast of swirling near psychedelic black buzz grimnity from Swiss one band band Paysage D'Hiver, aka Wintherr, who also happens to be a member of Darkspace, a group whose grim black buzz is set somewhere in deep space, as opposed to the mysterious icy forests that seem to be the source of the Paysage demos and adorn most of the demo's covers. And while we're on the subject, it does seem kind of silly to keep referring to every Paysage record so far (ten since 1998) as a 'demo', seeing as we're not really expecting any of these demos to suddenly surface, re-recorded and super polished as a proper 'album'. Plus demos are just way more kvlt and underground�
The sound on Das Tor, which comes six years after the last release, 2007's Einsamkeit, definitely sounds like maybe months have past, not years, a continuation of past records, the songs remain sprawling majestic epics, most begin with the sound of wind, softly swirling synths, the bulk of the tracks made up of tranced out, droned out blasts of icy buzz, the riffs blurred into sweeping swaths of thrum, swaddled in soaring shimmering synths, the drums blasting away, a tangled rhythmic skeleton buried in the mix, the vokills a demonic rasp that bleeds into the surrounding guitar buzz, listening to it in the store, it sounds like thick billows of blown out blurry noise, but strap some headphones on and details begin to emerge, textures and melodies, dynamics, in some places those dynamics are super dramatic. On opener "Offenbarung", the whole first half is all bleary, smeary droned out buzz, when suddenly, the song blossoms into something super melodic, and droney and doomy, a second guitar swooping in, laying down a creepy dirgey riff, wreathed in haunting melodies, the drums slowed down to a death march pound, the effect is stunning and super intense, this woozy, creepy crawl continues for several minutes, the sound blissing out to just a single guitar, before the sound explodes again into a furious blizzardy blast, beneath which, melodies and textures roil and churn, and then suddenly, the black buzz is peeled back, revealing more of that whipping wind, mysterious whispered voices, what sounds like some arctic field recordings, ghostly and abstract, which seems to explode right back into some churning doomy crush, only to bliss out again into a soft focus drift of ethereal atmospheric synth swirl and haunting cinematic ambience.
The rest of the tracks - all epic, the shortest clocking in at 14:20 - follow a similar pattern, a brooding slow burn intro, often a lumbering, lurching doom, exploding into full on furious winter blast bliss out, synths swirling throughout, the songs dissipating in clouds of wind and icy ambience, the tracks laced with long stretches of smoldering droned out black buzz mesmer, wrapped in fields of gauzy synth, the melodies mournful and melancholic, the record finishing with an extended stretch of hushed kosmische synthscapery, again, swaddled in wintery winds and a grim foresty ambience. And while sonically, it's very reminiscent of past PdH record, it's surprisingly lush and not lo-fi, blown out and buzzy, but also super lush and layered and gorgeously mesmerizing. Total tranced out black metal bliss for sure. And like the other 'demos', Das Tor comes housed in an oversized A5 sized 8 panel fold out book style digipak, the whole thing sealed in a black envelope, the band name and album title printed in blank ink on the black sleeve.
We have a bunch of these, but once they sell out, might take a while to get more from overseas, so grab one quick before they're gone, or be prepared to wait patiently for a restock!
Black metal may be all about the buzz and the blast, the insane insectoid riffing, the furious blast beats, the howled hateful shrieks, the epic arrangements and grim production, but it's also about drama, and mystery. Lots of folks scoff at the corpsepaint, and the forest photos, the spikes and the fire, but it's all part of the magic, the mood, it may seem played out and overdone, and often a little silly, but it is part of what makes black metal so weird and wonderful. And for us the weirder and more mysterious the better.�
There is Immortal, the Blizzard Beasts, strange pro wrestling looking dudes tromping around in the snow. The is Absu, alchemical musical warlocks, conjuring up all sorts of demons. And there are about a million other corpsepainted ghouls lurking in black forests and staring out from blurry black and white photos. The thing is, with most of those guys, you can imagine them donning their corpsepaint after a pint down at the pub. You can imagine them lounging around in jeans, ordering Chinese food. The corpsepaint and their character in the band are things they put on like a costume. It's a little like when you realize one of your favorite artists is a normal person, you see them at the laundromat or the grocery store and some of the mystery is lost.�
Thus, we seem to find ourselves drawn to the weirdest, most mysterious, most bizarre black metallers we can track down. Necrofrost is one. We know nothing about them, other than their strange blackened sounds, their demented corpsepainted visages staring out at us from the back of the record covers, their fucked song titles. It all helps create some alternate reality where those guys lurk in some primeval forest and create that impossible damaged and brilliantly fucked up music.�
Such is also the case with Paysage D'Hiver, a one man band from Switzerland, who in addition to recording by himself as Paysage D'Hiver, is also a member of the equally mysterious black horde�Darkspace in which PD'H mainman Wintherr is called Wroth and is one of three creepy corpsepainted wraiths who all look strangely like�Pinhead from Hellraiser (we're doing our best to track down the Darkspace discs for the store too). Where Darkspace is some sort of science fiction cosmic black metal weirdness, Paysage is more of a blown out buzzy ode to nature and spirituality, to winter and of course to darkness. Paysage D'Hiver have,�over the last 8 or 9 years, released eight cassettes. That's it. Almost no one we know had ever heard them, or had owned one of those cassettes. But the mystery had everyone curious. And when we did finally hear the music, it was just as magical and mysterious as we had hoped.
Recorded back in 1999, Die Festung was one of three Paysage demo tapes released that year, and the second in this comprehensive reissue campaign, which will find all 8 tapes being reissued on cd, each�packaged in a gorgeous oversized A5 book style sleeves, adorned with amazing wintry art and sealed in super subtle black on black printed envelopes.
Unlike the other Paysage D'Hiver reissue reviewed elsewhere on this list (Schattengang), Die Festung is an epic and expansive series of ambient soundscapes, and not specifically black ambience, instead, the sound is much more along the lines of classic Krautrock a la Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh or Cluster. Some folks here also heard some Gooomy trancelike bliss, like Cyann And Ben or M83, but way more minimal and spacey. All glistening soundscapes of looped synthesizers, simple keyboard figures repeated over and over and slowly shifting, layers of minor key whir, and vocal like melodies, epic and grand, smooth shimmery swells and majestic sweeps, sparkling clouds of electronic twinkles all glimmering and sparkling. Paysage D'Hiver translates to landscape of winter, and Die Festung sounds precisely like that. It's hard not to imagine long tracking shots of soft blue glaciers, of snowy peaks and forests that go on forever. A view from above of frosty landscapes and endless fields of snow and ice. So totally mesmerizing and lovely. The perfect companion to the buzzing black murk of�Schattengang.
Packaged in an oversized A5 book style digipak, a gorgeous snowy forest and mysterious distant castle drawing adorning the front, inside a booklet full of drawings and photos, but of course almost no information or liner notes. So completely recommended. And as with most things, super limited, not sure how long these will be around....
At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kerker was originally released on cassette in 2000, and is essentially a single piece, split into movements, and of all the reissues so far is the murkiest, all of the requisite parts are present but the fidelity is so low, the recording so strange, that all of the constituent parts are rendered one swirling muted organic whole. Bands like Wold, Amocoma, Yoga, Paysage take it to a whole 'nother level. Beginning with a rumbling ambience, the main riff soon surfaces, barely audible over the din of the intro, and very little changes when the vocals and the drums join in, the sound becomes a bit more frenentic, headphones reveal more details, but even then, the sound is a swirling churning roiling black sea of buzz and blur and hum and rumble and whir occasionally coalescing into discernible black metal before seemingly blurring before your very eyes and slipping back into the abyss. So incredibly haunting and mysterious and beautifully fucked up. The second movement is all ambient, thick swaths of keyboard, and pounding industrial drums, a gurgling blackened drift, like trudging through some underground cavern populated with demons and monsters, huddled by firepits, trying desperately to escape the blizzard that lurks above. Here too the sound is incredible, lush, yet lo-fi, muddy and indistinct, but within that muddy swirl all manner of subtle details and slow shifting colors reveal themselves. Voices too, demonic, ominous, bubbling up from below. The third movement continues the descent, the ice melting, soon the rocks themselves liquefying into viscous black pools, the sound of this approach to hell is one of deep low end buzz, a blown out distorted rumble that seems to swirl malevolently beneath a haze of blurred whir, until finally a keyboard enters, adding a glimmer of light to the pitch black sprawl.
Finally, the cycle is completed with another super distorted, murky blast, this time with synthesizers adding demented shards of melody, the drums an avalanche of pound and crash, the guitars a maniacal frenzied buzz, the vocals a subterranean gurgle, and again all blurred and smeared into a gorgeously hazy washed out smear of abstract buzzing blackness, dark and dramatic, haunting and enigmatic.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a grim looking dungeon (Kerker means Dungeon) and a swirling black hole, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kristall & Isa was originally released on cassette in 2001, and is another blast of frostbitten brilliance, a furious buzzing trek across snow choked tundras, and right out of the gate, this is one of the fiercest of the Paysage discs, the guitar a furious buzz so in the red that it's blurred into a near static streak of sound, the vocals are harsh and hysterical, buried in the mix, the drums a motorik pound, and within the swirling chaos there seems to be strange melodies lurking, what sounds like flutes or keyboards surfacing and then disappearing in the blink of an eye, definitely lending a strangely psychedelic vibe to the proceedings.
The record quickly shifts gears and transforms into lo-fi bedroom ambience, sounding like it was recorded on a boom box, all manner of clatter and clunk, the music and the vocals super low, it almost sounds like someone held up a microcassette recorded to the speaker of their stereo, super intimate and creepy. The follow up is much the same, only this time the music is a whooshy soft focus blur, but still the shifting microphone can be heard, as well as lots of tape hiss, a truly creepy ambience, like listening surreptitiously from afar.
"Der Kristall Ist Eis" explodes into a bleary eyed buzzy black blast similar to the album opener, and again the sounds are so blurred and blown out that the track seems to gradually shift into some spaced out buzz drenched dronemusic, hypnotic and mesmerizing. A near static blast, that pounds away while all around it clouds of static and buzz swirl, and eventually, beautiful warm melodies surface from the din, and it suddenly sounds like two records playing at once, but in a really good. really strange way.
