What would you think if someone described a band to you, as sounding like a mix of Butthole Surfers, Black Flag, the Brainbombs and black metal? Want if they went on to describe the band's sound in more detail, and they came up with something like "thick oozing ultra distorted, totally chaotic, drone drenched, drugged out, noisy as fuck, weirdly hypnotic, punishing and pulverizing, scuzz drenched doomic plod"? Well your first thought, if you were anything like us, would be "could such a band actually exist?" It does sound too good to be true. Your next thought might be "well okay, if a band like that did exist, not only would they be scary as shit, they'd also probably be my favorite band EVER."
Thus we have Rusted Shut. Going on 20 years now, these Texan noisemakers have somehow only managed two proper records and a single or two, each one of those jammed to overflowing with the abovementioned thick oozing ultra distorted, totally chaotic, pulverizing scuzz drenched plod. When we reviewed their Hot Sex ep, we alluded to the fact that if said ep wasn't an ep, wasn't vinyl only, wasn't over a decade old, and wasn't WAY too fucked up for most normal ears, it would have not only been out Record Of The Week, but our Record Of The YEAR. Of our EVER! Well, it's as if whatever God enjoys inflicting sonic torture on his children heard our prayers and conjured up this festering bit of blackened noise punk brilliance from whatever pit these guys call home.
It's rare that a band 20+ years old makes a record on the tail end of 20 years even half as good as the record that started it all, but we're tempted to say, this just might be the heaviest, freakiest, most brutally brilliant thing we've heard from these guys so far. Which is indeed saying a whole hell of a lot.
The opener "Home", is 5 minutes of blown out punk-drone, the guitars unwinding in thick gnarled tangles, moaning and rumbling and howling, a dense undulating layered swell of roiling sonic filth, fragmented riffs, squiggly downtuned Greg Ginn-ish guitar scrabble, the drums skittery and abstract clouds of cymbal sizzle, bursts of free rock splatter, while over the top, some sort of harsh, whiskey soaked punk rock testifying, spouting all sorts of misanthropic misinformation, like a post punk noise rock gutter scum Whitehouse. The music grows more and more frantic, faster, more freaked out, the various streaks of sound coalescing into riffs, that blur into still more smears of sound, the song an exercise in droned out filth caked tension.
Then there's "Heart Of Hell", total old school punk rock, but filtered through a sort of washed out lo-fi Brainbombs dirginess, the main riff, total classic punk rock, but locked and looped, and played over and over and over and over, totally trancelike, the vocals just as sneeringly scowly as on the first track, but once they drop out, the song locks into a total droned out punked up krautrock groove, that sounds a bit like Circle covering the Brainbombs, albeit doused in crumbling distortion and blurred reverb and delay.
Then comes "Intellect", 15 minutes of total blown out garage dirge bliss, the sound so in the red, that every time a cymbal hits, it swallows up the rest of the sound, the vocals so loud it sounds like the singer grabbed you by the head and locked his lips around your ears, you can feel his hot hellish breath and the spray of spittle. But all the while the music underneath, grows more and more distorted and somehow more and more hypnotic, so damaged and fractured that it sounds like the song might crumble into pieces at any moment. But that's just the first few minutes. Soon the band switch gear and the bass EXPLODES, like suddenly while the band was playing, the bass player went out to his truck and got 3 or 4 more amps and just let fucking loose, low end overload, everything acid drenched and psychedelic, the sound of speakers frying, of headphones melting, the vocals garbled like speaking in tongues, the bass unleashing a sludgey doomy groove, the song an endless noise rock blown out druggy musical brawl that makes the Butthole Surfers at their fiercest sound practically tame.
This song more than anything here reminds us of our first live run in with these weirdos. At SXSW this year, they played an instore, everyone was waiting to see the Mayyors, but Rusted Shut were just destroying the place, super noisy and scuzzy and awesome, and they just NEVER STOPPED PLAYING. The homeless-looking singer/guitarist guy kept getting shocked by the mic, so eventually he simply walked outside, after leaning his guitar up against his amp... some punk dude in the audience then picked up the mic, and freestyled some "I hate SXSW" lyrics... when he was done and threw the mic down, it seemed like the drummer and bassist would wrap it up, but instead they kept on jamming... and jamming... and jamming� then the guitarist came back in after being outside for what felt like (and pretty much WAS) ages, picked up his guitar, and then it seemed like, OK, this must be the grande finale... but that was only the beginning!! They literally kept on playing for another half hour at least. After a while, most of the crowd had gone outside to wait for the Mayyors, driven away by the bands wall of harsh vibes and skull stomping crush, and someone even joked that they should shut the doors of the shop and lock Rusted Shut inside...
These guys are lifers, they're insane, a total mess, which is the only way a piece of glorious sonic filth like this could ever happen. This is not music made by nice guys slumming it, by punk rockers getting their hands dirty, no, this is the sound of old guys pissed and insane, hell bent on punishing the rest of the world, a furious plod and pound fueled by hate, and misery, and drugs. Lots and lots and LOTS of drugs. And that instore, for all of it's confusional chaos, is pretty much the exact same vibe captured here. That is what this band is all about. About relentless endless riffing, hypnotic crustpunk dirges, wild damaged Neanderthal noise rock. The sick sick energy of Rusted Shut is an anomaly. This is not music, this is the sound these guys conjure up from their dead souls and black hearts, a fucked up noise drenched hardcore psychedelic space sludge whathtefuck that's just about the greatest thing we've ever heard.
Only in Texas. Any state that can produce the Butthole Surfers, Stickmen With Rayguns, Scratch Acid, and of course George W. Bush, must have something weird going on. The heat? The drugs? Whatever it is, we wouldn't trade it for the world (well except maybe for the Bush part). How Rusted Shut managed to remain so obscure is a mystery for the ages. The horrible grinding noise these guys can muster up out of a plain old rock band is mind boggling. It's downright harrowing listening to this disc. They've been around since 1986 (and part of this disc was released as a cd-r in 2003), but this is their first official release. A massive, pulverizing crush of simple, plodding, gritty, grimy, filthy, scuzzy, dirge-y sludge that is just obscenely heavy and the grinding buzz that permeates and suffocates every second of this disc has to be THE most distorted guitar sound ever. Sounds like the riffs are crumbling to jagged little pieces the second they emerge from the speakers, a Marshall stack and a suitcase full of distortion pedals run through a meat grinder and then flung at you like white hot shards of jagged metal. Like the sickest most doped up, deliriously deviant noise punk free-rock outfit, but all wrapped up in a fuzzy, sick black cloak of grim black metal buzz. Sometimes this sounds like the Buttholes meets the Brainbombs, sometimes like Celtic Frost meets Today Is The Day fronted by Cronos from Venom, sometimes like the Lightning Bolt dipped in hot tar with a heavy metal Captain Beefheart on vocals. So whether Rusted Shut sound to you like black metal, or dirge punk, or sludgecore, or all out noise, pretty sure after getting an earful of this you won't be able to hear much of anything else. At least until the ringing stops and the bleeding lets up a little.
We're pretty into twisted psychedelic music. The more twisted the better. And that mutant strain of weirdo psychedelia that is CHRISTIAN psych, somehow that seems even weirder and more ridiculous. Even though in some strange way, both Christians and psychedelic freaks were each trying to attain enlightenment, albeit by very different means. Which makes it all the more glorious, to hear the squares try to co-opt the super hip, in hopes of luring some of the lost toward the light. It rarely worked, and in most cases had the exact opposite effect, portraying the co-optors as painfully out of touch, and even more impossibly square. However, Brother John Rydgren might just be the exception. This Lutheran pastor very nearly pulled it off, due in no small part to his amazing voice, equal parts Ken Nordine and Orson Welles, his radio show a twisted dizzyingly psychedelic meditation on love and sex, war and death, set to some seriously fuzzed our psych rock. This double cd collects his three late sixties lps, which were originally only distributed to radio stations and churches (the radio stations instructed to burn them after broadcast, hence their rarity), and it's some of the craziest, coolest stuff you'll ever hear. Every once in a while, when we're playing this in the store, and people are freaking out, laughing, not believing what they're hearing, we sometimes jokingly ask if folks are ready to convert, but listening to this now, it's actually not that far fetched to imagine that back in the day, Rydgren could have really pulled it off, making Christianity cool and convincing druggies and hippies that somehow, that was the more righteously psychedelic path. Really, all it takes is a listen to the opening track, "Music To Watch Girls By", with its fuzz guitar crunch, and exotica vibe, all tropical horns, and groovy rhythms, Brother John intoning over the top, sounding way too lascivious as he describes one girl from head to toe, her lips, hair, her body, her lipstick, hearing that impossibly deep voice say things like: "She likes to be watched", "It's creamy", "Looks like she's ready for a happening", obviously there's a punchline, but it's a pretty uncomfortable wait, until he finally explains, that God created people, girls included, "Quite a design". "God made it", he explains, so you can think about it next time you're out watching girls, he doesn't want to take the fun out of it, it just makes girl watching... mean more! Holy shit, how cool is this Brother, it's okay to watch girls, just know that those gorgeous honeys were created by the man upstairs. And it doesn't get any less weird.
"Personality Doll Of The Week" is a weird anti-war sketch, where a nerdy scientist pulls the string on the back on the Personality Doll Of The Week, and she continues to say the same thing over and over, no matter what question he asks "I don't like war, I think everybody should love everybody else". Then there's "Mercy Mercy Mercy", which lays down a bluesy gospel groove, with Brother John, prosthelytizing over the top. Some seriously sweet sermonizing, and that voice, that VOICE!! Keep digging, up next is the "Hippie Version Of The 23rd Psalm", where Brother John rewrites that iconic psalm in hippie speak, with lots of baby's, and cool's, and dig's, and man's, all over a wild organ driven psych rock freak out. But it's the next track, "Rinky Dink", that sealed the deal, with Brother John's stentorian lyric reading, over another groovy fuzzy psychedelic jam, and thee most ridiculous chorus, Brother John delivering this line in a deep deadpan: "One, two, three, four, rinky dink". Groovy and ridiculous, and sorta crazy catchy too!
It stays relentlessly far out, warped and psychedelic, the music pretty great, choirs, sitars, fuzzed out surf guitar, tribal drumming, streaks of feedback, even some cool collaged experimental soundscapes, replete with samples of popular songs and fragments of Christmas carols, there's "To Sir With Love", a stately bit of baroque pop, over which various women describe love, and how to treat their man, and how their man should treat them, there's "The Happening", where Brother John interviews various people: Smokey Robinson, both Peaches and Herb from Peaches And Herb, one of the guys from the Association, one of the guys from Paul Revere And The Raiders, and bunch of others about God, and their faith, and how drugs are not the way to attain enlightenment, all peppered with Brother John again explaining: "They're young, they think, and some of them live what they think", there's the sultry sitar driven "Dark Side Of The Flower", with Brother John again sounding disturbingly sensual, there's a "Christmas Montage", that mixes Christmas carols, with horrible samples of news reports about people dying from drunk driving, rats overrunning neighborhoods, crying babies, so bizarre!
The whole second half of the first disc finishes with 20 one minute tracks called "They Say", each one a different vignette, delivered over some groovy psychedelia, each one finishing off with Brother John delivering the solution, beginning with the words "They say�" And again, some of them are disturbingly 'sexy', all about what men want, want couples need, etc., and of course, Brother John explains what 'they say' and ties it all back to God. Wow.
The second disc starts off with the "Cantata Of New Life", a sprawling 26 minute epic, rife with choirs, and orchestras, call and response vocals, very dramatic and cinematic, and of course the whole thing's peppered with plenty of fuzzy psych, and Brother John's deep sonorous voice, reminding us a bit of another recent Record Of The Week, William Sheller's Lux Aeterna. But then we get back into yet another collection of his radio broadcasts, and if it's possible, things get even creepier, Brother John in conversation with some mysterious woman, about dying young in car crashes, going AWOL, there's a track about computers, which is goofy and crazy, there's one about how God made rhythm, and more more more. Finally, the two part "This Is Silhouette", a weird collaged soundscape of fuzzed out psych, Brother John telling us how it is, and interviews with young people talking about God and drugs, and one final psychedelic sermon from Brother John!
Seriously incredible stuff, warped and wonderful, disturbing and inspiring in equal measure, fans of sixties spoken word, Christian psych, outsider music of all stripes, weirdo radio broadcasts, and other Omni releases, this one just might take the psychedelic Christian cake!
Packaged in a swank full color six panel digipak, with a huge booklet, with rare photos and extensive liner notes.
