It's been a while, but finally, the return of Frequency Thirteen, and TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!! Yep, in the past we've championed killer discs from Black Vomit, Ice Bound Majesty, Trolskull, Dukkha and Rape Rack, all offering up a truly twisted take on blackened heaviness, and ever since we've been dying to hear more, so this pretty much hits the spot, a massive sprawling double disc compilation, featuring tracks from most of the Frequency Thirteen roster, and as far as we know, all the tracks here are EXCLUSIVE. So if you're already a fan, and snap up F13 cd-r's whenever you see them, then you obviously need this, exclusive new music from Skultroll, Dukkha and Ice Bound Majesty, as well as a whole mess of others.
But for those new to Frequency Thirteen, it's tough to imagine a better introduction to True Sheffield Black Psychedelia. Which is a bit of a misnomer, as much of this is not from Sheffield, much of this is not necessarily black, although it's ALL psychedelic, and it's all TROOOOOOO.
Beadle, who we had never heard of before, open up the first disc with a crushing chunk of looped riffage that reminds us of a more blackened Gore, a lurching, lumbering, hypnotic crush. Which perfectly gives way to a new Dukkha jam, that sounds like classic nineties style noise rock, heavy and crunchy and weirdly melodic, with some awesomely twisted melodies and arrangements, and some wild freaked out guitaring. Brobdingnagian who you might remember from their ep on Rusty Axe spews out some noise drenched black filth, like some sort of Ildjarn Merzbow mash up. And so it goes, the whole disc a twisted, convoluted, buzzy, blasting, psychedelic sonic travelogue, with some surprises along the way. Trolskull, slow things down with their murky heroin house minimalism, buried voices, a muted pulse, swirling swaths of synth. Ice Bound Majesty offer up their fiercest filthiest blow out yet, furious and frantic, doused in effects, with programmed drums so fast it almost sounds like a chest rattling drone. Charles Dexter Ward crafts a weird sort of Dan Higgs sounding bit of ritualistic sea shanty style guitar drone, albeit crunchy and distorted, and War Ethic does some weird super murky grindy thrash, but with some skittery almost jazzy sound blastbeats, and there's more more more more. And that's just the first disc!
The second disc starts out with some super minimal sinewave shimmer courtesy of a band called Syn, before Dukkha kick shit into gear with the most awesome hypnotic looped psych jam, that would make Circle or Cave proud. In fact, it sort of sounds like a mix of the two, but with a bit more metal drumming, and some convoluted tangled arrangements, but always slipping back into super mesmerizing hypno-rock. KPTMichigan unfurl some gorgeous hazy woozy Tim Hecker like gauzy dronemusic, while Scum Also Rises (awesome name) so some strange post industrial mathy groove rock, that sounds WAY better than that description makes it sound, fat fuzzy bass, weird skittery electronics, all fuzzy and blown out. Sluglord stir up some sort of unholy blackened orchestral doom, all dense tones and deep shimmers, and the Disobedients do a sort of super minimal bedroom doom pop, and Trolskull return with some murky abstract rhythmic weirdness, that sounds a bit like a less loose Avarus, a bit more sinister and haunting and a bit krautrock too. And of course again here, there's more more more!
Easily one of our favorite labels, with a roster that should make most other labels bow their heads in shame. And this is definitely one of the few comps where you literally want to hear more from every single band. Fancy packaging too, a fold out die cut full color sleeve, jam packed with about a million inserts, liner notes, an obi... hell, just buy it, you won't be sorry. And odds are, like us, soon you too will find yourself obsessed with TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!
Another glorious glimpse back at the long lost art of the Funerary Violin. A genre all but forgotten and lost, some say quashed by the Catholic Church, a gorgeous mournful body of work, solo violin pieces to be performed at funerals, sad and sorrowful, minor key and miserable, dense with dark emotions, perfectly transporting the listener back to an nineteenth century funeral, the procession, the mourners clad in black... Very beautiful and evocative. But it's not just the music, it's the tangled history of the players and the personalities, the musicians and the composers and the patrons responsible for much of the music. Oh, and the fact that it's all made up.
That's right, these amazing scratchy wax cylinder recordings of simple melancholy violin pieces, and the text accompanying them have all been fabricated. Although sometimes it's tough to tell when hearing the genuinely creepy, crackly and realistically old timey sounding music, and reading the extensive tales of the composers and their tragic lives. Maybe it is all real? Who are we to say? Just because there is only one person in the entire world who knows everything, anything actually, about the mysterious Guild Of Funerary Violinists. And the fact that none of the performers or composers are mentioned anywhere, recorded, written, anecdotal, except within the pages of the book, the liner notes and the website of the genre's discoverer (perhaps creator).
But like we mentioned in a past review of another Funerary disc, who cares? The music is dark and mysterious, emotional and creepy, and the text is fascinating, impossibly well researched considering none of it is real, and totally fun to read.
This disc (supposedly) collects the work of three of the most important figures in the English School Of Funerary Violin. Babcotte, Sudbury and Eaton. All of these recording recovered from the extensive collection of Funerary relics kept by Gunter II, Prince of Schwatzburg-Sonderhausen, who in addition to the wax cylinders heard here, also counted among his prized possessions, the coffins of Goethe and Heine, as well as the death mask of Beethoven. The first Babcotte track here is thought to be performed by Gunter, himself an accomplished violinist, however the rest, the legendary "Funerary Suite # 4", due to their sound and performance are considered to be the work of Wilhelm Kleinbach (whose disc we reviewed a list or two back). The Eaton piece, a slow mournful, sometimes atonal dirge, is performed by the composer himself, captured on wax cylinder in 1913. And the final piece, "The Erroneous Dirge Of George Babcotte is performed and recorded by Maria Rotaru in 1975, a young Romanian violinist who tried to pass the work off as her own composition. When the truth came out, Rotaru disappeared mysteriously, and it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that this piece resurfaced. Or so we're told...
Even without the fantastical backstory, the music is worth the price of admission. Each piece is wonderfully crafted and beautifully performed, all solo violin, keening mournfully, minor key melodies drifting dreamily in some, the scrape and sawing of the bow constructing miserablist dirges in others, all except the more recent bathed in a thick cloak of crackle and static, giving it that Jeck / Hecker fuzzy-blurry-dreamy vibe we can never seem to get enough of. The fact that this music is set amidst such a dense and complex, passionate world of intrigue and mystery, love and death, only makes it that much more exciting. And the fact that every single bit of it is made up, well, as far as we're concerned that just seals the deal.
Recommended!
We were already sold on this before we even heard it, just based on the title alone, and likely you are too! And having heard it, we're all the more into it. This latest Finders Keepers/B-Music release is not just another Bollywood - or even Lollywood, or Kollywood - compilation, not that there would be anything wrong with that. Their recent Pakistani picture house collection Life Is Dance is still in heavy rotation 'round these parts, as are others of its ilk. But Bollywood Bloodbath is even better, thanks to its specific, scary theme. Cooler 'cause these songs, as you may have guessed, are all taken from the soundtracks to Hindi horror movies! Ghost stories, killer thrillers, zombiethons, that sort of thing... but unlike American slasher flicks and Italian giallo from the same period (the '70s mostly, though this disc ranges as far back as 1949, and up to the '80s), these Indian fright films are, of course, like other Bollywood productions, elaborate musicals. So the bloodbath sounds like it's taking place at the discotheque!! It's a perfect mix of the over-the-top pop groove-a-delica of the best vintage Bollywood stuff, infused with the even weirder, wilder, and wiggier sounds demanded by the horror movie genre, like shocking screams, stabbing cacophonous chords, and impassioned female vocals pleading for mercy.
Yep, it's pretty brilliant the way this collection combines two of our favorite soundtrack genres into one. Gotta give it up to compiler Andy Votel and his diligent research (involving hours and hours of viewing cheap old VHS tapes found at the Indian grocery store, no doubt), as he's dug up a delightful 'best of' from a hybrid cinematic genre we've yet to explore ourselves. And even if these songs were sourced from Z-grade movies, there's for sure some top talent involved on soundtrack side of things, including even the legendary RD Burman.
Although there's a modicum of ominous, atmospheric creepiness to be found in most of these cuts, moments that are mystical and mysterious, truth be told it's not all that frightening, as the spookiest stuff always gives way to urgent uptempo beats and zipp-zapping "seance fiction" synths, lively rock/disco orchestration and spirited singing, i.e. typical Bollywood bombast! If anything, rather than, say, John Carpenter or Goblin (our usual go-to's for suspense/horror soundtracks), some of what's here reminds us more of stuff from far out Spaghetti Westerns.
Since we're making this Record Of The Week, we should pause to state that if you're not already into Bollywood soundtracks, you need to check 'em out! And this, despite its specific slant, would certainly give you a good idea of what you've been missing - total WTF kitchen sink psychedelic percussive song-and-dance Eastern-inflected rock opera funked up madness.
22 tracks, 78+ minutes. Complete with cd booklet of copious, obsessive, expert liner notes from Votel. And lots of cool creepy colorful graphics of course. (In addition to this domestic cd release, there's also import vinyl available, but we're pretty much out, hoping to have some more from overseas next month, FYI.)
Much like volume one, which we raved about a while back, this latest installment of Soul Jazz's Box Of Dub collection of dubstep and 'future dub' is as much a straight dub record as it is a dubstep record. Maybe even more so. Hence the 'future dub' descriptor in the title. Could well have called it modern dub or something similar. The dub element, while sometimes totally twisted into new shapes, is more often left relatively pure, a slab of classic old school dub, just slightly modernized, maybe with a bit of extra bass, or some haunting effects, but not much else. The power, as always, is in the BASS.
And just like the first volume, this is an absolute killer. All the tracks here, whether they be shuffling classic dub or super creepy skeletal dubstep, are dark and slithery, with huge thick basslines, skittery dubbed out percussion, vocal fragments, warbly loops, hypnotic rhythms, all hovering somewhere between late night bliss out, and bumping slow motion dance floor destruction.
The tracks are all distinctly dub, but in all sorts of shapes and forms, from Ramadanman's swirling dizzy shuffle, with strange little sonic flares and vocal snippets over a looped bassline and some modern electro shimmer, to the straight up soulful dub of Pinch's "Step 2 It" featuring the smooth soul croon of Rudey Lee, but like most of the tracks here, peppered with fucked up FX, thick undulating basslines, and all sorts of random sonic weirdness. The Cult Of The 13th Hour track sounds like a Kode9 outtake, super minimal, lots of record crackle over a looped Eastern Melody and an ominous spoken word vocal line, growling and muttering over a revved up Portishead rhythm track. Cotti's "Tamil Dub" sounds like a dubstep Muslimgauze, with buzzing sitars, and a killer throbbing bassline stutter, creepy animal calls, and slowed down vocal samples. Digital Mystikz contribute two tracks, the first some classic sounding dub, channeling the modern British sound of On-U Sound and the Dub Chemists, the second a more dubstep number, but with clanky kitchen sink percussion and horns, sounding like a slowed down Specials. Pinch offer up more dark and dangerous dubstep with their second track "Chamber", a super spare slab of low end sprawl, the drums a hiccupping stutter, the bass surfacing in big roiling waves, everything murky and mysterious, and ultra minimal. The disc closes out with Skream's "Sublemonal", another nod to the old school, with a super reverbed horn refrain over an ultra stripped down barebones dub workout, the snare reverbed into the ether, the bass smooth and shimmery.
The more we listen to this, the less distinctly 'dubstep' it sounds, and the more it just sounds like some freaky outer space dub record, which is in no way a bad thing, just a bit surprising. Because of the dearth of decent dubstep and grime in the US, we're always hankering for more, so whenever a 'dubstep' record pops up, we're pretty excited and order it right away, but lest we forget, long before this new fangled dubstep, we loved us our dub, BIG TIME. So when someone takes a dub record and adds all sorts of buzzing bass, gets it all space-y and tripped out, low slung and speaker melting, haunting and ominous, pulsing and throbbing, we're pretty much sold.
First of all: if you haven't seen Bring It On, go see it now. It is amazing. Funny, clever, stupid. If you liked Clueless, and Heathers, and Can't Hardly Wait, then you will love it. And to be honest, I'm not so sure that anyone would love this soundtrack without having seen the movie. That said, this soundtrack is pretty cool. Some seriously kick ass Timbaland-style R&B from Blaque (the big hit, and the ladies from Blaque also star as the girls on the black cheerleading squad!) and 3LW. Plus some crappy high energy cheerleading style music, that you'll end up liking once you see the movie. As well as a few absolutely cringe-worthy songs that are beyond brutal (including a techno remake of Toni Basil's 'Hey Mickey' which unfortunately is featured heavily in the film). Andee bought one. Like you care.
