When we first heard Ireland's Solar Bears, for whatever reason we sort of pegged them as another eighties style retro Carpenter / Goblin worshipper, and while there is an element of that in what they do, and we of course LOVE that stuff, there's so much more going on, their sound at once futuristic, but also pastoral, droney and a little sci-fi, but also blissed out and a little new agey, organic and poppy, jangly and dreamy, an incredible mix of so many different sounds we love, which perhaps seem like they wouldn't work together, but somehow, She Was Coloured In ends up sounding practically perfect.
Beginning with a reverbed sample, laid over a murky lo-fi loop, and a skeletal bit of rhythmic skitter, the track blossoms with prismatic synth swirls, fuzzed out swells of distorted chordal shimmer, it's like some sort of shoegazey dreampop, before the track shifts into something almost funky, with fat fuzzy stuttery bass and some sci-fi soundtracky synth, which gives way to gorgeously hazy folky steel guitar strum, which in turn leads into some almost Ariel Pink sounding FM radio retro pop, all warm chiming melodies, vocodered vocals, low slung basslines and little flurries of guitar jangle.
As if it wasn't already good, starting with the third track, "Twin Stars", it gets even better, deep fuzzed out low end drones, thrum and throb, darkly melodic, then some programmed beats swoop in, looped and stuttery, some melancholy synth melodies surface, all very soundtracky, still more melodies, a counterpoint to the original melodies, all very emotional and intense and dramatic, until that gives way to swirly bit of Reichian synth loop shimmer that could go on forever. The title track begins with stately cellos, or cello-like synths, some woozy bass, lush melodic swells, and then the song transforms into some sort of post rock lope, chiming guitars simple drums, swoonsome strings, a little twang, a little psychedelic crunch, so lush and subtly epic, which leads directly into two minutes of glimmering new agey bliss in the form of "Head Supernova", which gradually transforms from muted murky thrum, to weirdly majestic pomp.
"Crystalline (Be Again)" is another strange hybrid, beginning as a minimal bit of subtle synth drift, before crunchy psychedelic guitars transport the track into the realm of propulsive space kraut drift, and then into tripped out new wave, more loping bass, swirling space age synths, looped riffs, building to a seriously soundtracky bit of retro futurism.
The record is so varied, and the sound so ever shifting, that it's difficult to describe without going track by track, yet for all of the record's varied sounds and songs, it all flows so perfectly, like the score for some lost sixties psychedelic film, or the soundtrack to some super strange European television show, so evocative and ethereal and atmospheric, but with moments of spaced out rocking, or blissy shoegazey drift, or hypnotic krautrock throb. Fluttering flutes intertwine with delicate Appalachian folk, strings soar and sing, tinkling chimes drift over sixties Stereolab style Europop, synths distort and crunch, and weave pulsing science fiction electronic groovescapes, with moments definitely reminding us of Zombi and Majeure, but then as quickly as those bits explode into action, they recede leaving gently lilting drifts of hushed new age folky ambience, or layered droney buzz, or even minimal soundtracky groovepop that reminds us of Rockford Kabine's audio experiments, elsewhere looped sixties vocals are layered over warped fuzz bass and shuffling percussion, strings slip and slide, house-y rhythms sink into thick swaths of sun dappled chordal crunch, and super sweet melodies swoop and soar above handclaps and clipped drum machine, a weirdly propulsive sunshiney electro space pop, and then finally, there's a gorgeously lush and somber closer, with reverbed piano, more flutes, simple strummed acoustic guitars, warm soft swells, building to a lush tangle of guitar melody and dark piano chord drift, eventually leaving just a bit of flute flecked layered and distorted dronemusic, finishing with the ka-chunk of the stop button being pressed on an old tape player, as if we were listening to some old tape, or even better, like we were listening to this very record, only in some alternate future, the future as envisioned by pretty much every eighties movie and TV show, one where where cassette tape technology was still the preferred method of audio playback, even in our flying cars, and automated houses.
We love this record.
As much as I love almost everything on Anticon, the two MC's who can seem to do no wrong are Dose One and Sole. And on this, Sole's sophmore full length, he proves himself to be the one true Anticon visionary. Like all the Anticon records that came before, the production is out of left field, totally off kilter with unlikely loops and bizarre samples. But the production manages to stay totally head nodding and super funky. Unlike the hyper-production-centric Def Jux camp, here it's ALL about the flow. And the flow is mind boggling, a stacatto and relentless avalanche of tongue twisting, verbally dense extrapolations on white boy blues, hip hop haters, as well as ruminations on all sorts of more esoteric topics. All delivered in a manic whine-y white boy drawl. This is most definitely the future of hip hop, lyrically challenging, musically complex, totally original and weird as fuck. A contender for 2003 record of the year and it's still only January!!
Our newest discovery, thanks to KMEL keeping us company as we tool around town, imagining that our crappy little tape deck is actually a 'boomin' system'. Sole manages to out-nasty even Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown. Wicked stuttering Timbaland style beats and streams of nasty sex style vitriol.
The first Solefald record 'The Linear Scaffold', knocked our fucking socks off. Furiously heavy and relentlessly crushing (with amazing cover art courtesy of Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum). So we were so excited for the arrival of their second album 'Neonism'
"We all know how difficult it is to cultivate good taste in music. If you do have good taste in music, of course you know about SOLEFALD! We are the only band in Metal music with good taste.
But what about the music? Do we laugh at our music? Of course not. We are Metal's sensitive guys. You know us. We can safely affirm that NOTHING is more serious than our music. Yes, correct! We can even affirm that nothing is more IMPORTANT than our music!
Our music is perfect. What does it mean that it is perfect? It means that you will die when you listen to it. Death will sweep you under Solefald's wings like seven winds sweep seven oak leaves swiftly away into the winter sky!
But we can assure you: You will not die if you listen to our advice. Solefald believe it helps talking about the things that hurt. How can we help you? It is nothing Solefald want more than to be able to help you. Sit down and relax. Have something to drink, and try to forget about death. If you still feel bad, let us talk about it.
We are good boys. Our music, though, is so perfect it is lethal. It is not our fault that we are just TOO good.
Solefald dream about a happy life for everybody. That is why we make an effort to warn you. We warn you because we care about you. Because we want to live with you and everybody else in the best of all possible worlds! Be reasonable, burn our album before it burns you.
We called it Red Music with Black Edges.
We called it Radical Designer Rock'n'Roll.
IT DID NOT HELP. THEY DIED ANYWAY."
If only all records were this unpredictable and exciting and kick ass. Andee's metal record of the year for sure!!
We love when weird stuff just shows up in the mail, especially when that weird stuff turns out to be some grim, rhythmic, experimental blackened industrial avant-noise, like this, the first we've heard from Solitary Torture, whose sound is tough to describe beyond the above. Somehow super varied, but woven into a strange black sonic ritual, beginning with whipping winds, and some glitched out primitive rhythms, which is soon swallowed up by a blast of howling heaviness, before transforming into a swirling psychedelic blacknoise freakout, moaning vocals, and gristly electronics. At that point, we were sort of expecting this to be a straight up noise record, but instead, the second track unveils a melancholy, buzz drenched black metal riff, but instead of exploding into your standard blasting metal, in stretches way out, for the length of the track, spaced out and truancy and minimal and super hypnotic, the final minute or two erupting into some speaker shredding crush.
The rest of the record splits its time between, grinding black electronica, post industrial thrum, woozy abstract black ambience, blurred grim riffage, strange minimal noise collages and dense, blasting blacknoise blowouts. Killer stuff for sure. Surprised this isn't on Crucial Blast.
Needless to say, we only got a tiny handful of these, so not sure if/when we'll be able to get more. Comes housed in a DVD style case, with two xeroxed black and white inserts.
Record number two from Canadian black metal depressives Sombres Forets, whose debut, was definitely one of our favorite black metal records of last year. A gorgeous blown out miserablist wash of black buzz that definitely gave other aQ faves like Make A Change� Kill Yourself, Xasthur and Burzum, a run for their money.
This disc takes that frosty washed out black sound and pushes it even further out, buzzier, fuzzier, more distorted and even more dreamlike. The brief opener sets the stage, thick swirls of keyboards throb and swell, the sound so blown out the notes distort as if burning from within, a sweet sad melody, wreathed in distortion and reverb, that quickly gives way to he record proper, the guitars thick and buzz drenched, churning over a wash of melancholy keyboards, which soar dramatically like a chorus of angels, adding a strange Arvo Part-ish vibe to the proceedings. But even minus those keyboards, the songs here, much like on the last record, are so moody and melancholy, but still super intense and powerful. Some tracks feature acoustic guitar interludes, with the acoustic guitar continuing on into the song proper, winding itself in and around the loping buzz.
The production is strange, at once thick and heavy, but also a bit murky and gauzy, the effect being that the record seems a bit blurred, a little washed out, which only adds to the lonely dreamy quality. Strip away the vokills, and the distortion, and these songs would most likely reveal themselves as heartbreaking minimal folk ballads, or depressive pop gems, but dip them in filth, wrap them in distortion, and run them through with harsh howls, and suddenly, your wallowing in some epic, majestic, depressive blackness. The final track is quite strange as well, all acoustic, a simple strummed minor key progression, peppered with occasional flurries of floor tom, some cymbal shimmer, but for the most part, simple and stripped down and strangely striking.
First we've heard from this new local label, and the debut recording from Some Ember, aka Dylan Travis, who was laid up after an accident, and decided to spend his settlement on a bunch of gear (and from the sounds here, he must have been on plenty of pain killers too!), building this record from scratch, and learning to record in the process, but you'd never know it from the results. It's a dark, lush landscape of brooding, swirling post punk cold wave minimalism, all pulsing muted synths, spare percussion, shimmery atmospheres, thick, crumbling industrial swells, hushed melancholic melodies, all blurred into a murky, washed out dirge pop dreamscape, sounding a bit like a more lysergic Talk Talk, driven by Travis' vocals which at times sound like Danzig covering Scott Walker, and at others like some impossible hybrid of Antony and Dave Gahan, soaring and passionate, emotive and dramatic, we really weren't prepared to dig this as much as we do. Fantastic!