After one more extended stretch of bedroom lo-fi field recordings, this one the most ambient and abstract of the bunch, a series of hushed whispers and some barely there shimmer, the final track explodes once again in a relentless frenzy of buzzing high end, machine like jackhammer pound, and a wall of blown out static rrrooooaaar. This track is the most varied of the bunch, slipping at one point into a lurching Burzumic lope, but only briefly before returning to the relentless wintery black onslaught. The band pause for breath, while cold winter winds blow through, the band offer up a tangled convoluted off kilter outro that sounds almost Deathspell-ish, before darkness falls once again and all that is left is the sound of the windswept wintery night.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a beautiful winter forest and a snowy stream, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
Black metal may be all about the buzz and the blast, the insane insectoid riffing, the furious blast beats, the howled hateful shrieks, the epic arrangements and grim production, but it's also about drama, and mystery. Lots of folks scoff at the corpsepaint, and the forest photos, the spikes and the fire, but it's all part of the magic, the mood, it may seem played out and overdone, and often a little silly, but it is part of what makes black metal so weird and wonderful. And for us the weirder and more mysterious the better.�
There is Immortal, the Blizzard Beasts, strange pro wrestling looking dudes tromping around in the snow. The is Absu, alchemical musical warlocks, conjuring up all sorts of demons. And there are about a million other corpsepainted ghouls lurking in black forests and staring out from blurry black and white photos. The thing is, with most of those guys, you can imagine them donning their corpsepaint after a pint down at the pub. You can imagine them lounging around in jeans, ordering Chinese food. The corpsepaint and their character in the band are things they put on like a costume. It's a little like when you realize one of your favorite artists is a normal person, you see them at the laundromat or the grocery store and some of the mystery is lost.�
Thus, we seem to find ourselves drawn to the weirdest, most mysterious, most bizarre black metallers we can track down. Necrofrost is one. We know nothing about them, other than their strange blackened sounds, their demented corpsepainted visages staring out at us from the back of the record covers, their fucked song titles. It all helps create some alternate reality where those guys lurk in some primeval forest and create that impossible damaged and brilliantly fucked up music.�
Such is also the case with Paysage D'Hiver, a one man band from Switzerland, who in addition to recording by himself as Paysage D'Hiver, is also a member of the equally mysterious black horde�Darkspace in which PD'H mainman Wintherr is called Wroth and is one of three creepy corpsepainted wraiths who all look strangely like�Pinhead from Hellraiser (we're doing our best to track down the Darkspace discs for the store too). Where Darkspace is some sort of science fiction cosmic black metal weirdness, Paysage is more of a blown out buzzy ode to nature and spirituality, to winter and of course to darkness. Paysage D'Hiver have,�over the last 8 or 9 years, released eight cassettes. That's it. Almost no one we know had ever heard them, or had owned one of those cassettes. But the mystery had everyone curious. And when we did finally hear the music, it was just as magical and mysterious as we had hoped.�
Recorded back in 1999,�Schattengang was one of three Paysage demo tapes released that year, and the first in this comprehensive reissue campaign, which will find all 8 tapes being reissued on cd, each�packaged in a gorgeous oversized A5 book style sleeves, adorned with amazing wintry art and sealed in super subtle black on black printed envelopes.
Schattengang is three long tracks, the longest almost 21 minutes, the shortest just under 7. Forty one minutes of haunting ambient foresty buzz. The opening track begins with some�gorgeous shimmery tranquil ambience, which soon�gives way to a murky muddy black buzzing smear, super blown out, and washed out, thick swaths of epic keyboards, over barely audible riffing, buried drumming, and vocals that are another murky layer of sound. Occasionally, the clouds part and you can hear some grim primitive riffing, but soon they are sucked back into a swirl of whirling blackness and dense FX, it's so fuzzy, and droney, it's almost more hypnotic and mesmerizing than blasting, but listen close and there is some serious black fury within Paysage's thick wash of whirled sound. The buzz eventually shifts gears�to a lugubrious, glacial funereal doom, plodding and monstrous, with huge simple drums, and long drawn out crumbling chords, guttural vocals, all stretched into a slithery blackened crawl. It's difficult to explain precisely why this stuff is so compelling, but it's just so dark and murky, and buzzy and dreamy, but not really like some of the other buzzy dreamy blackness we have championed in the past.�
The second track begins with more drifting surreal ambience, tinkling�sleigh bells, before�a huge wave of fuzzy guitar drone, and swirling spaced out keyboards engulfs everything, a dense black blur, all the parts so fast and furious, so tangled up and smeared together, it sounds almost like some strange buzzing drone underpinned by sweeping cinematic keyboards, laced with�bits of dialogue and found sounds... About halfway through the song winds down into a dark droning�interlude all dreary synths, strange thumps and creaks, disembodied voices, the distant cry of wolves, the whir of the night winds, but it's not long before it's back to�full on droneblast, before finally slowly blissing out into a very mournful Xasthur like arpeggiated minor key coda, a loping almost sea sick waltz that loops and loops hypnotically before fading out. So epic. So black yet so strangely beautiful.�
The final track is all ambient,�shimmering swaths of keyboard, glistening and glimmering, very Tangerine Dream or maybe Popol Vuh,�while beneath the surface, voices whisper and groan quietly, haunting hiss and bits of wind-like whir drift by, quite haunting and again very cinematic. Our new favorite blast of freezing grim black mystery for sure.�
Packaged in an oversized A5 book style digipak, a gorgeous snowy forest drawing adorning the front, inside a booklet full of drawings and photos, but of course almost no information or liner notes. So completely recommended. And as with most things, super limited, not sure how long these will be around....
In the overcrowded world of metallic post rock, or post metal, or whatever the heck you want to call it, there seem to be two forces constantly battling it out, Pelican and Isis. But it's hardly a battle, as both bands are friends, share a label, and share a sound too. And the interesting thing is they both seem to be developing in a similar fashion. Each band, in their own way, and at their own pace, seems to be phasing metal out of their sound. Not completely. But where Isis once sounded a LOT like Neurosis, they now sound much more like a post rock band with metal bits here and there. Expansive and epic and only heavy to balance their ultra melodic side. And while Pelican seemed to be on a serious metal bender there for a while, this new record, while indeed rife with metallic moments, finds them at their post rockiest, and we have to say it suits them.
From the opening track, with its loping minor key math rock intro, to it's downtuned metal chug middle, to a killer harmony guitar / double kick bridge, the band never go all out metal, even if it might sound like it on the surface. Sure, we're loving the occasional flurry of maniacal kick drum, and the occasional Fucking Champs like Carcass riffery, but it never completely transforms the sound into pure metal. Metal plated maybe, but regardless, it sounds amazing!
Pelican nowadays sound like the very heaviest band you loved in the nineties, come back to life, supercharged and metallized. We hear lots of Slint, Bastro, Polvo, Shellac, Don Caballero, June Of 44 and bands like that, in the riffs, the arrangements, the melodies, which is fine with us. In fact, a lot of City Of Echoes sounds like a heavier Explosions In The Sky, who obviously owe a great debt to the loud-quiet-loud math rockers of days gone by. Sure it's metal enough to hit the spot for that sensitive metalhead in need of a melodic instru-metal fix, and yeah it may be heavy, and it may be metallic, but c'mon, this is indie rock, a kick ass, heavy as fuck indie rock maybe, but still...
While they last, we have the limited Japanese import Daymare double disc version of City Of Echoes, much like the fancy version of Jesu's Conqueror we carry instead of the domestic Hydra Head version. Ultra deluxe packaging, gorgeous design, thick 6 panel digipak, spot varnish gloss on matte finish, Japanese obi, Japanese liner notes, but most importantly, a bonus dvd of the band performing live at the Knitting Factory in L.A., playing mostly new songs but a few Pelican classics like "March To The Sea". The dvd looks great, sounds great, and unlike some past performances we've seen, the band are on fire -- they've always sounded great, but they didn't always move that much, but here the band are super active on stage, jumping around, swaying, head banging, which makes it way more intense and fun to watch. And it's cool to see the new songs played live too...
Oh man, if this record was only a full length, and not an EP, it would have been record of the week for sure! Even so, it's a pretty hefty EP clocking in at 33 minutes, especially when you consider it's only two songs! And not only is it quite possibly the best Pelican song so far, with a completely unforgettable, loping seasick main riff, relentless double kick drumming, totally heavy and MASSIVE, occasionally slipping into indie rock, with deliriously jangle-and-chime drenched melodies that eventually becomes a dreamy acoustic coda complete with flute, but the second track is a JK Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) remix that ends up sounding like the best Jesu track yet, all My Bloody Valentine blissed out with fuzzy backward melodies, industrial machinellike rhythms and epic alien arrangements.
Four massive tracks of instrumental heaviness here, folks. Chicago's Pelican debut with this untitled document of dirge (actually this Hydra Head version is a reissue of their self-released debut from last year). Teetering on the cusp betwixt being a melodically melancholic and rhythmically clever post-rock band and being a punishing doom metal behemoth, Pelican don't let down either side. This is HEAVY. Epic, intense, and always interesting. Slow, trancey sludge riffs and chugging rhythms are interlaced with kinda pretty melodies and sudden tempo shifts. The result is a LOUD, almost psychedelic listen that should be very satisfying to fans of similarly droney and heavy outfits like 5ive, Tarantula Hawk, Boris, Pharoah Overlord... Gore and the Melvins and Harvey Milk too.
Pelican are the kind of band that plays shows with Isis and High On Fire, and reference La Monte Young and Ash Ra Temple in interviews...i.e. our kinda band! Kudos to Hydra Head for picking 'em up, and we look forward to their upcoming full-length on that label.
MPEG Download: "Pulse" [/audio/pelicanpulse.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Pulse" [/audio/pelicanpulse.m3u]
We've definitely mentioned it before, in other reviews, but with every release it does seem more and more that Pelt are perhaps the only group of minimal dronelords truly occupying the dark mysterious sonic space vacated by the long lost legends. Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young, John Cale, Taj Mahal Travellers, Pelt sonically fall somewhere in that list, often leaning more toward one position than another. Sometimes unfurling whispered shimmers and deep crystalline metallic whirs, other times spewing thick sheets of upper register skree, or spreading thick layers of reverberating buzz over Eastern style ragas. Whatever they're doing, and however the hell they do it, the result is truly diving. Especially for the drone obsessed among us.
And here, on their latest, within four long tracks they dabble in all of the above, the opener is all gongs bowls and bells, deep murky metallic sprawls, ringing out, tones drifting into the ether, but with a strange propulsion, not usually found in Pelt tracks, that makes it almost sound like the Necks, if all three of the Necks were playing cymbals and bowls. Dark and languorous and gorgeous. The second track is all scraping fiddles and moaning cellos, bowed and rubbed and sawed feverishly a la Henry Flynt, pizzicato melodies, distant melodies, LOTS of space, dense squalls of malfunctioning string quartet drones, bits of percussion and tinkling chimes, very abstract and obtuse but still quite hypnotic. Up next is the record's centerpiece, 31 minutes of deep multi-timbral drones, thick swirls of harmonium, and according to the liner notes, the only track that utilizes electricity, to power something called the New Jupiter Machine. No idea what that is, but we like it. Fiddles and cellos join the fray, until there are so many layers your ears a gloriously overwhelmed, all the various notes and tones vibrating, beating, interwoven, offering up all sorts of incidental melodies and mysterious sounds that only reveal themselves gradually. So transcendental. Worth it for this track alone. In fact we often say this, but we would have been just as happy if they stretched it out for another 30 minutes, or 60, or 90, well, you know.
The disc finishes off with a brief coda of glistening high end. Sounding a bit like an analog Ryoji Ikeda, all super high harmonics, bells and chimes, all glimmering in the impossibly high upper registers, like listening to ice crystals, or the sounds of stars sparkling, or a recording of sunlight reflecting of the water, or the sounds of dew on morning grass. Delicate, crystalline, and fantastic.
Folks around these parts (including us) have been freaking out over the gorgeous post-Fahey, neo-Appalachian guitar playing of Jack Rose, whose last few records have been massive AQ faves and whose dark and droning, delicate fingerpicked guitar work had us completely mesmerized from the first time we heard it. Makes it easy to forget sometimes that Rose has been making music for years with his equally talented bandmates as Pelt, a group that conjures up extended instrumental ragas, expansive pusling suites of drone and shimmer, from all manner of bowed strings, bowed metal, hurdy gurdy, sundry Eastern instruments, and simple percussion as well as more traditional instruments like guitar and cello albeit utilized in highly unconventional ways. Makes sense in a way, as Rose's solo guitar is definitely informed by his years exploring the extended drone in Pelt. This new Pelt record, featuring a slightly expanded lineup, continues their quest to discover the heart of the drone, nirvana attained by never ending sound, sonic ripples that pulse and reverberate into infinity, a lovely and mind blowing musical head trip. The first track is a static shimmer, a swirling keening drone, that unlike much drone music, is not at all simple, instead it is a lush and multi layered wash of minor key melodies, stretched and smeared into a slightly ominous, almost cinematic extended dirge, intense and gorgeously imbued with all sorts of feeling and emotion, not often found in experimental minimalist musicks. The second track features Rose's immediately recognizable steel string guitar, which is soon disrupted by creaking streaks of sound and eventually overtaken by a thick fog of moaning cellos, morphing from an Eastern-tinged raga, to a throbbing fuzzed out drone, and eventually settling into a spare ramshackle soundscape of creaks and clatter. Track three is classic Ur-drone, not all that dissimilar to Sunroof! or Total or Vibracathedral orchestra, a cloud of keening high end skree cobbled together from percussive overtones, bowed metal, and ringing harmonics. The final track is a brief splatter of madly sawed cellos, creaking and squeaking strings and random splattery percussion, almost a musical version of 'shaking it off', sort of decompressing after nearly an hour of intense spiritual musicality. All you cd-r hounds / drone-heads that slobber all over everything Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Celebrate Psi and the like should definitely explore the magical mystical world of Pelt.