FINALLY AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!
Here's our review from way back in 2005, when the cd version was first released...
Just when you thought you'd heard everything, in comes Sublime Frequencies to fill in the gaps you never thought existed. How many cds of Iraqi pop do you have in your collection? Until now we certainly didn't have any, let alone anything remotely traditional from Iraq. For a country that's so important to our war mongering presidential administration it's perhaps a little surprising that more interest hasn't been piqued about the culture of Iraq. But then again, everyone but W seems to understand that the real reasons for plundering this nation wasn't to "liberate" anyone. In fact, W would probably rather that no one even pay attention to any of this music, which has the awkward fortune to have been produced almost entirely (with the exception of three early 70's tracks) during the reign of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime ( tracks here range from 1980 on up to 2002!). In spite of his - well deserved - reputation as a cruel dictator, he was also an avid supporter of both education and the arts - such are the complexities of life W would rather not acknowledge - and for better or worse, kept the fabricated nation state as stable as it has ever been. Hussein promoted secular arts and music, starting cultural centers for both, and even dubbed singers the "eighth division" of the armed forces (his nation had seven military divisions) - not to paint too rosy a picture of Donald Rumsfeld's former pal and business partner, who was also a sadistic tyrant after all. Compiled by Mark Gergis (I Remember Syria, Molam, Cambodian Cassette Archives), Choubi Choubi is a collection years in the making. Gergis scoured the earth for the source material on this disc, travelling through Syria, Europe and the Iraqi neighborhoods of Detroit, Michigan. The anthology starts off with a folk rock track from '70s Socialist singer Ja'afar Hassan, a song that could easily compete with the best psych tracks on Hava Narghile or Turkish Delights for the crown of Middle Eastern psych champ. But if you're expecting another psych compilation, you're going to be disappointed as Choubi Choubi is much more than that, way more. Most of the recordings on the album have no western instruments on them, nor hardly any western influence. These tracks rock out much harder with no electric instruments, but with huge string sections, pounding drums, and monstrous oud playing. Maybe it's also the super bluesy sounding (to the western ear) melodies, it's no wonder that it sounds so fresh and familiar to us. It really is weird, when we first listened to this record we could have sworn there were more songs with electric guitars on it, but there aren't that many at all. It just sounds so fucking heavy, and rocks so hard that we remembered it as being a "rock" record. Really, really, really fucking great!
Originally released way back in 2005, the first volume of Choubi Choubi, a collection of folk and pop music from Iraq, remains one of everybody's favorite Sublime Frequencies releases. And for good reason, besides the political implications of the music, made almost entirely during the reign of Saddam Hussein, which might have you envisioning the typical Middle Eastern story, of people forced to make music in secret, fearing for their lives, their livelihoods, but strangely, as we mentioned in our review of the first Choubi Choubi release, Hussein was in fact an avid supporter of the arts, and started cultural centers for both art and music throughout Iraq. Sadly, performers, artists and musicians who were not commercially successful, were deemed to be of a lower class, and the idea of Choubi, an Iraqi style of music that features rapid fire beats, buzzing oud melodies and wild fiddle playing, was considered by most to be a province of the seedier side of Iraq, dingy nightclubs, prostitutes, criminals, etc. In fact many female performers would wear masks to hide their identities. And while the music was encouraged by the government, music by its very nature is rebellious, so this music of the people had a power that made Choubi essentially the 'national dance of Iraq', and as the liner notes explain, even with Choubi's stigma and reputation, and parties and weddings, Choubi is the music of choice, with people whipping out their best Choubi moves.
The first Choubi Choubi comp has been out of print for a while now, so it's super exciting to have another volume to dig into. With the songs culled from the same era and time period, sonically, it's more of what we loved about the first one, wild, chaotic beats, flurries of percussion, super passionate vocals, dramatic and intense, lots of strings, the oud playing distorted and truly psychedelic, the recordings far out and lo-fi, in-the-red, the drums and rhythms slathered in cool primitive FX, reverb and delay, some of the tracks freaked out and energetic, others moody and minor key, some have an almost Bollywood vibe, others, are totally far out drum driven weirdness that reminds us of the twisted Indian soundtracks of Vijaya Anand, and still others sound almost liturgical, while others are distorted and buzzy and hypnotic, but really all of the tracks here incredible!
The story of the music and the musicians in Iraq at the time is super fascinating, and is gone into in more detail in the liner notes by Sublime Frequencies' Mark Gergis. As is the roots of Choubi, and what's gone on post Hussein, and post war in Iraq. Those extensive liner notes are accompanied by tons of awesome photos, as well as notes on each track, all on a super heavy full color gatefold sleeve.
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First off, anyone who bought the Minimal Wave Tapes compilation, another recent aQ Record Of The Week, is most definitely gonna want this too, another killer collection of, like the title says, Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics, a perfect part two, or companion, and fear not, the only overlap is one single band, who do appear on both comps, but with different tracks, so this is essentially an all new (old) collection of vintage coldwave dark synth sonics, which, if you're anything like us, and we're beginning to think you are, you can't get enough of.
It's pretty strange how cold / dark / new / synth wave have made such a huge comeback, bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode, Human League, Front 242, Soft Cell, are now cited as huge influences on a new breed of dark synth driven combos. Also funny considering something similar happened 8 or 9 years ago, when a rash of bands were exploring similar territory: Adult., The Faint, Fischerspooner, Erase Errata, etc. But music is definitely cyclical, and as a new generation discovers the treasures of the past, they start bands mining that past, and revist that past via reissues. The most recent issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian offers a mini primer on the difference between the various waves: darkwave was early industrial and goth rock, cold wave the French version of darkwave (as we first discovered on the amazing So Young But So Cold comp), Synth wave was like cold wave but more sparse and moody, and new wave, well everyone should know what that is by now.
Lately, it seems most folks make little distinction between the various waves, instead lumping them all together as cold wave, or minimal wave or whatever, since regardless of the variations, they definitely all share a similar sound and vibe, and speaking for ourselves at least, it's a sound we dig big time. But then most of us never really stopped digging that stuff to begin with. Lots of former goths here for sure. And every time we discovered a band exploring the sounds we dug so much back in the day, we went way out of our way to gush about them big time, like one of our 2009 Records Of The Week, from Soror Dolorosa, a black metal side project that sounded like some lost Joy Division jam, or rare cold wave antiquity, and more recently records by groups like Blank Dogs, who may not have grown up listening to this music, but if they didn't then must have had a super hip older brother.
But as was demonstrated on the Minimal Wave collection, there were tons of bands outside of the obvious above mentioned references, who were just as cool, if not cooler, the underground of a scene that for a while was very mainstream, on the Minimal Waves comp, it was Crash Course In Science, Tara Cross, Das Kabinette, Ohama, Das Ding, Martin Dupont, Deux, Bene Gessert, Turquoise Days, and others, a few of the more wave-informed folks here knew many of those bands, but to the rest of us, it was a revelation. So much amazing music, so many new groups. On this Cold Waves collection, it's Absolute Body Control, Ruth, The Neon Judgement, Stereo, The Vyllies, Days Of Sorrow, Land Of Giants, End Of Data, Eleven Pond, Ausgang Verboten, Nine Circles and more more more. And like before, a few groups we're familiar with, but a whole bunch of mysterious new names, all of which contribute killer tracks, and most definitely have us hankering for more from all of them.
The obvious ones, Ruth of course, a long time aQ favorite, whose track here also appeared on the out of print So Young But So Cold, sort of Kraftwerk meets Gary Numan, Linear Movement, who also had a track on the Minimal Wave comp, whose track here is awesome, catchy and swirly, with super hypnotic synth melodies and awesome vocals, groovy bass and that clipped new wave drum machine rhythm, Absolute Body Control, who recently received the deluxe Vinyl On Demand boxset treatment, with some awesomely gothy gloom pop, in fact, this collection sounds WAY poppier than the Minimal Wave collection, so much so, that almost all of these bands sound like they should have been right up there with Depeche Mode and the Human League.
Needless to say, this is another fantastic comp, with some incredible songs, and already has us hankering for volume 2!
Nice thick gatefold sleeve, tons of liner notes, and pix, also comes with a download card. CD coming soon too... ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
'Collision Course' is an awesome compendium of the confrontational hip-hop/electronica linking Public Enemy and Alec Empire in both militant posturing and penchant for noise. A good portion of the tracks are exclusive to compilation and include some of our favorite damaged beatmongers such as Sensational, Fever, Ice, Anti-Pop Consortium, DJ Scud / Nomex, Patric C, Bomb 20, and more! Compiled by Kevin Martin (Ice, God, Techno Animal, etc.) who is also responsible for the Macro Dub Infection series as well as the amazing Isolationist compilationn from a few years back.
This is another record that barely needs a description, most aQ heads are gonna want one of these for sure, a collection of exclusive, unreleased tracks celebrating 15 years of releases by the mighty Rocket Records, a UK label that over the years has brought us tons of amazing spaced out heaviness, from groups like The Heads, Goat, Hills, Gnod, White Hills, Teeth Of The Sea, Mugstar, Anthroprophh and loads more, this comp collects some of those very same bands, along with a handful of 'friends of Rocket' as well as some other outfits who have records coming soon on the label. Needless to say, even just the names we know make this worth grabbing. Recent Record Of The Weekers Teeth Of The Sea offer up a fierce field of grinding static drenched drones, shot through with smoldering feedback, and progged out psychedelia, while another former Record Of The Week combo, UK space rock heavies Gnod, deliver some tripped out reverb soaked weirdness. Swedish psych rockers Hills get all buzzing kraut-raga, channeling Parson Sound and Amon Duul, while long time aQ faves, UK via Texas weirdos Shit And Shine unfurl a sprawling 15 minute rhythmic noise rock dirge, with creepy helium vox, and some seriously harsh garage tone, like the Butthole Surfers but even more caveman. Cherrystones give us his take on tripped out minimal drift, a little bit dubby, laces with shimmery guitars, and fields of mysterious glitchery, and big time aQ faves Goat offer up some unreleased live action, their special brand of African infused Swedish occult stoner space rock tribalism, that has us hankering for more more more! And yet another previous Record Of The Week honoree, Heads side project Anthroprophh, delivers what sounds like a super heavy, ultra drivingly rhythmic spaced out This Heat, all dense percussion, thick swells of chordal thrum, and FX soaked shimmer. Vision Fortune, whose Cardinal Fuzz lp we reviewed recently, give us some blown out, grinding, fuzzy, distorto dub, wound around loping math-kraut mesmer. And those are just the bands we know. Of the new to us combos, Blood Sport get all groovy, almost funky, sorta proggy, with an almost African feel, a little bit of a Goat influence perhaps, with some super stylized, almost glam sounding vox that align their sound with fellow space rocker Hookworms. There's a Swedish outfit called Uran, whose sound is all gristly, electro-fuzz, distorto stomp, groovy space garage heaviness, there's the Heads related outfit Roll bars, with some squelchy synths, thick fuzzed out bass, sounds bit like Jane's Addiction's "Mountain Song" drugged up and spaced out, and finally, an Italian band, that the label claims to be one of their faves, The Lay Llamas, who get all woozily playful, unwinding a mesmerizing stretch of looped space-kraut drift, all tranced out and cyclical. Phew! So much good stuff. Obviously, all you space / psych / drone rock nerds who dig all things Cardinal Fuzz / Agitated / Rocket (obviously), are gonna want this, so best grab one quick before they are gone for good...
Besides being one of the best collections of metallic grind (or grinding metal) in a while, this compilation is also notable for having perhaps the largest collection of vocalists that grunt and growl in a remarkably bowel loosening, rib cage rattling almost inaudible (except maybe to dogs) subsonic slowed-down cookie monster gurgle. It really is amazing. Plus all of these bands are from the Czech Republic! Had no idea it was such a hotbed of metal/grind. Of the 5 bands represented, only one (Contrastic) fails to please, lacing their grind with some sort of Red Hot Chili Peppers neo-funk. Ugh. But the other four bands more than make up for it, with some of thwe most punishing metal we've heard in a while: blazing tempos, impossibly fast drumming, crushing downtuned guitars, and those aforementioned sick, growled vocals. Check out the sound samples and you'll be sold.