We'd had a couple cd-r releases from Australian math doom trio Fire Witch, so we were super psyched to discover they had an actual cd that came out on a label in Japan, when we finally got the cd, we discovered it was a split with a band we had never heard called Ryokuchi. All it took was one listen to convince us that we loved 'em and needed to hear more!!! So while this is not a full length proper, it is a brand new record from this Japanese bass and drums duo, one thirty minute track, dense with all manner of low end riffing, blown out distortion and convoluted arrangements, mathy breakdowns, melodic drift and dark ambient shimmer. Ryokuchi call what they do�"Experimental doom tribal hard core" and that's pretty much what it sounds like.
The track begins as an atmospheric post rock jam, with blooping reverbed bass, and mathy percussion, sounding not unlike a more drum heavy Three Mile Pilot,� but a few minutes in, the distortion pedals kick in and the band lurches into a crazed doomic plod, heavy and chugging, loping and swaying, gradually slowing down to an almost full stop, before bursting back into action, with a bit of complex mathy Ruins-y prog. For the next 10+ minutes these guys wildly careen from dense proggy rhythmic tangles, to huge slabs of slow shifting doom, to blissy stretches of moody slowcore, occasionally peppered with super distorted vocals buried in the mix, everything recorded super hot and in the red, before finally, with about ten minutes to go, the band pulls back, revealing an ominous dronescape behind the curtain, cymbals sizzle and shimmer, low end rumbles sway back and forth, muted melodies drift intermittently amidst the strange bass heavy landscape, when suddenly and dramatically, the band crash back in, and we're off, a pummeling slow motion downtuned doom drenched sludge, plowing along endlessly, interrupted by brief spurts of splattery spastic prog, before terminating in a huge squall of wild drumming and explosive bass feedback.�
Phew. So intense and so amazing. Think the Ruins covering Corrupted, or a doom metal Three Mile Pilot. Or just drums and bass and distortion and doom raining from the sky like some lesser known plague...
Packaged in a cool cd-sized DVD-style plastic case, with a full color, two sided cover, and a little mini full color booklet inside that folds out into a mini-poster and hides a sticker inside.
Aussie noise rockers the Grey Daturas had been telling us forever about some killer band called Fire Witch, who they played with all the time. It took forever, but we finally managed to get a bunch of copies of their Critter / Kritta 3" cd-r, which of course sold like crazy and was gone before we knew it. We stayed in touch with the band, but had been unable to get anything else until now. The strange thing is we had to go all the way to Japan to get this, a split with Japanese duo Ryokuchi...
It was well worth the wait though. Fire Witch are another band who traffic in the slooooooooow and heavy, but they definitely give it their own twist. Not sludgy like SUNNO))) or their legions of followers, and not really noisy like many of their countrymen. Instead they're some sort of strange downtuned slowcore mathrock. Massive guitars churn and throb, the drums a crushing pound, over the top, drawn out wailing leads, all the makings of a proper rock band, but instead they fuck it all up, gloriously, lurching forward only to pause briefly, allowing the silence and bits of room sound to seep in, before launching back into downtuned action. And they go on like that for ages, never attaining any momentum, instead engaging is some crowd baiting bit of stop start torture, and we love it. A slow motion wall of psych guitars and slow shuffling drums.
Here and there, the band reels it in, allowing the drummer to just wander, while the guitars squiggle and oscillate, a dizzying warbly soundscape of tangled melodies and sea sick shimmer. They finish off with the brilliantly titled "I Spilled A Lot Of Blood To Get This Meal", a lengthy chunk of abstract soundscaping, reverberating metal, soft swells of feedback, lazy basslines, drifting harmonics, shuffling rhythms, eventually bursting into a dense doomy plod, but laced with all sorts of killer melodies, making it sound like a doomed version of June Of 44 or Engine Kid.
Fire Witch are teamed up here with Ryokuchi, a Japanese duo (what is it with Japan and duos?), just bass and percussion, who offer up an ultra dense, and relentless onslaught of mathy grinding doom-drenched metallized noise rock. Beginning with strange percussion and fuzzy minimal drones, the band suddenly launches into a massive wall of sludgy pummel, like a more hyper kinetic Eyehategod, or a doom metal Ruins. Relentless and hypnotic, the drums pounding away, the bass a swirling wash of blackened buzz, amidst the chaos duel vocalists howl and shriek. Fuck! And that's just the first track, their second number is way more spread out and sprawling, offering up some stretches of relative tranquility with affected bass and tribal percussion, sounding a bit like a more metal Three Mile Pilot, but the majority of the nearly seventeen minutes is spent furious and chaotic, grinding and crushing, a Tasmanian Devil of sound, going from wild thrashing to slow motion plod and back again in a matter of second. Dense and complex and convoluted and so fucking great!
So we know a bunch of you bought the Ghost Dog soundtrack, threw it on, and realised you were listening to a completely mediocre rap compilation that had very little to do with the movie, and thought 'What the fuck?' Well, there is an explantion. If you were
Latest blast of damaged hip-hop-ic mayhem from the Def Jux camp and it's maybe one of the best so far. And of all the Def Jux releases, for some reason it's gotten the least attention. Not sure why, but it's a shame. Def Jux has done nothing but impress from day one, Cannibal Ox, El-P, RJD2, Company Flow, Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif and on and on. A perfectly, off-kilter, damaged and demented take on hip hop. Super innovative production, funky and bouncing beats, wild, weird flows, and most importantly a sense of humor. S.A. Smash fit in perfectly, playing the goofy country cousins to the big city Def Jux nuclear family. The record starts off with a skit, I know, I hate 'em too, but this one's pretty fucking funny. And there are a few more scattered throughout the record, but they sort of fit in the whole scheme of things. Skits aside though, this record kills. Banging, booming beats, weird but totally catchy production. The sound is a wild mix of Nelly bounce, Clipse grind and Cannibal Ox outerspaceness, which perfectly compliments Camutao and Metro's free form flow, equal parts Onyx intensity, Redman goofiness and Method Man scratchy drawl. The El-P produced "Lilly" is quite possible the jam of the year, with an incredibly catchy, looped bassline, and a hook that just won't stop. Why this isn't all over the radio we will never understand. And the rest of the record is just as slamming. Fans of all things Definitive Jux, Mush, Anticon need this, and folks who get all their hip hop from MTV and Power 106 gotta get schooled.
Released In conjunction with the new Deathspell Omega ep (reviewed elsewhere on this list, and both are available together on a single lp, also on this list), Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum heralds the return of an old favorite, French duo S.V.E.S.T., who strangely enough haven't released a proper record since 2003 (2005's Coagula compiled older demos), but within 30 seconds, we were totally reminded exactly why we loved these guys so much. And they're a perfect foil for Deathspell, their sound equally fractured and convoluted and fucked up, but where DSO go for something darker and moodier and more melodic, S.V.E.S.T. go in the other direction completely, spitting out frenzied swaths of blurred buzz and wild squalls of intense tangled blackness. These three tracks, are so awesome, we almost, and we're well aware of the sacrilege involved here, but we just might like them as much as, if not even more than the Deathspell half of the split.
Their sound is hard to describe. The first track opens with a dizzying swirl of squiggly guitars, woozy riffs, wild splattery drumming, that seems already like it's bordering on total meltdown, yet that's just the intro, and the band launch into a frenzied assault even more fucked up and dense, but pepper it with cool little melodies and parts that almost sound Viking, albeit buried beneath a roiling black blowout. The guitar does these cool little descending trills, the song lurches and stutters, the drums are relentless, mind blowingly fast and heavy and intricate, until part way through, the sound shifts, and there's a bit of doomy crawl, before leaping right back into the fray. Throughout, there are bursts of total drumming chaos, extra guitars howling and adding yet more layers of buzz. It's so thick and heavy and dense, it takes close listening to pick out all the amazing stuff going on beneath the buzzy black surface.
The second track continues on in much the same vein, with the guitars even more twisted and gnarled, the drums still relentlessly mathy and intricate, slipping from total chaotic black noise, to stumbling groove, to cool pounding dirge, the drums leaping out from the mix, the guitars thick and raw, but soaring majestically at the same time. The sound manages to be epic and classic and technical while also murky and lo-fi, the sounds all blurring together, a heaving mass of constantly shifting blown out blackness, still rife with all manner of tangled little melodies, and sweeping epic ambience.
The closer is short and sweet, the weirdest and creepiest of the bunch, beginning with a staccato machine gun burst of drums and riffage, before slipping into a swirling high end guitardrone, all woozy and overlapping, disembodied riffs and smeared melodies, dizzying and mesmerizing, growing more and more intense, the drums barely there, just those high end guitars glowing hotter and hotter, until finally, the drums kick in, and the track resolves in a totally twisted soaring post rock black metal what the fuck epic outro, that fades out WAY too soon. Holy shit. These guys need to deliver a full length ASAP. and we definitely don't want to wait another 6 years.
As mentioned above, S.V.E.S.T.'s three tracks are actually half of a split, released in conjunction with a new record from Deathspell Omega, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and equally as essential.
And again, vinyl folks, you are in luck, both the DSO material and the S.V.E.S.T. songs, while released as separate cds, are available together on a single lp!
Before we get into our usual wordy meandering, hyperbolic gushing and tangential ruminating, we oughta come right out and say it first thing, this record is fucking incredible. One of the coolest weirdest records we've heard in ages. Twisted and blown out, weirdly melodic and groovy, dense and washed out and otherworldly and fucking bizarre, equal parts blissed out hypnogogic shoegazey drift, lurching, chopped and screwed style Southern crunk, majestic choral dreaminess, blurred beat heavy collaged electronica, and sample heavy blown out synthbuzz epicness. In some alternate universe alien world, THIS is the music that comes blasting out of booming systems in tricked out lowriders, some sort of glorious, blindingly blissy club music that fuses stuttery stumbly beats, to crumbling distorted low end, and thick swaths of synths so blown out the whole record sounds like it might collapse, mix in soaring operatic vocal samples, low slung bass buzz, jittery drum skitter, and mush mouthed slowed down 'rapping', smear and blur it all into one glorious, warped and warbly cough syrup fever dream epic, and that's basically Salem's King Night.
By now, most folks have at lest heard of 'witch house' a new 'genre' that Salem seem to represent, willingly or not, it's hard to say, but alongside other groups like oOoOO, witch house has received the sort of blog hype (and mainstream press) that immediately turns us off, and made us want to hate it, but so far, everything we've heard, we've dug, big time, but nothing has kicked out ass as much as this Salem record. It's so weird, and twisted and bizarre, it's sort of hard to believe that THIS is the record people are talking about, it makes sense that we'd love it, and that it would be an aQuarius Record Of The Week, but the New York Times? John Q. Public? Fuck it, like we always say, we'd way rather here stuff like this on the radio anyway. But regardless of the hype, or the backlash, or any of the nonmusical stuff, it all boils down to how ingenious and utterly OUT THERE this is. Just check out the title track, some weird garbled voices, some skittery drum machine, some ravey synths, choral voices, and then BAM, the song explodes, the bass a throbbing slab of rumbling crunch, the drum machine weirdly awkward, but the perfect compliment to the tangled melodies, and those soaring distorted operatic voices, the track a total epic, building and building, like the score for some insane alien sci-fi slow motion dancefloor martial arts battle, you can almost visualize fishtanks exploding into galaxies of exploding glass shards, while bodies fly threw the clouds of glistening sparkle, everything seemingly floating weightless. So good. We could listen to this track FOREVER (and pretty much have since we got it). But then comes "Asia" with its fat stuttery beat, and girlish vocals buried beneath a miasma of crumbling distorted crunch, and woozy synth melodies and confusional drum programming, sounding a bit like some over the top M83 jam gone haywire, or maybe some lost Cocteau Twins B-side remixed by Alec Empire and Black Moth Super Rainbow, everything fuzzy and washed out and gauzy, murky and dark, but still suffused with a weird sort of sunshininess. "Frost" is more of the same, even prettier and blissier, taking Sigur Ros and dipping it in a vat of gristly distortion and Carpenter sci-fi synths, and then stretching it out into a billowing sheet of diaphanous dream pop.
It's not until "Sick" that we get a glimpse of Salem's other side, their chopped and screwed, sippin' sizurp, alien slow motion shoegaze hip hop side, the music remains essentially the same, maybe not quite as dense, still swirls of female vocals, a strange otherworldly chorale, but over the top of this sonic cotton candy , a 'rapper' delivers his mutated pitch shifted flow, mouthful of marbles, finger on the record slowing it do a crawl, creating a weirdly dreamy draggy druggy hip hop / dream pop hybrid. And the rest of the record seems to drift lazily between those two sounds, "Release Da Boar" finds Salem offering up another cloud of dopesmoke dreaminess, fuzz drenched dirge pop bliss, which gives way to "Trapdoor", another slow motion, DJ Screw style cough syrup remix, laid over a warm warped and warbly bit of lysergic ambience and buzzing rave synth swirl. "Hound" is like the title track redux, so thick and crumblingly distorted, but so blown out and beautiful, "Tair" is a gloriously weird spaced out, handclapped chunk of shoegaze rap, and "Killer" sounds like Joy Division or Interpol run through a million distortion pedals, and set to a Casio keyboard drum machine beat, only to shrug off some of the crunch and warble, leaving a gorgeous stretch of plaintive low slung doom pop, that hints at the poppiness that lurks beneath the surface on King Night, only to finish the record in a squall of synth buzz, mumbled vox and drum machine chaos.