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
Yeah yeah yeah, everybody LOVES Wilco. Critics, Fans, everybody. So experimental. So creative. Such heartbreaking magical music. Hey, we love Wilco too. But there was a time, not all that long ago, when Jeff Tweedy, the man behind Wilco, was at least to most of us, the weaker half of the only alt country band that ever mattered. The band whose first album's title (No Depression) became the new name for alt country. Tweedy was merely the whiney vocal foil to Jay Farrar's world weary, whiskey soaked drawl. Sure Tweedy sang some great songs, but Farrar was the voice that MADE Uncle Tupelo, the band he shared with Tweedy. After Uncle Tupelo split, Tweedy went on to front Wilco, and Farrar went on to form his own group, Son Volt. The first Son Volt record was amazing, sort of an extension of Uncle Tupelo, Farrar's voice still so perfect and stirring, framed by kick ass country rock, sometimes soulful and stirring, acoustic and laid back, sometimes rambunctious and rocking. Tweedy's Wilco headed in decidedly more experimental directions, and it suited them, they got weirder and way more interesting, with the band and the songs and the sounds providing the focus, while Tweedy's vocals became just a part of the big picture. But as Son Volt progressed, something started to go wrong, the slow songs sounded too syrupy, the rocking songs began to sound cheesy, the attempts at sounding experimental sounded forced. But the thing was, every record contained at least two or three perfect jems. Gorgeous modern takes on classic bluegrass, full on Crazy Horse style rockers, all with Farrar's amazing vocals, emotive and laconic, soulful intense. Serious classics! So this comp is practically perfect. If it wasn't a compilation, it might just be the ultimate Son Volt record. In fact it sort of still is! Included are the four best tracks from Trace (the first Son Volt album), the best tracks from all the rest, as well as compilation tracks and a handful of unreleased tracks and demos. Loads of photos and liner notes. Both Cup and Andee have been playing this constantly in the store! So good!
Alan Sondheim is a legendary writer and critic, he's also quite the accomplished musician, his fantastic Ritual-All-7-70 album was recently reissued on ESP which we should get around to reviewing quite soon. This collaborative effort is in fact not archival but a brand new record, released on the insanely prolific and always impressive Porter Records, on Julu Twine Sondheim teamed up with lap steel guitarist Myk Freedman for some improvised folk, that manages to bristle with energy, sounding quite abstract at moments, but surprisingly composed at others.
Incorporating a unique arsenal of instruments, including zither, banjo slide guitar and even something called a parlor guitar, the duo crafted this gorgeous songsuite, the playing is often quite percussive, and aggressive, subtle strumming and abstract finger picking is all tangled up with intense strumming, and atonal scrabbling, here and there the instruments are wreathed in thick buzzing feedback, other times the melodies are spidery and abstract and allowed to unfurl lazily. Sondheim contributes a kick ass banjo solo, that sounds simultaneously like classic bluegrass, but also slightly chaotic and seat-of-the-pants sounding. Freedman counters with a gorgeously languid slide guitar solo, all drifty and woozy and ethereal, but the record works best when the two play together, and off of each other. Lots of reverb and room sound, strange haunting Eastern sounding melodies, occasional squalls of detuned hillbilly psych freakouts, stumbling lurching atonal melodies drifting into soft shimmering avant Appalachia, squiggly slippery slide wound all around off kilter chromatic riffing, and once in a while, the two come together perfectly and unfurl a warm washed out drone-y guitar raga, that we wish would just go on and on and on.
Everyone into Blackshaw and Rose and Bishop and Baldwin and Ahmed And Akiyama and other modern acoustic guitarists should definitely check this out. Same sort of sound, but way more tripped out and otherworldly and mysterious and jazzlike. RECOMMENDED!!!
A few lists back we raved about a recently released 7" from a now defunct local band called the Sopors, who seemingly disappeared without a trace, they were part of the same scene that brought us pop heroes the Ovens, and post Sopors, some of the same members went on to play in Violent Change, whose debut tape we reviewed a while back too. And as much as we love that Sopors 7", and we really do, it barely scratches the surface of what an amazing and bizarre band the Sopors really were. This lp, most of the copies of which reside in boxes and beneath beds and in closets, is the sort of dizzyingly ramshackle and inadvertently brilliant record that inspires extreme music nerdery and slavish fanaticism, and we're not ashamed to admit that we're pretty goddamn obsessed with these guys, and it breaks out heart that they never got their due. Listening to this record now, we're compelled to proclaim these guys our favorite local band, it's catchy as fuck, but totally damaged and off kilter, it seems to us, that the people who lose their shit for Sic Alps and other sonically similar groups, should feel similarly about these guys. Of all the bands who channel that twisted post punk sound, a la Swell Maps, the Fall, Television Personalities, early Pavement, we really haven't heard anyone do it better than these guys, the fact that every song sounds like its on the verge of collapse only makes it that much better. Pop hooks galore, crazy catchy melodies, but all wreathed in angular guitar crunch, blown out lo-fi buzz, the drums so low in the mix they're often inaudible, the whole recording brittle and lo-fi, and tinny and in-the-red, but somehow, all of that stuff becomes a part of the Sopors' sound, a sound which is gloriously fucked up and just about the catchiest shit we've heard in ages.
Some of the tracks here sound like lost eighties Yellow Pills style post punk power pop B sides, while others sound like some obscure British angular punk rock, and still others sound like bedroom 4-track indie pop, others almost sound like classic punk rock a la 999 or Stiff Little Fingers, all clanging crashing chords and gruff vox, but EVERY song here is impossibly catchy, some are so catchy it's impossible to believe they're not covers. Not sure what else to say, we're kind of obsessed with these guys, and have been listening to little else.
If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands, or have been loving that Violent Change tape, or love the Ovens, but wish they were more noisy and off kilter and twisted and fucked up, or just want to hear what we would make our record of the year, if it actually come out this year, then dig it! WAY WAY WAY recommended.
Sorc'Henn's last disc, Harmonium Pieces & Dead Reveries, which was released on Faunsabbatha, the more 'metal' sub label of Ruralfaune, wasn't actually a metal record, more a dark dronescape, whirring expanses of Lustmordian Wolf Eyes style post industrial buzzing black shimmer.
This latest Sorc'henn disc, released on Crucial Bliss (another sub-label, this time of Crucial Blast) is even more removed from anything metal. And in many ways anything dark. At least the 21 minute opener, which plays out like an Argento soundtrack composed by Oval, all shimmering layers, and skipping cds, looped ambience, that glimmer and glistens, a bit of Philip Jeck, a little Tim Hecker, all fuzzy and crackly melodies locked into haunting loops, while over the top, a child's voice whispers, and in the background bits of bird song. Truly creepy, but simultaneously quite lovely, totally mesmerizing, would have been happy if this track was stretched out to fill the whole disc. Odds are you'll find yourself listening to it over and over, luxuriating in its haunting mystery, eyes closed, picturing some old crumbling estate, surrounded by dark forests, a child peeking from the heavy curtains in an upstairs window.
After that, the sound gets even more fuzzed out and crackly, a warm washed out hiss, speckled with bits of crackle and pop, a slowly unfurling minimal melody way off in the distance, the sound of thundering low end drifting by like black clouds, warm whirring organs, bits of electronic glitch, deep throbbing reverberating buzz, all leading up to the 27 minute long final track, a totally demented black musickal ritual, deep rumbles, growled Darth Vader like invokations, bits of industrial clatter, squalls of hiss, whirling streaks of effects, detuned guitars, woozy melodies, thick waves of crumbling buzz, slivers of feedback, creaking and groaning machinelike ambience, distorted chimes, disembodied vocals howling and moaning, a truly harrowing black and bleak soundscape, finishing off with a brief snippet of an old timey French piano ballad, adding even more mystery to the song's already eerie and mystical vibe.
Like all the Crucial Bliss releases, packaged in a cool 3 panel full color fold over sleeve.
Okay, Sore Throat are one of our favorite bands. EVER. But for ages their shit has been impossible to track down. Crusty, heavy, fast and furious, stupid, goofy, political, pissy, snarky, clever, wasted, and musically unbeatable. They were cramming hundreds of songs on to 7"s before Anal Cunt was even a bad idea. BUT, and this is the big but here, we tried to get a ton of these to list, and managed to only get 5. But we wanted to give at least a few folks on the list a chance to experience the fucked up grindcrust joy of the mighty Sore Throat. So be prepared to be disappointed. Only the crazy dudes up at 2am on Friday maniacally watching the aQ site for the update will probably be able to snag these, but you never know. Fear not though. There are some upcoming reissues, which we'll be able to get plenty of, enough for everybody. But for now, 5 of you are in luck, get ready, get set go...
Oh yeah, the record. A cd compilation of some super rare demos, 83 songs in all, furious crusty metallic anarcho grind. Comes with an extensive booklet, some inserts and a Sore Throat patch!
We were originally trying to track down enough of these to make it Record Of The Week, arguably one of the greatest records from one of the greatest, most ridiculous and utterly genius crust / grind / noisecore bands EVER. Maybe described as Anal Cunt crossed with Napalm Death, or early Carcass via Lawnmower Deth, or Amebix crossed with Electro Hippies, or something equally ridiculous and nonsensical. Andee bought a copy when he was in Japan, and considered the whole trip a huge success, based on his procurement of said cd, which should definitely give you an idea of the sort of high regard we hold this glorious piece of sonic filth in around here.
