Part two of my huge high school/college 'Kate' crush (the other being Kate from Haysi Fantaysee). This is Katie Jane Garside's new outfit. You may remember her as the filthy little waif in a tattered sackcloth dress and wild blonde dreads from Daisy Chainsaw. While Daisy Chainsaw was all pent up teenage agression and buzzsaw guitars, Queen Adreena is slow simmering bitterness and warm languid instruments over Portishead-y rhythms. Don't be fooled by track one, it's definitely a winner; a crashing and monstrously heavy two minute barn burner that could have been a PJ Harvey 'Dry' era outtake, the rest of the record, while not as rocking, is certainly worth a listen. Dark and brooding and intense, almost goth. Fans of Portishead, PJ Harvey and the like should check this out. Includes a video for your computer, nice Quay brothers/Charlie Chaplin mix, with a nude (!) Katie astride her bandmate. BIG import price, not sure when/if the domestic is coming.
Now, WITHOUT the limited bonus dvd disc! Here's what we said about this last time for those that somehow overlooked it... This one scarcely needs a review. By now you've been hearing this record on the radio and MTV and in malls. Odds are you already own this if you like the Queens Of The Stone Age previous albums, or you bought it for the single. Or you loved Kyuss and think the Queens suck. But setting all that aside, and taking this record just on its musical merits, 'Songs For The Deaf' is a kick ass hard rock/pop rock record. Great sound, great songs! What's not to like? This is easily their best record since their super heavy debut. 'Songs For The Deaf' has it's heavy moments, and the warm fuzzy Kyuss guitars are still in effect, but it's way more of a pop record. And while they do stretch out occasionally, with headbanging stoned desert jams, things always return to the hook. Which is not a bad thing. Just the opposite. And the addition of Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees and solo) have added a lot in terms of sonic breadth and songwriting complexity. Way more dynamic and WAY MORE CATCHY. Listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. The last "hidden" track is a piano driven, string laden psychedelic pop epic. It -sounds- great, but just wish it was a better song (although our friend Drew is convinced it is a 'masterpiece'). But so what? This record is full of great songs!! Plus lots of weird guests: Dean Ween, Twiggy Ramirez, Casey Chaos, Blag Dahlia! The only downside, which has been an annoying QOTSA quirk from the beginning, is their relentless in-joking. This record is rife with said in-jokes, a bunch of stupid fake radio DJ's, occasional joke songs and the like. Easy to skip by but they tend to kill the flow of an otherwise solid record.
It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close).
But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well...
If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying.
The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught.
As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute.
The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck.
So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else.
Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.
Over the last few months we've been systematically going through our warehouse (read: not very big back room) and unearthing all manner of gems, limited cd-r's misplaced box sets, long out of print lps, and getting them back in the store, or if there are enough, getting them reviewed and onto the list. That way, even though we'd normally try to have 30 or 40 of something, at least a handful of you can get your hands on something instead of it sitting neglected on some shelf.
So here's another recent discovery, a cd-r from a long time aQ fave, Quetzolcoatl, aka Timothy Hurley, who also does time in Taj Mahal Travellers worshipping outfit Bonecloud, both hailing from Ireland. Released on Phantom Limb a while back, and limited, to, oof, 90 COPIES! Which of course means WAY out of print, and these are the very last copies.
The sound of Quetzolcoatl is dreamy delicate stuff, Warm washed out landscapes of high end tones, blurred into cloudy streaks, spread out over angelic voices and tinkling chimes, gritty buzz over distant percussion, and haunting ghostlike melodies, gentle swells of fuzz and hiss, sun dappled and ethereal, murky stretches of low end crawl, and majestic lo-fi chorales, smeared into long indistinct stretches of stained glass sound, glimmering and prismatic and so gorgeous.
Amazing packaging, a full color insert, with printed vellum sheets on either side, a small printed vellum insert, each one hand numbered, limited to only 90 copies. Again, already out of print, last copies ever�
Another way too limited missive from mysterious Irish drone outfit Quetzolcoatl, this time in the form of a split cassette, with the until now unknown to us outfit Changeling. This ridiculously limited hand painted tape begins with AQ faves Quetzolcoatl, featuring member(s) of another AQ fave Bonecloud, who explore a gorgeously muddy and murky soundworld, long drawn out drifts of grimy gritty sound. Warm and muted, dark sonic swirls, plenty of hiss and fuzz and delay and reverb, with bits of percussion, vocals, keening feedback, all drifting and swirling way below the surface, a roiling miasma of thick sound. Dark and ominous and tribal, dense squalls of distorted guitar drift overhead like storm clouds. It almost sounds like that weird ambient opening to Kiss' "God Of Thunder" but slowed way down and dubbed on to some old thrift store tape. Taj Mahal Travellers is a name that always comes up when we're talking about these guys, and with good reason, while that legendary Japanese ensemble employed a wildly different approach to sound making, the actual sounds themselves are quite similar. The expansiveness, the epic quality, but Quetzolcoatl get a bit more aggressive, the guitars and drums buried beneath thick layers of buzz and grit. The flipside features Changeling, and if anything, they sound like they could well feature some of the same members, cuz the sound is slightly similar, but where Quetzolcoatl are dark and aggressive, intense and murky, Changeling are blisssful and dreamy, dark layers of sound, hiss and fuzz, rumble and whir, but here sculpted into delicate waves, and subtle swells, a little bit dark, but glowing with some sort of mysterious warmth, glistening sounds rich and resplendent woven into soft focus drifts of moody murk. Like rays of the sun through a dirty window. So nice.
Dronemusic is always tough to describe, especially trying to explain or even understand what exactly it is that makes one group so much more compelling than another. Maybe that something isn't meant to be described, some ineffable quality that is in the music, and can't be pulled out and examined, or understood. That's sort of the vibe we get from both these groups. There is a magical mystical quality to the music they make, a sound, or even something outside of the sound (or inside) that connects on some primal level. Something to let wash over you, to fill up your ears, to carry you off, something almost physical, something organic and pure, not something that can be understood or explained. So good.
Hand painted cassette tape housed in a hand painted cloth bag, with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we got a bunch, but they'll be gone in no time...
We made the debut lp No Visitors from these Texas drugged out psych/doom/noise/kraut/sludge weirdos a Record Of The Week back June, and well, since these tracks were culled from the very same recording session that produced that record, you could very well consider this a sort of Record Of The Week part two, and really if you dug No Visitors, this is more of the same, blown out psychedelic heaviness, that sounds like a mashup up of the Butthole Surfers, Hawkwind and Shit And Shine, all filtered though AmRep nineties noiserock and Texas knuckle draggers Rusted Shut. Which if you're anything like us, is about all you need to know. But if you're new to Quttinirpaaq, or just need a reminder, give a listen to the first couple samples below. The brief sort-of intro, the sweetly titled "Diary Of A Pig Keeper's Wife", is all detuned trudge, crumbling slo-mo riffage, death march drums, weird, slowed down chant like vocals, this is some sort of wasted, psychedelic ultra doom, but it's on "Chinese Hercules" that Quttinirpaaq really get to flex their musical muscles, locking almost immediately into some seriously tranced out, heavy hypno-rock riffage, that weds super distorted drum pound to churning looped riffage, garbled vox and swirls of noise and effects into some heavy, space, psychedelic noise rock that takes everything we love about White Hills, The Heads and all the rest, cranks it WAY up, and drags it through the filth, resulting in some seriously next level kraut-sludge space-psych heaviness that KILLS.
And while it doesn't necessarily get better from there (not sure how it could really), it stays pretty epic and psychedelic, heavy and warped, tripped our and trancey, most of the tracks some weird sort of hybridized psychedelic krautrock and noise rock crush, the band locked into endless grooves that roil and churn mesmerically, while all around sounds swoop and swirl, streaks of feedback, blasts of FX, constantly shifting textures, buried melodies, all blurred and smeared into heaving, noisy, heavy psych weirdness.
Some of the tracks here get downright out there, some surprisingly beautiful, still noisy, but infused with surprising melodies, and crafted with a delicate touch, while others are just pure skull caving crush, and still others are almost electronic sounding, seemingly dabbling in the same warped outsider electronics as Shit And Shine.
Needless to say this RULES. Everyone who bought and loved No Visitors, is gonna want this too. And if you've yet to check these guys out, Let's Hang Out might just be your new favorite heavy / noise / psych / space jam. You have been warned.
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, clear with 'blood red spray'. Comes with a full color insert, and it's LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
We got our first taste of these Texas weirdos on a split with psychedelic drone-drug-doom heavies Bong, and the virtually unpronounceable Quttinirpaaq were definitely a good match, countering Bong's longform sonic explorations with their own heavy psych / caustic noise / kraut-sludge pummel. What we didn't know at the time, was that Quttinirpaaq includes among its membership, members of former Record Of The Weekers Rubble as well as Shit And Shine offshoot outfit Same Sac! Which totally makes sense, as No Visitors is a serious blast of drug addled Southern psych, the opening 90 second blast a crumbling almost industrial sounding dirge that sounds like Brainbombs at 16rpm, filtered through some seriously Butthole Surfers style drugginess. Which if you're anything like us, had us sold pretty much right away. And while not all of No Visitors is nearly so noisy, it is all pretty goddamn great. From pulsing low slung krautrock style murk, like on "Malvert", which drapes the motorik mesmer with wild squalls of caustic guitarnoise, and creepy hissy whispery vocals, and what might be some detuned pianos, to slo-mo black noise doom-dirge crumble, like on "Ex-Batts" which literally sounds like the tape has been slowed down, so all the instruments rumble and crumble and moan, everything wrapped in sheets of wild squealing feedback, and near Merzbowian noise, all the while lumbering and lurching like some lost Buttholes jam played back on a broken boombox.
These guys exist somewhere between skull crushing noise rock, atmospheric noise drenched Japanese style psych and primitive caveman dirgery, the comparisons we've read mention Brainbombs, Skullflower and Les Rallizes Denudes, but we'd probably also include Drunkdriver, Twin Stumps, Violent Students, Rusted Shut, Burmese, Liquorball, you can probably figure out what sort of glorious, druggy noisiness we're talking about. Super heavy, ultra psychedelic, stumbling and crushing, tranced out and woozily hypnotic, massive slabs of churning low end, beneath crunchy, jagged, distorto guitars, wild streaks of feedback everywhere, the vocals yelped and yowled, sometimes bellowed, here and there delivered in a deeply dramatic, and sort of creepy croon, the sound constantly on the verge of collapse, but always seeming to eventually coalesce into some seriously demented, kraut-sludge heaviness that will have most aQ customers losing their shit big time. And hell, there's even some faux techno, check out the gristly pulsating "Golden Needles", that sounds like Shit And Shine on Kompakt. Fuck yeah!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
Never before has a record been so completely overshadowed by it's delivery method. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year, you no doubt have read or heard about Radiohead, offering their album for download, at any price the customer deemed appropriate, whether it be $20 or nothing at all. Needless to say, this sort of thing can't really be pulled off unless you're one of the biggest bands in the world, but since Radiohead ARE, it seemed to be an unmitigated success. They haven't revealed how many copies they sold, or what the average price paid was, but it's probably safe to assume, they made out okay.
And then there are the Radiohead fans who don't like downloads, and who want every bit of music that they can get, and thus shelled out $80 for the deluxe double lp, double cd set, with a whole extra cd of outtakes and unreleased tracks (at least one aQ-er did! As did lots of aQ customers). We personally thought, for a band like that, it almost would have been cooler to NOT release an MP3 version, have it ONLY available in stores. After all, without indie stores they wouldn't have been where they are today. People are so worried about record sales, imagine if a handful of bands skipped the online release entirely, and you HAD to buy it in an actual store. Sure, we're sort of biased, but hell, we love records and cds and tapes, and even if we didn't have a store, we'd feel exactly the same way.
