Just what the world needs right? ANOTHER electronica compilation. Well, you might actually need just one more. A few household names Knifehandchop, Wobbly, Kevin Blechdom but mostly unknowns (at least to us) this is a wild and wooly, fun and funky, mashed up pisstake of all things MTV and top 40 radio. The sound is glitched out, punishing, big beat, dancehall, drill and bass madness, but the songs are all (barely) recognizable chunks of hits you know and love (or hate). And as much as maybe I wasn't prepared to, I ended up digging this a lot. And listening to it all the time. A sped up/chopped up version of that Eminem song from Eight Mile, Old Dirty Bastard and Mya's Ghetto Superstar with a DHR dancehall makeover, Madonna's James Bond theme run through the sonic shredder and tons more. Pretty fucking great!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Norway's most advanced "black metal" label has released a fairly amazing compilation here. Moonfog's incredibly elite roster contributes exclusive material: from the blackened thrash of Eibon (the supergroup containing members of Darkthrone, Mayhem, Necrophagia, Pantera/Viking Crown, and Satyricon making their recorded debut), to Dodheimsgard's mutation into the black metal techno of their new incarnation DHG, to the primitive country/punk black metal of legends Darkthrone (recorded at Necrohell Studios, otherwise known as their 4-track machine), to intense death/black brutality from Gehenna and Thorns, and more. 25 minutes on the cutting edge of Moonfog's vision. Absolutely essential to dedicated fans and adventurous newcomers (as well as the other way around), as this comp really runs the spectrum from classic raw stuff to sacrilegious trip-hop "black metal" 2000.
And, as a kind of bonus, you also get a second disc collecting popular cuts by Moonfog bands, compiled by users of The Moonfog Dungeon (i.e. website). They're all previously released tracks, so this can be regarded as a handy mix of some black metal faves.
Obviously, we listen to all sorts of music here, and maybe also obviously, a lot of it is way outside the mainstream, whether it's psychedelic space rock, cinematic avant doom, dirgedronedrift, but when we're totally honest with ourselves (some of us at least, sure you can guess who), there are two genres that we always go back to. The stuff we listen to when we're NOT writing reviews, for pure pleasure, on roadtrips, on iPods, the soundtrack to many a journey, and those two genres would be eighties metal, and grunge. And for sure it has to do with our ages, and when we grew up, and what we grew up listening to, but grunge was HUGE for some of us. We subscribed to the Sub Pop singles club, we hunted down obscure 7"s on C/Z, and other smaller labels, we of course dug the usual suspects, Tad, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Green River and all the rest, but we were (and are) pretty obsessed, digging way deeper, and trust us, we could go on and on about our favorite super obscure (and sort of obscure) grunge outfits: Swallow, Cat Butt, Sprinkler, Thirty Ought Six, Malfunkshun, Love Battery, The Fluid, Green Magnet School, Gruntruck, Best Kissers In The World, Truly, Blood Circus, and yet not a single one of them are found here, nope, the folks at Soul Jazz dig REALLY DEEP, so much so, that even the grunge nerds around aQ only recognized EIGHT of the bands included on this comp, so we were super psyched to get schooled on one of our favorite genres. And to be fair, not all of this is strictly grunge, some of the stuff here is more straight up punk rock, some is pretty experimental, but some is seriously and fantastically grungy. Things start off with a band we knew and loved already, Starfish, whose girl grunge dabbled heavily in shoegaze, sounding to us at least, like a grunge version of Team Dresch, which is most definitely a good thing. Vampire Lezbos are pretty grungy too, and before now totally unknown to us, but all swagger, snarly riffage, some hard rock shreddery, that is until the song explodes into full on punk rock bash and howl, the rest of the song seesawing back and forth between the two. Nubbin are pretty great too, definitely grungy, a little bit jangly and Nirvana-esque, their song "Windyyy" borrowing the opening riff from a much more famous sing with the same (sort of) title. Saucer, who we had never heard before, are total grunge, all sort of hard rock swagger, and laid back riffage, heavy but also sort of stone-y. The first real WTF moment comes from Hitting Birth, who we were of course familiar with, but who we never considered grunge, and they're not grunge here either, more sort of early lo-fi industrial, to be fair it is SORT of grungy, but the metallic rhythms, the strange percussion, there's even some turntable scratching, makes it an interesting sonic reference point for the movement, and we do have to say, it's the coolest Hitting Birth song we've heard.
Other favorites include Pod, the pre-Mudhoney, pre-Tad outfit Bundle Of Hiss, the very Skin Yard sounding Helltrout, who were considered one of the heavier bands in Seattle at the time (late eighties to mid nineties), then there's the fuzzy jangle pop of Chemistry Set, that seems to owe more to R.E.M. than anything, and My Name, who are almost like funk-grunge (and we mean that as a compliment), the all female grunge-chug of Shug, and the noisy girl-grunt post punk of Calamity Jane, and so much more. Anyone into grunge will dig this like crazy, and a bunch of these bands have full lengths, well worth tracking down, and of course, it's Soul Jazz, so there's a huge book, full of extensive liner notes, with rare photos, and a blurb on each band, as well as some appendices, like a list of various band members still active today and what bands they play in now, as well as a six degrees of Nirvana chart, that connects each band on the comp to the godfathers of grunge, in some cases in just one move, with a handful of band members having actually played in the group, and at least one having had the group play their birthday party!
Available as a double cd, or a fairly pricey 4 lp set, sold in two separate 2lp volumes.
LISTED THE DOUBLE CD EDITION OF THIS COMP LAST WEEK, ALSO NOW HERE'S THE VINYL VERSION, IN TWO PARTS...
Obviously, we listen to all sorts of music here, and maybe also obviously, a lot of it is way outside the mainstream, whether it's psychedelic space rock, cinematic avant doom, dirgedronedrift, but when we're totally honest with ourselves (some of us at least, sure you can guess who), there are two genres that we always go back to. The stuff we listen to when we're NOT writing reviews, for pure pleasure, on roadtrips, on iPods, the soundtrack to many a journey, and those two genres would be eighties metal, and grunge. And for sure it has to do with our ages, and when we grew up, and what we grew up listening to, but grunge was HUGE for some of us. We subscribed to the Sub Pop singles club, we hunted down obscure 7"s on C/Z, and other smaller labels, we of course dug the usual suspects, Tad, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Green River and all the rest, but we were (and are) pretty obsessed, digging way deeper, and trust us, we could go on and on about our favorite super obscure (and sort of obscure) grunge outfits: Swallow, Cat Butt, Sprinkler, Thirty Ought Six, Malfunkshun, Love Battery, The Fluid, Green Magnet School, Gruntruck, Best Kissers In The World, Truly, Blood Circus, and yet not a single one of them are found here, nope, the folks at Soul Jazz dig REALLY DEEP, so much so, that even the grunge nerds around aQ only recognized EIGHT of the bands included on this comp, so we were super psyched to get schooled on one of our favorite genres. And to be fair, not all of this is strictly grunge, some of the stuff here is more straight up punk rock, some is pretty experimental, but some is seriously and fantastically grungy. Things start off with a band we knew and loved already, Starfish, whose girl grunge dabbled heavily in shoegaze, sounding to us at least, like a grunge version of Team Dresch, which is most definitely a good thing. Vampire Lezbos are pretty grungy too, and before now totally unknown to us, but all swagger, snarly riffage, some hard rock shreddery, that is until the song explodes into full on punk rock bash and howl, the rest of the song seesawing back and forth between the two. Nubbin are pretty great too, definitely grungy, a little bit jangly and Nirvana-esque, their song "Windyyy" borrowing the opening riff from a much more famous sing with the same (sort of) title. Saucer, who we had never heard before, are total grunge, all sort of hard rock swagger, and laid back riffage, heavy but also sort of stone-y. The first real WTF moment comes from Hitting Birth, who we were of course familiar with, but who we never considered grunge, and they're not grunge here either, more sort of early lo-fi industrial, to be fair it is SORT of grungy, but the metallic rhythms, the strange percussion, there's even some turntable scratching, makes it an interesting sonic reference point for the movement, and we do have to say, it's the coolest Hitting Birth song we've heard.
Other favorites include Pod, the pre-Mudhoney, pre-Tad outfit Bundle Of Hiss, the very Skin Yard sounding Helltrout, who were considered one of the heavier bands in Seattle at the time (late eighties to mid nineties), then there's the fuzzy jangle pop of Chemistry Set, that seems to owe more to R.E.M. than anything, and My Name, who are almost like funk-grunge (and we mean that as a compliment), the all female grunge-chug of Shug, and the noisy girl-grunt post punk of Calamity Jane, and so much more. Anyone into grunge will dig this like crazy, and a bunch of these bands have full lengths, well worth tracking down, and of course, it's Soul Jazz, so there's a huge book, full of extensive liner notes, with rare photos, and a blurb on each band, as well as some appendices, like a list of various band members still active today and what bands they play in now, as well as a six degrees of Nirvana chart, that connects each band on the comp to the godfathers of grunge, in some cases in just one move, with a handful of band members having actually played in the group, and at least one having had the group play their birthday party!