Wow. What else can we say. This sounded so good in the store, and even better in headphones, but it wasn't until we got in the car, and cranked this as loud as it would go, that it finally sunk in, and suddenly, we were bouncing up and down in a tricked out lowrider on some alien planet in some alternate universe, our booming system BOOMING, getting totally lost in these twisted and gorgeously damaged sounds. WAY WAY recommended.
If we didn't tell you that Salem's Pot was a heavy, stonery, very Electric Wizard-y psychedelic doom metal outfit from Sweden, the band name kinda shoulda already given you a good idea of what they might sound like - and also an idea of their sense of humor. Yep, they like puns - an earlier album was called Sweeden... geddit? S-WEED-en. Heck, the title of this new disc could possibly be a pun too; we don't know Swedish so we can't be sure. But anyway please don't let the pot-themed punning dissuade you, Salem's Pot aren't just some bogus toker jokers, no, they really ARE damn heavy and occultishly effective at the slow, low, Sabbathy psychedelic sludge thing.
There's three looong tracks here, "Creep Purple" (egad, another pun!), "Dr. Death", and "Nothing Hill", and they're all creepy, crawly, brainwrecking doomfests with wasted, wailing vocals (Ozzy-ish but super distorted) and hypnotically lumbering grooves. Yep, if you wanna call it Electric Wizard worship, well, sure, and it's done damn well. But they have their own weirdly woozy angle on this sound, really. The heavier-than-thou guitar riffage and plodding percussion is augmented with droning organ and, at one point, even some sinister, warbly accordion!! Going back to the guitars, gnarly feedbacky soloing is another essential element of their sound. Yeah, we like how Salem's Pot really accentuate the creepy vibes - it's a 3am hazy Satanic drug thing you wouldn't understand, quite compelling and almost (almost) serious sounding, puns aside.
So of course recommended big time for fans of Electric Wizard, but also to for fans of Uncle Acid, Blood Farmers, Satan's Satyrs, Monster Magnet, Windhand, The Wounded Kings, Sourvein, fellow Easy Riders HORNSS, and all others into witches and weed�
FYI, there's vinyl, we had some but sold out and are waiting for a restock (or repress?) soon...
For the Biblically impaired out there, Salome was the stepdaughter of King Herod, ruler of Galilee, and her infamy comes from the fact that she was convinced by her mother Herodias to seduce her stepfather (euwww) with an eye to getting him to promise her anything she wished. And what she wished was the head of John The Baptist on a platter. Why? Because John condemned the marriage of Herodias and Herod. Harsh.
Thus Herod did her bidding, and she was able to present John's severed head on a platter, to her satisfied mother. One of the most gruesome Biblical moments for sure (although only one among MANY), that has oft been the subject of paintings and plays. But that sort of cold hearted brutality, that sort of gleefully grim bloodshed, how would that play out sonically? Well, perhaps a bit like Virginia's Salome, a female fronted slow motion sludge juggernaut, whose sound falls somewhere between Eyehategod, Khanate and Monarch. Four long songs, each a gloriously filth encrusted, downtuned dirge, with frontwoman Kat's vocals a raspy wraithlike shriek, that is at times a dead ringer for Khanate's Alan Dubin. The music, while definitely sludgey and pummeling is rife with surprising melody, even some of the slowest heaviest parts sound more like 16 rpm Sabbath than the more static and sludgey dronedirgedoom that's all the rage. But the band definitely mix it up, some lo-fi jangle here and there, some classic UK doom sounding mournful melody, some incredibly lugubrious chug and churn, some rocking parts that have a bit of a Melvins feel, all stretched out into slow slithery spaced out ultradooooooom.
The record closes with the 21 minute "Onward Destroyer", which while incredibly heavy and sooooo slooooow, manages to be weirdly pretty, with clean guitar melodies drifting in between the rest of the song's abstract spacious plod, almost like a funereal doom Low. Some awesome sheets of Eyehategod style feedback, with the band eventually kicking it up a notch, and -almost- rocking, a midtempo doomic groove, more harsh hellish vox, and an amazing stretch of feedback that sounds almost orchestral before the band pound out a sludgey groovy slow motion finale.
Monarch, Moss, Eyehategod, Khanate, Thou, Corrupted, Bunkur, if that sounds like your ideal playlist, then this is pretty much a no brainer. But for folks into troo classic doom more than this extreme modern variant, Salome might just be the perfect gateway to whet your appetite for something more black and more grim, and with a few more o's. Doooooooooooooooooooooooooom........
Both the cd and the lp are limited to 500 copies. The lp is already out of print, so when those are gone, that's it, but the cds should be around a bit longer, although probably not much.
Another blast of AQ style rock (you know exactly what we mean) with a healthy side dish of professional wrestling from AQ pal Kevin and his master-of-all-other-zines magazine Salt. Issue five features tUMULt's own 7000 Dying Rats, the hyper-literate metallic grind of Bloodhag, an amazing interview with one of Andee's favorite comic book artists Renee French, label feature on iDEAL Recordings, a review of Kawabata Makoto and Jojo Hiroshige live in Japan, former Man's Ruin rockers Croatan, the relatively little know Japanese band Syogana, some reflections on the ECW, reviews of underground wrestling videos, some comics, and even some record reviews. A great read. Send this guy some money so he can turn this thing into a regular magazine and knock the Wire and Spin and Magnet and Terrorizer on their asses!
Finally another issue of one of our favorite zines. SALT seems to be the zine version of Aquairus, sharing the same taste in music as well as a similar sense of humor, and a similar joy in discovering new and exciting music. Kind of wish someone would give Kevin SALT a big pile of money so he could do a real magazine and knock the Wire and Terrorizer and Spin and whoever else on their collective asses. This time around an interview with The Summer In Between, an article on Texas' Monotremata Records, an extensive review of the Acid Mothers Temple UK tour, show by show, by Kevin and a handful of friends spread out around England, as well as an interview with AMT mainman Makoto Kawabata where he talks quite a bit about his love of professional wrestling. Also in this SALT, an interview with bay area noise monsters Burmese, an interview with Aufgehoben No Process, an interview with guitarist Gary Smith, an interview with cartoonist Chris Yambar, an article about Rock And Role Play Records, home of the mighty Teen Chtulu, Blood Hag, and perhapst the best named band in the world: The Powersofdarknessshallrainblooduponthiscityfor500years, and an interview with AQ faves BORIS! As with every issue, lots of stuff you already dig, but a bunch of stuff you probably don't yet but undoubtedly will. Buy SALT or at least send this guy all your money. PUNK PLANET #49 May/June 2002 3.95 Totally fascinating story on the tumultuous history of Vagrant Records. Interviews with label owner Rich Egan and all the Vagrant bands. Also interviews with Mike Watt, Richard Hell, Hot Water Music, Electrelane and more. As well as stories on the INS crack down on immigrants/terrorists, the newly heightened security on the US/Canada border, Slavadorean activists in Chicago along with the ususal music reviews and columns. THE WIRE #219 May 2002 7.50 Cover article on Mr. plunderphonics John Oswald, Shirley Collins, The Fall, Mission Of Burma Patti Smith. A rather unimpressive Invisible Jukebox with El-P, and an article written by our own Jim Haynes on the Jewelled Antler Collective (Thuja, The Birdtree, Mirza, the Knit Sepearates and more.) Plus reviews and a funny Savage Pencil strip that seems to be poking fun at our buddies at Amoeba. ----* ----* In Stock, No Chance to Review : ----* 20 MILES "Keep It Coming" (Epitaph) cd 14.98 ALIAS "Other Side Of The Looking Glass" (Anticon) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 BLECHDOM, KEVIN "And The Temple Of Doom" (Unbearable) 7" 5.98 CALLA "Custom" (Quatermass) cd 15.98 CLINIC "Come Into Our Room" (Domino) cd ep/7" 6.98/6.98 DARK FUNERAL / INFERNAL "Under Wings Of Hell" (Hammerheart) cd 13.98 DAVIS REDFORD TRIAD "Mystical Path Of The Number 86" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98 ELECTRIC PRUNES, THE "Stockholm 67" (Birdman) cd 13.98 FLOOR / DOVE "split" (Berserker / Crucial Blast) 7" 3.98 FONTAINE, BRIGITTE "13 Chansons Decadentes et Fantasmagonigues" (Polydor) cd 17.98 GOBLIN "Amo Non Amo" (Cinevox) cd 16.98 GOBLIN "Il Fantastico Viaggio Del Bagarozzo Mark" (Cinevox) cd 16.98 GOLD SPARKLE BAND "Fugues & Flowers" (Squealer) cd 14.98 GRUBBS, DAVID "Rickets & Scurvy" (Drag City) cd/lp 13.98/9.98 GUILTY CONNECTOR "First Noise Attack" (MSBR) cd 9.98 HIDALGO, JUAN "Tamaran (Gocce Di Sperma Per Dodici Pianoforti)" (Get Back) lp 15.98 HIGELIN, JACQUES & BRIGITTE FONTAINE "15 Chansons D'avant Le Delinge" (Polydor) cd 17.98 HIROSHIGE, JOJO "The Very Best Of Jojo Hiroshige" (Alchemy) cd 19.98 HOOD "You Show No Emotion At All" (Domino) cd ep 6.98 KIRALY, ERNO "Spectrum" (Trace Label) 2cd 17.98 LAST OF THE JUANITAS "Time's Up" (Wantage USA) cd 14.98 LLOOP "Bulbbs" (theAgriculture) cd 14.98 MAN IS THE BASTARD / GERRIT "split" (Misanthropic Agenda) 7" 3.50 MARCHETTI, WALTER "In Terra Utopicam" (Get Back) lp 15.98 MOBY "18" (V2) cd 16.98 MORRICONE, ENNIO "Ecce Homo" (Dagored) cd 15.98 NEBULA "Dos EPs" (Meteor City) cd 13.98 NOTWIST "Neon Golden" (City Slang) cd 18.98 ONENESS OF JUJU "Space Jungle Luv" (Strut) cd 18.98 OPERA IX "Maleventum" (Avantgarde Music) cd 14.98 OXES "Oxxes" (Monitor) cd 14.98 PHEROMONE "Disparlure" (Corpus Hermeticum) cd 16.98 PIRANHAS "s/t" (On/On Switch) cd 10.98 RADULESCU, HORATIU "Streichquartett nr. 4 opus 33" (Edition RZ) cd 16.98 SPOON / SWEARING AT MOTORISTS "split" (Super Asbestos) 7" 3.98 STRAPPING FIELDHANDS "Third Kingdom" (Omphalos) cd 15.98 TAAKE "Bjoergvin" (Wounded Love) cd 14.98 TROLLHEIM'S GROTT "Bizarre Troll Technology" (Woodcut) cd 14.98 TSUNODA, TOSHIYA "Pieces Of Air" (Lucky Kitchen) cd 14.98 TWINE "Recorder" (Bip-Hop) cd 15.98 V/A "Populare Judische Kunstler: Berlin / Hamburg / Munchen" (Trikont) 2cd 21.00 V/A "Populare Judische Kunstler: Wien" (Trikont) cd 14.98 V/A "Rough Guide To Afro-Peru" (Rough Guides) cd 13.98 V/A "Silk Road, The: A Musical Caravan" (Smithsonian Folkways) 2cd 21.00 VENOM "At War With Satan" (Castle / Sanctuary) cd 16.98 VENOM "Black Metal" (Castle / Sanctuary) cd 16.98 VENOM "Welcome To Hell" (Castle / Sanctuary) cd 16.98 WALKMEN, THE "s/t" (Troubleman) lp 10.98 WEEZER "Maladroit" (Geffen) cd 16.98 WIESE, JOHN "Live At Mon Ton Son: August 28, 2000 Sapporo Japan TT 17:19" (Helicopter) cd 4.98 WORLD STANDARD "Jump For Joy" (Daisyworld) cd 32.00 _______________________________________________________________________ SPECIAL ART EXHIBIT and OPENING : JIM HAYNES
There's always a long wait between issues, but as longtime readers of the aQ list know, it's always worth the wait. And we know lots of longtime aQ-ers, are also longtime fans of Salt, which is the way it should be. A very occasionally published zine, produced by our pal Kevin, a contributor to Rock-A-Rolla magazine, but with Salt, he gets to focus on his true passions, whether that means some obscure band, or some obscure wrestler, all part of the charm. And as we mention in pretty much every review, we keep hoping Salt will either become a proper mag, or in some way become a more regular thing, cuz every issue is a huge treat, and before we know it, we've burned through it and are already hankering for a new one.
