Rumor was that this was gonna be Segall's 'metal' record. The title did nothing to dissuade that notion, 'Slaughterhouse', and the garish black and white howling monster/medusa artwork definitely seemed to support that theory as well. And while we remained skeptical, album opener "Death" (good metal title btw) briefly gave us pause, with its wild opening, a churning squall of super distorted guitars and squealing feedback, but soon the record proper kicks in and all is well, fear not, Ty Segall has not gone metal (as much as we think that would be amazing!) however, this is most definitely his heaviest record yet. His first recording with his live band, which of course includes longtime collaborator Mikal Cronin, find the sound cranked to eleven, the guitars blown out and distorted, the riffs heavy and crunchy, the songs are still garage pop, but with some serious heft, the vocals occasionally slipping into raspy howls, the guitars exploding into full on shredding leads, the group sounding all Stooges-y, raw and feral and seriously fierce. And it totally suits them. And even the tracks that are all jangly and poppy, are weirdly produced, with the guitars crumbling and in the red, beautiful harmony vocals, all oooh's and aaah's laid over grinding near metallic riffs, pounding drums, this is most definitely the first Segall record we'd describe as 'headbangable', but the key here, is that the songs are still impossibly catchy, just check out "I Bought My Eyes", which is so catchy we were convinced it was a cover, sounding like some sixties or seventies classic rock jam supercharged and dirtied up. The title track is a 90 second blast of churning garage punk riffage, with glass gargling vox, before they slip right into "The Tongue", with its Oh Sees-like opener, and sixties jangle rock verse, only to explode into some full on psychedelic noise freakout.
Beyond the sonic shift though, these are definitely some of the best songs we've heard from Segall, the heaviness and dirge-y rockingness only making them that much more intense, and in addition to the originals, Cronin contributes one track, another 90 second blast of super blown out Stooges-y swagger, that as you might imagine is shot through with some irresistible poppiness, and there's a couple of covers, they manage to transform Fred Neil's "The Bag I'm In", into a super dynamic tangle of low slung bass, and dense walls of psychnoise crunch, pounding garage rock pummel doused in wild guitars and sheets of blown out psychedelic guitar, and the take Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy" and rough it up a bit, adding some guitar crunch, and messing with the lyrics, before stumbling to chaotic premature halt. And let's not neglect to mention the 10 minute closer "Fuzz War", which sounds like it could be some lost Fushitsusha basement tape, or some lost seventies private press underground psych jam, a sprawling landscape of drone and buzz, noxious clouds of grinding guitars, super abstract drum splatter, the sound slipping from dark and droney to wildly chaotic, to a weird almost industrial clatter, and finally to a sort of freejazz drum heavy noiserock coda. So cool. And as you might have surmised, definitely one of our favorite Segall records yet!
Dronemusic indeed. Seht is one Steven Clover, who has released a handful of limited lathe cuts under different names. On 'Dronemusic' Clover crafts deep, rich sonorous drone music, seemingly simple but lush with harmonic overtones. As the record
This is a sort-of-reinterpretation of the amazing 'Dronemusic' cd-r released on a while back on Celebrate Psi Phenomena. This is very minimal with lots of incidental clatter and totally random noise. Sounds a bit like some guy cleaning/re-arranging his kitchen, with lots of thumps and bumps and clicks and even some bird calls(!). After about 10 minutes, the drones finally make their presence known. Joined gradually by warbly guitars and wisos of melodies. But almost as soon as they're there, they diappear again. Then it's back to the ambient clatter, discussions, room sound. A reverby piano or buzzing harpsichord surface occasionally, but it always seems to return to our house cleaning, room tidying protagonist. Very strange...
From the same label that brought us the amazing Gog records, Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, comes this bizarre, and hauntingly beautiful slab of alien black metal. Not sure what else to call it, it's definitely black metal, but it's weirdly blissy and electronic sounding, more like Alcest or Amesoeurs than old school grimnity, but even then, it's still weirder, like it must have been played by robots or insects, or some massive black metal machine assembled beneath the surface of some mysterious moon. You can almost picture some mechanical monstrosity, pieces of human flesh, various organs, somehow built into the machine's inner workings, everything grinding and sparking all in a Herculean effort to produce this glorious droning buzzing blackness. A cloud of black buzz that will eventually drift through space and time swallowing any planets in its path, and extinguishing all life it encounters. Heck, even the cover of the record is the view from some sort of alien lander, looking out and the cold dead ground of some red planet, as if any minute some huge horrible black beast will lurch into view over the horizon, dashing all of our ideas about said planet being uninhabited.
The sound of Servile Sect is epic, and majestic, the guitars glistening sheets of sound, the surface of that sound peppered with bits of electronic shimmer, causing the long drawn out riffery to reflect and refract, tiny little sonic events occurring every second, the surface alive and constantly squirming and changing color, but viewed from afar, it's simply a blown out undulating buzz. Those guitars are digitized and processed, spread into thick smears of warm glowing whir, the riffs barely discernible beneath the constant roar of Servile Sect's sonic swirl
The vocals add just more buzz to the mix, howling and wailing, but stretched into streaks of sonic violence, and drums, assuming there are any, are buried, festering beneath layer after layer of crushing guitar fuzz, emitting noxious rhythms that don't so much blast or pound as they do explode into tiny squalls of still more buzz.
Occasionally, the buzz abates, leaving the guitar to sway lazily, the notes ringing out, the guitars lurking in the distance, but it's never long before the lilting melody is engulfed by a colossal buzzing roar, and the band locks into another extended psychfuzzblackdrone.
Another out of left field immediate AQ black bliss classic.
Fans of the new wave of droned out dreamy metal, black and otherwise: Nadja, Angelic Process, Ameseours, Alcest, etc. will dig this, as will dronelords who like their drones heavy and loud and yeah, a bit metallic...
I think French people have a different idea of what is scary. Take for example the French black metal band Seth. Makes you wonder if there are other French black metal bands called Todd, or Josh, or Erik, or Simon. Who knows? How about these song titles: 'Addicted To Psychotropic Angeldust' or 'Into The Spheres Of Spirtuality' or 'The Sons Of Seth'. Not so scary. But Seth do play some mean and -very- scary black metal. Fast and furious, with a really strange production (almost industrial at times) and some really weird playing/parts that make Seth stand out from their black metal contemporaries. Definitely fits comfortably next to your Immortal, Emperor, and Marduk records.
Ambient post rock bands are a dime a dozen these days, and bands who sound more like Godspeed that Godspeed ever did at this point probably outweigh the legions of Neur-Isis clones. But every once in a while, bands manage to remind us just why we fell in love with that sound in the first place. Danish quartet Seven Mile Journey definitely take that sound to whole 'nother level, brooding, epic, cinematic, like post rock without the rock, a sort of abstract filmic chamber music constructed from rock instrumentation.
Slow building, slow burning, so tense and intense, moody and mysterious. The drums are kept to a minimum much of the time, more for propulsion and flourish than actual beat making, but when the drums do come in, they come in hard and then drive the song, while the other instruments weave lush tapestries of sound, minor key swells, lilting overcast melodies, buzzing strings, simple piano parts draped over keening moaning minimal soundscapes, jangly guitars drifting amidst warm whirring lowercase drones, in some cases the songs build to incredible climaxes, like staring into the sun, everything blinding and chaotic and exploding like some sonic supernova, others just smolder, glowing from within, never quite easing up on the built up tension.
Fans of the usual post rock culprits - Godspeed, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky - will have very likely just found their new favorite bands, although for us, the band are at their best when they mix it up, removing the drums, spreading out the sound into impossibly emotional and moving imaginary soundtracks, ratcheting up the tension, building and building and building. Epic, transcendent and beautifully cathartic.
Second full length from these twisted hip hop alchemists, fronted by one of the guys from nineties hip hop jazz-bo's Digable Planets, but Shabazz Palaces is something else all together, a twisted strain of avant hip hop that's deconstructed, and mutated, and all twisted up. The first SP record, Black Up, was heavy on the murky, woozy, and warbly, a futuristic Afro-psych woven into stuttery beats, lurching slo-mo creeps, and all manner of warped loops, but on Else Majesty, something strange has happened again, with the sound moving even further away from call sic hip hop, but somehow drifting a bit closer to the laid back jazziness of Digable Planets. Give a listen to the samples below and you'll see what we mean. The vibe is less dark and shadowy, less grim and ominous, but at the same time, the sound is still mysterious, and darkly psychedelic, but infused with a strange sort of hopeful glow, a positivity, it's like Shabazz Palaces 'feel-good' record, but even then, this is some weird, tripped out shit.
The vibe is mellow, dreamy, the beats are al over the map, from classic loping hip hop grooves, to wild dense skitters, the music is warm and lush, swoon some synths, cascades of kosmische shimmer, vocals are clipped and cut and looped into weird hiccuping grooves, disembodied riffage surfaces here and there, as do swaths of smooth jazziness, the record peppered with short sonic fragments, mutated electro-hop, carnivalesque baroque electronica, some smoldering broodiness, all processed guitar shimmer, and brushed, hushed percussion, theremin like melodies, old school funk all twisted up into weird sonic shapes, big beats blurred into dizzyingly avant electro-soul, the sound in constant flux, between tracks and mid-jam as well, it's almost like someone flipping the channels, flitting between various strains of mutant hip hop, some shadowy and drowsily druggy, but most of them, groovy, and funky and weirdly posi, like a more psychedelic, and way more demented De La Soul maybe, at least this time around, but who can guess what other weirdness the next record will bring. We can only imagine...
One of our favorite modern electronic hip hop outfits offer up a super limited double disc instrumental version of both their previous albums.
Shadow Huntaz are the ultimate crazy crew of brain melting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while there, Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely had their own avant angle. But we had been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We wanted some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. On this double disc instrumental collection, the vocal tracks are stripped away allowing us to focus on the truly visionary sounds and HOLY FUCK, we didn't think we could dig this stuff any more but we do!!! The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, little vocal snippets are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir. Phew! Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks.
Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for INSTRUMENTAL hip hop record of the year!
Packaged Skam style in a clear jewel case with no artwork and a Braille sticker along the spine!
It's been so long since we had some crazy crew of brain meelting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely have their own avant angle. But we've been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We want some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, vocals are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir, and then there's the vocals, all different and distinct, some laid back and stoned as fuck, some amped up and rapid fire, all dense with incredible tales of this or that, all sort of druggy and tripped out. Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks.
Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for hip hop record of the year!
It seems like maybe we're becoming a little predictable sometimes, letting the name of a band, or some insane cover art get us all gaga over a record before we even hear the music. But while it's only a theory, it seems like in most cases, the music is just as good as the artwork. Or the band name. For years, we've applied that theory to our record shopping and have rarely been disappointed.