Heads up all you Sublime Frequencies obsessives out there, and we know there are a lot of you, this is record number two from a new label called Sham Palace, run by Mark Gergis, one of the guys who runs SF, and whose first release was the amazing Leh Jani lp from aQ fave Omar Souleyman. This new lp is a collection of Dabke, a celebratory music performed at weddings and parties in the Middle East, hypnotic electrified dance jams driven by the buzzing of the mejwiz, a double reed bamboo flute, this modern version accompanied by driving electronic beats, over which a male vocalist, calls out for the audience to dance and participate. Does that all sound a little familiar? That's because Omar Souleyman is probably the most well known Dabke performer, at least in the West, so if you can't get enough of that sound, here's a killer collection of super obscure Dabke cuts, collected from various tapes and cds, featuring tracks captured live at parties and weddings, and like those Souleyman jams, the jams here are driving and hypnotic, psychedelic and totally mesmerizing, totally tranced out, the beats booming, pounding, skittering, the melodies buzzing wildly, the tracks here all vary quite a bit, from stripped down and a bit more mellow, to bombastic and booming, to brittle and lo-fi and distorted and drenched in echo and reverb, the programed beats wild and chaotic, the grooves totally irresistible, some amazing stuff.
And needless to say, WAY recommended, especially for all Sublime Frequencies / Omar Souleyman fans!!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!! Packaged in nice full color sleeves with printed liner notes on the back of the jacket.
Avid readers of the list know we love dancehall, from classic dancehall reggae, right up to the more aggro super heavy junglized ragga dancehall. And those same readers are probably well familiar with the Soul Jazz label, and their amazing, elaborate, painstakingly assembled, meticulously researched reissue compilations. Every one packed with classics and rarities in equal measure, always with a massive booklet packed with liner notes, info about all the tracks, anecdotes, photos and whatever else they can squeeze in there. You probably can tell where this is heading. Soul jazz releases now number in the hundreds, but they have yet to release a bum disc. This double cd keeps the streak alive BIG TIME.
An awesome and comprehensive primer on dancehall reggae, done in the inimitable Soul Jazz style. Have a look at the artists: Yellowman, Tenor Saw, Chaka Demus And Pliers, Barrington Levy, Sister Nancy, Cutty Ranks, Super Cat, Cornell Campbell, Gregory Isaacs, Eek A Mouse, Clint Eastwood, and that's just the ones we know, there's also Half Pint, Reggie Stepper, Horace Ferguson, Toyan, Early B, Trinity, Lone Ranger, Michigan & Smiley, Triston Palmer, Lady Ann, Brigadier Jerry, Conroy Smith and more and more and more.
And the tracks! A bunch of essential jams, some have found there way onto other comps, but many have NOT. If you're like us, that dancehall rhythm is just irresistible, such a killer groove, whether it's wrapped around mellow guitar and smooth crooning, or jagged melodies and rough and raw toasting, we just can't get enough. Pretty sure you're feel the same after filling your ears with all these jams.
Includes tons of amazing photos as well extensive notes on each track, and each artist.
Latest comp of genius dubstep and bass heavy grooves, and it's SO goddamn good, it's been hard to listen to anything else since we got this in. Avid readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, how much we love dubstep, especially the harder, darker, bassier strains, which is precisely what you get here, two discs of some of the heaviest buzzing low end bass heavy jams of the last few years, the thread that connects them is not just a label, but a UK studio as well, where all these tracks were produced, before being released on various labels, and on various 12"s between 2004 and 2009.
Folks already way into dubstep will probably see the artists included and be sold: Vex'd, Joker, Skream, 2562, Pinch, Loefah, Cyrus and a bunch more, but anyone who's been digging the recent series of Soul Jazz dubstep collections, or like us, is always on the lookout for some seriously dense and heavy buzzy dubstep bliss, well then, this is definitely gonna hit the spot.
Both discs start off with killer jams from Vex'd, whose Cloud Seed record was our Record Of The Week a while back, and of course, these tracks rule just as hard, thick fuzzy bass, distorted synthy squelch, distorted toasting style vocals, lurching stuttery beats, the perfect way to kick off both discs for sure. Drop the needle anywhere though (yeah, we know, or the LASER or whatever), and you're bound to land on some seriously deliriously kick ass buzz and stutter, warble and crunch, Joker & Ginz's skwee-like "Purple City", Pinch & P Duddy's lumbering super blown out bass skitter anthem "War Dub", Circuit Breaker's super hypnotic low end pounding repeto-groove "Phonque", Joker's cinematic epic "Stuck In The System", with its moody string like melodies, and insanely thick bass warble and cool synth pulses, Cyrus's warbly Eastern tinged "Indian Stomp", October's super spare, dubbed out minimal "Euro Dance Hit" which is anything but, Loefah's clattery dubdronescape "System", not to mention a whole bunch of minimal Pole style digidub jams on disc 2.
Absolute bass bliss, and divine dubstep dreaminess, although not so much dreamy as dark, but still, WAY WAY recommended. Definitely one of our new favorite electronica comps, dubstep or otherwise...
We were super excited by the sudden re-activation of the Shock label. Run by Stefan Jaworzyn (Skullflower, Ascension) and home to some of THEE most amazing industrial / power electronics / noise rock of the last several decades. Seriously, a list of releases on Shock reads like an aQ dream team: Skullflower, Ascension, the Dead C, Cul De Sac, Cosmonauts Hail Satan, Drunks With Guns, Coil, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, Ramleh, we could go on. Needless to say, the legacy of Shock looms large over pretty much all of the weird noisy heavy music we dig today. We recently reviewed the White Trash Motherfuckers comp, which was reissued recently along with two Ascension records and this comp right here, although we still think Jaworzyn just found a bunch of boxes of unsold cds from back in the day, out in his shed, but fuck it, either way, it's amazing to have these available again. For folks who may have missed out the first time, but also for a whole generation of music nerds who might not have even been around back in the day. Deep Funnels Of Entry collects some of the best tracks (from singles and comps) from some of our favorite bands on the Twisted Village label. And while sonically, Twisted Village tended more toward tripped out psych, there is definitely still a sonic connection between groups like Vermonster and Skullflower, who in their early days, would have been right at home on Twisted Village.
So yeah, check out the lineup, folks already into Twisted Village will be drooling, and folks not familiar, well the band names alone should give you a clue: Vermonster, Bongloads Of Righteous Boo (best band name ever?), Luxurious Bags, Crystallized Movements, The Garbage And The Flowers, Wormdoom (second best band name ever?), Tono Bungay, Bimbo Shrineheads, and Brother JT appearing here as simply JT. A quick earful of Vermonster's "Black Crack Boogie" should give you an idea of what you're in for, endless heavy psych space jams, dirgey, loose, chaotic, freaked out and WASTED. Total next level zoner psychedelia of the highest order. Classic psych super charged and dosed on mescaline and PCP, and captured in endless basement jams. Each track here sounds like it was yanked from an hours long jam, these little snippets our glimpse into whatever drug fueled sonic bacchanalia produced all of this glorious psychedelic noise. Bongloads Of Righteous Boo deliver a similar track, that is until the INSANE vocals come in, a WTF falsetto, that has to be a joke? Or does it? BoRB are sort of a classic rock, melted down into something much more warped and woozy, the vocals, seemingly the only remnant, otherwise the sound seems bound for the heart of the sun, arriving there by way of lots and lots and LOTS of drugs.
Luxurious Bags would later morph into more of a noisy pop band, and some of that is present here, but the lilting sad boy vocals, and indie jangle is buried beneath gouts of crumbling distortion, and blown out drum damage. Crystallized Moments fuse their heavy psych to a slowcore moodiness, sounding like a supercharged Low, before they explode into their own squall of dizzying psych damage. NZ noise poppers the Garbage And The Flowers are the most traditionally song oriented here, their sound buzzy and droney, but still darkly poppy, but fear not, it doesn't take long for Wormdoom to obliterate that poppiness, and explode in a frenzy of primal, primitive psych-noise bliss, with some of the most amazingly distorted crumbling guitar buzz EVER. Bimbo Shrineheads who we never heard outside of this comp are also on the poppy side, but darkly frenetic and post punky, enough that they don't even seem like that much of an outlier here. JT delivers some woozy freeform psychedelic drift, while Tono-Bungay is all hard rock by way of cosmic psych, churning and riffy, with some wild endless shredding. And after that, Luxurious Bags, Bongloads Of Righteous Boo, Crystallized Movements, Vermonster and The Garbage And The Flowers all get another go! But it hardly matters, by this point, your grey matter is all melted down into a prismatic puddle on the floor, your smoking headphones telling you this is essential damaged outsider psych, and you NEED it.
Holy cow! The Analog Africa label does it again, another amazing archival collection, even more notable this time around for the fact that it's not really even a collection of African music, instead, it's a sampling of sixties, seventies and eighties Colombian music, which as we discovered via this comp, was in fact hugely influenced by African music, and within seconds of pushing play, it's definitely obvious, the hybrid of Latin and African music so perfect, Afrobeat and Afrofunk, psychedelic fuzz funk, the drums and vocal chants of African music perfectly fused to classic Latin rhythms, even the folks around here who aren't always into this kind of stuff, have been digging this big time, and at least one of us has been listening to nothing else.
As with all Analog Africa releases, there's a massive booklet, with extensive liner notes, on the history of Colombian music, theories on how African music made it to Colombia (a single mysterious man called Boquebaba? Seafaring traders?), ideas on what drove this fusion that seemed utterly ubiquitous in Colombia at the time (roaming mobile sound systems, innovative and forward looking producers), there's also the story of how this comp came to be, which tells the tale of the curator's repeated visits to Colombia, which involved bringing African records to trade for Colombian records, and which ultimately resulted in threats on his life, as apparently, many of those records existed in Colombia already, but without anyone knowing the artists or the names of the songs, and various DJs and sound systems had been playing those records for years, and now that folks knew what they were, and more copies had been brought to Colombia, they felt threatened. It's all super fascinating, and there's so much more, multiple essays on the evolution of the Colombian sound, of Colombian psychedelic Afrobeat and more more more.
But it's really it's all about the music, and the music here is incredible, wild and fuzzy and funky, groovy and psychedelic, crazy percussion, chaotic drumming, wah wah guitars, soulful horns, and check out the vox on opener "El Caterete" by Wganda Kenya, which starts off sounding impossibly African, in fact, had we not known it was from THIS comp, we would have assumed it WAS African, and then when the lead vocals come in, a soaring near operatic croon, that is at the same time totally over the top and almost comical, and one of the coolest vocalists we've ever hear, all over call and response chanting, driving rhythms, psychedelic guitar jangle, groovy loping funk bass, it's KILLER. And it never lets up, the first disc focusing specifically on the Afrobeat and Afrofunk rhythms that worked their way into Colombian music at the time, while disc two, is more oriented toward more danceable tropical Latin rhythms, although both discs seem to offer a bit of both. The beginning of disc two is awesome as well, the vibe a little bit dark and brooding, the first few tracks sounding alternately like the swampy slithery blues of Screamin' Jay Hawkins (right down to some maniacal, echo drenched sinister laughter, wooooohahahahah), sultry and some seriously fuzzed out psychedelic Latin Afro-funk, and at times almost like Klezmer! And this disc two, never lets up, every song a stone cold killer, which will have you nodding your head, tapping your toes, and fighting the urge to get up and dance.
Easily our reissue of the year, hands down, coming in just under the wire, to leave all other reissues in its dust. And another strange thing, you don't often find on collections like this, a hidden track tucked away at the end. After a few minutes of silence, what sounds like a call in radio program, and then one final jam, all groovy percussion, whoops and hollers, acoustic guitar strum, and some serious accordion shredding! Fantastically packaged, in a miniature hardcover book, a huge almost sixty page booklet, tons of liner notes and essays, rare photos and more!!
We're always on the lookout for killer dubstep compilations, like most UK electronic music genres, the really great stuff ends up being released mostly as 12" singles or even impossible to track down white label dubplates, so often we look to folks who might just be able to get their hands on the best of the best, and hope that they're willing to share the wealth, more often than not in the form of a banging mixtape. Which is exactly what this is, courtesy of beatmaker/producer Diplo, a seriously banging, bass heavy dubstep mixtape that KILLS. The sounds and styles vary, but almost all the tracks here rule, our favorites being the ones with that relentlessly buzzing bass warble and stuttering big beats.
DZ's "Down" is is the perfect example, a shuffling hiccupping big beat is defined almost entirely by HUGE slabs of buzz, warbly, rumbling, wheezing basslines, sometimes more than one, and constantly being sped up an slowed down, changing the rhythm and the pitch and turning the song into a dizzyingly dense bass dub jam. Doctor P's "Sweet Shop", begins life all bouncy and ravey, with soulful female vox, but after 30 seconds, the track switches gears and sloooows way down, and becomes this dubbed out bass heavy creep, rife with buzzing synths, and whistle like melodies, all wound around some of the fiercest electronica we've heard in ages. And did we mention the bass? This is the sort of shit we'd pump if only we did in fact possess a booming system.
