At the risk of alienating some of the other amazing records we've been loving and listening to non-stop, we might just have to proclaim this disc our new favorite. Cuz, man, do we miss the good ol' math rock days. Or post rock days, whatever you want to call them. That brief period, when there were instrumental (or mostly instrumental) bands everywhere, each offering up super complex tangled chunks of calculus-rhythmed indie jangle. Guitars intertwined into gorgeous harmonies and splintering into jagged melodic shards. Drums battering out impossibly intricate beats, the bass slithering around and within, supporting and propelling, but always laced with killer pop hooks and amazing minor key melodies. Bands like�Polvo, Pitchblende, Table, Breadwinner, Dazzling Killmen, Bitch Magnet, Rodan, Crain, June Of 44, they just don't make bands like that anymore... or do they?
Tic Code, from Portland Oregon sound like they just got sucked up from 1995 and transplanted in 2007, with all their mathy chops intact. Every song here is dense and catchy and weird and rocking. The opener is all Don Caballero ultra complex spazz out. The guitars super dizzying and slippery, over a relentlessly chugging groove, that at one point slips into an almost jig, and then it's back into a hyper rhythmic math jam. The second track is more moody and propulsive, more post than math, the guitars lilting and ringing out, the drums loping lazily, super summer afternoon...
The rest of the record is all over the math map, leaning heavily on the heavy, more chaotic side of things, the drummer destroying, the guitars tangled up wildly around the drums, every song a gorgeous avalanche of sound...
Some�of our other favorites are�the weird melancholy almost Goblin-esque�"The Second Stanza Of The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza" with it's epic sweeping chords and haunting melodies, and the Yes-on-steroids of "Swedish Fish", with more killer dual guitar dueling culminating in an explosive freaked out free for all sonic squall... fuck it, they're all amazing.�This band is just so great, and sound so modern and old school at the same time.
Screw this whole post rock metal hybrid movement everyone is so hot for, we say: bring back the MATH!!!
The Tides made a miraculous journey last year from the reject pile of a very shortsighted local music magazine into the loving arms of aQuarius where it quickly became a unanimous favorite and a big seller. Taking all the things we love about this new post rock / dirge metal hybrid that has been kicking our asses, Pelican, Isis, Minsk, Conifer, Mare and the like, and subtly twisting it into something all their own. Where as the last Tides record alternated between rhythmic moodiness and metallic bombast, From Silence manages to be a little less overtly heavy, and a lot more moody and brooding, dark and dolorous, with slow subtle grooves and warm washes of hypnotic dreaminess, basically just good old post rock minus the metal. Although the metal is still indeed present, just in very subtle ways, more felt than heard, informing the songs and the riffs, giving the music a sort of ominous, sharp edge, lurking just below the surface. However, fear not, for the final 11 minute track is apparently where Tides had been keeping all the metal riffing missing from the first two tracks. What starts as a spacious swoonsome jam, all downtuned guitars, softly strummed, shuffling drums and wide open expanses of swooshing ambience, erupts about halfway through into a thoroughly chugging pummel, crunchy and lurching, pounding and swaying like a much groovier Neurosis before blissing out into a washed out psychedelic drift that threatens to float away completely before the hammer falls again and that gorgeously chugging riff returns to lay waste to any and all in its way.
Most of the underwater environmental recordings we're familiar with are of whale songs and Antarctic seals and penguins, but this one takes us to an even more unusual locale: the moat of a medieval castle! How cool is that? The ten tracks on this 55 minute disc consist of material selected by French sound artist Thomas Tilly from about five hours of hydrophonic field recordings he made in the murky green waters of the moat of Sanzay Castle in the west of France. These excerpts represent what Tilly, in his careful listening, found most interesting, a dense buzzing micro-sound world created by the aquatic insects and plants, apparently reacting to the intensity of the summer sunlight on the surface of the water. Aside from some "slight equalisation", he made no electronic treatments or altering edits of the raw recordings; weird as it is, this is what you'd hear if you dunked your head in the moat and gave a long listen! Yet, it SOUNDS quite electronic (something that other nature recordings have prepared us for). They certainly don't sound of organic origin. Buzzing, pulsing, chattering drones. Rhythmic, intriguing. Steady mechanical whirr. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. Constant clicking, like the ticks of a Geiger counter. Sudden sharp whines... decay... Even Morse Code like BLEEPS! (Is that a robot rusting away at the bottom of the moat, still emitting sounds? Did a mad scientist once inhabit this castle?).
It makes us think, Raster-Noton meets Sounds Of North American Frogs. Almost makes you wonder why the likes of Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, Nerve Net Noise, all the experimental electronica, digital glitch, clinical clicks and cuts types even bother, when instead of investing in a laptop computer and software, it seems you merely need to submerge a microphone in a suitable stagnant moat. Of course we're kidding. But the thought does occur.
The varied ambient textures of these tracks are mesmeric for sure, and surprising. The most fascinating Found Sounds / Field Recordings find we've run across in recent weeks (unless you count the new Thai Elephant Orchestra, but those elephants are playing instruments).
Holy crap is this mind blowing stuff, everything ever recorded by this group of super obscure, early nineties sci-fi death metal weirdos from Missouri, who offer up the sort of bizarre, murky, mathy death metal, we can't ever seem to get enough of. Sprawling, churning, chugging epics, that lurch from doomy death march trudge to stumbling barreling blasts, often devolving into near psychedelic creeps, replete with strange chanted clean vocals, the drums muted and muffled, a furious pulsing pound throughout,comparisons could certainly get made to other sonically similar death metal outfits of the time, but in a way, it seems like death metal doesn't get a fair shake around aQ. It seems to us, that lots of folks who are obsessed with black metal, and doom metal, would fall in love with death metal too, if just introduced to the RIGHT records, or the RIGHT bands, specifically, the weirder, more warped strains of death metal, and it doesn't get much weirder or more warped than Timeghoul, who obviously found inspiration in classic old school death metal, but in crafting their own take, managed to transform the usual guttural grinding heaviness into something almost avant garde. Sure there's the sci-fi aspect, the themes, the lyrics, the imagery, all of which is super cool, but other bands have definitely dabbled in similar imagery, the magic is that somehow these guys conjured up that same sort of arcane experimental sci-fi weirdness with the music too!
Sure the usual death metal tropes are present, furious downtuned riffing, grunted cookie monster vocals, furious blast beats, but the songs are super complex, and not just that, but convoluted as well, blasts stumbling to a near halt, only to stutter weirdly and then careen off in a wildly metallic gallop, or to sort of bliss out completely and shift to a slo-mo creep, and just as often locking into pure tranced out blasting death metal mesmer. And it's not just the structure, or the sound, it's the timbre, murky and muffled, weirdly reverby and echoey, the vocals too, not your typical DM grunt, much more monstrous and weirdly melodic, and when the clean vocals come in, definitely something you rarely here in death metal. There's also some weird almost sing songy grooves, some stretches that sounds like Cannibal Corpse sea shanties, all woozy and bouncy, swaddled in wild tangled shred-heavy leads, we're reminded a bit of the super tripped out early Esoteric records, only if they played death metal instead of doom. Similarly warped outsider sonic thinking it seems.
This collection combines the group's two demos, with a second disc of rehearsals, live tracks, and their very first ever 4 track recordings. The first disc is non stop weirdo sci-fi death metal freak out radness, the second demo dramatically different than the first, trading much of the murk in for a sound that manages to be even more dizzying and demented, SUPER progged out and seriously next level. And while the actual sound is closer to their death metal compatriots, the song structures, arrangements, clean vocals, weird psychedelic stretches, all remain to make sure this is not your normal run of the mill death metal.
So all you death metal phobes, open your mind, you'll likely be rewarded by some seriously twisted and crushing heaviness. We'd recommend Timeghoul along with groups like diSEMBOWELMENT and Gorguts' Obscura as some sort of outsider death metal primer. Fucking RULING!
Worth it for the first disc alone. The bonus tracks are even weirder and more fucked up, due in part to the varying levels of sound quality, the 4 track recordings are murky and muddy, blurry and buzzy, with some super cool blown out effects, and some of the songs, SO good, too bad they never got recorded properly, but they're almost perfect in this form. The live tracks are near Merzbowian in their speaker shredding intensity, and weirdly, the rehearsals sound almost as good as the demos proper. And the crazy thing is, as much as we love the first disc, and we do, a LOT, we find ourselves listening to the second disc even more, fucked up and totally bafflingly brilliant! Includes extensive liner notes, lyrics, the original demo covers, and killer new cover art by metal artist Mark Riddick.
The kings (and queen) of shitgaze return once again, to prove once again, that none of those wannabe noiseniks can even come close. It's not about your shitty 4-track, or your busted ass equipment, or recording onto a boombox in Mom's basement, it's about songs and hooks, the riffs and the melodies, and TNV have it all covered. The songs rule, impossibly catchy, with weary drawled indie sad boy vocals all tangled up with dreamy girl group la la la girl vocals, the guitars are crunchy and angular, the drums are blown out, in-the-red basement crunch, the keyboard is warm and warbly and wheezy, not sure if there's an actual bass, it's hard to tell since most of these tracks lean toward the trebly, and the production varies, from surprisingly clean and shimmery (on "Martin Luther King Day"), to crumbling and distorted almost everywhere else.
But again, that's all incidental to the songs, which manage to be sort of pop, sort of punk, a little new wave, a bit crusty, all wrapped around unlikely, but irresistible hooks, a few songs get super jagged and no wave-y, and the sound totally suits them, but then there are jams like "Martin Luther King Day" which sound like classic nineties indie rock, albeit a bit rougher around the edges. And the rest of the tracks fall somewhere in between, raw, blown out garage-y new wave-y pop, that easily outshines all the other shitgaze combos, as well as positioning TNV comfortably amidst a similar but parallel scene, the weirdo lo-fi new wave garage pop scene that Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps, The Fresh & Onlys, Ty Segall and Tyvek all call home.
We LOVE this band!
We only just reviewed the -last- Times New Viking on the most recent list, even though it had been out for a while. And now here we are two weeks later, with a brand new TNV, and it's more of the glorious blown-out in-the-red chaotic ultra catchy pop same.
As it says on the back of the record "Times New Viking play pop songs with guitar keyboards drums." Which is definitely simplifying it a bit. Since they also incorporate a huge amount of NOISE, and feedback, and buzz, and tape hiss, and all manner of distorted blur and skree and howl. That said, this new one is even poppier and catchier than Present The Paisley Reich, and even more buried under thick slabs of crumbling sonic chaos.
But even with all the noise, at it's heart, TNV is definitely a pop band through and through, the dueling boy/girl vocals, the warbly keyboard, the bouncy indie guitar jangle, sometimes it sounds like Superchunk, but if they were on Siltbreeze and recorded all their songs on a microcassette recorder and mastered it with a tin can and twine. They also sound a bit like Mates Of State, but way less polished, way more punishing, thick bolts of high end and dense clouds of hiss bombarding the lilting sweet pop, the bouncy keyboards and crooning earnest vocals. Here and there, the noise drops off a bit, revealing the pure sweet sunshine underneath, but it's quickly swallowed up again, by another wash of speaker shredding buzz and soaring hyperdistorted melodies.
We just can't get enough of this stuff. Pop record of the year contender? Absolutely, and it's still January. If there was ever a band who deserved the sobriquet of 'noise pop' it's definitely Times New Viking. And it certainly doesn't get any noisier or poppier than this. Certainly not at the same time!
Ed Ball, the mastermind behind the headfuck shoegaze genius that is Teenage Filmstars, is not just a master of sonic manipulation and avant audio alchemy, no he's also a POP genius, which in some ways is precisely why Teenage Filmstars was so compelling, for every whatthefuck collage of bizarre sounds, or the dizzying spinout of backwards drums and warped reverse guitars, was some perfect melody, some kernel of absolute classic pop tunesmithery, even at its most obtuse and impenetrable, it was always weirdly poppy, or subtly melodic.
The long running classic British pop combo The Times is the groop in which Ball let his otherwise sublimated pop demons loose, gobbling up every trope of classic pop music from the sixties, seventies, and especially the eighties and the nineties, and spitting them back out as his own brand of primo pop, which sounds quite a bit like some ever shifting, and slightly tweaked fusion of Oasis, Ride, the Happy Mondays, the Style Council, Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears, Pop Will Eat Itself, and the like. But only slightly tweaked. Don't be expecting any freaked out sonic fuckery, or some fractured meta-pop, the Times were never meant to be experimental, they're more like a musical time capsule, for Ball and his cohorts to go skipping through the history of pop music. And to bring back bits and bobs that he then assembles into the Times museum of classic pop. And classic it is. From mod jangle, to new wave synthy groove, to big guitar power pop, to strummy slow jam, to string soaked balladry, to glimmering soft focus shoegaze, no quirky prog-pop, and pretty much every stop in between. And it's not just the sounds, it's the songs, lush and jangly and melodic, hooks galore, catchy as all get out, total retro pop bliss, every song a gem. Another glorious chapter in Ball's long and storied sonic history, or chapters, this double disc reissue consisting of 3 different The Times records, originally released in 1989 and 1990...
Like all Artpop! releases, comes with a huge, somewhat confusional booklet, packed with liner notes and pics, and also includes a bunch of killer bonus tracks!
We had never heard of these folks until AQ fave Greg Weeks came to town with his travelling musical revue (Timesbold in tow) and I have to say I was BLOWN AWAY by this band. How a band could be this good, sound this polished and self assured, share so many
Finally a full length from the amazing Timesbold! We first discovered them as the opening act for AQ fave Greg Weeks last year and loved the shit out of their debut ep. This full length fufills every promise their ep made and then some!! A dark and lonely trip down some very familiar paths, but the scenery is quite different and the company is much better. Taking the mournful, bleak country rock of Palace or Songs:Ohia, the lush melancholia of the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev, and the classic songsmithery of Neil Young or the Band, Timesbold emerge with something at once totally timeless and classic, but also fresh and unique. Piano and acoustic guitars are the foundation for these expansive and gut wrenching tales of misery and hopelessness. Spare and sparse, evoking wastelands, both physical and spiritual, these tunes are so intense and brutally poignant, furtive peeks into the souls of men damned by love and loss. Breathtaking and intense, dark and dreary, but gorgeously recorded and produced. Thick throbbing low end, wisps of shimmery harmonium and that voice, a warbling, cracked cry to the heavens for forgiveness and salvation. So so good. This is probably the saddest, most beautiful, best sounding record we've heard in a really long time. Fans of Woven Hand, 16 Horsepower, Palace, Songs:Ohia, Souled American and all that sort of rickety, dreamy, country/folk/rock will LOVE this as much as we do.