Available as a double cd, or a fairly pricey 4 lp set, sold in two separate 2lp volumes.
LISTED THE DOUBLE CD EDITION OF THIS COMP LAST WEEK, ALSO NOW HERE'S THE VINYL VERSION, IN TWO PARTS...
Obviously, we listen to all sorts of music here, and maybe also obviously, a lot of it is way outside the mainstream, whether it's psychedelic space rock, cinematic avant doom, dirgedronedrift, but when we're totally honest with ourselves (some of us at least, sure you can guess who), there are two genres that we always go back to. The stuff we listen to when we're NOT writing reviews, for pure pleasure, on roadtrips, on iPods, the soundtrack to many a journey, and those two genres would be eighties metal, and grunge. And for sure it has to do with our ages, and when we grew up, and what we grew up listening to, but grunge was HUGE for some of us. We subscribed to the Sub Pop singles club, we hunted down obscure 7"s on C/Z, and other smaller labels, we of course dug the usual suspects, Tad, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Green River and all the rest, but we were (and are) pretty obsessed, digging way deeper, and trust us, we could go on and on about our favorite super obscure (and sort of obscure) grunge outfits: Swallow, Cat Butt, Sprinkler, Thirty Ought Six, Malfunkshun, Love Battery, The Fluid, Green Magnet School, Gruntruck, Best Kissers In The World, Truly, Blood Circus, and yet not a single one of them are found here, nope, the folks at Soul Jazz dig REALLY DEEP, so much so, that even the grunge nerds around aQ only recognized EIGHT of the bands included on this comp, so we were super psyched to get schooled on one of our favorite genres. And to be fair, not all of this is strictly grunge, some of the stuff here is more straight up punk rock, some is pretty experimental, but some is seriously and fantastically grungy. Things start off with a band we knew and loved already, Starfish, whose girl grunge dabbled heavily in shoegaze, sounding to us at least, like a grunge version of Team Dresch, which is most definitely a good thing. Vampire Lezbos are pretty grungy too, and before now totally unknown to us, but all swagger, snarly riffage, some hard rock shreddery, that is until the song explodes into full on punk rock bash and howl, the rest of the song seesawing back and forth between the two. Nubbin are pretty great too, definitely grungy, a little bit jangly and Nirvana-esque, their song "Windyyy" borrowing the opening riff from a much more famous sing with the same (sort of) title. Saucer, who we had never heard before, are total grunge, all sort of hard rock swagger, and laid back riffage, heavy but also sort of stone-y. The first real WTF moment comes from Hitting Birth, who we were of course familiar with, but who we never considered grunge, and they're not grunge here either, more sort of early lo-fi industrial, to be fair it is SORT of grungy, but the metallic rhythms, the strange percussion, there's even some turntable scratching, makes it an interesting sonic reference point for the movement, and we do have to say, it's the coolest Hitting Birth song we've heard.
Other favorites include Pod, the pre-Mudhoney, pre-Tad outfit Bundle Of Hiss, the very Skin Yard sounding Helltrout, who were considered one of the heavier bands in Seattle at the time (late eighties to mid nineties), then there's the fuzzy jangle pop of Chemistry Set, that seems to owe more to R.E.M. than anything, and My Name, who are almost like funk-grunge (and we mean that as a compliment), the all female grunge-chug of Shug, and the noisy girl-grunt post punk of Calamity Jane, and so much more. Anyone into grunge will dig this like crazy, and a bunch of these bands have full lengths, well worth tracking down, and of course, it's Soul Jazz, so there's a huge book, full of extensive liner notes, with rare photos, and a blurb on each band, as well as some appendices, like a list of various band members still active today and what bands they play in now, as well as a six degrees of Nirvana chart, that connects each band on the comp to the godfathers of grunge, in some cases in just one move, with a handful of band members having actually played in the group, and at least one having had the group play their birthday party!
Available as a double cd, or a fairly pricey 4 lp set, sold in two separate 2lp volumes.
There are a handful of compilations, so well thought out, so well put together, with just the perfect artists and the best songs, that function like an impossibly perfect record. If you could somehow imagine that said compilation was in fact, a record by some band it would be absolutely the greatest record ever. Never has that been more true than in the case of a couple of black metal comps from back in the nineties. One is the amazing Darkthrone tribute, Darkthrone Holy Darkthrone, an absolutely stellar comp featuring Satyricon, Enslaved, Marduk, Thorns, Emperor, Dodheimsgard, Gorgoroth. So it should come as no surprise that another 'perfect record' comp is this one right here, Nordic Metal: A Tribute To Euronymous. While we're still waiting for that Darkthrone comp to be reissued, it's no small consolation that this one has been resurrected, to demonstrate once again, that no matter how amazing bands are now and how far black metal has come, it really was never better than in 1995.
A tribute to Euronymous, the fallen leader of Mayhem, who was murdered by Count Grishnack aka Burzum, beginning the non-musical 'Lords Of Chaos' saga of Norwegian black metal that would become tabloid fodder for the next decade, this compilation was actually already in the works as a showcase for the Scandinavian bands of the time, but Euronymous ended up dying before he could release it on his own label Deathlike Silence. So it was completed by his allies at Necropolis Records (RIP) as a tribute to their fallen 'leader'.
Like that Darkthrone comp, a look at the bands should be enough to tell you that this is something special: Abruptum, Mayhem, Dissection, Emperor, Mysticum, Marduk, Thorns, Opthalamia, Enslaved, Mortiis and Arcturus. Basically every band that mattered, the bands that defined Nordic black metal. Plus these aren't just any tracks, these are almost all some of these bands' best tracks.
Abruptum's "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet" is still a tweaked and damaged BM classic, completely unhinged, with angelic female vocals, warbly pitch shifts, blackened blasts, and those vocals... the perfect way to start things off. Next up "The Freezing Moon" by Euronymous and Mayhem, frosty and grim, but melodic and catchy and an all time classic. The reverb drenched blasts sandwiched between gorgeously melancholy melodies. And then Disssection's "Where Dead Angels Lie", maybe one of the greatest black metal songs of all time, with a killer fucking hook and some of the most amazing guitar playing EVER. And it just goes on from there, most serious black metal fans will most likely have all of these tracks, but it's like the ultimate BM primer. If they taught a class in black metal, this would absolutely be essential listening. (And it was indeed studied intently by those of us who were working here at Aquarius back during our big black metal discovery phase in the mid-nineties, we have fond memories of this album!).
Other highlights include Thorns' "Aerie Descends", a lurching slow motion blackened trudge, with creepy circusy keyboards and weird whispered vocals, a very cabaret vibe mixed in with seriously grim blackness. Then there's a killer rehearsal version of Emperor's "Moon Over Kata-Shehr" which proves it wasn't the production or the recordings that made them so good, it's the songs. Epic and complex and fucking fantastic. There's some classic Enslaved, and even back then at their grimmest and most buzzy, they still demonstrated all sorts of prog tendencies.
Pretty much every track on here is essential. Even if you have most of these, it's like the ultimate classic black metal mixtape, and like we mentioned before, if you've been hesitant to explore black metal, this is probably the best possible place to start!
This 3cd boxset is a fantastical document of parapsychological research throughout the 20th Century, with recordings of purported demonic possession, glossolalia, precognition, poltergeists, and the already well documented Electric Voice Phenomenon. The latter had been the subject of research by noted parapsychologists Raymond Cass and Freidrich Jurgensen, whose work was collected on several cds released on the Touch label, one of which was the AQ perennial favorite The Ghost Orchid. The first disc of this set focuses on voices spoken through a person, who may not be conscious of the spirits controlling their words. There are several examples of demon possessed children, and a particularly creepy recording of a spirit medium who has contacted those who died in a plane crash and weeping through the medium to "move on." The second disc concentrates on Xenoglossy (the articulation of a language not known to the speaker) and Glossolalia (also known as 'speaking in tongues'), with examples of an English girl who speaks in an arcane form of Egyptian. There's also a few examples of Aleister Crowley famously channeling the Enochian language which the 16th Century mystic John Dee had also been known to conjure up. The third disc documents the sounds left behind by the spirits themselves, including paranormal music (that which has been transcribed from a deceased composer into the hands of a receptive living musician), the rappings of poltergeists within the walls, and the aforementioned EVP. A good deal of these recordings suffer from poor recording qualities that exacerbate the mystery of these spirit communications. From a strictly aesthetic point of view, we have long extolled the virtues of scratchy 78s, tape hiss, and surface noise as a patina of remarkable beauty and sublime power. This rusted sound makes things seems haunted to begin with, and then add the recordings of demons, ghosts, and other spirits, and we've got one thoroughly creepy and amazing document.