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...
Album number two from the one man Pendro. A demented odyssey of warped records, chiming atmospherics, and hiccupping robot armies. Squiggly atoms of sound careen wildly between waves of what sounds like groaning bowed metal. Nice.
Most of you who read the list know how into Fflint recordings we are. And what do ya know, the almighty Fflint Central strikes again! Why aren't these guys huge? Especially when they are making some of the craziest, most original electronic music we've ever
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...
Pendro (aka Tim Jones, the second half of the FFlint dynamic duo) describe this record as 'psychedelic', but God knows what he must have taken to come up with this. Things start off with a cascade of blips and bleeps that seem quite menacing (that's quite a feat for blips and bleeps, mind you) and slowly evolve into a more psychotic Boards of Canada. The rest of the record is a crazy mix of chopped and mutilated classical samples, found sound, hyper-distorted melodies, malfunctioning cd-player rhythms and gurgling computer glitchery, all of which eventually coalesce into a droning, buzzing coda. Really great.
Could find very little about this loner / zoner, downer folk combo (one man band?), but it's just the sort of thing we dig, lovely, damaged, woozy and moody, a twisted troubadour, unfurling warped folk ballads and damaged drum machine driven murk-pop in equal measure. Take the opening one-two punch, the first, sounding like a more fucked up, mush mouthed, 4-track Nick Drake, all delicate steel string guitar beneath warped, warbly vocals, that sound like they're melting/decaying before your very ears, giving the otherwise pastoral sound a drowsy, druggy vibe, while the second track adds some primitive programmed rhythm, and a wheezing Casio keyboard, woven into an echo drenched balladic dirge, again with those fucked up, mumbled, FX heavy vox, draped over an otherwise lilting sprawl of spare, minimal slowcore drone-pop. The most amazing thing is that somehow the drum machine stumbles and stutters, which is very unlike programmed drums, but it gives the whole sound a fragile, fractured vibe.
As the record progresses, it gets noiser and more chaotic, the sound more blown out and crunchy, the vocals distorted, the beats too, some tracks pocked with spacey electronic squiggles, and weird pitch shifted gurgled vox, others with loads of buzz and hum, static and hiss. The more experimental aspects of Tricephalic Head remind us of the late great NZ experimentalists Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, those moments more than balanced by stretches of hushed folkiness, and weird sprawls of low fidelity kraut-psych, and flat out WTF psychedelic noise freakouts.
Includes a download code.
Here's full length number three from this Michigan retro garage psych crew, and with every record these guys seem to travel further and further into the past, or more specifically, manage to sound even more like they're from 1965, or maybe some other musical universe, where time simply ground to a halt about 50 years ago. But we're not complaining, People's Temple and their musical time capsule offer up some seriously heady, psychedelic garage blooze, lots of fuzzed out reverb, extended spacey jams, wild drumming, swaggery Stones-y, Stooges-y crunch, tripped out retro rock jams, but mixed with plenty of unlikely sonic detours, some classic almost fifties sounding balladry, some seriously lovely Beach Boys-esque harmonies (check out "I Don't Mind (Prelude)"), some furious hard rock shreddery and even some twisted classic rockisms, but all of that stuff is woven seamlessly into what is essentially, a lost sixties hard psych classic, channeled via modern musical shamans, the sort of record that if you didn't know it was new, you'd be hard pressed to NOT think it was actually some sort of reissue. All that aside, the sound is killer, the songs are great, and we find ourselves wanting to listen to little else...
With pretty much every previous record from these Michigan based, sixties worshipping, psych-surf garage rockers, it seemed like they were sonically moving back in time, their sound transforming from some worshipful Nuggets style retro-jangle, to a sound that ACTUALLY sounded like it was from back in the day. And while on this new one, much of that sound remains intact, for whatever reason, Weekends Time doesn't sound quite as much like some obscure sixties reissue. Instead, Peoples Temple now sound like a kick ass surfy, garage rock band, with plenty of Stooges-y swagger winding through their fuzzy, druggy jangle, a sound that wouldn't be at all out of place on the Castle Face label.
It might be the production, the sound this time around is much more lush and warm, a bit more modern, there's even some power poppiness in the mix, or maybe it's the songs, heck, they do a couple Ariel Pink covers, but even those two cover versions, if you didn't know any better, could be PT originals, or even some obscure sixties psych obscurities the band dug up. All the songs here though, like on the other records, are fantastically fuzzy, sunshiney and jangly, hook heavy, surfy and groovy, a little bit druggy, and plenty psychedelic, and at times fuzzy and folky (check out the super sixties, fuzz-folk closer!), and once again demonstrate that these guys are one of the best bands around channeling that far out sixties psych psound...
There's hype, and then there's HYPE. And we can't really remember a band as hyped as Perfect Pussy. Most folks had heard all about them, read all about them, knew way more than they had any right to before hearing a single lick of music. The risk with that sort of hype, is that the actual music could never ever live up to the expectation, and how PP stacks up is really pretty subjective. Assuming for one second, PP wasn't a ubiquitous news item on Pitchfork every day for the last year, hearing Say Yes To Love is kinda revelatory, the sort of record that could easily knock you on your ass. One thing we can say, is it's weird that a record this noisy and abrasive and UNcommercial is getting so much popular approval, but all we can say to that is hell yeah!
So yeah, but what the hell does it sound like? Well imagine classic Riot Grrl, nineties noise rock, all wound up in wild squalls of psychedelic shoegaze, with frantic bleated vocals that are a dead ringer for Melt-Banana, and you'd be getting close. The opening one-two punch of "Driver" and "Bells" might as well be one song, four minutes of keening high end ferocity, and in fact high end is where PP spend much of their time, would be surprised to discover there was no bass player, cuz really, it's all sharp and jagged, slashing noiseguitar, crunchy jangle, it's not until the third track "Big Stars" that things slow down, but even then, it remains fierce and feral, a little more aligned with that classic nineties era, but wreathed in feedback and noise, and the end of the track tapering off into some tripped out psychedelic drift. But hold up, some bass pops up on the beginning of "Work", before being quickly swallowed whole by a cloud of swirling guitar skree, and then weirdly, midway through, are those synths, somehow, the song becomes all cosmic and celestial, just for a minute, before stumbling back into more jagged noise pop / noise punk pound.
This is the sort of record, that squares will claim sounds like 'noise', and really they're not far off, this is some seriously noisy stuff, so much so, that on the shitty stereos this stuff was meant to be listened to on, it's really impossible to differentiate nuance, in the store it sounds almost like a Merzbow remix of Melt-Banana (not a bad thing mind you), but strap on some headphones, or blast it through a killer sound system at deafening volume, and PP's master sonic craft reveals itself for sure.
Our favorite moment might be right at the end, with the two minute blast of "Advance Upon The Real", which fills up it's remaining 3+ minutes with a barely audible bit of strange industrial ambience, buried melodies, blurred shimmers, the perfect intro to the weirdo experimental closer "VII" which IS noise, vocals drifting through fields of grinding distorted crunch, blooping synth melodies hovering amidst sheets of caustic gristle, rhythmic and blown out, a weirdly beautiful bit of extreme noise punk, and the perfect way to finish things off.
The cd comes in a cool glittery slipcase, with ultra minimal artwork, and while we did have the lp (back in soon, hopefully), it's not the oft remarked upon menstrual blood infused vinyl. Sorry.
Attention music geeks, music-tech nerds, cool gadget obsessives and espeically anyone who freaked out over the amazing Buddha Machine! We've got another far out musical gadget that will have you all in a tizzy.
Tristan Perich is a name we had never heard before. Turns out he's a musician and inventor, who has released this record, his debut we think, of 1-bit music (more on that in a moment) in its own self contained jewel case player. What's that? A gorgeous little electronic sculpture, made up of a plain old plastic jewel case, and a handful of colored wires and chips and tiny dials, completely self contained, a headphone jack in the jewel case offering you entry into Perich's crunchy minimal electronic sound world.
As many of you know, 8-bit music is the sound of '80s video game music, all your arcade favorites, super simple electronic sounds crafted into equally simple harmonies and melodies, so get rid of seven of those bits, and you're left with just ONE bit, the smallest increment of memory and sound. So Perich has taken these super minimal tones, and constructed some amazing electronic music, that is crunchy and raw, the sound all buzzy tones and staticky clicks, ranging from playful lullabies to grinding dense tangles of squelch and squiggle. Some of the tracks definitely sound like they could be some lost video game music, but others are drone-y and weirdly layered and textured smears of crumbling lo-fi bleep and buzz, through headphones it sounds amazing, but through your speakers, it sounds like someone is in there pulling your speakers apart with rusty blunted shears. This would destroy a dancefloor, add some booming beats and you'd have some Daft Punk jam of the year, all grinding minimalism, in fact one track sounds like Fischerspooner via your Atari 2600, while some of the others sound like a much more playful and lo-fi Ryoji Ikeda, the sound of someone playing Pac Man turned into a 1-bit techno jam, and like the ultra minimal little brother of Skweee (that Scandinavian electro we've been so obsessed with lately)!
But the music really only is half of it. The player is so striking, the whole record contained on a tiny chip, soldered to the jewel case, a battery in its little holder, two tiny volume controls, a mini on/off switch, a button to skip tracks, wires leading to a tiny headphone jack, the only liner notes a printed piece of paper that comes off with the plastic shrinkwrap, and a transparency with Perich's name and the name of the record. Before any of us had even heard the music, we all new we had to have one. It's a tiny musical sculpture, a piece of art that functions as a piece of sound art as well. Anyone who bought a Buddha Machine will want one of these. And if you were wondering what to get that weirdo music freek friend of yours, we'd be hard pressed to think of something cooler than this!
Be warned. We got ONLY 50 COPIES!!! They are super labor intensive and hand made. Perich is currently trying to sort out a way to make more, so when we run out, it may be a while before we can get more, so if you want one, and we can't imagine how you wouldn't, then act fast!!!
Cool music gadget (and minimal lo-fi 1-bit videogame glitch crunch record) of the year!
Music nerds may get obsessed with records all the time, but they also get pretty into musical gadgets, as evidenced most recently by FM3's Buddha Machine, which we've sold about a billion of, and most folks we know own more than one. And heck, that's just a little plastic box that plays short little loops. We didn't think anything would be able to trump the coolness of the Buddha Machine, which appealed to music geeks and tech nerds in equal measure, but then along came 1-Bit Music from a composer named Tristan Perich. Not only was 1-Bit Music Perich's debut record, it wasn't a record at all, instead it was simultaneously a piece of sound art and a miniature sound producing gadget, a collection of tiny wires and chips and switches and a watch battery, all affixed to the inside of a plain old cd jewel case. The result, a super striking looking little gizmo, but one that produced some weird and amazing 1 bit sounds. But what exactly are 1 bit sounds?