James Blake, who has been getting hyped a lot lately, but who we had never heard, takes a more Zomby-ish tack, a sort of retro eighties pop, but rendered woozy and warbly with processed vox, squelchy synths and heavily effected bass buzz. Dubstep legend Benga of course does not disappoint, after a tangle of high end synthy squiggles, launches into some awesomely twisted bass warble driven skitter. Rusko is another one who starts out with some soft focus radio pop, all diva driven and warm and swirly, only to pull the rug out, and send us tumbling into a swirling psychedelic dubbed out bass synth blowout, only to eventually slip right back into that breezy electronic soul pop. So fucking great. And there's loads more dubbed out bassy goodness, tracks from Ginz, Major Lazer, Diplo himself, Zomby, Untold, Rudi Zygadlo and more more more...
Alec "The Destroyer" Empire, fed up with the Berlin scene, returned to the New York DHR offices and rummaged through the huge box of demo tapes from numerous underground and largley unheard American artists. These three jam-packed discs feature 35 of those
Like some long lost noise rock manifesto, all three volumes of this legendary Amphetamine Reptile compilation, gets bundled into a single double disc primer, that lays out everything you could ever want to know about nineties noise rock, but were too much of a pussy to ask.
Detuned blues rock meets pigfuck scuzz, near metallic riffage, collides with knuckle dragging stumble, howling noise drenched bombast wraps it's filthy tendrils around some seriously hook heavy pop tuneage. There's not a dud in the bunch, just check out the list of bands: Mudhoney, Helios Creed, Boss Hog, Vertigo, King Snake Roost, Surgery, Guzzard, Jawbox, godheadSilo, Boredoms, Superchunk, Jesus Lizard, Dwarves, Tad, God Bullies, Halo Of Flies, Cows, Lubricated Goat, Helmet, gas Huffer, Unsane, Cosmic Psychos, Chokebore, the U-Men, Bailter Space, Steel Pole Bath Tub, Braniac, Today Is The Day, Rocket From The Crypt, Gaunt, the Chrome Cranks and more more more! Comps can definitely be a dicey proposition, more miss than hit, but goddamn if this isn't practically perfect, wild, noisy, spastic, chaotic, grungy, blown out, swaggery, snarly, pissed as fuck, and somehow still crazy catchy.
Needless to say, this is abso-fucking-lutely essential, and if you're new to the whole nineties noise rock thing, this might be all you ever need (but probably not haha!)... (Fyi, vinyl includes download.)
We know people who work at other record stores give each other gifts of music for birthdays and Christmas. Makes sense, that's what they love, right? But from another perspective, there's something just a little too easy about that... "here, I bought you this from the store where we all work". So, 'cause of that, here at AQ we don't have much of a tradition of giving cds and lps as presents.
But, Allan was thankful that Andee broke with tradition last year and mailordered him a copy of this hard to find cd for Xmas. (Andee got himself one too, of course). And now we've finally managed to contact the label directly, over in England, and order a few to sell here at AQ as well.
Definitely any lover of early '70s proto-metal heaviness needs to put this on their wish list. Downer Rock Genocide is a collection of super rare tracks by some really obscure heavy psych/prog acts who kicked around the same scene as early Black Sabbath. And it's pretty darn killer. There's 16 tracks by 14 bands, here they are: Flying Hat Band, Clear Blue Sky, Necromandus, Egor, Monument, Iron Maiden, Gnidrolog, Iron Claw, Red Dirt, Slowbone, Bram Stoker, Hackensack, Bum, and Writing On The Wall. We'd heard of some but others were new to us, unearthed from way down deep in the murky underground of decades past.
Too many gems here to talk about 'em all, but we'll mention a few... Flying Hat Band (2 tracks from them, from a never released 1973 album) was where Glenn Tipton slung his axe before joining up with Judas Priest. No wonder they hired him! We'd never heard FHB's stuff before, and already this comp is worth it just for the badass rockin' doom of their first cut, "Seventh Plain". It's like Comus meets Judas Priest! Clear Blue Sky, who also contribute two demo tracks, is one of the bands we -had- heard before (their album is a Sabbathy treat). And Sabbath lovers will really want this for "Nightjar" by the Tony Iommi produced Necromandus, easily that band's heaviest and best track. So good.
What else? The Iron Maiden on here is NOT the Iron Maiden you're familiar with, it's another, earlier band with the same name but a much doomier disposition. Actually who they really sound like is Wishbone Ash, Argus-era, all folky and epic. Gnidrolog is another one we knew, a great, super dramatic prog act in the vein of Van Der Graaf Generator, who offer up their doomiest "Long Live Man Dead". Red Dirt are a gruff slice of raw, primitive bluesy heaviness, that just got Cup to remark "that music has hairy balls!". Iron Claw kick out the jams big time on "Lightning" from a 1971 cassette only release, Egor tear it up on the blown-out live track "Street" also from '71, Hackensack deliver some wild fuzzed out soloing and wailing vocals on their kick ass cut "River Boat" circa '72, and Bum bring us the pagan "God Of Darkness" from way back in '68. Did Sabbath hear these guys? All of it good stuff for fans of bands like Sabbath, Budgie, Leaf Hound, High Tide... and Witchcraft today. Give yourself the gift of downer rock.
Some of these tracks are from albums, many are demos or archival live recordings. So sound quality varies, but not the occult-inspired, heavy-riffing, proto-metal awesomeness.
We often feel like we're totally out of the loop when it comes to dance music. And as if to prove that point, every once in a while we'll randomly stumble across a disc that totally kicks our ass, only to realize, that the world at large had already been hyping said disc to death. Such is the case with this second comp of far out futuristic electro weirdness from Ed Banger Records. We sort of just picked it up on a whim (some AQ folks were already hip to it, we're not all dance music squares) and were immediately smitten. Wild and fun, funky and funny, heavy and fuzzy and if the person writing this review actually danced, this disc would have had him out of his seat like a shot.
No need to do a total track by track run down, as every single song here is a killer, a few names we knew, most we didn't, but the sound is crazy. And fucking awesome. It's like the music of LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, but supercharged, injected with youthful energy and punk rock snottiness, peppered with more distortion and buzz, fucked up beats, off kilter loops and samples, but remaining totally hooky and danceable.
Some of the best tracks:
The killer dis track "Dismissed" from Uffie, a killer slab of seriously foul mouthed electro nastiness using a bastardized version of what sounds like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" as the main loop, but it's all about the vitriolic invective, what sounds like a nasty teenage white girl awkwardly rapping and spitting all sorts of goofy playground insults.
Ultra hyped next big things Justice who do their best Daft Punk, and offer up a super damaged cop-show block rockin' beat workout with machine like rhythms and cool crumbling synthy bass lines and awesome glitched out buzz drenched synthesized riffage.
Krazy Baldhead who come closest to Jones Machine for sheer mindless electronic bliss, throbbing synths, bouncing bass, another track that sounds like some futuristic chase scene.
Sebastian, who offers up a blast of ultra distorted beats, weird blown out fuzzy loops, the whole thing chopped and hiccuping like some radio with bad reception or a turntable with fuzz all over the needle.
We could go on and on. Needless to say, every time we play this in the store folks go nuts for it, and even some of the dance music phobic we know have been rocking this like crazy! Some of the other folks on the comp: Mr. Oizo, DJ Mehdi, Mr. Flash, Feadz, Busy P, Klaxons, Fancy and Vicarious Bliss.
Way recommended.
Back in stock! (And, also, when we reviewed this a few weeks ago, we spaced out and somehow listed it under the title of Electro Grind Holocaust, which is a totally different comp on the same label, whoops!)
For those of you who just flipped over our recent Record Of The Week selection the Drum>MachineGun compilation, and want MORE crazed drum machine grindcore insanity, this other collection entitled Electro Grind Gore Compilation should also be of interest! It's slanted a bit more toward the underground and obscure than the Drum>MachineGun comp, and also more towards the porno/gore obsessed side of this bizarre metal/punk subgenre -- a subgenre that features, as displayed here, razor sharp spastic guitar riffage, techno dance beats, belching death metal grunts and growls (some so subsonically extreme that they sound like bubblings from below the earth), non-sequitorial samples (often offensive and, um, humorous), and lots of bleepy bleepy bleargh distortion and noise. There's a unexpectedly high catchiness quotient, in spots, but these tracks are definitely utterly maddening at the same time. It's kind of a "chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter" deal with the electro danciness and the harsh splattermetalgrindnoise in collision. In fact, it's kind of unclear just who this sort of music is supposed to appeal to: we can't imagine techno fans digging all the noise and gore, and we didn't think so many metalheads liked techno-dance beats -- but I guess we were wrong! Of course we like it, so...
Electro Grind Gore contains 28 tracks from 17 bands, most of whom we'd never heard of before. Some names: Atomik Surfing, Shunt Incision, Basket Of Death, Vomitrone, Skrotum, 666.Porn.Star, SMES, Posthuman Worm, Absurd God, Tourette Syndrom, Firbrosarcoma... A very international line-up indeed, the bands hailing from Brazil, Japan, Mexico, France, Croatia, Holland, Germany, Panama, Spain, Australia, and Italy. It's a veritable World Cup of sick underground electro grind! While here at Aquarius we're better versed in black metal, doom, and "true" metal, if we ever do decide to turn this drum machine fueled electronic grindcore deviancy into an AQ specialty, we'd definitely start by tracking down more stuff by the bands on this comp!
Tough to argue with a compilation called Far Out Spaced Oddyssey, especially with its super stylized witchy, skull-stick-carrying naked woman cover, her hair flung out over a starry backdrop of green and yellow, and the fact that this comp is subtitled: Psychedelic Folk, Electronica, Jazz & Rock From The Out-There Edges Of Brazil, well, that just seals the deal. And while we're often wary of comps like this, that mix vintage classic lost jams with more contemporary tracks, it actually works here, the result is an Andy Votel worthy double disc collection of Brazilian super varied sonic psychedelia. From prog to funk, to psych rock to folk, the amazing thing, is that in many cases, we had trouble telling if something was from the sixties or seventies or NOW. Which again speaks to the bad assness of Far Out Spaced Oddyssey.
The collection opens with Jose Mauro's "Apocalipse", a classic slice of vintage Brazilian psych-prog, soulful vocals, lush strings, groovy percussion, haunting witchy melodies, acoustic guitars, fluttery flutes, very reminiscent of seventies acid folk, but with a distinctly Brazilian vibe, and from there on out, it's a glorious mind expanding musical trip, from groovy flute flecked calypso, to hazy, organ driven soul (peppered with distinctly modern production filligree), from dense tribal electronic spaciness to fuzzy funky seventies jazz prog, from funky Blaxploitation sounding electronica to noisy chaotic psychedelic rock, from spacey new agey tinkle and shimmer to sweet summery Tropicalia, it almost doesn't matter which song is by whom, or what song is from what era, at least until you decide you need to track down more, which is always the sign of a killer mix, and if you're like us, you'll find yourself wanting more of much of this, not to mention playing both discs to death!
BORIS BORIS BORIS BORIS BORIS. Okay. Just wanted to get the attention of all you freaks who can't get enough of Japan's mighty Boris (and we know there's a lot of you, since we can't seem to keep any Boris in stock for more than two seconds!!) And since
No longer vinyl only, G-Spots is now on cd. We didn't know it would happen so soon, but it's boon for all the turntable-deprived amongst you. And it's got six extra tracks on it, as well! Here's more or less what we said about this collection when we highlighted the LP version:
Aside from the eye-popping cover art, the first thing you might notice about this record is its intriguing title - G-Spots: The Spacey Folk Electro-Horror Sounds Of The Studio G Library. But what does it all mean, and how could the music live up to such a ridiculously awesome yet difficult to parse description? Well, check the sound samples to find out, or read on...
Some of you may remember the equally great, SUPER limited (not to mention uber-pricey) Electrosonic record from a few lists back, featuring library music from esteemed BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer and titan of early electronic experimentation, Delia Derbyshire. Much in the vein of that long gone gem, G Spots contains selections from the somewhat mysterious Studio G, a production company started by one John Gale, whose work in advertising inspired him to up the ante on the music we either take for granted or generally find annoying as shit. Rather than approaching this work as mere background music, Gale wrangled in a number of composers to bring his vision to life. Things kicked off with a series of 7" records before moving on to lps. Gale claimed to release the first collection of library music to feature actual artwork, and you are advised to go to Trunk's website to view some stellar examples of Studio G's visual aesthetic.
The music, of course, is pretty dang great as well. The songs basically set out to mimic the popular trends of the time, resulting in a sound that is at once familiar, yet strangely distant, as they were produced in a laboratory-like setting with studio musicians. Of course, that kind of thing happened all the time, but it's much more intriguing to imagine this as some sort of parallel reality interpretation of pop music in the '60s and '70s, made by chain smoking guys in their thirties with thick horn-rimmed glasses and neckties. Aside from song titles, the 20 spacey folk electro-horror tunes collected here are identified only by their catalogue numbers and composers, most (all?) of whom you will not recognize. This lack of information only adds to the mystery, in the best way.