So here we are again. You obviously know where this is heading since we ARE reviewing this record, AND highlighting it, but a while back, it was just a name, Fantastikol Hole. How could we not be curious, if not utterly smitten. A band called Fantastikol Hole? C'mon. SO we tracked down every shred of recorded music from these guys and got just a little bit obsessed. But this is the first one we could track down enough of to list. Four bands, all amazing, all totally different, all French we think, a record so heavy and weird it took TEN labels to release it. And after all that talk of Fantastikol Hole, they only have three tracks here, but it's enough to get you as obsessed as we are.
So what exactly are Fantastikol Hole all about? Super aggro, mathy, convoulted experimental heavy rock weirdness. Stop start stuttery arrangements, huge slabs of Neurosis-y sludge, bits of shimmer and drone-y ambience, wild tangled squiggly leads, angular atonal riffage, howled distorted vocals, long stretches of crumbling doomy buzz, and that's just the first song of three. The second is even more manic, a sort of proggy grind, with tons of space, and weird stops, jagged riffing, swirling dizzying bursts of buzzing fury, programmed drums, explosions of impossibly convoluted synth swathed hypergrind, shortwave radio interference. The third track is only two minutes, but they spend it plodding along doomily, a huge downtuned riff, wrapped around a simple percussive thud, the vocals processed and super distorted, so genius. Complex and confusional and mathy and heavy as fuck. We need to carry more Fantastikol Hole. We will remedy that as soon as humanly possible.
But what about the other fantastikol bands here? Well, there's Shall Not Kill, who offer up three tracks of their own brand of heaviness, a groovy stoned, heavy as fuck plodding midtempo post punk sludgy doom, rife with harmonized lead guitars, yowled vocals, super psychedelic squalls of twisted tangled leads, busts of furious octopoidal drumming, some super fast Maiden style jams, some blissed out droney dirges, but always returning to some sort of cracked classic doom sound.
Up next is Tekken, who are fast and fucked up and furious, a white hot metallic hardcore, bordering on grind, with weird samples, blasts of incendiary buzz, pounding chaotic drumming and snarling punk as fuck howled vocals. The last track finds their grinding punk chopped up and flipped backwards, slathered in static, turning it into some weird fuzzed out, stuttering soundscape of skipping punk rock cds and shortwave interference.
And finally, comes the band Moon, whose three long tracks fall somewhere between ultra minimal dronemusic, and the slow motion sludge riffery of Old Earth or SUNNO))), nearly ambient the slow low rumbles eventually build into a lugubrious downtuned crawl, the buzz occasionally receding, and revealing a glimmering glistening shimmer beneath the rumble.
A pretty weird combination, but a tough one to beat. We've found ourselves digging for more stuff from all four of these bands, although our heart still belongs to Fantastikol Hole.
WAY recommended.
Album number two from these Finnish doom merchants and man does it make me want to just end it all. This music is dismal and bleak and totally hopelessly perfect. So slow and miserable and heavy and dark. Take the lo-fi doom of Skepticism, and beef up the
Shape of Despair deftly mix haunting funereal dirges with ultra crushing doom, but add gentle folk melodies and subtle but soaring strings. This is the sort of stuff that should be on the soundtrack to the new Lord of the Rings. You can just imagine being lost and alone in the forest, just waiting to die. So good.
We had never heard of Shed Dwellaz, but apparently these guys were a hip hop crew from Redwood City, active in the nineties, and NYC tape label Ormolycka has dug up these 4 track demos from back in the day, and folks who've been digging Ormolycka know the sort of fucked up taste they have in hip hop (Antwon, Juiceboxx, Lil Ugly Mane, Death Grips, etc.) so the sound of the Shed Dwellaz sounds right at home. Guessing most of these guys are white, it's got that sort of Beastie Boys via Anticon vibe too it, but it's much more lo-fi, DIY and old school, with some sick flows from the MC's and some pretty sweet tracks, swirling harps, stuttering chopped up vox, plenty off fuzz, distortion and static, weird samples. Hints of Wu-Tang of course, but also Sensational, even Hawd Gangstuh Rappaz Wid Gatz, some of this is goofy, but some of it's dark and sinister, shades of Gravediggaz for sure, but home brewed 4-track style. Killer stuff for sure. Housed in a sweet double cassette case, full color J-cards, and like lots of the Ormolycka jams, LIMITED!!!
The best comment we heard amidst all the bitching about the recent U2 record, you know the one that just showed up in your iTunes, uninvited (and in most cases, unwanted), was that there would have been a whole lot less complaining had we all woken up to find THIS record in our iTunes. If only...
So yeah, it's a new Shellac record, and people have been freaking out (ourselves included) since word first leaked about its impending release, and its goofy/brilliant title. Thankfully, and maybe not surprisingly, very little has changed since their last record, 2007's Excellent Italian Greyhound. Right from the get go, the title track finds Steve Albini, laying down what sounds suspiciously like a lost ZZ Top riff (harkening back to that bad ass Rapeman cover of "Just Got Paid"), but then in comes Todd Trainer's ultra precise drumming, and Bob Weston's thick sinewy bass, and BAM, couldn't be anything other than Shellac, especially when Albini's sung/spoken vocals come in, and then the lyrics, a snippet of which includes the line "we'll go where the females congregate, perhaps they'll let us fuck them, and on the way, we'll have adventure", or something like that. And the sound, pure Shellac, super tight, lots of chug and pound, crazy dynamic (check out the super weirdly arranged "Compliant", that veers from some very Big Black sounding churn, to ultra spaced out stop/start breakdowns, and then some downright prettiness, along with some surprisingly croony vox!), but also UN-dynamic for much of the record, the band doing what they do best, and locking into tense / tranced out grooves, that could go on forever. Some of the tracks, like "You Came In Me" (with more 'fucking' lyrics), are super fierce, minus some goofy call and response vox, that one's a stunner, with some wild, octopoidal drumming, and one of the best guitar sounds we've heard in ages. "Riding Bikes" is a sweet curious slab of downer slowcore pound, while the beginning of "All The Surveyors" starts off with one of those parts, like the Shellac classic "Wingwalker", where live they all spread their arms out like the wings of a plane, and do a little a capella bit. Here the band do yet another little vocal intro, culminating in them howling "FUCK THE KING!!", not to mention Albini making crazed bird calls throughout. Which is kind of what makes this record (and Shellac in general) so good, and so fun. They never gave a fuck, that was obvious, but somehow now they seem to give even less of a fuck, taking the music utterly seriously, but injecting humor, whenever or wherever they feel like, the sort of stuff that to us on the outside is so obviously some sort of inside joke, or something dumb from the van or the rehearsal space, but the band take that stuff, and transform it into something as crucial to the song and sound as the music itself. That said, even without that stuff, the music itself, BY itself, is more than enough. Tracks like "The People's Microphone" are so tight, so progged out, but not wanky, it's math rock, but ultra minimal math rock, every note, and hit, concise and perfect, they're like a machine, but one that emotes, bleeds, broods, and most importantly, thinks that really goofy shit is hilarious! Like the monkey-hoisting-another-monkey-over-his-head-pro-wrestling-style cover art. And yeah, probably every review of this record will end like this, but how can we resist? Dude, INCREDIBLE!
We actually originally discovered this record in a thrift store, years ago, and ended up buying it for $5 or whatever, just cuz the cover was super trippy, and it was printed on cool prismatic reflective paper, and of course, we had no idea what to expect, and while we dug it, a LOT, and listened to it constantly, for whatever reason, it never occurred to us that what we had was some treasured rarity lost psychedelic artifact, one that certain discerning producers have mined for killer breaks, until we found out this reissue was on the way. So we revisited the record and holy crap!!!! How could we not have known?! So insane, and inspired, and ridiculous, and over the top, and ahead of its time, and it totally out trip-outs almost any record we can think of! Needless to say, we're super psyched to have this reissue, which features that original record, along with a whole mess of bonus tracks!!
So the record proper, Lux Aeterna, was originally composed to celebrate a friend of William Shaller's wedding, thematically driven by concepts of union and togetherness, and ostensibly based on the Catholic mass, this is far from any sort of religious music you've ever heard. Following in the footsteps of other iconoclastic composers, like Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Vannier, Lee Hazlewood, David Axelrod, Scott Walker and of course Magma (more on that in a second), Sheller conjured up what is at once an over the top symphonic prog epic, but also a strangely meditative operatic chorale, the sound a gorgeous and dizzying fusion of bombastic prog, classical opera, tripped out seventies psych, outsider jazzfunk, and soaring symphonic majesty. The first track alone should convince you, with its groovy loping stripped down rhythm, its woozy bassline, its swoonsome strings, its slippery slide guitar (!!), its lush operatic vox. That cut is equal parts lost soundtrack and weird Morricone-esque krautfunk, sort of, the sound epic and dramatic and VERY cinematic, dark and subtly sinister, minor key and haunting, but then with about a minute to go BAM, the the sound shifts, sort of fractures, and gets super lo-fi, soaked in phaser and flanger, swirling and tripped out, laced with psychedelic wah guitar, a woozy, melting fad out groove. Holy WOW. So fucking awesome. And that's pretty much how the rest of the record plays out, with Sheller weaving these lush orchestral epics, alternatingly symphonic or operatic, when all of a sudden he'll mix in some trippy sci fi freak out FX or fuse rock drums to soaring operatic vox and symphonic strings. Some tracks play it totally straight, like "Ave Frater, Rosae Et Aurae", which really could have been plucked right out of a mass, but then in swoops "Opus Magnum Pt. 2", with its driving kraut-ish groove, reprising the opening theme, but adding some seriously loopy bleeps and bloops, squelches, and reverby blurps, tripped out laser fire squiggles and swirling analog electronics. Only to then settle right back down into some hushed string driven drift, but a minute or two later and the sound explodes again in a frenzy of FX, the song gathering momentum, and heft, and transforming into a sort of dirgey driving jam, wreathed in strings and an avalanche of glitched out electronics. And so it goes, slipping from haunting ritualistic choral music, to tripped out psychedelic seventies prog funk grooviness and back again, sounding quite often like Magma, or some similarly epic prog combo, stopping occasionally to dip into a bit of musique concrete or twentieth century classical, or introducing seriously terrifying children's spoken word, reciting what sounds like scripture, before finally finishing off with a gorgeous melancholy piano coda, again a refrain of that opening melody.
Quite a strange and twisted record for someone's wedding, sure WE'D all be psyched, but in 1972? Wow.
After a two minute track of silence, meant to separate the programs, comes, as the first of a big batch of bonus tracks, several pieces from Sheller's soundtrack for a 1969 film called Erotissimo, the music appropriately psychedelic and seventies hippie rocking, but of course laced with strings, and surprisingly some heavy proto metal riffing, wild psych guitar leads, dreamy female vocals, the whole thing building to a killer fuzzy psych rock blowout, before slipping back into something a bit more fuzzy and woozy.
After that is "My Year Is A Day", Sheller's big hit, a fantastic slab of orchestral pop, that reminds us of early Bee Gees and the Zombies, and fans of either/both will flip. The rest of the record is more of the same, fuzzed out psychedelic orchestral pop, "Couleurs" being a standout, with its freaked out effects heavy breakdowns, and sitar like buzz running throughout, but really all twenty tracks are killer, making us thing there must be a whole lot more William Sheller we need to track down. Maybe Omni will follow up with another reissue. Here's hoping!