Well, most folks are familiar with 8 bit sounds, all your favorite vintage arcade game music is 8 bit, and all the modern purveyor of Casio core or Nintendo core, they're using those crunchy lo-fi 8 bit sounds to make awesomely retro music. So one bit, is the smallest increment of memory and sound, and Perich composed his music using just 1 bit sounds, the result, beyond being small enough to fit on a tiny chip, and that chip along with some switches and wires in a jewel case, it also made for some alien sounds, like video game music, but as if imagined by the roster of Raster-Noton, a series of clicks and beeps and tangled squiggles of squelches and primitive melodies, almost like some ultra minimal toy techno or something. And while in headphones the sounds were intense and loud and raw, through speakers, they were INTENSE, super destructive and brutal, the sort of sounds, no matter how playful and simple, that DESTROY speakers. So awesome.
Sadly, Perich and his crew had trouble keeping up with demand, as each of the releases, were hand made, every wire and switch, glued into each jewel case one at a time. So eventually that 'record' was discontinued. But now, we have Perich's latest release, no longer simply 1-Bit Music, now, it's a 1-Bit Symphony! And it is in fact more complex, with the various tones and beeps and squelches woven into lush tapestries of sound, rhythmically complex, and harmonically lush, at times sounding almost like M83, sometimes like Steve Reich or Terry Riley composing on a primitive toy Casio keyboard, other times like some lost old school video game, the sounds panning wildly from speaker to speaker, the melodies tangled and intricate, the overall sound so hypnotic and mesmerizing, the compositions sprawling and epic, ranging from 5 minutes, to nearly ten minutes to infinite, the final track a gorgeously lush chunk of distorted fuzzed out minimal buzz, that manages to sound all moody and shoegazey, warm and woozy and crunchy, an endless loop, that we really could imagine listening to endlessly.
But like 1-Bit Music before it, the music is really only half the equation with 1-Bit Symphony, the packaging, which IS the record, is so striking, a gorgeously arranged series of wires and switches, a battery, a volume knob, a button to switch tracks, an on/off switch, a headphone jack, all affixed to a clear jewel case, with a simple stick on the front, and the booklet in the plastic sleeve on the outside of the jewel case, adding a spare white background to the visuals, but also including liner notes, not to mention an intense and fantastically confusional poster featuring what appears to be the composition presented as it was programmed, which also manages to be visually striking and a work of art in its own right.
This one is not so nearly limited as the last one, but probably safer to not risk it, cuz if you're at all into weird music, and weird music related thingies, you are definitely gonna want one of these, and you'll probably want to give one to all the music nerds in your life as well. And like the first Perich 1-Bit release, this one too, is no doubt destined to be the cool music gadget, and minimal lo-fi 1-bit glitch crunch shoegaze squelch symphony record of the year!
Much like the Young Accuser 7" reviewed a couple lists back, It Feels So Good When I Stop is another Joe Pernice release related to his forthcoming novel. The Young Accuser 7" was a not-imaginary record, by the imaginary band in Pernice's novel, channeling a more rocking vibe than we're used to from him, but on It Feels So Good When I Stop, Pernice takes on a bunch of covers, forming what is essentially a soundtrack to his novel. Some of the tracks seem to be actually mentioned in the story (based on the handful of readings interspersed between the songs here), while others seem to just be songs that informed its writing or heck, that Pernice just digs.
Del Shannon, Sebadoh, Tom T. Hall, Allan Sherman, Todd Rundgren, Plush, Dream Syndicate, Sammy Johns and of course The Young Accuser. Pernice manages to make all the covers here sound like his own, his voice wispy and delicate, the instrumentation minimal, the song choice ideal for his style, Del Shannon's "Found A Little Baby" is one of the highlights, joined by the rest of the Pernice Brothers, if it wasn't a cover, we'd be proclaiming it one of the best Pernice / Pernice brothers tracks ever. The Sebadoh cover manages to make the original sound even slower and sadder. The instrumental version of one of the Young Accuser jams from the Sub Pop 7" is also pretty great (with the Pernice Brothers again), and Todd Rundgren's "Hello, It's Me" seems like it was written for Pernice, stripped down and gorgeously vulnerable.
Not sure if this has us wanting to read the novel necessarily, but it sure has us hankering for another Pernice Brothers record. Or how about a Scud Mountain Boys reunion! Regardless, a beautiful collection of songs for sure.
Killer ep from this one man US funeral avant doom outfit. The sound here veers wildly from tripped out doom-ed psychedelic experiments to moody post rocky instrumentalism to bizarre drum machine flecked drone plod, and yeah, finally to some buzz drenched bizarre doom. And bizarre it is. Of the four tracks here, only one is actually doom metal all the way through, and even then, it's fractured and fucked up and freaky as all get out. Makes sense that this was released on the same label that gave us a recent Gnaw Their Tongues release, as PiM are definitely another obtuse doom metal variant, and we LOVE it.
The opening track begins with some classical guitar, draped over distant cacophonies, and fluttery flute, glitched out electronic buzz, clouds of swirling effects, strange detuned melodies, thick slabs of corrosive buzz, anguished wails, before the second track kicks in and the band pound out a slow motion doom crawl, the distortion brittle and crumbling, the vocals in the red and hyper distorted, in fact, all the sounds are super blown out, and then near the end, some weird way up in the mix acoustic guitars drift in, as the doom pounds on beneath. Then comes a brief instrumental interlude, all gentle piano, simple guitar strum, and some obtuse, slightly out of tune slow motion leads, until the doom drops, and the song lurches woozily toward the final track, a warped dronescape, all whirring electronic low end, distorted voices transmitted beneath some rubbery bass, so detuned you can hear the strings rattling against the frets, and then out of nowhere, some super primitive drum machine surfaces, its stilted machinelike skitter, draped over the throbbing buzzing electronics below, so bizarre, and so brilliant.
We tried to order a bunch of these, but only managed to get a handful, limited to 100 copies, packaged in cool mini dvd sleeves, with full color artwork, each one hand numbered, last copies ever.
Pretty much as soon as we heard this, we knew it was going to be Record Of The Week, and not just black metal record of the week. In the past, Peste Noire seems to have always been unfairly categorized as an Amesoeurs / Alcest sideproject (we plead guilty of that as well) due not only to the presence of Neige, the mastermind behind both Amesoeurs and Alcest, but the seemingly shared membership between all three bands, and while Neige did no doubt contribute much to Peste Noire's sound, it seems Peste Noire was much more the brainchild of only remaining original member, Famine, whose other main musical outlet is the almost equally twisted Valfunde, and as if to prove the validity of the above claim, has assembled an almost entirely new lineup (although Audrey from Amesoeurs contributes some vocals) and cobbled together the most damaged, most fucked up, most gloriously bizarre Peste Noire record yet. Which if you've heard any of the other records is definitely saying something!
The record is weirdly arranged, five proper songs, with 2 minute or shorter song fragments and interludes, some that play like proper songs themselves, only truncated, others that act as intros or just totally tweaked unhinged sound experiments, but somehow, songs and non-songs alike hold together beautifully, and bafflingly, the band having created some sort of crusty, blackened, melancholy, depressive French folk flecked classic metal.
The intro begins with sizzling shimmering cymbals, simple percussion, eventually joined by beautiful ethereal female vocals, as well as some raspy blackened not-really-harmony vocals, then the riff comes in, and damn if it isn't a riff from Star Wars, but super distorted and blown out, pounding, crusty, epic and majestic, the rasped vocals over a haunting military sounding speech. And then straight into the first 'proper' track, which begins as some sort of sea shanty like French folk song, but with the addition of some hellish black vokills, you can almost imagine a table full of French soldiers, and one dripping slimy otherworldy beast, all singing along, glasses raised to the sky. Then in comes a very classic sounding metal riff, but the guitars muted and woozy, the tempo lurching and seasick, all manner of different vocals, crooning, shrieking, howling, then an awesomely weird squiggly bit of low end, super tripped out and psychedelic but somehow subtle and buried in the mix. Guitars soar and sing and jangle, wrapped around equally dramatic vocals, a total French folk crust anthem.
The follow up track begins all dark acoustic guitars and birdsong, martial percussion, eventually exploding into a super buzzy distorted march, pounding away, midtemp and melancholy, before returning to a super gorgeous, hauntingly depressive gothic crust almost-ballad, blackened and distorted, but also post rocky and strangely emotional and moving.
The 'interludes' include some warped and warbly haunted house piano, doused in hiss and crackle, ghostly female vocals drifting amidst the warm whir, sinister laughter, squalls of maniacal shrieks, dueling male / female vocals, almost operatic, soon joined again by that monstrous blackened croak, warm woozy calliopes, soundtracky keyboards and the sound of storms, tons of reverb and delay, tape hiss and softly crumbling distortion, all creating perfect segues between loping depressive midtempo blackened post metal lurch, super blown out in the red almost D-beat pounding buzz, those vocals transforming from hellish howl to deep moan, there's even some wheezing harmonica, all leading up to the final track, "Soleils Couchants", which begins with birdsong again, and an awesomely angular and beautifully twisted guitar part, paired up with a gorgeous minor key harmony, before slipping into a moody downtuned creep, complete with weird frog like vocals, and a looped bit of beeps and chirps, total post-doom weirdness, literally like nothing you've ever heard, it sounds a little like that first part of the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disneyland, where you're just floating through the dark bayou, lit only but slivers of moonlight and the flickering light of fireflies, it's like a soundtrack to that, swampy and doomy and mysterious, until the band launches into a strangely melodic black doom midtempo jam, the guitars minor key, multiple vocals merging into raspy otherworldly harmonies, before breaking down into a long stretch of just guitars and vocals, the guitars twisted and spidery but still melodic, the voices tortured but super passionate, yet again infusing the fucked up twisted blackness with pathos and emotion, keeping it from being weird for weird's sake, this is something else entirely. What sounds like a child's voice joins in, twisted around that hellish vokill, all draped over a gorgeously catchy riff, reminding us a bit of Katatonia or Lifelover, before spiraling and sprawling into a seriously melodic blackened post rock jam, and then finally returning to the doomy lurch that began the song some seven minutes earlier.
Peste Noire have (again) managed the seemingly impossible, creating a record both totally twisted and damaged, but also lovely and moving and melodic, a record that ranks up there in our pantheon of most bizarre and fucked up black metal records ever, while somehow appealing to even the not so metal inclined, a confusional mix of black and crust and pop and folk, all twisted and tangled up and forced through Peste Noire's cracked musical sensibilities, the result, a record fucked up and fantastical, and this review not withstanding, almost impossible to describe.
A while back, it seemed like everyone, ourselves included, was totally obsessed with a French black metaller called Neige. Doesn't ring a bell? How about his shoegazey post-black metal outfit Alcest? Or his fuzzy black metal gone bliss pop combo Amesoeurs? His fracutured new wave black metal combo Valfunde? Or even his more 'traditional' black metal outfit Peste Noire? Yep, you got it now.
Been a while since we've heard from Neige, since then, he joined another 'dark metal' band, and he's also joined long time aQ faves Forgotten Woods. While that's pretty exciting, and we're always up for hearing more of what Neige has to offer. We also sort of wish he'd just cut down on the various side projects, so we wouldn't have to wait nearly as long for a new Amesoeurs, Alcest or Peste Noire record.