It is possible, based on the 4 digit catalogue numbers, to piece together some sort of loose history, not only of Studio G's evolution, but of musical trends in general. Opening with the moody organ piece "Icicles", many of the other songs on the first side are fun, lightly psychedelic pop that would have fit perfectly in any number of party scenes in any number of 1960s movies. Airy acoustic guitars mesh with the occasional spacey weirdness, the songs are at times accompanied by live drums, but sometimes feature early, primitive rhythm machines. The final song on side one of the vinyl (track 15 here), however, the perfectly named "Deformed Theme", is an anti-melody that ventures into darker territory, a creepy synthscape setting the mood for much of the rest of the disc, where ominous, surprisingly heavy Goblin-esque songs like "Cosmic Dust" and "Cosmic Blues" rub elbows with "Freak Blues", which would not sound too out of place on Bruce Haack's The Electric Lucifer. Then there's the hilarious "Dangerous Voyage", a funky, tropical-tinged piece that would sit well in your favorite '70s porn film, with its lead harmonica, fretless bass, and hi hats galore. Other songs feature flutes, more synths, weird tape effects, and random elements of percussion. Throughout it all, things flow perfectly, all part of the style that John Gale created with Studio G.
What more do you need to know!?! It's a compilation called GRIND BASTARDS. Subtitled "For The Grind Freaks". Released on the label run by legendary Japanese grinders Unholy Grave. And check out the band list. Tons of killer groups, and a whole bunch new to us, almost all heavy and brutal and kick ass: Mortalized, Insect Warfare, Butcher ABC, Unholy Grave (of course), Exgreed, Disgust, Top Breeder, Motiveless, Gods Of Grind, Little Bastard, Red, 48, Gate, Spiral and more.
Plenty of downtuned chug, furious blasts, growled cookie monster grunts, wild hysterical shrieks, insane chaotic riffing, most songs clocking in at under two minutes, many of those under one, short sharp jagged blasts of grinding fury, with some songs super well produced and heavy as fuck, others blown out almost Japanoise sounding boombox blur, a handful of crusty D-beat pounding, super varied, but super cohesive, heavy as hell, should totally hit the spot for punk rockers and metalheads alike, as long as you like it ultra heavy, ultra sick and blazing fast. The biggest surprise for us, is probably the 51 second long Mortalized track, "Nailing Descartes To The Wall", which just might be the catchiest minute of grind we've ever heard. Similar to how Jon Chang's new bands incorporate eighties metal and crazy power metal hooks into impossible complex grind, Mortalized sound a little like Iron Maiden on 78, or maybe some super catchy 3 minute pop single spun as fast as it will go, the guitars raging and soaring, the hooks undeniable, even some leads, but that main melody has been stuck in our head nonstop. The only solution seems to be listening to that track over and over again. Which we're still doing. And it does seem to be working. We just. Can't. Ever. Stop.
Packaged in cool fold out punk rock sleeve style with each band getting their own little square for artwork and liner notes.
With a title like Grind Bastards, you can safely assume that this comp is indeed directly targeted at you, the grind bastards. And we know there are some serious grind bastards among the aQ faithful. Anyone who has gone nuts in the past for Agoraphobic Nosebleed, or Pig Destroyer, or Discordance Axis, or Last Days Of Humanity, we could go on and on and on, so yeah, dig a little deeper and discover a whole world of grind going on UNDER the underground. Grind Bastards collects some of the best Japanese grind from mostly bands you've never heard of, but NEED to.
Heavy, buzzing, blasting, frenzied, frenetic, pummeling, crushing, a dizzying swirl of metal riffage, furious blast beats, grunted cookie monster vocals, inhuman blackened shrieks, hooks all over the place, and some of the heaviest catchiest under a minute shit you'll ever hear.
Little Bastards, Magnicide, Mortalized, Butcher ABC, Cortecuellos, Brob, Mangirl, Fortitude, Bleeding Humanity, D.I.E., Kutsujoku, Deadly Spawn, Zagio Evha Dilegj and of course Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks released this (and who also run the amazing all black metal and grind and doom record store Grave in Japan). Dense and dizzyingly complex, next level heaviness for sure, fast and crusty enough for punk rockers, riffy and brutal enough for metalheads, and definitely a rad grind primer for the newbies.
BTW: We also have a few copies of Grind Bastards 2, which besides totally ruling as well, just so happens to feature one of our favorite grind jams ever, a 51 second grindpop gem by Mortalized (who have 2 songs here) covering pop punkers Propaghandi.
Okay grind bastards, time for round 4, another awesome collection of some of the best grind that Japan, and the rest of the world, has to offer. But like on past installments, this is not the grind you know and love, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Last Days Of Humanity, Discordance Axis, Hayaino Daisuki, Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer, Nasum, that's all mainstream by comparison, this is the grind underground, some names you might know, you might even have records by Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks is responsible for this mayhem, or Total Fucking Destruction, and then there's a bunch of bands you probably only know from past installments of Grind Bastards like Mortalized, Fortitude, Little Bastards, and in addition this time around a there's whole new crop of bands we'd never heard 'til now: Vulgaroyal Bloodhill, Zomba Green, Disgunder, Diborce, Ada Max, Black Ganion, and more more more.
This isn't really for dabblers though, this is sort of the grind version of grim, kvlt, true, the sounds here insane and ultra aggressive, over the top, a relentless assault on the senses, a crushing barrage of grinding buzzsaw riffage, blasting hyperspeed drumming, crazed vocals that yelp, howl, grunt, screech, the songs ultra proggy, a million parts and tempos crammed into the space of a minute or two, the sounds vary from blasts of blacknoise, to groovy almost classic metal, to white hot blasts of old school grind, to twisted effects drenched grinding avant metal freakouts, to galloping fastcore, to helping almost Melt-Banana sounding hypergrind, to epic war grind, to some almost poppy grind, some seriously gurgling goregrind, a few tracks get into 3 and 4 even 5 minutes, while others blow by in seconds, furious and frenzied and frantic and fantastically fucked up, this is some of the raddest, heaviest, most brutal and inventive grind you'll hear, anyone into fast and heavy, blasting brutality, this will kick your ass big time, and like past volumes, this would be a pretty epic grind primer, and like those volumes, this couldn't be more recommended.
Killer packaging too, a massive fold out punk rock poster, with each band getting their own little panel of liner notes...
Once again, this one is for all the Grind Bastards out there, the fifth in this long running series of Japanese comps, collecting the best of (mostly) Japanese grind, released on the Grind Freaks label, run by legendary Japanese grinders Unholy Grave, who are present here, along with some other longtime faves: Mortalized, Agothocles and some others. But the best part of these comps is discovering all the weird ultra underground grind outfits you'd most likely not hear anywhere else: Red Ran Amber, Ada Max, Extreme Noise Destroyer, Hell And Hell, Easies, Fortitude, Midnight Resurrector, Naqro, Parasite and more!
Obviously, this comp is called Grind Bastards, on a label called Grind Freaks, so odds are if you made it this far you know what you're getting into, fast and furious, blasting, churning, chugging, GRINDing heaviness, frenzied beats, insane riffing, howled and screeched vox, total metallic chaos, blurry punk mayhem, short sharp blasts of super complex, downtuned intricate metallic grind. We're digging Red Ran Amber, who if all was fair would be getting the same love as say Wormrot, Pig Destroyer or any of the other grind outfits on Relapse, Mortalized offer up another minute long epic, further convincing us that they might have the potential to be our favorite grinders if they only had more material out and it was a lot easier to track down, Extreme Noise Destroyer offer up some sort of distortion drenched bit of acoustic guitar weirdness before launching into some serious downtuned devastation, the Easies spit out blasts of super blown out and in-the-red chaos, Brob offer up some seriously old school powerviolence fastcore grind, their sound thick and caustic, Parasite are almost straight up classic eighties metal, complete with super melodic harmonized guitar leads, while Naqro might be a new favorite, their super raw lo-fi sound impossibly dense and heavy, their sound swinging wildly from frantic grind to swinging almost groovy metallic churn, and Midnight Resurrector kick out the straight up hip hop, not sure if they're normally a grind band or they just have some grind cred (they do infuse their sound with some fat fuzzy bass, and some Hawd Gangstah style bellowed rapping). Already can't wait for volume six! Comes in a cool fold out punk rock poster style sleeve.
This just may be the best compilation ever. How's this for a concept? A bunch of electronic/noise bands make songs out of death metal drums. Just the drums. Brilliant. Maybe. Has the potential to be pretty amazing. So how does it actually fare? Pretty well surprisingly. Most of the bands don't fuck with the beats too much, just sort of do their thing around whatever their chosen blast beat happens to be. So what could have been a stupid mess becomes the weirdest, noisiest, most confounding death metal record ever. Light on the guitars, but heavy on the buzz and glitch and whir and skree and whatever chopped up, processed graaeeerrgggghhhh they could get out of their laptops. Think a death metal V/VM, or Dave Lombardo drumming for Wolf Eyes! AQ pal Lesser is on here, as is Bombadier and Panicsville, but the rest of the participants are new to us. It hardly matters though. The tracks all sort of fit together into a single, epic, demented "death metal" masterpiece.
Truly amazing and strange collection recorded in Spivey's Corner, North Carolina in 1975 & 1976 during the annual "Hollerin'" contest. Developed out of a need for communication over long distances long before walkie talkies were invented, Hollerers soon developed their own unique hollers for various emergency situations. This disk contains some of the most advanced developments in Hollerin' and as such has some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear coming out of a human throat at high volumes.
Living in the Bay Area, we've obviously been hearing all about Hyphy for about a year now, a distinctly Bay Area sound, not all that dissimilar to Crunk or the chopped and screwed sound of the Dirty South, but with a vibe that was distinctly, well Hyphy (a mix of hype and fly btw). A sound that supposedly just sort of sprouted up in the beginning of 2006. We'd heard tracks by all the main movers in the scene, Keak Da Sneak, Mac Dre, E-40, and while we dug it, it didn't really sound all that different from the Bay Area hip hop we'd been hearing for years, and it sort of smacked of the great hype machine, coming up with a catch phrase to make something old and tired sound new and fresh again. But maybe we weren't hearing the right tracks, cuz we got our hands on this comp, featuring all the best Hyphy bangers from the first year, and HOLEEEEEEEEE SHIT, is this stuff amazing. Fucked up and funny, funky and fun and so totally over the top. Absolutely irresistible. In fact we sold one to a customer, who called us from his car ten minutes later FREAKING OUT about how great it was, and how every track was so good, he'd skip to the next one, expecting it to be a dud, only to discover it was even better. We had the exact same experience. We listened to a few minutes of each track, constantly skipping forward, not believing that every track could be that fucking great. But they were, and they are!
We've been freaking out about grime for ages, a killer UK hybrid of hip hop and jungle (Dizzee Rascal, Lady Sovereign, Wiley...), we can't get enough of that grimey sound, so fucked up with killer beats and weird loops, and some of the funniest freaked out flows we've ever heard, dense and tongue twisting. With our new found love of grime, we had been lamenting the sad state of US hip hop, the same beats, the same boring gangster rap, the same glossy MTV stuff, but damn if these tracks don't push the exact same buttons that grime does, sounding fresh and thrilling all over again.
But what does Hyphy actually sound like? It's kind of hard to pinpoint, it may be about location as much as sound, the scene as much as the music, but most of the tracks have some common elements. Synths for one. Lots of synths, thick and fuzzy, often the main hook is just a massive buzzing synth melody over a shuffling laid back rhythm. And the rhythms, they don't bang and pound as much as sort of slink. And the rapping, some seriously strange flows, from marble mouthed mumbles, to urgent whispers to Lil' Jon style hollerin' but it's not just the delivery, it's the actual words, a confusional mix of Hyphy slang that has you scratching your head as often as laughing out loud. Check out "I Got Grapes", the main lyric being a wailed "I got graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapes" over a super stripped down beat. Or "Yadadamean" where the main hook is a strangely affected "Yadadamean" repeated over a weirdly epic cinematic synth line. WTF?!? So amazing.
I wish we could describe it more explicitly, but you just gotta hear it. If you're anything like us, you'll be grabbed in the first 30 seconds and won't be able to stop. Normally we're pretty skeptical of 'hits' collections like this, but it's hard to argue with a comp this jam packed with stunners, and we're not about to. Did you dig the B'more Music comp? The Science Faction: Grime comp? The Rio Baile Funk comps? The Warrior Dubz comp? The Razor X Productions comp? Well, you just might have a new favorite. THE dance party record of the year. Whether you're slow rolling with the top down, cranking it through the headphones, or bumpin' and sweatin' up the dancefloor, this disc is THE ONE.