This time around, things start off with a feature on another obscure zine, this one called German Bite, a fanzine focused on German art, film and theater, and a mag that we've never read, but from reading ABOUT it here, definitely has us curious to track down some copies. There's also an introduction to aQ faves Maher Shalal Hash Baz, originally intended for Salt #3 (and written in 2001!), as well as a lengthy piece enumerating the various ways that the author loves the late great Royal Trux. Then there's a great piece on the long lost late great seventies post punk / new wave combo Neu Electrikk (which featured one member who would go on to record/perform as Hwyl Nofio, a name familiar to most longtime readers of the aQ list), and an interview with the guy behind LTM Recordings, and finally an interview with Elephant Six psych poppers The Minders.
There are some comics, some editorial content, a tribute to the late great British abstract painter John Hoyland and more, and all for $5. Salt always comes highly recommended, especially in an age of blogs and webzines, we should treasure the folks out there who still make proper zines, especially when they're as good as Salt!
Yes, at last! The new Salvatore is here! We've been trying to get this, their fifth album, for AGES. For whatever reason, these imports were tough to come by, but finally we've got 'em. And now that it's booming through our stereo here at the store, we know that it was worth the wait. First off, the love of Neu! still beats strongly in the hearts (and, um, beats) of these mostly instrumental Norwegian post-rockers. That motorik percussion propulsion that we love too. Instant hypnosis in other words. Which means that they're still very much of the "Circle-ular" persuasion, leaning towards the likes of Tortoise and Trans Am too. Tortoise's John McEntire did the mix, in fact (and contributes drum machine on one track, "Brugata"). That's alongside drums, guitar x 2, organ, bass, "bassdrones", xylophone, vocoder, "sitter" (sitar?) -- and each track has a slightly different, usually expansive line-up of musicians and instrumentation. The bass and percussive elements are always quite strong, of course, but Salvatore still manage to make their music quite delicate too -- and although Luxus remains on the lighter side of Salvatore's output (the "poppier" path they've followed since 2002's Fresh), there are certainly bolts of electric darkness and grit shivering through these tracks, especially on the scarily reverberating "Fluxus"...while the combination of female vocals, strings, and "fake balaban" (presumably the middle-eastern sounding horn we hear) on the ten-minute-plus title track is simply gorgeous, not scary or dark at all. Speaking of balabans, Luxus establishes that ethnic influences are definitely a part of Salvatore's sound, something that they have in common with krautrockers Can, doubtless another inspiration of theirs. So, for fans of Can, Circle, Neu!, Tortoise, etc. Salvatore has produced another winning album, that we're so glad to finally have, to share with you.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally available again, but for now only in box set form.
Everyone knows Samhain were cool, and that at least the first 3 records are essential (and they are of course included here) so we will focus on the other stuff. The box also includes the "Final Descent" cd as well as an unreleased double live cd. Also included is a pretty cool live video and the Samhain comic book (although it seems more like a comic pamphlet, being all of 8 pages). So far, if you don't have these records, it all seems like a pretty sweet deal. Except...all of the cds are packaged in simple cardboard, promo-style sleeves. No jewel cases or booklets. Kind of shoddy. And for some reason, this all comes packaged in a HUGE box, most of which is taken up by some sort of plastic 'space-taker-upper' and not actual stuff, which means it takes up extra, valuable space in our cramped apartments. Suitable for Danzig's ego, not our shelves. So aside from the lame packaging, if you do not have these records already, we say, go for it.
First we've heard from this Dutch combo, even though it's their FIFTH full length, and judging from this new one, man have we been missing out. The first minute is an impossibly furious and fierce, almost blacknoise blowout, a flurry of blast beats wrapped in sheets of blurred buzz that ends up sounding almost like wild, experimental blackened freenoise, eventually, the sound settles into something a bit more traditionally black metal, but only just, Sammath's black metal retains that unhinged, chaotic vibe throughout, with pretty much every note here wound up in dense, dizzying tangles of death tinged blackness, the sound vicious, raw, harsh, hellish and noisy, reminding us at times of Gorgoroth's Destroyer record, at least in terms of pushing the actual sonics about as far as they can go. Closer listening reveals much going on below the surface, a churning morass of raw black metal fused to almost psychedelic sounding blackness, the group deftly (and subtly) adding melancholic melodies and lush textures to what is otherwise a gloriously grim and sonically punishing onslaught, the tracks continuously exploding into epic majesty before (d)evolving into more frenzied avant black buzz. AWESOME!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Their label Metonymic qualifies Sandoz Lab Technician's "Synaptic Acres" as "fluent jazzish exotica, with undercurrents of 50's noir films that never were, to minutely detailed moments of stillness and beauty." I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. The Sandoz Lab Technicians emerge as one of the more mind-expanding outfits from the fertile New Zealand free noise community, which has also spawned The Dead C, RST, Flies Inside The Sun, Surface Of The Earth, etc. With freeranging sonic investigations with guitars, feedback, drums, sax, melodica, and bells (just to name a few of the many sounds uttered on this album), "Synaptic Acres" is a playful if gritty album akin to playing in the mud as a kid.
After a way too long break, Hidden Shoal return to aQuarius, with two new gems, both from long time aQ faves, the first is the latest from SF dreamdronedrifter Wes Willenbring, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this right here, the latest from German outfit Sankt Otten, who we originally described as a mix between Bohren And Der Club Of Gore and Portishead (they're often described in the press as the German Portishead), and really Bohren and Portishead, can't do much better than that. But we were excited to hear how these guys might have changed over the last couple years, and in fact, their sound has shifted quite a bit.
At least in the beginning, the murk and the muted minimalism has been replaced by something much more washed out and ethereal, glimmering and dreamlike, the opening track is a weightless swath of gauzy chordal shimmer that leads directly into a deep throbbing bass synth, we were prepared for a descent into darkness, but weirdly, the sound shifts toward something more epic, a chiming gamelan like melody, over warm soaring synths, skittery drums, a sort of laid back droney downtempo shuffle, but laced with a weirdly major key melody.
It's around track three, where the group slip into some serious downtempo trip hop territory, a gorgeous hazy trawl through greyed electronics and blackened ambience, more laid back skitter, thick throbbing bass, and all sorts of sweeping swirling melody, dark and epic and mysterious. But SA continue to defy the German Portishead pigeonhole, by cranking up the tempo, veering into a sort of krautrock by way of Four Tet one minute, whirling Pop Ambience the next, synthy sprawling blissed out prismatic new age the next, over the course of the record slipping back and forth between these various sounds, sometimes melding several at once, a gorgeous, moody sonic journey, from haunting atmospheric darkness, to sun dappled rhythmic mesmer, to spaced out psychedelic synth, to eighties sounding new wave to hushed dreamlike ambience, to creepy slowcore crawl. Awesome stuff.
Got some of this old favorite back in stock, thought we'd list it again in case you'd missed it. Previously we wrote: The image of a pungi player hypnotically swaying the end of his instrument in front of a cobra portrayed in Western books and films is a fairly accurate one" says this disc's notes, and while that may justify this one Western preconception, it does nothing to prepare for how weird and wonderful the music from snake charmers really is. The three different instruments used by snake charmers (the oboe-like pungi and the rhythmic instruments premtal and kanyeri) provide not so much of a sexy sway as one might think, but a herky-jerky set of bobbing rhythms and an odd stop-start style of reed playing. Andee has likened it to the hard disc editing of Oval, Pita, and Jim O'Rourke but played live! Perhaps the snakes are Mego fans... This is a pretty spectacular collection of mysterious and stirring sound. Highly recommended.
Killer blast of garage pop surf scuzz from this Stockton California combo, that had us immediately thinking of another surf garage group we flipped over a while back, Mrs. Magician, but SW take that same sound, strip it way down, and add some fuzzy, wasted shoegaze to the proceedings, just check out opener "Freeway", which sounds like it should have been on Slumberland, lo-fi, fuzzed out, simple propulsive drumming, over spidery melodies, and some ethereal vocals that give the vibe a serious girlgroup feel. Follow up "She's Not Right" injects some Beat Happening style minimalism, with boy/girl harmonies sung by two boys, the intertwining high/low vox wrapped around some dirgey, reverb soaked riffage, and more primitive drumming. And that's pretty much how Black Eyed Kids plays out, the sound shifting from stripped down, lo-fi crunch, to lush, swirling fuzz pop. Tracks like "Reality's A Bitch" combine the two into jangle pop gems that pile on the warm swaths of distortion, multiple vocals, buzzing distorto-melodies, even some buried samples and sound effects,. There are moments that are obviously home brewed mad scientist tinkering, the band gleefully indulging in weirdo 4-track dub experiments at one point, but it somehow fits perfectly with the rest of these woozy surf pop and garage rock jams, the second half of the record heavy on 'hits', "Sun Coma" sounding a bit like Jeff The Brotherhood, a crazy catchy burst of distorto-pop radness, or the sprawling slo-mo closer "Therapy", which sound like Thee Oh Sees at 16 rpm. Fans of the current crop of garage pop should flip for these guys, file next to Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees, The Intelligence, Mrs. Magician, Sultan Bathery, Herzog, etc...
Remember the movie 2000 Maniacs? Where tourists are lured to a small Southern town and are forced to participate in 'games' that are essentially elaborate and ultra gory (and quite inventive) excuses for extreme torture that ultimately lead to their deaths. Or howabout the sixties biker classic Easy Rider? The ultimate drugged out hippie motorcycle road movie. Or maybe the seventies British horror flick Psychomania, about psychopathic suicidal bikers who make a pact with the devil, kill themselves and return from the dead to terrorize the squares? So now, imagine some crazed, druggy, doomy, psychedelic, psychotropic, head spinning mix of all three, and Satan's Satyrs are pretty much the perfect house band. Similarly, Die Screaming is essentially the soundtrack to the above, some impossibly insane, low budget, blood drenched, exploitation-splatter Z-grade alien biker undead epic. The opening track "Thumper's Theme" is uncharacteristically upbeat, but you can almost imagine this fuzzed out organ fueled jam playing beneath the credits as a porky, leather vested biker, presumably "Thumper" rolls into town, as the townsfolk lock their doors and lower their blinds, all to the strains of fuzzed out distorto riffage, wheezing organ, tumbling toms, all a little bit surfy, infused with just a bit of sonic swagger. But it's on "Instruments Of Hellfire" where things get really good, or perhaps bad if you're one of those innocent bystanders, wild squiggly psychedelic leads over blown out Stooges-y metallic garage punk pound, plenty of wild wah wah guitars, totally tripped out, and when the vocals swoop in, totally whiney, high pitched, and echo drenched, somewhere between a young Ozzy, and a more unhinged hysterical version of Uncle Acid, and in fact, Uncle Acid fans should be ALL over this. It's like a more raw and primitive take on the same sort of seventies psychedelic hard rock, but with SS, it all sounds so much more desperate and unhinged, frantic and dangerous. Oh and then out of nowhere, in comes a barrage of bongos and hand percussion, that gives the sound a little bit of a Goat vibe, but only for like 10 seconds, and then it's right back into another, lurching, lumbering psych-doom garage rock blowout.
Apparently UK doomlords Electric Wizard are huge fans, which makes sense, as they share much of the same sonic DNA, a similar psych-doom bent, and the same obsession with exploitation movies, horror flicks from the sixties and seventies, SS's jams even more that EW's evoking rubber suited beasties, blood spurting ultra violence, greasy bikers and bodacious bikini babes, if it's possible for a 'sound' to be greasy, and filthy, dirty and caked in dried blood, well, Die Screaming is as filthy, bloody and lysergic as it gets. And stick around for the sprawling creepfest closer, the 12+ minute title track, which is a drugged out doom crawl: over a bed of whirring organs, SS unfurl a lumbering dirge, a wasted psychedelic downer rock sprawl, that explodes in the last few minutes into a final, frenzied blast of heavy-horror biker rock crush that KILLS!!!