But while we wait patiently, we can now revisit the first Peste Noire full length, with the unwieldy title La Sanie Des Siecles - Panegyrique De La Degenerescence, finally reissued! We've been dying to list this, but until now we haven't been able to get enough. Above we call Peste Noire Neige's more traditional black metal group, but that designation is really relative, as the music of Peste Noire, while being black and buzzy and heavy and grim, is also totally tweaked, fractured and fucked up, rife with all manner of whatthefuck, from gorgeous sweeping melodies, to strange samples, so completely confusional arrangements, to bits of liturgical music mixed into the buzz, to some serious pop tendencies. But somehow it all works. That is if by works, you mean, constitutes one of the most awesomely fucked up lo-fi melodic outsider black metal records ever!! We raved about the latest Peste Noire a while back, the awesomely titled FolkFuck Folie, and everything we loved about that record (also just reissued) is present here as well, but if anything, all of those things are just, well, MORE. More fucked up, more freaked out, more melodic, more lo-fi.
Just take the opener, "Nous Sommes Fanes", begins with some record crackle, before the band lurches into a weird drunken waltz, sounding more like the Reeks And The Wrecks than any black metal. The guitars and drums swing woozily, the drums and cymbals super blown out, over the top, an ultra distorted guitar spins a web of damaged leads, before slipping into a strange moody post rocky drift, replete with big boomy reverb drenched chords. But then the second track kicks in, and we're back in more recognizable black metal territory, and even though it's buzzy and black, it is incredibly melodic, poppy almost, the melodies soaring and epic, the track is peppered with blasts of blasting grimness for sure, a bit of a crusty punk vibe all tangled up with the buzzing blackness, but even when the song is blasting blackly, close listening reveals all manner of melodic weirdness going on beneath the surface, and it doesn't stay below the surface for long, as the song shifts into loping minor key almost-dirge, before finish up how it started, with that strangely emotional super melodic soaring blackened buzz.
And so it goes, the band lurching from midtempo lope to roaring furious blast, to almost doomy plod, all strangely muddy and murky, the various parts twisted and gnarled into something totally unique. The guitars are incredibly varied, going from Ved Buens Ende like Slint-worship, to filthy Darkthrone-d crunch, to gorgeous almost folky finger picking, some serious moments of Opeth-y flutter peppered amidst the crusty blackness.
The second to last track "Dueil Angoisseus (Christine De Pisan, 1362-1431)" is all gorgeously bleak and buzzy, midtempo and melancholy, but then draped over the top is super clean, classical guitar, way up in the mix, that gives the track the strangest vibe, makes it sound strangely pretty. Finally, the disc finishes off with "Des Medecins Malades Et Des Saints Sequestres", which begins with a tangle of effects drenched hammer-ons, unfurling a haunting, off kilter melody, the drums a distant lo-fi pound, when the song kicks in, it's almost eighties metal, albeit filtered through a grim French black metal lens, but the riffing, so classic, and so cool sounding when cloaked in a filthy production and that demonic rasp. But this song too, shifts into some strange other space, and is suddenly
infused with what sounds like a wall of whirring organs, those hammer-ons return, and the song is some strange minor key doom pop epic, that flits back and forth between that eighties riffing, super distorted, and that sprawling metallic poppiness, before transforming into a blaze of super effected metallic chug, finishing off with a strange super distorted almost-jig (!), the drums huge and pounding, while the guitar plucks out a strange distorted melody, much like the opening track.
Needless to say (funny how we always say that after SAYing it for several thousand words), this is one of our favorite black metal records ever. Fucked up, but black and heavy, poppy and hook filled, but still grim and buzzy, if you loved FolkFuck Folie, you'll love this, if you dig Amesoeurs and Alcest but want to hear that sound dipped in filth and painted black, well then this will definitely do the trick. If this was brand new and had just come out, it would be, without a doubt, one of our records of the year (not just black metal either), but as it is, this is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL AND RECOMMENDED!
It seems like every time there's a new Peste Noire record we make it Record Of The Week. Which only seems strange until you actually hear it. And hear how fucked up and totally bafflingly brilliant it is. With every record Peste Noire seem to move further and further away from the grim black metal that birthed them, but to be fair, no one in Peste Noire has spent much time playing what anyone might consider 'typical' black metal, especially mainman Famine, now rechristened La Sale Famine De Valfunde, who used to play in Alcest. Though we should note he took extreme umbrage when we suggested that Alcest / Ameseours mainman Neige had anything to do with the music of Peste Noire, which is also surprising considering that one member of Alcest and one member of Ameseours are also members of Peste Noire and we assume do contribute musically. But really, none of that matters as much as the very very strange sounds these folks create, and the fact that metalheads still dig it. In fact, we're constantly perplexed by certain bands that for no good reason remain beloved to even the truest grimmest metalheads. To be fair, Peste Noire, for all their twisted sonic proclivities, are still masterful black metallers, it's just that those blasts of brilliant black metal are often separated by strange accordion driven French folk music or some twisted bit of confusional psychedelia. Which brings us to L'Ordure A L'Etat Pur, the latest, and yes, perhaps greatest from these French misanthropes. And as always, it only takes the first track, a shot across the bow, to reveal their true intentions, as twisted and unlikely as they may be.
The sound of wind and rain, of crashing surf, distant foghorns, underpinning some reverbed clean guitar, riffs ringing out over these sounds of the sea, a second guitar adds some melody, and there seems to be a wolf howling, or a voice imitating a wolf, there are tolling bells too, and the beginning of what sounds like it could be a jig, or some sort of gypsy folk, maniacal rambling vocals surface, the guitars growing more distorted, the sound tense and dramatic and growing moreso, before no not launching into furious black buzz, but instead some sort of shuffling post rocky groove, the vocals unhinged and maniacal, wrapped around a chugging riff, and some simple propulsive drumming, not so much metal as rock, and then the sound does erupt into a kind of blackness, soaring and droney but before full blackness is achieved, it returns to that sort of sea shanty that opened the proceedings, and the howling wolf returns. Some double kick drumming ups the ante, and finally, the song lurches into more metal territory, but again, more sort of blackened rock, like Khold than Darkthrone, with some seriously catchy riffs, and then, HORNS, moaning ominously, adding some cool texture, and giving the song a sort of "Tusk" vibe, until the metal peels away completely, leaving just horns and acoustic guitar, a sort of oompa oompa polka, with a trombone playing the main melody. Oh yeah, and some accordion. We're in full on French street music territory now, and then the metal guitars swoop back in, as do the vokills, but now they're playing a killer metallized version of that polka, with some strange trilled vocal harmonies and some weird droned out guitars, which suddenly stop, leaving just the sounds of what sounds like sword fighting, and the song shifts gears again, bursting into an almost ska sounding punkish sprawl, only to moments later shift again into a gnarled bit of noise rock, and it's right back into the oompa oompa metalized ska, the vocals transforming into a sort of goregrind gurgle, the music stopping briefly to reveal the sounds of a barnyard, all chickens and roosters, then when the music kicks back in, the vocals simulate the sounds of chickens, Famine singing variations of "Ba-kaaaw", before finishing off in a killer mathy tangle of dynamic chug and pound.
And that's just the first song. And fear not, we won't go through every song here part by part, although we could, and reading this without listening would make this new Peste Noire sound like thee most bizarre record EVER, and heck, maybe it is, but impossibly, it also sort of works, in a dizzying, whatthefuck sort of way.
The rest of the record does offer more surprises, as well as some more traditional black metal, but even at its most buzzy and blasty, the sound will splinter into some strange super distorted can-can, guitars will suddenly unfurl wild squiggles of high end, the sound suddenly devolving into a sort of effects heavy progged out swirl that then transforms into a pounding almost industrial crunch, wreathed in more moaning horns, or a fight will seem to break out in the middle of the song, shattering glass, sirens, all while the song continues to chug and churn, the sound slipping easily from dark, gnarled crusty pound to woozy meandery clean guitar post rock and then to glistening soaring sonic majesty, only to have a chorus of weirdly chanted vocals surface and totally change the vibe to more of a stein hoisting sing along. The blasting buzz here tends less toward the grim blur of classic black metal and more toward a sort of goofy gallop, but one that suits the band more than the other ever would, and amidst all this weirdness, PN can whip out a stretch of impossible beauty or extreme blackened bliss, the sort of parts you want to go on forever, but in the ADD world of Peste Noire, those moments are fleeting, and will soon be subsumed by some new, stranger sound. Elements of power metal abound, but like all of the other musics bastardized here, it becomes just another twisted / fractured facet of Peste Noire's bizarre musical universe. All culminating in the beautifully mournful slow core doom of closer "La Condi Hu", a creeping lament, heavy and distorted, but darkly melodic and melancholy, laced with clean hushed vocal harmonies, but then you couldn't have expected that to be all, in swoop some sad sad strings, some chugging guitars, building to a minor key bit of blackened post metal, and unlike the rest of the record, nothing gets super weird, the band remain heavy, the music tense and dramatic and emotional, continuing to build, the sound intense and moving, laced with mysterious proggy sections, cool female vocal harmonies, dense intricate drumming, there's even a cool wild sort-of-drum solo, with the drums spitting our an avalanche of beats, beneath spoken female vox, which leads right into a super gorgeous stretch of minor key, slithery bass driven heaviness, that any band would kill for, but these guys leave for last, letting the sound wind down, and displaying without a doubt, that there is some sort of method to Peste Noire's extreme and utter musical madness.
Ever since we listed the Amesoeurs record a while back (and actually even before) we've been trying to track down records by two related bands, the equally blissed out black bliss combo Alcest, and the much more primitive and black Peste Noire. While we've been unable to track down either cd, we did manage to get a bunch of copies of this brand new Peste Noire lp, one side featuring 4 songs from a rehearsal, the actual versions of which will be on the upcoming full length, while the B-side is a sidelong black buzz epic recorded a couple years ago.
Nothing about Amesoeurs will prepare you for Peste Noire. There is a similar melodic sensibility, but beyond that, it's a whole different beast. The four new tracks are killers, and for rehearsal tracks sound amazing, so much so that most bands would be pretty happy with the versions here, loud and heavy and recorded super hot. The forthcoming full length on which these songs will appear is to be titled Folkfuck Folie just for a brief glimpse into the twisted minds behind the music. Things begin with a weirdly majestic and martial intro, with complex drums and strange arrangements, almost like some medieval carnival music, before bursting into full on furious blackness, buzzy and relentless, but even in the blasting things are slightly off kilter, damaged and demented sounding, and very very melodic, mathy and complex, super harsh vocals over the top but they can hardly disguise how utterly hooky these songs are. In fact, after hearing Amesoeurs and Peste Noire and Alcest, it seems to be these guys' M.O., write killer pop songs, amazing hooks, unforgettable melodies, then try to disguise them as best they can as buzzing black metal. It never works completely, which is why this stuff is so remarkable. Some of the songs have tons of syncopated chug, giving the songs an almost proggy vibe, almost like some weird mix of Emperor and Voivod. Blooping bass, cascading sheets of guitar and gorgeous minor key melodies. Can't wait for the new record. If these are only sketches, we can hardly fathom how freaked out and amazing the actual songs are gonna be.
The B-side is an older recording and is much more rough and lo-fi, raw and blown out. Lots of reverb and effects, but still rife with plenty of surprising melodic breakdowns, impossible catchy and lovely for something this black and raw. It gets even weirder near the end, with a long stretch of scratchy record crackle and monklike chants, and then a super pretty laid back acoustic outro. So amazing. Everything these guys touch turns to black gold!
Packaged in a super striking black and white sleeve, band photos and liner notes on the back, including the legend 'Hooligan Black Metal' that seems to make almost no sense when paired with the music inside...
Vinyl only, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Okay black metal freeks and fanatics. We've all been going apeshit for everything and anything from the super tangled and inbred French micro-scene that spawned Alcest, Amesoeurs, Mortifera, Valfunde and of course Peste Noire, and we had been trying to track down enough of these double cassettes to finally list, and obviously we did, but odds are these will FLY out of here, and as we're not sure how limited these actually are, and how long it will take to get more, if indeed we can, please be prepared to maybe be disappointed, or very patient as we try to get more.