Like all Omni releases, lots of photos, and extensive liner notes, as well as some weird unseen art and reproductions of the covers of some of the singles that are included as bonus tracks!
We raved about a band called Xynfonica a few lists back. A baffling and ridiculous melding of 'classical music' with growled demonic death metal vocals. Some of us were blown away, others of us, well, were not. We discovered Xynfonica was created using nothing but a guitar synthesizer, and the man behind Xynfonica also had a record label, based entirely on this concept of musics made with guitar synthesizers, coupled with evil metal vocals, and had TWO OTHER RELEASES. One world music! And one jazz. Whatthefuck?! We knew we had to hear all of 'em!
So here we have the auspicious debut of Shevalreq. The world music installment of what seems to be a series of truly fucked up outsider musical weirdness. Starting with the cover, Shevalreq was already shaping up to be just as amazing as Xynfonica, the band name and album title in thick purple script, the cover a photo of the guitar synthesizer, and what appears to be a dat machine, and ON TOP OF THE synth and the dat machine are some miniature knights on horseback jousting!!! The back cover shows the same night posing next to the guitar pedals and still on top of the GIANT musical equipment. Inside are pages and pages of lyrics, again, an EPIC, this time concerned with some sort of ancient civilization, jousting, knights, murder, intrigue, castles and royalty, hard to say exactly, especially since it's impossible to understand the lyrics as they're delivered in that monstrous rasp.
And then there's the music. To be totally honest, it doesn't sound all that different than Xynfonica, lots of the tracks sound like a Youtube clip of a cat walking back and forth on a synthesizer keyboard. Coupled with the evil vocals, well, it's just totally bizarre, and to some of us absolute brilliance, but this one stands out as suddenly, the sounds will shift, and we're suddenly listening to tablas, or some Eastern sounding horns, and here and there, Monsieur Shevalreq even busts out little squalls of furious lead guitar. Wailing leads, soaring strings, plink plonky synths, growled invokations, rumbling fake cellos, all woven into a stumbling, damaged concept record about jousting and duels and kings and castles. What more do we need to say?
If you bought the Xynfonica, you almost absolutely need this, if you didn't, we still have some left, or you might as well start with this one. And next time, we'll review the JAZZ one?!?! We can hardly wait.
We've been going kinda crazy lately for super dark, ultra minimal, abstract techno, the darker and murkier the better, records by Shed and Terrence Dixon, as well as the whole Hospital Records axis (Silent Servant, Vatican Shadow, etc.). We also just discovered Marcel Dettmann, whose latest we'll review on an upcoming list, not to mention recent reissues from Fluxion and Monoton, and then there's this, the first we've heard from Shifted, who delivers exactly what we've been hankering for, super spare, crackly, skeletal, avant techno murk, all clicks and pulses, some sort of spaced out electro dub ultra minimalism that had us in its thrall from the very first few seconds. Equal parts clinical Raster-Noton style electronic abstraction, and Chain Reaction heroin house, the sound of Shifted is gorgeously hypnotic, and utterly mesmerizing, the opening intro a spaced out sort of dronescape, with distorted smears of what sounds like guitar, blurred into a drifty atmospheric haze, laced with strange industrial crunch, the whole thing getting more and more distorted and dirty as it progresses, which had us expecting something a bit more blown out and noisy, but instead, in swoops "Chrome, Canopy & Bursting Heart", a delicate crystalline arrangement of hiss and static, throb, and thrum and pulse, underpinned by a distant rumbling low end, and laced with strange bits of clatter, and softly reverbed texture, another one of those cases, that if the record had simply been a 70 minute version of THIS song, we'd be just as into it. Instead, the sound of Under A Single Banner moves in al sorts of different directions, but never deviating too much from the hushed and clipped minimalism that makes it so hypnotic. "Suspended Inside" is all high end sizzle and skitter, laced with distant rhythmic flurries, peppered with barely there bleeps, and draped over a backdrop of what sounds like crickets, while the title track is an ominous bit of crunchy abstract stutter, this time driven by deep, distorted bass pulsations, and woozy, groovy rhythm, a sort of ghost electro, that's haunting, and subtly harrowing at the same time.
"Burning Tyres" is heavy on the reverb and echo drenched, and could be some obscure Hospital Records B side, being spun is a massive cave, the beats ricocheting all over the place, the melodies blurred and smeared, the whole thing a gauze-y fantastically garbled field of blackened and blurred space-house, which leads directly into the much more controlled "Pulse Incomplete", which loops what sounds like a human breath, and links it to percolating rhythms, and subtly blooping and bleeping cascades of muted melody, the beat frantic and frenzied, but somehow also subdued and dialed way back. "Contract 0", makes us think of a Kompakt record stripped of every non essential element, almost like the opposite of Pop Ambience, all the fuzzy, dreamy melodic driftiness pulled back, leaving just the barebones rhythm, and some strange distant glitchery, and fragmented static. Finally, "Story of Aurea" is all droned out mystery, a burbling, softly undulating low end swell, laced with tiny upper register trills, and barely audible dog whistle sonar sine waves, which leads directly into the closer, "Wash Over Me", which begins as some abstract minimal electro dub, just rhythm, and a distant chordal thrum, before the rhythm is joined by some soft billowing clouds of synthy shimmer, the sound transformed into a dreamy bit of new agey soft focus skitter, which again, we would dig a WHOLE record of.
So good! One of our new favorite electronic / minimal techno records for sure, our current going to sleep music (which as you all know, is probably THEE highest recommendation we can give to this sort of record), and very likely to end up on some of our top ten lists (cuz list making time is coming up!!)...
As much as we might be led to believe otherwise, post rock is alive and well. And we mean post rock in the 'classic' sense, you know, the late nineties, post-Slint, instrumental mood rock, June Of 44, Tortoise, Rodan, Engine Kid, Bastro and all those bands we loved and still love. As evidenced by the post rockisms of recent aQ faves Chevreuil, Isis, Conifer and now the return of one of the classic post rock bands the Shipping News. We are admittedly suckers for a lot of sounds, the buzz and blur of frosty black metal, the classic amen break drum and bass, big crunchy metallic emo, but almost more than all of those, we can't get enough of that stretched out, hypnotic and rhythmic, brooding, propulsive post rock. Sinewy guitar lines, wound around crisp, intricate drumming, throbbing bass and spoken /sung / shouted vocals. Well, to be honest we -can- get enough of the vocals, in fact the vocals here were almost enough to put us off this record completely, but there's just something about this record that grew on us, even the vocals, especially the vocals. It's got this super dark, claustrophobic vibe, expansive and loose but weirdly tense and paranoid so completely reminiscent of THE post rock record, Slint's Spiderland. And while every band that has employed the quiet-loud, hard-soft song structure has been accused of ripping off Slint, a handful of bands just happened to occupy a similar sonic niche, deftly exploring the structure of rock, dismantling it and re-assembling it as a crystalline framework, delicate, but razor sharp, wrapped in warm melodies, subtle and woozily minor key. But unlike some of their post rock brethren, Shipping News don't ever really get loud, their dynamics are conveyed instead through intensity, and arrangement, owing a sonic debt of sorts to bands like Godspeed and Silver Mt. Zion as much as Slint. Regardless of its influences or precedents, Flies The Fields is just a gorgeously languid, mesmerizingly rhythmic, completely hypnotic epic rock record. Post or otherwise.
Finally back in stock. One of the best soundtracks to one of the greatest movies EVER!! Really. The last time we listed this was almost 5 years ago and we just now managed to get another batch in. Here's what we had to say about this amazing disc:
This is simply one of the greatest films ever made. You can call AQ and argue with us if you disagree. This film is so personal and intense. So completely thrilling and perfect. And it features what has to be Gene Hackman's best performance ever (except maybe for The French Connection). Also features Harrison Ford and Cindy Williams in one of the best scenes of all time (the scene in the park, filmed in San Francisco's Union Square). And the soundtrack is equally impressive. David Shire, who also did the score for the oh so amazing Taking Of Pelham 123, was presented with a new challenge in the scoring of the Conversation. First, Coppola insisted that the score be simple and stripped down, unlike the bombastic full orchestras Shire was so adept with. Second, the score was composed before the film was finished (like Morricone with Leone), which allowed the score to guide the filming and really help focus the performances. So the score ended up being mostly just solo piano (with Shire believing the whole time that they would orchestrate it later). Dark and minor key. Simple, but so goddamn creepy. It's absolutely chilling and almost too perfectly captures the paranoid unhappiness of Hackman's Harry Caul. It's way scarier and dismal sounding than anything more modern doomsters like Piano Magic or Tindersticks have been trying to pull off. Another interesting aspect of the score is the 'jazz records' that Hackman's character plays sax along to in the film. Those 'records' were actually composed by Shire specifically for the film and Hackman actually played the sax. He had never touched a saxophone before, so on the set he had someone teaching him to play, and he would spend his time practicing scales instead of going over his lines. Those tracks are on this disc, complete with Hackman's sax accompaniment. Another bonus on the disc is a full band version of the Theme From the Conversation, where Shire finally gets to flex his arranging muscles. This soundtrack has never been released in any form, so it's pretty exciting that the folks at Intrada managed to pull it all together and get this out (they actually had to do quite a bit of legwork, remixing, re-EQing, and re-editing to put this all together!). Not really available at stores, we're managed to get a few copies 'cause we're such slobbering The Conversation fans.
And for those of you who haven't seen The Conversation...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? WALK AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW. WALK TO YOUR NEAREST VIDEO STORE. RENT THE VIDEO. UNPLUG THE PHONE. AND WATCH. YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY. An absolutely beautiful film with some of the best performances, directing, and music you will ever see or hear.
We thought UK noiseniks Shit & Shine couldn't get any more brutal or abrasive or, well, noisy, but of course we were dead wrong�
This two track monstrosity lets us hear us two very different sides of the multi headed S+S beast. The A side finds the band kicking up an absolutely ear shredding din, so noisy and blown out that it's almost impossible to hear the actual band. There are multiple drummers, and multiple bass players, but here it sounds like they're all armed with white noise machines and sine wave generators. Layers of in-the-red buzz and high end hiss, super distorted vocals and a murky rhythmic throb. It almost sounds like what we wished Merzbow sounded like, a fierce super dynamic heavy as fuck white noise juggernaut.