Well, look at that, we were just talking about how everything BUT the music on the new Radiohead has been discussed to death, and we go and spend the first half of our review doing the very same thing...
Anyway, now available on cd, and as a regular lp, Radiohead's latest, in case you haven't heard it in one way or another, is actually really quite good. Not immediately experimental, and a bit more rocking, with lots of fan favorites that have been in the works for years, the sound reminds us a lot of Hail To The Thief, but with definite nods to Kid A and Kid B (Amnesiac), it's hard to imagine these guys making a BAD record. They have such a distinct sound, and such a way with sonics, and melody, whether rocking furiously, or drifting dreamily. And In Rainbows covers pretty much all the bases, the opener, "15 Step", begins with an Autchre-ish electronic skitter, but then in comes Thom Yorke's falsetto croon, and soon the band is shuffling through swirling guitar melodies and children's voices, strange FX and dubbed out drums. "Bodysnatchers" is a serious rocker, and is one of the oldest songs here (we think), with a killer crunchy riff, distorted bass, a very motorik Neu!-like rhythm, and big chiming U2 like guitars. "Nude" is a hushed whispery ballad, but just weird enough to stay interesting, a haunting high end drift, with a super gorgeous vocal line. The rest of the record seems to slip back and forth, from rock to ballad, from swoonsome epic crashing bombast, to hushed intimate whisper. Finishing off with the amazing "Videotape", a slow soft piano dirge, with another delicate and haunting vocal melody, but underpinned with some weird muted electronic drum loop, the whole thing so hypnotic and repetitive and dreamlike.
But who the heck needs to review a Radiohead record anyway? Especially this one. If you didn't download it, you're probably already gonna buy the cd or lp. And in fact, we bet half the people who downloaded it are also gonna buy the physical version. Radiohead are one of the few bands with such a crazy universal appeal, regular folks dig 'em, indie rockers of course, lots of metalheads do too, and loads of 'experimental' and 'avant' music lovers like them as well. Which makes sense, cuz, hell, they're a great band, they write great songs, they're not afraid to experiment and take regular songs and twist them all up, and this is just another great Radiohead record.
Comes in cool 'green' packaging, designed so you can take the various parts and stickers and stick them in a RECYCLED jewel case and voila!
An action packed album on which Esplendor Geometrico-styled chunky rhythms crash against antique samples of ragtime piano and organ drone. Sorta like a more 'industrial' version of digital pranksters V/VM.
White hot drones of amplified electric motors and distortion feedback build, shift and scrape. Not unlike the work of experimentalist John Duncan.
It's about fucking time! This is one of the best and most overlooked hard rock/metal records of the past 15 years, a big fave of Andee and Allan here at AQ. Its obscurity might have something do with the fact that that they were, as frontman Greg Strzempka
But the bottom line is always the songs. And Raging Slab, at least on this record, has SONGS coming out their ass. Unforgettable hooks and sing-along choruses. So catchy and fun (and funny) without being stupidly ironic. Bizarre lyrics that are sung so forcefully and with such emotion that you find yourself singing along full force: "GET OFF MY JOLLIES!!!!" or "I can bust a gut on Heebie Jeebies and holy rollers poppin wheelies", or "Just try and shave my wooly bully, I'll use the fur as fuel for folly." In fact all the lyrics are almost nonsensical but oddly satisfying and completely compelling (especially when you're in full on air-guitar, or 'air lead vocalist' mode). This should have been the "Nevermind" of groovy boogie stoner hard rock, but the money and success and fame somehow didn't happen. But now with this reissue, folks have another chance to catch on to this slab of truly unique, Southern-fried metal-rock nirvana.
OK kids, put down your White Stripes records, and your Clinic records, and your John Spencer Blues Explosion records, and burn your Strokes records, and your Yeah Yeah Yeahs records. This is the real shit: gritty, cocksure, whiteboy blues, junkyard
Rainbows Are Free? Did they really name their METAL band that? Really? Well, they are on the psychedelic/stonery side of things, so that sort of thing kinda makes sense, just like the local band called Glitter Wizard, but still. You gotta really kick ass to pull off having a name like that. And, they do! Bottom heavy, fuzzed out, swinging riffage explodes out of the gate on opener "Slow Train". They don't really let ever let up, with wild, even more fuzz-filled soloing and a vocal style that surprises by morphing from a stoner drawl into what sounds more like a frothing rabid Rob Halford from Judas Priest! Really, on the second track the singer busts out a gruff, staccato style that's more metal than thou, over the top like Halford singing "The Ripper" with a frog in his throat, not at all what we were expecting but pretty damn awesome. That's actually when we knew we really liked this band, that they were willing to roam outside the standard stoner rawk template, the singer especially, screaming and/or crooning as the mood strikes, while the band RIPS right along. As a result, there's moments here that remind us of everything in the stoner/psych/doom/grunge realm from Kyuss to Reverend Bizarre to Skin Yard (or Gruntruck) to Goatsnake to Danava ... From their name on down, it's hard to peg these guys, but we like 'em and their chunky grooves and freaky ways. They get particularly far-out and bad-trippy on "Sinking Ship", and the singer's yowl on "Are You Dead?" even conjures up the shade of Saint Vitus' Scott Reagers.
Recommended to anyone into all the killer stoner stuff we've been giving the thumbs up to lately from the MeteorCity and Small Stone labels, for instance the Solace we listed last week. And, everyone who dug Freedom Hawk oughta dig the heck outta this too!!
Second full length blast of psychedelic stoner rock heaviness from these hippy heavies (we can only assume they're hippies with a name like that right?), and like their first, this is another batch of swaggery, Sabbath-y, pounding stoner psych riffery, with even more dramatic vocals that first time around. Give a listen to the awesomely titled "Speed God And The Rise Of The Motherfuckers From A Place Beyond Hell", which displays the band at their bad ass best. The main riff, a stone cold killer, with some seriously wailing leads over the top, the drums, bombastic and beefy, and when those vocals swoop in, totally over the top. Somewhere between the near operatic metallic howl of Mika from Finnish hypno rockers Circle, the classic metal vox of Judas Priest's Rob Halford, and the space lord motherfucker himself, Dave Wyndorf from Monster Magnet. And actually Monster Magnet is probably the best band to compare these guys too. While not quite as space-y, they have the same massive musical balls, every second here oozing major attitude, and maybe most importantly of all, they don't take themselves too seriously. It may be metal, and it may be heavy, but it sounds like these guys are having the times of their lives, and that sort of vibe is seriously infectious, and gives this a bit of a party rock vibe, which helps keep Rainbows from devolving into generic stoner rock, instead, the sound and the songs are loose and wild and wooly and fun as fuck, totally headbangable, groovy and crazy catchy too, there's also some Southern rock going on throughout, which of course reminds us of all time aQ faves Raging Slab, not to mention all the bands we mentioned in our review of the first Rainbows Are Free record (Kyuss, Reverend Bizarre, Skin Yard, Goatsnake, Freedom Hawk, etc.), and fuck, any band that lands somewhere between Monster Magnet and Raging Slab, gets a BIGtime aQ seal of approval!
Disturbing, verrrrry disturbing.
You might expect that something from Circle and Pharoah Overlord members going under the names Krypt (Jussi) and Rudimentor (Janne) might be sorta metallic (especially after that Krypt Axeripper ep reviewed last list). This silver-on-black screenprinted package certainly looks dark and evil: the illegible logo, the band photo (long hair, spiked armbands), the song titles -- there's just two of them, "Transylvanian Error" (17:45) and "Ultimate Sword" (16.34). And the album title is a nod to Jussi's favorite '80s "metal" act, Jesters Of Destiny.
But we also know to expect the unexpected from our Finnish friends. So while this IS dark and evil, there's not a metal riff in sight. Rather, this duo utilize percussion, voice and effects to create a psychologically sick, rhythmically fucked drone-zone. The two long tracks are black, bottomless abysses both, caverns echoing with monstrous processed vokills and clattering pipe-fights, awash in a dense, drifting electronic miasma.
The label press info references Z'ev (the percussion), Faust (the weirdness), Wolf Eyes (the noise), Darkthrone (the evil) and we hear all that for sure. We'd further compare Rakhim's improvised blackness to black metal experimentalists (and AQ ROTWer's) Abruptum, with some of the screaming sounding like the insane-asylum inmates from a Staalagh record! Maybe like Staalagh on a broken boombox, being played the the corner of a room where spaced-out Circle side project Dr. Kettu are jamming with the Black Boned Angel.
Actually, last year we reviewed an expensive Qbico import LP by Rakhim (weirdly enough, we still have a few copies, if you act fast...) and ever since experiencing the mesmerizing psychedelic murkiness of that debut we've been wanting to hear more.
Disturbing, yes. But we like being disturbed like this!!
This hitherto unknown Russian black metal band has quickly gained some converts here at Aquarius with this disc. Of course, we're suckers for folky, flute-heavy pagan forest metal! You might laugh at the jig-dancing potential of this disc, and sure, we like it
We've been geeking out on, I mean rockin' out to, a bunch of the '70s and '80s hard rock/heavy metal reissues coming out on the UK's Rock Candy label... Plasmatics, Armored Saint, Billy Squier, Ted Nugent, Riot, a whole bunch of old favorites, done up all deluxe with nice packaging and copious liner notes. We've reviewed a few already. Here's another we like a lot.
First-time-on-cd for this 1978 album, the second and last from one-hit wonders Ram Jam. That one hit was their high octane cover of Leadbelly's "Black Betty" from their first album (do yourself a favor and look up the video on Youtube!!). So what has Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Ram got to offer? Well, though it didn't produce any hits, it's the better of their two records by far. With a revamped line-up, Ram Jam's hybrid bubblegum / biker blues roots are a thing of the past, the band now a lean, mean, polished, hard n' heavy rock outfit that fans of other, more popular commercial late '70s American rockers like Aerosmith, KISS, Foreigner, and Starz should dig... though at the time they apparently didn't, this record sales-wise spelling the end of Ram Jam's career. Dunno why, people must just not have heard it, as it's quite the party platter, full of kick ass lead guitar, powerful vocals, and energetic, catchy tuneage that would sound great blasting from your souped-up Camaro or custom-painted van...
But now here's a chance to hear this again (for the first time, if you're like us!) and give Ram Jam's swansong its due! Recommended to all rockers.
You know something is fishy when limited cd-r's start getting reissued as... LIMITED CD-R'S!!! What the heck?! Once makes sense, nothing wrong with a limited cd-r, but reissuing an out of print cd-r on cd-r AGAIN just makes us wonder why the heck it wasn't a real cd in the first place. Especially if it's so good that it requires multiple reissues. That said, at least we can be thankful that this gorgeous gem is still available at all. Originally released in 2004 on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label Jozepha is a practically perfect suite of songs, glistening and delicate, sweet and melancholy, steel string acoustic guitars, simple slide, even some subtle harmonica, lovely melodies drifting and intertwining, meandering lazily, soft sunlight filtered through the leaves and branches overhead, a cool breeze. A little bit country, a little bit pop, but mostly a totally timeless, dreamy instrumental journey with no particular destination, just floating along like big soft clouds, warm chords swirling like autumn leaves, simple melodies, dropping one note at a time, like raindrops on a sunny day. Quite possibly the sweetest, dreamiest, driftiest, swooniest record we've heard in ages. And frustratingly, this is again EXTREMELY LIMITED. Comes packaged quite smartly in an exquisitely embroidered sleeve!