We reviewed Peste Noire's second full length FolkFuck Folie a while back, and the Lorraine rehearsal lp, both were amazing, stumbling chaotic, filthy fucked up blackness, and these two tapes are no different. If anything, they're more raw, and more gritty and blown out. Lo-fi and ultrablack. The first track is so fast it almost sounds like it was recorded at the wrong speed. But much like the records proper, the sound lurches from furious black blasts to stumbling midtempo buzz, to plodding almost-doom, but even on these early ultra lo-fi recordings, the mood and vibe is already in place, haunting and creepy, demented and freaked out, borderline psychedelic at times. Noisy as fuck, crumbling and super distorted, everything painted a washed out black, grime-y but at times weirdly melodic and blissy.
Collects pretty much all of Peste Noire's recordings outside of their 2 proper cds and the rehearsal lp (including their problematically titled 2001Aryan Supremecy demo, which seems out of character since according to Encyclopedia Metallum, their lyrical focus is on "Aesthetics of Evil, Medieval Demons and Decadent Poetry") including a couple unreleased bonus tracks. But probably, unless you're a crazy obsessed tape trader, you haven't heard any of this stuff anyway.
Needless to say, WAY recommended, and again, probably super limited, so act fast.
Cool packaging too, two cassettes, laid side by side in a small printed black cardboard box, with two inserts, old demo covers on one side, liner notes on the other.
The more we hear from Mr. Stephen Brodsky, frontman of the mighty Cave In, the more we're beginning to wonder if maybe his particular genius was wasted in the context of a sludgy metal band. Or perhaps it was specifically that weird pop genius that made Cave In such a bad ass proposition. And that should have had people more prepared for their eventual shift into bombastic progpop.
Regardless, we've got two Brodsky projects on this week's list, the psychedelic power pop of Brodsky's Octave Museum, and this brand new disc right here, that sounds like some weird hybrid between Elope, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Beatles, XTC, Kyuss and the White Stripes... If that's even possible, and on repeated listening
This disc is pretty all over the map, some tracks are jangly and dreamy, others are crunchy and super heavy, many are both. But it's the perfect pop songwriting that holds all of these disparate sounds together. And perfect pop they are.
We were pretty much sold 10 seconds in, the opener is a barnstormer, a killer riff, with a lurching stop start verse, and some Beatles-esque falsetto vocals, all wrapped around one of the most killer hooks ever! The second track is more blessed out, folky and very British sounding, with epic melodic swells, and more falsetto vocals, gentle acoustic strum and some playful vocal guitar interplay. But track three, "Walls Of Etiquette is the gem here, and most likely the single, if records like this actually have 'singles', groovy and stoner, with a slithery riff, keening vocals, a super catchy melody, and a churning super intense grinding metallic refrain, and a chorus to die for. Very reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age back when they were AWESOME. A lot of this record reminds us of that amazing Open Hand record we raved about a few years back. "Man Of The Mountain" is another killer, beginning with a crunchy metal intro, before slipping into a dreamy folky drift, all poppy shimmer and irresistible hooks.
The rest of the record plays out in a pretty similar fashion, with Brodsky pitting his Beatlesy pop heart against his distorted desert axe, the results pretty tough to beat. And this is one of those records we just gave a cursory listen to, but soon found ourselves spinning it over and over EVERY day. No better recommendation than that...
We had almost forgotten how divisive this record was when it came out way back in 1993. But we were quickly reminded when this reissue dropped just by observing the reactions from some folks, especially women, which is ironic as Exile In Guyville was meant to be this vitriolic girl power bash on one of Phair's exes (dude from Urge Overkill apparently), but lots of the women we know were really put off by this record. Not sure if it Was Phair herself, what she became, or just the whole concept, which could come across as a whinging bitterly about a breakup instead of a powerful kick ass fuck you to a shitty ex, but listening to this again just reminds us that Exile In Guyville is a pretty fucking awesome record. Dark jangly indie pop, with super intense, often harsh, sometimes hilarious lyrics, all wound up with dark melodies, powerful guitars, and KILLER hooks, and while Phair's voice is not necessarily super polished, it totally suits the material, raw, rough, but melodic and sweet, and with a definite edge, often straining for notes she can't reach, but instead of sounding wrong, it ends up sounding passionate and aggressive, sometimes dangerously sexy, other times wistful and sad. Supposedly a song by song reworking of the Rolling Stones Exile On Mainstreet, it's easy to get all hung up on the drama and the fallout, and the post Guyville shitty records Phair released, and the ALL the hype, but fuck all that, this record is awesome. As essential in terms of nineties college rock as the Lemonheads It's A Shame About Ray or a handful of other iconic releases.
Some standout tracks: the could-have-been-a-hit "Never Said with it's soaring chorus and big crunchy guitars, the swirling moody guitar/vocal workout of "Dance Of The Seven Veils" with it's swoonsome falsetto and the (apparently, at the time) shocking use of the word 'cunt' in the lyrics, and of course the most referenced Guyville track "Fuck And Run", and for good reason, a super stripped down jangle, with awesomely bitter lyrics and it's "fuck and run" refrain, the crunchy grinding guitar heavy "Johnny Sunshine", with its dueling vocals and almost choral second half, and maybe our favorite track "Stratford-On-Guy" a loping minor key groove with almost spoken vocals, but all woven around a killer minor key main melody.
What else can we say, we loved it back in the day, it sounds just as good now as it did then. The reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, not essential, but fans will certainly dig. Also included is a dvd featuring a documentary about the making of Guyville, as well as the reaction to the record featuring tons of (maybe not so) random folks including Dave Matthews, Ira Glass, Gerard Cosloy from Matador, Steve Albini and more, as well as Phair in conversation with the man who inspired the record! Interesting and fun, maybe a little self important, but ultimately, all the extra stuff is totally superfluous, as the record as it is, as it was, all on its own, is really all you need, and if you don't already have it, then you really do need it.
The other day a mail order customer called up and ordered Finnish post-rockers Circle's tUMULt release "Andexelt", and also "Ciudad de Brahman" by Argentinian stoner-rock outfit Natas. I immediately suggested that he also get a copy of this debut cd by
As much as we loved the late great Silkworm, and ALL their records, we'll always have a special place in our hearts for those first few, the ones that featured Joel Phelps, whose super distinctive vocals, aching and soaring, and dripping with pathos and emotion, made those first few Silkworm records like the most EMO indie rock records ever. And the fact that 3 of the 4 Silkworms sang, it made those records super diverse, and each of the vocalists had dramatically different voices, which made for wildly divergent sounds, and strange, but impossibly unique harmonies. That said, Phelps was always our favorite, and while we were heartbroken when he left Silkworm, he continued to make amazing records solo, in fact his 1995 debut, Warm Springs Night, might still rank as one of our all time favorite records EVER.
So now Phelps, with his longtime backing band the Downer Trio have returned with a brand new record after almost a decade, and it's so great to hear that voice again, still as strange and beautiful and emotional as ever, the music a perfect match for his heartfelt oddball delivery, a sort of woozy, bluesy indie rock, dynamic, noisy, space-y, with lots of space, the guitars distorted, beautifully gnarled, and when Phelps belts it out, it still gives us chills, the opener "Nashville Sound" manages to transport us back to 1995, but at the same time, manages to sound modern and kind of timeless, the arrangement, very reminiscent of classic Silkworm, but with Phelps stunning vox, transforming the already powerful, nuanced music into something truly next level.
It's really hard to be objective, Phelps is easily one of our favorite vocalists ever, the old 'he could sing the phone book' thing is totally cliched, but impossibly true when it comes to Phelps, it is an odd voice though, love it or hate it for sure, but if you end up loving it, which we're guessing lots of you will, it inspires the sort of love that borders on slavish devotion, and he's not just singing, all that strange guitar playing, that's Phelps too, who works his guitar like he does his vocals, nothing standard or even remotely traditional about it. Instead, Phelps and his Downer Trio have crafted yet another totally distinctive, and utterly unique collection of songs, that traffic in a strain of indie rock, that seems to be the exclusive domain of these guys, and nobody else, anywhere. So impossibly great...
A short while back we reviewed an lp from legendary bluesman Washington Phillips, called What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?, released on the amazing vinyl reissue label Mississippi. As much as we love vinyl, we know a lot of folks out there don't have record players, so thankfully, all of the tracks on that Mississippi lp, are also contained on this here cd, and then some! The lp featured 12 tracks, this cd collects all 16 recordings from Phillips, his entire recorded output, and as a bonus, you also get 4 tracks of early religious music from Mamie And A.C Forehand (Forehand had a track on another recent Mississippi comp called Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long). Here's what we had to say about Phillips when we reviewed the lp:
Very little is know about Phillips, other than he was from Texas and only ever recorded sixteen songs. That's it. Sixteen songs, all of them totally gorgeous and mysterious. Phillips vocals are intense and world weary, but it's the accompaniment that really stands out.
The cover shows an illustration of Phillips playing what looks like a toy piano, but the sound is stranger than a toy piano, much higher and more resonant, chiming and tinkling, like little bells, like Christmas carols, a sort of joyous effulgent sparkling shimmer. The liner notes suggest that it may or may not be a Dolceola, an extinct late nineteenth / early twentieth century instrument that looks like a hybrid of a toy piano and a zither. But as there is only one confirmed recording of the Dolceola, on a Leadbelly track from the forties, it's hard to prove just what Phillips' instrument could be. According to a 1961 interview with Frank Walker, who recorded Washington Phillips, the instrument Phillips used was homemade and was something "nobody on earth could use except him". Online sources speculate that it could be a fretless zither or a phonoharp. Whatever it is, it sounds somewhere between a hammered dulcimer, a spinet (baby harpsichord) and an ice cream truck (minus the sound system), all beneath a warm fuzzy patina of dusty crackle. The notes tumble and twinkle while Phillips weaves them seamlessly into a warm glowing backdrop for his testifying, creating a gorgeous and haunting angelic gospel blues, that is truly unique.
Another awesome archival release from the folks at Mississippi records. Not only is their catalog slowly being re-pressed, but there are a whole slew of new releases, the first being this collection from the enigmatic Washington Phillips.
Very little is know about Phillips, other than he was from Texas and only ever recorded sixteen songs. That's it. Sixteen songs. Twelve of which are here, all of them totally gorgeous and mysterious. Phillips vocals are intense and world weary, but it's the accompaniment that really stands out.
The cover shows an illustration of Phillips playing what looks like a toy piano, but the sound is stranger than a toy piano, much higher and more resonant, chiming and tinkling, like little bells, like Christmas carols, a sort of joyous effulgent sparkling shimmer. The liner notes suggest that it may or may not be a Dolceola, an extinct late nineteenth / early twentieth century instrument that looks like a hybrid of a toy piano and a zither. But as there is only one confirmed recording of the Dolceola, on a Leadbelly track from the forties, it's hard to prove just what Phillips' instrument could be. According to a 1961 interview with Frank Walker, who recorded Washington Phillips, the instrument Phillips used was homemade and was something "nobody on earth could use except him". Online sources speculate that it could be a fretless zither or a phonoharp. Whatever it is, it sounds somewhere between a hammered dulcimer, a spinet (baby harpsichord) and an ice cream truck (minus the sound system), all beneath a warm fuzzy patina of dusty crackle. The notes tumble and twinkle while Phillips weaves them seamlessly into a warm glowing backdrop for his testifying, creating a gorgeous and haunting angelic gospel blues, that is truly unique.