Includes extensive liner notes in both German and English.
Another amazing archival release from the seemingly infallible Honest Jon's, the fourth in their series of compilations collecting early 78s held in the EMI archives.
Open Strings, is as the title suggests, a collection of songs by virtuoso stringed instrument players, hailing from Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey, all recorded in the 1920s, an incredible selection of tracks, almost entirely unheard since they were first released. And wow. Every single track here is fantastic. Folks who have been obsessing over the Sublime Frequencies series best start paying attention to Honest Jon's as well, absolutely riveting, emotional, idiosyncratic, passionate, from wild musical flights of fancy, flurries of notes, tangled melodies, to warm whirring droning ragas, to playful folky lullabies, to wild, almost psychedelic workouts, to frenzied freakouts, to dark contemplative ballads, all warm and crackly and gorgeously aged, but at the same time absolutely timeless, this is some seriously magical music, lost treasures for sure.
And although it's really unnecessary, considering how sublime the first disc is on its own, the bonus material, featuring contemporary raga / drone string players responding to the originals (without which there music would not exist, or if it did, it would be in an extremely different form) is also pretty fantastic. And no doubt, folks with very little interest in Middle Eastern string music from the 20s will probably pick this up anyway for the folks doing modern versions of said music, just check out the lineup: SIR RICHARD BISHOP, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, STEFFEN BASHO-JUGHANS, MICHAEL FLOWER, CHARLIE PARR, BRUCE LICHER, PAUL METZGER, RICK TOMLINSON, MV & EE AND MICAH BLUE SMALLDONE. Not bad. And their interpretations/versions are quite varied and all quite cool, from dark hushed whispers, to effects laden psychedelic blowouts to longform raga buzz to delicate folky flutter. Hopefully folks who pick this up for the modern stuff, will dig deeper and discover a whole new world of sound.
The cd comes in a gorgeous printed gatefold jacket, with thick printed inner sleeves, and the vinyl, WOW. Super extravagant printed box, 4 lps in printed inner sleeves, heavy and deluxe and thus, a bit expensive, but for vinyl obsessives, probably well worth it.
FINALLY!!! Hard to believe this thing is actually done considering how long and how seemingly cursed this project has been. Started almost 5 years ago to be released on AQ staffer Jim's now defunct Petrol label, then bequeathed 3 years ago to AQ staffer Andee to release on his tUMULt label where the lineup and concept went through many changes (possibly because what was begun as an homage to a song Jim really liked, had become a deconstruction of a song Andee really hates) and then an endless procession of waits, mastering, pressing, re-recording, battles with other labels over 'rights', as well as 4 different cover concepts that all had to be scrapped because they were seemingly too difficult for any printers to confidently take on. -sigh-
So here we are. Was it worth the wait? Obviously we think so. Look at the lineup, a veritable who's who of AQ favorites: Acid Mothers Temple, Circle, Hrvatski, James Plotkin, Kit Clayton, Loren Chasse, Troum, the Tape-beatles, Mieskuoro Huutajaat, Fennesz, and Stilluppsteypa. And that's just the cream. Lots of tracks were left off, according to Andee in order to avoid the spotty/uneven flow of most compilation/tribute/cover records. He even opted to leave off the Melt Banana track, which was a tough, but important choice, since the spazzy grind of their track disrupted the droning meditative, hypnotic flow of what is now less just a compilation of random tracks, more an epic and gorgeous hour of dreamy droney creepy blackness.
So what does it sound like? Well, while it does flow, and could perhaps pass itself off as a record by a single (quite eclectic) group, each track offers something unique, while still culling the sinister spirit and nihilistic 'rock' from the original (the inspiration for this comp). Finnish shouting choir Mieskuoro Huutajaat start things off with a brief, and shouted, acapaella version, in Finnish, and delivered with gusto! James Plotkin's Joy Of Disease turns it into a burbling, stuttering, electronic soundscape with hiccupping beats and backwards vocals. Somewhere between Boards Of Canada and Coil. Stilluppsteyppa took back their original track, a wash of glitchy yet melodic, musique concrete, and re-recorded/re-mixed it, removing most of the melody and adding even more space, resulting in a dark abyss of gorgeously perplexing minimalism. The Kit Clayton track is an ultra catchy, beat heavy SF glitch core workout, that obliterates the original melody but manages to keep the minor key tension and dark ambience. Ultra prolific Japanese space rockers Acid Mothers Temple turn the original into a wild pagan ritual, starting out with several minutes of Tsuyama's throaty chants, skipping nervously around that oh-so-familiar melody before the band stumbles in to join him for the remaining 10 minutes, with splattery percussion, freaked out reverb/retard guitar and squealing feedback. Hrvatski (aka Keith Whitman) claims that this Painted Black contribution is his favorite track that he's ever recorded and it's easy to see why: he actually sings, plays guitar, and weaves a thick wash of warm, langorous tones before it all crumbles beneath a speaker shredding cascade of sputtering drill and bass. Iowa's masters of plunderphonia, the Tape-Beatles use found sounds and actual lawsuit-baiting chunks of the original to create a tense and unnerving, noirish dreamscape, with disebodied screams, curious snippets of overheard conversations, and the sliced and diced original which all end up adding to the creepy vibe. German drone-sters Troum incorporate 'that' melody into a totally overpowering and molasses-thick drone, assembled from multiple tracks of guitar and accordion. The Fennesz track was previously released on an ep via Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label, and to us seems like Fennesz at his very best. Melodies and textures are spit out, stuttering and hiccupping from the cold, digital craw of the laptop, but somehow come out all warm and thick and coil around you like stuffed snakes and deliciously fragrant pipesmoke. Amazing. AQ faves Circle, do what they do best, taking the skeletal remains of the original, holding on to the barebones melody, and constructing a motorik, unwavering rhythm, that sounds like Tony Conrad and Faust's Outside The Dream Syndicate with just a little more melody and umph. And the record is finished off perfectly, spiralling slowly into 'black'ness, by AQ pal Loren Chasse (who as you probably already know is a pillar of the Jewelled Antler Collective, as well as a member of Thuja, the Blithe Suns, etc). He uses snippets of the original, slowed down hundreds of times until it is a lugubrious almost-melody, and contact mic-ed strobe lights to create a static-y, humming, nighttime dronescape, like a otherworldy forest, complete with clattery insect buzz and moaning winds in the ancient trees. An almost perfect compilation and an amazing gathering of some of our favorite artists doing some of their best work. Essential.
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The latest from Sublime Frequencies comes in the form of this killer collection of Pakistani instrumentals, recorded between 1966 and 1976, the decade of music reflected by the decade spent putting this collection together, not just gathering the songs, but actually contacting all the various musicians, but the results speak for themselves, a wild assemblage of groovy, fuzzy garage and beat and surf music, all instrumental of course, with buzzing sitars, wheezing organs, distorted electric guitars, tangled melodies, all buzzy and psychedelic and so very good!
The history of the music, as always, is as interesting as the music itself. Pop music was banned for the most part, but in 1966 a nationwide movement was begun to overthrow the dictatorship, which did eventually happen, resulting in a surge in popularity of bands playing American style music, and of course along with the music came drugs and long hair and parties, and a huge flow of hippies from all over the world. Sadly most of those bands never recorded, as the industry was geared more toward film music, and the bands that did record, typically did traditionals or version of popular songs from films.
This mini musical revolution ended in 1977 when the Socialist party was overthrown, and the military chief took over, establishing a pure Islamic state governed by Sharia law, which meant alcohol and nightclubs were banned, films and TV were heavily censored, which resulted in most of the artists leaving Pakistan for Europe or the US.
But while it was going on, some amazing music was being made, as evidenced by these tracks, wild and funky and fuzzy and sweaty and groovy, playful percussion wrapped around garagey fuzz guitar, surfy riffs, spidery melodies, Ventures-y reverb, a definite Joe Meek vibe to lots of these songs, dreamily lo-fi, lots of organs and old synths, unfurling frantic flurries of notes, plenty of sitar buzz shimmering throughout, and the fact that these tracks are instrumental, definitely makes them way more accessible to the less adventurous listeners out there. We used to marvel at the fact that we sold so many copies of Ethiopiques volume 4, but realized that perhaps it was because it was instrumental too. Needless to say, the music here, even sans vocals, is plenty wild and wonderful enough to have even the most seasoned of world music explorers in utter bliss.
SUPER LIMITED as always, gorgeously packaged in a super heavy full color gatefold sleeve, with extensive liner notes, and lots of photos.