Most folks probably know Ramleh mostly for their connection to sonic contemporaries and brothers in noise Skullflower, both having emerged from the same scene and both having released records on the infamous Broken Flag label (run by Gary Mundy, the main man of Ramleh). But Ramleh was always its own unique beast, a constantly evolving sonic terror, beginning life as a power electronics combo, before blossoming into something more in line with what might be called noise rock. But the line that marked that shift was never clearly delineated, with elements of pre- and post- bleeding both ways, infusing the group's sound with strange elements that definitely made Ramleh stand out amongst their noisy contemporaries.
Hole In The Heart was originally released on Broken Flag as a super limited cassette, in 1987, and is here fleshed out with extra sounds culled from a cassette release called Nerve released the same year, and listening to this again now, we're reminded how ridiculously prescient the sound of Ramleh was, predicting sounds that are all the rage now, from glacial downtuned dirgery a la SUNNO))), to tripped out druggy ambient free noise (about a million floorcore bands), strange post industrial dirgescapes (Wolf Eyes?), to blown out industrial metallic crunch (about a million more bands), it's a sound that is definitely of its time, but also sounds like it could be some super limited microlabel cd-r release of today.
Opener "Bite The Bolster", is all slow smoldering drones, distant shimmer, processed ghostly vocals, lo-fi for sure but lush and strangely dramatic and lovely, leading straight into "Do Not Come Near" that does SUNNO))) better than SUNNO))) themselves twenty-odd years earlier, a heaving, grinding crumbling mass of gnarled buzz, laced with streaks of feedback, buried melodies, muted pulses, fractured almost-rhythms, some of it sounds downright dubby, albeit blown out and noise drenched, hypnotic and washed out and crushing.
Which is then followed by the epic 25 minute, 6 part "Redcap", a sprawling multi movement noise jam, which begins with a weird bleated doomic plod, only to explode into a squall of swirling whirling hiss and buzz, distorted vox, and wild tangled feedback, not that far removed from Our Love Will Destroy The World or Birchville Cat Motel. Loops, and haunting melodies, the track lurches and lumbers, slipping from all out assault, to dark stuttery drift and back again. Part three is a massive slowed down metallic dirge, processed vocals stretched out into a grinding drone, while the (surprisingly catchy) main riff pulses in the background, eventually splintering into angular loops, topped by a soaring super distorted psych guitar wail. The next part falls somewhere between Godflesh and Wolf Eyes, a crushing synth flecked distortion drenched plod, with billows of echoey vox, a motorik pulse at its core, doomy, but also sort of blissed out. A brief burst of twisted tweaked riffage and what wounds like pipe fights and broken glass, opens up into the final part, beginning with a churning muted loop, and shards of effected feedback, sounding a bit like an industrial WOLD, this muddy musicbox sort of looped melody happening way down in the mix, while a soft cacophony of high end and swooping distorted vox careen and collide in the space above, at first it sounds like a sort of abstract free noise freakout, but the vocals get more and more melodic, and the song takes a new shape a twisted bit of depressive noise pop, a bit like the Dead C, before blinking out.
"Spear Flowers" begins as a gnarled tangle of super distorted riffs, again weirdly melodic, swirling and collapsing inward, eventually transforming into a looped hypnotic drug jam, repeated mantra like vocals, crunching grinding electronics, buzz all over the place, loads of feedback, totally mesmerizing, and again, sounding like it could be from today.
"Hole In The Heart" is total in-the-red ramshackle pop infused noise rock, like a heavier, more lush Dead C, the main melody sweet and catchy, but slowed down and buried in hiss and buzz, lilting and dreamy for all its abject aggression. "Product Of Fear" is a gorgeous guitarscape, layered buzz, washed out glimmering warmth, humid and haunting, and really really pretty, which leads you softly into "Grazing On Fear 2" which is also pretty, in its own way", but is also a cacophonous blow out, twisted atonal organ, and churning distorted white noise, eventually lurching into a cool skipping, stuttery outro. And finally, the nearly 25 minute "True Religion", an expansive soundscape of processed guitars that again is strangely pretty, very much in the vein of Jesu or Nadja, the guitars blown way out, but the melody is lilting and melancholy, a sort of soft doom, but wrapped in muted crunch and crumbling buzz, before slipping into a strange fractured interlude, before emerging on the other side some sort of slow motion noise pop dirge, epic and triumphant, finishing off in an explosion of grinding white hot / black hole skree.
Absolutely essential for pretty much everybody, but specifically, folks into Nadja and Jesu and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Skullflower, and anybody who likes super heavy droned out noise, pop infused shoegaze industrial metal bliss out, and crushing power electronic dreamdronedirge. Reissue of the year so far, hands down.
This is ostensibly a walk through Jeruselem as recorded by Random Inc. (who was a member of Autopoeises) and then processed/altered/fucked with by himself and a handful of guests including Tim Hecker, Electric Birds, the Rip-Off Artist, Ultra-Red and more. The results are pretty fantastic. I've listened to almost nothing else for the last few nights. This falls somewhere between AQ faves Stefan Mathieu and Oval, sort of gritty, buzzy, and hypnotic dreamscapes, but much darker and more cinematic, partly because of the recorded snippets of life/people/music in Jerusalem, but also because of the musical choices made by the contributors. This is a really dreary, somber, hypnotic, droning affair, with lots of buzz and click and hum and skitter. And the artists gentle touch with the original sound sources results in some totally breathtaking moments. I haven't dug a record this much since Oval's Diskont. Great stuff.
Another entry in the NEW WAVE OF FINNISH HEAVY METAL, aka NWOFHM, comes modern Finnish thrashers Ranger, who not unsurprisingly, don't sound modern at all, and in fact, even though the label describes them as thrash, a lot of the time, they almost sound more like classic eighties true metal, the title track opens with the sort of epic harmonized guitar majesty, you just don't hear anymore, and then the band launches into some ridiculously over the top drumming, a barrage of pick slides, and BAM, chugging riffage, blasting beats, soaring divebomb leads. At this point, the sound is definitely thrash, we're hearing lots of early Anthrax for sure, even a little Slayer too, but Ranger are way poppier, the grunted sung/spoken vox punctuated with wild falsetto wails, the eighties vibe is huge, the drums all reverbed and boomy, the song flitting from lightning fast punked out thrash, to chugging classic metal and back again, and then of course some wild soloing, dueling epic shreddery, for folks our age, this is like musical manna from heaven (or hell?). And as yet always, especially with Finnish bands, and from the Ektro camp in particular, we're faced with the nagging possibility, that these guys could be taking the piss. But really, even if they are, they're so good, it hardly even matters, total eighties heavy metal radness, that really sounds like it could be from back in the day. The serious metal majesty and fierce metallic fury balanced by plenty of hooks and some serious poppiness, as well as some serious goofiness (but then what great metal bands didn't have some of that? Venom anyone?). The vocal delivery is awesome and ridiculous, more spoken than sung, but delivered like a true metal warrior, you can almost imagine both his hands holding up the invisible oranges, and of course lots of trilled 'r's, and let's not forget the sound effects, like the revved car engine when the vocalist sings the line "V8 engine screams!!"
But fuck it, metalheads who treasure the golden age of metal (that's the eighties btw) and can't get enough of that sound, this is about as good, and ridiculous, and amazing as it gets. Especially what might be the most epic track here, the closer "Knights Of Darkness" (featuring the aforementioned revving engine sound effects), a galloping tour-de-force, with some amazing harmonized guitars, killer shredding leads, and a vocal performance, that had us once again, thinking it could be Mika from Circle in metal drag. So goddamn great. Death to all but metal!
We'd been hearing about this record for ages, the guys in the Ovens and Violent Change constantly asking us if we'd heard these guys, and of course we HADN'T, cuz it seemed to be another one of those local SF underground post punk records that surfaced briefly and then disappeared, much like those Sopors records we were finally able to track down. But thankfully, this angular post punk / noise pop gem was rescued from obscurity from the fine folks at Blast First, and while we were a bit surprised that some weird super obscure band nobody had ever heard of would merit a big label reissue, once we finally got our ears on this stuff it was easy to see why, and then had us wondering how the hell this had slipped under the radar, and how had we missed these guys completely? Hell, they even did a split with aQ faves Grass Widow that flew right by us apparently.
Well it doesn't really matter now. What really matters now is that you all don't miss out this time around, cuz holy shit is this stuff killer. Dark, brooding, angular, crunchy and fuzzy, moody and broody but bristly and kinetic, catchy as fuck, but also raw and tense and urgent exactly the kind of stuff folks into Iceage and similarly hyped new post punk combos should be flipping their shit over. And thankfully will now have the chance. Noisy and intense, swaggery and frenetic, the guitars sharp and crunchy, swirling into wild squalls as often as locking into crunchy riffage or unleashing shards of gnarled noise, the drums and bass locked into tightly wound grooves, loping lazily one second, driving and punk as fuck the next, the vocals a snotty snarly feral yowl, nervous jittery energy harnessed into jangle pop shapes but run through with Wire-y slivers of melody, as good as we had hoped and then some!
Yet another depressing and doomy export from our beloved Finland. Man, these people must be so miserable. How else could a single nation produce so much depressing music? This time around it's the Rapture, who musically, bear an uncanny resemblance to AQ favorites Katatonia. And for those of you unfamiliar with that sound, it's a bit like a metal Cure; dark and droning, melodic and hypnotic, but heavy! The Rapture take their obvious Katatonia influence, and rough it up, adding screaming, shrieking, growling black metal vocals, instead of the more melodic Katatonia croon. Really fucking great.
At first I was inclined to hate this band. I see 'em on MTV all the time (the video is actually pretty great), they're a two piece, as is the current fashion, boy and girl duo ala the White Stripes, and they have been saddled with that dreaded (and offensive) NEXT-BIG-THING tag. But I have to say, this record kicks serious ass! It's got some of that garage rock thing going on, which is obviously part of their next big thing mass appeal. Hives, Strokes, White Stripes and all that. But this record is so much weirder and cooler. Really gloomy sounding, kind of like a more punk Velvet Underground, with occasional squalls of white-noise guitar and super noisy freakouts. It's kind of hard to put my finger on just what makes this record so appealing. The songs are catchy, the spare instrumentation still manages to kick out the jams, and the overall sound has this weird horror movie / B-movie vibe. It's really exciting to see a band this grungy and muddy and gloomy and cool hit the big time. It may be a guilty pleasure, but at this point we have so many, why even keep track?
We discovered this strange split lp via the always amazing WFMU in New Jersey, a freeform radio station we've collaborated with on numerous occasions in the past, most notably we shared a couple showcases at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas, which by the way was no coincidence, and it wasn't just because we're pals, it's also because WFMU constantly and consistently play the most amazing shit. We think we know about the craziest, most underground music, and then we tune into WFMU and routinely have our minds blown. And yeah, we blow their minds once in a while too, with stuff we recommend on our list, but pretty much every time we listen to WFMU, we have to have a pen and paper handy to jot down all the amazing things we need to track down, which happened recently with this here record. One track was all it took to know this was some serious aQ-worthy weirdness, dark and psychedelic, tripped out and bizarre and beautiful, on a label we love too, with a background story as cool and weird as the music itself. So we got as many as we could (it's limited to 300 copies!) but odds are they won't last, so grab one of these quick cuz once we describe it to you, we're pretty sure you're not gonna be able to live without one...