All that, and then when you add in the blood dripping logo, and melting skull cover art, it's pretty much a guaranteed aQ Record Of The Week! YOU WILL DIE SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yes! The new Satyricon! Black metal fans rejoice! Satyr and Frost are back with another slab of cold twisted grimness to rock you. Actually, we've had copies of this import disc for several weeks now, but held off on listing it 'cause we were hoping that a domestic release was imminent. But, alas, that does not seem to be the case. Now that these Norwegian gods are on a big major label over in Europe, there's some corporate bullshit preventing an indie from putting out "Volcano" over here. So, it's only available as an expensive import for the foreseeable future. However, we assure you that it's well worth the extra $$$ you'll pay! Satyricon have long been one of our favorite Nordic metal bands, maybe our number one fave, and "Volcano" only builds upon the artistry of their previous masterpiece "Rebel Extravaganza". This doomy, dark and violent disc is full of the usual Satyricon surprises. Voivod-dense, industrial prog-metal soundscapes built upon Frost's brutal drum battery and Satyr's throat-torn vox, precise and massive guitar riffing, and sci-fi synths. The totally rockin', almost Killing Joke-ish punk headbanger "Fuel For Hatred". Guest vocals on several tracks from Bjork-esque Norwegian electronica diva Anja Garbarek. A disc-closing, fourteen-minute epic of heaviness called "Black Lava" which boasts the amazing line: "Autumn in the air, the smell of black metal 1990-95"! Aside from the somewhat un-thrilling cover art (a snake's head), and that they allowed the label to change the album's title from the eccentric spelling "Vulcano" to the mundane "Volcano", these guys can do no wrong.
NB. we've only got five of these, and it might be a while before we can get more, so please don't cry if we tell you they're all gone already...
We didn't even know this reissue was happening, but both Andee and Allan were so psyched when this came out recently. The first we heard of LA speed metal outfit Savage Grace was back in the day, they had a track on the Metal Blade Metal Massacre II compilation released in 1982, with other rad bands of the time like Aloha, Overkill, Obsession and all time aQ faves Warlord, among others. Even with all that tough competition, their song "Scepters Of Deceit" ruled, and weirdly enough, it featured Ozzy guitarist Randy Rhoads' brother on vocals. The next year, the band put out The Dominatress ep, which besides being their first proper release, featured a saucy lingerie clad dominatrix, er, dominatress on the cover, which was quite titillating for young metalheads like us at the time. A couple years later, the band released their killer debut full-length Master Of Disguise, featuring another infamous cover, this one with a naked woman handcuffed to a motorcycle, with a creepy red eyed cop leering at her, all wreathed in red fog, and the music inside was even better than the ep, not as raw, but still fast and heavy and melodic. This slipcased cd reissue contains both Master Of Disguise and The Dominatress, and tacks on 4 early eighties demo tracks, including their Metal Massacre contribution.
Most metalheads maybe remember these guys, but they might not realize how well this stuff has stood the test of time. It sounds better than ever, especially with the onslaught of retro metal and old school style thrash bands, this stuff just rules. Still. The riffs are killer, the songs are super hooky and stick in your head like crazy, the leads are super technical and catchy in their own way too, the kind of leads that you end up humming along to, the vocals soaring and high and perfectly suited to the music, the drumming intense and also super technical, and while these guys are generally considered to be speed metal, the band they most sound like in many ways is Iron Maiden, the same sort of epic song structures, harmonized guitar leads, there's definitely a serious NWOBHM influence, which makes this stuff so much more than run of the mill speed metal. Just check out the sound samples, if you can resist "Lion's Roar" or "Bound To Be Free", you really have no right to call yourself a metalhead... Oh, and if you liked the new one from Sweden's Enforcer we highlighted a few weeks back, THIS is definitely the kind of '80s speed metal that they're today's torch carriers of.
Includes a massive booklet with lyrics, liner notes, tons of photos, including alternate even saucier shots from the photo session for the Master Of Disguise cover! Recommended, metallers!!
We admit it, we're cool packaging junkies. Which is different than being a collector. It's just that we like to have the music we love, all wrapped up lovingly in artwork and packaging that was as well thought out as the music. That's one thing you'll never get from an MP3, some crazy gatefold pop up, or some curious origami like creation wrapped in twine. The possibilities are endless. And we're constantly amazed at what artists come up with to compliment their music.
So before we get to the music on Scald's latest Fluke, we have to talk about the artwork. Some of you, whether you know it or not, are probably already familiar with the artwork of Scald drummer Paul McCarroll, who did the layout and design for the Nordvargr / Drakh on tUMULt, laid out AND painted the cover for the over the top Nordvargr / BSE Hypergenome666 box on Old Europa Cafe, he also did the cover for the forthcoming Pyha on tUMULt (yes, it's really finally coming out) as well as tons of other stuff, but this one takes the cake.
A beautiful oversized glossy gatefold, the images all washed out and dark, a crucifix in the forest, all sorts of harrowing photos, a die cut pocket for the cd, and A COMMUNION WAFER printed with the Scald log. A real communion wafer! How evil is that?! Holy shit. Apparently it took ages to find someone who would or could print on a communion wafer, but it was worth it!
Scald are a long running outfit, who sort of straddle the line between crusty punk, furious grind and buzzing black metal, their songs are complex and serpentine, the riffs massive and mathy, the drums furious and pounding, massive fuzzed out basslines, strange time signatures, lurching tempos, howled shouted vocals, the tracks are woozy and chaotic, chugging, churning, definitely hear some Amrep noise rock amidst the blasting buzz. The first 5 songs are a furious assault, that should totally hit the spot for metalheads and noiserockers alike.
But Scald have another side. A much darker, dronier side, which they indulge on the epic 25 minute closing track (longer than all the other tracks combined). A sprawling and expansive noise flecked dronescape, the usual suspects are referenced, but Scald definitely create their own sound, super creepy, and dense, with long stretches of hushed whispering shimmer, strange voices, bursts of jagged grinding crunch, strange swooping backwards effects, dense rumbling low end drones, muted glitch and all sorts of garbled interference, super cinematic, almost like a straight recording of some mysterious seventies art film, dialogue and all. Fucking awesome.
We were gonna try to review this record without mentioning what this sometimes reminds us of, but hell, we just can't, and if it keeps you from buying it then it's YOUR LOSS. Scale The Summit are some young shredding guitar instrumentalists, who weave epic, soaring jubilant tech metal jams, that drift and shimmer and shred, laced with tons of swirling harmonies, tinkling harmonics, plenty of chug, all surprisingly major key, like the soundtrack to a videogame, or the climax of some action movie, or yeah, a little like Joe Satriani's Surfing With The Alien...there we said it. But take that Satriani sound, tangle it all up with some Fucking Champs shred-ery, get it all mathy here and there, let it sprawl majestically like some sort of Explosions In The Sky album closer, and you've pretty much got Carving Desert Canyons. This is the sound that accompanies a camera dangling from the bottom of a helicopter soaring along the desert floor, the soundtrack to a hipper emo-metal version of Planet Earth, expansive and epic, but plenty metallic and post rocky. We've been listening to this like crazy, it definitely pushes some buttons we never knew we had (or at least hadn't had pushed in a while), but fuck it, everything can't be dour and depressive and buzzy and black, sometimes you need something like StS, all emotionally metallic and triumphant, post rockisms spreading out into wild churning chugfests that in turn eventually explode into mathmetal blowouts, or super melodic shredfests. Definitely for fans of the Fucking Champs, Pegataur, Electro Quarterstaff, Explosions In The Sky, Zebulon Pike, Pelican, and all things postmetal, mathmetal and instru-metal.
Tony Molina from pop heroes the Ovens returns again, with yet another new band. And that hardcore obsession that popped up in the Ovens all the time, whether it was shout outs to obscure NYHC bands on stage or weird straight edge covers, an obsession that first truly became flesh in his hardcore combo Caged Animal, surfaces once again in the form of Scalped, yet another HC outfit, and another one featuring Molina and at least one other Oven. There's no secret poppiness or any of that bullshit, this is some seriously pummeling, punishing old school style metallic hardcore, and metallic it is, with fierce fucking riffs, bellowed throat shredding vox, four songs in less than 6 minutes, a furious onslaught that will no doubt get that pit spinning. Ovens fans seem to be an obsessive bunch, snapping up Caged Animal singles along with Ovens singles, so odds are, you Ovens nerds might want one of these too, but really, this one is strictly for the hardcore kids. And yeah, probably super limited to boot!
The second cosmic synth-drone-rock missive from Scantily Clad, a duo of instrumental improvisers split between Northern and Southern California. We loved their first cd-r, an amalgam of lo-fi synth styles from soft lullabies to abrasive noise that showed a lot of promise. Well, that promise is made good on their follow-up, a richer, more focused, and self-assured outing than before. The sonic intensity is beefed up, the songs more composed, the instrumentation more varied, the dreaminess heightened ( especially on tracks like Vanilla, Baby"), and the nosier parts (like what sounds like chipmunks speaking in tongues on "Deep Witch") are even weirder. But it all fits together very well as a fully-realized piece of heavy instrumental spaciness. Even the packaging is cooler, with their clipart collages of mandalas and symbolic animals housed in a sturdy transparent plastic case. Fans of groups like Emeralds and Carlton Melton will find lots to dig here!
This is the third reissue of a recording by German guitarist/soundscaper Gunter Schickert that we've listed - and also the third that we've made a Record Of The Week. That ought to tell you a little something about just how much we like the music of Herr Schickert! Up until fairly recently, Schickert's work has been shrouded in obscurity, the original albums being super rare and hard to find, reissues equally scarce. But thankfully, just in the last couple of years, several legit, long-deserved reissues, appearing on the Bureau B and Important labels, have helped to make Schickert's mesmerizing music more widely known - and has hopefully established him where he belongs, as one of the crucial names in the classic krautrock pantheon, up there with contemporaries like Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottsching, Achim Reichel, and Michael Rother. Certainly as far as we're concerned, he is! If you dig any of the aforementioned gentlemen, you should definitely get to know Gunter Schickert as well.
The previous two albums of his we've Record Of The Week-ed, 1974's Samtvogel and 1979's Uberfallig, are both all-time aQ faves. There's not much more to Schickert's small discography - but there is this, and it's another fave for sure. Originally released as a cassette tape in 1983, then reissued again on cassette in the '90s and on cd-r in the early 2000's by the Freeman brothers (of Auricle Magazine / Crack In The Cosmic Egg fame), the material on Kinder In Der Wildnis consists of disparate DIY recordings drawn from Schickert's archives, so it's a bit more varied than either of his earlier albums, though if you've heard those, you'll recognize right away that you're back in Schickert's sonic realm, one of organic field recording atmospheres and trance-inducing minimalist pulsations... but something about this is so much more nervy and dark. More "rocked out" too at times. Maybe it's the influence of the NDW, aka Neue Deutsche Welle (punk new wave music of Germany), but we're still talking krautrock.
Even though Schickert does EVERYTHING himself (guitar, tape, vocals, percussion, trumpet) it somehow sounds like a whole band, and that band sounds like Amon Duul II and Faust trapped together in a bunker, jamming endlessly in the middle of the night, the music dark and claustrophobic despite the environmental nature sounds that (as always) Schickert likes to weave into his recordings. There's the children's voices on here too (his daughter sings on the jittery title track) but that's in stark contrast to the druggy darkness of so much of this. Tracks like "Rabe In Der Nacht" and "Hollentanz" are a dense lo-fi mesh of percolating beats, wailing psych guitar, and sound FX. Bird twitter-y field recordings (and crazy crow-like cawing from Schickert himself, we assume) meet overdubbed layers of chanting vocal parts, including more animal-like cries, in the hallucinatory mix. Swirling drones of synth coalesce into hypnotic throbbing rhythms, over which lilting keyboard motifs hint at the likes of Goblin. Also significant is Schickert's sad, electronically-treated trumpet, heard ferinstance on "07.Mai", alongside pleasingly placid repetitive guitar, phasing effects, and field recordings of fireworks exploding (heard elsewhere on the record as well) that sound like sferic squiggles of electronic sound, buried in the mix along with disembodied unknown voices. The trumpet here foreshadows the future sounds of Supersilent, while the pulsating patterns of proto-glitch music also remind us of This Heat's Repeat.
Yep, it's a freakin' great record all right. Trippy and weird and psychically round the bend. In other words, super satisfying. How it stayed so far under the radar for so long is crazy. Big props to Bureau B for giving it a proper reissue now on both compact disc and vinyl for the very first time, with excellent artwork, liner notes, and even two bonus tracks (on the cd only).
The bonus tracks, fyi, are feeling a lot more NDW, Schickert employing a drum machine it sounds like, a bit dancey, still dark and damaged, looping layers of vocals coming and going amidst the beats. Could easily be something Dark Entries of Medical Records would be expected to reissue. Very cool, fans of Pyrolator / Der Plan will enjoy these as well as the rest of the album. But with or without the bonus tracks, Kinder In Der Wildnis is super recommended, in heavy rotation in the store right now, a record that with Schickert's other two solo albums makes for an impressive trifecta of unsung krautrock genius.