MPEG Download: "Giniwin" [/audio/timesboldginiwin.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Giniwin" [/audio/timesboldginiwin.m3u]
First we've heard from Tin Man, aka producer Johannes Auvinen, who specializes in a gorgeously melancholy, minor key house music, downcast and skeletal, total morning-after, minimal, come down electronica. You can almost imagine this stuff playing at full volume, through huge speakers in a massive, totally empty warehouse, the floor covered with trampled rave flyers, empty cups, and discarded clothing, a sort of dance music 'world without us', Ode playing like the soundtrack to a series of images of empty clubs, of decrepit spaces, night clubs laid bare in the cruel light of day, the beats, dubby, and murky, the surrounding sounds bleary and hungover, super tranced out and mesmeric, most definitely dance music made NOT to dance to, but instead the soundtrack to an endless night, the listener hunkering down in a dimly lit corner both, waiting for a morning that may never come.
A handful of the tracks here are 'vocal' tracks, which we were quite wary of at first, especially considering that with house music, that generally means some sort of cringeworthy diva vocals, but not here. On Ode, Tin Man delivers his own dour vocalizations, a softly effected croon, deep and dramatic, sung/spoken, way down in the mix, laid back and a little bit wasted sounding, perfectly complimenting the wasted nocturnal house grooves beneath. Maybe our new favorite NON dance music, dance music record...
Every once in a while, we find ourselves missing the sound of classic math rock. The sound of late nineties post rock. Oh hell, who are we kidding, we're ALWAYS missing that stuff. Slint, Rodan, Bastro, Bitch Magnet, Breadwinner, Dazzling Killmen, Hurl, Crain, heck, even Andee's old band A Minor Forest. Mathy, convoluted, serpentine, minor key, weirdly catchy, strangely structured, lots of starts and stops. As much as we're loving the new breed of metal bands gone post rock or math rock. They definitely tend to lean toward the post side of the equation, preferring to bliss out rather than math out. But for any one who finds themselves getting a little chill when reading the above list of bands, Tiny Hawks are the band to give you everything you've been missing. Tiny Hawks are a duo from Rhode Island, but don't be expecting tangled Lightning Bolt spazz, or stripped down guitar and drums duo rock, this is a huge sprawling explosion of gorgeously melodic and deftly complicated math rock. You'd never know this was a duo (the drummer plays bass on the record) as these guys create a huge sound, thick and textured, dense and dreamy. Some tracks are spastic freakouts, all chaotic drum splatter and manic riffing, others are shimmery expanses of muted strum and dreamlike shuffle. There's definitely an early nineties Dischord element to their sound as well. Intricate, erratic, experimental, bits of jazz and metal twisted into post rock shapes and then set in a dizzyingly mathy framework. Convoluted minor key workouts peppered by sudden bursts of jagged aggro crunch and pound, and plenty of loping blissed out mellowness, drifting harmonics, clanging guitars, all drifting in a jangly haze. This is ALL the shit we love about the genre, all tangled up in a hugely fresh sounding kick ass blast of super aggressive, sweetly melodic, math rock anvil to the head. So goddamn good. Like your favorite band from 1996, got in a time machine, got a practice space down the hall from yours, and invited you over to stand around a sweaty, stinky practice space, get drunk, bounce around and have your mind and ears fucking blown!
By now, Finland must seem like one big musical forest, will small tribes of elfin music makers, sitting around fires, with home made instruments and beat up old guitars and primitive tape recorders, spending their days kicking out clattery, meandering free folk pagan jams, tribal and hypnotic. Venture a little further into the forest and you'll find Circle, harnessing the power of the sun to power their amps and keyboards, kicking out endless psychedelic drone rock jams. Chop your way through some dense underbrush, delve deeper into the woods, where there is less life and less light and it's a little dark and scary and you'll find Pharaoh Overlord, big hairy Yeti's, clubs in hand, making a sludgy racket around a huge funeral pyre, horrible blackened shapes dancing on the canopy overhead. But go no further, because there's a cave, with a mouth as black as pitch, where no one dare enters, for fear of the unholy racket emanating from within. For it's here you'll find the mysterious members of Tivol. Look closer and the cave sort of resembles a beat up old garage. But stand back and prepare yourself for the wild and wooly psychedelic freakouts spewing from the mouth of this cave / garage. Pounding trashcan drums, druggy, super affected space rock guitars, and howled banshee vocals, screeching and wailing. This is the scuzzy, fuzzy, sloppy, noisy soft white underbelly of the Finnish rock scene, and we LOVE IT. Like the unwanted lovechild of Guitar Wolf, Hawkwind and Liquorball, let loose in the woods, only to be raised by pot smoking, psych rockin' wolves. The ultimate pounding psychedelic garage space-sludge. Ah, Finland. Where else could it come from?
This lp collects two long out of print cd-r releaese (one on 267 Lattajjaaa, one on Time-Lag) that were cleaned up a little (only a LITTLE) made louder and more in your face and then etched into a massive slab of wax with a sharp stick. Packaged in a gorgeous hand printed sleeve, courtesy of Rob Fisk and The Free Porcupine Society.
The world needs another SUNNO))) or Earth like it needs� well, it doesn't. Nor does it need another Slint, or a Mogwai, or a Justice, or an Animal Collective. Every time a band blows up, suddenly a million bands are there to get sucked along in their wake. But never was this phenomenon more egregious than with the new wave of doom/drone/dirge outfits. At the risk of repeating ourselves again, it seems like every band, heavy or otherwise, that features at least one member with a "drone side project" or a "minimal doom side project", barely keeping ahead of the various people dabbling in back metal, but we digress.
Like most things, it probably seems easy, but isn't. The whole leaning your guitar against the amp and letting it go, sure we joke about that in reviews, but it's way harder than that. Compare the millions of ho-hum guitardrone cd-r's to something like the last amazing record by Vulture Club (we still have some, if you haven't bought one, you should, really). It's like night and day. So we're always pretty cautious when we hear about a new guitar drone group or some doomdirge record we oughtta dig.
But once in a while, a group comes along, who only just barely fit into that whole genre, skirting it, creating something totally their own, with just the merest hints of sounds more familiar, like all great bands, borrowing and stealing freely, but not just regurgitating those sounds right back at us, instead, spreading them out in some underground lab, pulling them apart, exploring how they tick, dissecting them, then attempting to put them back together again, with some of their own parts, some sounds and songs that have been fermenting in a dusty corner of said lab, the results then something new, a patchwork of sounds, that in the right hands, can be deftly woven into something beautiful, something dark and mysterious, something like this.
A Semblance Of Something Appertaining to Destruction is the latest from the mysteriously monickered To Blacken The Pages, part four of an ongoing series in sound, a sprawling dirgescape that owes much to meandering post rock, downtuned slow motion sludge, drifty abstract doom, and the sort of heavy doomic countrified sludge that Earth has been exploring over the last few records.
Three tracks, the shortest 11 minutes, the longest nearly 18, each a dusty, moonlit drift, simple minor key twang, slowed down space rock riffage, streaks of feedback and buzzing distant drones, swirling FX, layers of guitar fuzzy and druggy. The opener, more than Earth or SUNNO))) or any of those, sounds much more in line with Loop or Spacemen 3, a drugged out soporific riff, that lumbers a little too slow to rock, even a little too slow to constitute any sort of groove. Instead, it's a dreamy droney drift, heavy and mutedly chuggy, churning onward through a sky of whirls and swirls and rumbles, underpinned by plenty of buzz and fuzz and blur. It's like a super slowed down way more abstract Loop, which we probably don't need to explain to you is in fact a very good thing.
The second track introduces drums, which do little to up the propulsion, this is still weary, dreary and delightfully spaced out. A super spare, abstract doomy lope, the sky above criss crossed with high end guitar skree, the drums supporting another blown out slow motion space rock riff, the whole track trudging across an endless expanse of shimmery buzz and swirling space-y effects. Everything muted and mumbly and lazily mesmerizing.
The final, longest track, ditches the drums, returning to the lazy smoky sprawl of the opener, but this time even more abstract, the central guitar part, drifting well below the constantly shifting layers of sound, coruscating high end, over billowing deep rumbles, a glacial, stately, almost funereal anti-groove, perfect late night, drift off, trip out slow motion space rock krautdrone. Fans of Earth and Expo '70 will dig especially, as in some ways, this does sound like a strange hybrid of the two, although all of you into the slow dreamy droney heavy minimalism would do well to check this out.
The return of Irish one man guitar dronedoomdirge noisemaker, Paul McAree aka To Blacken The Pages, with his first vinyl release, and to commemorate, McAree mixes it up a bit, offering up at least one side dramatically different from what we're used to hearing on TBTP records up until now.
Originally recorded for a sound exhibition in Dublin, "Crow's Nest" strips away most of the thick rumbling distorted guitars we might have been expecting, leaving a strange haunting bit of effects drenched shadowy sound in their place, the result though is quite pleasing, much more mysterious and otherworldly, lots of delay and reverb, bits of clang and crunch sent spinning into the ether, here and there long notes ring out, the overall sound is super spare and abstract, soft tangled melodies, the guitars smolder instead of roar, plenty of scrabble and scrape but smeared and blurred into solar flares of Sunroof!-ed sound, but unlike the raga-like ur-drone of Sunroof!, the sound and sounds here are way more spaced out, both figuratively AND literally. Warm washes of feedback bathe the whole track in a rich glow, and strange little flutters surface here and there, like some alien birdsong.
The track on the B-side is more similar to past TBTP outings, but McAree manages to meld the old sounds, with the new sounds found on the flip, the same strange assemblage of high end crunch and scrape and squiggle, but set in a landscape much more black and buzzy, thickly layered, undulating sea of sound, blown out an streaked with feedback, the weird effected shards of melody, drifting on that thick, rumbling undercurrent. Dense and drone-y looped and hypnotic sounding here and there, but for the most part a massive organic sprawl of minimal psychedelic guitar drone dreaminess.
Housed in a simple black 12" style sleeve with the middle holes cut out, a printed obi with all the artwork and liner notes, and comes with a black cd-r, packaged in its own sleeve with a proper insert, containing, both the tracks, but a WAY extended and remixed version of the B-side!
The third part in an ongoing series of blackened drone guitar missives from Irish one man slow and low wrecking crew To Blacken The Pages. Fans of the first two TBTP records (None and A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction) are already well versed in the bleak abstract soundworld this guy can conjure, fusing the low end explorations of groups like SUNNO))), Expo '70, Bohren, Slomo and the like, with something a bit more psychedelic and space-y. Sure, TBTP is capable of unfurling some planet crushing black hole heaviness, but also of tossing handfulls of notes into crystalline expanses of murky reverb, letting the various notes flutter and fall, before tossing out another handful. The first two tracks on North are perfect examples, "Crossing" and "I Am Screes On Her Escarpments", the first begins as a swirling almost static field of slow shifting reverb and delay, peppered with percussive thumps and creaks, sent careening into the ether, while shards of clean guitar, sounding a bit like super mellow Keiji Haino, unfurl like clouds of grey smoke, while underneath, a guitar rumbles and whirs, gradually becoming more and more rifflike, ringing out a bit chaotic and noisy, before slipping into the second which begins with the same sort of reverbed stretch of echoey thumps and creaks, before the guitar thickens into a crumbling corrosive wall of swirling chordal hum and keening feedback, a roiling blackened bit of guitar ambience, infused with melody and moodiness and shot through with strange high end streaks and swoops that are probably effected guitars, but almost sound like children's voices here and there. Quite haunting.
The next few tracks take TBTP's sound in a different direction, the root again being shimmering guitars, but this time the focus is on the voice, a lazy drawled croon nestled down in the mix, that drifts along side the increasingly caustic guitar buzz resulting in a sound not unlike some strange Dead C / Roy Montgomery hybrid, a sort of sun baked noise drenched dronedirge slowcore. Dark and woozy and melancholy and way druggy and drowsy sounding. Later, "To Be Dead" introduces actual drums, and gets all propulsive, a lurching noise rock take on spaced out krautrock, but with the guitars in full on overdrive, a constantly swirling squall of feedback and psychrock freakout. And then the last two tracks are massive billowing clouds of coruscating buzz and skree, blurred into gorgeous multi hued smears of blown out guitar and a gorgeous hazy shoegazey drift, in fact the nearly 15 minute "Night Drive" might be one of the prettiest heavy guitar tracks we've heard in ages, anyone into Nadja or Jesu, will love it, it's like the slow motion metalgaze of those two outfits but stripped of drums and allowed to just sort of hover. So nice.
Needless to say, the drone and dirge and doom obsessed out there probably already added this to their shopping cart (or if they didn't yet, probably should now), anyone who bought the other two records definitely NEED this too, and folks not necessarily into metal, but who still dig on dark drifty hazy heaviness might be pretty into To Blacken The Pages, North in particular...
Tobacco would definitely be a strange name for a group. But it's an even stranger name for a -person-, except when you realize, that person is in fact the twisted mastermind behind the cracked electro pop of aQ faves Black Moth Super Rainbow. In our review of the most recent BMSR record, we compared their sound to Air covering Daft Punk, but with a bunch of junky old equipment, busted up amps and rickety swap meet synths. What's not to love?!?!