The oddly named Razen are a duo, who grew tired of the traditional rock band instrumentation, and decided to each pick a new instrument, one they had no idea how to play, which is how they ended up with a detuned santoor (like an Indian hammered dulcimer) and a drumset assembled from metal plates. And thus was born Razen. They've expanded their instrumentation to include still more instruments they don't know how to play (bouzouki, keyboards, horns), and have invited a handful of guests to contribute an even more impressive and bizarre arsenal of noisemakers, including bagpipe, chalumeau (a classical style recorder), sopranino (one of the smallest horns in the saxophone family), bass recorder, duduk (a Middle Eastern woodwind) and shenai (a North Indian oboe), and this is the result: a glorious, mysterious take on world music, dark and haunting, heavily percussive, cinematic, abstract and dramatic, the label mentions Moondog and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and David Lynch, but we also hear some Sun City Girls, some martial industrial music, while at the same time the sounds dip into African folk music and Indian style ragas, all rife with drone and buzz and strange melodies, lush textures, frantic rhythms, all filtered through Razen's distinctively non-world music perspective.
"Rammelaargong" begins with hypnotic tribal hand drumming, deep low end thrum, fluttering woodwinds, and haunting steel string shimmer, eventually building to a frenzy of howling horns, and frantic drumming, infused with plenty of drone and buzz, and a strangely motorik rhythmic pulse, with everything eventually dropping out, finishing off with a brief flurry of lo-fi percussion.
"Razen Zand" begins with a thick undulating raga like drone, rendered in glitchy electronics, before the drums kick in, and then the horns, and the sound is almost like a marching band playing some abstract African folk music, the drums and horns locked into staccato bursts, while in between those bursts, wild melodies are unfurled from buzzing steel strings, the sound manages to be epic, and majestic and HEAVY. "Richel" is all low end blur, and woozy snake charmer melodies, shimmery spidery buzzing strings, a sun baked sprawling raga-like drift, the vibe dark and emotional and intense, very cinematic, wild fluttering woodwinds flit above that mournful snake charmer cry, the track laced with sharp percussive strikes, and thick low end thrums, hummed chantlike vox, and swirls of metallic shimmer. "Rode Hond" too, begins with a deep metallic buzz, layered and lush, and those exotic intense snake charmer melodies, the percussion, spare and skeletal, but propulsive and rhythmic, the song growing more and more intense the drums more frenetic, the horns and woodwinds more tense, soaring and singing out, all the instruments slipping into a hypnotic groove, that we could listen to forever, and fades out way too soon.
So incredible, it's only 4 tracks, but they're so intense and detailed and blossom a little more with every listen, you might as well set your turntable to send the needle right back to the beginning, and let it play all night.
And that's just the Razen side. The flipside is taken up entirely by a single track from Sheldon Siegel, which is not in fact a person, but rather a group, a Belgian abstract free jazz outfit, made up of cello, drums, percussion, sax, vocals, tapes and music box, and don't be expecting regular old free jazz, they are after all teamed up with Razen for a reason, and not because they're both from Belgium, it's more likely, that like Razen, the guys in Sheldon Siegel approach their music similarly, looking to subvert the old, and invent something new, to create a music that while made up of free jazz elements, is more than free jazz, and what they've come up with does definitely strike out from the confines of free jazz, sure, a quick listen will sound like free jazz on the surface, but as you dig deeper, and the song develops, thick grinding cello drones ground the sound, a thick undulating textural buzz, underpinning, stuttery skronk and little flurries of percussive skitter, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer. Over the course of the side's 25 minutes, the group shift gears dramatically, slipping into a seriously twisted dirge, with the horns super processed and sounding almost electronic, blissing out, and letting blurts of feedback and spurts of rhythmic sputter spar over mournful cello melodies, sounding super dramatic and intense, after some bursts of almost traditional sounding avant jazz, the sound winds way down, the tapes warble and whir, the other instruments are muffled and muted, a strange landscape of scrapes and thumps, of fragmented melodies, and abstract ambience, before finishing off with a strange stretch of stumbling loping jazz flecked skitter, and swirling droned out weirdness.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
The return of these dreamy jangle poppers finds them sounding even dreamier, their retro sound drifting ever further back to the days of Sarah Records, all crystalline guitar shimmer, swirling softly psychedelic jangle, reminding us once again of the late great Field Mice. And with every record, their 4-track home recorded beginnings seem further and further away, the group's polished pop landing positioning them closer to say, Belle And Sebastien, than Ducktails or Woods or any of their other former label mates.
The opener "Had To Hear" might be the darkest (and maybe best) of the bunch, adding just a bit of darkness, some sonic pathos, that had us thinking of Scud Mountain Boys (or the Pernice Brothers), the above mentioned Woods, and for some reason pre-New Pornographers power poppers Zumpano, but it's a gem, all minor key melodies and a verse as catchy as its chorus. That said, it's still plenty ethereal and shimmery and dream poppy. But not nearly as much as the rest of the record, which dials back most of that shadow leaving just pure, lush, shimmer-pop dreaminess. Some folks around aQ are finding Real Estate a bit too twee for their taste, but really, if you love the Field Mice, Belle And Sebastien, Heavenly Beat, the Go-Betweens, the Pastels and the like, this will definitely be right up your alley.
For whatever reason, we've never reviewed a record by Jay Reatard, which considering the hype surrounding him these days is somewhat surprising, and even though we dug his old band the Lost Sounds quite a bit, we were never all that interested in his solo stuff.
We're kind of kicking ourselves now, cuz if this new one is anything to go on, this shit is SO up our alley. Frantic, jangly, propulsive, power pop. And, yeah, garage rarely enters into it, this is total old school power pop, big guitars, killer hooks, and Reatard's high whiney vocals that have always been perfect for this sort of pop.
If we had to draw a comparison, it would be the Buzzcocks and the Cardiacs. The classic punk pop smithery of the Buzzcocks, and the frenetic high vocal-ed, almost proggy spazzpop of the Cardiacs. And at its most frenzied and caffeinated Reatard reminds us of the Toy Dolls too. Which should give you a good idea of what this stuff sounds like.
The first three tracks are a pretty perfect 1-2-3 pop punch. The first single opens up the record, "It Ain't Gonna Save Me", a total jangle pogo punk pop jam, with a stripped down verse and a soaring anthemic chorus, and a cool angelic vocal bridge that is total Cardiacs. "Before I Was Caught" sounds like it came straight off some Rhino post punk compilation, total classic old school eighties new wave pop, with a hook to die for, and awesome chiming guitars. And finally "Man Of Steel", another very Cardiacs sounding jam, but with a cool woozy guitar part, and a robotic new wave verse, skittery drums, and yet another super catchy, ever ascending chorus. Thankfully, the rest of the record is just as great. Not a stinker in the bunch. And the more we listen, the more the later tracks begin to shine, one of those discs where every track is a possible favorite. Watch Me Fall is definitely one of our biggest surprises, we listen to it DAILY, and it has us backpedalling like crazy, tracking down and checking out all those other Reatard discs we passed by the first time around...
Relapse is really playing up the cyber-industrial-whatever aspect of Red Harvest but it's their least 'industrial' record so far. But, industrial it still is, with machine like beats occasionally overtaking their pounding, flesh and bones drummer, and ultra crisp and precise riffs, processed into expansive sheets of distorted roooaaaaaar. Somewhere between Neurosis, AQ faves Alchemist, Emperor and Machine Head. Not a bad combination at all. Furious death metal gives way to epic and funereal post apocalyptic dirges. Shrieking black metal is chopped and diced into industrial chugs and droning metalscapes. Melodies are stretched and distorted, electronic rhythms are assembled in a desolate wasteland of malfunctioning electronics, instrument buzz and distorted hiss until flesh ripping guitars come raining down like fiery hail from angry gods. One of the coolest metal records of the year so far.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This former Record Of The Week (on the occasion, in 2009, of Sub Pop putting out an expanded double cd reissue), was reissued at last on vinyl this year for Record Store Day... or supposedly it was, but actually, the copies only just showed up! Well, we'd have wanted a bunch anyway, 'cause, again, it's Record Of The Week. Dunno if we can get more when these run out, as, again, it's a limited Record Store Day release. This edition, the first time it's been on vinyl in 20 years, comes with a download, and additional tracks.
So, here's what we said, which is a lot, about this fave before...
Red Red Meat barely get a mention on the aQuarius website, mostly in reviews of post-RRM outfit Califone, but as with many bands, that has more to do with timing than anything, predating as they did our New Arrivals list. If there was time, we can think of hundreds of bands we'd love to revisit and give their due. And Red Red Meat would definitely be at the top of the list for some of us. So this deluxe expanded reissue of RRM's 3rd, and arguably best, record makes now as good a time as any to gush a bit about one of our favorite records of the nineties.
When Sub Pop began expanding its focus beyond grunge, signing all sorts of bands, from pop to country, slowcore to garage rock, they definitely lost a lot of their hardcore buy-anything-on-Sub-Pop fans. But for many of us, no matter how into the grunge years we were (and believe you me, some of us were WAY into grunge), this shift marked the beginning of Sub Pop's transition into more than a regional label focused on a single sound, and is precisely why Sub Pop continues to thrive while so many other labels fell by the wayside. Among those un-traditionally Sub Pop sounding bands were groups like Codeine, Rein Sanction, Hardship Post, Jale and Red Red Meat, all of which ended up loving as much as if not more than all the classic grunge mainstays.
But Red Red Meat, there was just really something special about these guys. They were sort of country, definitely fitting loosely into the burgeoning alt-country movement, but they were so much more, their twang was rooted in a sort of timeless rock, but at the same time it was infused with a druggy warble, wreathed in hazy swirls of whirs and drones, the guitars were murky and muddy, the slide guitar slippery slithery, frontman Tim Rutili's vocals were weary and washed out, emotional, but laid back and slurred, perfectly complimenting the band's warped warble.
Bunny Gets Paid, originally released in 1995, found the band pushing their sound even further out, the sound still recognizably Red Red Meat, but from record opener "Carpet Of Horses", the band seemed determined to create some sort of 'classic' bit of drone drenched country blues. Lazily strummed acoustic guitars draped over a whirring fuzzy pulsing drone, the vocals appropriately melancholy, rough and ragged, allowed to drift over the slow shifting drone beneath, almost no percussion, very little structure, the song a living breathing bit of spaced out dream folk, incredible (and incredibly subtle) melodies, a killer main hook, all left to just sort of shimmer and hover and sprawl, sun baked and druggy, like some sort of drugfolk raga, definitely prescient, unwittingly laying out the blueprint for new weird America or freak folk or whatever you want to call it a decade later.
But Bunny Gets Paid is not all sprawling oozing melting slow motion blues, the band do rock, "Chain Chain Chain" is some classic sounding nineties indie rock and roll, reminding us of a more classic rock sounding Grifters, but still not losing any of their wooze or warble, the record doused in effects, guitars warped, alternatingly crunchy and jagged, bluesy and ooze-y. "Buttered" is a total heartbreaker, thick steel string strum and twang, subtle strings, effects dappled ambience, thick swaths of whirring drone, the whole thing managing to sound intimate and bedroomy, but also epic and timeless.
The classic track here though has to be "Gauze", a moody minor key lope, so laid back and soporific, the guitars spidery and translucent, the vocals seemingly an afterthought, the drums a simple shuffle, lush and intimate and hushed, until the chorus, another gut wrenching heartbreaker, the vocals wrapped in almost Butthole Surfers FX, but done so deftly, that instead of sounding weird or fucked up, it just sound perfect, delivering a total break up /make up mix tape refrain to die for. And so it goes. "Idiot Son" is a the Rolling Stones filtered through nineties indie rock and busted four tracks (with more nods to the Grifters), "Bunny Gets Paid" is another meandering druggy droney drift, disembodied vocals, fragmented guitars and skittery percussion, and another killer hook buried in the murk and mire, and the record continues to unfurl, in all its hazy, lazy, dreamy, wasted, late afternoon, too many beers and broken hearts glory, finishing off with a 2 minute bit of near perfect bedroom folk, peppered with singing strings, reverbed piano, all wrapped around Rituli's gorgeously weathered croon.