But then there's the unexpected B side, which is downright tranquil, a carnivalesque loop warbling beneath children's voices, tons of delay and reverb, a dizzying blur of funhouse ambience. Weird as fuck, but somehow a good balance for the chaotic skree on the flipside.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
You could argue that EVERY record from these Texas via UK via Texas noise rock weirdos is sort of a 'dance' record. Every one rife with rhythms and grooves, hypnotic and repetitive, tranced out and yeah a little bit groovy. Although most of that was countered by blown out distorted bass buzz, squealing noise made by squeezing air from balloons, thick swaths of analog synth blurt, crushing down tuned bass buzz, multi drummers, bizarre and ultra creepy costumes, but really, at the core of $&$, was rhythm. And as the band has shed its revolving phalanx of multiple drummers, and slimmed down its ranks to what is essentially just one man, $&$ mastermind Craig Clouse, the sound has changed as well, with Clouse pushing the music of his previously bombastic noise rock juggernaut into something more electronic, the entity that is now Shit & Shine, instead of being some weirdo noise rockers, are in fact some twisted, avant, and yeah, still noisy and WTF version of electronic music, one that's not strictly electronic, just to muddy the waters just a little more.
In fact, right from the get go, the sound is akin to the Butthole Surfers recording for Warp, or some extremely bastardized version of that new slo-mo soul sound. Opener "Hiss" sounds like Burila or How To Dress Well, but all drugged up and doused in FX, at least for a minute or two, then in comes some proper guitar some synths, and the 'band' sound like an actual band, a cleaner, more streamlined, more 'danceable' Buttholes perhaps, but in the history of $&$, it doesn't sound all that out of place, even though it is a lot different than most of what's come before. But we dig it, a noisy, rock groove, peppered with swirls of squelch and gristle, some buried progged out synths, FX that send sounds stuttering into cloud of dizzying psych, but al wedded to that unwavering groove.
And that's just the beginning, with Clouse utilizing his kitchen sink approach, but in this case, the kitchen sink in question is a dirty rusty sink in an old abandoned meth lab on an empty lot somewhere in bumfuck Texas, but that only adds to the WTF of Clouse's 'electronica' and doesn't prevent him from conjuring up squelchy little bas driven synth heavy grooves like "You Can't", which sounds like some warped version of Neu!, or the ultra minimal glitchy electro skitter static of 'Pearl Drop", or the big bass, block rockin' "PG 13" that takes a super funky groove, adds some metallic vokill screech, some distort blasts of psych noise, all of which eventually devolves into a sort of eighties soundtrack groove. From there on out, there's the demented James Brown-ish "Blowhannon', which sounds like his back up band was either Earth Wind And Fire or Rusted Shut or BOTH. "Who's Your Waitress", is a shittier shinier take on FM radio yacht rock, a smooth groove, laced with just enough subtle WTF-ness to keep it confusional, "Value" is all big beat bombast, sounding like it could be some lost DHR b-side or another Meat Beat style cruncher. There's more of course, from low spun, creeps wrapped around rubbery bass billows, and dubbed out drum splatter, and some pounding 4 on the floor acid house, albeit equally acid fried, and wreathed in some creepy John Carpenter synthiness. And if you're lucky, and remain a cd person, the aluminum version has bonus tracks from the last $&$ 12", one a cool collaged rhythmic groove, replete with mangled vocal samples, skipping bass blurt, some gurgled cookie monster vox, even some guitar crunch, one is a full on disco blowout, albeit a bit distorted and twisted, and FX heavy, especially toward the end, where it seems to melt into a sort of Butthole Surfers megamix, and one is a murky skitter, that slowly builds to a sort of warbly dubbed out funk-murk electro dirge, that is about as danceable as it is weird. Which is 'very' on both counts.
When we first heard / heard about Shit And Shine, a mysterious noise rock collective from the UK, they definitely seemed custom made for aQ, multiple drummers, multiple bass players, someone playing lawnmower, a sound equal parts vintage Butthole Surfers, classic Hawkwind, and modern kraut-psych-drone-rock a la Circle and Pharaoh Overlord and Cave and the like, not to mention the garish, sometimes offensive album, art, the hilarious and usually offensive song titles, we were sold, smitten, totally obsessed. And thankfully, in the several years since that very first 12", very little has changed, almost all of the aforementioned essentials are still part and parcel of the Shit And Shine experience (minus the lawnmowers, but then the more we've come to understand these jokers, the more we realize that probably a lot of the 'facts' circulating about S&S is total bullshit, so odds are there never was any lawnmowers, sigh), and if anything, they've managed the impossible, getting tighter and more polished, more rocking, with better and somewhat proper 'songs', while simultaneously getting more and more fucked up and far out, taking super minimal elements and combining them into something massive and bewitching and baffling and heavy as fuck, but sounding literally unlike anything we've ever heard. Sure there are elements of plenty of stuff we love, but the way these guys twist those elements and cram them into whatever shape THIS is, just blows our minds, and eardrums.
So yeah, garish pink on white cover, masked lady with one of her breasts out on the front, a weird long necked headless super hero lady on the back, inside an awesome scary photo of two little girls, long hair obscuring their faces, standing hand in hand in front of a massive wall of amps, and song titles: "Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?", "Goodbye And Good Gardening", "Girls Against Shit", "20 Years Of Caring For The Nations Eyes", "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", "I'm Making My Lunch", " People Like You... REALLY!" and on and on, but none of that would mean shit if there wasn't a head spinning gut churning din to back it up, and holy shit do these guys bring the noise this time around.
The opening track, "Have Your Really Thought About Your Presentation" is equal parts Brainbombs and last list's Record Of The Weekers Rusted Shut, but with a little bit of krautish hypnorock mixed in, so what you get is a crushing, super distorted mega main RIFF, a pounding mesmerizing drum beat, everything super hot and blown out and in the red, looped and locked and pounding away over and over and over and over, but with some weird stuff going on, buried vocals, strange bits of glitch and crunch, and the weirdest part of all, seems impossible to play, but every few measures, it sounds like the band skips a beat, almost like the record skips, but it's super subtle, like a weird stutter step, that just makes it all the more weird, but no less trancelike and heavy, and it only gets weirder from there on out.
All the songs here are based on rhythms, which comes with the territory when you have multiple drummers, the second track begins all skittery, an almost drum machine sounding shuffle, which slips into a looped dubbed out pound, while all around the rhythms is buffeted by swirling FX, jagged shards of jangle guitar, and super distorted wild over-saturated leads and weird voices buried in the mix. The next track explodes in a tangle of twisted string buzz and fractured electronics, before those sounds coalesce into a crazy noise drenched rock racket, rife with angular guitars and layer upon layer of drones and voices and feedback and sonic chaos. "USA / Mexico" is some Buttholes gone black metal weirdness, super murky muddy riffage, pounding blast beats, start stop rhythms, bizarre vokills and crazy electronics all over the place.
The crushing stop start chug of "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", almost makes the record for us, with a killer main riff, and an increasingly distorted guitar tone, until a sample of some cheesy European sounding folk song comes in, and like magic, the crunch and chug and pound lock in and fit perfectly with that lilting little ditty, turning it into something nasty and scary and AWESOME. It's only a second, but it's sooooo good.
The abstract dub of the title track, the main rhythm made out of what sounds like someone writing on a chalkboard, some super effected tripped out dubby bursts, random spoken words, thick sheets of warm washed out guitars, until the track gets all Circle-y, but filtered through some fractured nineties industrial, like Pharaoh Overlord jamming Meat Beat Manifesto, but with strangled metal guitars and vrooming motorcycle sounds. There's some dance-y almost house sounding throb and pulse, but it's butted up right against a twisted angular noise rock / electro mashup, that is so distorted it's dabbling in Merzbow territory.
The other looooong track "Roberts Church Problem" sounds like it was recorded live, ad thus sounds like vintage S&S in full on unhinged Buttholes mode, multiple pounding drummers, wall of buzz, fuzzed out heaviness, repetitive and looped and seemingly never ending (we wish!). "Friseur Nelson is another good one, all very Circle, distorted and murky, a killer tribal rhythm, crumbling fuzz bass, and a muted chugging low end, some weird haunting chiming minor key melodies, another one that could have been stretched out to the end of the record and we would have been perfectly happy.
We could go on and on and on (even more than we already have), but why bother? Every song here rules, they're all super strange and heavy and hooky and groovy and noisy, and somehow, for being so disparate, they all manage to sound like part of a proper record. Well, certainly not a PROPER record, but you know what we mean. And while the rest of the songs are just as tripped out, and what-the-fuck and holy shit! as the ones we already described, odds are by now you probably got the feel for whether this is your cup of blown out rhythmic heaviness or not.
The sound of Shit And Shine is like some constantly twisting and transforming, bloody and mangled wreckage, equal parts This Heat, Aluk Todolo, Geronimo, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Brainbombs, Merzbow, Terminal Cheesecake, Strangulated Beatoffs, Faust, Laddio Bollocko, all pulled apart and reassembled into some damaged Frankenhooker noiserock drum circle spacejam. And odds are if you like any or all of those bands, you're gonna LOVE this...
The first time we heard from the UK's bass and drum (not to be confused with drum and bass) ensemble Shit And Shine, we were already predisposed to love them. Seeing as they featured multiple bass players, a stage full of drummers, and most importantly, at least to us, several lawnmowers. Fuck. Yeah.
Over the course of the last three or four years, these guys have continually pummeled us within an inch of our lives, with their throbbing tribal Butthole Surfers style onslaught, a furious blown out in the red drug drenched psych rock, but only the loosest approximation of rock. More like some sort of government drug experiment, where various deviants and ne'er do wells, criminals and sociopaths, were incarcerated, dosed with all manner of experimental psychotropics, then let loose in a concrete bunker filled with drums and amps and busted up old bass guitars, everything recorded for posterity, until someone started leaking the tapes, code name: SHIT AND SHINE.
This was the most wacked shit we'd heard since Terminal Cheesecake or the Strangulate Beatoffs. And every record drifted further and further out, as the band became more and more unhinged, and now there's this, Cherry, a massive double lp that while still demonstrating the kind of physical and psychic damage Shit And Shine can do, also reveals a whole new world of fucked up sound these guys have tapped into. In fact, when we first threw this on, we weren't even sure it was the same band.
The record opens with a simple percussive drum jam, all toms, sort of tribal, beneath a series of samples, and film clips, a little weird, reminiscent of old industrial, until the next track obliterates the first with a blast of awesome processed metallic riffing, almost like some heavily FX-ed Iron Maiden leads, draped over some shitty shiney sludge, then suddenly guitars flip backwards, the sound becoming some freaked out psych damage, lurching into some killer stop / start dynamics, a churning what-the-fuck sort-of metal jam. Oh yeah, there's also a long long track of old school proto disco, groovy, druggy dancefloor shit, unexpected, but it sort of works in S+S's tweaked sound world. And all of that stuff is peppered with brief super short tracks of classic Shit And Shine tribal drugpsych pummel, but it always slips back into something� curious.
Side three is a single side long track, a gorgeous chunk of layered drone, guitars buzz and rumble, basses throb and pulse, there are probably some synths in there too, the various layers churning and shifting, drifting and shimmering, super hypnotic but still subtly fucked up and creepy.