Sore Throat were born of the same scene that produced Carcass, Napalm Death and the various other legendary early Earache bands, but the group were extremely opposed to commercialism in all forms and took great pains to musically talk shit and call bullshit on bands they considered to be sell outs, even bands on their own label. Frontman Rich Walker, who would later go on to play in doom metal outfit Solstice and runs the Miskatonic Foundation label, was a legendary shit talker, who purposefully alienated bands, labels and whole scenes, which only made Sore Throat that much more fun to listen to, and fun to see piss of all the bands around them, in that way they were sort of like a proto Anal Cunt, and in fact, the A side of this, their final record, Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid, definitely set the template for Anal Cunt and other noisecore outfits, short sharp blasts of chaotic noise, many as short as a few seconds, 90 songs in 22 minutes, so many that they're all clumped together so as to not exceed the limit of 99 songs on the cd, all these brief blurts and blasts laced with weird buzzes and bleats, strange effects, processed vocals, bizarre samples, the sound often drenched in effects and reverb or totally dubbed out. It may be noisy and brutal and blown out, but it's also weirdly listenable, and we often find ourselves listening to the whole of side A, a twisted fragmented noise grind songsuite that NO band since has come close to matching. In fact if this disc was just those 22 minutes, it would still be worth it. But this disc also includes the rest of the Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid record, which displays the band's other side, longer songs, midtempo, crusty doomy punk rock, more like Amebix or Doom (which featured members of Sore Throat) or Antisect, churning and heavy, dirgey and crusty, swaggery and snotty.
As if that weren't already enough grinding crusty noisy bliss, the rest of the disc is filled up with Sore Throat's equally ruling first full length Unhindered By Talent, which is way more punky and thrashy, pounding d-beats, grinding riffage, bellowed vox, wild squiggly guitar solos, but the band was already well on their way to being grind/noisecore legends, with Unhindered featuring tons of sub 30 second songs, with 14 or 15 not even cracking the 10 second mark, plenty of goofy stuff too (a killer, warped reinterpretation of Sabbath's "Iron Man" called "iron Lung"), but also some seriously fierce heaviness, some of it easily some of the best punkmetal crust EVER.
Needless to say, TOTALLY RECOMMENDED, cool artwork with extensive liner notes and lyrics, and be warned, it took us ages to get enough copies to list, so when we run out, it might take us a while to get more, if we even can.
The processes of the mysterious composer / sound sculptor Soriah are almost as interesting as the strange and otherworldly music he creates. The live performance, the setting, is often a spiritual complement to the composition itself, taking place in haunted tunnels, in treetops, in the deserts, in churches, all adding to the mysterious ceremonial aspect of each piece, as do the extensive costumes, head-dresses, totems, tribal garments, all combined with Soriah's background in Butoh, Yoga and other ritualistic practices, lend his music a timeless and mysterious air. A dark pagan dance of drones and dark ambience.
After numerous, super limited, self published and hand made art editions, this is Soriah's first proper release, and it's totally breathtaking. Two lengthy pieces, for vocals, pipe organ and effects, Soriah conjures up a haunting sonic otherworld, drifting, dreamy, menacing and malefic, a rumbling, whirring
dark ambient dronescape, thick with the natural timbre of the wheezing pipe organ, and dense with subtle overtones from the various vocals. A deft mash up of ancient classical musicks and modern experimental drone based minimalism, a heady blend of Messiaen, Mirror, Coleclough, Dead Can Dance, Jacula, Niblock, and Eastern ragas. A dusty old pipe organ, built in 1881, lays the groundwork, a rich, thick, multilayered bed, subtle overtones, rich swirling drones, notes and melodies shimmer and beat against each other, creating strange movements, a thick wash of chordal whir that pulses and breathes like it was alive.
The organ is intertwined with various vocals, sometimes crooning, alien and operatic, but more often an impossibly low-end rumble, a dense and deep Tuvan style throat singing, buzzing and multilayered, more like some strange long stringed instrument than a human voice. Crumbling and corrosive, but at the same time soothing and ethereal. The vocals drifting through various effects, become smears and stretches that blend and blur into the overall droneworld.
Definitely one of the darkest and dreamiest drone records in recent memory, and all the more compelling in that this is not just a simple tone or set of tones, slowly shifting, know this is a rich and vibrant live ritual, you can feel the organ vibrate, the vocals curl around you like some ripe exotic smoke, this music is alive, soft and inviting, but dangerous and dreamlike. A bit like SUNNO))) armed only with church organs, and accompanied by Huun-Huur-Tu, a massive physical drone, a huge deliriously suffocating wall of rumble, like laying at the bottom of a pit, eyes closed, and being buried alive by soft sound. So good.
Record number two from this unlikely black metal offshoot. Which makes sense when you realize that the black metal band that Soror Dolorosa frontman Andy Julia calls home, as drummer, is none other than the twisted French 'faerical blasting punk' outfit Nuit Noire. But even that band's outsider barely black metal status couldn't have prepared us for Soror Dolorosa, which is only black in that it's the color of the clothes, and the black eyeliner these guys don, as they unfurl some fantastically retro gloom/goth/death rock, that as we mentioned in our review of their first album, sounds SO genuinely gothic, that we're guessing even some gothrock veterans could be fooled into thinking these guys were from back in the day. We mentioned groups like Christian Death, Specimen, The March Violets, the Virgin Prunes, we'd probably add the Abecedarians, and Kommunity FK, and heck why not Bauhaus and Joy Division and even Interpol. Cuz for all the retro eighties worship and gloom pop revivalism, NOBODY does it as good as these guys, right down to the bass tone, to the deep crooned dramatic vocals, the meandering spacious compositions, loping and low slung, spidery guitar melodies, simple propulsive drumming, lush reverby production, and gorgeous songs, not heavy, not weird, just dark and dreamy and dramatic, channeling classic cold wave and goth rock bands of the past, creating their own contemporary death rock sound that owes as much to the Cure as it does to the more subterranean goth rock of old.
Unlike their first record, which seemed to retain much of the urgency and raw energy of the black metal scene that birthed them, this latest album is simultaneously more polished and more restrained, less crunch, and buzz, and more shimmer and jangle, the verses unwinding and meandery, the choruses epic and majestic, but still restrained and minimal. And the songs too might be even catchier, but subtly so. There's no overt immediate hit like "Beau Suicide" from the first record, but instead, ALL of the tracks here blossom on repeated listens into the sort of songs that get played to death, and make it on to that break up mix tape, dour and dark, and miserably blissed out.
The song "Soror Dolorosa" almost cribs the exact bass line from the Abecedarians' biggest hit, but here, the band instead stretch it out, and pile on layer after layer, keening guitar melodies, a dark melancholy croon, clouds of cymbal shimmer, until the song slips into a woozy bit of softly tribal drift, all warm guitar whirl, before launching into a darkly propulsive gloom rock churn. Our favorite track though might be closer "Broken Wings", which almost sounds like the best Katatonia song ever, but slowed way down, with all the distortion stripped away, the dramatic vocals so powerful and moving, the guitars thick and textural, all the while a thick driving bass line pulsing beneath the surface, a dark, doomy goth pop dirge that plays out like some miserablist slowdance moperock, cinematic in it's own way, evoking wandering in the pouring rain, watching the city lights blink off one at a time, of heartbreak, of loss and even death, a gorgeously lush yet emotionally bleak ballad, that is the perfect finish for this modern gloompop/gothrock classic.
Soror Dolorosa is a band that will confound many of those trolling the internet for any number of '80s deathrock / darkwave obscurities. You could easily slip Soror Dolorosa - with its Goth name, its monochromatic artwork, the theatrical vocals, the rhythmic savagery - next to the likes of Christian Death, Specimen, The March Violets, and The Virgin Prunes, and none would be the wiser. Of all the '80s references to make, Clair Obscure (while very well, obscure) is probably the closest, if that French band had been much better in grafting songs to match the ritualistic deathrock throb.
The biggest surprise here might not in fact be that this is new and not some archival eighties lost gem, but that it is in fact the project of Nuit Noire drummer Andy Julia, who has also played in Peste Noire, Mutiilation and other grim black combos. None of which would at all prepare you for the glorious cold wave miserablism found here, Julia has such a distinctive croon, and the band conjure up such an amazing batcave new wave gloom, it sounds like it has to be from the eighties.
The guitars shimmer and chime, the bass is thick and throbbing, the drums are simple and propulsive, the sounds is spacious, lots of reverb and delay, but it's all about the vocals, a mournful dramatic croon, somewhere between Ian Curtis and Andrew Eldritch. In fact, this totally channels the spirit of the Sisters Of Mercy, as well as the Virgin Prunes, the Fields Of The Nephilim, the Cure all that awesomely epic gothic darkness we grew up on.
But as we know, it's easy to just emulate a sound, any band can sound like their favorite band of old, that phenomenon is responsible for at least several scenes and sounds. But that music, that classic sound, is as much about songs as it is about sounds. We often lament, that songwriting seems to have been supplanted by the mere act of being in a band, of making the right noises.
And it's in that way that Soror Dolorosa stand out from all the other cold wave wannabes, they write amazing songs, filled with incredible melodies, hooks galore, the basslines as memorable as the vocal lines, dramatic, intense, personal, emotional, the vocals oozing with pathos, the songs themselves rife with parts and pieces that are incredibly catchy, when the vocals drop out, you're still hearing them in your head, you find yourself humming along to the bass, or slipping away from the vocals and getting lost in the shimmering reverbed riffage.
The whole record is fantastic, but opener "Beau Suicide" is maybe one of our favorite cold wave jams ever, past or present, so dark and driving, with a main riff to die for (the sort of riff Interpol has spent their whole career trying to come up with), a cool jagged angular guitar freakout midway through, an incredible and impossibly melodic bassline, and one of the coolest, most intense, and unforgettable vocal lines, so good. Just this track gets played so much in the store it's beginning to feel like the aQ theme song. Then there's the nearly 12 minute closing track "American Chronicle", a lilting, super dramatic gloom pop epic, with long stretches of dour drift, the guitar unfurling gorgeous echoey melodies, the vocals more emotional and anguished than anywhere on the record, which is strange, since the music is perhaps the prettiest and most melodic.