Sometimes it seems there's so much old music to be rediscovered, what's the point in even making more? Well, maybe so folks 100 years from now can put out an amazing archival boxset of black metal, or doom, or freak folk. But we digress.
Murder ballads, true life tales of sorrow and sadness, tragedy and death, loss and misery, set to music, songs designed to help mourn, to pass on tales of lives lived and lost, a way to celebrate life, and fight off our fear of death.
For over a hundred years, these songs have existed, probably longer, the music and lyrics like tabloid newspapers, sensationalistic, bold and explicit, never designed to be popular, or mainstream, instead they existed for the people, who were hungry to hear about disaster and mayhem, just like slowing down to look at a car wreck, these songs would hold the listeners in thrall, not only designed to tell a tale, but maybe teach a lesson as well.
This collection is massive, gorgeously presented, extensively researched, and beyond all that, just an amazing collection of fantastic songs, most culled from old 78's, dusty and scratchy, hissy, pops and crackle, adding an appropriately old timey patina, country, rhythm and blues, the subject matter appropriately dark, and sinister, as if those musics weren't already primarily focused on death and dying, broken hearts and murdered sweethearts.
The sounds range from campfire country to stripped down blues, to bouncy rhythm and blues, to mournful ballads, to twangy honky tonk and every variation in between. Men, women, young, and old, all recorded between 1913 and 1938, spinning their tales, around the campfire, behind a bottle of whiskey, on a street corner, anyway there were folks in need of a good, and tragic story.
The packaging is amazing, a clothbound hardcover book the cds in little pockets on the inside of both the front and back covers, a huge book, a introduction by Tom Waits, a brief history of the genre, and then super in depth notes on each artist and each track, tons of photos, and not just the performers, but the various accidents, wrecks, mishaps and tragedies that inspired these songs (not least among them, the sinking of the Titanic!).
On first look, and even first listen, Plantation Gold will probably seem quite familiar to a lot of folks, the faded cover image, the list of performers beneath the album title in big gold letters, inside, lots of twanging guitars, foot stompin' rhythms, slippery lap steel, booming stentorian male crooners, rich dulcet female vocalists, tales of love and loss, heartbreak and tragedy, all the sort of stuff you would expect from country music in the sixties and seventies. But look, or listen, even a tiny bit closer, and Plantation Gold reveals itself as just about the furthest thing from traditional country you can imagine.
The Plantation label (later SSS) was the brainchild of a man named Shelby Singleton, who over close to a decade, gathered up some of the most idiosyncratic, unique, and plain crazy country music artists EVER. The closest to gold that Shelby and Plantation got, and probably the only name / song here that will be truly familiar, is the country classic "Harper Valley P.T.A." written by Tom T. Hall and performed by Ms. Jeannie C. Riley, which was in fact a bona fide hit record, the single went on to sell hundreds of thousands, the album millions, and even convinced Singleton to put together a singing group actually called the Harper Valley P.T.A. to cash in on the hype, as well as inspiring a handful of homages, the weirdest one included here, more on that shortly. The rest of the tracks on these two discs range from full on over the top whatthefuck, to slightly skewed, sometimes incorporating strange sound effects, bizarre instrumentation, but sometimes playing it straight, letting the song subject and the lyrics take what on the surface sounds like regular old country music, turning it into something way more freaked out and gleefully goofy (and on occasion borderline offensive to today's more PC sensiblities).
Dee Mullins' "I Am The Grass" seems pretty straight ahead, minus the lyrics about Bigfoot and the freaky metallic effects laden hissy psychedelic refrain in the chorus. Neil Ray's "Big Fanny" is one of those Johnny Cash style talking country songs, the subject of the song a metaphorical 300 pound ugly woman in Vietnam. Weird. "Sold To The Highest Bidder" by Johnny Moore And Col. Tex Herring, is the story of all the happy memories and the family home being sold at auction, featuring an actual auctioneer reeling off the list of everything that must go. Becki Bluefield offers up the surprisingly saucy "Somebody's Gonna Plow Your Field". And then there's "Happy Valley C.I.A.", the aforementioned problematic version of Plantation's big hit, here laced with groovy sixties sitar, the vocals delivered in a very politically incorrect faux Chinese accent.
Johnny Credit offers up his theme song, featuring the clever refrain "I ain't never had no cash", and sounding, as you might guess, just like the Man In Black himself. Best country song title award would have to go to "I'm The Mail She's Waiting For" a innuendo laced love song by Chuck Wood. Then there's The Harper Valley P.T.A.'s "I Dig Dangling Participles", a clever bit of country wordplay. The other star attraction here is Tokyo Matsu, who sounds like an Asian Patsy Cline, all woozy reverb soaked twang, barrelhouse piano, slippery slide guitar, and Matsu's thickly accented croon.
And that's barely getting into the FIRST disc. There's LOTS more on disc one, and 30 MORE weird and wonderful twangy jams on disc two. Every song is a gem, whether it's laugh out loud funny, clever or subtly racy, or heartfelt and dramatic. We could pretty much go track by track, "Four On The Floor (And A Fifth Under The Seat)" is a dark brooding morality play sung by an actual police trooper, "Groovy Grubworm" is a countrified funky hoedown by Harlow Wilcox & The Oakies, and then there's Rod Hart's "C.B. Savage", the tale of a gay trucker, and his suggestive transmissions, another politically incorrect gem, the kind of song that makes you laugh, but also makes you a bit uncomfortable, and is most definitely the sort of song no one could get away with anymore.
Every time we play this in the store, people stop what they're doing to listen, to laugh, most of the time they come up to see what the heck it is we're listening to, and more often than not, leave with their own copy. The booklet is massive, with a history of Singleton, Plantation and SSS, and a fairly in depth description of each artist and all the songs, as well as tons of photos and reproductions of some of the jackets and record labels.
Some seriously twisted outsider country genius, WAY recommended, even if you're not necessarily that into country music, and all you folks into 'incredibly strange music' kind of stuff and those song-poem compilations we love so much, should definitely check this out!
Wow, things were awesome in the seventies. Sure, there was Watergate and an oil crisis and Vietnam...but there were also high school bands rocking out versions of Hendrix and Led Zeppelin! You loved the Langley Schools Music Project, right?
Maybe you also dug the (now out of print) "Schoolhouse Funk" disc of high school marching bands doing funk covers. Here's the next must-have in this burgeoning 'genre', a collection of recordings of high school bands circa 1970-1976 doing their favorite rock hits of the day. From Foghat's "Free Ride" to Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" to B.O.C.'s "Godzilla" this is pretty darn killer, a way to enjoy these 'oldies' without turning on classic rock radio -- the originals can't compare anyway. Check out the drum solo in "Moby Dick", or the way the kid's voice changes during "Purple Haze" (heck, he's probably 13 years old!). You'll hear from the Santa Monica Unified School District Music Dept., the Anaheim High School Original Rock and Popsannay, the Fairview High School "Excalibur" and Jazz Ensemble, the Baldwin Harbor Junior High Jazz/Rock Ensemble, among others. Was it square to be in band back then? 'Cause these kids sound pretty hip to us today.
From crazy fuzz psych guitar leads that seem way beyond their years to sunny, Fifth Dimension style vocal choruses, these tracks are full of extra-curricular excellence. We were especially surprised and impressed by the Roswell New Mexico Goddard High School Stage Band's version of "Evil Woman" -- no, not the E.L.O. song, or even the one by Spooky Tooth, but the much more obscure composition by '60s garage band Crow that Black Sabbath covered on the UK version of their debut album! Cool, and weird.
I was kind of surprised by the lukewarm reception this received from some of the AQ staffers, 'cause as far as I'm concerned this collection is as good if not better than the Gas titles we raved about in past lists as well as the last two Pop Ambient compilations. From gorgeous, shimmery, slowly shifting dreamscapes of heavily reverbed guitars and processed electronics, to warm fuzzy drones with skittery hiccupping beats to chiming ethereal washes of hummmmm and whhiiiiiiiirrrrr. So gorgeous. This has been my late night listening for the last week. Fans of Boards Of Canada, Gas, Troum, and the like will be in heaven.