Based entirely on how much a record gets played in the store, this double cd dubstep comp is probably just about the most popular record we have in stock these days. No matter who's working, it seems to get played practically nonstop, and every time it's on, we find ourselves going up to see what's playing. EVERY time. Makes perfect sense, this comp is jam packed with THEE JAMS, every single "hit" from the birth of modern dubstep, until NOW. Dubstep obsessives will still probably find tons of stuff here they're missing, especially considering that most of these tracks have never been on cd before now, and newbies, holy shit, you cannot do better than this as an intro to dubstep. Over two hours of stripped down dubbed out beats, every possible permutation of that dubstep warbly bassline, raga like toasting, murky mumbling vocals, fuzzed out synths, some tracks playful and fun, others dark and sinister, so much glorious glorious bass, buzzing and rumbling, throbbing, pulsing, pounding, all beneath skittery beats, and laid back grooves, abstract funk and dark moody ambience. Just have a look at the lineup: Skream, Caspa, Loefah, Benga, Distance, Headhunter, Pinch, Shackleton, Digital Mystikz, The Bug, Kromestar, 2562, Kode 9, Burial and loads more. We've raved about pretty much every dubstep record we've managed to get in, but of all of them, this one is definitely THE one to get. Even if you already have all the other ones, ESPECIALLY if. And if you're a big fan of classic dub, but have yet to check out this modern permutation, you owe it to yourself to give it a try, definitely pushes lots of the same buttons, but ups the lowend bigtime, making it darker, and heavier, much more physical, and WAY bassier, which is never a bad thing.
Simply put, this is a covers album by indie-kids of '80s metal classics... with Reggie & The Full Effect doing Slayer (imagine "Raining Blood" with zippy new wave keyboards--it's amazing!), The Get Up Kids reworking Motley Crue, Jejune covering the Scorpions, and the much sought-after really weirdo experimental acoustic country rendition of Slayer's "South of Heaven" by Modest Mouse + Califone! Electric Frankenstein, Supernova, Less Than Jake, and others also contribute. Yeah, it's basically a fun, joke record, yet at moments kind of incredible (like The Killingtons' strange, unrecognizably spaced out take on W.A.S.P.'s "F**k Like A Beast"). It makes me wish that there were bands that actually sounded like this all the time! Put it this way: Allan never ever thought he'd have any desire to own a record containing a track by Modest Mouse, let alone a band with a name like 'Mephiskapheles', until he heard this one. (Mephiskapheles do a horn-free version of Celtic Frost's "Necromatical Screams" by the way).
A while back, we went a little crazy for a series of three limited edition (and now long out of print) 7"s, a series of Hawkwind tributes, by some of our favorite modern psych rock heavies, tracks from Kinski, Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, White Hills, Mudhoney and Mugstar, all of them amazing. So now finally, those 7"s have been compiled onto a cd, including not only all of those original tracks, but also some bonus tracks to boot, more Hawkwind covers by Moon Duo, Magoo and *another* cover by aQ faves Mugstar. More on those in a moment, first, let's talk about those original singles, and of course the mighty HAWKWIND!
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked exactly these, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were simply a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was.
So how does each band fare? Pretty marvelously in fact, let's run through the track shall we?
Kinski are up first, and they definitely get their Hawkwind on, covering "Master Of The Universe", not so much making it their own, as transforming themselves into a vessel through which the spirit of Hawkwind can flow, and flow it does. That main riff is such a killer, all the band have to do is ride it out, adding plenty of freaked out effects and psychedelic leads, the vocals buried in the mix, not getting in the way of the endless spacepsych jamming.
Bardo Pond add female vocals to their take on "Lord Of Light", the vocals drifting ethereally, over a roiling black cloud of FX drenched guitars and some seriously pounding drums, even a bit of flute (we think), and maybe more than any of the others managing to meld the sound of the original with their own, plenty of wah wah guitar, loads of effects, most of the track spent drifting through space, cloaked in blown out super distorted psych guitar and shimmering outer space ambience. Surprisingly heavy and totally blissed out.
Acid Mothers Temple are an obvious choice to pay homage to a band who was doing the AMT thing 30 years ago, and in true AMT fashion, Kawabata and company go for it, covering "Brainstorm" although it's difficult to tell, as it's buried under sheets of wild freaked out psych guitar and blown out space rock effects EVERYWHERE. It really doesn't sound all that different from any number of other AMT jams, but that's basically because every AMT jam is a tribute to Hawkwind, isn't it?
NYC's White Hills ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, tackling "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer.
Mudhoney tackle "Urban Guerilla" and totally make it their own, so much so, that minus a little chunk of extended droney space rocking in the middle, those not well versed in Hawkwind would certainly be forgiven for thinking it was a Mudhoney original.
And finally Mugstar throw their space rock hat into the ring, and are a DEAD ringer for Hawkwind, their sound murky and muddy, squalls of psych guitar, clouds of swirling spaced out FX, droned out jams, all tangled up and slowly unwinding into a long sprawling space rock jamscape. Hawkwind would be proud.
Phew, even without bonus tracks, this would be a serious killer, but for the cd reissue there are three! The one most folks seem to be super excited about is the Moon Duo jam. Moon Duo, for those not in the know, is the two piece drum machine driven space kraut offshoot of SF psychedelic rockers Wooden Shjips, and they take Hawkwind's "Hurry On Sundown" and stretch it way out, skeletal drum machine, woozy organ drones, reverbed Suicide like vox, dark and hypnotic and spacey, only to erupt about halfway through into something way more rocking, grinding distorted tendrils of psychguitar smolder wrapped all around that unrelenting motorik groove.
Magoo, who we don't know too much about, tackle "Space Is Deep", and stay pretty true to the HW formula, thick fuzzy bass, fiery effects drenched guitars, stripped down and minimal, the vocals sounding very Geddy Lee, eventually the track builds to a seriously spaced out fuzzguitar stomp, unleashing that wild chaotic heart of the sun Hawkwind style extended outro that pretty much WAS the hallmark of every incredible HW space jam, and they nail it.
Finally, Mugstar gets another go, and they take on "Paradox" and like their version of "Born To Go", they might as well just fess up to being the reincarnated spirit of Hawkwind, cuz holy shit, for all thebands who ape that Hawkwind sound, few capture the mood and spirit and vibe and SOUND as well as these guys, crunchy fuzzy guitars, super melodic basslines, vocals buried in the mix, everything wrapped in swirling streaks of whooshing sci-fi effects, slipping easily from blissed out almost krautrock style groove, to fierce almost metalic crunch, culminating in, yes, another gloriously blown out, extended hypnotic space rock freak out finish.
It may be a comp, and it may be all covers, but this is still most definitely a contender for freaked out, psychedelic space rock record of the year!!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
It seems like most Mississippi Records obsessives are also fans of the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequencies label, which makes perfect sense, they both seem to have a somewhat similar aesthetic, both focus on unheard gems, and curate some of the best compilations we've ever heard. Mississippi tends to focus on blues and country and gospel, while Sublime Frequencies looks further out, focusing on world music from Africa and Asia and beyond, but this record right here, the latest on Mississippi, might be the perfect Sublime Frequencies / Mississippi crossover, in fact, listening to this now, it's hard to believe it's not actually on Sublime Frequencies.
A fantastic collection of recordings of guitar music from West Africa (Senegal and Mali) focusing on various bands who are essentially unknown outside of Africa, but are quite popular in their villages, and are called upon often to play parties, celebrations, political events, their sound most likely immediately recognizable to fans of Group Bombino, Tinariwen and Group Inerane, which we'd imagine most aQ customers are.
That sound is a totally distinctive African folk music, captured live in various settings, houses, backyards, town squares, parties, you can hear people talking, birds chirping, kids laughing, random conversations, it all just adds to the sound, warm and inviting, emotional and so melodic, heavy on the acoustic guitars, lots of handclaps and foot stomps, the guitar playing is quite percussive too, a sort of low slung twang flecked desert blues, alternatingly moody and melancholy, effusive and festive, sometimes the sounds are distinctly Western, other times they're reminiscent of traditional African music, more often they're a hybrid of the two. Most of the groups here are made up of just acoustic guitars and vocals, but the sounds and songs they create are so lush and layered, so fantastically evocative, and just so totally beautiful.
Fans of all things Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi will definitely dig this, and it's absolutely essential listening for folks who love those Sublime Frequencies' Guitars From Agadez records...
The packaging is fantastic, super thick full color jacket, with a massive full color booklet, featuring tons of photos and liner notes, as well as plenty of history of the region and the musicians.
Another amazing and mysterious and confusional release from Tesco, who almost single handedly are keeping modern industrial and post industrial music alive and kicking. They've brought us Der Blutharsch, Death In June, Anenzephalia, and now JUCHE. A compilation of modern industrial artists, weighing in on North Korea (!). What is Juche? Well Wikipedia describes it like this:
"The Juche Idea is the official state ideology and state-sponsored religion of North Korea and the political system based on it. The doctrine is a component part of Kimilsungism, the North Korean term for Kim Il-sung's family regime. The core principle of the Juche ideology since the 1970s has been that "man is the master of everything and decides everything". Juche literally means "main body" or "subject"; it has also been translated in North Korean sources as "independent stand" and the "spirit of self-reliance"."
Removed from the context of actual, totalitarian politics, Juche sounds kinda cool. Intense, brutal, simple. And certainly like some sort of industrial music manifesto. So it makes sense that these bands would have something to say about it. What exactly is up to you to decipher. From the music and the extensive art and text in the accompanying booklet. But for now we'll concern ourselves with the music�
We were mostly excited by a brand new unreleased track from aQ faves Anenzephalia, whose past records were rife with the sort of intense, bleak, grim, blackened dronescapes we can never get enough of. The track here is still grim and dark, but more rhythmic, a crackling lo-fi glitchscape, a skeletal rhythm crafted from squelches and pops spread out over the drift below, a garbled alien melody, equal parts sine-wave and damaged sonar ping, eventually joined by a wavery insect like blackbuzz, and some distorted disembodied vocals, a looped snippet from a speech of some sort, the whole track subtly harrowing, and weirdly hypnotic.
The Turbund Sturmwerk track is super creepy as well, a whispery shimmer of ambience, a strange looped vocal whir in the background, sweeping swell of distant distortion, soft smears of hiss, all beneath an urgent voice, an emotional speech of some sort, the song shifting gears part way through and morphing into a swirling dirge, of crumbling downtuned chords, throbbing low end buzz and extremely panned bursts of fuzz and hiss. The Grey Wolves offer up another chunk of grinding ambient creep, a rough, gritty textured wash of processed synths and strange looped distortion, melodies rendered in shards of feedback and fractured effects, a voice buried in the mix, urgent and ominous, peppered with bits of Bush, and some tangled blurred rhythms.
Operation Cleansweep weigh in with a sinister stretch of drawn out tones, layered caustic rumbles, whirring machinelike drones, mysterious percussive thumps and creaks, all smeared into a dense throbbing buzz. The strangest track is probably Militia's, beginning with some spoken word, that slips into singing, in the background a slow building looped chunk of glimmering ambience. Soon an hypnotic looped synth melody swoops in, pulled from some lost Phillip Glass piece, accompanied by junkyard drums, all very mesmerizing and repetitive, a bit like gamelan, or some Steve Reich piece. A haunting slab of alien industrial world music.
The rest of the tracks are just as weird and cool, dark and drone-y, Con-Dom, Genocide Organ, Ex-Order. In fact, much of this comp seems to fall more in line with experimental drone music, than traditional 'industrial' music, some of it reminding us of mellower more blissed out Prurient, with processed vocals, all manner of rumbling, pulsing low end, plenty of buzz and blurred murk, all of it dark and mysterious and fucking awesome.
Packaged in an oversized A5 red textured cardstock booklet, the text and symbols on the cover letter pressed in embossed metallic gold, inside a full color booklet, with lyrics, images, photos, each band with their own page. And as it says on the back cover "Limited Edition of 15,000,000 copies", so better get yours now�
WE HAVE VERY FEW OF THESE (SIX TO BE EXACT) AND WE CAN'T GET MORE SO ACT FAST.
This is a great compilation of modern electronica/experimental/free rock/ambient/bliss-out weirdness that was only available for 2 days at the Brudnell Social Club in Leeds UK to coincide with two days of music. Features AQ faves Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra and Birchville Cat Motel as well as lesser known but equally appealing noisemakers Toss, Benjamin Franklin and Kohn.