YES! We're big fans of lesser-known krautrock guitarist Gunter Schickert (who also did production work with Klaus Schulze, like, for Japan's Far East Family Band). As soon as we heard that his Uberfallig album was getting a new reissue, we knew it was going to have to be a Record Of The Week. We've been in love with this record forever, referencing it and Schickert plenty of times in other reviews when we want to cite something incredibly atmospheric and minimalistically trance inducing from deep in the krautrock zone. There was a previous cd edition of this we stocked years ago, but that's been out of print for ages. Now Germany's industrious Bureau B label have stepped in and added this rare late-krautrock masterpiece to their ongoing, essential series of reissues of essential kraut / kosmishe albums. And it's on both digipak cd *and* vinyl now as well!
Uberfallig was Schickert's second album, originally issued in 1979 on the Sky label, the follow up to his 1975 Brain debut Samtvogel. It's hard to believe somebody this good didn't record more, or with other people, but we're only aware of a couple later recordings that have ever surfaced. Here on Uberfallig, Schickert's exceptionally hypnotic space-echo guitar work, similar to Manuel Gottsching of Ashra, is matched by fascinating rhythmic pulsations, at times recalling prime Can-like velocities or the circular bubbliness of aQ faves AR & Machines, and some Pink Floyd Meddle era pastoral psych vibes as well. And it's mostly just Schickert (guitar, voice) and a few friends (drums and vocals) plus nature sounds, deftly deployed.
Opener "Puls" is worth the price of admission alone. It does indeed pulse, for nearly 16 epic minutes, building from calmly rhythmic beginnings to pure hypno-guitar bliss, mixed with subtle, splashy, sploshy field recordings - evoking the idea of Schickert and his drummer colleague Charles M. Heuer wading upstream in the wilds somewhere as their music plays. That begins the recurrent watery theme found on this album, an ever present liquid watery ambience, the sounds of wind and rain and surf and babbling brooks woven in among the "actual" instruments. The cover image of an intense looking Schickert suggests this too, his visage overlaid with what looks like the play of light on the surface of water.
The second cut, "In Der Zeit", is a shorter, folkier number, with more surf-sounds and bird calls and a gentle, hushed female vocal, accompanying Schickert's pleasant, repeating acoustic guitar motif. So nice.
Track three, "Apricot Brandy II", as some may guess from the name, is a sequel to the first track on Schickert's debut Samtvogel (wish we still had a reissue of that - maybe Bureau B will do something about that, too). Again with a watery intro, then the nervous ticking of drumsticks, heralding a quietly unfurling, slightly sinister and suspenseful 12 and a half minute, gently percolating proto-post-rock trip. We're hearing some Can circa Tago Mago, and Tortoise and Circle, too, especially with the murmuring vocals chanting "Apricot Brandy" amidst other drones and moans. It's all druggy and delicate, moody and mesmeric. Quite the tour de force, coming to a close with strange samples and lovely crackling.
If that wasn't enough, the album ends with even more haunting mesmer, the aptly titled, the 8+ minute long "Wanderer", slow and spooky at first, with more of that tick-tock drumming and watery splashes. It's got a twilight sound to it, so beautiful and mysterious and mesmeric, like this whole amazing, organic, echo-laden album.
Includes, along with credits and lyrics, new 2012 liner notes from Schickert's contemporary Asmus Tietchens, in both English and German, and also an interesting note from Schickert, explaining that some of this music was used on the soundtrack to a film about the gay community in New York called Brooklyn 11238, which we'd never have guessed...
While we'll state that this is reissue definitely something crucial for fans of Agitation Free, AR & Machines, Moebius & Rodelius, Michael Rother, You, Ashra, and latter-day krautrockers Village Of Savoonga, we should also make clear that this is NOT just for krautrock collector nerds - even if you've NEVER heard a krautrock record before, we'd still recommend this one, obscure as it is. It's that good.
Schizoid was responsible for our favorite tracks on the massive (and massively good) 'Don't Fuck With Us' 3 cd compilation of North American digital hardcore compiled by the 'expert' on such things, Mr. Alec Empire. We described Schizoid as "Burzum goes DHR" and that's still pretty right on. But now we have a whole disc, so there's much more variation and much more mayhem! Super distorted, heavily effected, totally evil vocals over dense electronic soundscapes, with chopped up metal guitars, pounding hardcore/gabber/drill'n'bass rhythms. Way more intense and aggressive than almost anything on DHR, and certainly more fucked up and pummelling than almost any electronic music we've heard lately, without falling into the boring, repetitive sameness of most gabber/digital hardcore. Super varied, with full on speed metal gabber, lots of spaced out ambient breaks, electronic drones, and some seriously damaged mid tempo primitive-black-metal-electronica. This is definitely some of the best (and most brutal) electronica to come our way since we first heard 'The Destroyer'. For fans of DHR, The Berserker, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destroyer, Venetian Snares, Atomsmasher, Burzum, Darkthrone and all that evil stuff.
Wow, it's definitely Christmas around here and how can we tell? Well, for one thing we got this amazing new soundtrack reissue that we never realized until now we have been looking for most of our adult life. It's on Crippled Dick Hot Wax, one of our fave reissue labels that we haven't heard from in years and had feared they disappeared for good. And it's another lost gem from the proto-Can universe of The Inner Space, the same early group incarnation that gave us the soundtrack to the unreleased surreal-politico film, Agilok and Blubbo!
One of our favorite Krautrock obscurities compilations from years and years ago was called Kraut Demons Kraut and two of the tracks were credited to The Can, but didn't sound like Can at all. These were pastoral and pretty with flutes and guitar, one featured very folky female vocals by Margareta Juvan called, "I'm Hiding My Nightingale", the other track was called "Kama Sutra" (billed here as "Indisches Panorama I"). We had always wondered where those recordings had come from, and how they related to Can. It wasn't until someone put this on in the store after we just got it in that it all came rushing back. Those songs were from a rare 1968 German erotic film by Kobi Jaegar called Kamasutra: Consumation Of Love and were arranged and performed by Irmin Schmidt & The Inner Space, whose then lineup of Jaki Leibeziet, Malcolm Mooney and Michael Karoli was essentially the same line-up of Can's debut full length, Monster Movie.
But much of this is different from the Can we know (though the Malcolm Mooney-sung "There Was A Man" points at what Can was to become, and Michael Karoli's simmering electric guitar lines are as signature as ever), it even sounds very different from the other Inner Space release, Agilok and Blubbo. That soundtrack was more exploratory, improvisational and experimental, while Kamasutra is much more focused and musically gorgeous. Lots of sitars, flutes, acoustic and electric guitars playing slow-burning compositions with loping repetitive rhythms. Occasionally rocking out a groove, but more often wandering through many pastoral raga-tinged extrapolations. This is the most psychedelically kosmiche recording we've ever heard from this outfit, which of course gives it our highest recommendation!
When we recently posted our top ten lists for 2011, some folks might have noticed Andee's top spot was a record we had never actually reviewed or listed, but it wasn't for lack of trying. It was actually released way back in 2010, but we didn't even hear about it until 2011, and then it took until 2012 for us to actually get enough copies in to review. Lots of aQ folks probably recognize Schreifels' name, whether it's as the frontman for nineties post punk combo Quicksand, or more recently in Rival School, but even before Quicksand Schreifels played in legendary NY hardcore outfits Youth Of Today and Gorilla Biscuits! But don't be expecting anything remotely hardcore or punk rock (although there are nods to those days, more on that in a second), the sound here is much more classic indie pop jangle, which is really the direction Schreifels had been moving in anyway since the end of Quicksand, with Rival Schools, World's Fastest Car and now solo.
An open Letter To The Scene is crazy catchy, jangly indie pop, and from the very first play, we found ourselves spinning it constantly, over and over on a daily basis, much to the displeasure of the less pop inclined, but it's that sort of irresistible collection of songs, and again, as with every subsequent record, we can't understand why mainstream success continues to elude Schreifels, the songs here are so much catchier and hookier and more original than 90 percent of the indie rock we hear, but it's probably that whole original thing that throws people off, but for the rest of us, who like our pop smart, and quirky, catchy, crunchy and fuzzy, and jangly, well, this record is pretty tough to beat. We're tempted to go through the record song by song, but we'd probably end up just gushing crazily about how every song is SO CATCHY and SO GREAT, but hell, every song here IS so catchy and great, from dark strummy almost-ballads, to big jangly power pop, from intimate bedroom pop to fuzzy poppy classic indie rock, all driven by Schreifels' distinctive vocals, a little bit gruff but super warm and melodic, the sound rife with strange cool lush arrangements, and subtly trippy production, and then there the abovementioned nods to his punk rock past.
First there's a killer cover of Agnostic Front's "Society Suckers", which works surprisingly well as an acoustic guitar and bongo driven chunk of strum and jangle, there's also a new version of "Don't Gotta Prove It", originally recorded by another one of Schreifels' early outfits, the melodic hardcore group CIV, here transformed into a killer slab of distorto guitar and organ driven fuzz pop stomp, and that's not to mention liberal lyrical references to various bands and hardcore musicians and reappropriations from classic hardcore songs (one pointed out in the lyrics borrowed from Warzone!), but they're so subtle and work so well with the music and the lyrical content, that you might not even notice it at first (if at all), it's just part and parcel of Schreifels' twisted indie pop sound, which is a sound we somehow STILL haven't tired of, even after literally listening to this record almost daily for the last year. The only thing that might get us to stop, is the supposed impending release of a brand new record. But until then, we'll keep digging this one. And we're betting the popfans that read the aQ list will too.
Subtitled, Another Suplex Prune Hittite Fantasy! But I think this needs a little more explanation. Argh. Ok, some of you will remember Steven Shultz for his remarkable "History of Vats" cd, or his more recent rap album, the "I Forgot To Get A Rap Name!"
The four cds come packaged in a cardboard box, complete with a thick booklet providing you with the entire libretto, and more. Basically, this is the Conet Project of "comedy"! (that is, if you can consider this comedy...)
This also features a special guest star, a certain local metal singer who wisely desires to remain anonymous (hint: he's on one of Andee's recent tUMULt releases), who, as a favor for Steve, played the role of Hulk Hogan! ...I also think I heard Bob Dylan on here...
So, if you think pro wrestling characters from the '80s are amusing and that the slang term 'hella' is funny and you like Frank Zappa, or if you are simply a connoisseur of the idiotically ridiculous, this is for you!! Don't say we didn't warn you. Basically, if you can stand to listen to the entire thing, you've got problems. (See www.harmful.org/stalinclaus for more information, including a helpful flowchart explaining the, uh, plot. Or so we're told, we were too scared to go there.)
Like a modern Switched On Bach, DJ Scotch Egg, armed with modified game boys, and a serious arsenal of 8 bit noisemakers, takes all your favorite Bach tunes and turns them inside out, tangles them all up, slathers them in overloaded electronic buzz and glitch and all sorts of squiggly video game music, and creates some glorious bastard classical gabber electronic classical knee-to-the-nuts techno. And it's a blast. Wild and goofy, funny and sort of funky, but completely brilliantly baffling.
Lots of the pieces are ones you'd recognize, but they are quickly transformed into blown out lo-fi blasts of damaged dance music. Some tracks feature garbled super distorted vocals, and end up sounding like some toy version of Atari Teenage Riot. Allan thinks a lot of this sounds like the video game version of the theme from Bad News Bears or maybe an 8-bit Virgil Fox trapped in a haunted video arcade. However it strikes you, odds are you won't hear a record this weird and this much fun anytime soon. Imagine playing some insane futuristic version of Dance Dance Revolution on a crappy old Atari 2600, but with the sound patched through 1,000 Marshall stacks. Fucking awesome!
If you're anything like us (at least two of us have the sounds of Rastan on our iPods and we have a full size Tron machine in the back room of AQ!) this is so deliriously damaged and absolutely essential!!
Man, I should have been a rapper. What other career allows you the freedom to release record after record, even after you're already dead!!! In much the same fashion as Tupac and Biggie, Screw's posthumous output will soon outnumber the records released
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Imagine your favorite hip hop jam slowed down to 3/4 the speed, or even 1/2 the speed. Well, you don't have to, cause here comes DJ Screw with his peculiar brand of remix, which as fas as we can tell just means slowing the records down, but damn it sounds good. All those radio hits dipped in molasses and dragging themselves through a tarpit beats and 'ugh's. The sexy songs sound sexier, the slamming songs sound, well, slower but somehow more powerful, and some of em just sound really really funny.