Another installment in the absolutely flawless Pop Ambient series. We casually mentioned in our review of the 2004 Pop Ambient comp that we weren't all that keen on techno. A few folks took it a bit too personally so this here review should hopefully smooth some ruffled feathers. It's true, we never liked the mainstream techno that much. It was the mutant strains that really hit the spot for us. But that's the case with pop music as well. And metal. And indie rock. And hell, music in general. That's sort of the point of this list and this store. It's the ferreting out of weird and wonderful subsets of genres that may not initially appeal to us. Finding that one techno record that the black metal folks might dig, or finding that one grindcore records that even indie rockers can't resist. So it is with the Pop Ambient. Gone are most of the beats, and ALL of the four on the floor throb, and most of the techno trappings, and left in their place are a ghostly glimmers, a shimmering trace of a pop song, the musical equivalent of catching something in the corner of your eye. Like condensation, little beads of melody slowly slip earthward, while indistinct melodies drift past like the last vestiges of early morning fog. Subtle and sleepy, dreamy and drowsy, gleaming and glistening, completely mesmerizingly hypnotic. The perfect sounds for warm fires, rainy days, late nights, full moons, thick fogs, lonely evenings, not so lonely evenings, good books, deep sleeps, a lazy afternoons and for drifting into nothingness. Tracks from the Orb, Gas, Ulf Lohmann, Thomas Fehlmann, Klimek, Andrew Thomas, Pass Into Silence, Triola, Popnoname, DJ Koze, and Peter Grummich. The LP is a few tracks shorter than the cd.
Another year, another collection of gauzy, washed out atmospheric shimmer from Kompakt. The latest in their ongoing series chronicling the more ambient (and poppy?) side of techno, but unlike past installments, there has been a serious shift this time around. Not only are there a bunch of new artists, but the sound itself has definitely been transformed. Before, Pop Ambient seemed to be more about processed electronics and bleary eared synthscapes, like techno with the beats stripped away, but this time around, while those electronic and synth elements haven't been abandoned completely, the sound seems much more organic, more Kranky than Kompakt, more like a sound unto itself. We use Pop Ambient to describe much of our favorite drone music, hazy, shimmery, gauzy, dreamy, be it Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker, Jesu and the like, Pop Ambient, for us at least, has become a sort of analog to shoegaze, a drifting sound blurred and smeared and indistinct, while somehow remaining melodic and mesmerizing. Its relation to techno tenuous, if entirely nonexistent at this point, having taken off a life, and a sound of its very own.
Every Pop Ambient comp has been a huge hit around here, so much so that we just naturally assumed that we had probably made all of them Records Of The Week in the past, but upon checking, we realized only one had made ROTW. Well, now TWO.
2009's Pop Ambient focuses much more on real instruments, horns, guitars, pianos, all woven into the already familiar landscape of soft synths and barely there rhythmic pulses, a swirling slow moving ambience, that flits from haunting chamber music, to looped post rock, to deep drone.
The first thing you might notice, is some very aQ artists amidst the usual suspects, sure there's Klimek, Andrew Thomas, Burger / Voigt, but then also Tim Hecker and The Fun Years, as if they had asked for our 2 cents in putting together this year's comp. And sonically, we couldn't have done better ourselves. Much darker, and more mysterious than past installments, surprisingly varied, but it works beautifully as an album, not just a collection.
Warped orchestral fanfares are slowed down and blurred beautifully, with a subtle rhythmic undercurrent, warm woozy horns blurred into sun dappled streaks, shimmery dramatic strings wind around plaintive piano, gorgeous and soundtracky, moody free jazz records get spun at 16 rpm, the piano plucking out a funereal dirge, flutes woven into wavering sheets of sound, record crackle everywhere, bits of electronic shimmer get stretched out into gauzy looped soundscapes, simple repetitive guitar figures lope dreamily over long stretches of harmonized horns, epic sweeping swells of dramatic buzz ebb and flow over buried melodies, distorted guitars unwind amidst swirling clouds of gritty textured ambience, skittering Oval-like loopscapes stutter and glitch soft focus tendrils of electronic whir, spidery guitars tangle with looped samples, locking into impossibly dreamy drifts of hypnotic repetition.
It's a breathtaking collection of sonic wonder, of sounds we truly consider to be Pop Ambience, haunting and otherworldly, subtly dark, sometimes ominous, always gorgeous, and of course totally recommended. And while this is a no brainer for the Pop Ambient obsessed, the minimal techno folks, and the Kompakt fanatics, this record might prove to be a new favorite for anyone into Stars Of The Lid, Pan American, Labradford, Eluvium, Windy And Carl and other purveyors of deep drone and nocturnal drift.
Finally, the latest installment of pop ambience is here, a record we look forward to all year. Very few series, whether they be compilations, TV shows, movies, whatever, can make it to 10 installments, at least not without the quality suffering big time, but the Pop Ambient series continues to be amazing. And untouchable. We'd say that every one is better than the last, but that wouldn't be entirely true, since every single one has been equally fantastic. The 2009 installment introduced some new blood, some non Kompakt folks dabbling in their own ambient pop, like Tim Hecker and The Fun Years, along with the usual suspects. But for 2010, Kompakt decided to keep it in the family, lots of familiar names: The Orb, Mikkel Metal, Thomas Fehlmann, Dettinger, Andrew Thomas, Wolfgang Voigt, DJ Koze, but with a couple tracks from Brock Van Wey, whose Echospace imprint owes no small debt to Kompakt, and one from new to us Marsen Jules, with maybe the best song on the disc.
Jules' "The Sound Of One Lip Kissing" starts things off with surprisingly dark and ominous take on the Pop Ambient sound, a gorgeously grim, lopped slow motion creep, all deep tones, lots of space, and a spare skeletal rhythm, all murky and warm and washed out, the various tones looped and stuttered into blurred sonic ripples, cinematic and darkly epic, we find ourselves playing that one track over and over and over.
The two Brock Van Wey tracks take the post Chain Reaction minimal space dub sound of Echospace, and gives it a shimmery, sun dappled pop ambient overhaul, bits of guitar, and fragmented voices, wreathed in delay, and looped into ethereal dreamscapes, Van Wey's 17 minute closer "Will you Know Where to Find Me" begins as a muted blurry low end drift, but soon explodes into a glorious prismatic shoegaze blowout, that sounds a bit like a drumless M83, nearly static, a pulsing cloud of bleary eyed female vox and processed buzz, so epic and gorgeous.
In between lurks plenty of soft focus beauty, from glistening, echo drenched slowcore dream pop, to swirling seas of hiss and crackle and submerged melody, to stuttery high end drones, to blurred gauzy piano driven abstract ambient ballads, to cinematic sting laden drifts, to super intense and emotional looped dronescapes, to hushed outer space minimal psychedelia, to blissed out slow motion mesmer. Another utterly gorgeous and transcendently divine ambient pop music, which will just have to hold us over until 2011...
For vinyl folks, fear not, the lp version includes the cd as well...
A new Pop Ambient collection is always exciting news around here, perhaps our favorite single ongoing series of electronic music compilations EVER. And goddamn if we don't reference the Pop Ambient sound in about half our reviews. But it's inevitable really, after all the sound we've come to know as Pop Ambient is just so gorgeous and glorious, washed out and hazy and gauzey and dreamlike. It's techno without the beats, it's new age without the schmaltz, it's dark deep listening, but it's also ethereal and ephemeral and the sort of sound that ends up being the soundtrack to so much of our lives, so soothing and mesmerizing and hypnotic, dreamlike sounds that entrance, and lull and transport us to some other place, thus, a new batch of Pop Ambient jams is some soothing sonic balm for our weary musical souls...
The biggest surprise this time around might be opening with a track by ANBB, the collaborative duo of Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld of Einsturzende Neubaten, whose music, even here, is barely Pop Ambient, the sound is muted and buzzy, electronic and abstract, a slow building drone, that's more ominous than dreamy, very soundtracky and dramatic, with deep electronic pulses, and then right near the end, vocals come in, and the song is transformed into some strange bit of haunting electro cabaret. But that's about as weird as it gets, the rest of the record slips back into the swirling shimmering electronic dreamscapes we've come to love, pianos unleash flurries of notes that drift beneath soft swells of muted buzz and skittery barely there rhythms, warm whirring chordal streaks are layered and stretched out into beautiful sun dappled blurscapes, full on daydreamy fuzz pop like a druggier driftier M83 meanders and drifts like some after school special playing in slow motion, the standout track might be "30.6.1881", by Crato, who we'd never heard before, whose take on Pop Ambience is on the dark side, mixing a little heroin house underwater pulse to the otherwise whirring ethereal blur, fantastically warped and blurred and in places surprisingly noisy. But other than that and the opener, the rest of the record finds the Pop Ambient stable at their most blissed out, their most woozy and soft focus, featuring some of the usual culprits: Thomas Fehlmann, Jurgen Paape, Mikkel Metal, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, as well as some fresh faces: Bhutan Tiger Rescue, Crato, Bvdub, Barnt and more.
As always, absolutely, utterly and wholeheartedly recommended, total bliss out dreaminess for sure, and if you're just discovering the world of Pop Ambience, prepare to become totally obsessed, and with a desire to track down the first TEN volumes as well...