Absolutely one of our all time favorite records ever. Anyone into Califone, Calexico, Souled American, Giant Sand, Neko Case, Ryan Adams, should absolutely pick this up, and any one into the current crop of freak folk and drone psych who aren't adverse to actual songs, might dig this too.
And like the expanded Sub Pop cd, this new vinyl version includes extras - B-sides, alternate versions and covers, makes this essential, even for folks like us who already have it. A 4-track demo of "Chain Chain Chain", less rocking, all stripped down and appropriately lo-fi and languid, a single version of "Idiot Son" that finds the song stretched out even further. Record opener "Carpet Of Horses" gets reworked into a pounding dirge, way more rocking and heavy than the original, but still just as darkly evocative, and there are unreleased tracks, one a weird dub workout, the other three wonderfully weird warbly rockers (one rife with horns) that don't sound at all out of place alongside the rest of Bunny Gets Paid.
Remastered, handsomely packaged, includes download as we said, real nice!!
Red Red Meat barely get a mention on the aQuarius website, mostly in reviews of post-RRM outfit Califone, but as with many bands, that has more to do with timing than anything, predating as they did our New Arrivals list. If there was time, we can think of hundreds of bands we'd love to revisit and give their due. And Red Red Meat would definitely be at the top of the list for some of us. So this deluxe expanded reissue of RRM's 3rd, and arguably best, record makes now as good a time as any to gush a bit about one of our favorite records of the nineties.
When Sub Pop began expanding its focus beyond grunge, signing all sorts of bands, from pop to country, slowcore to garage rock, they definitely lost a lot of their hardcore buy-anything-on-Sub-Pop fans. But for many of us, no matter how into the grunge years we were (and believe you me, some of us were WAY into grunge), this shift marked the beginning of Sub Pop's transition into more than a regional label focused on a single sound, and is precisely why Sub Pop continues to thrive while so many other labels fell by the wayside. Among those un-traditionally Sub Pop sounding bands were groups like Codeine, Rein Sanction, Hardship Post, Jale and Red Red Meat, all of which ended up loving as much as if not more than all the classic grunge mainstays.
But Red Red Meat, there was just really something special about these guys. They were sort of country, definitely fitting loosely into the burgeoning alt-country movement, but they were so much more, their twang was rooted in a sort of timeless rock, but at the same time it was infused with a druggy warble, wreathed in hazy swirls of whirs and drones, the guitars were murky and muddy, the slide guitar slippery slithery, frontman Tim Rutili's vocals were weary and washed out, emotional, but laid back and slurred, perfectly complimenting the band's warped warble.
Bunny Gets Paid, originally released in 1995, found the band pushing their sound even further out, the sound still recognizably Red Red Meat, but from record opener "Carpet Of Horses", the band seemed determined to create some sort of 'classic' bit of drone drenched country blues. Lazily strummed acoustic guitars draped over a whirring fuzzy pulsing drone, the vocals appropriately melancholy, rough and ragged, allowed to drift over the slow shifting drone beneath, almost no percussion, very little structure, the song a living breathing bit of spaced out dream folk, incredible (and incredibly subtle) melodies, a killer main hook, all left to just sort of shimmer and hover and sprawl, sun baked and druggy, like some sort of drugfolk raga, definitely prescient, unwittingly laying out the blueprint for new weird America or freak folk or whatever you want to call it a decade later.
But Bunny Gets Paid is not all sprawling oozing melting slow motion blues, the band do rock, "Chain Chain Chain" is some classic sounding nineties indie rock and roll, reminding us of a more classic rock sounding Grifters, but still not losing any of their wooze or warble, the record doused in effects, guitars warped, alternatingly crunchy and jagged, bluesy and ooze-y. "Buttered" is a total heartbreaker, thick steel string strum and twang, subtle strings, effects dappled ambience, thick swaths of whirring drone, the whole thing managing to sound intimate and bedroomy, but also epic and timeless.
The classic track here though has to be "Gauze", a moody minor key lope, so laid back and soporific, the guitars spidery and translucent, the vocals seemingly an afterthought, the drums a simple shuffle, lush and intimate and hushed, until the chorus, another gut wrenching heartbreaker, the vocals wrapped in almost Butthole Surfers FX, but done so deftly, that instead of sounding weird or fucked up, it just sound perfect, delivering a total break up /make up mix tape refrain to die for. And so it goes. "Idiot Son" is a the Rolling Stones filtered through nineties indie rock and busted four tracks (with more nods to the Grifters), "Bunny Gets Paid" is another meandering druggy droney drift, disembodied vocals, fragmented guitars and skittery percussion, and another killer hook buried in the murk and mire, and the record continues to unfurl, in all its hazy, lazy, dreamy, wasted, late afternoon, too many beers and broken hearts glory, finishing off with a 2 minute bit of near perfect bedroom folk, peppered with singing strings, reverbed piano, all wrapped around Rituli's gorgeously weathered croon.
Absolutely one of our all time favorite records ever. There's a whole bonus disc too, which we'll get to in a second, but the record itself is reason enough to pick this up, especially if somehow you've never heard it. Anyone into Califone, Calexico, Souled American, Giant Sand, Neko Case, Ryan Adams, should absolutely pick this up, and any one into the current crop of freak folk and drone psych who aren't adverse to actual songs, might dig this too.
The bonus disc of b-sides, alternate versions and covers, makes this essential, even for folks like us who already have it. A 4-track demo of "Chain Chain Chain", less rocking, all stripped down and appropriately lo-fi and languid, a single version of "Idiot Son" that finds the song stretched out even further. Record opener "Carpet Of Horses" gets reworked into a pounding dirge, way more rocking and heavy than the original, but still just as darkly evocative, and FOUR unreleased tracks, one a weird dub workout, the other three wonderfully weird warbly rockers (one rife with horns) that don't sound at all out of place alongside the rest of Bunny Gets Paid.
And the super iconic doll's head in the tipped over glass cover art gets a deluxe reimagining, a massive fold out multi panel digipak inside a swank slipcover, with a thick booklet, jammed with photos, original covers and artwork, as well as some newly penned liner notes from band members and Red Red Meat fans including members of the Shins, the Fruit Bats, Modest Mouse and others!
We have loved this band since we were in high school, when we first picked up a copy of the Red Temple Spirits' first record. That album - Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon - became something we've returned to over and over again. Then, it was a more adventurous, post-apocalyptic, and lysergically tainted take on the British post-punk / goth-pop albums of my youth. You know, Love & Rockets, Siouxsie, The Smiths, The Cure. But later, upon discovering the Syd Barrett fronted Pink Floyd records, Twink's Think Pink, and the Outsiders' CQ, Red Temple Spirits seemed less to fit in with their contemporaries and more of a feral updated expression of psychedelic awakening of those bands from the '70s. The basslines from Red Temple Spirits may have been lifted wholesale from Steven Severin of Siouxsie & The Banshees, and the guitars could hit the jagged, sparkplug bursts of Gang Of Four or even Crime (but for the most part, they paralleled the dark-eyed jangle of the Abecedarians); but the arrangements were far more convoluted - at times shambolic and rambling, and at others ritualistically intense.
The band emerged out of the LA goth-punk scene in 1987, when bassist Dino Paredes departed Psi-Com, which was fronted by none other than Perry Farrell (who would go on to form Jane's Addiction) only to find another amazing frontman in the form of William Faircloth. This British ex-pat was equal parts doomsayer and acid casualty, eagerly waxing poetic about the latter through the lens of the former. Many of these visionary tales mapped out a basic philosophy of universalist gnosticism - "The Light Of Christ" addresses a common gnostic precept that an inner wisdom is trapped within the human condition and can be tapped through meditation, invocation, rigorous study, whatnot, but not before passing through allusions to Buddhism and animism. Vocally, Faircloth sounds a hell of a lot like Black Francis / Frank Black trying to do a Syd Barrett impersonation - a demonic, tonal yelp with a faint trace of a British lisp.
The band produced two albums, the aforementioned Dancing To Restore An Eclipsed Moon (1988) and the nearly impossible to find If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa, I Wouldn't Stay A Minute More (1989). The bulk of copies of the latter all seemed to end up in Greece for whatever reason, and given the prices for the album online, must have been single handedly supporting the Greek economy. The debut is an astonishing album that sprawls from languid dirges to frenetic punk-pop songs all lead in dramatic fashion by Faircloth. The second album attempts to tighten up some of the more unhinged aspects, with a few more conventional psych-rock songs but when they hit the cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls To The Heart Of The Sun," it really is a twisted acid trip launched beyond Earth's orbit, through pounding tribal rhythms, Keith Levene-esque guitar scratchiness, and Faircloth's belted vocals. Both of those albums are present in their entirety here, along with some choice bonus tracks (including a really tripped out version of 13th Floor Elevators' "Rollercoaster") as well as a third disc of demos.
This 3cd set also marks the reinvention/reactivation/resurfacing of Bruce Licher's Independent Project Records, complete with the amazing letterpress folios he was creating back in the '90s. Faircloth was actually one of Licher's press technicians after Red Temple Spirits broke up, and Red Temple Spirits and Licher's Savage Republic were certainly coming from the same headspace. The major difference being that Red Temple Spirits was actually a way better band, if criminally under-appreciated. Very highly recommended!
The debut record from one of my (Andee) all time favorite bands. This record is soooo great. For lots of different reasons, not the least being that they were all of 13 or 14 years old when they recorded it. Damn. When I was 13, I was watching cartoons and eating mac and cheese, not tearing up the Sunset Strip and playing in a kick ass punk rock band. And punk rock this is. While there are hints of the pop geniuses they were to become, 'Born Innocent' is mostly trashy, glammy, noise-y, bratty fun. And boy is it fun! From the almost punk rock jig of 'Pseudo Intellectual', to the shredding 'Linda Blair', the McDonald brothers prove that even at 13 they could rock with the big boys!
This classic Redd Kross rarity finally gets re-released so Andee can once again gush endlessly:
I have loved this record for soooooo long. But I had forgotten just how long until quite recently when I was going through my high school senior yearbook (1988 if you must know) after my Mom reminded me that a certain suspected murder went to high school with me. So I looked, and did find Scott Peterson(!). I didn't really remember him, although I recognised his face from the news, but what I did realise was that my senior quote was almost entirely lyrics from THIS RECORD! What a geek! That was 15 years ago! And this record still totally blows me away! And why shouldn't it?!? This is one of the best indiepsychedelicpunkpoprock records ever made! Noisy and trashy and psychedelic but so totally clever and catchy and super rocking. Redd Kross took the perfect pop of the Beatles, the druggy haze of sixties drugrock, an obsession with all things kitcsh, brotherly love/hate (frontmen Jeff and Steve are brothers, who would often end up in on-stage fistfights!), the burgeoning eighties L.A. punk rock scene, youthful exuberance bordering on snottiness (Jeff and Steve were barely teenagers when the band started), a knack for crafting wickedly hooky songs and perfect sibling vocal harmonies (perfect in the sense that they were both whiny, and bratty and singing to the very edge of their range) into what I think is probably one of the best bands EVER. Neurotica is probably the record that best defines what makes Redd Kross so great and unique. Before Neurotica, they were a sloppy, chaotic mess, stumbling and screwing around and seemingly accidentally stumbling on perfect pop gems. After Neurotica, they became seasoned pop pros, getting more and more melodic, with better production and more money. Almost becoming a sort of hard rock / bubblegum amalgam. Transition records can be awkward, and Neurotica is a little, but that's what makes it so great. Leftover thrashy punk-rock-ness pops up amidst unbearably catchy pop sweetness, snotty fuck-you lyrics nestle right up against heart felt love songs, anti-Sunset Strip wannabe-rock-star diatribes ("No metal sluts, or punk rock ruts for me...Oh Noooooooooo") sit beside folky, beatniky acoustic-guitar-and-bongos odes to love ("You're my love, you're my happiness, you're the one, you're the reason why it's true. Ooo ooo ooo"), but for the most part this is wild and wooly, catchy and crazy, acid soaked pop-ified punk rock! And it's soooooo good!