As always, pressed on thick vinyl, housed in a gorgeously screened jacket, includes an insert on thick textured paper, with very minimal liner notes (appropriately enough) on one side, and and on the other an ad for the Dolceola out of some old time catalog. Cool!
Holy mission to Mars! What a fantastic discovery, the first we've heard from Phobonoid, a one man black metal / industrial / noise outfit from Phobos, and yep, that's one of the moons of Mars, and the music on Orbita is a high concept soundtrack to the end of civilization on Mars, as viewed from Phobos, and also BY the god Phobos, culminating in the eventual meeting between Phobos and his brother Deimos, on the scorched surface of the ruined red planet. And sonically, that's sort of what it sounds like, opening with a dense cloud of blacknoize, darkly billowing, ominous and sinister, eventually frenzied riffing begins to emerge from the blackness, a roiling sonic chaos, that instead of bursting into blasting black buzz, blurs and swirls into a grinding, almost orchestral buzz, a lurching doom-drone creep, wreathed in electronic fuzz and glitched out crumbling distortion, before erupting into a blown out Godflesh style industrial dirge, the sounds mutated and on the verge of collapse, electronic flecked heaviness, that buried blackness bleeding over the mechanized rhythms and the insectoid riffing. And that's just the first track! From there on out, Phobonoid paints a bleak sonic picture of Mars' ruination, achingly melancholy guitar buzz blossoms into blackened industrial blasts, the vocals a demonic rasp, the programmed drums relentless and robotic, inhumanly fast at times, but constantly slipping back into a monstrous, crushing plod, the sound almost psychedelic, dense and lushly layered, noisy and super distorted. Throughout the 7 songs here, the sound is in constant flux, a dizzying barrage of black tarpit creep, churning atonal blasts, mechanized metallic buzz, with one gorgeously austere stretch of blurred, almost blissed out industrial ambience, before one final blast, of majestically epic mechanoid black buzz. So good!
Our Record Of The Week from List #347, back in stock!!
One genre in heavy music, that a whole bunch of aQ-ers consider critical to their musical development, is in fact WAY underrepresented on the aQ list, partially cuz much of the music that made up that genre happened well before the advent of the aQ new arrivals list, but also because so few contemporary bands can pull that sound off, at least convincingly. What the heck are we talking about? SCREAMO. Yep, wild, chaotic, short sharp post punk heaviness, some of our faves include Orchid, Mohinder, Swing Kids, Portraits Of Past, Heroin, Antioch Arrow... those live shows were legendary, heaving masses of sweaty flesh, the line between audience and band blurred or obliterated completely, sets as short as 10 minutes, still packed with 15 songs of furious hardcore frenzy, there were definitely politics going on too, but it was the sound that had us smitten, the energy, the passion, the emotion, that first wave of screamo was obviously heavily indebted to Rites Of Spring, Die Kreuzen and other early hardcore and post hardcore combos, but the screamo bands took that sound and cranked it up, supercharged it, shortened the songs and blew the living fuck out of it.
Very few bands today can pull off that sound, or even try, there's Comadre, and Ampere, and a few others, and now you can add Pianos Become The Teeth, but the cool thing about PBTT, are that they take that classic screamo sound and meld it to a seemingly diametrically opposed sound, that sort of Godspeed You Black Emperor, slow build epic post rock majesty! And somehow it works. The energy and passion, the bursts of furious howling musical catharsis wedded to something more smoldering and patient, and the mix is pretty fucking fantastic, the group lurching from dense tangles of wild punkish crunch to soaring epic psychedelic blow outs, the songs super complex, constantly shifting mood and emotion, but keeping the tension ratcheted way up. "Quit Benefit" features insane squalls of wild octopoidal drumming, stuttering arrangements and dramatic pauses, haunting stretched out sheets of feedback, cool hard panned guitar jangle, the song a non stop frenzy of ever shifting rhythms, incredibly lush and melodic but all snarled up, but with a distinct melodic vibe running through the whole thing. "Pensive" finds the band locking into a churning slow build, with still more intense and relentless drumming, the guitars sharp and angular, the vocals howled and oozing with pathos, every song is a dizzying mile a minute post punk emo screamo epic, the band slipping so easily from indie jangle to rabid grinding punk and back again, but after nearly 30 minutes of that incredible and insanely cathartic level of sustained energy, the band offer up the final track, "Young Fire", a gorgeous post rock drift, all clean spidery guitars, simple skeletal rhythms, woozy twangy melodies, a slow build part way through to something more heavy, but never letting go, never exploding into a wild freak out, instead, letting the song unfurl lazily, the various sounds slowly slipping away, eventually leaving just a single reverbed guitar to play the record out. So lovely.
And the whole record, so fucking heavy and epic and emo(tional), definitely a big new favorite around here, and for folks who have been missing the days of the Orchid and Mohinder and Gravity Records, this is as about as close as you're gonna get to making it back there, but as is obvious from the above, Old Pride is less about looking back, and more about taking that sound, and dragging it forward, into the NOW.
Originally available as a bonus DVD audio disc with the first pressing of Pig Destroyer's Terrifyer album, the half hour plus track "Natasha" functions almost better as its own record (which it now is), seeing as it was pretty sonically removed from the rest of the grinding mayhem found on Terrifyer.
Rumored to have originally been intended for a two-part split with the similarly godlike (and sadly defunct) Creation Is Crucifixion, which never materialized, "Natasha" is possibly the single strangest and greatest effort yet from these Pig Destroying psychopaths. Extrapolating on the previous love-scorned dementia lyrical themes of their Prowler In The Yard opus, "Natasha" is a hallucinogenic half-hour nightmare of epic proportions. Heavy, plodding sonorous drums (and finally a bass guitar!) crash like thunder as ominous feedback echoes off the graven landscape of lyricist JR Hayes's surreal acid-trip of uncomfortable adolescent obsession gone horribly awry. The piece metamorphoses through several states, from long quiet ambient passages to keyboard dirges to full-on metallic surges before finally dissolving into the audio equivalent of the gnashing jaws of the song's eponymous protagonist. Absolutely stunningly majestically heavy and downright, dare we say, beautiful - like a psylocybin-striated amalgam of Corrupted, Boris, Godflesh, Buried at Sea, Old Man Gloom and Neurosis. Includes the same disturbing short story liner notes as before, but with some gorgeously garish new artwork. Natasha is an absolute must-hear and definitely proves once again that Pig Destroyer remain at the very fore of extreme music innovation.
When we first heard what the title of the new disc from East Coast grindmetal kings Pig Destroyer was called, we were making fun of it like, "oooh, scary, a prowler --- in the yard!" Somehow prowlers don't seem as scary as what most other death/black metal
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nine more tracks from the totally amazing Pig Destroyer. Scott Hull, also of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and formerly of Anal Cunt, takes grind even farther, making the riffs faster, the songs more fucked, and the drumming even more inhuman and machine-like (we were convinced it was a drum machine for a while). The GNOB side (bong backwards, get it?) is kind of jokey and stupid and pretty much pointless, but definitely get it for the Pig Destroyer tracks.
Latest slab of pummeling, punishing industrial power violence from this local one man band, who also just so happens to be 1/2 of another band we love, Iron Lung, but unlike Iron Lung, BHT, aka Jon Kortland, creates twisted blurts of caustic noise, grinding, distorted power electronics, and brutal metallic churn. This latest is split into 28 tracks, each 44 seconds long, each a sonic stunner, from skull cleaving blown out crush to sculpted static over stuttering jack hammer rhythms, it's a hard sound to swallow, difficult listening for sure, and it's likely most metalheads might find this a bit too brutal, and too abrasive, and probably not metal enough, which is saying a lot, but for folks into twisted avant noise, industrial and power electronics, outfits like Ramleh and Skullflower, Whitehouse and Swans, Brighter Death Now and Bastard Noise, PHT definitely fits somewhere amongst all their equally sonically twisted brethren!
Some tracks are strangely atmospheric, others purely rhythmic, the sounds themselves blown out and in-the-red, plenty of sonic gristle, crumbling feedback, hiss and hum and skree and squalls of feedback, metallic clang and clatter, with sounds often exploding into wild gouts of white noise, but just as often evolving into murky pulsations. Heady, heavy and hypnotic, the vocals a wild bellow, the only really link to the group's punk/metal roots, otherwise, the sounds is more experimental, and avant, and even with the vocals, the vibe is more like some lost industrial outfit from the eighties or nineties. There are plenty of surprise too though, moments of unlikely melody and beauty ("1970"), gorgeous bits of grey ambient drift ("Scum"), and a bunch of tracks that almost play out more like some warped variant of minimal techno, all skeletal crunch, and stuttery throb, and yet, it all somehow works together as this bizarre, noise drenched hydra-headed, 28 part psychedelic, power electronic noise-crust epic. And it KILLS.
Awesome orange and black minimal cover art too.
What might you expect from a band called Pig Heart Transplant? With a record called Hope You Enjoy Heaven? And song titles like "Prison / Fortress", "Crawling Through Hell", "Abject. Debased. Diseased" and "I Video Tape Your Diet"? What if the band featured members of Spazz, Silentist, Iron Lung, Despise You, Artimus Pyle, Gob, Brainoil and more? What if we told you they shared some splits with dirgedoomnoise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer? Yeah, you'd probably come up with something like THIS.
A punishing slab of slow motion power violence, crushing downtuned guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, everything dripping with filth and murk, total Man Is The Bastard worship for sure. Low end all over the place. Some tracks the guitars are burning hot, the production way in the red, others are super creeped out murkscapes of industrial pound and processed vox, while still others are sludge-doom trawls through all manner of crusty low slung dirgemetal, and a couple are long buzzing drones, with howled vocals over the top, sounding a bit like a low end deathmetal Whitehouse. Maybe our favorite track though, is "Feeding From Your Trough", reminding us a bit of Geronimo, a fucked up mechanical sprawl of pounding crunch and hissing static, dripping with distortion and noise, locked into a stumbling lurching rhythm, with some chunks of grinding heaviness that sound like they could blow out your speakers, slipping from clipped robotic trudge, to hateful blacknoise dirge and back again. Some seriously harrowing shit for sure. Which as you probably know by now, means WAY recommended. At least for those in the mood for some murky and menacing musical punishment.
Pimmon is probably one of the best know artists in Celebrate Psi Phenomena (other than Birchville Cat Motel) and here offers more unique Australian 'electronica.' Rumbling and gurgling low end, haunting and atmospheric with rhythmic crackle over found sound
NOW ON VINYL!!!
We go on and on complaining about the dearth of grime and dubstep releases in the US, but then we end up sitting on a handful of kick ass titles that have been getting serious playtime in the shop and on our headphones. Well, as we've said before, there are only so many of us, and so so so so many records to review, so some things take longer than others. Like this double disc from Pinch. Not brand new, but easily one of our favorite dubstep discs of that last little while, and easily the darkest and most stripped down.
Split into two discs, one with vocals, one without, we definitely prefer the instrumental disc, but the vocal disc is definitely growing on us. A few tracks we could maybe do without, but for the most part still pretty kick ass. But not nearly as intense and mysterious, murky and skittery as the instrumental disc, well worth the price of admission all on its own.