It's that time again, Kompakt's yearly installment in their Pop Ambient series, a release we ALWAYS look forward to and one that typically immediately becomes out new favorite sleeping / chillout / late night listen, and this one looks to be no different. In that respect at least. One way it IS different this time around is the opening track. More on that in a second. For folks new to Pop Ambience, it's basically like minimal electronica with the beats stripped way, leaving just lush expanses of whoosh and shimmer, blurred melodies and abstract ambience. It's also become a sort of go to descriptor for that sound we love so much, the sort of hazy, gauzy, washed out soundscaping of folks like Tim Hecker and the Caretaker and the like, with these comps offering up new tracks by old faves, and every time at least one or two new discoveries. The big discovery this time around for us, and the one responsible for the above mentioned opening track, goes by the name of Mohn, and delivers what might be the darkest, heaviest Pop Ambient track yet, a thick hazy landscape of blurred, crumbling greys and blacks, lots of space, abstractly rhythmic, almost doomy, dense gristly swells, that remain warmly melodic, but still hauntingly ominous. It's a gorgeous cinematic creep, super dynamic, and darkly moody, growing more spare and skeletal near the end, we've been listening to just this track over and over, and while it's the first we've really heard from Mohn, we're definitely dying to hear more.
The comp returns to more familiar ground with some more familiar names after that, Superpitcher, Wolfgang Voigt, Triola, Marsen Jules, Simon Scott, and while the rest of the tracks here are much prettier, and way less dark, and more traditionally pop ambient, they still retain a bit of that ominous undercurrent, usually in the form of more melancholic melodies, with lush shimmers drifting amidst sonic shadows, repeated motifs adding just a teeny bit of cinematic tension. Superpitcher's lush and lovely "Jackson" might be one of the most gorgeous things we've heard from him, all processed voices and looped pianos, repetitive and cyclical and totally mesmerizing. Another new name Morek offers up a bit of dark and gristly buzz, wreathed of course in lustrous swirls of haze and shimmer, while Triola weaves a dreamlike expanse of swoonsome drift, and almost post rock sounding brood. Voigt's track here sounds like a lost soundtrack for some acid drenched Tim Burton film, like the tape is warping and undulating before your very ears, transforming beauty into something a bit darker and shadowy, while Jules adds what might be the only actual beats here, but in the form of reverbed and blurred skitters, the whole thing super dense, dubbed out and dreamy. Simon Scott weaves a sprawling bit of string laden soundtracky drift, evoking images of rainswept streets and dark mysterious cities, until the new-to-us Loops Of Your Heart finishes things off with a wistful bit of gauzy guitarscaping, all sweetly tangled melodies, and subtly processed atmospheres, everything wreathed in a streaks of sonic gristle and some soft focus cosmic swirl. So lovely.
Looking at the cover of this comp, what catches our eye? Well, of course the words PSYCH and FUNK in big electric pink letters. Pretty much had us right there, we're easy like that. But then the fine print on the sticker on the front adds an extra tingle of excitement: "None of these tracks have ever been reissued"! So what we have here is a survey course on some obscure shit, an international collection of freaky, fuzzy, funky jams from the golden years, circa 1968-1975 or so, mostly from groups we'd never heard of before. The ones did know were a good sign, being super groovy and decidedly eccentric. (Though we do have to point out that at least a few of the cuts here actually have been reissued before, that's how we knew 'em!). Here's the lineup: Hunsu Ozkartal Orkestrasi (Turkey), Kukumbas (Nigeria), Mulatu Astatke feat. Belaynesh Wubante and Assegedetch Asfaw (Ethiopia), Kim Sun (South Korea), Petalouda (Greece), Mehr Pooya (Iran), Staff Carpenborg and The Electric Corona (West Germany), The Group (Italy), Armando Sciascia (Italy), Wadih Essafi (Lebanon), Omar Khorshid (Egypt), Metin H. Alatli (Turkey), George Garanian with The Melodiya Jazz Ensemble (Russia), and Eskaton (France). 14 tracks in all, all of 'em b to the a to the d to the ass. Get ready for plenty of percolating percussion, infectious bass lines, analog synth buzz, chicken scratch guitar, greasy organ, drugged out FX, and in many cases Middle Eastern or African or other 'exotic' ethnic elements as appropriate to their nation of origin. Highlights are almost impossible to pick. All the African stuff is killer (Ethiopiques fans take note), so are the Turkish tracks (you want weird? check out how the Metin H. Alatli cut somehow segues from Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith music to stoned cocktail bellydance improv!!), so is everything else. We dig how eerieness and jazziness are combined on "The Feed-back" by The Group (aka Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, featuring Ennio Morricone), and also Armando Sciascia's suspenseful "Circuito Chiuso" is pretty eerie too. Both are from Italy, where it seems that it's hard NOT to sound like you're scoring a phantasmagoric horror flick a la Goblin. Also, we love love love the grandiose extended electro-funk from Magmoid progsters Eskaton that closes out the disc. But why keep writing about this, you know you need it - unless your record collection already includes all these rarities, and there's no way it does.
Lovingly compiled with the help of DJs like Cut Chemist and Stone's Throw's Egon, Psych Funk 101 is truly a lesson in, well, a variety of awesome vintage funkiness, in the tradition of other cool comps like Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Obsession, Trap Door, and the Afro-centric Love's A Real Thing. Housed in a handsome digipack, it boasts a thick, 36 page booklet featuring a two-page spread on each track, with full color repro of the original LP or 45 sleeve from whence the cut originated, along with a page of text giving more info than you'd expect.
FYI this also came out on vinyl, but was gone so fast, we don't have any to list. However, we are told it is being repressed, soon we hope...
Psych. Funk. India. The '70s. Yes it's gonna be awesome. Sitars and Bollywood stars, badass grooves and acid rock guitars. This excellent new collection comes from the same folks (deeeeeeep diggers they are) who brought us that incredible international Psych Funk 101 comp a while back. They are EXPERTS. It's not entirely a joke that they present these comps in the guise of academic coursework, their research is extensive and if you pay attention you're gonna learn somethin'. According to the liner notes, Psych Funk 101 is considered a pre-requisite to this new "seminar", which is subtitled "Aesthetic Expressions Of Psychedelic Funk Music In India". Fortunately they don't carry the academic gag too far, and keep grad school jargon to an amusing minimum. (By the way, if you don't have Psych Funk 101, well, we figure you can still audit this course... though we DO recommend picking that one up too).
So, what's this Sa-Re-Ga! all about? 20 tracks, all killer no filler, circa 1970-1983, that showcase several "key figures / movements in Indian Psych Funk", from the garagey late '60s Sgt. Peppery stuff you'd expect from a former British colony (and from anywhere else in the world the Beatles had made their way), to the work of genius Bollywood composer R.D. Burman (and his eventual wife, the famous singer Asha Bhosle), to the Go-Go stylings of brothers Kalyanji Aalyanji Anandji, to hard rock bassist Keith Kanga's "wild beat group" Atomic Forest and related acts. Much information is provided about all of those artists and more in what must be the BIGGEST damn cd booklet we've ever seen. 52 pages!! The digipack sleeve can barely contain it. Packed with tons of dazzling full color graphics and learned text. Totally gettin' your money's worth with this one. (It's packaged like the Forge Your Own Chains comp, equally fat and deluxe.)
But even without the frills, just the music alone would make this a must. You can't listen to this without getting a gleeful smile on your face, from the get-go it's great and then somehow each song manages to top the one before it, with insistent propulsive percussion, bombastic orchestration, impassioned vocals, musique concrete techniques, and indeed some heavy, Hindi, FUNK. We're having trouble picking individual tracks to single out, only because they're ALL so good. But we gotta mention just a few of the super standouts, one of 'em being a live version of the classic "Dum Maro Dum" performed Bhosle and Burman and band at the Royal Albert Hall in 1978. That's a song you've heard before, most likely (the Kronos Quartet even recorded it, on their 2005 album with Bhosle), and it helps to realize that not only does a lot of the music on this disc seem like it oughtta be the most popular stuff in the world, in many cases, it really was quite popular, and not just in India. This rendition of "Dum Maro Dum", which means "Take Another Toke" by the way, was their concert's deliriously ecstatic, well-received finale. Then there's "Freak Out Music", another R.D. Burman number, that couldn't have been a hit, but is certainly Freaked Out. (And it's not even the one here by him that combines the sounds of strings with that of smashing glass.)
We also were excited to hear more from Atomic Forest, a band that provided the title track to the great international fuzz compilation Obsession a few years back (now out of print). They do a cover of a Deep Purple tune, "Mary Long", and of course laden it with extra fuzz. Another one for classic rock fans would be Bappi Lahari's "Everybody Dance With Me", which sounds suspiciously like Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" given an exotic Indian disco makeover, with bongos and wild wails... And, conversely, as an early example of Indian groove filtering into the West, the compilers have included a track by krautrocker/fusioneer Klaus Doldinger, "Sitar Beat", which is indeed just that, and must have been a highlight of the 1969 spy movie soundtrack on which it originally appeared. Which is interesting, 'cause the entry by Indian garage band X'Lents, "Psychedelia", originally from the Simla Beat 70 compilation, sounds like it would be perfect for a James Bond style spy movie too.