Needless to say, absolutely required listening for folks who like their pop gloomy, their eighties revivalists depressive and dark, and who count any of the above mentioned bands in their personal pantheon. And while we love the current revival of lo-fi new wave goth garage pop, Cold Cave, Blank Dogs, Gary War, Zola Jesus, etc... Soror Dolorosa has supplanted them all and now seems to be the record we can NOT stop listening to.
Sometimes we forget that not everyone has been closely reading our list/website for the past six or eight years...or the past six months, even. That causes us to mistakenly assume y'all know about older releases that we stock. Why do we mention this? Well, recently Andee sold a bunch of copies of the very first releases on his tUMULt label (that came out five years ago) to a distro, who listed them on their website as "new in stock" and thereby sold a bunch...to people we know, who are regular AQ customers, who just happened to have missed the SA cds the first time we listed them way back when. So...we thought we'd better give everybody another chance to pick up from us these amazing, all time AQ favorites!
Long overdue reissue of these amazing and long out of print LPs by Chicago's Souled American, a band unfortunate enough to have helped create a genre that effectively didn't yet exist. But by the time 'alternative country' had caught the attention of the music buying public and helped rock audiences overcome their fear of country music, Rough Trade had already collapsed (leaving them with no label, and basically no records) and the band had already withdrawn from the public eye so effectively, that even their most stalwart fans assumed the worst.
Fe and Flubber, their first two records, find them exploring rock music from a distinctly country/bluegrass perspective. The result is a wholly original sound, true to the tradition, but weird enough to keep them a sort of band's band for years, blending plaintive, heartfelt, on-the-verge-of-cracking Neil Young-ish vocals, warm but angular guitars, and probably their most unique characteristic; the bass, dubby and underwater, slippery and otherworldly. Anyone who likes Palace, Uncle Tupelo, Songs:Ohia, Rex, or John Prine, will love these records.
Around the Horn and Sonny find Souled American slowing down and becoming more introspective, shedding band members and discarding un-needed sounds to arrive at their own essence of folk/bluegrass/country; dark, lugubrious, glacial sounds of country past, lost loves, mines and ghost towns. While still essential for fans of Palace and Uncle Tupelo, now even fans of Low, Labradford, Godspeed, and Kranky records will find themselves irresistably drawn to, and slowly enveloped by the murk and mist.
Our esteemed co-worker Andee founded tUMULt because he wanted to see this records reissued. All four cds have been lovingly remastered, have new artwork and Around the Horn is a cd rom, containing a never before seen video for "In the Mud". When you buy both volumes (4 cds!) they come in a beautiful slipcase.
Sometimes we forget that not everyone has been closely reading our list/website for the past six or eight years...or the past six months, even. That causes us to mistakenly assume y'all know about older releases that we stock. Why do we mention this? Well, recently Andee sold a bunch of copies of the very first releases on his tUMULt label (that came out five years ago) to a distro, who listed them on their website as "new in stock" and thereby sold a bunch...to people we know, who are regular AQ customers, who just happened to have missed the SA cds the first time we listed them way back when. So...we thought we'd better give everybody another chance to pick up from us these amazing, all time AQ favorites!
Long overdue reissue of these amazing and long out of print LPs by Chicago's Souled American, a band unfortunate enough to have helped create a genre that effectively didn't yet exist. But by the time 'alternative country' had caught the attention of the music buying public and helped rock audiences overcome their fear of country music, Rough Trade had already collapsed (leaving them with no label, and basically no records) and the band had already withdrawn from the public eye so effectively, that even their most stalwart fans assumed the worst.
Fe and Flubber, their first two records, find them exploring rock music from a distinctly country/bluegrass perspective. The result is a wholly original sound, true to the tradition, but weird enough to keep them a sort of band's band for years, blending plaintive, heartfelt, on-the-verge-of-cracking Neil Young-ish vocals, warm but angular guitars, and probably their most unique characteristic; the bass, dubby and underwater, slippery and otherworldly. Anyone who likes Palace, Uncle Tupelo, Songs:Ohia, Rex, or John Prine, will love these records.
Around the Horn and Sonny find Souled American slowing down and becoming more introspective, shedding band members and discarding un-needed sounds to arrive at their own essence of folk/bluegrass/country; dark, lugubrious, glacial sounds of country past, lost loves, mines and ghost towns. While still essential for fans of Palace and Uncle Tupelo, now even fans of Low, Labradford, Godspeed, and Kranky records will find themselves irresistably drawn to, and slowly enveloped by the murk and mist.
Our esteemed co-worker Andee founded tUMULt because he wanted to see this records reissued. All four cds have been lovingly remastered, have new artwork and Around the Horn is a cd rom, containing a never before seen video for "In the Mud". When you buy both volumes (4 cds!) they come in a beautiful slipcase.
BACK IN STOCK AGAIN!!
By now, if you've been paying any attention, you know how much we love Souled American. So much that Andee even started his tUMULt label specifically to re-release their first four albums. (Really!) So once again we're super excited to have gotten a handful of copies of their last record, Notes Campfire, back in. Notes Campfire is record number six, and finds Souled American at their most lugubrious, their stoned glacial country at its very slowest and introspective. Which is saying a lot for the masters of stoned deconstructed skeletal country folk. But Notes Campfire is indeed the dreamiest and darkest of all their recordings, shimmering guitars ripple endlessly into the ether, achingly mournful about-to-crack vocals hover like disembodied spirits in SA's wintery musical forest. Creeping and slithering, warbly and tenuous, these songs are barely there impressions of what was once a country rock band, wispy smoky shapes, dreamy and luminescent halos of distant twang and soulful introspection. Still manages to kick ass over almost any slowcore / no depression / alt. country we've ever heard. Fans of Palace and Songs:Ohia and stuff like that owe it to themselves to check Souled American out if they haven't already.
Sublime Frequencies record number two from the mind blowing Omar Souleyman! In reviewing the last Souleyman disc we compared the sound to something resembling a Middle Eastern Aavikko, which if you're anything like us, sounds AMAZING. Totally over the top chaotic world music rife with soaring strings, cheesy eighties drum machines, wild synths, and amazing buzzing saz melodies, and if anything this new disc is even more over the top.
More than ever, Souleyman's music sounds very Bollywood, festive, wild, sweaty, energized, intense and relentless, rooted around rhythm, the various melodies and vocals slither and swirl, unfurling woozy Eastern melodies over the non stop beat. It's definitely dance music, and party music, just not the sort of dance / party music we're used to.
The recording is fantastic too, very lo-fi, the texture and timbre of the sound shifting constantly, from murky and muddy, to bright and brilliant, could be that these cuts were culled from various tapes recorded and released over the past decade, but that only adds to the fun, and if it's anything, this music is fun. Funky, groovy, and fun fun fun. Sometimes the melodies are so rapid fire it begins to sound like some sort of alien video game music, then moments later it will slip into something darker and folkier, before exploding again into a wild burst of psychedelic dance chaos! Dabke apparently is a style of music, THIS music, a kind of party music rarely heard outside of Syria, as it's considered not important enough to export, but as far as we're concerned this is some of the most amazing music we've ever heard. For more background info on Souleyman, check the review of the older record on the aQ site, plenty of background on his life and his music, but it's hardly necessary, the sounds here definitely speak for themselves, and what they're saying, is buy this record now! It's so so so so so essential. And heck, while you're at it, you might as well pick up the other one as well (which is now available on vinyl!) if you haven't already, they both completely rule!
We're not sure how a live Omar Souleyman record differs from any of his other records, which were all essentially recorded live, but these shows are distinctive for one reason in particular, they all took place in the West, in front of audiences outside of the Middle East, who most likely had never seen anything like it. And we were lucky enough to see Souleyman perform here in San Francisco, and we were blown away. The sound was incredible, that tangled Eastern psychedelic sound that is already so propulsive and rhythmic and mesmerizing, but cranked through a MASSIVE sound system, and suddenly, it was as if that was how it was supposed to sound all along. And to see a whole sweaty throng of SF hipsters, from punks to metalheads, losing their shit, and dancing wildly to these weird and wonderful sounds, it was pretty inspiring. We couldn't help but wonder how Souleyman felt, performing in these big dance clubs, maybe it just seemed strange to us, cuz really we can't imagine any crowd, no matter how big or small resisting these incredible grooves. So here are a handful of live performances, from America, Australia, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the UK and Denmark, all of the tracks here finding Souleyman in fine form, the music lively and wildly chaotic, psychedelic and groovy.
One thing this live record does gives us the chance to focus on is Souleyman's keyboardist / percussionist, Rizan Sa'id, who when we saw Souleyman, almost stole the show. Sure Souleyman was the master of ceremonies, pacing the stage, clapping and singing, hyping the crowd, but then off to the side was Sa'id, going totally nuts on the keyboard, providing ALL of the music, a veritable one man band, playing wild melodies, looping rhythms, triggering big rib cage rattling beats, but the best part was his keyboard had little drum pads, and all of those flurries of Middle Eastern percussion, those are actually being played live, his hands a blur over the keyboard, unfurling wild rhythmic tangles. We literally could not take our eyes off him. On these tracks, those two are joined by an electric saz player, who adds another glorious layer of psychedelic buzz, and as you might imagine, this is incredible, and fantastic and totally and utterly transcendent. Fans will want this for sure, and it's definitely a perfect introduction to Souleyman's spiritual sonic magic, and by all means, if you get the chance to see this stuff live, you won't be sorry!!
RELEASED ON VINYL FOR RECORD STORE DAY! Just a few copies remaining. Here's what we said about the cd version of this when we made it a Record Of The Week in 2010:
We'll admit, we're a sucker for Sublime Frequencies, they've yet to release a record that didn't totally blow our minds. Which says as much about SF's curating as it does about the unheard music worldwide. Treasures everywhere, amazing and passionate and personal and far out sounds, being made in homes and yards, on street corners, in bars, at picnics and parties, not conceived for public consumption, meant for a small audience, and often for a specific purpose, getting a glimpse into these magical musical moments is what Sublime Frequencies is all about, and we feel lucky to get to experience these sounds.