The return of Redd Kross!!! Their first record in FIFTEEN YEARS!! The Redd Kross nerds at aQ have been in a tizzy since we first heard about an impending new album. And we're happy to report it's even better than we had hoped. And impossibly, it might just be their best since Third Eye, heck, maybe even since Neurotica! And yeah, we talk a lot about favorite bands, and are quite hyperbolic in our descriptions of records and groups we love, but Redd Kross definitely are one of our all time favorite bands EVER, no hyperbole there at all, some of us have been listening to Redd Kross for going on thirty years now. And Andee's very first band (with Jay Lesser) even played their first show with Redd Kross!! And every single RK record, from the early punk rock teenage jams, to their later, more polished, major label releases, has ruled, the boys in Redd Kross masters of pop songcraft, unfettered Beatles worship mixed with an encyclopedic knowledge of classic pop music, not to mention punk rock roots and a sound so distinctive that even wearing their influences boldly on their sleeves, Redd Kross jams could never be mistaken for anyone else.
We went and saw them play last year, the first tour with the original line up in ages, and it was rumored the band were raising money to release the next record themselves, and they played all the hits, new and old, and sounded as food as ever. And here we are a year or so later, and Merge stepped up and released what might just be contender for record of the year, and as mentioned above, might just be one of Redd Kross' best record period.
We weren't initially sold by the first single, the title track, which totally sounds like a Neurotica B side, which is not a bad thing at all, it just sounded a little like RK by the numbers, but then something happened and the more we listened to it, the better it got, a KILLER chorus and an even more killer pre-chorus/bridge, some wild wah guitar psychedelia, the sound heavy and fuzzy and crunchy, swaggery and the sort of sound younger bands would kill for. But once the second track started, we knew this was IT. "Stay Away From Downtown", is total Yellow Pills style power pop super charged and cranked up, with a main riff that is SO catchy, the vocals and main melody total Beatles worship, and then the chorus, holy shit, one listen and it was lodged permanently in our brains. Nothing we can say can compare to hearing it, check out the sample below and be SMITTEN. We ended up listening to that song fifty times at least before we could even bear to move on, and yet the rest of the record did not disappoint, and more than lived up to the promise of the first two tracks. "Uglier" is another track that sounds like it could have been plucked right off of Neurotica, and the chorus, another killer, crazy catchy, the song laced with some rad psychedelic freakouts.
"Dracula's Daughter" is classic Redd Kross balladry, all Partridge family style power pop jangle, and at times melodically reminding us of Thelonious Monster's "Sammy Hagar Weekend", while "Meet Frankenstein" is a perfect slab of fifties style retro pop, which had us thinking Redd Kross would have been an even better choice to supply the music for the fictional band in the movie That Thing You Do (instead of Fountains Of Wayne).
The rest of the record unwinds like a classic Redd Kross record, every song crazy catchy, jangly and fuzzy, funny clever lyrics, killer harmonies, hooks galore, borrowing liberally from all the classic pop bands that came before, but making those sounds all their own, and stick around for closer "Hazel Eyes", whose main riff is a dead ringer for another classic RK jam "Follow The Leader", from 1997's Show World, but here unwinds as a droned out psychedelic jangle pop dirge, laced with weird effects, and a woozy groove, and finishes the record in fine fashion, weird, heavy, trippy and crazy catchy. It's been nearly impossible to work on the list cuz this record is ALL WE WANT TO LISTEN TO. And we're already gearing up to see Redd Kross play here next week, we're in a sort of Redd Kross mania, which makes sense cuz this record is SO GOOD. Record Of The Week hands down, and yeah, quite possibly Record OF THE YEAR!
Anyone who's been digging Ty Segall, King Tuff, Purling Hiss and other like minded noise poppers, who has yet to discover the joys of Redd Kross, now is the time to discover your new favorite band!!
Redd Kross are absolutely one of my all time favorite bands EVER (sez Andee). They've been kicking ass for more than 25 years, going from snotty bratty punks, to brooding glam rockers, to power pop geniuses to some impossible combination of all three. They played recently here in SF, with their classic lineup, and played songs from their whole career, punk oldies and more recent pop gems and they all sounded amazing. Every show is a gas, the band going off on insane tangents, playing loads of covers (PJ Harvey, Abba) and sometimes totally destroying their own songs.
Every single one of their records is amazing, maybe none more so than this one right here, simultaneously their least and most popular. Their least, cuz it was a pretty dramatic sonic shift. True fans shifted right along with them, but casual fans did not dig their new even flowery pop sound. BUT, they had their biggest hit with this record, the totally genius "Annie's Gone", which you might not know by title, but once you hear it you'll most likely recognize it immediately. Whatever anyone thinks, if you're into killer pop, it's hard to imagine you wouldn't totally dig Third Eye.
Anyway, this is part of a strange reissue program where records are re-released, but are only available for 6 months and then they'll go out of print again (like the recent Alice Cooper Records Of The Week). So while we're not sure what the reasoning behind that is, all we can say is we'll take a Third Eye reissue anytime and anyhow. So what's the big deal? Well beyond style and history and past records and all the non musical bullshit, Redd Kross are some of the best pop songwriters EVER. EVER. No hyperbole, these guys seem like they can effortlessly whip out perfect pop on a moments notice. Incredible hooks, killer riffs, unforgettable memories, gorgeous harmonies, shredding guitar, kick ass drumming, and the unmistakable voices of frontmen/brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald. Listening to this again, it's really hard to imagine how any one into Redd Kross wouldn't have dug this disc. It's appropriately schizophrenic (like RK always are), it's got some ass kicking rockers, some dreamy almost ballads, maybe it was the hit, nothing like a hit to get folks screaming "sell out" But fuck it. This record rules. The hit especially. "Annie's Gone" is a dark minor key jam, with a chorus to die for, with a video featuring Anne Magnuson of Bongwater! "Shonen Knife" is a super rocking blast of Stooges-y riffing and still even more hooks. "1976" was the other big hit, another caffeinated blast of feel good power pop, with pounding piano, big distorted guitars and lots of wah wah! "Bubblegum Factory" is just that. Total pure bubblegum pop, and practically perfect to boot. The record finishes off with "Elephant Flares" another grungy garage-y rocker, with a killer metallic groove chorus. Eighteen years later and Third Eye still sounds as great as it did when I was 20! Needless to say, pop kids who don't own this or god forbid have never heard Redd Kross absolutely MUST own this. One of Andee's all time favorite records, from one of his all time favorite bands!!!!!!
Oh man, does this hit the spot. Total old school, abject, cold and clinical, noise drenched industrial, a symphony of rusty old machines, the cranks and levers operated by rotting corpses, this crumbling sound factory situated upon a blackened expanse of charred remains and ruined cities, the voice a reverb drenched howl, a totally hypnotic rhythmic clatter creates the skeletal framework, while all around, clouds of hiss and buzz are woven into slow shifting almost-riffs, lumbering, stumbling, dark and dour, shot through with barely there streaks of melody, a brief bit of cinematic apocalyptica, the flip side, features another lurching steam punked Skinny Puppied rhythm track, this time pelted by bits of glitch and fuzzed out sine waves, a female voice speaks over the top, telling tales of violence and mayhem, in a calm measured tone, a strange contrast to the looped decaying sprawl of Redrot's harrowing soundscapery. Deep processed vocals are morphed into thick undulating tones, fragmented electronics wrapped around a frizzled underwater pulse, a swirling backdrop of creak and crunch and whir, the motorik lo-fi robotic beat in lockstep with a growling alien commentary. Awesome stuff for sure. So awesome in fact, that we just listened to this like 3 times in a row, and we're only really stopping now because we have other reviews to write...
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!
Record number two from this mysterious metallic math rock band. Reflector's first record Flugangst was a surprise hit around here, a crunching math metal juggernaut, perpetrated by the now ubiquitous guitar/drums/no bass lineup, but Reflector certainly didn't suffer for it. Heavy and complex and brooding and massive, with plenty of doomy slow core bits and shimmery drone-y drifts.
If anything, Pass takes everything we liked about Flugangst and cranks it up, the sound is incredible, lush and thick and expansive, REALLY hard to believe they're a bass-less two piece here, the guitars are hard and dense and chuggy, the drums crushing, the two locked into killer grooves, Neurosis like lumbering plod one second, super tangled post rock weirdness the next, even some slow motion Slayer riffing here and there.
It's criminal these guys aren't huge, they should be touring with Mastodon and Baroness and all those low slung bearded sludgelords, but this ain't sludge (although they are perfectly capable of getting plenty sludge-y!), this is almost some sort of pop infused downtuned metal, shot through with plenty of post rock mathisms, strange textures, catchy melodies, and riffs that KILL.
We don't have a whole lot of these, so if we run out be patient, we have to get more from overseas, but hell, anyone into slow and low heaviness, or the new breed of post / math / metal / gaze / whatever, these guys could very well be your new favorite band.
Every time we start a review with a phrase like "we don't really like techno all that much" or "we've never been huge fans of pop punk" we end up getting people writing in defending the genre in question. But truth be told, we -do- like techno and we -do- like pop punk, and we do like all kinds of music, it's sort of the point of this store. It's just that we generally tend to dig the weirder, more far out, more creative risk-taking fringes of all those genres, which is -also- the point of this store. But that said, we don't actually like pop punk all that much, at least not the strain of cookie cutter made-for-MTV dreck that one typically thinks of as pop punk. But we do love pop. Do we ever!!! And we do love punk! And unlike the bad math that results from adding metal and hip hop (oh how we desperately wish someone could make that work!), pop and punk fit pretty comfortably together, add some good songs, and maybe even some metal riffage, and we're in business. Thus we have Reggie And The Full Effect, originally a joke side project for a handful of emo / pop punk luminaries (Coalesce anyone?), now a band that's as good as if not better than all of the serious bands that spawned it. They are the ultimate emo band. Of course you have the huge kick ass production, great catchy songs, sensitive whiny boy vocals and big distorted guitars. BUT THEN, you've got some chugging metal guitars and howling throat shredding vocals, fuzzy synths, goofy lyrics, and an ultra dumb / totally brilliant sense of humour. And as if that weren't enough, every third or fourth song is a total eighties synthpop workout, straight up New Order mockery / worship (one of which is a dead ringer for track two on the recent Killers record! Now who's laughing?!). Goofy and silly, but actually really good and fun and catchy. And finally, you've got RATFE's hardcore alter ego, the fictitious Finnish electro punk outfit Common Denominator, who have contributed one track to each Reggie record, always with Common Denominator's lead vocalist introducing the band, in a thick inexplicably German accent: "HELLO AMERICANS, THIS IS KLAUS FROM COMMON DENOMINATOR. WE ARE THE BAND YOU THAT YOU ARE LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW WE ARE FROM FINLAND AND THIS IS THE THIRD SONG OFF OUR DEBUT ALBUM IN AMERICA, THIS SONG IS CALLED DEATHNOTRONIC AND IT GOES LIKE THIS!!! And what follow is what can only be described as Ministry meets Rammstein meets that song that ALWAYS seems to play during cheerleader competitions (Y'all Ready For This!) as well as some awesome noodly guitar leads.