For Mr. Tobacco's first solo foray, he actually sticks pretty close to the Black Moth template he created, but does manage to give that sound a little twist. The instantly recognizable fuzzed out gritty synths, the stuttery crunchy crumbling beats, the chopped up vocodered vocals, the blissy eighties sheen, all in full effect, but up the hip hop vibe a bit, mix in some ethereal female vocals, some borderline cheesy (but still kick ass) cop show theme song groove, handclaps, fluttering flutes, soaring cinematic faux strings, even some rapping at one point (courtesy of Aesop Rock, who took BMSR on tour earlier this year), and we're slipping into Fucked Up Friends territory. A few of the tracks are instant classics, sounding sometimes like a more sunshine-y hip-hop flecked Goblin, other times like a more lo-fi synth heavy Boards Of Canada, and once in a while like an LSD dosed Daft Punk doing the soundtrack for a nature special on Yo MTV Raps all about jellyfish or mountain goats or those weird fish that glow in the dark. WTF?! But par for the course with Tobacco and his Black Moth Super Rainbow. And while there does seem to be a bit more hip hop happening here, it's essentially another gloriously fractured and fucked up BMSR record, which is just fine with us!
First album by Amon Tobin after shedding the Cujo moniker. Excellent drum & bass with hand-lifted beats from jazz to old bachelor pad lps to soundtracks. All impeccably reworked, recomposed and produced by Mr Tobin. Everything this guy has released is crucial. Very highly recommended!
Writhing forth once more from the most shadowy cracked wastelands of forsaken Brooklyn, Tombs returns with their third full length of glistening, gleaming extreme metal. And indeed extreme metal is the only genre tag that really works for this band, since they've made it their crusade to cherry pick the absolute best traits from a myriad of metal subgenres to mathematically create some of the most monolithic, ferocious and enormous metal being recorded today. A brief vaguely funereal dirge ushers in a flurry of pummeling helicopter double bass, wild eyed doom-laden heaving guitars, and a hurricane of rolling snare drum and hammering blast beats. There are hints of Souls At Zero-era Neurosis or even Deathspell Omega in the dissonant hypno-riffing. The circling, maddening guitar work and sickening Lovecraftian grooves sometimes recall early Morbid Angel. While elsewhere you might hear hints of the wasted urban scrawl of vintage Godflesh or the slithering futuro-insectoid crawl of latter day Celtic Frost / Triptykon. But there is not one moment of Savage Gold that sounds like homage. Instead, these influences are blended together seamlessly, creating a sound all encompassing, familiar and unique all at once. The vocals are a cold emotionless howl, which lends otherwise innocent lyrics like "life is a dream" a twisted rotten air. It's an extremely dense record. Guitars seem to avalanche upon one another, building a higher and higher wall of black glistening sludge, ready to collapse in on itself again at any moment. There are melodic moments as well. The regal grind of "Portraits" especially brings to mind Ludicra or Wolves In The Throne Room, but with a more obsidian metallic sheen. Compared to their insanely critically-acclaimed last album Path Of Totality, Savage Gold feels much more streamlined, smooth and clean (mostly thanks to a production job from Hate Eternal's Erik Rutan), but it's not at all a detriment to this record. Instead it gives the band the sound of some well oiled calculated killing machine. The spaciousness of the production really lends an extra sprawling quality to the band's more epic moments, while somehow magnifying the menace of the darker passages. And while there's still plenty of doom, sludge, groove and twisted death metal, Savage Gold has really upped the black metal influence. Labyrinthine tremolo whirlwind guitars seem to spiral upward like some Escher staircase, leading to realms shadowy, alien and obscured! A shining black monolith that shows metal can be forward-thinking, modern and unique without sacrificing any of the heaviness, ferocity or... well... metalness! Absolutely recommended, and sure to make more than a few metal best of the year lists come January 1st.
Now, if you read our list regularly, or look at the tags on the cds in the store, you know that we at AQ tend to use the word "ridiculous" (in a good way) quite a lot. And we're also partial to the, again positively-meant, term "fucked". We use these words
Yann Tomita's "An Adventure Of Inevitable Chance" is either a genius work of audio pastiche or a complete put on (or both). To begin with, the album opens with an academic-sounding lecture telling us that Tomita's music is a completely synthetic re-creation of a number of established genres. Yet the musical examples illustrating these genres do not match up. For example, their idea of "Acid Rock" is a banal karaoke lounge tune, and "Country" is represented by what seems to be an excerpt from Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place"! Also, this is supposed to be a live concert from 1993 (with no overdubs, we're told), but...is it? Certainly it would be an amazing, disorienting one, as this disc moves track-by-track through propulsive early-Kraftwerk electronics, simple violin plucking augmented by analog delays, Carl Stalling / Martin Denny exotica, Cornelius-esque whimsy-rock, Barney Miller / Night Court TV show theme style jazzfunk, radio tunings and sputterings, and late '80s cheesy electric dub! Oh, two of the tracks are John Cage pieces, including a not-quite silent version of 4'33"... It's all so unexpected and unfathomable, while often being amazingly quirky and catchy. Tomita claims that his work has influenced countless musicians, DJs, journalists, and fans alike. Some of you may recognize his name from his remix on the Boredoms' Super Roots 8! For those of us who have just encounted his work for the first time here, he claims that he has "influenced you subliminally as well." In the booklets (there's two) you'll find much more to puzzle over (like the catalog of other Tomita releases, including a 7" record with a doughnut on top of it, and a 12" with an ashtray in the shape of a miniature steel drum...there are photos). Oh, in possibly the most brilliantly ridiculously fucked move EVER, this disc is actually packaged as a double cd -- but one of the discs (entitled "Heart Beat") is made of cardboard! (Thus making it unplayable for those of us with *normal* cd players). Odd is an understatement. We're thinking now that if we've judged our customers right, odds are we'll have to try and order more of these pronto...
Tony Tears, you've come a long way, baby. When we first discovered psychedelic doom outsider Tony Tears a few years ago, he was an eerie, despondent Italian fellow with very few friends/fans, judging by his MySpace page (see below). Nowadays, he still is eerie and despondent (and Italian) but he's got some fans now, maybe even a cult. Cult enough to now have a handsome lil' box set release, containing three cds, collecting all of his significant public recordings to date, including Voci Dal Passato, the weird Goblinesque DIY doom masterpiece that we made an aQuarius Record Of The Week when we first got it on cd back in 2009. That cd quickly sold out, but fortunately there then was a cassette version released, which also soon went out of print, but then after that, it was released on vinyl. So it wasn't just us that had become obsessed with Tony Tears, it seems. We know some of you are too, and this box of music from Tony's Astral Worlds is for you!
We'd managed to track down only one other Tony Tears release, a cd-r we listed two years ago, and which is also long gone too of course. But, having begun his career as Tony Tears back in 1988, the man has got a bunch of other releases, all of them incredibly hard to find, most of 'em limited run cd-rs and even more obscure demo tapes. Fans should be very thankful, then, for this box set put together by, naturally Minotauro Records (what with that label being home to another cult Italian psychedelic doom genius, Paul Chain). Besides Voci Dal Passato, the box includes Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror from the year 2000 (the cd-r we did get before), along with The Reality Before All (a cd-r from 2004), Tony's half of a split 7" with Abysmal Grief from 2004, the All My Black ep from 2007, and perhaps best of all, the more of less brand new 2014 Tony Tears full-length album, Vortice, previously issued on cd-r and very difficult to obtain. Vortice is pretty great, something we'd have considered making a Record Of The Week by itself, though definitely different from Voci Dal Passato, being rather more spacey and spooky than heavy, though parts are quite heavy too. On it, Tony is no longer alone, he has recruited a new member into what's now we guess the Tony Tears band, a vocalist, named David Krieg, who also must be Italian though. At first we we apprehensive, 'cause we like Tony's semi-spoken vocals. But this new singer has a haunting, almost operatic style that gives Vortice's heavily synthesizer laden, abstract ambient drone doom sound a touch of Early Music or 20th century classical avantgarde. 'Nuff said, perhaps, 'cause we're about to tack on our original reviews of Voci Dal Passato and Fears And Sensations, so this is gonna get loooong. We figure if you read about those and don't have 'em already, you can figure out if you want this box; if you DO have 'em, you probably already know you want this box for everything else, anyway.
The final two sound samples below are from Vortice, though, fyi.
And a word about the box itself - in addition to the three cds in cardboard sleeves with credits and tracklistings, there's also a separate set of cards with the original cover art for each release on 'em, and a fold-out insert with photos and liner notes from Tony himself, in both Italian and English. In a nice touch, the inside surfaces of the box feature full-color occult artwork by Tony, too.
So, here are the two Tony Tears reviews we've previously published, for those who need to find out more...
Voci Dal Passato:
We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it.
We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned...
Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears...
Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around.
So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today.
Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe.
Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily!
Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be.
The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort.
Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty.
Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help.
Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror:
This is first official release of TT's debut demo from 2000, Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror, consisting of six tracks (the last an extended, 4 part suite lasting 15 minutes). Just like the Tony Tears album we made ROTW, it's a lo-fi morass of mesmeric doomed-out psychedelia, inspired by Paul Chain, Goblin, Black Hole, and other esoteric Italians, with wobbly keyboards, crude drum programming, chant-like and sometimes extremely distorted Italian-language vox, and of course heavy fuzzed out doom guitar riffage, the whole thing giving off uniquely eerie, eccentric vibes galore as each track slowly plods forth through a haze of hiss and murk.
We mentioned Umberto with Striborg-level production and performance in our review of Voci Dal Passato, and guess what, these earlier recordings are even MORE like that. It's a beautiful thing. Tracks like "The Return To The Underground Temple", mostly echo effected keyboards and weeping guitars over simple steady rhythms, have so much weird psychedelic atmosphere that Tony Tears should not be limited to a 'cult doom metal only' audience. Devoted dronologists should hear the quietly ominous "Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore", the aforementioned four-part suite - it's pulsating electronic cosmic mystery that could be from some lost '70s krautrock lp or sinister soundtrack, at least until the super slowed down sludge part kicks in, with vocals and guitar sounding like they're recorded at quarter-speed or something, as if you're listening to it on a device with dying batteries.
We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it.
We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned...
Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears...
Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around.
So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today.
Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe.
Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily!
Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be.
The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort.
Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty.
Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Even moreso maybe than The Puritan album we ROTW'd last time, being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help.
If we can persuade a ton of folks to buy this, hopefully that won't make Tony Tears any -less- unhappy, because we're looking forward to more from this miserable, mesmerizing, and altogether unique act... stay doomed Mr. Tears!
Unfortunately, we can't really discuss how fucking unbelievable this record is (and it is!) without first addressing the skeptics and the naysayers. I have long been a champion of Tool and urged people to check them out, regardless of their preconceived
Lateralus is dark and brooding, rhythmic and atonal. Beautifully complex, with insane time signatures, bizarre tunings and huge riffs. A doom rock epic, skillfully forced into some completely alien prog/metal/ambient shape. Tense and droning tribal workouts, pummelling double bass, chugging power chords, whispered feathery stretches of ambience, and great fucking songs. Misanthropic lyrics and amazing (sometimes shrieked, but more often sung) vocals. Ultra dynamic and staggeringly technical. Great parts are stretched to their breaking point, where they cease to be just great parts, and instead become torturously tense. And so satisfying.
Obviously, you already know whether you -think- you like or dislike Tool. But if you think you dislike Tool, maybe it's time to think again.
Tool is easily the best of all the so called "nu-metal" bands and like the Deftones seem to have been unfairly lumped in with the Korns and the Limp Bizkits. Tool have always had a pretty well developed aesthetic, in their music, their (lack of) image, and especially their videos. This DVD (or vhs tape if you're so inclined) collects all of their videos, and they are amazing. Futuristic surreal vignettes played out by tiny depressed sexless figures, traversing a dangerous and lonely world of living flesh and rotting appendages. Owing much to Svankmeyer and the Quay brothers, these videos are absolutely mesmerising, and Tool's weird syncopated depressia-rock underpins the dour goings on perfectly. There's also a whole disc of rarities, which is really great as well, but it's all about the videos.
By now, probably everyone knows who Torche is, and has an inkling of what they sound like, but if not, you're in for a pretty kick ass surprise. Cuz these guys are like the pop band you always wished existed, in that they fuse big hooks and crazy melodies to massive downtuned guitar crush and pounding drum damage, and with every record, they seem to move further and further away from their sludgey beginnings and toward a sound that manages to be more and more accessible, without getting any less heavy. Seems impossible but it's true. Torche are like what we wished Queens Of The Stoneage sounded like, catchy as shit, and crazy heavy, just check out a track like "Kicking", with it's almost bubblegum chorus, and it's furious churning metallic main riff, the combination is pretty much a dream come true for folks like us who like our pop crazy catchy, and our heavy HEAVY. There were hints on past records of what these guys were capable of, but holy shit, Harmonicraft pretty much realizes all of that potential, it's so catchy and fun, and hooky and heavy, that it's almost like sonic candy, total heavy pop bliss, we've listened to this record probably 50 times in the last two weeks, and we're not even close to getting tired of it. For more in depth raving about Torche and their particular peculiar brand of sludge pop songcraft, you can check out the other Torche reviews on the aQ site, but for now, just know that this is probably THEE best heavy pop / sludge pop record this year, and heck, really any year, and based on how many plays this gets, it might just be a contender for RECORD of the year, pop, sludge or otherwise!!
A few lists back we gushed unapologetically about the gorgeous ultra heavy sludge pop of the mighty Torche, their self titled debut having just been rerecorded remixed and reissued. And as we mentioned in that review, that sucker had been lodged in our cd player for years, since the very first time we laid ears on it. The heir to Nirvana's throne, adding a megaton of heaviness to Nirvana's near perfect sound. The result was some sort of impossibly heavy pop music, as downtuned and punishing as it was hooky and anthemic.