This is the third record from Omar Souleyman on Sublime Frequencies, and just might be the best one yet, which is saying A LOT. A collection of live recordings culled from nearly 15 years worth of cassettes, these tracks are incredible, energetic, passionate, so full of life, effusive and emotional, funky and celebratory, and to Western ears, seriously far out. There's almost a wild Bollywood vibe (even though this is from the Middle East, not India), in the vocals, and the rhythms, and with the crazy tangled synthesizer melodies, the propulsive drumming, and Souleyman's distorted, wailed vocal delivery, it all sounds just so perfect, even listening to this music on record, it sounds sweaty and exhausting and cathartic, it's easy to imagine a big crowd of people dancing and bouncing along, freed from all cares and concerns letting the music just carry them away.
Like all Sublime Frequencies releases, the liner notes offer up so much information, on Souleyman, his life, the history of Syria, on Syrian folk music, etc, but even without all that info, if it's just about the music, these are some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear. Frantic Eastern melodies, frenetic percussion, analog synths wound around Souleyman's vocals, this is party music, dance music, but not like party or dance music the way we normally think about it. The music of Souleyman is transcendent, spiritual, psychedelic, transformative, a folk pop known as Dabke, rarely heard in the West, perhaps not at all if it wasn't for Sublime Frequencies, and we'd imagine these sounds might be overwhelming for casual world music listeners, it is after all wild and frantic and relentless, the melodies complex and twisted and tangled, there are some moments that verge on folky for sure, the final track is a gorgeous haunting lament, just vocals and buzzing synthesizers, but barring that track, even on the folkier jams, those strange synths, the unique melodies, the repetitive tranced out rhythms, those all transform Souleyman's folk into something much more, and in most cases, it's not long before the band explodes into yet another super intense sweat soaked psychedelic Syrian folk pop workout. So great!
We'll admit, we're a sucker for Sublime Frequencies, they've yet to release a record that didn't totally blow our minds. Which says as much about SF's curating as it does about the unheard music worldwide. Treasures everywhere, amazing and passionate and personal and far out sounds, being made in homes and yards, on street corners, in bars, at picnics and parties, not conceived for public consumption, meant for a small audience, and often for a specific purpose, getting a glimpse into these magical musical moments is what Sublime Frequencies is all about, and we feel lucky to get to experience these sounds.
This is the third record from Omar Souleyman on Sublime Frequencies, and just might be the best one yet, which is saying A LOT. A collection of live recordings culled from nearly 15 years worth of cassettes, these tracks are incredible, energetic, passionate, so full of life, effusive and emotional, funky and celebratory, and to Western ears, seriously far out. There's almost a wild Bollywood vibe (even though this is from the Middle East, not India), in the vocals, and the rhythms, and with the crazy tangled synthesizer melodies, the propulsive drumming, and Souleyman's distorted, wailed vocal delivery, it all sounds just so perfect, even listening to this music on record, it sounds sweaty and exhausting and cathartic, it's easy to imagine a big crowd of people dancing and bouncing along, freed from all cares and concerns letting the music just carry them away.
Like all Sublime Frequencies releases, the liner notes offer up so much information, on Souleyman, his life, the history of Syria, on Syrian folk music, etc, but even without all that info, if it's just about the music, these are some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear. Frantic Eastern melodies, frenetic percussion, analog synths wound around Souleyman's vocals, this is party music, dance music, but not like party or dance music the way we normally think about it. The music of Souleyman is transcendent, spiritual, psychedelic, transformative, a folk pop known as Dabke, rarely heard in the West, perhaps not at all if it wasn't for Sublime Frequencies, and we'd imagine these sounds might be overwhelming for casual world music listeners, it is after all wild and frantic and relentless, the melodies complex and twisted and tangled, there are some moments that verge on folky for sure, the final track is a gorgeous haunting lament, just vocals and buzzing synthesizers, but barring that track, even on the folkier jams, those strange synths, the unique melodies, the repetitive tranced out rhythms, those all transform Souleyman's folk into something much more, and in most cases, it's not long before the band explodes into yet another super intense sweat soaked psychedelic Syrian folk pop workout. So great!
Man, have I been waiting for something like this for years. A massive mega mix of classic drum and bass / jungle / dancehall. Takes me back quite a few years when jungle was brand new (to us at least). When finding jungle 12"s was a challenge and even finding clubs that played jungle was practically impossible. A bunch of us (often with AQ pal Lesser in tow) would go to local bars and just sit in the corner, luxuriating in the stuttery staccato beats, waiting for the bass to drop and huge swells of thunderous sub-bass synths to wash over us. And for me, even though jungle is supposedly 'played out', it remains as fierce and heavy and raw as it ever was. This mega mix has all the great 12"s from the early days of jungle, tracks by Cobra, Remarc, Cutty Ranks, Krome & Time, Shy FX, Tek 9, DJ Hype, Barrington Levy, Squarepusher, Ninjaman, Decoder, Plug and tons more!. No diva vocals, no syrupy melodic dance crap, just monstrous Amen breaks (the drum loop dujour of jungle) everywhere, skittery and frenetic, pitched up and down and all around, stuttering and hiccupping and pounding, with throbbing basslines and rib cage rattling synth stabs. And as a bonus for all of you dancehall heads, there's plenty of toasting and junglized reggae tunes. I remember most of my friends at the time, ESPECIALLY my drummer friends, being totally skeptical and dismissive, saying stuff like "It's just a drum machine" and "the beats are so repetitive". But that's the point. The rhythms -are- repetitive, I mean, they were made to dance to right? But they are SO complex, inhumanly so, and the buzz and stutter of beats swirling wildly from speaker to speaker makes the repetitive nature of the music all the more hypnotic and trance-y. And how could anyone obsessed with rhythm, especially drummers, not be totally mesmerised by these hyperspeed/convoluted beats? I've found myself driving around in my housemate's truck (which has a booming system) just blasting this comp, trying to replicate the feeling of the big bass bins pounding me into the corner of that dingy club years ago, and at the same time, have lulled myself to sleep with this comp buzzing and skittering in my ears. Even if you were on the scene and have a lot of these 12"s, there may be a bunch you don't have, and it's nice to have all this stuff on one convenient disc, although the tracks are split into three 20+ minute megamixes which makes finding particular songs a bit of a chore. But odds are, you'll just listen to this whole thing over and over and over. Folks who picked up the Bug cd from the last list should really check this out as should anyone into crazy fucked up elctronica/dancehall/digital hardcore. Fucking great!
MPEG Download: "Track 01" [/audio/soundmurderer01.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Track 01" [/audio/soundmurderer01.m3u]
It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some Gregg Turkington prank.
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services, and the fact that someone managed to tape it. The tapes of this service have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn funny. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an insane mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium, variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended!
A super limited tour only cassette release from one of our favorite members of the continually growing metallic post rock contingent (you know, Isis, Conifer, Tides, Mouth Of The Architect) But unlike a lot of those groups, SYA is not even remotely metal. And we never thought we'd say it, but dang it if that isn't a bit refreshing. Sure they can whip up some metallic crunch. Some big heavy riffs, but at their core they are a post rock band, a math rock band, dark and tangled instrumental rock, moody and epic, massive and emotional. What is most surprising maybe about this 3 song tape is the presence of harmonica! HARMONICA!! And not just in the background. It's the one of the main melodic elements. And it sounds killer. Once you hear the opening track on September Songs, you'll wonder why the hell more bands don't have a harmonica player. But beyond the kick ass harmonica, this band just rules, huge convoluted riffing, strange mathy rhythms, thick swells of sound, killer complex emotional and heavy. Long stretches of dark brooding ambience, blissed out rhythmic shimmer, warm guitars over martial drums, slow building guitar jangle over mesmerizingly propulsive drumming, slippery slide and minor key melodic finger picking, there's really nothing not to love. The guys take a sound that's becoming more and more tired and turn it inside out and upside down, making their own sort of POST post rock, intense and alive and vibrant and super exciting.
And fucking harmonica!
Finally, record number two from these local hard rockers, whose debut self titled cd-r was a huge hit with the aQ metalheads, and while we LOVED that record, we're beginning to think Heart Attack might be even better, a another killer collection of kick ass metal jams, equal parts classic NWOBHM, eighties hair metal and classic early thrash metal, the sound poppy and heavy and hooky. Right up front, if you're fans of groups like Cauldron, Twisted Tower Dire, Slough Feg, Midnight Chaser, and of course classic metal and hard rock combos like Iron Maiden, UFO, Tokyo Blade, Pandemonium and the like, then Space Vacation is definitely right up your alley. Just give the title track a listen, it's been stuck in out head like crazy for weeks now, and it pretty much perfectly encapsulates the group's sound, the heavy riffed out opening, the harmonized guitar leads, the wild drumming, the song shifting into a chugging eighties hard rock, super poppy and catchy, before launching into a furious almost speed metal blowout, chugging guitars, and furious double kick drumming, wedded to soaring clean vocals, plenty of super dynamic stop starts too, and hooks galore, even the heavy parts are crazy catchy. And then there's the shredding last minute or so, wild soloing guitars over furious drumming, and still more killer guitar harmonies. It literally took us about twenty listens before we could stop listening to that one track and dig deeper in the record. But once we did, pretty much all the tracks here are equally catchy. "End Of The Bender" is another killer, with a chorus that won't quit, and another crazy shredding finish, and then there's "Bro Hammer", a churning chunk of classic double kick driven Euro metal style radness, with yet another impossibly catchy chorus.
And while there's plenty of heaviness here, and fierce riffing, and insane drumming, and for all the record's NWOBHM aspirations, Space Vacation still mostly sound like eighties hair metal, albeit on the heavier, hookier side, and while there's plenty of cool weirdness throughout, your love of Space Vacation all depends on how much you dig that era of heavy metal, which we dig A WHOLE LOT, so for us Space Vacation is basically the modern version of a metal band that would have literally been our favorite band at age 16, and heck, considering how much we've been listening to this lately, they're coming dangerously close to being just that even now, several decades on. WAY WAY recommended!