And finally, for those folks who were put off by all this weirdness, meaning even more weirdness than normal, all of side 4 is taken up by a full on, head crushing Shit And Shine blow out. Doped up and spaced out, huge loping rhythms, pounding multiple drumkits, the basses and guitars a chaotic tangle of crumbling riffs and throbbing distortion, everything locked into relentless looped churning crush. So completely filthy and crusty and damaged that it sounds constantly on the verge of falling to pieces, but it's this continuous chaos and impending doom, that makes S+S's freaky jams so intense and so fucking awesome!
Need we say, TRES RECOMMENDED!
More totally and hilariously garish cover art. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! We got a bunch but AQ folks seem especially partial to Shit -AND- Shine, so these will probably go pretty quick. You have been warned.
Return of the mighty Shit And Shine, a massive sprawling noise rock collective from the UK. Multiple drummers, LOTS of guitars, even some lawnmowers and other noisemakers. This new disc takes their caustic freaked out psych-noise in a whole new direction, channeling their energy into blissed out sort-of krautrocky grooves, albeit still drenched in thick grinding crumbling grit with the needle ALL the way in the red. In fact -most- of the tracks here are some sort of hypnotic stripped down rhythm, just completely damaged and dinged up and pelted with thick slabs of hissy fuzz. Vocals struggly desperately to be heard, even the drums keep getting sucked under the massive swells of acidic sound, swirls of buzzing glitch and super blown out melodies are all draped over the endlessly propulsive rhythms, as they struggle to keep moving forward with layer after layer after layer of dense prickly buzz and drone piled atop them. A gloriously cacophonous caterwaul of rhythmic chaos.
Imagine the Psychic Paramount filtered through a Merzbow production and mastered by Masonna, pressed onto a lathe cut, then played a thousand times until the grooves all began to run together, then play it on a turntable made from an old microwave using a rusty nail as a stylus, and broadcast it through the blown out speakers in that junked car that's been sitting in your neighbor's yard for the last ten years. The record THAT sound, and broadcast it through a HUGE tuba shaped loud speaker with your head stuck all the way into the horn. Kinda like that. Imagine some Aufgehoben No Process, some Laddio Bolocko, some Wolf Eyes, some Butthole Surfers, even some Whitehouse and eighties no wave, but mix in a serious dose of Can and Faust and then douse it in thick swaths of noise, freeze it and shatter it into a million pieces. It all comes together on the album's 30 minute centerpiece "Practicing To Be A Doctor", a simple rock and roll drum beat, a million pounds of grinding low end, some grungy sludgy garage rock riffing, some buried mumbled vocals, and set the whole thing to just sort of lazily unfurl over the course of a lurching, druggy, damaged half hour. Suddenly we're also hearing some Brainbombs, some Terminal Cheesecake, even a bit of the Melvins, all wrapped up into endlessly motorik spaced out tribal sludge rock nirvana.
For a limited time, Jealous Of Shit And Shine also includes an extra cd, which contains their long out of print 12" "You're Lucky To Have Friends Like Us" on cd for the first (and last) time! Here's what we had to say about the 12" when we listed it way back in 2004:
You might want to keep an old rag next to your turntable for this one, to wipe the grit and grime and goo off your needle when you're done listening to this slab of sonic what-the-fuck. A confusional mix of buzzy, damaged psych rock spaceout, Buttholes style tribal weirdness, straight up icepick in the ear noise rock, speaker melting sludge and some very unlikely pop filigree. Instrumentation includes multiple drummers, multiple lawnmowers (?) and lots of guitar all melded into a pummelling wall of grindsludgepopnoisepsych.
Ahhh, Shit And Shine, even the name give us the warm fuzzies. That's because multiple drummer-ed lawn mower bass tribal drug jams often do. And no one does it better, or quite like the UK's Shit And Shine. With a constantly shifting lineup that often swells to double digits, including as many drummers as they can pack into a room. And a wall of amplifiers that makes SUNNO))) seem like they're playing through practice amps, several bass players, often just a phalanx of shitty Casio keyboards, howling vocals, all tangled up into a heaving mass of post-Butthole Surfers drug psych heaviness.
Much like the cd reissue of Cherry (last week's Record Of The Week), Kuss Mich, Meine Liebe is not entirely brand new, the two longest tracks we've had before on a super limited, crazy expensive lp, but here on cd for the very first time. Along with one other loooooooong jam, and a handful of shorter, but no less appealing chunks of what-the-fuck tribal psych-out heaviness.
Let's cover the tracks we've heard before. "Biggest Cock In Christendom" is an in-the-red tribal workout, like a more metallic and way more distorted and druggy No Neck Blues Band. Or a WAY heavier Chain Reaction disc. Thick pulses of low end drift beneath streaks of super distorted amp damage, all very krautrock sounding, but filtered through a bank of effects pedals, all broken or with dying batteries. Definitely blissed out and mesmerizing, but so ominous and creepy. This is the shit musical dreams are made of. 15 minutes of this stuff is not nearly enough. Set it to repeat, drink a bottle of Nyquil and let yourself get sucked under. The other track from the 12", "Toilet Door Tits", is an endless rhythmic jam, with ultra blown out drums, sounding a bit like some Butthole Surfers / Laddio Bolocko hybrid, albeit WAY more distorted and damaged. The sound is completely fried, the whole track sounding like it's crumbling through your speakers, strangled vocals drift amidst the tribal pummel, as do weird alien sounding squiggly leads that squirm and slither from speaker to speaker giving the whole track a super disorienting effect.
The other long track on Kuss Mich is the epic and drowsily sprawling "Preventions Arise", 10 minutes of muted almost industrial sounding rhythms, way more moody and washed out than the other tracks, an endless muddy murky rhythmic jam, pulsing and throbbing, a propulsive groove beneath a very noir spoken word. Strange but a good balance to the sheer brutality of the other tracks.
Scattered all around these three massive jams are jagged little chunks of shiny shit, blasts of noise and crunch and buzz and pound, from brief flurries of machine like grind, furious blast beats, and stuttering off kilter rhythms, to total Buttholes worship, pounding tribal rhythm, buzzing fuzz guitar, hypnotic and intense, to tripped out abstract skitter, all warbly distorted bass, and processed vox, to huge blown out chug and churn, heavy and epic and massively distorted and blown out.
Once again, more proof that these guys (and gals) are the current reigning kings and queens of crushing chaotic drugged out drone drenched drum corps psych-doom heaviness.
Killer packaging, very simple and cryptic, shit brown paper and metallic gold ink shine!
One of our favorite in Southern's Latitudes series, available on super duper limited vinyl!!!! We got 30 copies and will never be able to get more. So jump on these quick...
Full on, over the top, freaked out psychedelic, drum drenched guitarnoise from this massive UK ensemble Shit And Shine, a a gore soaked, bloody nosed, sweat stained sonic knee to the groin. Multiple drummers, lots of guitars, a toy keyboard and one mighty riff. Think prime era Butthole Surfers, add some Stooges stomp and some Hawkwind spaciness, an unstoppable wall of crushing churning psychedelic crunch, thick sludgy basslines, fuzzy filthy guitars, grunted shouted vocals, all in a druggy swirl of effects, random noises and full on brain frying weirdness. A glorious forty minute pummeling.
Comes packaged in a cool diecut sleeve, a variation on the immediately recognizable Latitudes cd packaging, although this time, white on black instead of white on brown. Includes the same insert as the cd. Pressed on bright red vinyl. And of course, SUPER SUPER LIMITED!!!
The last Shitmat record was just a tad too ravey for us, when what we really want from Mr. Shitmat, is wild pounding ragga jungle. He's probably responsible for one of our favorite ragga jungle records ever, Killababylonkutz, a whole record of multiple version of the same dancehall jam, but holy shit did that one slay. Wild drill and bass, over the top toasting, bizarre samples, all chopped up and looped into chaotic careening slabs of junglized pummel.
Since Killababylonkutz, Shitmat has moved more and more toward straight up rave music, sometimes doing sort of mashup thing, other times going for the goofy retro angle a la the recent Zomby, record. No matter how much we liked all of those records, we couldn't help hankering for more of the hard stuff. Well, it looks like Shitmat heard our prayers somehow, cuz even with that title, this is the hardest most jungly record since Killababylonkutz and we've been going nuts.
Sure there's still plenty of rave-y jams, and mashup bits, but there's also plenty of wild chopped drum and bass, some serious chunks of ragga jungle here and there, even some toasting, and Shitmat lets his spastic programmed insanity run wild, spitting out dizzying tangles of impossiby complex drum jams, making even the cheesiest of dance grooves sound hard and heavy. The best jams are definitely the ragga jungle numbers, worth it for those 3 or 4 tracks alone, but like we said it's all pretty great, and makes for excellent listening even for the dancefloor phobic!
Awesome Cabbage Patch Kid cover art too!
The return of the Shitty Listener, and as always, we feel obliged to comment on what has to be one of the best band names EVER, and as always, The Shitty Listener is Jason Honea, a one time member of the Jewelled Antler Collective, who's played in or with Teenage Panzercorps, Franciscan Hobbies, the Knit Separates, Child Readers and a bunch more, but as always, the Shitty Listener is a much more intimate, personal affair, in the past, hushed and home brewed, or recorded outside Jewelled Antler style, but for this new ep, Honea has expanded his sonic palette, with what sounds like a full band, and a sound that harkens back to classic eighties new wave and post punk, "No Thrones", is all tribal drumming, and waves of crystalline guitar shimmer, while Honea croons over the top, his vocals powerful and throaty and dramatic, but still it's The Shitty Listener, so it lasts barely 90 seconds before "Beautiful Same" brings things back down, some field recordings, clouds of cymbal shimmer, woozy synths, but the vocals remain upfront, and way up in the mix, like some lost obscure 'wave rarity from the eighties, but again, the song doesn't even reach two minutes, instead, Honea crafting a gorgeously faded sonic fragment, out of time, but also strangely timeless.
The flipside gets more Jewelled Antler-y, "Pool Of Light" is all music box melody over what sounds like a crackling fire, or maybe rain on the roof, the vocals super loud, and up in the mix, lots of reverb, as if Honea was singing right in your ear, hushed and haunting, super intimate, and mysteriously lovely. "Candle On Water" too is super lo-fi, acoustic guitar strum, tape hiss and field recorded ambience, the sound of windshield wipers maybe? Strange fragmented synths drift by, the vocals an ethereal falsetto, a gorgeous bit of swoonsome, wistful, dreamy bedroom 4 trackery to finish things off. Nice heavy full color covers, and probably super limited too!
The return of The Shitty Listener! Maybe one of our all time favorite band names EVER. And it's about time. We all completely dug the Girls All Say EP we listed a while back, but it just wasn't enough. It was only 9 minutes long after all. Well, Fruitless Accomplishment clocks in at a whopping 26 minutes, and thus manages to take all the elements we liked on the EP, and spreads them out, expands and explores, which just means there's so much more to like.