It's been a while since we've heard from the Trikont label, and we've missed them. In the past, they've brought us some all time aQ faves, the Flashbacks series, Africa Raps, so many amazing compilations: Beyond Istanbul, Doom & Gloom, Creative Outlaws, In Prison, Dope & Glory and of course Ho! Roady Music From Vietnam. Always impeccably curated, with extensive liner notes, tons of photos, and an in-depth history of the music and the performers.
Konkani Songs is a fantastic addition, Music from India, a sort of Indian light and folk music, ballads, big band jazz, torch songs, festive folky dance numbers, all with a hint of Bollywood, as well as plenty of other influences, Western soundtrack music, Morricone, fifties and sixties European pop, but all so distinctly and uniquely Indian.
Anyone into the Sublime Frequencies series will definitely want to grab one of these, sounds both familiar and foreign, far out and classic, groovy Eastern melodies intertwine with Klezmer like accordions, soaring dramatic strings, chiming bells, wild percussion, the sounds slipping from calypso to mariachi, Bollywood to cheesy pop, groovy funk to organ driven sort-of-country, rad groovy surfy garage to dark tango-y waltzes, the sound is uniformly warm and fuzzy, that gorgeous washed out old recording sound. But it's the vocalists that seal the deal, from deep baritones, to sweet songbird croons, some hushed and intimate, some intense and expressive, sometimes a perfect match for the music backing it up, sometimes brilliantly at odds, we've only just begun to dig into the liner notes, there's much to learn about Onkani songs, but based on the songs alone, this could be one of our favorite comps of the year so far.
Similar to the spirit of those 'Ein Wigwam...' compilations of film music from East German westerns (Vol. 2 we listed just a few weeks back), 'Kosmos' collects the music from East German science fiction films and television programs, which while maybe not
Similar to the spirit of those 'Ein Wigwam...' compilations of film music from East German westerns (Vol. 2 we listed just a few weeks back), 'Kosmos' collects the music from East German science fiction films and television programs, which while maybe not
Occasionally whilst reading AQ reviews (or elsewhere too of course), you may have run across a reference to something called the NWOBHM, a curious acronym that stands for "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal". Hopefully we explained what it meant! Or it was somewhat clear from context, describing the influences of such bands as Slough Feg, Early Man, or Circle at their most metal (who'd like be be called a "NWOFHM" band, actually...New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal, natch). The NWOBHM began around 1979, continuing into the early eighties, almost a reaction to and also a hybridization of both punk rock and '70s classic rock. Some famous NWOBHM acts include Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Venom, Angel Witch, Saxon... a varied bunch to be sure. And without the NWOBHM, we'd never have had Metallica, and thus thrash, and thus death metal, and thus black metal, etc. etc.... well maybe. Anyway, in case you're, say, a fan of Pharaoh Overlord's 4 album (another "NWOFHM" release), or into grim black metal, but would like a little history lesson about the real old school stuff, this NWOBHM stuff, we've got just the thing. A three-cd set, imported from England, celebrating the NWOBHM in all its (mostly obscure) glory. 56 tracks from such bands as Trespass, Raven, Bitches Sin, Blitzkreig, Persian Risk, Satan, Heavy Pettin, Silverwing, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Holocaust, Ethel The Frog, Savage, Warfare, Jaguar, Vardis, Fist, Quartz, Cloven Hoof, Tyson Dog, Praying Mantis... the biggest names are probably Venom, Diamond Head, Angel Witch, and Samson. And believe it or not there are plenty of entries here from bands that we'd never even heard of before as well (Hellanbach, She, Avenger, Aragorn, Crucifixion, Xero, Horsepower...)!! A lot of these bands didn't have long careers, but still managed a killer single or two, which is why comps like this are treasure-troves, a NWOBHM 'best of' composed of some album tracks, 7" cuts (so many great ones on the Neat Records label) and tracks from back-in-the-day comps like New Electric Warriors (1980) and Metal For Muthas (1980). So for NWOBHM fans old and new, this is a nice collection of headbanging, party hardy METAL -- catchy riffs, wailing vox, guitars guitars guitars. Comes with a 12 page booklet full of record sleeve art and liner notes on each act, packaged in a box with the cds in cardboard sleeves.
Living Is Hard. Indeed. Truer words were never spoken. The plight of Africans in Britain in the beginning of the twentieth century, was indeed one of hardship and strife, of persecution and destitution of unspeakable violence and unfettered racism. And the songs on Living Is Hard perfectly capture the spirit of the time. The anger and resentment, but also the hope and happiness, the frustration of constant harassment and the dreams of something better.
As the liner notes mention, these songs were a "disruptive late entry into the history of black music in Britain", a music that owes very little to any white listenership. A hybrid of African spirituals, blues and plantation songs, with hints of Carribean music, bits of highlife, mostly vocal, with minimal instrumentation, managing to be simultaneously complex and musically dense, but also simple and heartfelt.
A few tracks are immediately recognizable as a sort of highlife blues, simple acoustic guitar and seemingly celebratory vocals, but much of the music on Living Is Hard, is truly unique, unlike anything we've ever heard, even as fans of wondrous and mysterious world musics, there are strange acapella tracks, where the rhythms are created from grunts and mumbles, the main vocal line, strangled and guttural, peppered with occasional percussion, some tracks have a Western folk vibe, even hinting at some Morricone-ish twang, others sounds a bit like doo wop, rich harmonies and gorgeous hummed melodies, but most of the tracks here are just vocal and percussion, chanting, crooning, call and response, voices sometimes rough and raw, sometimes smooth and silky, the rhythms backing them up ranging from simple and spare to dense and tribal, so varied and moving and simply wonderful.
As with all Honest Jons releases, Living Is Hard is gorgeously packaged, with a thick book of liner notes, lots of photos, translations of the lyrics and more.
Dust-To-Digital does it again! With what might be one of their most impressive releases to date. Which is saying a lot, considering how much we love pretty much everything they release. A quick list of some of our favorite D-T-D releases should give you an idea of what we're talking about: those recent Lonnie Holley albums, Kassidat: Raw 45's from Morocco, Luk Thung: Classic & Obscure 78's From The Thai Countryside, Opika Pende: Africa At 78rpm, Pictures Of Sound, Excavated Shellac, Victrola Favorites, we could go on and on and on and on. Look up any of those on the aQ site and read our extensive and effusive ravings about all of them.
And this new one, a sprawling four cd collection of 78s from Southeast Asia, is yet another stunning release, in every way, the mysterious and lovely music collected here, the design, the research, it's a gorgeous object on top of being one of the best reissue compliations of the year. Curated by David Murray, who also assembled the Luk Thung and Kassidat collections, and who curates the Haji Maji blog, which explores 78rpm Asian music, Longing For The Past is like a class in early 20th century Southeast Asian music in a box, 90 tracks, four and a half hours, the music culled from the years 1905-1966, and offering up an expansive and varied sonic snapshot of music from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The temptation is to simply paraphrase the extensive liner notes, but there's just too much here to fit into a review. We're also tempted to describe this compilation song by song, but again, we could do a whole list just on this one release. All you really need to know, is that this is fantastic. The music is incredible, an breathtaking sampling of Southeast Asian music, fans of the genre, even those who consider themselves amateur experts, will be blown away, many of these tracks reissued for the first time, and the sonic breadth is stunning too, folk music, pop music, gamelans, percussion, strings, gorgeous vocals, so varied that it almost seems too reductive to even describe a handful of them, odds are lots of aQ-ers are gonna want this already, but check out the sound samples below too. Odds are you'll be smitten. And in terms of cultural import, that can't be underestimated, as much about the music of this era, from this region, has remained mostly unexplored before now.
And as with all Dust-To-Digital releases, the packaging is crazy. There's a huge nearly 300 page hardcover book, with tons of liner notes, about the record industry in Southeast Asia, music from each country, and a complete breakdown of each track here, with a description of the artist and the song, not to mention an extensive bibliography, as well as hundreds of vintage photographs, reproductions of record labels and sleeves, and so much more. The cds themselves are packaged in a massive 8 panel digisleeve, printed and embossed, and everything is then housed in a deluxe printed/embossed box. So gorgeous. And for world music obsessives, absolutely essential!!
MPEG Stream: VA N H I B A N W I T H T H E VA N H I B A N T R O U P E "Xu Toi Bang Qui Phi, Thu Nhi" [/audio/valngngftpst4cddtd1.m3u]
Lords Of Chaos, the definitive book on the whole Norwegian black metal scene, heavily focused on all that church burning, band mate murdering drama, that made an otherwise grim and cult a household dinner party topic, even amongst folks usually averse to metal and murder and mayhem.
This two disc companion seems the be more thematically linked to the book, featuring tracks by many of the bands, while more interestingly tracing a history of occult music from the blues to seventies prog to industrial, eighties metal to underground subversive soundtracks to the current crop of corpse painted black metal warriors. It's an awesome introduction for the black metal newbie for sure, featuring tracks from Bathory, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Ulver, Thorns, Abruptum and of course Venom, the godfathers of black metal. But it's way more than that. The first disc especially is jam packed with haunting, mysterious, metal and occult classics. Aleister Crowley, recorded on wax cylinder, invoking Satan, Robert Johnson (he did make a deal with the devil after all!), an awesome creepy classic prog jam from Coven, of course Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath", more amazing flute flecked prog from Black Widow, whose demonic elements seem to be more thematic, but a killer jam nonetheless, some creepy cinematic ambience from Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil (whose remarkable Lucifer Rising 4lp box we reviewed recently), maybe the biggest surprise, an 11 minute chunk of electronic looped weirdness from someone called Mick J (we'll go out on a limb and say it's actually Mick Jagger!), that we listen to over and over, Venom's classic "Black Metal" (of course!), then Mercyful Fate, Sodom, Hellhammer, finallty some industrial stuff, Monte Cazazza, Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV, as well as some goofy organ music from the high priest himself, Anton LaVey.
The second disc is where you'll find all the black metal, but also a rare track from Italian horror metallers Death SS, and some other random evil occult weirdness from White Stains, Electric Hellfire Club and Peter H. Gilmore, acting high priest of the Church Of Satan. Killer stuff, super varied, and easy to enjoy even if you haven't read Lords Of Chaos. Comes with a massive book, featuring a brief history of occult rock, a bit about all the artists and performers, plenty of pix, as well as an introduction by Michael Moynihan, author of Lords Of Chaos. Definitely essential, even for someone who is well familiar with most of these artists, plays like the coolest 'evil occult' mix tape any one could ever make you.
These have been tough to get, so if we run out, please be patient while we order more from overseas, best to grab one now while you can...
We've long been champions of the mighty mysterious Fflint central label and their beautifully bizarre droning electronic weirdness. And we've raved about every single one of their cd-r releases. So we were pretty excited when the kind folks at Birdman decided to collect the best bits from all those releases and compile them on a real cd to create the ultimate Fflint primer. Essential for those of you who have yet to discover the amazing sonic world that is Fflint Central; absolutely necessary for those of you who have worn your old Fflint cd-r's down to spinning plastic nubs; and don't think you Fflint obsessives are getting off easy, there are several exclusive tracks never before released that you of course need! We could go on and on and gush endlessly, but since our very own Andee wrote the liner notes, we might as well just let you read what he had to say:
What the fuck is Fflint anyway? A place? A label? A bunch of cheeky bastards who have, in the matter of a few short years, rendered all other UK electronica obsolete? Umm, a place?
In the world of popular music, world-changing things get old fast. With the advent of punk rock, it was a thrill realising that anyone could start a band, but that wore off -real- quick, once everybody did. And then, when the laptop replaced the guitar as the "instrument" anyone could buy and thus have their own" band", it wasn't long before we found ourselves at shows, watching nerds check their emails on stage while we sipped overpriced drinks and fantasized about slipping into the bar to play some Galaga. And then came the cd-r. Christ, you thought the tape was bad. At least with tapes you always had something laying around to dub the new Van Halen or Motley Crue record on. But cd-r's, c'mon. Fuck. Not only can you not tape over them, but even my mom has a limited cd-r release. (And it's not half bad!)
So when you discover some mysterious group, who are quietly releasing cd-r's filled with sounds that are beautiful and perplexing and dreamy and annoying and dark and mesmerising and fucked beyond all possible comprehension, you cling to them like you were a mama bear and these cd-r's were your newborn cubs. But at the same time you are constantly wondering why -- knowing that these sounds exist and are somewhat readily available -- anyone would knowingly choose to listen to the rest of the shit out there.
Well that's all about to change.
And I guess that brings us back to the big question. What the hell is Fflint anyway? Obviously it's music, after all you're holding their cd in your grubby little paws as we speak. But is it electronica? Noise? Dark ambience? Twentieth century? Twenty First Century? Who the hell knows? And honestly, who gives a shit.