We can occasionally get volumes one through three of the Screwed Up remix series, but you can/should also check out Napster for some of the biggest hits (remixed we think without permission) and up until a few months ago, all the latest jams slooooowed waaay dooown. But Screw is dead now (R.I.P.) and the world just seems a little too fast.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Unclassifiable American metal experimentalists Sculptured present their second album. Their sound is a combination of epic Maidenesque guitar melodies, emotional vocals (cleanly sung and otherwise), progressive song structures, and unusual instrumentation, most notably the AMAZING use of trumpet and trombone throughout the album. Yeah, imagine a cross between (death/black/prog metal gods) Opeth and (Utah prog/fusion/improv former metalcore band) Iceburn, with a horn section. Unlike anything else in the metal realm at the moment, and recommended.
The Tri Angle label has brought us some of our favorite weirdo electronica, from witch house to slo-mo-soul, from dronestep to warped hip hop, just a quick list of some of our favorite Triangle artists speaks volumes: Forest Swords, Vessel, FiS, Haxan Cloak, Water Borders, oOoOO, Clams Casino, Balam Acab, Holy Other, How To Dress Well...
So the fact that this might be the weirdest, noisiest, most out there Triangle release yet should not be taken lightly, cuz the bar had already been set pretty goddamn high, but the oddly monikered Sd Laika, aka Milwaukee producer Peter Runge, knocks it out of the park, with what is some sort of post grime, post dubstep, electro noise oddity, that pushes ALL our buttons. The sort of thing that you might have expected to come out on DHR back in the day. The opening one two punch is all it should take, the 90 seconds of "Peace", all grinding gristly synth buzz, keening high end skree and squiggly psychedelic melody, wreathed in swaths of hiss and him, fragmented and blown out, noisy, lurching and lumbering, it kills us that that song didn't stretch out to fill up the whole record. But then comes "Great God Pan", which eases our pain a little, with big billowing clouds of buzzing low end, glitches out drones, and staticky buzz, a field of hazy drift, that is soon interrupted by a seriously twisted beat, that sounds like it was assembled from discarded fragments of others songs, noisy, clattery, skittery, stuttery, all the while, in the background, thick swells of black buzz pulse ominously, and over the top, haunting alien melodies, all tethered to that super sick, unholy anti-groove. Murky and sinister and seriously fucking next level.
And it never lets up, all the beats sound like they were filtered through some homespun analog telephone transistor radio broadcast system, fuzzy, and crackly, always dropping out, and then swooping back in, imagine a grime record recorded onto a wax cylinder and then broadcast via short wave radio, in a moving vehicle so the reception is in constant flux. And even when everything is in range, and the sound is relatively hi-fi, the sounds are still warped and woozy, and before long the sound devolves into another gloriously distortion drenched sprawl, often sounding like Leyland Kirby's Caretaker having a go at dubstep, and failing spectacularly.
There are some mysterious shards of 8bit sound, some twisted fragmented samples, some flurries of tangled melody, and cascades of synth blorp and grinding fields of staticky thrum, the sound occasionally dipping into cubby tranquility, but again, quickly snapping back into a twisted variant of alien IDM. The whole record is a dizzying collage of fractured sonics, of shattered rhythms, reassembled into damaged, demented rhythms, hints of minimal techno, Pop Ambient, dub, house, electro, all find their way into the sound, but in true mad scientist fashion, those elements are melted down, dissected, and transformed utterly and completely into some strange hybrid of experimental dada-soundscapery and avant electronica, a gloriously mind bending, brain melting, dance floor defying masterpiece.
With a lot of stuff on the AQ list, to us at least, the music often transcends its genre. And part of the fun of reviewing a record like that, is getting people who don't normally listen to that kind of music to check it out, and maybe even dig it. You know, some metal record that's so fucked up and damaged that it might appeal to folks into noise music or experimental music. Or some pop band that's so heavy and intense, that even metalheads might dig it.
Well, with this, the long long long overdue reissue of the first and only record from San Francisco's very own Sea Hags, we're not even gonna bother. This isn't fucked up or noisy or experimental. It's heavy, groovy, glammy hard rock that totally kicks ass. And if you don't dig stuff like Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks and the like, then odds are you aren't gonna dig this. But if you do (and if you don't what the hell's wrong with you?!), and somehow you missed out on the greatest hard rock band to ever come out of SF, then for fuck's sake, pick this up NOW.
Hailed back in the day as the next Guns N' Roses, and described by their manager thusly: "There's only so far you can go with three junkies and one alcoholic�", the Sea Hags were Bay Area rock heroes, who would hang out with Courtney Love, have Metallica's Kirk Hammett play lead on one of their tracks, almost get a song on the Sid And Nancy soundtrack after a tip from Love (who was fronting Faith No More at the time!), record with Mike Clink who produced Appetite For Destruction, kick their drummer out while recording, have the band nearly break up on tour after being busted for drugs, and (sadly) have one member die at age 26 of an heroin overdose a year after the band breaks up, but more importantly than all of that, record one of the best hard rock records of the nineties, and one of the greatest hard rock tracks EVER in the form of "Half The Way Valley".
Just listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. Filthy and dangerous, groovy and bluesy, glammy and heavy, and so crazy catchy, a pinch of the Stones, a bit of the Yardbirds, lots of Aerosmith, plenty of GN'R , all mixed up with their own unique take on sixties pop and seventies hard rock. Kick ass riffing, pounding drumming, boozy world weary vocals, and hooks galore.
Not sure what else to say. Amongst the hard rockers around these parts, the reissue of the Sea Hags record was a HUGE deal. So much so, that had it not happened, Andee and Allan might have considered it for their fledgling eighties metal reissue label!
Needless to say, this is essential listening for hard rockers. One of our favorite discs from the nineties. Finally reissued, and damn if it don't sound as kick ass as ever!
As with all the Rock Candy reissues, the packaging and presentation are amazing. If only ALL reissues were this well done. Bonus tracks, tons of photos, extensive liner notes, interviews with bandleader Ron Yocom, as well as track by track notes and a band history.
Where Are You is the first we've heard from local outfit Sea Knight, but it's a stunner, dreamy, and strummy, and psychedelic, moody and melancholic, the traditional guitar/bass/drums augmented by violin, which gives the sound a sweeping, epic and emotional vibe, not to mention the powerful vocals. All it takes is about two minutes of opener "Chasm", and you'll be sold, equal parts Pixies / Breeders pop smarts, and shoegaze-y Mazzy Star haze, simple steel string strum, chiming melody, a spidery guitar, the vocals dreamy and ethereal, the sound laid back and soft focus, slow building to something much more epic, maybe like a girl pop Godspeed if that makes any sense. It's definitely indie pop, but with a lush sonic palette, and a propensity for epicry that definitely makes Sea Knight something special. And is often the case, it took about 10 listens of the first track before we were able to dig any deeper. Which is always a good sign. The rest of the record holds up just as well, a perfect mix of folky strum, a little twang, classic old school indie rock, heavy on the nineties, with plenty of noisiness and unexpected mathiness mixed in, check out the sweetly melodic "Concrete", which blossoms into something much noise poppier, or the heavy droned out modern rock-ish "Crows Came And Spoke Of New Beginnings", with its smoldering buzzguitars, and haunting soaring vocals, again the Godspeed as indie pop band definitely comes into play, and apparently, as a live proposition, these songs all get a lot heavier and noiser, which is something we definitely wanna hear!
This is the first full length from Sean Tillman, who you may remember from his sort of popular old band Calvin Crime. His solo stuff as Sean Na Na is a complete about face from Calvin Crime's arty punkiness. This is coy, clever Built To Spillian pop. He was on that split cd with Mary Lou Lord a few months back, and blew her away (granted no mean feat). Imagine a younger, more playful, whinier Built to Spill (the Dug Martsch comparisons are unavoidable, high reedy voiced, lonely, whiney boy rock (�Elisabeth)). Really cool.
As if you hadn't realized it by now, we're sort of crazy Sebadoh fanboys (and girls), we made the last two multiple disc reissues of classic Sebadoh records aQuarius Records Of The Week, and now that we're reviewing this one, we're not exactly sure why we didn't make this one a ROTW too, probably because Sebadoh reissue number three might have seemed a bit much, but fuck it, consider this an UNofficial record of the week, cuz while those other Sebadoh records are great, this one is too, in fact, in some ways it ranks as one of our favorites for several reasons. One, it's one of the heaviest and most rocking of the bunch, some new blood (at the time) seems to have reinvigorated the band. Two, Jason Lowenstein, who on the previous record Bubble & Scrape had finally stepped up and started writing songs that rivaled main man Lou Barlow's tunes, really hit his stride here, some of the best songs on Bakesale are his, and lots of tracks it's tough to tell if the song is Lou's or Jason's, and what might be THEE best Sebadoh song ever, is here, and yep, is penned by Jason. And finally, Bakesale is the last truly great, and classic sounding Sebadoh record, sure Harmacy and The Sebadoh are great, they're just not GREAT. This record is damn near perfect, just the right balance between classic Sebadoh sad boy angst, and seriously rocking crunch.
First, let's talk about that bold claim about THEE best Sebadoh song, maybe that's a bit too bold, let's say one of , if not OUR FAVORITE. The oddly titled "Shit Soup", with its instantly memorable opening bass line, it's almost noise rock riffing, and it's super staccato arrangement, not to mention some killer lyrics, the song seesawing between hooky heavy pop, and weirdly distorted crunch, woozy folky drift and back again, just listen to the sound samples, if you're not blown away, well, hell, we're not sure there's any hope. But even if you don't love "Shit Soup" as much as us, Bakesale is seriously hit heavy, opener "License To Confuse" with it's fuzzy bass, angular guitar part, and droney shuffling chorus, a sub two minute killer, then there's "Careful" another Jason jam, with an awesome melodic bassline that seems to drive the whole song, a song that's tense and dramatic, moving and moody and totally rocking. There's "Magnet's Coil" which is classic Sebadoh, a little supercharged, but at its core, a bittersweet pop song wreathed in crunch and buzz, with some of Barlow's best lyrics and melodies. And let's not forget "Skull", another classic Barlow jam, strummy and jangly, heartfelt and sweetly melancholy, and some super sweet and subtle hooks. Howabout "Rebound"? Yep another CLASSIC, hooky, and fuzzy, with some awesome distorted riffage and more of Lowenstein's fuzzy bass, and a bridge as catchy as most bands' choruses, and then a chorus as catchy as 2 or 3 of most bands' choruses combined. "Drama Mine" is another heavy Jason tune, that balances hooks with crunch, further demonstrating that Bakesale was about as perfect a partnership as could be imagined between Barlow and Lowenstein. And those are just the highlights, highlights among other highlights. Hyperbole, we think not, one of the essential indie rock records of the nineties without a doubt.
This reissue includes a whole mess of extra material (a bonus disc in the cd version, the vinyl inlcudes the bonus material, along with the album proper, as a download), which includes all the various b-sides and extra tracks from various 7"s and cdeps as well as a handful of Jason's demos. And here's where Barlow and company indulged their audio fuckery that figured so prominently on past records, opening with "MOR Backlash", a noisy collage of classic rock and garbled radio transmissions, but in true Sebadoh fashion it leads right into an achingly heartfelt 4 track acoustic version of "Not A Friend", and that's pretty much how the bonus disc plays out, balancing noisy experiments with alternate versions, acoustic home recorded demos, not to mention some unpolished gems, and one of our favorite Sebadoh B-sides, the awesomely titled brooder "Punching Myself In The Face Repeatedly, Publicly".
Includes a massive booklet, with new liner notes from both Jason and Lou, as well as expanded artwork, photos, collages, and some cool early drafts of the iconic over art, featuring a photo of 1 year old naked Lou reaching into the toilet.
Lots of claims could be made for best indie rock record ever. Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted is an obvious choice. But there are tons of other contenders, records by Dinosaur Jr., Galaxie 500, Seam, Archers Of Loaf, the Pixies, the Breeders, Unrest, Slint, Yo La Tengo, Superchunk...
But what about Sebadoh? Originally Lou Barlow's bedroom side project while he was playing bass in Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh went from soft 4-track sad boy ruminations to full on rambunctious indie rock without losing Barlow's tender hearted, mopey moodiness. This record, III, is where they really clicked. To be totally honest, the first two are our absolute favorites (c'mon, somebody reissue The Freed Weed!!!) but until those are available again, we'll just have to cast our lot with III. Not entirely fair to compare them though. The first two Sebadoh records were just Lou, in his bedroom, singing and strumming, a ramshackle collection of sweet sad songs and freaked out tape experiments, where as by the time of III, Sebadoh was a real rock band, with not just two other band members, but two other songwriters, Eric Gaffney and Jason Lowenstein. Giving Sebadoh a distinctly schizophrenic sound, veering from introspective to noisy and annoying depending on whose song it was. Years before Conor Oberst ascended to the weepy, slouchy indie throne, Sebadoh's Lou Barlow was already the king of the lo-fi tearjerker. He ruled the roost of unabashed romantics in his rumpled threadbare cardigan, spectacles and tousled mop of hair. However, as III proved beyond a doubt, Sebadoh wasn't confined to lovey-dovey bedroom balladry, nope they could tear shit up a-plenty providing both cathartic heartbaring sadsack sweetness and blistering noise rawk for indie kids near and far.