So, in sum, quite a lesson, and definitely a fun one. We'd go so far as to say this should be a required course/comp. We've been lucky lately with the quality of comps and other archival releases coming out, documenting vintage music from (for us) far off lands. We recently made the Soundway's The Sounds Of Siam a Record Of The Week, now this Sa-Re-Ga! is making us so happy... and we've got our eye on an upcoming Now-Again comp devoted to '70s Indonesian rock and funk, called Those Shocking Shaking Days, we've got high hopes for that one, it promises to be rad too. The vaguely connected network of collectors and DJs who are responsible for these comps, true labors of love, deserve all our thanks!!
As we said, the compact disc version boasts a massively thick booklet, and the swank double vinyl comes with a large 20 page one too.
We reviewed this a while back, a mind blowing, ear destroying, super limited collection of strange sounds, noisy weirndess and fractured heaviness, all gorgeously packaged in a silk screened box with inserts and buttons and all kinds of stuff.
We discovered a small handful of these tucked away, and figured some of you may have missed out the first time around. Maybe your last chance to snag one of these....
Everyone around here is a huge fan of weirdo music label Rock Is Hell, as are most of you judging from how fast we sell out of their stuff and how quickly it all goes out of print. Pretty much everything on Rock Is Hell has blown us away, the Dig That Body Up It's Alive lp, the crazy Nate Denver's Neck etched one sided lp box set thing, the super limited Octis lathe cuts, the XbXrX / Total Shutdown double 5", all gorgeously packaged and jam packed with mind melting sounds. With that in mind we worked out a special deal with Rock Is Hell, which will give AQ customers first (and maybe only) crack at this ULTRA limited 7" box set!!!
The set is limited to only 400 copies, it was almost completely sold out on preorders, minus the 8 or 9 we just got, so this will be your last and only chance to get one of these, if you didn't already preorder one. All the records are on white vinyl with white labels, and the records are housed in a silkscreened cardboard box with an inlay and 2 buttons designed by BONGOUT (http://frre.fr.freee.frfr.e.free.fr/). And all the copies we got have the secret bonus 7"!!! Only 50 or so of those! The singles included are:
Foot Village (USA)
Z's (USA)
Sasqrotch (USA)
Child Abuse (USA)
Death Sentence: Panda! (USA) / Fugu & The Cosmic Mumu (AUT)
Bulbul (AUT)
Bug (AUT) / Reflector (AUT)
Rokko Anal (AUT)
So if you want to be one of the lucky few to own this crazy chunk of sonic and visual weirdness, click the buy button and you'll be all set! So there you go, don't blow it!!!
And remember, ROCK IS HELL!!!!! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just searcgh for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 3 INCHES OF BLOOD "Here Waits Thy Doom" (Century Media) cd 15.98 ACCUSED, THE "The Curse of Martha Splatterhead" (Southern Lord) cd 13.98 AFRICA GERMANY GERMANY MEXICO TURKEY AUSTRALIA "s/t" (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 25.00 ALTAR OF OBLIVION "Sinews Of Anguish" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 14.98 ALVA NOTO & RYUICHI SAKAMOTO WITH ENSEMBLE MODERN "UTP_" (Raster Norton) cd+dvd 32.00 ANTLERS, THE "Hospice" (French Kiss) cd 12.98 ARGUS "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98 ASTRA "The Weirding" (Rise Above) cd 13.98 ASYLUM "The Earth Is The Insane Asylum Of The Universe" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98 BEHEMOTH "Evangelion" (Metal Blade) cd 15.98 BIBLE OF THE DEVIL / BLADE OF THE RIPPER "split" (Scarey Records) 7" 5.98 BIRDS OF AVALON "Uncanny Valley" (Volcom Entertainment) cd/lp 14.98/13.98 BLACK JOKER "Watch Out" (Olde English Spelling Bees) lp 21.00 BLACK SHEEP "Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse 2" (Invada) 2cd/2lp 31.00/39.00 BLIND BLAKE "Bahamian Songs" (Megaphone) cd 17.98 BLK JKS "After Robots" (Secretly Canadian) cd 14.98 CABLE "The Failed Convict" (The End) cd 12.98 CONGA DE LOS HOYOS "Carnival Music Of Easern Cuba" (World Audio Foundation / Soul Jazz) cd 17.98 COURTIS, ALAN / BRUCE RUSSELL / EDDIE PREVOST / MATTIN "The Sakada Sessions" (Azul Discographica) lp 27.00 DDAA "Action And Japanese Demonstration" (Fractal) cd 27.00 DELAY, VLADISLAV "Tummaa" (Leaf) cd 14.98 ELECTRIC PRUNES, THE "Mass In F Minor" (Reprise) lp 14.98 ESPVALL, HELENA & MASAKI BATOH "Overloaded Ark" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/21.00 ESSO TRINIDAD STEELBAND, THE "Van Dyke Parks Presents" (Bananastan) cd + dvd 16.98 FENRIZ' RED PLANET / NATTEFROST "Engansgrill" (Indie Recordings) cd 21.00 FLUXION "Inductance" (Echospace) 12" 13.98 GOES CUBE "Another Day Has Passed" (The End) cd 14.98 GRASS WIDOW "s/t" (Make A Mess) lp 12.98 HABOOB "s/t" (Long Hair) cd 27.00 HARBOURS "No Souvenirs" (HR) lp 14.98 HEALTH "Get Color" (Lovepump United) cd HEIMS "Worship Or Die" (Moribund Cult) cd 15.98 HOOD, ROBERT "Minimal Nation" (M-Plant) 2cd 17.98 ILL WIND "Flashes" (Sunbeam) 2cd 25.00 JAFFE, SARA & MIA CLARKE "The Art of Touring" (Square Root Books) book + cd 19.95 JANDEK "Not Hunting For Meaning" (Corwood Industries) cd 8.98 KUUPUU "Lumen Tahden" (Time-Lag) cd/lp 15.98/29.00 LA NUEVA BANDA DE SANTISTEBAN "Sabor A Fresa" (Vampi Soul) cd 22.00 LI JIANHONG "Classic Of The Mountains And Seas" (PSF) cd 22.00 LITMUS "Aurora" (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98 MAHER SHALAL HASH BAZ "C'est La Derniere Chanson" (K) 2cd 13.98 MASERATI "Passages" (Temporary Residence) cd 13.98 METH TEETH "Everything Went Wrong" (Woodsist) lp 14.98 NECRONOMICON "Strange Dreams" (Garden Of Delights) cd 22.00 PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART "Come Saturday" (Slumberland) 7" 3.98 PLAIN RIDE "House On The Hill" (Ektro) cd 14.98 PUMICE "Perservere" (Soft Abuse) 7" 6.98 RAVAGE "End Of Tomorrow" (Metal Blade) cd 14.98 ROCKCELONA "La Bruja" (Estereo Fonico Country) cd 25.00 ROXY MUSIC "s/t" (Virgin) lp 21.00 ROYHKA JA RATTO JA LEHTISALO "Hiekkarantaa" (Ektro) cd 14.98 SARKE "Vorunah" (Indie Recordings) cd 21.00 SCIENCE FICTION DANCE PARTY "Dance With Action" (B-Music / Finders Keepers) lp 29.00 SINISTER REALM "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98 STONE GARDEN "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98 SUCH HAWKS SUCH HOUNDS (Long Song Films) dvd-r 16.98 SWASHBUCKLE "Back To The Noose" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98 TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI "Archive 1" (Jinya) 5cd 95.00 TREE PEOPLE, THE "Human Voices" (Guerssen) cd 17.98 V/A "A Orillas Del Magdalena" (Domino Sound) lp 14.98 V/A "Electric Asylum Volume 3" (Past & Present) cd 17.98 V/A "La Belle Epoque" (EMI / Zonophone) cd 14.98 V/A "Songs In The Key Of Z: Volume 1 & 2" (Cherry Red) 2cd 16.98 V/A "The Midnite Sound Of The Milky Way" (Big Beat) cd 16.98 V/A "Transmissions From Sinai" (Arthur) cd 13.98 VIVIAN GIRLS "Everything Goes Wrong" (In The Red) cd 13.98 VOIVOD "Infini" (Relapse) cd 14.98 WARDRUNA "Runaljod - Gap Var Ginnunga" (Indie Recordings / Fimbullijod) cd 21.00 ZOMBY "Digital Flora" (Brainmath) 10" 14.98 ZOMBY "One Foot Ahead Of The Other" (Ramp) cd/2x12" 14.98/25.00 _______________________________________________________________________ Please place your order via our website. [1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings! [2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive. [ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.