Includes download too!
Lately we've been revisiting some of our old favorites, with Records Of The Week from Loop, the Telescopes and Swervedriver, but as much as we love those bands, and we do LOVE them a LOT, we can't help it, our hearts will always belong to Spacemen 3. The dreamiest and druggiest of the bunch, pretty much every record, every different stage of the band, every song, has utterly entranced us. Blurred and bleary jangle pop stretched out into meditative space rock mantras, no one could conjure up the same sort of woozy elegance that these guys could. And while this is not a new record proper, and most of us have spent years tracking down every bit of recorded Spacemen 3, even a new ep with alternate mixes and some rare gems has us all in a tizzy. And judging from the responses of aQ customers, you're probably the same way. We've been selling out of these over and over, and have only just now gotten enough to list.
So drug addled space rock freaks of the world, we give to you, DJ Tones, a super limited (only 2000 copies) ep, containing TWO PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS(!!!), a radically different mix of their Red Krayola cover, and on cd for the first time, a track called "I Love You", originally released as a white label vinyl only promo, limited to 50 copies. And finally, a studio version of the track "Ecstasy Symphony".
For folks who are new to Spacemen 3, this might not be the place to start, although it wouldn't necessarily be bad, but may we recommend Playing With Fire, or Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To, for the rest of you, the obsessed, buy this now.
Up first is "These Blues", a gorgeous laid back jangle pop jam, that might convince us that Oasis probably own some Spacemen 3 records, along with "Modulated Tones", a gorgeous fuzzy minor key minute and a half of looped echo drenched guitar, so great, the kind of thing that could have stretched out into a whole Spacemen 3 set, both those tracks UNRELEASED!
Their cover of the Red Krayola's "Transparent Radiation" is the Violin Mix, so besides the skeletal guitar and drawled vocals, the bulk of the song is carried by strings, and the result is pretty divine. "I Love You" is a weird one, a programmed beat, beneath a stuttering synth rhythm, super echoey vocals, spare guitars, all moody and woozy and eighties sounding. Quite cool for sure, a little garage-y, a bit poppy, and all very druggy and dreamy. And finally, "Ecstasy Symphony", nine minutes of lush drones, dense and layered, slow motion melodies played out over long streaks of near static sound, total divine, sun dappled ur-drone bliss.
Packaged in a trippy little paper sleeve, a bit pricey for 5 songs (although it is nearly half an hour) but for fans of all things Spacemen 3, absolutely worth it.
And again, LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES WORLDWIDE!
This is my second favorite Spacemen 3 record, second only to the breathtaking Playing With Fire (which we just listed last time and is still in stock). But the more I listen to this, the more it inches closer and closer. It follows the same sonic path as Playing With Fire, with shimmery, hazy, druggy garage rock drone scapes and occasional squalls of fuzzed out buzz-saw riffs, and while it lacks some of the dreamy summery ambience of PWF, it makes up for it in gritty urgency and bleary, cloudy atmosphere. Some of these songs appear elsewhere, but these are the definitive versions, the way the band had always intended them to sound, adding layers and layers of guitars that were impossible to replicate live. This double disc reissue collects demo versions covers, and previously unreleased songs, all of them amazing. From the opening track 'Things'll Never Be The Same', a blast of thick Stooges-y sludge, to the Velvets-esque 'Walking With Jesus', a fuzzy, sun-spangled, lo-fi drone-y ramble, all shimmery strum and sing-songy vocals, to the bluesy swagger of 'Come Down Easy' sounding like Delta blues broadcast from outer space and dipped in LSD, this stuff is all so good. Yet another band that allows a straight edge goodie-two-shoes like me to dabble in dark and dangerous, dreamy and druggy excess!
Andee sez: This is the best Spacemen Three record ever, hands down. Period. As much as I love the garage-y fuzz rock of their early records, Playing With Fire is where their hypno-drone tendencies were finally fully realised. It's like classic Spacemen Three, but filtered through that Galaxie 500 summer-sun-space-reverb. All shimmer and throb, oscillating into the ether. This record is what sunspots on a lazy, humid afternoon would sound like. Or you know when you look out over the highway on a hot day, and the air is all warbly and distorted. This record is what I imagine that wavy, shimmering air sounds like. Gently plucked melodies over langorous, lazy riffs, underpinned by processed, delayed guitars that are bundled into reverberent pulses that spread out lazily, like sonic ripples. So absolutely, perfectly gorgeous. Occasionally, the tranquility is briefly upended by squalls of wooly fuzz and propulsive garagerock riffs, but things quickly smooth out and the musical narcotics begin to flow again and you drift right back off..... Comes with an extra disc of demos and alternate mixes!
Thought we'd better get around to listing this, since it was finally reissued domestically at a much cheaper price! "Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To" is one of the best album titles ever, and at least for the heavy pharmaceutical users in Spacemen 3, it's certainly a fitting one. Recorded in the winter of 1985 / 86, the album is actually the most rock of all of the Spacemen 3 albums as their 13th Floor Elevators buzz meets the intensity of early Stooges. Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce felt that the versions of the songs found on "Taking Drugs" were better than those on the subsequent albums. And that may just be true! Easily one of the best and most important documents of eighties space-psych!
We'd been wanting to review this for ages, but the first pressing disappeared in a heartbeat. Which makes sense considering that this is the SECOND kick ass offshoot of Philly psych rock outfit Birds Of Maya - the first being the awesome Purling Hiss, whose Public Service Announcement record we made Record Of The Week back in 2010.
The weird thing is, for whatever reason, we were never that nuts for Birds Of Maya, but Purling Hiss totally blew us away, and Spacin' is doing the same, which has us thinking maybe it's time to revisit Birds. But for now, we can just revel in Spacin's debut, the awesomely titled Deep Thuds, and if you're already a fan of Purling Hiss, we have to say, you might as well stop reading right now and add this baby to your cart, cuz it's most definitely cut from the same sonic cloth, equal parts power pop, classic rock, Stooges-y swagger, hooky and fuzzy, hand claps, all tripped out and psychedelic.
The opener "Empty Mind" is a total classic old school garage punk jam. The Stooges vibe is HUGE, the drawled vox, and the T-Rex guitars, the woozy hooky chorus, the spidery psychedelic leads, the sound lo-fi but still rocking and fantastically fuzzed out. But then the second song "Some Future (Burger)", ditches songcraft entirely, instead weaving a lush landscape of murky mesmer, all heavily effected guitar drones, and looped melodies, total low fidelity kosmische trip out, which once again reminds us of Purling Hiss, and the way PH flits from pop to psych out and back again.
"Wrong Street" is total Yellow Pills style psychedelic power pop, the sound super distorted, but hooks galore, and more wild psych shreddery. "Chest Of Steel" is another lo-fi pop gem, which leads directly into the warped experimental "Oh Man", that is a weird melding of fuzzy psych groove, minimal krautrock, and hippie rock trip out, but it's awesome, totally hypnotic and spaced out and trance-y, the production giving it a sort of Ariel Pink / John Maus vibe.
There's one more short sharp pop jam before the final number "Ego-Go", which might be our favorite, a sprawling psychedelic groover, plenty poppy, but still droney and murky and minimal, sort of a power pop Velvets maybe, driven by some fierce guitaring, some rad psychedelic leads, and laced with plenty of thrum and jangle, with another warped production, that gives it the vibe of some lost live jam captured surreptitiously in some shitty dive bar, and dug out of some old dusty box 30 years later.
Probably our new favorite lo-fi psychedelic spaced out power pop / garage punk record, fuzzy, jangly, hooky as hell and one of those records we can't seem to stop listening to! And absolutely WAY recommended for everybody who bought any/all of the Purling Hiss records!!
Hard to believe it's been five years since we last heard from Mark Linkous and Sparklehorse. It seems like every record has involved some sort of struggle or personal tragedy. Linkous has had a seriously rough life, an accident that almost killed him, and which left him crippled for life, struggles with anxiety and depression, but the result of all that anguish is one of the most incredible bodies of work in modern music. Sparklehorse is sort of like the country rock Flaming Lips. Starting life out as a super scrappy rock band, and then discovering the joys of the studio, learning to use the studio like another instrument, creating an incredibly expansive sound palette, and eventually creating a unique world of unbelievably lush sounds, like a modern day Brian Wilson. And this record is no different. It's rich and dense and lush and sweet, the vocals, a plaintive heartstring pulling croon, guitars strum and shimmer, melodies drift, harmonies float and glisten, everything woven together into gorgeously perfect twang flecked pop. The vocals are multi tracked, doused in effects, swathed in reverb, guitar parts are simple and spare, the record is dotted with bits of strange digital glitch, or fuzzy record crackle. Some tracks are crystal clear, simple and straight forward, others are dense and dizzying, with strange edits, and extreme stereo panning, there are a few super fuzzed out rockers, but for the most part Dreamt For Light Years is a record of sun dappled divinity and sweetly melancholy drift. A gloriously and dreamily psychedelic excursion into the heart of darkness. So lovely.
Hooray! AQ all-time fave Mark Linkous returns at last with a brand new Sparklehorse album and we are happy to report that he, once again, does not disappoint. Mr. Linkous has that innate ability to write incredibly infectious pop songs with teeth -- never
For those of you who aren't familiar with Sparklehorse, Linkous' aesthetic weaves delicate, about-to-crack vocals, gently strummed guitars, and all sorts of bizarre studio trickery (a wonderful amalgamation of lo-fi home recording and ultra-lush top dollar multi-track wizardry) to make his records SOUND so great. But it's the songs that make the biggest impression. Whether it's a super distorted rollicking rocker, a barely-there ghost of a melody, or a heart wrenching country ballad, every song, at its core, is a perfect, perfect pop song. Catchy as hell, but not immediately -- more a sort of insidious, slowly spreading, like a virus beautiful, but beautifully miserable as well. And the lyrics too are practically perfect. Simple but astonishing in their depth. Clever and brutally soulful, without being melodramatic or overwrought.