So here we have the long in the works follow up, and on first listen it's got a definite different vibe, distinctly less poppy, more heavy, and aggressive, less groovy, more well metal. Not a bad thing, but we kind of had our fingers crossed for THE heaviest pop record of all time. And on first listen, this wasn't necessarily that. But, the more we listen, the more the magic of this record becomes clear, and the more the pop side reveals itself, blossoming like the flowers on the cover, revealing blissed out beauty amidst all the downtuned pummel. In fact, we just noticed that the third track, "Bring Me Home" sounds like a heavier mathier Jesu, which is a very good thing indeed. All washed out My Bloody Valentine swirls of sound, big booming drums, wailing guitars, and a hook to die for. Some of the other tracks are fast and heavy and groovy and play almost like some sort of stoner rock, but still twisted into a distinctly Torche-like shape. The Melvins vibe is BIG all over this record, which is also a very good thing, and while we don't hear as much of the Torche we loved so much on their s/t full length, we do hear lots more of the other Torche related bands like Floor and Dove, and even some Harvey Milk. Which is our way of saying while we were slightly disappointed by the not-quite-as-poppiness, it's more than made up for by killer riffing and insane heaviness. And this is some heavy heavy shit, but still with just enough groove and pop to keep us listening NONSTOP.
And holy shit! The Packaging is mind blowing. A deluxe gatefold 10", adorned with a super close up of John Baizley's Pushead like painting, all smeared inks, water drops, flower petals and bees, inside, more amazing artwork, including portraits of each of the band members inside flowers, and right in the middle 4 little flaps holding the cd version of the record, a three inch cd housed in a clear 5" plastic cd shell, also adorned with a flower, the inner sleeve also printed in full color, the vinyl super thick and on various different colors of swirled clear vinyl, everything housed in a plastic sleeve, with a cool art deco clear sticker with more artwork and the track titles and band name. WOW.
We have loved Torche from the very first time we heard them. Rare is the band who seem to effortlessly create a sound, that whether we all realized it or not, was exactly what we had always wanted to hear. We haven't met a single person who wasn't immediately smitten with Torche, their sound, the one we had all been hungering for, some kind of perfect pop, made impossibly, and irresistibly heavy. A dizzying collision of incredible hooks and downtuned pummel. And Torche were, and are, the undisputed masters of that very unique heavy catchiness, or catchy heaviness. Their debut sounded like a super charged heavier than Heaven Nirvana, or maybe the Foo Fighters crossed with the Melvins. That was the sort of shit we should be hearing on the radio. And seeing on MTV.
Torche's recent ep, In Return, while still awesome, found the band ditching much of the pop in favor of a much heavier sound, embracing their inner Melvins, yet thankfully never completely losing that pop side, just obscuring it beneath riff after riff and furious skull splitting drumming.
So here comes the long and anxiously awaited second full length, and while maybe after In Return, we were expecting them to move even further away from the pop, we really needn't have worried. Somehow they managed to make a record that falls somehere right in between. Easily as catchy and hook filled as their debut, but even heavier than In Return. The riffs are massive, the guitar sound HUGE, the vocals keep getting better and better, still way down in the mix, but perfectly complimenting the sound, not too melodic, but none of that pointless caterwauling. The drums too, are LOUD and incredible. And the songs, shit, strip away some of the distortion, and we're talking top 40. Sort of.
The opener is an instrumental blast, that sounds like the late great Karp, super dense churning hyper riffage, and super complex drumming, dizzying guitar harmonies, almost like some Fucking Champs / Melvins mashup. But the second is all pop, right out of the gate, an awesome melody, big thick riffs, soaring vocals, over the kind of drumming that is as catchy as any of the other instruments, not since Nirvana would we find ourselves humming the fucking drum fills, but this is Torche, what do you expect? It's like pop punk given a sludge doom makeover.
The whole record is an exercise in extremes, coexisting impossibles. No record this poppy and this catchy could possibly be this dense and distorted and downtuned and heavy, but it is. And no metal record, or sludge record, should be able to be so hook filled and catchy and still retain it's sheer fury and intensity, but again, the proof is right here.
"Across The Shields" sounds like a primo slab of nineties college indie rock, a main vocal melody that sticks in your head the second you hear it, a killer bassline that on its own is as catchy as anything any of the other instruments are doing, but here it's wrapped around super metallic harmonies, dense squalls of tribal drumming, and some chest rattling downtuned chug. "Without A Sound" begins like some sort of early SST jam mixed with dirgey Melvins jam, but deftly transforms into a crazy catchy pop song, "Amnesian" seems to take the obtuse melodic sludgery of Harvey Milk, and turns it inside out, offering up soaring harmonies and a totally majestic main riff, but separated by atonal slabs of slow motion dynamics and pounding percussion, as well as wild FX drenched psychedelic leads. We could probably go song by song, and talk about how heavy and/or catchy each one is, because they are. ALL of them. Some tracks do veer in one direction or the other, but even then, the band seem incapable of sounding anything but both heavy AND poppy. There are certainly worse problems.
But like any band worth their salt, they do delight in confounding, so the record finishes off with the 4 minute, VERY un-poppy title track, incredible sludgey and dirgey title track, beginning with a roiling miasma of guitar buzz and hum, eventually a riff kicks in, the drums stuttering and staccato, the riff a churning start stop, lurching and hypnotic, a dark slithery groove, the guitars crumbling and wet with FX, in the background clouds of glimmering whir and twinkling reverb drenched guitar squiggles, a primo classic Melvins era trudge, and while not overtly catchy, Torche still seem unable to commit to full on pummel, so even in this climax of primal riffage, lurk some unexpected, very subtle hooks. Whether you realize it or not, hours, days, weeks later, you'll find yourself humming along to what ostensibly is the least catchy song here. And if that's not a sign of pop genius, well then we don't know what is...
INCREDIBLE packaging, borrowing its main concept from that Open Hand record from a few years back, the booklet cut into overlapping layers, the tray card, covering only half of the jewel case revealing the art on the inside, the booklet folding out into a massive sprawling, garishly cartoon horrorscape, but beware, if you take the booklet out, it's a bitch to get back in!
Okay, so this disc was one of our favorite releases of 2005. A massive, pummeling ultra catchy slab of hook filled sludge pop. Or something. Like Nirvana but a million times heavier. Anyway, we played the shit out of this disc, and still do.
Recently, the band decided to re-record the record, not completely, but they were unhappy with the mix, especially the vocals, so this here, as the title explains, is reissued, remastered, and partially re-recorded. Hard to say how different it is without doing a side by side comparison. It does sound a bit louder, maybe a little clearer, the vocals sound pretty much the same, maybe a teensy bit more in tune, but so what. The record was already perfect the way it was. If anything, now it's just a little bit more perfect-er!! Probably not worth buying again if you already have it, but if you somehow missed out on the divine slab of sludgy pop brilliance, the gods have chosen to bless you with one more chance...
This is totally kick ass stoner sludge pop! So right up our alley! Not surprising, as Torche is fronted by the main guy from equally heavy / poppy AQ faves Floor and also features one of the guys from AQ faves Cavity as well. Try to imagine the Melvins mixed with the the Foo Fighters and you'll get a rough idea. Massive downtuned metal riffs, stoner rock slowed waaaay dooown, and then wrapped in pop hooks and perfect harmonies. Ultra catchy sing songy melodies draped over pummelling dirges, like Christmas lights strung over a tarpit. AQ pal Josh was touting this as record of the year. And who are we to argue?! We dream about the day that this is the top forty we see on MTV and hear on the radio. It's as catchy if not catchier than most of the crap that gets shoved down kids' throats. And we're all for that 'your chocolate in my peanut butter' sort of unlikely combo, and you don't get much more unlikely than this. Sludge pop? Dirge pop? Stoner pop? Hardly matters. This is the record of the summer, the one you'll be blasting with the top down as you cruise along the beach. Assuming of course that it's the dead of night, and your car is black with bones hanging from the rearview mirror, and the stickshift has a human skull on it, and there's a corpse in your trunk, and your car is engulfed in a cloud of vampire bats, and all the windows are tinted blood red and you run down every one in your path. Exactly. Now there's no excuse for the metalhead in your life to safely indulge his or her musical sweet tooth!
We've long been fans of New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery, his guitar sound so distinctive, able to conjure up whole other worlds with his music, having cut his teeth in legendary groups like Dadamah and Dissolve, it was really as a solo artist where Montgomery finally unleashed his full potential. A sort of reverbed minimalism writ large, Montgomery takes simple melodic phrases, fragments, riffs, even just a few notes, and transforms them into mesmerizing landscapes of sound, hazy and spacey, multitracked expanses of melodic mesmer, his playing fluid and lyrical, all of the edges smoothed out by a battery of deftly employed effects, transforming the guitar into some sort of alien psychedelic sound generator, able to fashion strangely inviting sonic worlds for the listener to explore, and get lost in.
So we were curious to hear this, the oddly named Torlesse Super Group (a reference to some NZ geology apparently), which is (or was, this was actually recorded back in 2004-2007), Montgomery's new group, or duo to be more precise, and finds Montgomery teaming up with Nick Guy, who we had never heard of before, for a strangely haunting, and surprisingly rhythmic bit of hazy, psychedelic, post industrial, dreamlike guitarscapery.
The record opens with the three part, 16 plus minute "Erewhon Sentinel", the first part of which is a super abstract stretch of looped skeletal rhythm, a barely there bit of staggered static, distant melodic swells, twisted flecks of glitchy electronics, eventually a deep low end thrum surfaces, as well as some creepy soundtracky chimes, not to mention some ven creepier bits of distorted crunch, the low end beginning to pulse, all cinematic and a little bit ominous, honestly we would have been happy if this was ALL the record did, but then we would have missed out on part two, which might be our favorite new jam, beginning with more rumbling low end, laced with some cool super distorted melody, the result is very ghostly and otherworldly, and then a beat comes in, a slow, slithery, downtempo skitter, and suddenly this sounds like some post Portishead, post Bowery Electric sort of electronic ambient creep, now THIS definitely could have continued for the rest of the record, hypnotic and low slung, woozy and warped, a sort of subterranean underwater lope, very soundtracky, evokes all sorts of super striking images, rain slicked streets, dark abandoned cities, low lit late night speakeasies. The sound continues to develop, additional melodies, more layers, harmonies, distant lo fi chimes, looped electronic high end squiggles, all drifting on that low thrum and hypnotic shuffle. Part three is something else entirely, sounding like a lo-fi melding of Autechre and Seefeel, a little bit glitchy, but warm and organic, swoonsome and woozy and dreamily looped, wound around some serpentine melodies, and plenty of fuzz and thrum.
Definitely a surprise, if Montgomery is playing guitar over all this, then he's even more of an alchemist than we already thought, cuz nothing here sounds distinctly guitar-like, at least in this opening salvo, all textural and ever shifting timbres, and layered loops, and swirling atmospheres, and propulsive rhythms and dark sonic swirl. It's not until the fourth track, where the guitar finally makes its presence obvious, with Montgomery unfurling a looped bit of repetitive riffage, eventually joined by a super skeletal beat, and then an avalanche of guitars, all buzzy and psychedelic, warm and washed out, creating a heady, hazy sprawl of mesmerizing drone rock shimmer, definitely more reminiscent of past recordings.
The rest of the record plays out in a similar fashion, with Montgomery laying down some spare, sparse guitar, sometimes lacing it with muted feedback, or woozy folky strum, while his partner (we presume) wraps these delicate bits of melody with streaks of glitch, fragmented rhythms, even seeming to add some dub to the sound, letting various elements careen and drift before settling back into their original druggy drift, the sound is super hypnotic, fantastically lysergic and dreamy, the sounds tapping into a psychedelia akin to Spacemen 3, repetitive, cyclical, a core droned out loop, but surrounded by crumbling distortion, sonar like pings, but with Montgomery's melodic reverby strum at its core.
The final track in fact begins with that reverby strum, hear letting a single strum repeat, ring out into the ether, before gradually, various other sounds creep in from the periphery, streaks of pulsing buzz, hushed shimmery swells, it's almost like the dreamiest, prettiest, softest doom ever, which weirdly enough is more like the Montgomery of old than anything else here, it's late night drift off dreamdrone psychedelia, strummy and shimmery, it's not really until about 9 minutes in that some crunch and heft are added to the mix, but subtly, so they don't overwhelm, instead, they just add density, and Montgomery's strummy grows more urgent as well, and added layers of melodic counterpoint and guitar harmonies, only make the sound blossom into something both lush and lovely, crunchy and a little bit dark, before finally fading out into a sweetly melancholic softly psychedelic haze. Gorgeous!
As we've mentioned many times in the past, we're practically obsessed with the music of Mr. Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk. From the blackened drone of his old church burning corpsepainted ambient horde MZ 412, to the industrial noisefolk of Folkstorm, the full on noise assault of his collaboration with Goat, the rhythmic noise experiments of his collaboration with Merzbow, the bleak drone drenched dark ambience of his projects with former partner in MZ412 Drakh (including an upcoming release on tUMULt!), he also plays in a couple black metal bands, has a noise group, and of course there's the haunting militaristic ambient drone folk of Toroidh. When does this man find time to sleep?!
As much as we love everything he's donee, we have a particular soft spot for the music of Toroidh. It's just so evocative, so dark and creepy, beautiful, but incredibly ominous, haunting and downright frightening at times.
We had never been able to get any Toroidh records for the store, so we were super ecstatic to discover that the first three Toroidh records were being remastered and re-released as a box set!!
It's hard to put into words just how massive and breathtaking these records are, how huge in scope. Epic explorations of history through sound. The three records are definitely distinct and unique, but they work together perfectly as a trilogy, their sound, themes and structures perfectly compliment each other. A long strange dark and soulful journey through sound.
Haunting looped military marches, snippets of speeches and rallies, lilting waltzes with moaning horns give way to militaristic drums, over slow soft swells of murky gloomy shimmer, peppered with more snippets of speeches. Thick church organ drones wrap themselves around deep densely reverbed operatic vocals, throughout muted percussive thumps and throbs pulse rhythmically, everything swirled into woozy Skepticism like dirges.
Warm swells of brass moan in the distance, beneath mesmerizing male chanting. Huge expanses of abstract drone, slowed down mournful murmurs wash over forlorn minor key melodies, spread out into murky whorls of sonic sorrow, dizzying swirls of 16rpm warble and deep droning drift. Crunchy industrial marches wrapped in smoky blackness underpin simple propulsive rhythms. Minor key acoustic guitar strum floats on thick beds of soaring strings. Each record manages a seemingly impossible balancing act, situating itself somewhere between cold martial pound, and super emotional melodicism.