Actually released as a book, that just so happens to also contain a cd, for our purposes, we'll just go ahead and consider Fruitless Accomplishment a cd, that just so happens to come with a book! For those new to the Shitty Listener, it's not really a band, instead it is one man, Jason Honea, from from the Jewelled Antler outfits The Child Readers and the Franciscan Hobbies, as well as the Chord Fort, the Knit Separates and Teenage Panzercorps. The Shitty Listener is his Honea's mostly solo, lo-fi, bedroom folk project. And is deeply connected to his poetry/lyrics and artwork. As is evidence by this deluxe book/cd combo.
The sound is incredibly intimate and low fidelity. Mostly recorded on micro cassettes or handheld tape recorders, Honea incorporates tape hiss and whatever ambient sound happens to occur in the background, whether it's a plane flying by, a dog barking, the sound of crickets, it all just becomes part of the sound. And just like old Sebadoh tapes, the ch-chunk sound of the record or stop buttons being pushed, as well as weird warbles in the tape, become as much a part of the song as the song itself. Lilting melancholy piano, gentle acoustic guitar strum, and not much else support Honea's warbly falsetto, plaintive and emotive, always way down in the mix, a sort of drifty fuzzy dreamy melody within each song. But that's more than enough. Each song ends up sounding surprisingly lush. Our favorites though have to be the ones that sound like they were recorded from a distance, or through the wall or window. Those tracks almost sound like Honea was singing and strumming indoors, while the mic was outside, capturing most of the music, but more than anything all of the ambient action happening around it. Other highlights include the a capella "Bad Wonder", "I Call You Up" which sounds a bit like Morrisey fronting Sentridoh, the minute long "Across My Dreams", a sort of processed dreamy guitarscape, and the 7 minute medley "Sweet To My Mind w/ Someone Flame-Like & Up Too Much", the first half of which sounds a bit like a Basinski composition, but made manually, by playing a figure on the piano, pushing stop on the tape player, pressing record and playing the figure again, over and over and over. So weird and wonderful.
Fruitless Accomplishment is a strangely compelling collision between abstract experimentation and lo-fi pop loveliness, and the results are truly divine!
The packaging is pretty dang divine as well. And just to frustrate and confuse, there are TWO different versions. Both are exactly the same on the inside, just different on the outside. Packaged in either a newsprint covered hard cardboard box, or in a sewn green felt sleeve, inside is the cd-r, an insert with the liner notes, four full color and two black and white inserts featuring various drawings and collages by Honea, and Real Flowers, a small book of poetry, gorgeously printed on nice paper and with a full color paste on cover!
We don't care what the rest of the world says, we still love Witch House, or drag, or grave rave, or cave rave, or whatever you want to call it, we still can't seem to get enough of it, the murky slithery soundscapes of slo-mo rhythms, tarpit soul, slowed down vocals, everything wreathed in a cough syrupy haze, it's the perfect late night music, like a bastardized drug addled Portishead, which sounds amazing right? We've been particularly partial to the recent spate of groups crafting a sort of abstract soul, a minimal, washed out, woozy RnB that takes the tropes of the original sound and stretches 'em waaaay out and slows them waaaaay dooooown, the result being a blissed out sonic comedown, all lumbering shuffling beats, woozy washed out melodic swells, vocals alternatingly chopped and screwed or left to drift angelically amidst hazy clouds of druggy drift. Think How To Dress Well, Crypt Thing, D'eon, Holy Other, Dirty Beaches, Hype Williams and the like.
We had never heard Shlohmo before, and actually first discovered him via a recent local show featuring Water Borders, oOoOO, White Ring and other sonically similar soundscapers (think Witch House if you want, it's okay). Shlohmo definitely traffics in a similar sound. fans of any of the above mentioned bands, will no doubt dig Shlohmo as well, his sound leaning more toward the swirling slow motion melodicisim of Balam Acab or Clams Casino, the sound all slow strummed chords, wreathed in effects and layered beneath blurred vocals, occasionally deep and dramatic, but more often, a fluttery Prince like falsetto, spidery melodies, creepy rickety rhythms, slow motion stutters and woozy warble, those distinctly witch house-y female vox all layered into a sort of chordal thrum, the sounds here hovering mainly in some ethereal sun dappled Technicolor dreamworld, but once in a while the sounds gain momentum, and become darker, the sounds more caustic and crunchy, but even then, the vibe is more shoegazey and dreamily druggy, with the sound eventually slipping back into something much more drifty and ephemeral.
Gorgeous stuff. WAY recommend for fans of prettier dreamier drag (Balam Acab, Clams Casino, etc.)�
Packaged in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve, includes a download code as well.
Another super obscure New Zealand post punk rarity dug up by the fine folks at Siltbreeze, this one from a band most folks had never heard, or even heard of, and we mean even folks who fancy themselves New Zealand underground rock experts, hell even the NZ obsessives around here who have pretty much every Flying Nun and Xpressway record, had never heard these guys (and gal) before, which maybe makes sense, when you consider the fact that they only ever recorded one 7" in 1981, and this is actually a live recording, which was discovered in the possession of famed NZ archivist Bob Sutton (although the 4 tracks from that 7" are included on the digital download, or we can order you the 7", which Siltbreeze also just reissued, just ask!). But based on this live recording, these guys were a pretty fierce proposition, propulsive frenetic drumming, angular, guitar crunch and scrape, snarly snotty vox, the songs twisty and tangly, lurching from tribal churn, to super poppy and melodic, to mathy and punky and back again, the vibe a bit gloomy and a little gothy too, a few of the tracks are stripped down and minimal, but for the most part the sound is frantic and jittery, and the sound blown our and vicious, reminds us a bit of 100 Flowers or the Urinals, the Fall too, but with a distinctly NZ bent, we'd heard them compared to pre Bailter Space outfit the Gordons, which is pretty close, but we also hear a lot of Aussie post punk like the Scientists, Celibate Rifles, etc. Really though, these guys are their own special thing, noisy and hooky, jangly, angular and pretty goddamn wild, and listening to this live set, we can't help but wonder why these guys didn't get as big as some of their countrymen, cuz this is fast becoming one of our favorite archival NZ discoveries!!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, includes the above mentioned download code, complete with the bonus tracks from the original 7"!
It's a panic attack of over the top black metal theatrics from this notoriously 'round the bend band from Japan! The frantic tempo barely ever lets up as Sigh cram as much in the way of grandiose keyboards, blazing fretwork, thundering drums, and pompous choirs as they can into every nutty nook and crazy cranny of this album. The rapid, rasping delivery of the liberetto is dizzying too... we say "liberetto" because this album is divided into three acts, and has a definite operatic feel to it. Black metal opera. At 200 mph. It's like they've been listening to a lot of Devil Doll and Cradle Of Filth back to back, on crack.
Starting off years and years ago as Japan's truest "Nordic" black metal act (with their first album set for release on Euronymous of Mayhem's record label, before his murder by Count Grishnack of Burzum), Sigh went on to establish a career of horror soundtrack-inspired genre-fuckery that had critics comparing 'em to John Zorn and the Boredoms as much as Burzum. After their brilliant mashup of stoner rock psych and black metal mayhem on 2001's Imaginary Sonicscape, this cult took things maybe a bit too far for some of their fans with the unexpected (even for them) chipmunk-voiced poppy power metal moves of that album's long-awaited follow-up in 2005, Gallows Gallery. WE were happily confused and amused, though. And now Sigh has sharpened their blades to shred even harder on this album, dispensing with the chipmunks and also with the occasional saxophone lounge jazz and techno detours that popped up on Gallows Gallery. Absurdly bombastic, mixing heavy metal heroics with Morricone melodies, the fierce, frenzied, fixated Hangman's Hymn is as ridiculous as anything they've done but also undeniably, insanely impressive and entertaining.
Japan's best black metal band (along with Sabbat) are back with their first US domestic release, having just been signed by big metal label Century Media. We've always been fans of their fucked-up genre-mangling horror movie soundtrack metal, and this might
It seems like a lot of the black metal we've been digging lately has been of the 'tortured anguished vocals' variety. Sterbend from last list is probably the most obvious. But Marblebog too. Also Hekel elsewhere on this list. But go back a ways and you can find plenty of black hordes who not only buzz grimly, but howl and wail as if their souls were trying to escape from their bodies, Bethlehem, SF cult legends Weakling, and of course Silencer. This record isn't really new, and actually we have been trying to track down copies of this forever. Silencer are spoken of with hushed reverence, and for good reason. Death - Pierce Me is dark and damaged, grim and suicidal miserablist doom-drenched black metal of the highest order. Talk to any of the current crop of the black metal elite, Wrest from Leviathan, Malefic from Xasthur, and they will fawn unabashedly over Silencer. Thankfully, Autopsy Kitchen have stepped up and rescued this all time black classic from oblivion. And now you can finally experience one of the original black cults who expressed their blackened misery through impossibly anguished vocals. Hysterical shrieks, frenzied and overwrought howls of absolute terror. Never has a band captured grief and misery and loneliness so perfectly and in such an utterly frightening way.
But it's not just the vocals, the music is completely intense and seething as well, with an unrestrained turbulence, dense and buzzing and so emotional and personal and overwhelming. Heart rending minor key melodies emeshed in black swirls of buzz, the riffing so intense and totally manic, exposing a tortured inner world wrought with drama and tension, a dark soul exposed, a damaged personal hell expressed through shriek and buzz. The anguished blasts of blackness are separated by dark doomy ambient passages, from simple mournful acoustic guitar to droney piano fugues to simple melodic doom metal minimalism, but when the riffs and the vocals kick in, a huge brutal blackness dropping on you from above, it's the sort of musical moment that gives you chills, makes your hair stand up on end, and in the right frame of mind makes you want to just break down. Which is precisely why Silencer and Death - Pierce Me are so revered, this record set the template for ALL depressive suicidal black metal to follow, and while some have come close, Xasthur and Nortt certainly, there is just something so special, and so utterly frightening about this record that keeps anyone from ever capturing the same black musical world of abject fear and unmitigated misery.
First time available on cd ever!
Fucking incredible document of early seventies free jazz recorded live in Paris, in December 1970. We shouldn't have to do anything but tell you who plays on this to convince you that this is utterly essential. Fans of Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago (most of whom, play on this) and all things ESP, MUST own this. Seriously beautiful and epic outer-jazz-space exploration.
And here's the freakin' lineup:
Alan Silva - leader, bass, electric-violin, electric-sarangi, bow and spring (two French electroacoustic instruments) / Bernard Vitet - trumpet, french horn / Lester Bowie (AEC) - trumpet, flugelhorn / Alan Shorter - trumpet / Joseph Jarman (AEC) - saxes, flute, bassoon / Steve Lacy - soprano saxophone / Ronnie Beer - tenor and soprano saxophone, flute / Roscoe Mitchell (AEC)- saxes, flute, oboe / Robin Kenyatta - alto sax, flute / Michel Portal - alto sax, clarinet / Dieter Gewissler - electric violin / Jouk Minor - electric viola / Kent Carter - cello / Irene Aebi - cello, celeste / Dave Burrell - piano / Beb Guerin - bass / Don Moye (AEC) - drums, percussion / Jerome Cooper - drums, percussion, bronte / Oliver Johnson - tympani, percussion. Compact disc release limited to 1500 copies, so don't hold out on this one!