The record that started it all. 'It' in this case being our neverending, undying love for Mark Linkous and the desperately beautiful Sparklehorse.
This is Sparklehorse's first album, finally available again on cd after being shamefully out of print for way too long. Certainly a must for anyone who's got both Good Morning Spider and It's A Wonderful Life, but also a great place to start for those who've yet to discover the wonderful musical realm of Mark Linkous. From the slow singing-right-in-your-ear intimate "Spirit Ditch" to the rockin' summer sing-a-long "Rainmaker" to the sort-of-hit "Someday I will Treat You Good", each tune that Linkous writes is a gem: lush ballads, twangy 'No Depression' pop and experimental musical miniatures. Though at times comparisons to Camper Van Beethoven sans art school pretensions are fitting, fans of Uncle Tupelo, Palace, Vic Chesnutt, Lambchop, Wisdom of Harry and great pop in general should all take heed and check out Sparklehorse. You won't be sorry.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
They're called Speedwolf. Their demo tape is called Bark At The Poon. They have song titles like "Time To Annihilate", "DeathRipper" and "I Am The Demon". The inside cover features a pants down drummer, wearing a wolf headdress, on the can, rocking out. They're obsessed with football, their hometown the Denver Broncos (they not only thank John Elway, but they named one side John, the other Elway). The cover features a rad high school binder drawing of a crouched wolf in front of the full moon. Sounds goofy, and maybe it is a bit, but fuck do these guys slay. Or shred. Slay AND shred. Full on thrashing metallic madness, with a vocalist who sounds a bit like Lemmy, and with super catchy classic sounding thrash jams, the first of which sounds a little like aQ favorite Young Ones faux metal heroes Bad News fronted by Lemmy, but way heavier. The guitars chug and churn, the drums blast relentlessly, flurries of double kick laid beneath , the songs shift from full bore neck snapping frenzy, to loping hooky groove, to pounding almost doom, laced with some creepy samples, some killer riffs, and plenty of rad licks. Definitely on the punker side of thrash, with the vocals and some of the hooks reminding us of a way more metal Danzig, which is definitely not a bad thing. "I Am The Demon" is THE jam here, with its killer Danziggy chorus, its super catchy guitar harmonies and insane drum breakdown (complete with wolf howl at the end), these guys kick so much ass, heavy and hooky is a pretty unbeatable combo. If you're hip to the whole modern retro thrash revival, these guys will definitely hit the spot, and if there's any justice, they'll end up on some huge label rocking stadiums with dressing rooms overflowing with coke and booze and groupies, cuz this shit is so much better than 90 percent of the new thrash we've heard...
Way recommended. LIMITED TO 200, each one hand numbered.
There are different kinds of heavy for sure. There's the grim black corpsepainted buzzing heaviness, there's the lurching lumbering knuckle dragging doom sort of heaviness, there's also the face melting noise rock sort of chaotic heaviness, and of course there's the conceptual heaviness, like "ooooh, that's really heavy, maaaan", and there's about a million different sorts of heaviness in between, all strains, some heavier than others, but then there's the mightiest heavy of them all, just a classic, pure, heavy metal heaviness. Few bands can achieve that sort of heavy purity, a rare confluence of killer riffing, howling throat shredding (but still melodic) vox, blasting pounding drums, shredding guitar leads, hooks galore, catchy choruses, all woven into a metal blowout that causes immediate headbanging, that could start a pit in a stuffy office, the power of the riff, the power of real metal.
This is a power Denver's Speedwolf wield like a bloodied mace. Before we even get to the music, all the signs are there. They're called Speedwolf to begin with. Their record cover is a badass binder art / side of a seventies van black and white drawing of a huge scythe and hourglass wielding cloak-ed skull headed death, hovering in the sky above a gang of Speedwolves, wolf headed toughs on motorcylces, cruising down the highway, there's also a naked woman wearing the skin of a wolf, looking sexy and howling at the moon, their logo is a wolf pentagram, and they have song titles like "Up All Night", "Out On Bail", "I Can't Die", "Death Ripper", "Ride With Death", "The Reaper" and of course "Speedwolf" cuz any heavy metal band worth it's salt has a namesake 'theme' song. So yeah, all the signs point to pure heavy metal heaviness, and the sounds inside do not disappoint. We've raved about past Speedwolf records, they even played our South By Southwest showcase last time, and blew EVERYbody away, we have been dying for a proper full length ever since, and finally here it is, with a handful of our old favorites re-recorded, as well as a clutch of new jams, with a massive production, the sound is crushing, and the songs of course kill.
Like a supercharged Motorhead, or a tighter heavier Venom, or like a cranked and kick ass version of our faux metal heroes Bad News, these guys kick out the jams, relentless and punishing, furious and frantic, but at the same time with that weird sort of positive heavy metal party energy that few bands can conjure without diluting their heaviness. We were most excited to see two of our favorite Speedwolf jams revisited, "I Am The Demon", which still sounds like a more metal Danzig, and includes a drum solo, complete with cowbell (which shows up here and there elsewhere on the record, and is another signifier of pure heaviness!), and of course "Speedwolf" which after a creeping ominous almost Maiden-y intro, really does sounds like a Motorhead 45 at 78rpm, and the rest of the tracks too, everyone sounding like some lost early heavy metal classic, but delivered with a ferocity that is undeniable. These guys have been toiling away in relative obscurity, it's about time the rest of the metal world took notice, and bowed down before these masters of metal. And while the vibe is definitely speed/thrash metal, this totally destroys all those other retro thrash revivalists, and transcends any mere metal classifications, and ascends to some sort of true metal pantheon on high. Where they belong.
One more track from our new favorite retro thrashers, Denver's Speedwolf, whose killer demo tape is reviewed elsewhere on this list, which you should grab immediately before they're gone. Think classic thrash, but with some Danzig mixed in, as well as some Bad News (really!), hooky and heavy and pounding and frantic, and so fucking killer. Bad ass riffs, crushing drumming, throat shredding vox, and hooks all over the place. These guys should be HUGE.
Speedwolf share this single with long running rockers The Hookers, who we'd only heard once or twice before, but who prove to be a pretty epic match for the 'Wolf. We remembered them being more punk rock, and while this is till plenty punky, it's got a serious NWOBHM vibe. A little Iron Maiden, a little Venom, wild feral vocals, killer riffs, rad harmony guitars, and hooks that slay. Definitely gonna have to give these guys another chance and track down some of their full lengths.
Both sides rock AND rule, anyone into classic sounding heaviness NEEDS this (and the Speedwolf tape) BAD!
Super cool cover art, and limited of course, ONLY 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered...
Latest in the LAMC series of split 7"s from the Famous Class label, each single featuring a known entity on the A side, and then a more obscure band on the flip, chosen by the A side band. This marks the first appearance on the aQ list of Speedy Ortiz, which is CRAZY, cuz some of us here have been fans for ages, not sure how that happened, but needless to say, their track here is a gem, heavily beholden to nineties indie rock, in particular the Pixies and the Breeders and Veruca Salt, fuzzy bass beneath crooned female vox, kinda swaggery, and dirgey, but hook heavy and poppy, the chorus super Beatles-esque, soaring and majestic, lilting and melodic, and catchy as all get out. One of our favorite modern day outfits mining our favorite era of indie rock for sure.
We had never heard of Chris Weisman before, and while we were maybe expecting something more indie rocking, instead, it's just acoustic guitar and vocals, the vibe sort of Big Star-ish, maybe a little bit like the Posies, dreamy vox, lush steel string strum, super dreamy and classic pop sounding, at points even reminding us of Emmit Rhodes, which is most definitely a good thing. Will for sure be tracking down more from Weisman...
Like all the LAMC singles, as you probably already guessed, this is VERY LIMITED!
Finally back in print and available again, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Hewre's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem:
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite new weird black metal records!
- MPEG stream: II
- MPEG stream: III
- MPEG stream: IV
There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outift Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like.
This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly outweirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane.
The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too.
A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record!
The disc also includes a video, playable on your computer, for a track not on the cd. And it's a strange one as you might expect. The music is all dark drones, with weirdly jazzy drums way up in the mix, shuffling over a fuzzed out Burzumic riff that sort of ebbs and flows, a fuzzy distorted wave. It never fully kicks in, but it never completely blisses out. It sort of teeters back and forth between dark jazz and glacial black fuzz. It's a little like a black metal post-bop Bohren, sort of. The track shifts partway through and becomes a strange sonic kaleidoscope of creepy orchestra music, garbled ambience and a haunting martial rhythm played on tympani's. The accompanying video is gorgeously grainy, all darkness and shadows, like some rare damaged print of a lost silent horror film, the film stock so degraded that various chunks of light and dark take on ominous shapes, the end result, the visual equivalent of an old crackly record. Totally mesmerizing.
Shame on anyone who somehow managed to miss the acoustic Harvey Milk instore, with HM frontman Creston Spiers tackling stripped down Milk tracks, Leonard Cohen covers, heck, he even covered "Three Is A Magic Number" from Schoolhouse Rock. Well this one is for those of you who blew it, or for those of you who didn't but still need more.
A super limited yellow vinyl 7", the second and supposedly last pressing, 300 copies, already sold out, we have about 30, of Creston Spiers from Harvey Milk performing acoustic, two originals, both awesome. And both sounding like could-have-been Harvey Milk tracks, or obscure Leonard Cohen covers, anyone at the instore knows exactly what we mean, his voice and way with melody is so distinctive, and owes quite a bit to Mr. Cohen. On these two tracks, Spiers' vocals are rough and ragged but still melodic, accompanied by stripped down steel string guitar, spare and melancholy, with slightly off kilter arrangements, the tone mournful and melancholy. Barring a recording of "Three Is A Magic Number" you couldn't hope for more.
Pressed on thick clear yellow vinyl, housed in a clear plastic PVC sleeve, limited to 300 copies, out of print, this is most likely your last chance...