Each track is super cinematic, the drums skittering and shuffling, the basslines rubbery and dubbed out, synths buzzing and warbling, shards of haunting melody drift by, what vocals do remain, are just ghostly traces and are washed out and blurred into strange streaks of sound. The sound seems to swirl and drift and wash over you, so evocative and creepy and darkly beautiful. Take "Brighter Day", the bassline almost continuous, undulating, rumbling and whirring, the drums locked into a head nodding dubbed out groove, the song anchored by this disembodied melodic fragment, that is somehow a total hook, thick slabs of buzzing synths surface here and there, backward swoops, gristly digital crunch, but for the most part it's dark and smooth, groovy and slithery, a sexy dubbed out crawl, sort of like the Tricky of old dabbling in dubstep. And the rest of the instrumental disc follows suit. Sprawling dubscapes, of fragmented stuttery rhythms, deep rib cage rattling bass, drifting ethereal melodies, lots of buzz and fuzz and rumble and whir, bits of Eastern raga, some more classic dub sounds, a bit of modern dub a la Pole, all woven into blurred bleary eared landscapes of lurch and groove. Absolutely essential.
The vocal disc is not too shabby either really, our only complaint is that the tracks are already practically perfect in their ominous minimalism, so sometimes the vocals almost seem superfluous. But even so, the vocal disc is still pretty bad ass. The opener "Punisher" is a stone cold classic, a rubbery dizzying bassline, streaks and swoops over that classic dubstep groove, totally grime-y and dubby, but also alien and abstract, the vocals a looped toast practically buried under the murk and mire. "Brighter Day", the standout from the instrumental disc, gets a vocal makeover, a super catchy sing songy toasting, that definitely changes the vibe of the song, making it much less ominous and way more poppy, but even as much as we love the instrumental version, this one is definitely still pretty great. A few of the tracks verge on the diva-like, and manage to transform the originals into something a little too croony, but there are only a couple of those, and one of them slips easily into that classic Tricky / Martina sound which is actually pretty nice. The rest of the disc just sounds like more classic modern dub, the vocals going from smooth and melodic to rough and raspy, but still underneath, the music remains gloriously slithery and skittery.
Like we said before, you could just listen to the instrumental version over and over and over (we certainly have), and we'd give this big ups just on the basis of that disc, but give the vocal disc a try to. We've been spinning that one more and more everyday. And as if we even needed to say it, WAY recommended.
The criminally underrecognized Pinetop Seven have been plugging away for years, as they watched Lambchop, Whiskeytown, the Old 97s and a handful of their alt-country peers hit it (relatively) big. But with their fourth album, Pinetop Seven's time has finally come. The band takes simple country ballads, stretches and expands them, adding strings and lush textures, bizarre and exotic instrumentation, and create gut wrenching, brutally intimate country epics. The vocals are deep and trembly like the guy singin' 'em might be about to have a breakdown -- Roy Orbison channeled through Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, and Chris Isaak. You know how bands like Godspeed and Blackheart Procession reside at the dark murky end of the indie rock spectrum? That's what Pinetop Seven is to the alt-country scene. And in the same say that Godspeed is, at this point, only barely connected to an "indierock" sound, Pinetop are only tangentially "country" by way of their slight twang. What gets us is that it's also perfectly accessible, dark music that in a perfect world would be on adult radio all the time. This is real honest-to-god music that lingers in your brain for a while -- it's about as far from trendy and flash-in-the-pan as you can get. Very accessible, very deep, and very highly recommended.
Note: we also have one of their previous albums, "Rigging the Toplights", which is one of Andee's absolute favorites of all time.
Record number 3 from this weirdo Canadian duo, sure it'll be a big hit with the kids into the current crop of lo-fi warble and fractured garage pop, but these guys take that sound in a much darker, and way creepier direction. Sort of new wave, kind of garage-y, even a little bit industrial, but also a whole lot fucked up and fractured, a bit of that Residents off kilter creep, all warped guitars and motorik beats, and some seriously demented vocals.
Every song is raw and blown out, but more murky and synthy than anything, the whole record wreathed in grit and hiss and filth, the vocals weirdly tangled and often doubled, the guitars melting into black puddles of hum and rumble, super fuzzy and jagged, but simultaneously muted and muddy, definitely more punk than most of those bands but filtered through the same sort of alternate universe FM radio vibe, a few of the tracks are even laced with some weird off kilter 8-bit video game sounds, which somehow manage to blend in perfectly with the rest of the sonic strangeness, stumbling drum machines, woozy ambience, twisted production, and yet, somehow, buried under all the buzz and crunch and lope and lumber, lurks some seriously catchy and irresistible lo-fi dream-doom-pop. Definitely a new favorite...
You always gotta have a kick ass summer pop record. Even better if it's totally insanely glammy and catchy and bouncy and just a little snotty. And this latest blast of pink and black clad teenage kix hits the spot in a big way. We first heard the Pink Spiders on the internet as seems to be the trend these days. Their WAY big budget video for the insanely catchy Weezer-esqe "Little Razorblade" was making the rounds. Hard to resist for sure, not only was it a killer slab of synth drenched BIG guitar power pop, but the video featured a bevy of scantily clad ladies on roller skates. Summer indeed!
Teenage Graffiti may be heavy, with crunchy, slightly new wave guitars n' lots of fuzzy squelchy synths, and glammy too, with lots of snotty swagger, references to Hollywood and hairspray (and the band has a goofy over the top fashion sense, sort of bubblegum Melrose, always clad in black and pink), but at it's heart this is POP. Big bouncy super catchy POWER pop. Definitely shades of AQ faves the Stereo and post Stereo outfit the Let Go. And like most power pop the 'Spiders owe quite a bit to Big Star, Queen, the Posies, Weezer, Jellyfish, Sloan. But the Pink Spiders take all that classic pop and filter it through their own distinctly teenage vibe. Lots of playful melodies, handclaps, harmonies, jangle guitar, lyrics about girls and crushes and girls and Hollywood and girls, oh and girls and most importantly, big crunchy riffs and killer hooks. Fun and carfree and super rocking. If we had a big pink convertible Cadillac you know we'd be cruising Valencia street blasting Teenage Graffiti at full volume!! Pop record of the summer!!
We knew nothing about these guys when we first heard them, we were definitely intrigued by the band name, and the song title, "Tell Her I'm Dead", and then when the music started, thick, buzzing, almost synth sounding guitars (or maybe actual synths, hard to tell), with big booming drums, sound like some sort of metal / cold wave fusion, and when the song proper started, that only furthered that idea, the churning distorted bass line, soft focus synth swirl, churning propulsive rhythm, and super dramatic crooned vox, when all of a sudden, the song exploded into a burst of furious blasting, a sort of black metal cold wave, accompanied by some strange sci-fi squiggles, and as soon as it started, it was right back into that gorgeously miserablist mope rock. The second time that burst/blast surfaces, it's accompanied by hellish shrieks, and then explodes right into a crazy drum/synth jam, with the drums pounding wildly in a field of swirling new wave synths, a twisted hybrid that somehow is something we always wanted to hear, but never knew it. The song continues to confound, with creepy falsetto vocals, over a synth heavy doom creep, before finishing off in a squall of FX swirl and psych wave weirdness.
Holy shit, one song is all it took, and the rest of the tracks here are just as good. A little digging revealed that Pinkish Black is in fact a group with roots in an old aQ favorite, the late great Texas prog-psych outfit Yeti, and suddenly the sound of PB made a lot more sense. After Yeti, came The Great Tyrant, and it seems like every band these guys were in, endured all sorts of personal tragedy and loss of life, the sort of thing that would most definitely inspire the sort of gloom and doom Pinkish Black traffic in, and while based on Yeti, it's hard to see just what may have influenced the actual sound here, the last record from The Great Tyrant found them delving into similar territory, super gothy and dramatic, but not so fully realized, PB sounds like where The Great Tyrant might have eventually ended up, the whole record held together with that impossibly distorted buzz, be it synth or bass or guitar, it's a constant presence, whether churning malevolently, or droning blissfully, it's what gives the sound of PB its heft, it's grim black energy, and it's the drums that drive everything else, the playing dense and intricate, powerful and mathy, by turns metallic and brutal, deft and almost krautrocky, those two combined are the framework, over which all manner of soundtracky synth melodies drift and squiggle, and the vocals, a dark soporific croon one second, a washed out almost shoegazey reverbed bellow the next, the songs slipping from dense driving gloom rock to tripped out psych-goth space jams, often some dizzying mix of the two.
After Vaura's recent aQ Record Of The Week, we might not have been surprised to find this being released on Wierd Records, cuz for all its metallisms, and its punk/metal pedigree, this is essentially a super dark, super heavy new wave record, the synth melodies especially had us imagining what a Gary Numan record might have sounded like had he been making his first records 30 years later, and we definitely think they might have sounded something like this. Instead it's on the limited edition Handmade Birds label, run by the guy from Pyramids, who always bring us interesting stuff.
Haunting and heavy, brooding and brutal, imagine some sort of black metal / new wave hybrid, or perhaps a sort of noise rock / goth rock fusion, fans of all that Goblin / John Carpenter worship who might be into something much darker and heavier should check this out, but really, everyone who digs gloomy heaviness will dig this big time, and and if like us, the thought of a sort of metallic new wave gets you all riled up, then this just might be your new favorite record. It is ours!
Portland? This doesn't sound like Portland! Hey, this guy isn't even French! What gives?
Well, Benoit Pioulard is but a pseudonym for a young avant-folk tunesmith named Thomas Meluch, who now lives in Portland, Oregon yet grew up in Michigan. His gauzy dream-pop has much in common with those sounds that spilled out of Michigan with Windy & Carl, Fuxa, Auburn Lull, and even Veronica Lake beginning just over a decade ago. There is a decided craftsmanship that further distances his work from the shambolic affairs that dominate his current hometown, yet this album is not without its narcotic impressionism through his gauzy smears of ambience across his wistfully strummed acoustic guitar numbers. Temper is his second album released through Kranky, and that's a damn proper place for the man. Well, yes, Windy & Carl do release records through Kranky; but his work also fits along very well next to Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. The album's opening cut "Ragged Tint" is atypically urgent in its doubletimed elliptical fingerpicking which speeds past Pioulard's vocals which are sort of like mumbling Stephen Merritt if we could make that sound like a very good thing. A heartbreakingly sad glockenspiel melody tumbles into the chorus of the song, tempered with reverb and delay to match the hue of his dreamy drone-pop. The rest of the album is set at a languid pace, more in keeping with the first Iron & Wine record, complete with lo-fi bedroom recordings and sad little ditties strummed across his acoustic guitar girded with softened Boards of Canada rhythms. Each of his songs are effortless, beautiful, melancholic, and totally worth getting stuck in your head. He brackets each of his songs with softly treated field recordings made on a well-worn walkman that has never had its heads cleaned. So the rainstorms and birdsongs are cast in a mottled gray fog of thick tape hiss, which turns bleary and sad through Pioulard's treatments. As one customer who bought this record from us said, "it's too pretty not to buy!"
Ooh! The vinyl version of Temper also comes with his first album on Kranky, Precis.
Those of you who loved Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime which we listed a few lists back, might as well stop right here and just buy this, the finally reissued, first and only release from San Diego's Pitchfork, which features the unstoppable rock tag team of Rick Farr and John Reis, who between the two of them would go on to kick our asses with Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From The Crypt, the Hot Snakes and about a million more! And as the band that immediately preceded Drive Like Jehu, sonically, a lot of the elements that would gel so perfectly in Jehu are definitely present here, albeit in a little rougher form. Super dynamic intros, heart rending bursts of emotion smooshed between bulldozingly beefy guitar parts, and Farr's distinctive gravelly wail. Reminiscent of Fugazi in that the songs are tough and rhythmic and mean, but with hooks galore! This record was SO important to my (Sadie) development in musical discernin' and enjoyment. Hearing these songs again makes me feel so sentimental. But they stand the test of time SO well. In fact this stuff is so much more kick ass than most of the guitar-rock/post-punk/whatever-you-call-it that's come out lately. Comes with three bonus tracks from their long gone 7"!