European Trilogy is a completely mesmerizing, and ever shifting sonic expanse, the listener is sent into battle to wander cold and alone, lonely and afraid, allowed to wander along the streets of some unnamed village, observing some unnamed war, watching the people, the buildings, the destruction, the devastation, but most specifically the sounds. From hypnotic propulsive militaristic marches to strange processed field recordings and bits of historical sound to deep dark cavernous drones. An absolutely astonishing piece of sonic beauty!
Gorgeous, super deluxe, over the top packaging. A black matte rubberized box with the title debossed, a super striking black on black, inside each disc is in its own thick textured paper sleeve, embossed with the band name and disc number (in Roman numerals of course), and a booklet on super thick glossy paper, with track listings and credits, everything appropriately spare and striking, very simple and streamlined and Teutonic. WOW!
Now this is indeed a pleasant surprise. The return of Tortoise. A band we were OBSESSED with in the beginning, whose first few records are classics, undefinable masterpieces that managed to totally transcend their classification as mere post rock. Tortoise's self titled debut still sounds classic and timeless, a loping hypnotic blend of math rock and krautrock and jazz. Their Millions Now Living, which was released in the very early days of the aQ list, so it only has a barely descriptive two sentence review, was a mind blowing meld of Oval like electronics and abstract jazziness, of brooding post rock and almost orchestral arrangements. The remix record, which found the band being reimagined by Steve Albini, Brad Wood, Bundy Brown, Jim O'Rourke, John McEntire and others, still ranks as one of the few examples of how a collection of remixes, in some ways can even transcend the originals. But from that point on, the band seemed to lose their way, it's hard to explain just how, but their record, often literally years in the making, surprisingly enough didn't sound fresh anymore, the sounds tired and played out, maybe meant to be 'mature' or 'academic' but instead mostly sounded boring, and in some cases bad.
There was always a spark, and every record had brief flashes, little musical moments that reminded us what they were once capable of.
Which brings us to the awkwardly titled Beacons Of Ancestorship, which while not a total mind blowing complete return to form, is pretty dang good. A handful of the tracks ranking up there with some of their classic jams from years back.
Most folks have been focusing on record opener "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In", and rightfully so, the band definitely had something to prove, some lost ground to make up, and some fans to win over again, and hell, "High Class Slim" is just the song to do it. It still sounds like Tortoise, but it's all revved up, skittery jazzy drums wrapped around deep woozy bass and reedy synth buzz, before in swoops some tripped out Stereolab / Tangerine Dream keyboard swirl, and then some super out of place buzzy keyboard groove, but it somehow works, the track gets more intense, the sounds smolder and throb, blissy and subtly psychedelic, a little bit funky, a lot bit space-y, even a breakdown that gets all cybotronic robot funk, washed over by some new age shimmer, and sparkely space-y effects... it was almost too much to hope for that the whole record would sound like that the whole way through, but then it wouldn't really be Tortoise, for these guys it's just a launching point for their latest exploration of sounds both simple and sinister, serene and cinematic, jazzy and funky.
There are definitely a few moments where things lag, where it definitely sounds like they're back to doing Tortoise by numbers, some Morricone-ish guitar, that while we usually love, here doesn't do much, some of the stretched out jams bog down more than bliss out, but those moments are few and far between, the rest of their time is spent weaving pretty fantastic flights of instrumental fancy, mathy jams rife with melodic curlicues and warm whirls of warble and whir, cool skittery almost dancehall sounding bits of buzz and blurt, wrapped around some truly funky rhythms, long stretches of stuttering almost African sounding grooves, laced with sitar like buzz, and cool psychedelic flourishes, and at least one track that starts off with some looped Afterschool Special music that is transformed into what sounds like the perfect backing track for a Kanye West song. And then there's the unpronounceable "Yinxianghechengqi" which finds Tortoise getting their Trans Am on, fuzzed out, snarling guitars wrapped in crumbling distortion, pulsing bass, John McEntire pummeling his kit like he probably hasn't since his Bastro Days, but then this IS Tortoise, so over the top they drape some atonal modal Return To Forever sort of buzz drenched melodic weirdness which ends up turning the song into something else entirely. And minus those few aforementioned lulls, the rest of the record continues on, and manages to hold our attention, and definitely has had us returning again and again.
So while it's not quite Millions, Beacons is definitely the best Tortoise record since the mid nineties, and once distanced from the legacy and the expectations and all the non musical bullshit, on it's own as simply a record by a band, a collection of songs and sounds, Beacons is really pretty fantastic.
Holy shit! Skullflower / Matthew Bower / Broken Flag / early industrial music nerds rejoice! A long overdue reissue of the debut release from Matthew Bower of Skullflower's solo project Total, originally released on cassette way back in 1986 on the Broken Flag label, and now available on cd for the first time EVER. And it's a monster. Amongst fans of this kind of stuff (which we most certainly are, and we imagine many of you are too), this ranks up there as holy grail sort of stuff, and many folks' favorite Bower recordings ever. And it's easy to see why. Even after all this time, the stuff on Hard + Low, still sounds totally fresh, and way ahead of its time. With new bands today conjuring up similarly mysterious murk, with no idea that Bower was doing the same thing, and doing it better more than two decades early.
Sonically, this is a tough one to pin down, the record begins with a live track, which is essentially a squall of blown out white noise guitar skree, through which can barely be discerned the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy In The UK", but soon even that disappears beneath a barrage of feedback and industrial clatter, it's the sort of noisiness that would have the listener battening down the hatches preparing for the onslaught that must no doubt be coming. But instead, the rest of the record, while still plenty pummeling and brutal, shows a surprising amount of restraint, whether it's the weird pulsating dirge folk noisescape of "Transfigured Night", which transforms skronking horns into bagpipe like bellows, all over corrosive drones and strange detuned guitar strum, sounding not unlike an industrial free jazz version of Amps For Christ, or "Charnel House Revisited", which is a woozy Philip Jeck like turntablescape, all warped loops and crackly records spinning over a strange stuttery beat. Or there's "You'll Get Yours Yet", which sounds like some lost cold wave gem, the guitars stretched out into droning buzz, laced with plenty of strange sonic streaks and tangled melodies, over which a darkly dramatic vocal bellows and growls, a sort of ominous drumless doom and gloom drone-noise creep.
The record's centerpiece is the nearly 14 minute "The Sound Of Music", which is essentially solo piano, super lo-fi, and with tons of echo and reverb, wreathed in subtle swaths of haunting buzz, the whole track rife with weird bits of static and tape hiss, and more detuned guitar buzz. Surprisingly lovely, but at the same time, still slightly sinister. There's a studio version of the opening live track too, which is GORGEOUS, driven by what sounds like organs, but must be processed guitars, tranced out and droney, drifting on a bed of static and hiss and gristly buzz, all manner of strange industrial filigree in the background, but weirdly tranquil, and dreamily mesmerizing, easily one of the prettiest 'noise' jams EVER. And finally, the record finishes off with "Terminator", another tripped out psychedelic samplescape, all looped and cyclical, an early industrial Jeck, unfurling a softly noisy, layered loops, and wrapping them in warm swirls of blunted noise and blurred gauzy thrum. Wow. Absolutely essential.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
The first track on this new record from Aussie new wave garage punks Total Control had us thinking for a second that they had ditched their garage side completely, in favor of going all 'wave all the time, just check out the first sample below. Sure the last record, Henge Beats, was laced with little bits of new waviness, but "Glass" is straight up new wave, sounding remarkably like New Order, all programmed beats, swirling eighties synths, moody, swoonsome melodies, and deep, crooned vox, it almost sounds like it could be some lost gem reissued on Medical or Dark Entries, but fear not, the next track, "Expensive Dog", is all knuckle dragging old school punk rock, a chugging, churning main riff, the vibe swaggery and sloppy, the vocals a mush mouthed bellow, way down in the mix, it's hard to believe it's the same band even, but then in swoops "Flesh War", which somehow melds the two, channeling some synthy post punk via a serious John Hughes soundtrack flashback vibe, a fuzzy riff, a pounding beat, but then over the top, swirling synths, ethereal textures, and the vocals reverting to that new wave-y croon. And so it goes, the band seemingly a little sonically schizophrenic, leap frogging from synth pop, to garage punk, and back again, with plenty of stops in the nebulous region right in between, which for us is really the sweet spot here. Although the more we listen, the more we're smitten by the even weirder, harder to pin down tracks. Like "Liberal Party", which sounds a lot like some actual obscure post punk/pop rarity, replete with angular guitar, kazoo-like buzz and horns! Or the murky electro-pop dirgery of "The Ferryman", which sounds like some lost Flying Nun B-side. Or "Hunter", which is a fantastic blast of swirling-synth, electro-wave bliss out. And while we were prepared for the record to finish with one final burst of bristly punkiness, these guys instead deliver what might be the poppiest jam here, hook heavy, synths galore, a soaring chorus, another nod to the sound of classic John Hughes movie music, and the sort of track that would be all over MTV if it was 1985...
Okay, seriously, how could we resist? The band is called Totally Radd. That's Radd with two D's. That's like the rad version of Hott with two T's. The record is called Shark Attack Day Camp, and features eye poppingly garish artwork depicting two kids playing video games in an arcade full of bloody zombies, including one who has been pushed head first through the monitor of another game. Oh and that game just happens to be called Hammer Hamsters. Inside the illustration is of kids in full Lord Of The Flies mode, wearing animal skins and heads, also covered in blood, in a grassy field peppered with dead elks and bears not to mention a huge pile of dead bloody rabbits, not sure how any band would expect to live up to the promise of all this ridiculousness, but somehow Totally Radd do, delivering totally over the top eighties soundtrack, NES, 8-bit keytar, glam rock, dork pop cheesiness that is hilarious and totally dumb, but crazy fun and way catchier and funnier than it has any right to be. But the second we threw this on in the store, we were immediately obsessed, and have been playing it non-stop, much to the chagrin of some people no doubt, but fuck 'em!
If you've been paying attention to the aQ list lately, you may have noticed us referencing eighties training montage music, several records we've gotten in recently have sounded inexplicably like that music, from cheesy VHS tapes, the sort of inspirational RAWK that always accompanies training for the big fight, or the big race, well, this stuff REALLY does sound like that. It also sounds a bit like metallized video game music, it also sounds like a brain damaged Sparks, falsetto vox slip into monstrous demonic vokills or screamo shrieks, total Legend Of Zelda 8-bit sputter collides with chugging metal guitars, super catchy punky pop becomes wild video game music and vice versa, the lyrics are completely silly, about cross dressing, and video stores, and all kinds of random stuff. There are songs named after video games, and we originally assumed those would be covers, but instead are simply songs ABOUT those video games! And speaking of covers, our favorite part might be the bonus 7" that comes with the lp, which starts off with a killer version of Phantom Planet's "California", given a sort of bubblegum synth / electro pop makeover, with vocodered vocals and squiggly synths, wrapped around a Weezer-ish power pop core. Then there's a cool, goovy, broody chunk of ballady electro-pop, a sort of video game Weezer slowdance number, before the awesomely titled "2 8-Bit 2 Quit", which is the most 8-bit of the bunch, sounding like Perry And Kingsley by way of Donkey Kong...
The B side of the 7" starts off with a jam that almost sounds like nineties era black metal, via 8-bit pop nerd dorkiness, brooding and dramatic, with Rob Zombie vocals, which goes right into a cover of Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" with a very misleading intro that's essentially a pitch perfect take on beginning of "Just What I Needed" by the Cars, before slipping into a dangerously straight ahead version of the Soul Asylum original, with extremely overly dramatic vocals, and a swirly psychedelic synth solo in the middle, but otherwise, a pretty straight rock (piss?) take...
It's all dumb and fun, and falls somewhere on the sonic spectrum between Steven Schultz and that MSG Songs From A Gated Community lp we reviewed a while back, but with more Mario Brothers, more pixie stix, more gratuitous violence, more blood thirsty zombies, more after school specials, more boobs, more masked serial killers, more BMX bikes, more gleaming the cube, more lost boys, more revenge of the nerds, more� well, you get it. GET IT!
Not to be confused with Doug Martsch's amazing nineties outfit, the Treepeople, -these- Tree People are equally amazing, but are a whole different proposition.
This disc was originally released as a super limited lp way back in 1979 and managed to quietly disappear. Now, here we are nearly three decades later, and whattaya know? There's a whole movement of modern free folk, 'freak' folk and the like, and if you didn't know better, pretty sure we could pass this off as some strange super limited cd-r by some modern folk revivalists. But keen ears would certainly be able to tell. This is so entirely original (especially for the time) and genuine sounding. Mostly acoustic guitars, flute and vocals, the Tree People had two distinct sounds, the first, a lilting melancholy moonlit folk, like Cat Stevens or Van Morrison, a gorgeous lazy drawl, rich and lustrous, over simple folk and fluttering flutes, dreamy and gorgeous, sounding like some lost folk classic one minute, a strange "Girl From Ipanema" style shuffle the next. But even at it's sweetest and softest, the record seems to always have a hint of melancholy, sometimes even a trace of ominous foreboding. Which definitely gives the songs a subtly dark undercurrent. The majority of the record however is spent in full on hippy jam mode. Very Comus-like at times (especially on track two, "Sliding"), wild steel string excursions, dense tangles of fingerpicked melodies and aggressive strummed riffs, with a definite raga like vibe, all over a smattering of hand drums and tablas, a glorious drifting buzzing steel string dronefolk, that just sounds so incredibly timeless. Elsewhere, the same jams evolve into more tranquil acoustic dreaminess, with the flutes floating over sweet lilting melodies, but even then, the songs will be peppered with sudden bursts of buzzing slide guitar, or brief squalls of atonal fingerpicking. SO cool. And considering the current love of all things freaky and folky, it's sort of amazing that stuff like this was already being made 27 years ago!