The copious liner notes are a bit confusing though. As far as we were concerned, Sebadoh WAS Lou Barlow, who was later joined by Eric and Jason. But the liner notes, especially Gaffney's, paint a quite different picture. Gaffney goes on and on about how it was basically his band and his songs. But a quick listen to the record (and a look at each member's subsequent sonic track record) reveals the truth, that Lou was still the quiet mastermind. Eric has some killer tracks for sure, and Jason's songs are wild and chaotic (this was before he would grow into a songwriter to rival Lou on later Sebadoh discs) but almost without exception the perfect pop gems here are penned by Lou. Just check out the opener "The Freed Pig", hard to imagine a more perfect indie rock song. Jangly and catchy, a little ramshackle, a teensy bit melancholy, but exuberant and hopeful. With a killer crunchy chorus.
III is peppered with sweet soft acoustic numbers that sound like they were plucked from old Sebadoh cassettes. Each one sad and lovely, perfect mix tape material way back in 1991 (Yeesh, has it really been fifteen years?!), the prototype for EVERY home recorded bedroom record since. Jason contributes some Minutemen sounding instrumental jams ("Sickles & Hammers"), some slow motion druggy stoner jams ("Smoke A Bowl"), a killer twangy acoustic hoedown ("Black Haired Girl") and most of the really esoteric tunes. Eric offers up some lilting minor key jangle ("Violet Execution"), some super fuzzed out jangly tribal psych rock ("Limb By Limb") and the super lengthy bizarre drugged out psych jam "As The World Dies The Eyes Of God Grow Bigger". Between all of these musical flights of fancy, Lou gives us perfect pop song after perfect pop song, whether it's in the form of a whispered mumbly song fragment, or a glorious rocked out jangly jam. Somehow these disparate elements mesh perfectly into a totally rollicking chaotic indie rock masterpiece. A reissue of III on its own would definitely merit record of the week status, but there's a whole extra disc of singles and outtakes that make this absolutely essential.
First up on the extras disc is "Gimme Indie Rock" a tongue in cheek slam on their more popular indie contemporaries, which inadvertently became a hit and somehow sounded like, but better than, all the bands it was poking fun at (check out the very Dinosaur-like leads!) Speaks volumes that a tossed off fuck around track can be this good. Next up is quite possibly the best Sebadoh song ever "Ride The Darker Wave" a loping groove, with a totally catchy guitar part and an instantly unforgettable melody. Heavy and sludgy but perfectly poppy. The rest of the disc is jam packed with outtakes and alternate versions, a whole bunch of Gaffney tracks, as good as anything on the record proper, as well as a few other Lou gems. Also, tacked on at the very end is "Showtape '91" a 12 minute experimental tape piece, the band used to play at shows before they came on stage. It features the band reading various reviews (positive and negative), repeating the various mispronunciations of the band name, all amidst a cacophonous soundscape of tape manipulation and guitar grind. Very annoying but very very funny.
As befits a classic record like III, the packaging and reissue extras are amazing. Besides the wealth of extra and unreleased tracks, there are extensive liner notes from all three band members, tons of photos, and the whole thing is housed in a snazzy slipcase with the band name and album title embossed in metallic gold ink. We feel like we're 21 again!!!
Movements Of Night is the first lp (as far as we know) from these Canadian drone drifters, whose past releases (two tapes and a cd-r) we raved about in the past. As much as we loved those, this new one, released on the venerable Students Of Decay label, manages to take their sound even further. From the opening couple minutes, we were totally smitten - the sound a lush, swirling, psychedelic morass, of lush layered textures, of keening, heartwrenching melodies, buried beneath gristly fields of soft focus static, under which, a meditative pulse throbs hypnotically, so cinematic and majestic, haunting and stirring, it's the kind of part most bands spend half a record, or at least most of one long song building up to, but these guys start out, with this dense, cathartic soundscape, which really sets the tone for the whole record, aligning them sonically with Philip Jeck, William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Stars Of The Lid, a sort of darkened psychedelic take on Pop Ambience, a looped dreamscape of heady, hypnotic, blissed out dronemusic, that is so mesmerizing, it has us wishing it would never end.
And while we were prepared to explain that nothing else on the record manages to reach the same sort of sonic and emotional peak, it's actually somehow, not at all true. The next track, in fact, seems to effortlessly conjure up another deep, emotional soundworld, all slow shifting minor key swells, softly reverbed melodies, washed out strings, and lysergic chordal drift, the sound building and building, before slipping right back into a muted field of drifts and swells. And so it goes. Every track, a dark, moody, brooding, cinematic gem, some ultra minimal and abstract, wispy fields of lowercase sound, others bold and strident, emotional and expressive, some almost symphonic, majestic and epic in scope, bordering on psychedelic noise, others hushed and whispery, barely there, brief blurred smears of sonic color, but every single second, of every track on Movements Of Night, is stunning, moving, and utterly breathtaking.
Includes a download code!
God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In its fourteen years of existence, it's never sounded tired or dated. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again with this super nice 2cd deluxe re-issue. If you missed this the first time around, then you are in for a real treat, and if you bought this the first time around, you may just need to buy it again to get the whole extra disc of unreleased tracks and alternate mixes. We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound.
So what is all the fuss about, you say?
Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges.
Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster.
The bonus disc contains six previously unreleased tracks, and three alternate mixes from a limited white label 12" and two ambient compilations. Out of the unreleased tracks, "Clique" sounds like it just barely missed the cut from the original album line-up while "Silent Pool" is a longer version of Quique's closing track "Signals". "My Super 20" and "Is It Now?" are long beat-less swims that are a warmer hint at their future direction and the two other unreleased tracks are versions of opening track "Climatic Phase #3, and "Time to Find Me" from their first EP. It might sound like at first listen that there is some repetition between the two discs, but it's really more in line with classic ambient music's infatuation with the Dub tradition of versioning, the adding or removing of various elements in a song to give it a totally different spin. Each version really does give a different feel even if the basic structures seem similar. Seriously, the second disc is just more of what you love already, and gives us a little more of the stuff we've been missing for ages.
Listening to Quique fourteen years later, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So Amazingly Awesome!!!! Reissue of the year so far and so totally recommended!!!!!!!!!
Before we get into this new Ty Segall record, we should probably state right up front, that we thought about making this a Record Of The Week. And then didn't cuz we ALWAYS make Segall's records Record Of The Week. And on first listen, we didn't immediately dig this quite as much as the last few, but if we've learned anything, we can almost guarantee that in a week or two, after repeated listens, we'll probably be losing our shit and proclaiming this his best yet. So bear that in mind, and consider this a probably could/would/should have been Record Of The Week. Cuz even if it doesn't have the immediate appeal of say, Twins, or Sleep, or even the Fuzz record, it's still pretty goddamn great, overflowing with impossibly catchy songs, a little bit fuzz poppy, a little bit garage rocky, still pretty glammy, the sound lush and dizzyingly ambitious sonically, with some songs sounding like a straight up rock band, others like pure studio concoctions, with most landing somewhere right in between, and even writing this review, and finally hearing this record for the first time on headphones, not in the store, we're having second thoughts again about this NOT being a Record Of The Week.
Just have a listen to the samples below, if you're new to the world of Ty Segall, odds are it won't take long for you to be on over, and if you're already a fan, like us, you'll immediately feel right at home. The opener/title track is all organ driven fuzz, with Segall effortlessly slipping into a falsetto, wound around multiple instruments harmonizing, buzzing and jangly and very retro sixties pop by way of modern garage rock, not unlike many of his contemporaries, but then there's "Tall Man, Skinny Lady" which sounds like nobody else, urgently strummed acoustic guitars wound around groovy drums, everything wreathed in a cloud of effects, the vocals drenched in echo and reverb, the falsetto in full effect, total glam rock swagger, and then when the super distorted fuzz guitar kicks in, especially the wild shredding psychedelic leads, it's divine. And hell, we're only two tracks in.
Instead of going track by track, just know, that if you dig the sound samples below, odds are there's pretty much nothing here you won't dig like crazy, whether it's all torch songy garage rock balladry, or fuzzed out heavy psych, or buzz heavy almost metallic distorto crunch, or grandiose baroque retro-pop, or the tons of gradations in-between. We're gonna stop now, before we change our minds and make this Record Of The Week anyway. Which we might still do anyway. Needless to say, way Way WAY recommended!!
When we reviewed the teaser 7" released a few weeks back to whet appetites for this, Ty Segall's new full length, we described the jam "The Hill" thusly: "a killer slab of glammy, proggy, garage pop, that might just be the best thing we've heard from Segall yet. A cool female vocal intro explodes into some seriously fuzzed out glam rock garage stomp, no lo-fi production here, it sounds incredible, massive and lush, and totally heavy, the boy/girl harmonies on the chorus KILL, the vibe swaggery and seriously glammed out, with some blasts of wild psychedelic shredding." And while that single and that sound is not really all that far removed with Segall's sound in general, the glamminess is cranked big time here, as is the hookiness. Just check out album opener "Thank God For Sinners", the perfect mash up of classic Beatles style melody and swaggery, slithery T-Rex fuzzed out groove. Which leads right into "You're The Doctor", adding some seriously driving psychedelic garage rock stomp, a wild blast of heady heavy psych rock that will have Oh Sees freeks losing their shit.
But as with every Segall record, the sound veers all over the place, slipping easily from sound to sound, vibe to vibe, and speaking of vibes, The Beatles vibe is huge throughout, but is deftly applied to Segall's already hook heavy sound, "Inside Your Heart" adds some brooding minor key melody as well as a killer catchy main guitar part, not to mention a wild squall of psychedelic freakout and a woozy, warped drag of an ending that makes it sound like the tape is slowly melting. "Would You Be My Love" is a dead ringer for classic Redd Kross, a supercharged sixties pop, while "Ghost" is a fuzz drenched, but still darkly melodic, almost metallic dirge, rife with gorgeous vocal harmonies, and a wicked main hook.
And so it goes. The rest of the record brimming with classic fuzzy pop and psychedelic garage gems, groovy and jangly one second, blown out and chaotic the next, but every track here stone cold killer. And while we do feel kinda foolish, going on and on about each successive Segall record as being the best yet, and our new favorite (and even making this one Record Of The Week only a few lists after Segall's Slaughterhouse record received the same honors), that's exactly what happens every time. And Segall really does just keep getting better and better, not just the songs, but the arrangements, the production, the vocals, everything. Have a look at past reviews on the aQ site, and you'll see just how much we love past records of his, which should tell you something when we once again, proclaim this the best one yet!
Sort of seemed inevitable that these guys would get together, two local lo-fi garage pop masters, both of whom have gotten much love from aQ, and both of whom have surprisingly similar styles, collaborating on a set of songs, that ultimately manage to sound like they could have been proper records from either. No distinct separation between tracks, no huge stylistic shifts, instead, a meeting of the minds that manages to be both impossibly hooky and fuzzy and catchy, but also as weird and twisted as anything either of them have done on their own. Lots of kick ass axework, wild psychedelic leads and dense squalls of tangled freakout, over all manner of jangle and crunch, the vocals doused in reverb and appropriately washed out and yelpy, the drums simple and spare, the songs slipping easily from druggy psychedelic jangle pop to crunchy noisy garage punk raveups, to full on skiffle-y sixties psych-pop to twisted echo drenched garage rock dirges and some head spinningly experimental garage rock space jams, like "Scissor People", which might be THEE jam here, beginning with a little bit of birdsong, before launching into some jangly crunch, another blast of garage-y poppiness, until things go totally crazy about halfway through, the song suddenly a patchwork of alternate takes and different productions, as if multiple versions of the song were playing simultaneously, and someone began to flip between the various channels, the sounds dramatically different, even the tempos, and then coming out of it into a sort of motorik psych-kraut groove, wreathed in killer leads, and thick swaths of guitarnoise, it's the sort of jam most bands would have stretched out for ages, but these guys cram into a succinct 3:31.
We have to admit, that on first listen, mostly heard in the shop in little chunks, didn't fully sell us, but once we strapped on some headphones, this collab definitely revealed itself as being something sort of next level, and blossomed into a pretty fantastic(al) psychedelic garage pop trip out that we've had on pretty heavy rotation ever since.