Fucking incredible document of early seventies free jazz recorded live in Paris, in December 1970. We shouldn't have to do anything but tell you who plays on this to convince you that this is utterly essential. Fans of Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago
And here's the freakin' lineup:
Alan Silva - leader, bass, electric-violin, electric-sarangi, bow and spring (two French electroacoustic instruments) / Bernard Vitet - trumpet, french horn / Lester Bowie (AEC) - trumpet, flugelhorn / Alan Shorter - trumpet / Joseph Jarman (AEC) - saxes, flute, bassoon / Steve Lacy - soprano saxophone / Ronnie Beer - tenor and soprano saxophone, flute / Roscoe Mitchell (AEC)- saxes, flute, oboe / Robin Kenyatta - alto sax, flute / Michel Portal - alto sax, clarinet / Dieter Gewissler - electric violin / Jouk Minor - electric viola / Kent Carter - cello / Irene Aebi - cello, celeste / Dave Burrell - piano / Beb Guerin - bass / Don Moye (AEC) - drums, percussion / Jerome Cooper - drums, percussion, bronte / Oliver Johnson - tympani, percussion
Another contender for Andee's flute hall of fame. More spaced out celestrial divinity from the master himself, Alan Silva. Two lengthy tracks of abstract fluttering flutes, free jazz clatter, and spaced out otherworldly wildness. Violin, cello, piano, organ, vibraphone, rattles, cymbals, percussion and FLUTE, all woven together into a gorgeously thick miasma of drone-y, scrape-y,
Newest effort from this Godspeed You Black Emperor offshoot, consisting of mainman Efrim and five other cohorts, plus a "tra-la-la band with choir."
Thankfully, Silver Mt Zion have chosen to actually move beyond aping the Godspeed mothership and crafted a pretty bizarre new sound. Pagan folk ala the Wicker Man, mixed with some of that patented Godspeed cinematic moodiness, and then some Polyphonic Spree-ish harmony. Sounds weird but it actually works pretty well. The first track sounds like it could very well have been from the Wicker Man soundtrack, with the choir chanting fa-so-la, fa-fa-fa, so-la-la-la over a simple tribal rhythms while all sorts of other instruments weave an ominous backdrop of strums and drones. The rest of the record follows a meandering path from those pagan freakouts, to rhythmic tribal jams, to strummy dreamy folk, layered scratchy electronics, to sweet violin/guitar serenity, to clangy clattery soundscapes, to wailing emotive almost-indie twang. Efrim's voice will be a stumbling block for some, his whiny upper register croon reminding us a lot of the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne' but even more strained and whine-y. Think a mix of Souled American's Chris Grigoroff, Built To Spill's Doug Martsch, and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, stripped to the waist, all painted up and standing above a burning pyre, and howling to the heavens! A primal, incantatory hippie cathartic group ritual. Fans of the Wickerman and Comus and other hippie pagan folk, just may have found some modern kindred spirits.
As with all Godspeed and Constellation-label artifacts, the cd artwork is gorgeous, as is the double LP version, both with deluxe gatefold sleeve and booklet insert.
WE LOVE THIS BAND!!! Those of you who have been with us since the beginning will no doubt be well aware of our love affair with these UK power poppers. They played one of the best instores we've ever had, Andee's old band P.E.E. toured with Silver Sun when they were here (Silver Sun's first US tour, P.E.E.'s last tour ever!), and we sold tons and tons of their other two records. And it's no surprise. Silver Sun write unbelivable songs, with super crunchy kick ass guitars, and maybe the best harmony vocals we've ever heard. It's been six or seven years since their last full length, the band even broke up for a while, until frontman James beagn recording a new Silver Sun record and realized that it wouldn't be the same without the rest of the band, so they got together and came up with Disappear Here. Their first record was a buzzsaw blast of Beach Boys, Queen, Supertramp, Jellyfish, Zumpano and the Posies. The second record, Neo Wave, appropriate to the title was was more angular and eighties and, well, new wave. But for Disappear Here, they've gone back to their power popping of old, maybe even going a bit farther, adding even more sugar and sweetness to their musclely pop. In fact they sound a lot like later Redd Kross (with maybe a bit less of RK's kitsch obsessed jaded hipster vibe) which is a VERY GOOD thing. So take the above list of bands, add Redd Kross, and maybe some Banana Splits, some Xanadu perhaps, even more harmonies, and still more big ultra catchy choruses, and you are looking at THE power pop record of the year. Can't figure out why these guys aren't HUGE!
It's so easy to hate on these guys (and gal), they went from indie darlings to next big thing, to actual big thing in the blink of an eye. Plus they sound dangerously and criminally like Smashing Pumpkins, but, and this is a very very big BUT, they actually kind of rule.
If you haven't heard their big first single "Lazy Eye", look it up on YouTube. It's like the best Smashing Pumpkins song Billy Corgan never wrote. Or more accurately, it's like THAT Smashing Pumpkins song, you know the one, the only really great late period SP song, but made heavier and blissier and a little noisier. That whole first record was packed with similar jams, My Bloody Valentine meets the Smashing Pumpkins is the most obvious (and oft mentioned comparison), but heck if it isn't sort of accurate. And for what they lacks in originality, they make up for in sheer rad rockingness, hooks everywhere, the singer's Corgan-esque croon, some kick ass drumming, and guitars everywhere, supecharged, distorted, heavy, buzzy, blown out, but still warm and thick and billowy.
We never reviewed the first record, but for some of us, it was definitely a (not so) guilty pleasure. While Swoon doesn't have a hit quite as unbeatable as "Lazy Eye", it does manage to be more lush and expansive, a bit heavier, and after a few listens, some of these songs will be lodged in your head FOREVER. And the sad thing is, this stuff sounds so much better than 90 percent of the rock happening these days, and it's sad to realize they just don't make music like this so much anymore, so when someone does, and does it so well, we just have to sit back and let ourselves be transported right back to the good old days, those days being the nineties, so c'mon, close your eyes, let your hair down, turn up the stereo and rock the fuck out. Pop fiends, especially ones who grew up in the nineties, will go nuts for this. And if you can ignore all the hype and the bullshit and just enjoy the music for what it is, even the most jaded of hipsters might just find themselves unable to resist the blissy crunchy pop spell of Silversun Pickups.
Belgian funeral folk avant ambient doom troop Silvester Anfang sure have a way with images. Their first full length featured the band in white hoods, shirtless, with sticks and clubs and axes and goats on chains, now this one, the band's first proper cd release, sports a foxy raven haired lass licking a skull, and elsewhere in the booklet and on the sleeve, posing with said licked skull, as well as plenty of goats still, upside down ladies in bikinis in the shape of an upside down crucifix, as well as a full color fold out poster of the babe-licking-skull album cover....
And while that all may seem a bit over the top, somehow, it suits Silvester Anfang's dark and demented music. They're like a grim, blackened, metallic version of all those freaky forest neo folkies. Imagine Avarus or Feathers or Kemialliset, just hanging out beneath the trees, weaving their stumbling free folk magic, when all of a sudden, they're pulled into some pit in the middle of the forest, only to emerge days later, with a blank dead eyed stare, emotionless, eyes black as obsidian, their hair tangled and matted, their skin covered in mysterious tattoos, and the sounds they make, like some some primitive musical ritual...
That's sort of what Silvester Anfang sound like. The parts are all familiar, the shuffling rhythms, the junkyard percussion, the haunting vocals, the detuned guitars, but somehow twisted, dark, and so black, and like they also somehow dragged some big ass amps as well as at least one full drum kit out into the woods, and the results are seriously scary (and amazing).
The first track unfurls a web of jagged distorted guitar melodies over a simple motorik pound, surrounded by all sorts of chants and distant drones, above a constantly shifting landscape of grinding whirs and swirling clouds of tinkling melodies, occasionally overtaken by thick washes of super distorted guitar buzz, everything culminating in an orgiastic musical free for all, with wild feral female vocals, dense tribal drumming, epic cinematic swells... an immense sonic squall the lights the black forest with some burnished red glow...
The second track, the nearly half hour long "Konfituur Voor De Satanjeugd" is much more subtle and stretched out, some sort of German Oak krautrock style slow burner, all shuffling drums and whirling ambience, spidery guitars and glistening barely there melodies, until about the 20 minute mark, when a riff finally coalesces, a killer riff, a sort of Viking dirge, a bit metallic, grinding away over thick sheets of blown out guitar drone, a dense wash of amp buzz and guitar growl, the riff looped and cyclical, while in the background lurk streaks of high end guitar and warm whirring synths, gorgeous and not a little bit frightening.
Magickal and mystickal, dark and diabolical, just the sort of musick that might very well have you too licking skulls after repeated listens, and there's certainly not a better recommendation than that...
Finally another wave of ESP reissues and more completely essential and seminal sixties free jazz. This disc, recorded in 1966, Simmons' debut as a band leader, is an intense blast of aggresive melody with four extended tracks of raw and relentless skronk
Song title of the week: 'antlers! antlers! antlers!'
Single Unit is a Norwegian visual artist that also makes some truly freaked out electronic music. 'Family of Forces' is his exploration of hardcore, electronica, and metal! Well, sort of metal, at least moreso than most of the more recent Jester offerings (Garm from Ulver. Imagine a black metal record, a Mr. Bungle record, or even a Zappa record, chopped to pieces and reassembled into some sort of insane electronic video game music with sampled chugging metal guitars, industrial roars, and all manner of bleeping and blipping, that form hypnotically hiccupping plunderphonic metal or maniacal droned out washes of bells and hums and whirring feedback! Partially composed, partially improvised, Single Unit mixes buzzing chiming childlike lullabies with technical and impossibly unplayable experimental metal ala Melt Banana, Meshuggah or Strapping Young Lad. Weird and GREAT.
The Kult Of Nihilow website has this to say about Sink's The Process: "This is not a sludge record. This is not a drone record. This is not an experimental record." Which is not actually true, since it's actually an awesome mix of all three. More accurately, it's not an average sludge record, or a typical drone record, and isn't like most experimental music, but that's precisely what makes it so appealing.
Sink are from Finland and have shared a split with aQ faves, UK dronelords Marzuraan, and they traffic in a sound that is both crushingly slow, blindingly heavy, as well as mysteriously dark and droney, but just like anything, it's what you do with all that stuff that matters. Anyone can tune down and play an E chord for 10 minutes. But not anyone can make it sound like angels singing.