Obviously, fans of the current crop of modern folk troubadours will find this absolutely essential, Devandra, Vetiver, Espers, Newsom, whatever your particular poison, the Tree People will fit in frighteningly well. Hard to say whether it speaks to the prescience of the Tree People, or just to how much these modern bands have actually been 'borrowing'. Either way, this is absolutely essential.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
This is not a normal Record Of The Week. It's not new. It's not even a newly released reissue. But what it is, is one of our favorite records EVER. And it just so happened Andee was in Olympia this last weekend, and got to visit K Records, where they discovered a little box of these stashed away in the warehouse. And since most of the records by this band predate the current version of the list, we were psyched to suddenly be presented with the opportunity to gush like crazy over the debut album from the late great Treepeople. And really, as far as we're concerned, if any band deserved a comprehensive reissue campaign, it's the Treepeople, but until then, dig this...
For those unfamiliar with the Treepeople, it's essentially pre Built To Spill, with BTS mastermind Doug Martsch honing his chops in a much wilder, more punky, noisy, but no less catchy context. In fact, if you've heard the first Built To Spill record, Ultimate Alternative Wavers, that record essentially sounds like a slightly more polished Treepeople Record. Imagine the glorious hooks and super catchy melodies of BTS, but wrapped in spidery intertwined guitars, swirls of feedback, wild chaotic drumming, the whole vibe more noisy, and loose, definitely more punk, aggressive and heavy, but still impossibly poppy. With every track here, on the group's 1991 debut, a stone cold killer, the opener "No Doubt" lays out the template, multiple guitar lines in constant motion, as if there were multiple solos being played at once, a dizzying backdrop of distort melodies, wound around sinewy basslines, and frenetic drumming, all beneath Martsch's distinctive vocals, oh and feedback, EVERYwhere, but somehow these guys make it sound as much a part of the sound/song as any other instrument. When people talk about noise pop, this is the sort of thing we imagine, equal parts jangle pop and urgent post punk, with some hints of proginess and psychedelia. And since we're all friends here, we'll fess up to the fact, that one of us here (ahem, Andee) had no idea that track two, "Andy Warhol" was a Bowie cover. Which also helps to give you an idea of the sound happening here. The opener bleeds right into the Bowie cover, almost as if they were conceived and composed together, with the Treepeople's version extra fierce and fuzzy (they'd do something similar to the Smiths' "Big Mouth Strikes Again" a year later).
"Gre" comes next, and might be one of our favorite Treepeople songs ever, frantic and fuzzy, noisy and punky, but again, super catchy, with drums and guitars in a seemingly constant squall, and yet molded into something most proper pop bands would kill for, if they could even figure out what to do with it. And from there on out, it just keeps getting better, some songs jangly and woozy, others straight up punk pound, more often than not a little of both, and almost as often, with even more sonic weirdness swirled into the equation. The Treepeople are one of those rare groups whose sound is actually totally and truly unique, there are definitely moments and parts and sounds and hooks that touch on other strains of indie rock, but much like Polvo, they seem to have taken the parts of a proper sound, pulled them apart and then reassembled them with no regard for the instruction manual, the resulting musical monstrosity emerging far more twistedly beautiful than it was ever meant to be, and the sort of sound that has stood the test of time like little else, this record (along with the group's entire catalog) on constant heavy rotation pretty much nonstop for that past 20+ years. And as much as we love Built To Spill, we find ourselves, almost without thinking, replying to almost every BTS related query with something like "yeah, but have you heard Treepeople?!?", cuz really, they're like a much crazier, noisier, heavier, more experimental version, which obviously for us, means even BETTER. A gloriously noisy concoction that should be essential listening for all indie rockers, young and old, and which should eventually, hopefully one day, get these guys, and all their records, the sort of love and accolades they so totally deserve. For now, we'll just do our part. And you should do yours, you won't be sorry, you might just have a new (old) favorite band!
Non musical note: this was the record that first introduced us to the stunning and horrifyingly beautiful pencil art of Mike Scheer!
The latest missive from this sinister spectre, broadcast from whatever shadowy corner of the netherworld this guy calls home. Like the previous two tapes we reviewed, Prefection & Permanence is an exercise in blackened ritualism, extreme minimal dronemusic fused to grim black ambience, an unholy hybrid spawned from the deep, a sound that is both malevolently mesmerizing and deeply sonically terrifying.
This Swedish sonic shaman who we most recently observed collaborating with local blacknoise terrorists Sutekh Hexen in the woods at Stella, conjuring up one of the most intense performances of that entire festival, delivers here an equally intense experience, one that along with the usual tropes of black ambient music, delivers a lots of sonic surprises, like on "Black Egg", wherein the grim black noise is sculpted into a pulsating, murky rhythmic throb, an avalanche of rumbling, whirring synths, accompanied by hellish vokills, the end result surprisingly musical, and in its own unlikely way, strangely catchy. And that's actually a template that many of the other songs hew to, rhythmic, hypnotic, a sort of hypno-grimnity, with some of THEE sickest vocals we've ever heard, gargling, demonic, monstrous bellows, alien murmurs, all over beds of grinding noise, clouds of static, of swirling black shimmers, and all manner of muted/mutated rhythms, a strangely mesmeric black industrial that sans vocals, could very well be are new favorite minimal blackened techno record, but with all the noise and vokills mixed in, it's transformed into something else entirely. But seriously, check out a track like "Alone/A/Cross/Abyss", it's like an impossible collaboration between some obscure grim black metal band, and some minimal techno producer, fans of some recent aQ faves like Record Of The Weekers Akkord, might find much to love here, and might find themselves lured to the (even) dark(er) side. That said, let's not downplay how dark and sick the sounds are here, this is suffocating, abject, miserable and bleak, harrowing and hellish, the vocals alone are the stuff of nightmares, but approached as some weird black industrial techno record, or at least understanding there's a strange, and to a degree out of place rhythmic element, which is how we've decided to, it becomes something even more avant / experimental / unique / bizarre, and is most definitely one of the coolest records we've heard in ages.
Another mysterious black metal horde from the great white North, hailing from Quebec, Canada, Triskele, like many of their French Canadian black metal countrymen, have much in common with their actually French brethren, owing much to the Black Legions and the various groups and scenes that brief movement inspired.
Les Murmures is not new, it was actually released way back in 2003, and there are two more recent records, but as those two were SUPER limited and both seem to be out of print now, we figured that probably some of you, like us, managed to miss out on this, which is a shame, as this is some seriously blown out, buzz drenched, miserablist black metal.
Supposedly Les Murmures was recorded in a forest (Like Ulver's epochal Nattens Madrigal) and it definitely sounds like it could have been, after a brief ambient keyboard / chanted intro, the band spews forth a churning torrent of crumbling black distortion and blasting drums, almost totally obscured by the sheet of hiss and buzz that envelops the proceedings. Almost more than a forest, this sounds like it was recorded in a cave, or at the bottom of a well, or in some massive concrete bunker. The vocals are a harsh glass gargling howl, inexorably tangled up with the buzzing reverb drenched guitars, and those drums that sound more like a wall of cymbal sizzle punctuated by barely audible rhythmic pulses, but don't get us wrong, it sounds AMAZING, super lo-fi and totally raw, slipping from chaotic stumbling blast, to lurching doomic creep and back again. Some tracks are explosions of furious white noise buzz and relentless drum splatter, but when the band locks into a groove, and slows it down a bit, the depressive genius shines through, the vocals transforming into an hysterical shriek, all manner of melancholy and mournful melodies rising to the surface, before being obliterated by another frosty white blast of black fury.
Then there's the title track, a nearly 12 minute stretch of buzz and drum ambience, the drums pounding out some tribal rhythm, while all around it streaks of whir and buzz swirl and swoop, the drummer also managing to incorporate some unlikely percussion, there's even some primal wailing at one point, it's actually nearly impossible to imagine this track NOT being performed in the forest, lit by firelight, the mysterious haunting sounds holding the woods' wild beasts at bay.
WAY recommended. Essential for fans of outsider depressive blackness and grim blown out black forest buzz.
Not to be confused with the much more prolific Czech depressive doom-ed black metal Trist, German one man band Trist is the ambient drone side project of Benjamin Konig, who is also the frontman for Lunar Aurora, an amazing black metal band we love, but have yet to list here (which will be remedied as soon as possible, we promise).
Initiation comes via the same label that has been gradually re-releasing all the Paysage D'Hiver demos over the last couple years, and is a collection of various long out of print and even at the time barely available demos, recorded between 2000-2003. Nothing black metal here, but plenty blackness nonetheless, Trist explores slow, hazy, otherworldly ambience, black drones and delicate Lustmordian soundscapery, a sound that falls somewhere between the gauzy digitized smear of folks like Tim Hecker and Aidan Baker, and the abject electronics and post apocalyptic sonic sprawl of groups like Wolf Eyes and Emeralds, infusing it with that distinctive 'black metal intro' vibe. Not obviously synthy, and definitely not overly guitar based, the sound on Initiation is blurred and washed out, melodies exist but are only glimpsed fleetingly, the longform drones and extended drifts are heavily textured with, warm whooshing whir, distorted crumble, ethereal fields of hiss and click and pop and rough sandpaper like buzz, definitely very dreamy and moonlit, but also ominous and grim, very cinematic, evoking some alien wasteland, burnt and ruined beneath a smoke filled sky, something lurking in the shadows, the ground littered with death and destruction.
Folks who loved that Cities Last Broadcast from last list, will definitely dig this too, as it mines the same sort of wasted unpopulated barren planet vibe, and take the more abstract dronescaping of folks like Machinefabriek and Jasper TX and Xela and Aun and Svarte Greiner somewhere much more cinematic. Bits of new age seep in here and there, chunks of slow motion doomdrone now and again, mysterious loops and bits of glitch surface throughout, giving many of the tracks an avant turntablist vibe, like Strotter Inst or Jeck, this is certainly not what you might expect from a grim black metaller, instead Initiation plays out more as a dense and varied and layered work of tense instrumental minimalism, of gorgeous and harrowing experimental dronemusic, and of course bleak black ambience, maybe too abstract for metalheads, but folks into drone and doom and drift and all that cd-r floorcore rumble and shimmer would do well to grab one of these right quick.
Some�of you folks who took advantage of the black metal cassette grab bag might have been lucky enough to nab Stiny, the 2006 full length from Czech blackdoomlords Trist, a gorgeously bleak slab of plodding doomy blackness. Falling somewhere between�Burzum, Nortt, Make A Change... Kill Yourself and Hypothermia.
Thankfully, Ars Magna, the label responsible for the mind blowing black miserablism of Animus'�Poems For The Aching, Swords For The Infuriated and the clinical black blast of Black Hole Generator, has swooped in to re-release that tape on compact disc, so now all you black hearted frozen souled metalheads who ditched the walkman years back, can still dig into this intense collection of bleak black misery.�
Four ultra long songs, the first clocking in at 16 minutes, the last at 11, Trist traffic in ultra repetitive, hypnotic looped riffage wreathed in frosty ambience, the sound is all guitar, the bass barely noticeable (if there is any bass at all), just grim sheets of keening riffs, sometimes soaring and epic, other times tangled and furious, dripping with reverb and not all that distorted, a sort of dirty clean sound, perfectly complimenting the buried vocals, an abstract screech that ends up sounding like another layer of buzzing sound, which serves in some ways to make the drums a focal point, surprisingly busy, going from simple plod to intense squalls of almost mathy drumming, bursts of double kick, some wild fills, but it all fits really well, the songs often veering from doomic trudge to almost groovy midtempo, and once in a while almost full on blastbeats.
And while the sound is plenty hateful and miserable and depressive, it still manages to be pretty at times, with little melodic bits that wouldn't be that out of place on an Alcest or Amesoeurs record... Way recommended. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands will find Stiny to be an essential addition to their library of sonic sorrow and musical melancholia.
The time has come. Hard to believe. Trollman in the flesh. Live. Their mortal forms revealed to all. Thundarr and Mordraaneth. Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come, Cosmic Keys To Gates Unknown. All before our very eyes.
Not sure what we were expecting, so much of Trollmann was mystery, those strange drawings on the cds, the bizarre monickers, the lengthy song titles. And hell, the sound. Huge expanses of slow motion doom. Hellish drones spread out like a black fog. We were sort of expecting some sort of SUNNO))) thing. Dry ice, hoods, robes, back lit shadows. But nah, that's a little too contrived. Maybe they would be hidden behind some stones, or huge curtains. Or maybe they would be monsters, creatures of the night, exposed for the very first time, a horrific but impossibly compelling sight.
No matter how you slice it, with a mysterious band, it's hard not to be disappointed, and to be totally honest we were a little at first, but then, the whole thing became more and more surreal, and it was hard not to love these guys even more.
It starts with skeletal, taciturn looking long hair man in a long sleeve Burzum t-shirt, seated at a keyboard in front of a huge black tapestry of a long haired, mustachioed skull wearing an Indian headress above crossed swords. Beside him, stands another long haired fellow, in jeans and a black t-shirt, holding a black bass. All to the strains of a skull rattling low end doomdrone. But then the camera pulls back to reveal the fact that they seem to be outside, DURING THE DAY! They also seem to be under a bridge. Beneath a brick arch, with a muddy hillside in the background, trees and bushes. On the wall behind the band in the background a strange brass plaque, and what appears to be a pig's head on a stick. The whole thing is filmed with a super jittery camcorder, sudden unexpected zooms, face, fingers on strings, the dirt hillside in the background, the skull on the tapestry, and while the band plays, you can hear people talking, obviously not that into the band, one guy even comes to the front of the stage, beer in hand, and begins to taunt the band, making hand gestures and mugging fro the crowd. Someone in the audience yells "You're fucking SHITE!!!". People laugh, but the band remain expressionless, intent on the harsh soundworld they're weaving beneath this bridge.