Even with the presence of Common Denominator, and the occasional synthpop workout, this is Reggie's least 'jokey' record to date, which is probably what makes it their best. Even the lyrics aren't as straight up goofy, in fact if anything, unless this is all a REALLY subtle joke, the lyrics tend toward straight up emo territory, love and loss and boys and girls and all that stuff. Pretty heartfelt stuff actually, and if there's one thing we're a sucker for it's emo! In fact the final song, a brooding piano driven emo ballad to end all emo ballads, is SO sincere, it seems like it MUST be a joke coming from these guys. But it's not. At least we don't think so. At first we were a little disappointed by the lack of skits and random stupidity, but as much as we love those old Reggie records, this one definitely has the potential for most repeated listens. There's just something about Reggie's combination of crunchy metallic guitars, weird Cars / Tupac synth melodies, perfect pop and goofy eighties high school ballads that we can't seem to get enough of!
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (part of the double disc reissue we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect -- spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. We grok that dude and these albums. There's actually two of them (albums) here, as this disc also includes A.R. VI, Echolung, originally released by Brain in 1975. Compared to Die Grune Reise it's a bit more mellowed out, if anything more cosmic and spacey... real nice! Total krautrock essentials, both of these. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear 'em...
An old fave, in fact a former Record Of The Week, at last reissued and available again, previously it was part of a 2-on-1 cd with another A.R. album, Echolung, but here it's by itself (with bonus dvd, more on that later). Nice packaging, great sound, so glad to have this back in the store! Here's more or less what we said before:
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (one we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect - spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. A total krautrock essentials. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear it.
This new, artist approved "Achim Reichel Edition" of Die Grune Reise is digitally remastered, and comes packaged with an extra, dvd disc (PAL, region 0, so it'll work in your computer but maybe not your dvd player) that contains an album length 42 minute video interpretation of the whole record ("Grune Reise - Der Film") that looks to be made fairly recently, with lots of trippy computer graphics going on, it's maybe better than the watching the "visualizer" on your iTunes but not much. Chances are, the pictures A.R.'s music will make in your mind are better than this, so use your imagination instead. The dvd also includes a 10 minute "Making Of" feature, but we don't know if that's a making of the album or a making of the video, 'cause the dvd menu/interface is just about the most confusing thing ever and we weren't able to figure out how to access that segment. So, the dvd is a bit of a bust, though again we didn't actually watch everything... and maybe the surround sound feature is a cool. Regardless, the album itself is highly, highly recommended!
Another batch of classic jungle from one of the grand masters of the era (early nineties) Remarc. These are all unreleased dubplates and are all smoking hot. Chopped Amen breaks, huge fuzzed out basslines, and ragga toasting all over the place. Derivative and repetitive, and definitely stuck in the nineties, but if you're anything like us you could listen to this stuff all the time, non-stop and NEVER get tired of it. That Amen drum break is just so wicked. It's hard to beleieve that just a drum beat by itself could be so catchy, but we've had this beat stuck in our heads for the last decade!
What to say about the Replacements? Their history has been pretty well documented. By the end, they were everywhere, MTV, magazines, with a sound that had almost nothing in common with the records that made them the legends they so rightfully are. One guy died, one has gone on to a middling solo career, one is even in the current incarnation of Guns N' Roses. None of that means anything though when faced with the pure pop genius of their first 5 records, 4 of which just got reissued with tons of bonus tracks. We always just assumed that everyone loved the Replacements, cherished their beat up copy of Let It Be (Replacements not the Beatles), put "Answering Machine" on every mix tape, and the thought of writing about a band like that is pretty daunting. Definitely one of those instances where it seems like shouting "these guys rule!!!! Buy this now!!!" should suffice. And there's the fact that there are tons of kids listening to bands who ripped off bands who ripped off the Replacements and might not even know it.
Replacements fans are a pretty obsessive bunch, so we won't even bother talking in any depth about the bonus tracks, needless to say, beyond the usual alternate takes, there are some serious gems and a couple Holy Grail type tracks. But for folks new to the band, fuck the bonus tracks, the record themselves are practically perfect. Or at least perfectly imperfect. Anyone who ever saw the Replacements knows you had a fifty / fifty chance of seeing either the best show of your life, or the most insanely shitty show ever, and the records while not quite that haphazard, are just haphazard enough to keep that sort of excitement going. None of the tracks are perfect, the band is always loose, really loose, and the songs are always on the verge of total collapse, but the songs are catchy, and the lyrics are awesome, sometimes snotty and funny, other times poignant and bittersweet. In an age of genres, it's weird to listen to a band that is essentially their own genre. Beyond being just a rock band or a pop band, they are the Replacements and nearly 30 years on they still RULE.
Hootenany is sort of the oddball of the Replacements' first few discs, and begins with the various band members swapping instruments for a falling apart blues jam, that does eventually do just that. The rest of the disc is split between frantic punk rockers, tripped out ballads, garage-y blues jams, and the usual pop flecked punk rock that defined their sound on Sorry, Ma. Standouts include the surfy "Buck Hill", the weird "Lovelines" with the lyrics being read from the personal ads of a Minneapolis paper, and the dreamy Westerberg solo jam "Within Your Reach", with it's effected guitar, primitive programmed drums, and plaintive vocals. Definitely not THE record to grab if you were looking for just one Replacements disc, but once you've immersed yourself in the rest of their records, you'll undoubtedly find this one essential too.
What to say about the Replacements? Their history has been pretty well documented. By the end, they were everywhere, MTV, magazines, with a sound that had almost nothing in common with the records that made them the legends they so rightfully are. One guy died, one has gone on to a middling solo career, one is even in the current incarnation of Guns N' Roses. None of that means anything though when faced with the pure pop genius of their first 5 records, 4 of which just got reissued with tons of bonus tracks. We always just assumed that everyone loved the Replacements, cherished their beat up copy of Let It Be (Replacements not the Beatles), put "Answering Machine" on every mix tape, and the thought of writing about a band like that is pretty daunting. Definitely one of those instances where it seems like shouting "these guys rule!!!! Buy this now!!!" should suffice. And there's the fact that there are tons of kids listening to bands who ripped off bands who ripped off the Replacements and might not even know it.
Replacements fans are a pretty obsessive bunch, so we won't even bother talking in any depth about the bonus tracks, needless to say, beyond the usual alternate takes, there are some serious gems and a couple Holy Grail type tracks. But for folks new to the band, fuck the bonus tracks, the record themselves are practically perfect. Or at least perfectly imperfect. Anyone who ever saw the Replacements knows you had a fifty / fifty chance of seeing either the best show of your life, or the most insanely shitty show ever, and the records while not quite that haphazard, are just haphazard enough to keep that sort of excitement going. None of the tracks are perfect, the band is always loose, really loose, and the songs are always on the verge of total collapse, but the songs are catchy, and the lyrics are awesome, sometimes snotty and funny, other times poignant and bittersweet. In an age of genres, it's weird to listen to a band that is essentially their own genre. Beyond being just a rock band or a pop band, they are the Replacements and nearly 30 years on they still RULE.
Let It Be is THE ONE. If you had to pick a perfect, classic, all time essential indie rock record, or college rock record, or whatever you want to call it, it would be practically impossible to not pick Let It Be. The first record where the band finally merged their nascent pop genius with their chaotic rock chops. As Replacements fans, it's easy to declare every track a classic, and every record perfect, but Let It Be transcends any of that, even plenty of non fans find Let It Be irresistible, the songs here are amazing, simultaneously well crafted, tight as fuck, but still loose and wild. Opener "I Will Dare" sets the scene with its shuffley rhythm, wandering bassline, and killer main riff. Follow up "Favorite Thing" is just as good, another hook most bands would kill for, but these guys spit em out effortlessly. But Let It Be isn't all the 'new', 'more mature' Replacements, which the band prove with the next two tracks, the furious rocker "We're Coming Out" and the goofy "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out", which while sort of a joke song, is still fucking AWESOME. The record is filled out with more gems, a Kiss cover, but a couple of the tracks would go on to remain what some folks might consider their finest moments: the gorgeous acoustic lament "Unsatisfied", and the mindblowing "Answering Machine", a gorgeous heartbreaker, just vocals and guitar, the guitar part pretty intense and moving all on its own, but the vocals are so bittersweet. What a way to end a record, and a perennial mixtape essential.
What to say about the Replacements? Their history has been pretty well documented. By the end, they were everywhere, MTV, magazines, with a sound that had almost nothing in common with the records that made them the legends they so rightfully are. One guy died, one has gone on to a middling solo career, one is even in the current incarnation of Guns N' Roses. None of that means anything though when faced with the pure pop genius of their first 5 records, 4 of which just got reissued with tons of bonus tracks. We always just assumed that everyone loved the Replacements, cherished their beat up copy of Let It Be (Replacements not the Beatles), put "Answering Machine" on every mix tape, and the thought of writing about a band like that is pretty daunting. Definitely one of those instances where it seems like shouting "these guys rule!!!! Buy this now!!!" should suffice. And there's the fact that there are tons of kids listening to bands who ripped off bands who ripped off the Replacements and might not even know it.
Replacements fans are a pretty obsessive bunch, so we won't even bother talking in any depth about the bonus tracks, needless to say, beyond the usual alternate takes, there are some serious gems and a couple Holy Grail type tracks. But for folks new to the band, fuck the bonus tracks, the record themselves are practically perfect. Or at least perfectly imperfect. Anyone who ever saw the Replacements knows you had a fifty / fifty chance of seeing either the best show of your life, or the most insanely shitty show ever, and the records while not quite that haphazard, are just haphazard enough to keep that sort of excitement going. None of the tracks are perfect, the band is always loose, really loose, and the songs are always on the verge of total collapse, but the songs are catchy, and the lyrics are awesome, sometimes snotty and funny, other times poignant and bittersweet. In an age of genres, it's weird to listen to a band that is essentially their own genre. Beyond being just a rock band or a pop band, they are the Replacements and nearly 30 years on they still RULE.
Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash was their first proper full length, and is a corker. Definitely punk rock, but still infused with incredible hooks, catchy beyond belief, but super raw and frenetic, some of their best songs EVER: the kick ass rocker "Takin' A Ride", the furious punk rock jam of "Customer", the woozy "I Bought A Headache", the all time classic "Shiftless When Idle", The Husker Du worship of "Something To Du", the pop in punk's clothing of "Raised In The City", not a miss to be found, listen to the samples and you'll be hooked!
What to say about the Replacements? Their history has been pretty well documented. By the end, they were everywhere, MTV, magazines, with a sound that had almost nothing in common with the records that made them the legends they so rightfully are. One guy died, one has gone on to a middling solo career, one is even in the current incarnation of Guns N' Roses. None of that means anything though when faced with the pure pop genius of their first 5 records, 4 of which just got reissued with tons of bonus tracks. We always just assumed that everyone loved the Replacements, cherished their beat up copy of Let It Be (Replacements not the Beatles), put "Answering Machine" on every mix tape, and the thought of writing about a band like that is pretty daunting. Definitely one of those instances where it seems like shouting "these guys rule!!!! Buy this now!!!" should suffice. And there's the fact that there are tons of kids listening to bands who ripped off bands who ripped off the Replacements and might not even know it.
Replacements fans are a pretty obsessive bunch, so we won't even bother talking in any depth about the bonus tracks, needless to say, beyond the usual alternate takes, there are some serious gems and a couple Holy Grail type tracks. But for folks new to the band, fuck the bonus tracks, the record themselves are practically perfect. Or at least perfectly imperfect. Anyone who ever saw the Replacements knows you had a fifty / fifty chance of seeing either the best show of your life, or the most insanely shitty show ever, and the records while not quite that haphazard, are just haphazard enough to keep that sort of excitement going. None of the tracks are perfect, the band is always loose, really loose, and the songs are always on the verge of total collapse, but the songs are catchy, and the lyrics are awesome, sometimes snotty and funny, other times poignant and bittersweet. In an age of genres, it's weird to listen to a band that is essentially their own genre. Beyond being just a rock band or a pop band, they are the Replacements and nearly 30 years on they still RULE.