This is sound, pure and not so simple. An endless series of unlikely musical events. Some soothing and serene, some droning and delirious, and some so harsh it hurts to even listen. But all of it, every single bit, is unlike anything you've ever heard. Or ever will hear again. It's not just music, but the sounds of music. And the music of sound, entering your ears from the inside, filling your wide open skull with malfunctioning maelstroms of stuttering, fuzzed out synth and hiccupping bursts of thundering glitchery colliding with sputtering clicks and oscillating low end rumbles, draped over chest rattling modulated pulses. Ultra harsh noise smeared over a strange man humming into a broken telephone, while an orchestra of detuned guitars tries desperately to compete in the background. Thousands of tiny hands unwrapping cellophane candies in a hyperbolic chamber, while little girls in tap shoes run laps around your eardrums. Epileptic bagpipes and faraway seal calls rub up against scratching and scraping woodblocks, timestretched into sinister growls or raw and ultra distorted high end melodies, while player pianos are reverbed to death until they become an ominous hum, like a swarm of mechanical wasps pinned down by loping, stumbling Autechre-ish loops and rhythmic workouts: all stuttering thumps and slow motion handclaps, like Timbaland being held down in your bathtub struggling for air. Mysterious and sing-songy Krautrock, jangly and noisy, rambling and shambolic, giving way to shimmery skree, melodies shifting and eventually splitting apart and forming new more abstract melodies, while chirping birds and guttural Orc-ish vocalisations convulse atop a bed of keening chimes and high end swells. Abstract IDM gets deconstructed into shards of jagged dance refuse, beats, shuffling and skittering beneath shifting chords and slabs of minor key sound. Rich sheets of dense sound, layers of sweet ambience, and the metallic hum of excited strings, eventually becoming clipped and static, a hypnotic looped rhythm over accordions, crowd sounds and more bird calls. Grinding scraping pulsing drones unfurl like a small village being over run by snakes made out of bowed cymbals and broken samplers. A dense, crushing melodic downpour, like laying prone in a pool of Rephlex 12"s while hundreds of 'electronica artists' piss on you from above. Hissing ambience created by a choir of tracheotomy patients with malfunctioning hearing aids spewing intercepted shortwave transmissions, interrupted by occasional gunfire; only the bullets are Masonna cassettes and Merzbow cd-r's. A skittery but smooth drone-dirge, like someone drugged Boards of Canada and then pushed them down the stairs, while outside the Fflint guys try desperately to start the getaway car.
Yes, but is it music? Can I dance to it? Will it make the opposite sex swoon and want to sleep with me? No, probably not. Actually, most definitely not. This is not like the music you're used to. This is not music you'll hear on the radio or download from iTunes or hear on a car commercial. This is not music to dance to, or fuck to, or headbang to. Or maybe it is. At least for some of us. But that's precisely what makes Fflint and their divine din so special. And so goddamn important. This is pure sound, sound outside of music. But music the way we wish all music could be: Pure and freed from all the constraints that keeps "popular music" so boring and pointless and well, popular.
This is unpopular music. We are unpopular people.
And we couldn't be happier.
PS: actually, we should say that this is Record of *next* Week, technically. Since we actually can't sell it 'til its "street date" on Tuesday, the 12th. But go ahead and mailorder it now, 'cause you won't get your shipments until after then anyway. Locals, line up Tuesday morning!
What the hell more can we say about grime?! Other than we love it. We're obsessed with it. Grime and dubstep are everything we wish hip hop still was (and some still is, the new Clipse absolutely destroys!). Fresh and funky, wild and weird. Fucked up beats and even more fucked up flows. Stuttering hiccupping what the fuck rhythms. It's maddeningly mind bending. And we just can't get enough. And the thing is, we're forced to subsist on a new grime/dubstep release every few weeks or every couple of months, when we could easily be eating up ten times that. This is the only music that stands any chance of getting our non-dancing asses out of our chairs and out onto the dancefloor. And even if dancing is even lower on your list of priorities that it is on ours, this shit is the perfect kicking back music, drifting off, mellowing out, late night dubbed out chill music, it also sounds absolutely amazing blasting in your car. Like we said, we just can't get enough. So here we have a collection of some of the best dubstep (and grime) jams of the last little while compiled by legendary DJ Mary Anne Hobbs. About half of these tracks were recorded or at least remixed specifically for this comp, the rest being all time grime/dubstep classics.
The disc starts off with a track from recent AQ Record of the Weeker Milanese, a furious muted blast of grime-y groove and some killer dancehall style toasting over the top. The grime element is sort of pushed aside in favor of the more blissed out dubstep sound for the rest of the disc, featuring a track from another AQ record of the week Burial, as well as a track from Kode9 & Space Ape whose full length we raved about not too long ago. And of course a track from Kevin Martin's Bug... This whole record is just so dark and deliriously groovy. Beats are all over the place, alternating between shuffling and pounding, slithering and stuttering, huge basslines fuzz and buzz, thick swaths of low end synth threaten your woofers, vocals are minimal, sometimes wild tongue twisting flows, other times growled dancehall toasting, bits of jungle surface here and there, thick swirls of ominous ambience EVERYWHERE. So goddamn good. We've been listening to this non stop!! And every time we play this in the store somebody comes up to find out what it is, and usually ends up buying it. So what else do you need to know. Buy this now!
The first mix cd from dubstep diva DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, Warrior Dubs, was a sort of greatest hits snapshot of the dubstep/grime scene at the time. Lots of well known names, tons of aQ faves: Milanese, Burial, Kode9, Bug, and loads more. And while it was an incredible comp, for those of us who had already been obsessively tracking down as much grime and dubstep as we could get our hands on, it was a little light on new discoveries, a terrific mix for sure, but one we might have made ourselves. Which is ironic considering that dubstep, like jungle and garage and techno before it, is a genre that thrives on the newest thing, on the latest tracks, so much so that all the great DJ's tend to spin dubplates, unique copies of discs that have yet to be commercially released.
This latest collection from Miss Hobbs is something completely different though. And precisely what we were hoping for. Not only does if feature a whole mess of new names and never-heard-of's amongst the usual suspects, it also spreads out sonically, way beyond the realms of grime or dubstep, incorporating all manner of other electronic musics, but all somehow woven into something incredibly cohesive, and darkly groovy.
Much of this collection is super minimal, laid back and downtempo, lots of murky production and slowly skittering beats, some haunting almost completely ambient tracks, but some serious bangers as well. But before we get to all those, we might as well talk about the biggest surprise here, "Theory Of Machines" by Ben Frost, a nine and a half minute slab of slow burning blurred dronemusic, that over the course of its 9 minutes builds from soft shimmer to dense crumbling Tim Hecker style blurred beauty, to thick caustic blown out soft noise, to an super distorted almost-trip-hop. The sound is immense and epic, and so gorgeous, wreathed in crackle and underpinned by buzzing downtuned lowend, streaked with soaring synths, the track's climax, all skittery beats beneath clouds of hiss and whir and crackle and fuzz is totally intense and gorgeous. And the fact that it's dropped right between a super spaced out reverb drenched out chunk of muddy dubstep and some sun dappled Boards Of Canada style downtempo shuffle, speaks to Hobbs' skills as a DJ. Song choice, arrangement, segues.
Even with the artists we know, Hobbs didn't necessarily pick their big hit, instead opting for the song that best suited the mix, and it pays off. Opening with Ital Tek's glitchy dubby stutter, and closing with Claro Intelecto's hushed techno whisper, a soft washed out dreaminess over a barely there pulse, the tracks in between manages to be all over the map, without sounding random or just thrown together. A grinding buzzing synth heavy grime jam from Wiley follows hot on the heels of Cult Of The 13th Hour's Kode9-ish slow dub, replete with a motorik pulse, some muted muddied skitter, and some deep spoken word vocals. DJ Pinch offers up some super abstract dubstep, the usual synth buzz relegated to a distant murmur, the main rhythm, surrounded by little flurries of tribal shuffle, which is quickly followed up by Magnetic Man's electronic dub, that minus the dubstep synth warble brings to mind On-U-Sound or the Dub Chemists. Surgeon offers up some awesome Kompakt style techno, all looped and hypnotic, minimal and murky, which quickly gives way to a Boxcutter track that almost sounds like some electronic dub infused free jazz, all abstract skitter, crooned vocals, throbbing bass, strange space FX, bits of free freakout, even some whirring organ.
Definitely not the mix for someone looking for a dubstep greatest hits, we've got the recent Steppa's Delight collection among others for that, this is more a collection of modern electronic music, a glimpse into the future of sound, how these various tracks fit together, how electronic music continues to change before our very ears, dub becomes dubstep but what will it become next, techno and grime and downtempo and trip-hop seep back into the 'new' sound and makes it even newer, hybrids of hybrids of hybrids, how these sounds look to the past to reach the future. But more importantly, you can dance to them. Well, sort of.
Ok, I know what you're thinking. A remix record?!?! A Merzbow remix record fer chrissakes?!?!? But c'mon, look at who's on this, it reads like an Aquarius who's who: Boris, When, Ulver, Fennesz, Sunn 0))), Hrvatski, Pita, House Of Low Culture and more! And they are remixing one of the best Merzbow records of recent memory, Frog. Surprisingly, all of the "remixes" are pretty cool, but the best results come from folks taking Merzbow's 'noise' in a decidedly more drony, dreamy, minimal direction, as opposed to making -his- noise sound more like -their- noise. Sunn 0))) offer up a gorgeously gritty, minimal rumble-scape, warm and languorous, with far-away guitars and slowly building static that threatens to, and eventually does, disrupt the murky ambience. Ulver minimalise as well, creating a grinding, lethargic rhythm from static, and slight blips of Merz-noise, all under a creepy, horror movie landscape of, ghostly theremin-like wails and warbly minor key melodies. And When take the noise, turn it way down until it's just soothing static, add distant carnival music, chirping cricket like sounds, a heartbeat like pulse, with occasional monster sounds (or maybe croaking frogs, but slowed down they sound like monsters!), rumbling, groaning and creaking ominously as proceedings build in intensity. But it's the Boris track that really makes this all worth while. An epic 20 minute dirge, with glacial guitars throbbing and moaning, creating a doleful, funereal threnody that sounds like Earth or Sunn 0))) buried under waves of shortwave static. The slow motion riffs stretch waaaay out, wailing mournfully almost like whale calls. So beautiful and haunting. Not bad for a remix record! Packaged in a gorgeous psychedelic fold out sleeve.
These Messthetics comps are so great. Truly a labor of love. So meticulously researched, pretty much ever single collection chock full of bands we've never heard of, with liner notes that read like a book about whatever scene or band is the focus of the comp. So here we go again, number 106 collects a bunch of rarities from The Manchester Musicians Collective. Heard of it? Neither had we. The Fall and Joy Division were the focal points, but this comp proves there were amazing things happening outside of the limelight. According to the liner notes, the four reasons that the MMC scene was different from the various other scenes were as follows:
1. The Buzzcocks, who inspired the scene to make it happen, to get involved, pick up instruments and start bands, set up shows and release records.
2. Live performances. The various meetings of the group helped fledgling bands get their shit together live and on stage, performing in front of their pals and peers, getting tight and honing their sound.
3. The MMC was not just for rocker dudes, there were plenty of gay teenagers and women making just as much noise as the guys in a scene predominantly male. And finally:
4. Incorporating more than just guitars into the sound, keyboards, synths, electronics, effects, all giving the bands a unique sound.
There's plenty more about the history and the development of the MMC, but as with anything it's all about the sound, and the songs, and the groups, and starting with the MMC's stars: Joy Division, The Fall and the Buzzcocks, you can get a pretty good idea of where they were coming from. But then there's groups like the Mud Hutters, who combined angular post punk guitars, with yowled throaty vocals and lurching tribal rhythms, with sheets of insectoid buzz. Or Grow-Up, who adding horns to their new wave, and wrapped it all around jangly guitar and funky rhythms, or Liggers, a punk rock band made up of three Catholic school girls who obsessed over Patty Smith but sounded more like Toto Coelo, or Passage, who tangled up simple rhythms with buzzing low end synths and spoken / sung vocals, or Bee Vamp, whose sound was very Devo, jagged jangle guitar, skronky synths, tribal drumming, and killer glammy vocals... and on and on it goes. So many amazing bands, one hit wonders (minus the hit), and groups who barely existed outside of the MMC scene, and who essentially don't exist at all outside of this comp. Hyped To Death should get some sort of grant, preserving musical history, like a punk rock Smithsonian. As will all of the Messthetics collections and pretty much everything on Hyped to Death, totally recommended.