The second track begins the same way, the taciturn man seated at his keyboard, beneath the Indian skull, but at this point, either the cameraman is getting bored, or has gotten too drunk to really keep the camera still or keep his attention on the band. Lots of jittery shots of the floor, the wall beside the band, the band members' feet, the crowd, drunk dudes and cute metal girls, amps, the trees behind the stage, the houses on the other side of the bridge, and most bizarrely of all, a couple of little dogs, one of whom proceeds to run back and forth in front of the stage, seemingly unperturbed by the roaring doomic dirge emanating from the speakers. And the cameraman seems unduly interested in the dog, considering he is meant to be capturing the slow motion might of Trollmann. Much more crowd chatter this time around, but somehow it just adds to the sound. Laughing and inane drunken conversations are inadvertently woven into the black fabric of Trollmann's sound. A bespectacled man mouths "Awesome. Fucking awesome... " Someone holds a cigarette beneath the camera letting the smoke whip by the lens like the world's most inexpensive special effect. All the while, Trollmann remain impassive, statue like, emitting an impossibly gorgeous ambient dirge, chanted vocals, over a pulsing bass drone and shimmery keyboards. Almost like Moss crossed with SUNNO))) only with Gregorian chant-like vocals. The whole thing is incredibly surreal, the camera bobbing from the ground to the sky to the band to the crowd and back again, the sky darkening behind the band, the crowd growing less and less distinct, and more like featureless shadows, wraiths... it's somehow sort of perfect.
Outside of the camera panning back to reveal a troll atop a toadstool clutching his keyboard, and a huge furry caveman with a club in one hand and a bass guitar in the other, performing on the edge of a fiery abyss, wreathed in clouds of vampire bats and thick curls of black smoke, we really couldn't have wished for more...
What's The Hubub Bub is a twistedly brilliant DIY post punk holy grail from a group known simply as Tronics, not so much a group as the work of one man, Ziro Baby, and his peculiar brand of post-punk / folk-punk /art-rock / protest music sounds relevatory even today. Originally released at the beginning of the eighties, this record must have really blown minds back then. Equal parts singer/songwriter punk folk songsmithery, minimalist punk primitivism, and ahead of its time tape experiments and sound collage, What's The Hubub Bub has been floating around the underground for 30 years now, with just a track or two popping up on obscure comps, which is hard to believe considering how fucking great this whole record is.
The first half tends more toward proper songs, although the record begins with the sounds of sirens, before in swoop brittle and angular guitars, languid and psychedelic, simply strummed and darkly jangly, accompanied by simple hand percussion, opener "How Do You Do Again" is crazy catchy, repetitive and mantra like, stream of consciousness lyrics, sort of sung/spoken, it's easy to hear the sort of influence this band has had on contemporary groups like Sic Alps (SA's Mike Donovan is a HUGE fan!), and that song sets the template, mostly one or two parts, looped and repeated, minimal lyrics, also repeated over and over, some songs have a distinctly fifties / sixties style pop sound, "Helsinki" is like some classic Beatles or Kinks song arranged for tinny guitar and hand drums. But it's right around "Space Message" that things start to get really weird, a brief blast of static, and garbled FX, with Tronics mainman (only man?) Ziro transmitting from the ether, his voice becoming equally garbled, very Conet Project sounding, and really, that signals a sort of seismic sonic shift, cuz the rest of the record, while rife with more punk-folk ditties, is also peppered with strange sonic experiments and collaged tape loops. There's the old timey rock and roll of "The Other Man" and then the murky droned out balladry of "Alone", that sounds like the saddest, warbliest Joe Meek outtake ever, but if any record was back loaded it's this one. Cuz then there's "Intro", which is in fact a sprawling bit of early sampledelia, bird song, weird voices, tape hiss, and strange effects, echo drenched samples of a sobbing woman, maudlin piano, snippets taped off the radio, bursts of jagged distorto guitar, little bits of orchestra, and symphonies, and what sounds like TV theme songs, all layered into a fantastic bit of psychedelic avant sound collage, and that leads right into what might be the greatest Tronics song EVER, "Shark Fucks", catchy, and anthemic, ridiculous lyrics, a main hook that KILLS, a wicked chorus, still just guitar and distorted drum (just one drum), with laid back, drawled vox, it will instantly get lodged in your brain, and you'll want to play it over and over and over, we have been, probably driving people insane, but we LOVE it! We're actually kind of amazed this song hasn't been covered a million times, it's SOOOOO good. Totally worth the price of admission, especially when he slips into some weird garbled underwater vocals, presumably just made with his mouth and not any actual FX.
Once you make it past "Shark Fucks", if you ever do, there's the primitive minimal fuzz-guitar punk of "I'm A Diver", also crazy catchy, and then things finish off with another sound experiment, the two part "Piece For A Galaxy Bar Jukebox", the first part, all pulsing sci-fi electronics, a dark shadowy kosmische, that gets people coming up to see what we're playing, every time it comes on in the store, moody and minimal and haunting, it's only three minutes, but it's the kind of thing we could listen to forEVER. The second part is still more sci-fi electro weirdness, this one less shimmery and droney, and more percussive and rhythmic, percolating bloops, that explode into jagged shards of distorted synth, and again, we would have loved if it stretched out for 10 or 15 minutes instead of just two...
So completely bafflingly brilliant, and utterly essential. A new unanimous favorite for sure. We also got another Tronics reissue, Say! What Is This?, which we'll review next time, but if you want that one too, just ask!
Eald-Ge-Streon reveals a much different Troum than we're used to. This German duo, long time favorites of folks around here (ever since their pre-Troum outfit Maeror Tri) has always delivered gorgeous guitar driven drone music, dark and haunting and hypnotic, which makes sense since Troum also operate the quite excellent Drone label, which specializes in, yep, you guessed it, drones.
Eald-Ge-Streon is a strange record in that it's a sort of odds and ends collection, various recordings begun years ago, left unfinished, or reimagined for various live performances, many finally finished here for the first time, and while the sound is still essentially dronemusic, it's much less guitar driven, much more ethereal and shoegazey, reminding us of Jesu and Nadja and Lovesliescrushing more than the usual suspects. Which is not a bad thing at all.
Epic, majestic, fuzzy, dreamy, washed out, the first track sounds almost pop ambient, thick gauzy swaths of sound drifting, layers upon layers, totally mesmerizing, ethereal, ephemeral, quite beautiful. The second track takes a looped machinelike rhythm, and builds a doom bliss dirge around it, a sort of post industrial shoegaze, that ends up sounding like some recently unearthed gem, except they never really made music like this. "Eolet" is deep drones, but infused with lots of melody, the sound cinematic, soundtracky, dreamy and pretty, not at all gritty or underground, which again is not at all a bad thing.
The rest of the record slips from motorik rhythm driven doom bliss, to soft billowing dreamlike ambience, to tangled blown out almost new wave sounding post industrial crush, to the 16+ minute closer "Crescere", an epic bit of muted drift, that slowly builds to a blackened heaving slab of pulsing pop ambience, laced with gorgeous psychedelic backwards guitar flutter, processed percussion, distant almost new age melodies, all building to an epic, super emotional climax of metallic buzz and sweet swirling shimmer. Fantastic. Comes housed in a super deluxe gatefold digipak designed by Stephen O'Malley with photos by Seldon Hunt.
And while they last, the compact disc version of Eald-Ge-Streon comes with a bonus disc, featuring a brand new 33 minute track, another gorgeously epic chunk of dronemusic, the first nearly ten minutes, a hushed barely there whisper, before the sound thickens, and dark wisps become haunting melodies, the soft buzz grows more rough and dense, transformed into an extended stretch of crumbling distorted low end drift, before the surprisingly melodic, washed out dreamy outro.
Wow, is this a doozy of a reissue. The long out of print Sen record, from guitar drone outfit Troum, originally released as their entry in the Mort Aux Vaches, gets an ULTRA deluxe double vinyl reissue courtesy of the always amazing Equation label.
Before we get into the record itself, we have to talk about the packaging. Especially because the version we got is limited to 97 copies, and except for copies to the band, and a handful of Equation mailorder customers is EXCLUSIVE to aQuarius!! Two lps, both pressed on heavy vinyl, the vinyl is clear with a sepia haze emanating from the center. The lps are housed in a SUPER thick clear PVC gatefold that is sealed with a little velcro button. Inside the gatefold, a thick 7" pouch, which houses three 7" circular 2-sided satin-finish heavy-card inserts along with a sticker and all sealed with a hand-numbered oval sepia sticker. Phew! It really is one of the most breath taking chunks of vinyl we have ever seen. So gorgeous and it weighs a ton. And if that weren't enough, the music inside is equally fantastic.
Troum (Traum is "dream" in the duo's native German, but Troum is ?) mines the nether regions of the subconscious to create waking replications of their nightly visions. Their recordings are far from mere transcriptions of dreams to tape; they are the gossamer residues of once vivid memories, passed through mesmeric filters to slowly dissolve present reality into soft focus fragments of thought. Musically, these translations fall both on the sublime and, at times, on the malevolent side of the ambient divide.
Sen, originally released as part of Staalplaat's luminary-laced live-radio-recordings "Mort Aux Vaches" series, seems fixated on the North Sea, where sheets of black ice creak under the tidal currents that roll onto a rocky beach. Troum sees no need to make any direct references to that imagined metaphor, rather it's implied behind a bleak drone haze of guitars, bells, voice, and keyboards treated with a heavy dose of synthetic cathedral reverb. Troum's post-industrial background is revealed with a churning drum machine which rumbles underneath their complex tonal patterns like an antiquated seaside factory.
Troum, more so than in their previous incarnation as Maeror Tri, has the potential to invoke awe through their hypnogogic expanses of droning sound. Here they push far beyond their potential.
And again LIMITED TO 97 COPIES!!! So get it while you can.
No sound clips, but check out this gorgeous promotional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg1BhFZM6MM
Finally, the first Troum record to be widely available in the United States, released through Relapse subsidiary Desolation House, and we're pleased to say it's maybe their best yet. Troum are the ambient-drone ensemble that emerged from the dissolution of proto-industrial dronesters Maeror Tri. Unlike the primarily guitar based whir and rumble of Maeror Tri, Troum obfuscate their sound sources, laptops, found sounds, accordians, guitars too maybe, and the results are timeless, mysterious, haunting, ethereal and utterly breathtaking dronescapes. Sigqan is a lengthy three part epic, beginning with rich sonorous foghorn like swells, that ebb and flow, separated by near silence, and slowly building in intensity from warm crescendos to huge doomy pulses. Eventually, these roaring rumbles joined by complementary shimmers of high end, that sound out, and then dissipate like sonic ripples, fading into blackness. The swells slowly grow closer and closer until the edges begin to blur and a subtly more continuous melodic framework begins to emerge and so begins the second movement, a creepy and slightly ominous, slowly fluctuating slow-motion-melody, whose lazily shifting notes keep the sonic landscape dense and rich, and keeps the sounds from flatlining into monochromatic drones. As the piece winds down, the dynamics and melody start to smear together into a warm, diffused fuzzy hum, with the subtle traces of melody sinking deeper and deeper into the dark warmth. The third and final movement was a sonic afterthought, added/recorded later than the first two, but is a pleasantly dreamy coda, with a slightly sunnier tone, a keening upper register melody, stretched out into subtly slithering iridescence with a shuffling, staticky rhythm just below the surface. So nice.
Records like this come along so rarely. The sort of record that immediately reveals itself as something so more then just another disc to add to your collection, or the sort of record you play once or twice and then file. The second we heard this, we knew we had to hear more, and hear it over and over and over again. We discovered these guys online, heard a few songs and immediately bought a copy, and then set out to order them for the store (one of us was so obsessed, he even ordered all the records by the True Widow mainman's OLD band).
Not sure what it is exactly about True Widow, it could be that after hundreds of records of rumbling dronemusic and blasting grim buzz and hushed ambient shimmer, that a band that writes songs, incredibly catchy and melodic and heavy songs, is exactly what our ears craved. Not to take anything away from the band, even if we were immersed in straight up pop and heavy rock (which we sort of are also), these guys (and gal) would most definitely shine. This is the sort of music we rarely hear anymore. We originally expected this to be metal, maybe some sort of heavy post rock metal hybrid, and while it is heavy, it's way more indie rock, or maybe slowcore, more like some haunting mix of the two, the guitars are thick and distorted, but not metallic, and they drift into slow drifting creeps as easily as they do pounding majestic roars. Other reviewers have described True Widow as 'sonic noir' and 'stonegaze', both of which are fairly appropriate, it's definitely dark and moody, certainly shoegazey, and a little bit stonery, but it's really just some sort of perfect gloomy heavy postrock. We hear Codeine, Low, Seam, the vibe is laid back and disaffected, weary and washed out, but still somehow completely rocking.
Every song here is practically perfect, and each one segues seamlessly into the next, the sort of record where you don't just remember the melody or the lyrics, but which songs comes next, and how long the pause between songs is, the sound just so hypnotic and mesmerizing, a sort of lyseric doom pop, a druggy post rock, but the thing is, none of that really explains how addictive these songs seem to be. Literally, from the moment we first heard this record, we have not been able to stop listening to it. We've found other reviewers elsewhere who had the same reaction. Which speaks to the power of the songs, so well crafted, brooding, yet incredibly catchy. Just check out opener "Aka", with its strange mesmerizing main riff, the mysterious pause, and then when the band kicks in, it give you chills, and it's 40 seconds into the record.
The second track, "Duelist", is one of the few tracks that features vocals from bassist Nicole Estill, her warm purr draped over big drums and a simple minimal bass throb, before the band launches into a slow burning minor key lope, only to crank up that opening part, infusing it with just a bit more muscle, and peppering the proceedings with a cool woozy chorus. Then there's "Sunday Driver", a gorgeous hazy reverby almost ballad, skeletal guitars, the drums still solid and loud, the vocals laid back and drugged out, the main melody so catchy, and a chorus that kills. Just writing this now, we've skipped back to the beginning of that song 3 times!
This isn't really new, it came out last year, but we only just discovered it, and it had such an impact on us, we figured it was worth sharing with the rest of you. Cuz even if only a fraction of you have the same sort of response to True Widow that we did, it was well worth it. This has immediately leapt to the top of our year end best of list, even though it didn't come out this year, and hell, for some of us, True Widow immediately made it onto our best EVER list. And yeah we know, we traffic in hyperbole a lot around here, we can't help it cuz we love music so much and are excited to turn people on to the music we love, but there's no denying the empirical evidence, we can't seem to listen to anything else but this record. And that doesn't look like it will be changing anytime soon.