Stink came out right after Sorry Ma, and is just as punk rock, just as catchy, but a bit tighter. It begins with a recording of a house party being busted up by a cop before a quick count off and the band launches into "Kids Don't Follow", which is another all time Replacements classic. In fact, this is only an ep, but all 8 tracks totally rule. "Stuck In The Middle" has an incredible stop start chorus, and a hook to die for, "Dope Smokin' Moron" is almost a full on hardcore track, "Go" is practically a ballad, moody and melancholy, the first hint of what these guys might be capable of songwise, and the disc finishes off with yet another classic, "Gimme Noise", another killer chorus, and hooks galore. How many 'classics' is one band allowed to have? Get used to, it'll take a few more records before they stop kicking out stone cold classics like it ain't no thing...
Even though this is record number FIVE from Reuber (aka Timo Reuber), who is also a member of electronic duo Klangwart, Ring is the very first thing we've heard from him, and it immediately became one of our new favorite records, a dizzying assemblage of loops and samples and textures and effects woven into a series of super varied soundscapes, from hypnotic kosmische krautdrone, to hazy murky pulsing techno flecked electronica, to super frantic spaced out new wave, to murky electronic drone dirge psych rock to woozy minimal sci-fi techno, all of it rhythmic and hypnotic, lush and layered.
Self described as Reuber's "motorbike album", Ring finds Reuber trying to evoke a 'Reuber Principle' using a selection of sounds designed to sound different during each performance, depending on the venue, the audience and of course Reuber himself. All but one of the tracks are created using just two synthesizers, experimenting with rhythm and texture, creating constantly shifting collages of sound, all 'Ring' variations, the first "Ring Ring", the most blissed out of the bunch, a minimal electronic pulse, a slowly shifting melody, a deep buzzing vocal that sounds like Tuvan throat singing, a haunting bit of cinematic kosmische drift that ends way too soon. The upside being that it leads directly into the 17 minute "Ring", which takes the sound of the first track and explodes it into something much more celestial and cosmic, a supernova of sound, all blurred and washed out, hazy and shimmery, underneath which various bits of percussion pulse and pound, a buried rhythm that gradually moves to the fore, and the song transforms into a gorgeously hypnotic tribal psychedelic workout that sounds almost like modern day Boredoms. This tribal churn is laced with strange melodic bits, twisted effects, a roiling swirl of sound, that soon returns to the washed out cosmic shimmer of the song's beginning, only to again explode into some heaving crumbling rhythmic crush, and then slip right back into a hazy dreamlike outro.
"Ringer" offers up a swirl of looped repetitive synth, mesmerizing and cyclical, cinematic and sci-fi, gradually growing more and more distorted and intense, until some of the sounds coalesce into beats, and the track becomes a supercharged synth heavy sci-fi blowout that wouldn't sound out of place on a Zombi record, although with a bit more of a techno twist. "Ring Frei" counters the previous track with some low slung synthbass, some skittery skeletal rhythms, streaks of feedback and squealing electronic glitchery, and most importantly some seriously fat fuzzy, murky melodies, a crunchy, buzzy muddy krautjam, propulsive and motorik, almost like some far out Kraftwerk / Suicide / Electronicat hybrid. And finally "Ringfest" finishes things off with some Kompakt style throb and pulse, starting out sleek and late night and minimal, before blossoming into something buzzier and more twisted, with shards of rave-y synth, more of those buzzing throat singing style vox and some squiggly spacey Theremin like melodies. Wow. We really can't stop listening to this, so mesmerizing and psychedelic and hypnotic and tripped out and most definitely a new unanimous aQ fave!
This is not really new, but it's one of our favorite freaked out black metal records, and it was reissued last year (originally released in 2002) although we only now managed to get in touch with the label (they also released the Vorak, reviewed elsewhere on this list) but now finally we can list and review, this amazing slab of bizarre blackness.
Those familiar with the Rev. Kriss Hades, probably know him as the guitar player for Aussie black death metallers Sadistik Exekution, who while weird in their own right, are pretty much furious grinding blacknoise, a sort of sloppy psychedelic black mess, awesome by the way, but more simple and fast than freaked out and fucked up. Which is why this first album from Sadistik guitarist Hades is such a mind blower. This is super abstract, noisy, buzzy, outsider experimental black metal, peppered with stretches of black ambience, industrial soundscapes and plenty of whatthefuck heaviness. This record has been described as a mix of Einsturzende Neubauten, Beherit and Pink Floyd, and while the sound here is probably much closer to Beherit than the other two, their are definite moments of tripped out psychedelia and industrial grind and whir.
But from the first song, it's easy to tell this is some freaky mind blowing stuff. Beginning with haunting acoustic guitar, weaving mournful melodies amidst whipping winds, when the band kicks in, instead of launching into blasting blackness, it's more a sort of murky blown out buzz, the guitars super washed out, the riffing just a blackened smear, underpinned by epic swells of super dramatic keyboards, the drums a buried blast, WAY down in the mix, while over the top the vocals are a confusional pile up of grunts and growls, of shrieks and howls, mumbling and singing in tongues, the whole thing smeared and seasick, buzzing abstractly, almost more experimental black ambience than metal, but there are riffs, and drums blasting away, reminiscent of Wold and Velvet Cacoon in some ways. The first track finishes off with more acoustic guitar, this time though draped delicately over muted black riffing.
And the weird thing is, that's about as metal as the record gets, that first track, from then on it gets more and more unhinged, more psychedelic, less riffy and definitely less 'metal', but no less heavy. The next two tracks are reinterpreted Sadistik Exekution tracks, and while we're not that familiar with the originals, these versions definitely twist the originals into new shapes. The first is a blazing black blast of buzz, but beginning with a tripped out psychedelic assemblage of backwards guitars and processed vocals, then the song itself is super convoluted, riffs slipping and sliding everywhere, squiggly leads, a total damaged black psych freakout, while the other is a sort of blissed out ambient Godflesh / Pitchshifter thing, all industrial rhythms, the riffs, way down in the mix and doused in FX, haunting vocals and all manner of swirling shimmer and crumbling drones...
Right after that is the super brief "Luciferion", a super distorted, ultra fuzzed out shred fest, just guitar, buzzing riffs and wild leads, the whole thing blown out and in the red, followed by "Meditation Of The Midnight Candle Practice" an extended soundscape of warped distorted guitars, strangled effects, huge washes of glacial guitardrone, super affected leads, glitched out minimal rhythms buried way down in the mix, drifting lo-fi ambience and super tweaked studio sounds, all woven into a seriously cracked world of black sound. The record finishes off with a creepy haunted house horror movie church organ jam that morphs right at the end into a super thick corrosive deathdronedirge...
A seriously demented slab of damaged psychedelic black buzz. Which obviously means WAY recommended.
The reissue includes a thick booklet with lyrics, photos, an excerpt from an interview with Hades, and lots of Hades' super intense artwork...
Like some dusty old 78, left in the basement for 20 or 30 years, wet and warped, gritty and scratched up, thrown onto the ol' Victrola as is, and allowed to unfurl a warped and warbly, rickety detuned slow motion blues crawl. That's exactly what this latest disc from the Reveries sounds like. Recorded live in Italy in 2004, the Reveries, fronted by Eric Chenaux (who for those of you up on your nineties indie math rock, fronted Toronto's godlike Phleg Camp), magically create this sound from another time. But there's more to it than that, the sound is strangely damaged, alien even, and for good reason. The band employ a technique as bizarre as it is brilliant. Each player, in addition to wielding guitar, harmonica, bass, saw, nose-flute and thumb-reeds (!?), holds a tiny cell phone speaker IN THEIR MOUTHS!!! WHILE THEY PLAY!! OR EVEN SING!! So each of the instruments is sent first to the speaker in the mouth of another player, who much like a Jew's harp, is able to shape and warp the sound with the shape of his mouth. So you're hearing guitar come out of the bass players mouth, the bass coming out of the guitar player's mouth, the flute through another player's mouth, and on and on...
Then there's the singing, which all three members do, and as you might imagine, it's pretty difficult to sing with a speaker in your mouth, and a speaker cable trailing out of your mouth to an amp or a bandmate's mouth. The result is a mumbled and warbly, mush mouthed drawl, fuzzy falsettos, a garbled croon, often sounding like a toothless old Nina Simone, but just as often, like some strange buzzing growl, perfectly complimenting the band's detuned twang flecked scrawl.
It's almost like the Starfuckers playing Django Reinhardt at 16 rpm, with a countrified Derek Bailey on guitar. Cracking, wheezing and skeletal, a demented yet lovely underwater slow motion Western Swing, plenty of downtuned buzz, scraping and shuffling, whispering and whistling, seasick and gorgeously woozy. There are stretches of garbled instrumental chaos here and there, but the majority of the set is spent slithering and shimmering, meandering drunkenly through some strange sonic haze, an old timey radio broadcast, from some strange musical alternate reality, bits of classic blues and jazz muted and smeared pulled apart and tangled up into haunting and perplexing shapes. So gorgeous.
The Reveries were indeed a revelation. A modern slow-mo, off-kilter, creaky rickety avant country combo, whose sound was a bleary blend of campfire twang, woozy slowcore, and most notably, a system by which each player holds a tiny speaker in their mouths while they play, with the various other players sending their sounds and signals into the mouths of the other players, letting the various musicians shape and twist and contort those sounds, often combining them with their own vocal parts.
The result was truly unique, haunting, mysterious, and gorgeously fractured. The last Reveries disc, was titled Plays The Music Of Sade. We weren't sure if that was some high concept thing, and it was in fact inspired by the Marquis De Sade, or if they were indeed covers of songs by the pop vocalist Sade (pronounced shar-day). It's perhaps a testament to the Reveries skill at reinvention that we were unable to realize that they were actually Sade covers (or it might speak to our being wholly unfamiliar with her body of work minus THAT song) Regardless, just like the record before, the Reveries created a wholly otherworld of moaning melodies, and creeping tempos, of strange voices, of detuned guitars, warbly basslines, shuffling percussion, all warped and funhouse mirrored by their circuitous journey from instrument to amp to speaker to mouth to microphone to recorder to compact disc.
On this first volume, in a proposed ongoing series, the Reveries tackle, as the title suggests, the music of country music icon Willie Nelson, and it's a pretty fine match. The first track is a surprise though, fairly rocking by Reveries standards, a rollicking version on "I Let My Mind Wander", with propulsive drumming, some serious riffing, and that strange whistle like melody that the band seems to lace each song with, a sort of falsetto croon. And the vocals as always are a sort of mush mouthed garble, due in no small part to the singe having to sing around the speaker in his mouth.
The rest of the record unfurls lazily, all creaking back porch blues, the guitars often drifting by in disembodied twangs, each arrangement spare and abstract and seemingly always on the verge of collapse, the drums shuffling and minimal holding it all barely together, but it's the melodies that make it immediately the Reveries, each one, each vocal line wavery and woozy, unfurled and filtered through a jew's harp like warble, keening whistle like tones tangled and ghostlike. Even the most recognizable songs, like "Crazy", become something totally and utterly different.
The overall sound is dark and drunken, mournful and mysterious, some tracks add harmonica, nose-flute, singing saw, and while those elements add to the lushness of the Reveries' sound, they're almost unnecessary, their core sound is so delicate and alien even at its most stripped down, so beautifully creepy, that all it ever takes to suck us in is that slow languorous twang, some warbly vocals, and a sweetly sad minor key melody...