Siltbreeze continue to dig deep into the New Zealand underground, and it doesn't get more underground than this, a band who never released ANYthing, as in if you weren't in Wellington, in the late seventies, or knew someone who was, you literally never heard or heard of The Spies. Which is a shame, as The Battle Of Bosworth Terrace is a NZ pop gem, one that is seeing the light of day now for the first time ever! Featuring a few NZ luminaries, members of the Puddle, and the recently reviewed here Shoes This High, The Spies deliver a sort of noisy, jangly, lo-fi pop that wrapped jagged shards of guitar, around loose drumming, buzzing primitive synths, and alternating sweetly crooned high vox, and more swaggery, yowled gruff vocals, the guitars occasionally erupting into psychedelic tangles, but just as often unfurling spidery melodies, or groovy post punk jangle. The brief opener is a gorgeous little lo-fi pop gem, all busy blooping bass, carnivalesque keyboards, and judiciously employed almost Marc Ribot like guitar melodies, all beneath some angelic ethereal vocals. The second track though is more gritty, mush mouthed sung/spoken vocals over a bed of crunchy, brittle guitar, and swirling psychedelic keyboards, the rest of the record balancing a mix of the two, some like laid back Velvets inspired druggy drifts, others like warped reinterpretations of some alien classic rock sound, and still others, seriously tripped out and experimental, reverb drenched stretches of bedroom dub via NZ noise rock, sprawls of bleating horns over gristly buzz and woozy, minor key jangle, or twisted loner, folk pop, all 4-track warble and druggy Jandekian croon. For every bit of brilliant classic pop inspired tunesmithery, there's some seriously drug addled, WTF avant pop deconstruction or druggy home brewed psychedelia. The most minimal tracks here reminds us a bit of the legendary Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, while much of the rest of this sonically aligns the Spies with the rest of the Flying Nun / Xpressway regulars. NZ nerds are in for a treat!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Includes a download card.
The latest groove rock offering from ex-Carcass guitarist Michael Amott. No Carcass-y grind here, just swampy, grindy, bluesy stoner rock. But still heavy as fuck, with heaping helpings of Hammond organ ladled all over it.
After five self titled releases, Kalamazoo Ramones/Black Flag worshipping mongoloid sci-fi garage punks the Spits offer up Kill The Kool, not a new full length obviously, cuz then it would be self titled AGAIN, but instead, KtK is a reissue of a super limited tour only release, now all gussied up, with a whole mess of bonus material, the vinyl a double lp cut at 45rpm, but both the cd and lp versions overflowing with the Spits's twisted mix of knuckle dragging caveman space punk and creepy synthy weirdness, a collection of singles, B-sides, outtakes and demos, and as always, even a collection of odds and sods from these guys is totally and impossibly catchy, playing like a record proper. Opener "2018" sets the stage, the band playing what is essentially three chord punk rock, but something about it transforms dumb punk into something twisted and warped and catchy as fuck. "Atom Age" is another gem, all droney and sorta psychedelic, but ultimately just a pounding punk rock anthem. Oh yeah, then in swoops one of the most retarded/genius 'solos' ever, and you sort of get what these guys are capable of. Sure they may sound like classic punk rock on the surface, but it's all just sort of tweaked and off kilter, enough that even the simples blast of bash and pound is something sorta next level. And as mentioned above, lots of the tracks are laced with weird sci-fi synthiness, often just buzzy tripped out intros, but just as often woven into the fabric of the song, and then there are the true oddities, which tend to be our favorites. The lo-fi psychedelic freakout of "Take Pleasure In Someone Else's Pain" that sounds like it could be Simply Saucer, the druggy, dirgey "Chem Trails", the whole song laced with coughing, and weird heavily effected alien vox, the synth heavy "The Liars", which sounds like Gary Numan by way of the Ramones, and then there's the ridiculous freaked out final track, "Spend The Night In A Haunted House w/ The Spits, which is essentially a drum machines, some synth buzz, weird swirling psychedelic ambience, and what sounds like super distorted field recordings of an actual haunted house, people screaming and freaking out, but also 'characters' growling and shrieking and trying to scare the regular folks. Makes for some seriously genius WTF weirdness, which is pretty much why we love these guys as much as we do!
We had never really heard The Spits before. Pretty sure we just assumed they'd be super generic boring punk rock. But one aQ staffer who'd been living in Seattle until recently was shocked that the rest of us had never checked these guys out, and talked them up as being one of his favorite bands, which was enough of a recommendation for us, and holy shit, do these guys rule. This is full length number 5 (we think), all self titled, and all, we presume, packed to overflowing with killer jams that meld Ramones style three chord punk with blown out Devo-style electro-punkpop, and the results are pretty mindblowing, hooks galore, but often buried in murk and buzz, the vocals slipping from a Joey Ramones style yelp to a mush mouthed heavily effected drawl, with even the most straight ahead jams wreathed in weird streaks of processed guitar buzz or twisted electronics, opener, "All I Want" is a pretty perfect pop song, and yeah, total Ramones worship, but the whole track is underpinned by killer sinister sci-fi guitar sounds and lots of buzz and drone, the result is punky pop, but sort of tense and intense. And "My Mess" is all curdled guitar crunch and tripped out doped up vox, wild drumming, and some rad psychedelic effects drenched breakdowns, and while there's not a proper chorus, somehow the whole goddamn song gets stuck in our heads like crazy. Oh and did we mention the bizarre falling apart interlude replete with dialed telephone tones and all the instruments sounding like they're melting before your ears. Then there are jams like "Tomorrow's Children", with muted muddy riffage wrapped around motorik programmed rhythms, and some druggy Hawkwindy vox, with a distinctly electro vibe throughout. We could go on track by track, but it's hardly necessary. 13 tracks, 21 minutes, short sharp, hooky, heavy, buzzy, fuzzy, catchy and totally ruling, these guys might just be our new (old) favorite band!
Imagine the Roots, if Busta Rhymes and Onyx were members, and Bjork sang all the refrains. Sounds like a mess, but it works perfectly. This was kind of a hard record to pin down. The first track is all stuttering Timbaland, with a demented, off-kilter, Busta Rhymes style flow. Track 2 is a bit of jungle fluff, but from then on, it's all cream. Kind of like a grittier, streetwise Bjork record, with catchy as fuck melodies, wicked beats, and really funny, super creative rapping. Now usually I don't go for the light stuff (you know, Del, Tribe Called Quest, and all that), but the Spooks manage to add some grit and grime, making this record darker than I expected. And consequently, my favorite hip hop record since the Zion I.
After an absolutely brilliant and criminally overlooked record on a major label (the absolutely essential 'A Series Of Sneaks' which we also carry), Spoon have made the move to the ever-flourishing Merge label. While still undeniably indebted to the almighty Pixies, Spoon just keep getting better and better. We can only hope that people notice and make them the stars they deserve to be.
'Love Ways' is a brooding and tense record, taking the sounds of Yo La Tengo and the Pixies, stretching them out a bit, adding a gravelly, world weary voice, and a dark intensity, without sacrificing their perfect pop hooks. So recommended!
It seems like there are a million bands these days doing their best Spoon impressions. And who can blame then? Spoon are awesome. It's no surprise bands want to sound like them. And who can complain really? We love their dour moody groove and propulsive indie jangle. So the more the merrier. As long as it is in some way acknowledged that they were the first, and remain probably the best at being, well, Spoon! But there was a time, when that dynamic was reversed, when Spoon were the ones cribbing their sound from another band. They weren't alone though. In fact some of your past and current faves were right there along with them. Crafting hauntingly oblique angular indie jangle, whispery loping verses and huge crunchy choruses. Sound familiar? You're thinking Nirvana maybe? Nope, but Nirvana were one of the those bands who also borrowed a critical element of their sound from one of the most influential indie rock bands of the nineties. We're of course talking about everyone's favorite outsider indie, loud/soft rockers the Pixies. The band who singlehandedly launched a million bands. And then of course tons of THOSE bands launched a million more.
Back in 1996/97, Spoon were offering up their own take on the Pixies sound. Sometimes it's uncanny actually, Spoon frontman Britt Daniel's crackly croon a dead ringer for Frank Black, the band's loping, muted guitar shuffle and bombastic choruses sounding like they could be some elusive Pixies B-side. In fact the Pixies worship on display here is almost too much for some. Even around here, a bastion of massive Spoon love, a few Spoon fans just can't handle how Pixie-ish these records sound. But heck, every band borrows, the key being to infuse the borrowed sounds with ideas and music that are distinctly your own. And in that respect these two discs are completely brilliant. The seeds of what would blossom into the Spoon we know and love, planted in the rich soil of all the Pixies bombast that came before. Personally, we didn't really notice the Pixies thing until it was pointed out to us. Instead, we dug these records, mostly because they happen to feature Spoon at their most rocking. Imagine Girls Can Tell or Kill The Moonlight supercharged, a little more chaotic and scrabbly, a bit more, dare we say, punk sounding. The guitars are more raw, Daniel's voice is a bit more scratchy and less croony, the arrangements are much more ROCK and a lot more dynamic. It's still Spoon, so there are hooks everywhere, but they're wrapped in big jagged guitars, the drums pound and the production is definitely a hint at Spoon's studio experimentation/mastery to come. On one of our favorite tracks, "All The Negatives Have Been Destroyed," voices and weird sounds careen all over the place in the background, while the band kick out the jams on a track with one of the catchiest choruses ever.
This double set collects the 1996 Telephono full length and the 1997 ep Soft Effects, which features one of our other favorite Spoon tracks "Waiting For The Kid To Come Out", a classic Spoon track for sure, but like the rest of the tunes here, much harder edged and just way more rocking. In fact a few of us here, if forced to pick, might just claim these discs as our favorite Spoon records ever.
Fans of Spoon who have yet to hear these discs will flip. And if there are somehow, inexplicably, some indie rockers out there who have yet to discover the glorious joy of Spoon's dark moody pop world, or for some reason, wish that Spoon would let loose a little more, well then, this here set should pretty much set you straight!
Packaged in cardboard gatefold, housed in a cool two sided slipcover.