Just listen to the sound samples, the first two tracks alone should do the trick. So goddamn good.
On both cd and 2lp, the vinyl version is super deluxe (hence the price, sorry), 180 gram vinyl, full color ultra thick gatefold sleeve, two printed color inserts, pretty fancy, and very limited.
We totally dig Norwegian black metallers Khold, whose records we have raved about on the list again and again. Besides sounding a bit like a black metal Nirvana, with more hooks and groove than blast and buzz, they also had an amazing image, their frontman, shaved head, all clad in black, huge fur animal-leg-like pants, long sleeved turtleneck, and black corpsepaint covering JUST the bottom half of his head, leaving the top half white, a strange vision indeed, the other band members more randomly smeared with white and black, the demonic legions to their leaders mysterious dark prince.
But none of this was without precedent. Before Khold were Khold, they were Tulus, a different black metal band, with a different sound, a different image, but as far as we know all the same members. Strangely enough, Tulus recently reunited, thus rendering Khold on hold, or defunct, with a new album (Biography Obscene, which we'll review soon!) just released, but we're here to talk about the might Tulus, so let's, shall we?
Cold Core Collection gathers up the first two Tulus discs, Pure Black Energy and Mysterion, both on the first disc, the second disc made up of rarities, demos, unreleased tracks, as well as two covers, David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Obituary's "Slowly We Rot". The first thing that struck us about Tulus, was the singer, he of the now half black half white shaved head, who in Tulus sported Pippi Longstocking style pigtails, lots of lipstick, and what seems to be a dress or some sort of strange tunic, the rest of the band look just as unlikely, especially the one who looks like a wizened demonic old man. Wow. And the music is just as impressive, plenty of what would find its way to the forefront in Khold is already here, strangely catchy grooves, totally hypnotic guitar melodies, lurching tempos, but here, it's in a much more grim and buzzing black context, lots of blasting beats, insectoid riffing, harsh vocals, BUT, just like in the image department, there's lots of weird stuff going on, creepy little girl / King Diamond falsetto vocals here and there, chunky almost punk rock sounding riffing, stretches of loping almost post rock, but Tulus is definitely a black metal band, just with a twisted aesthetic, sonically and visually, making their music both grim and kvlt, black and brutal AND fucked up and demented, catchy and bizarre.
The second disc is all over the map, the early demo stuff sounds like Striborg, ULTRA lo-fi, ALL drums, the guitar a weedy little background buzz, plenty of tape hiss and blackened murk. The later demos are more polished but still unequivocally black and buzzy. The covers are awesome, especially the Bowie, the verses heavy and harsh, with black metal vocals, but the refrains soaring and dang close to the original, shimmering steel string guitars and lush harmony vocals, a weird mix, but it sort of works.
Definitely recommended for anyone who dug those Khold discs, but this stuff is definitely grim and buzzy and fucked up enough to appeal to all the weirdo black metal fans out there. The booklet has the track info and some of the amazing photos (unfortunately not in full color) from the original releases. And for what it's worth, one of Andee and Allan's favorite black metal bands...
By now, most AQ customers are probably well familiar with Mr. Scott Tuma, who we of course first discovered playing guitar for legendary stoner slow-mo-country geniuses Souled American, in some ways, his underwater woozy guitar haze helped define that group's sound, and after striking out on his own, that sound became more and more distinctive, and we of course became more and more obsessed with Tuma's incredible abstract Appalachian soundscapes, equal part ambient drone music and haunting minimal guitar music.
Dandelion might just be Tuma's darkest and most abstract outing to date, after several brief tracks of music box ambience, delicate chimes, hazy melodies, wheezing smoldering rumbles, disembodied shimmer and rickety barely there rhythms, the record unfolds into it's first longform piece, an absolutely gorgeous driftscape, clouds of hiss and blur swirl softly and in slow motion, before a skeletal banjo, picks out a mournful melody, one note at a time, letting each note drift into the ether, before sending the next to follow. Around this haunting bit of abstract drift all manner of field recordings, sirens in the distance, chirping birds, whipping winds, tinkling chimes, rustling branches, a riveting stretch of folkdrone ambience for sure.
A brief bit of tangled glistening guitar melody leads into the second epic, this one ominous and foreboding, slivers of guitar buzz and shards of feedback draped over a softly swirling morass of muted buzz and smeared psychedelic swirls, clouds of cymbal shimmer hover in the background, as do tinkling chimes and flurries of abstract percussion, before fading out into a hushed bit of skeletal Appalachia.
The flipside is three loooooong tracks, the first taking up almost half of the side, beginning with dense swells of low end, a blackened dronescape that almost sounds Wolf Eyes worthy, abject and bleak, grim rumbles beneath ashen layers of whir and hiss, those sounds seem to gradually coalesce into melodies, and what sounds like strings, the mood shifting dramatically, more cinematic, and epic, still haunting and dour, but infused with a warm glow, laced with still more random free drum skitter and glimmering cymbal shimmer, the gradually evolving sound stately, and elegiac, darkly and mysteriously lovely.
The record finishes off with two more tracks, more like the older Tuma recordings, less dark, with that woozy Souled American vibe, delicate crystalline guitars set over reverbed landscapes of amorphous sway and drift, the two tracks forming the perfect sun dappled cloud covered coda to a fantastic, and fantastically enigmatic songsuite, from one of our favorite sonic alchemists...
You know how you can go on at length about this and that, but when you prepare to talk about that one thing you totally love, you find yourself completely tongue tied. I, Andee, kind of feel like that about this record. The minute we put this on, I knew this
Scott Tuma is probably not a household name to most of you, except those of you, who like me, were obsessed with Souled American, since that's where he spent most of the eighties, helping create those molasses slow, rickety bluegrass song-skeletons that we here at AQ love so much. And his time spent in Souled American shows here, on his first 'solo' record. But unlike the stoned and unsteady lurch of SA, 'Hard Again' is all crystalline shimmer, with Tuma's guitar, guiding us unsteadily through soundscapes of tape hiss and skittering snares, moaning chords and weeping melodies.
Take a little John Fahey, Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing, Souled American, maybe some spacy Brian Eno, play it back on a ancient tape machine, and listen to these understated and completely gorgeous guitarscapes, warbling notes, shimmering harmonics and tape hiss and ambient noise all over. Some of the tracks take the Souled American sound and stretch it to its breaking point. Notes versus space, and the space always wins. But the space is never complete, each note rings out, reverberating into the next, creating a delicate latticework of notes and overtones. On one of the tracks a drummer chimes in, but takes a completely new direction with his kit, sounding as if pebbles and sand were being scattered on the snare, with rattles and sizzles scattered between the notes of the lush guitar. Probably the closest 'Hard Again' gets to an actual song is song 5. Wintery and glistening, with carnival melodies played unsteadily and gently, evoking late afternoon strolls through abandoned carnival midways, light blanket of snow on the ground, while the entire scene is hazy seen through the veil of snowflakes filling the sky. This record is just one long lush walk through a cloudy landscape of foggy daydreams and wistful memories. Similar to the way Philip Jeck takes turntables and crafts old fashioned film strip flashbacks of days gone by, Tuma, takes the guitar, and paints vivid images, faded by the passing of time, the snow on the ground, the water in the basement and the rays of the sun, and evidence by clicks and whirrs and hum, which only add another layer to this already rich document. SO so beautiful.
The first two solo albums from Scott Tuma of Souled American, previously cd-only and long out of print, now released for the first time on vinyl together as a gatefold double lp! Hard Again (2001) was a Record Of The Week here when it first came out, here's the big raving rave review Andee wrote:
You know how you can go on at length about this and that, but when you prepare to talk about that one thing you totally love, you find yourself completely tongue tied. I kind of feel like that about this record. The minute we put this on, I knew this was it. One of my favorite records of the year, easy. Maybe one of my favorite records period.
Scott Tuma is probably not a household name to most of you, except those of you, who like me, were obsessed with Souled American, since that's where he spent most of the eighties, helping create those molasses slow, rickety bluegrass song-skeletons that we here at AQ love so much. And his time spent in Souled American shows here, on his first 'solo' record. But unlike the stoned and unsteady lurch of SA, 'Hard Again' is all crystalline shimmer, with Tuma's guitar, guiding us unsteadily through soundscapes of tape hiss and skittering snares, moaning chords and weeping melodies.
Take a little John Fahey, Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing, Souled American, maybe some spacey Brian Eno, play it back on a ancient tape machine, and listen to these understated and completely gorgeous guitarscapes, warbling notes, shimmering harmonics and tape hiss and ambient noise all over. Some of the tracks take the Souled American sound and stretch it to its breaking point. Notes versus space, and the space always wins. But the space is never complete, each note rings out, reverberating into the next, creating a delicate latticework of notes and overtones. On one of the tracks a drummer chimes in, but takes a completely new direction with his kit, sounding as if pebbles and sand were being scattered on the snare, with rattles and sizzles scattered between the notes of the lush guitar. Probably the closest 'Hard Again' gets to an actual song is song 5. Wintery and glistening, with carnival melodies played unsteadily and gently, evoking late afternoon strolls through abandoned carnival midways, light blanket of snow on the ground, while the entire scene is hazy seen through the veil of snowflakes filling the sky. This record is just one long lush walk through a cloudy landscape of foggy daydreams and wistful memories. Similar to the way Philip Jeck takes turntables and crafts old fashioned film strip flashbacks of days gone by, Tuma, takes the guitar, and paints vivid images, faded by the passing of time, the snow on the ground, the water in the basement and the rays of the sun, and evidence by clicks and whirrs and hum, which only add another layer to this already rich document.
So so beautiful.
And then Tuma's follow-up to that, The River 1 2 3 4 (2003) got a bit of a rave here too, as you might expect, we'll just recap a bit of it:
Wheezing chords underpin purposeful notes gently plucked and left to hang momentarily in the warm air, before drifting gently out of earshot. Melodies slowly reveal themselves from a smattering of notes introduced slowly and sporadically somehow knowing that they will all eventually fall snugly into place. Lush, slowly shifting drones with barely-there melodies suspended within like insects in amber. Warm blankets of sound, woven simply, but perfect in their simplicity. Completely mesmerizing and so soothing. Like Phill Niblock composing for Palace, or Godspeed backing up John Fahey, or Philip Jeck and a handful of country 78's. Simply amazing.
The first time we heard Scott Tuma play guitar, was with skeletal slowcore country legends Souled American. His washed out dreamlike atmospheric guitar parts helped define their sound, but more importantly, introduced Tuma as a truly idiosyncratic guitar player, with a haunting and mysteriously unique sound. Tuma's music was like an acoustic version of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, but whereas those guys use electronics and computers and effects to transform their guitars into blurred dronescapes, Tuma's approach is much more organic, unfurling skeletal guitar lines, a slowed down Appalachia deftly woven into a sprawl of slow motion, washed out, sepia toned countrified ambience. Tuma's two proper solo records, Hard Again and The River 1 2 3 4, are both HUGE all time aQ favorites, so we were pretty excited to hear about a brand new release, especially since we've been waiting patiently for almost 5 years!
Not For Nobody begins quite strangely, a super spare, lo-fi recording of barely there guitar, stretched out beneath reverb drenched childlike vocals, cooing and purring, a bit like a countrified Bjork, the sibilance stretched out into glistening shimmers, the melody, mournful and dreamy, bits of tinkling chimes, and muted ambient clatter, the whole thing sun dappled and soft focus, so strange and haunting, but so lovely and sublime.
The next track finds us on much more familiar ground, a loose tangle of steel string guitar, sounding like it could have come off one of the later Souled American records, but sans vocals, the melodies lyrical and lilting, couched in a thick layered backdrop of warm whir, sprinkled with tinkling bells and chimes, laced with bits of piano, somehow sparse and skeletal, but impossibly lush. Which is sort of Tuma's specialty, turning minimalism into maximalism, but without losing any of the former's hushed urgency or whispered intimacy.
The whole record is quite varied, but each track manages to sound like it couldn't be anywhere else, every one seamlessly leading into the next, a song suite, an album of cohesive musical pieces, not just a collection of songs. The third track, "Eloper", introduces what sounds like horns, for a haunting funereal march, a woozy fanfare that seems to slowly spread out, a simple pulse like rhythm beneath hazy streaks and deliberate minor key strum. The next track begins as a jaunty upper register steel string lullaby, giving way, part way through, to a languorous late afternoon sun dappled sprawl, slightly atonal, gorgeous and bleary eared. "New Joy" buries the guitar in a haze of whirring buzz and warm swirls of lush chords and muted feedback, very liturgical sounding, a dark ambient drift through some ancient crumbling cathedral, while "Rakes" begins as a simple stripped down halfspeed Appalachian hoedown, before transforming into a sea of sawing strings, of layered buzz and extended steel string drones.
The record finishes the way it began, with that ghostly childlike voice, the bits of spare guitar, the massive clouds of delay and reverb, that voice a wraith hovering above the web of subtle minor key guitar, the floorboards creaking, motes of dust tinkling like chimes in a soft evening breeze, creepy, sorrowful, and so completely gorgeous.
Tuma conjures a timeless magical mystery with his guitar. He plays the mysterious traveler, a wandering audio alchemist, turning notes and chords into gold, or rather, golden streaks of dusty memory and soft golden glimpses of some hidden and blurred otherworld. His are sounds to get lost in, to wrap around yourself like some cloak spun from gold thread, to hide under with a flashlight like a child, creating worlds of light and shadow, a sound at once mystical and enigmatic, warm and familiar, and truly truly sublime.
ATTENTION!! The first 100 copies come packaged in a gold on black, cardstock gatefold sleeve, housed in a special oversized handscreened 7" style outersleeve, black ink on metallic gold paper, each one hand numbered. We managed to get nearly 3/4 of that first 100, but the way things have been going these will probably not last long, so once we run out, you'll get the normal, slightly cheaper version (the innersleeve white on brown instead of gold and black, and without the oversized hand numbered outer sleeve).