On their split with Marzuraan, we described their sound as "a swirling, sludgy wall of hissing fuzzed out blackened ultra noise, harsh and horrific", but there's nothing like that here. The Process is much more musical, and more measured, for a band who is typically defined as a sludge band, they spend much of their time unfurling dark muted shimmery dronescapes, hushed whispery smears of barely audible thrum. And even when they are dropping some serious sludge, it's not really sludgey, the guitars are thick and corrosive, but glimmering and crystalline, rife with haunting chords, the vocals deep monk like chants. The opener here is the perfect example, it sounds like Tibetan monks fronting a doom band, only the doom is strangely melodic, and hauntingly cinematic. Halfway through the track fades into some dark chiming ambience, all muted and blurred, before the crushing doomic blows begin to rain down again, those vocals returning to underpin everything with their thick rumbling whir (sounding quite a bit like Tuvan throat singing). It's a pity the track is only 11 minutes long. We could have gone for twice that! At least.
The second track is all soaring Sunroof! like streaks of sound and strummed acoustic guitars, sounding like a noisier doomier Kiss The Anus, but all washed out and smeared into bleary shoegazey drifts, reminding us of a way more abstract Nadja or Angelic Process actually.
Strangely enough, almost the whole rest of the record is devoid of any hint of sludge or doom, instead exploring longform guitar drones, super minimal sinewave skree, gentle dreamlike ambience, rumbling cavernous dronemusic, until finally, the not at all appropriately titled final song "The Silence", which is anything but silent, four minutes of murky corrosive drift, but like the opener, rife with mysterious melody, disembodied vocals, glimmering chordal blur, all spread out into a thick sluggish doom-ic haze, that seems to blot out the sun, bathing everything in a burnished blood red glow.
Beautifully packaged In an elaborate fold out sleeve, printed in full color with a little tab to hold it shut. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
Most well known to most as the leader of the Revolutionary Ensemble in the 70's, Sirone was also a sideman for such jazz legends as Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Charles Gayle, Ornette Coleman, Roswell Rudd, Clifford Thornton, Sonny Sharrock, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and more. But he was way more than just a sideman, an amazing composer in his own right and a completely orignal and creative bass player. For this live set, recorded in 1991, Sirone teamed up with Dennis Charles on drums and Claude Lawrence on alto sax, and the results are sublime. The performance starts off with a long piece for solo flute. A dense squall of tweets and trills and twitters and flitterings, like strange and haunting bird calls. After that it's all about the bass, as Sirone stretches out and slides smoothly all over the fretboard with two tracks of almost nothing but bass (one track gets a smattering of free jazz rhythmic splatter), it's dark and deliriously languorous, warm and thick and totally dreamy. When the rest of the trio does join in, it's dense and focused and intense, with Sirone and Charles locked in tight but somehow still wild and loose and free, while Lawrence skips gingerly atop a squirming tangle of shuffling rhythms and throbbing pulsing low end. So good.
John Wiese (Bastard Noise) and his pal Cory Ronnau deliver what is probably the world's first plunderphonic grindcore record. Although in this case all of the plundering is self inflicted and self directed as the two record their own two piece (guitar and
So this is where it all started. Those Woven Hand records we've raved about, the Sixteen Horsepower records that totally blew us away. All started right here. Olden collects Sixteen Horsepower's first two demos, as well as an early live show and some brief interview snippets with 16HP/Woven Hand front man David Eugene Edwards. Much more raw and immediate, and a little more lo-fi and less sonically adventurous, but lacking NONE of the biblical fury or musical brimstone that made later 16HP records so powerful. The two demo sessions on Olden are stripped down, loping waltzes, drunken slide guitars and wheezing bandeneons, shuffling drums and palpitating double bass, with banjos, jaw harps, and Edwards' Screamin' Jay Hawkins-meets-Michael Gira caffeinated preacher wail. Minor key and melodically tragic, dirgy and hypnotic, wild and calamatous, and occsionally slow, sad and creepy. This is gorgeous, timeless, American music. Equal parts country, folk, and rock, but delivered with such fervor, so intimate and personal, and with such brutal musical intensity, that the songs take on the gravity and urgency of sonic directives from some higher power.
We've long been champions of Mr. David Eugene Edwards, in both of his swampy apocalyptic folk ensembles, first the late great 16 Horsepower, and then later, his more personal, and seemingly more spiritual Woven Hand. As long time readers of the aQ list know, Edwards is like a modern day revivalist, conjuring up demons and darkness, death and pestilence, but simultaneously light and hope and sometimes even redemption. With a sound that shifts from stripped down and intimate, to dense and heavy and ominously rocking, the music of Edwards is easily some of the most powerful and passionate we've heard. Woven Hand played the aQuarius SXSW showcase, and our first impression was holy shit, these guys are HEAVY. And loud. And so intense. In fact, considering how many actual metal bands and super heavy rock bands played that showcase, it's pretty remarkable that WH might still have been the heaviest band in the lineup.
Secret South is one of our favorite 16HP records, originally released way back in 2000, and out of print for AGES, this was their first record after leaving their major label, and thus seems to be infused with an extraordinary amount of anger and darkness. This record is FIERCE, the classic 16HP lineup is on fire, the vocals incredible and impassioned, the guitars raw and rough, the drumming powerful, the bass thick and enveloping, strings moaning and singing, but the magic of 16HP is how all those elements are woven together, it's difficult to imagine a mere band could evoke this sort of ominous atmosphere, this sort of dread and darkness, this is so much more than music, it's energy in sound, it's sweat and blood rendered in notes and melodies. A swampy mysterious gothic folk, but infused with elements of classic bluegrass, dramatic cabaret, plenty of doom and gloom... You can check the aQ site for other reviews where we rave on and on and on about both 16HP and Woven Hand, needless to say, both bands are all time favorites around here, and Secret South ranks right up there as one of the best by either.
Both the cd version and the lp comes with a bonus dvd featuring the whole record in 5.1 surround sound DVD audio.
Bay area black metal masters Von were responsible for two of the most important USBM documents ever, the Satanic Blood and Blood Angel demos, considered by many to be the first US black metal record(s), and to this day, those records continue to inspire a legion of musical hordes, who strive to emulate that furious idiosyncratic raw that few can reproduce. What few people know, is that right after the release of those demos, the members of Von shifted their focus to another project, with a way different sound and vibe, called Sixx, which was anything but black metal, instead a dark, creepy, brooding, gothic deathrock, think Bauhaus, Christian Death, Specimen, all minor key spidery guitars, swirling dark ambience, pounding new wave drums, and of course, super dramatic crooned vocals.
It seems almost prescient, considering that this sound is enjoying a pretty serious resurgence these days: past Record Of The Weekers Soror Dolorosa, Hateful Abandon, Factums, Dial M For Murder, Cold Cave, Crystal Stilts, etc. But this demo, recorded in 1991, was as mentioned above, recorded hot on the heels of two of the most grim and raw, blasting black metal records ever! And while it may not directly inform the actual sound, it does speak to what a strange and special record the Sixx demo was and is. Chiming guitars and krauty rhythms, lots of reverb and delay, a dark brooding ambience, we hear lots of classic goth and darkwave and new wave, Kommunity FK, Human Drama, Tones On Tail, and the more we listen to it, the more the link between Sixx and Von crystallizes, both bands trafficked in simple stripped down songs, most with only one or two parts, vocals repetitive and mantric, in fact, in some ways, Sixx almost sounds like Von with all the distortion removed, right down to those classic Von goaty grunts. That said, just 'cause you like Von, doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Sixx, but if you dig that sound, and any of the above mentioned bands, then Sixx's Sister Devil might just be your lost reissue / rediscovered gem of the year.
It's so difficult for a doom band to carve out a totally unique sound. Slow, check. Downtuned, check. Plodding tempos, check. Growled vox, check. Nothing to do but get slower and lower, but you can only get so slow or so low, before the music stops being actual sound and instead turns into some sort of physical thing, like a big molten lump of mysterious blackness. Plus, odds are, in a name-that-tune style test, most of us would be hard pressed to tell one ultra doom band from another funereal doom band, or one doomdirgedrone outfit from another slow motion sludge combo. But then there's Skepticism, who even after 17 years, and some dramatic sonic shifts, still sound like no one else. Their warm washed out blend of chugging ultra low guitar and warm church organ-like keyboards, their haunting atmosphere and otherworldy production, sound like NOBODY else.
Way back in the beginning, the way we described Skepticism was like this: imagine a doom metal band jamming out in a church basement, while upstairs the organist practices, playing some haunting liturgical hymns, now imagine a recording made right outside the church's stone walls, so the metal is muted and murky, the pipe organ warm and thick and muffled, so weirdly heavy, but dreary and dreamy. We also at one point described Skepticism as black metal meets Labradford. Both are pretty accurate we think.
It's interesting that such a heavy, low end band would NOT have a bass player, but like all the other records, Skepticism employ just guitar, drums, and keyboards, but once you hear it, a bass would just muddy it up, the sound is already perfect, a dark shimmering heaviness as ethereal as it is crushing. The band's recordings gradually grew less lo-fi, thickening and becoming heavier and heavier, but without losing their distinctive sound. It's been 5 years since the last Skepticism record, Farmakon, and in that time, the band have once again subtly altered their sound, incorporating a bit more classic doom, a bit more propulsion as well, a little more 'chug', varying the sound more than ever, but around these new elements is still wrapped that thick, warm black Skepticism sonic monk cloak.
The strangest song is probably "March October", with its clean guitar, it's lurching chug, and it's almost drinking song like vocals, howled by a singer who we can't help but imagine is covered in sabre tooth tiger pelts, sporting a black beard to his waist, a massive mountain of a man, leading us on a brave march into certain death. The whole record is epic and majestic, funereal and crushing, morose, atmospheric and dismally, depressively beautiful. Anyone at all into bands like Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Boris, Khanate, Eyehategod, Cavity, Electric Wizard, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Thou, Trees, Otesanek, Fleshpress, Monarch, Nihill, Monument Of Urns, Atavist, Noothgrush, Catacombs, Winter, should either already love Skepticism, or should buy this, and then buy every single thing they've ever recorded, because as much as we love all of those bands, we just might love Skepticism the most...
Here's one of those crucial, seminal recordings that somehow (probably 'cause we were much less thorough about these things at the time of its release) never made it into our on-line catalog. Yet we often make reference to it, and have recommended other, subsequent albums by the band, including the recently-released "The Process Of Farmakon" cdep reviewed on list #142.
Happily, Red Stream has just reissued this album, the debut from Finnish doom-lords Skepticism, after some time out of print, and we now have a chance to list it for the first time! Originally issued in 1995, this 2002 version has been (slightly) redesigned graphics-wise but contains the same immense sonic slabs of funereal doom-trudge metal that so awed us seven years back. We hail this album as the ultimate "black-metal-meets-Labradford" listening experience. Totally morose, depressive, atmospheric ambience in heavy dirge death metal mode, with melodies to crush your soul. Medieval organ-like keyboards give this a grim, churchly air, and of course it sounds like it was recorded with the microphones quite distant from the instruments/amps, possibly in a nearby forest.
If like other Skepticism albums and/or are a fan of the likes of Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Burzum's "Filosofem", and other sad and gloomy things, you MUST OWN THIS. 'Nuff said.