Of all the Sublime Frequencies releases, we'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite. We've made a BUNCH of them our Records Of The Week, and rarely does a couple lists go by without some new fantastic world music obscurity for us to rave about. But if we had to, we'd probably have to go with the series of 'Radio' releases. They're essentially recordings straight off the radio, the Sublime Frequencies guys traveling all over the world, sitting in their hotel room, or at someone's house, and just recording the radio. The results are fantastic and fascinating, and pretty excellent sampling of the culture, not just the music, cuz you get songs and bands and singers of course, but also advertisements, talk shows, politics, DJ's, and often, it's kind of dizzying, almost like someone's just flipping through the stations. But every one so far has been a blast.
For Radio Niger, the pace is not so frenetic, but the sonic breadth is as expansive as ever, with some of the coolest music we've heard, but liberally laced with all manner of diverse sounds and sonics, as the liner notes describe, some of what you hear: shout-outs to girlfriends, drunken storytellers who just wander into the studio, comedy skits, lots of amazing Tuareg desert blues, news snippets in English from the BBC, lo-fi marketplace cassettes, auto-tuned Nigerian pop, DJ's sing along with songs on the air, there are super avant cut up collages, classic African folk...
It's all pretty fantastic, but unlike the other installments in the 'Radio' series, this one is much more musically fleshed out, with almost full songs getting played, and lots of it amazing, from dirgey desert blues to wild psychedelic guitar buzz, cool, groovy new wave pop to wild drum heavy, high life, some minimal vocal/hand drums, and some seriously twisted juxtapositions, a jam that sounds like an African Steve Miller, bumped up next to wild, spastic tribal drumming, and rapid fire vocalizations, or more modern radio pop nestled right next to cool soundtracky, horn flecked funk! Like the other comps, Radio Niger is another fascinating sonic travelogue, and a glorious glimpse into the music, the culture, and the people of Niger.
Includes a booklet with liner notes, and lots of photos! (Oh, and did we mention the awesome song titles? "Sahel Drum-Machine Gun", "Moussa Poussy Galore", etc.)
At this point, sixties psych reissues are a dime a dozen. We have a whole section in the store, packed with good ones, and those are only a tiny fraction of what gets released. We've groused about it before, but just cuz it's old and rare, doesn't make it worth reissuing. Though sometimes, wow, is it ever!
The one thing we had never seen though, was a collection of sixties garage and psych from Iran. Then again, we had probably never wondered about the garage psych scene in Iran at all, but Raks Raks Raks has set us straight, and has us wishing we had.
As one might imagine, playing in a psychedelic rock band in the Middle East in the sixties was no cake walk, although according to the liner notes, it was maybe not as bad as we in the West might imagine, but amidst the various restrictions, political and personal, folks were of course still expressing themselves, and making music, and the results speak for themselves. Odds are, like us, you won't recognize a single band here, but it hardly matters, every track here is a winner, from Asian sounding grooves, to Ventures like surfy twang, to distinctly Middle Eastern sounding melodies, to fuzzy fifties-ish vocal doo wop, to twisted Monkees-like catchy pop, to Ethiopiques-ish jazzy funky grooves, to jangly psych folk, to fuzzy organ driven Joe Meek like grooviness, all infused with a distinctly Middle Eastern vibe, not just the language, the sound itself. Lo-fi, but so bursting with life and color and energy, classic sounds but imbued with elements and twists that make the tracks on Raks Raks Raks stand WAY out from the ordinary sixties psych reissue crowd BIG TIME! Expensive maybe, but so so worth it!
Massive booklet with extensive liner notes, as much about the history of the era and the politics of the region as the music and the artists.
Double cd covers comp in tribute to Andee's favorite rock band of all time, the mighty Aerosmith! The participating bands mostly hail from the realm of "stoner rock", such as Natas, Alabama Thunderpussy (who do a great "Sweet Emotion"), Atomic Bitchwax, Fireball Ministry, Drunk Horse, The Want, Core, Raging Slab, Altamont, and 18 more! As these tribute things go, a pretty good one. Furthermore, Andee sez: If this sounds even remotely appealing, you oughta order the Aerosmith cd "Draw The Line" too, which we also carry. It's probably one of the best 'rock' records ever. Aerosmith may suck now, but their first 5 records were '70s hard rock at its best; heavy and groovy and amazingly catchy. Their "Greatest Hits" were not their greatest hits. Trust me.
When we first got wind of this comp, for some reason, we just assumed it was gonna be another amazing Soul Jazz reggae comp, it didn't even occur to us that it would be a collection of killer classic jungle jams from the early nineties. But we threw it on, and were just knocked on our asses, transported back to '93/'94 when we first discovered jungle, particularly, ragga-dancehall-jungle or whatever you wanted to call it, a killer blend of traditional Jamaican dancehall, and this new breed of sped up hip hop that had grown out of the rave scene in the UK.
The history and genealogy is complex, but there's been plenty written about it, the liner notes here are particularly informative, tracing the development of ragga-jungle from the early Reggae sound systems, through the rave scene, UK hardcore hip hop, and beyond. Ragga jungle was a flash in the pan, existing for 3 or 4 years before most of the folks making it moved on to two-step, garage, drum and bass and on an on. But for our money, this was it. This was THE music we had been waiting for. We have loved dancehall forever, the harder and faster the better, so here was the toasting and melody of dancehall, draped over chopped up stuttering and pounding hip hop beats, all sped up into a rhythmic frenzy.
If there's one track that sums it up for us, it's DJ Zinc's "Super Sharp Shooter", with its interminable vocal and squelchy synth intro, the loping creeping reggae groove, the buzzing melody, the simple shuffling drum beat, the slowed down Method Man sample, and that's all before the track actually even drops, and when it does... Whoooowheee. We remember hearing this for the first time in one of the few clubs in SF that played jungle back in the day, and it nearly knocked us out of our seats. We ended up buying a DJ mix tape from one of the DJs spinning, and thankfully it had "Super Sharp Shooter" on it, and from that point on, we listened to it over and over every day, in the car, cranked as loud as it would go, bass pumping (as much as the bass could be said to pump in a crappy old van). So fucking heavy and hooky and funky. When the track finally kicks in, it's massive, relentless serpentine pass line, ultra complex drums, funky and groovy but so tangled and dense, every once in a while the bass line locks on a single not and just hooooooooolds steady until it drops, hard, and we're off on another junglistic jam. As far as we're concerned this would be worth it just for this track, but thankfully, the rest of the disc is just as kick ass.
Lots of familiar reggae and dancehall names, Ninjaman, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Cutty Ranks, and for those in the know, the rest of the names read like an early nineties jungle all star lineup: Ragga Twins, Poison Chang, Ragga Twins, DJ Zinc, Shy FX... but even if you don't know any of these names, the music speaks for itself. Check out "Original Nuttah" by UK Apachi & Shy FX, beginning with some super hooky sing songy reggae vocals before the track launches into a maddeningly dense rapid fire snare workout underpinning a raw and tongue twisting flow. Furious and intense and so goddamn good. Then there's tracks like Ragga Twins' "Illegal Gunshot", with its playful and circusy melodic loop, but juxtaposed with some seriously aggro toasting, some Bomb Squad like production, and some outrageously funky drumming.
Pretty much every track on here is a killer, never has a record so much made even us non-dancers want to head for the dancefloor and go fucking nuts. The cool thing about this stuff, is even if you're dancefloor phobic, is that these tracks are so dense and multi layered, full of convoluted rhythms and mad drumming and rapid fire rhymes and wild toasting and strange melodies and killer grooves, that they're almost as fun to listen to as they are to dance to. Almost.
Like all Soul Jazz stuff, gorgeously packaged and extensively researched. Tons of liner notes, track notes, photos, all wrapped up in a full color slipcase.
The world is full of massive metal labels, Century Media, Relapse, Metal Blade, each home to hundreds and hundreds of bands, lots of bands we love, but plenty we could certainly do without. There are way more tiny little metal labels doing their own thing, WAY below the commercial radar, each cultivating their own unique little scene, based on a combination of location, style, and in the case of Rusty Axe, a totally brilliant, massively fucked and utterly idiosyncratic DIY approach to metal music. Every little while, Rusty Axe release a super cheap label sampler and every time we are totally blown away by the sheer weirdness and genius of the bands they dig up.
This time around (volume 4!) there are way more familiar names than usual, but that in no way makes this comp any less appealing. In fact the known names will still seem pretty obscure to all but the most obsessive metalheads: The Wizar'd, Godless, Enbilulugugal, Black Vomit, V.A.C.K., Tjolgtjar, Marks Of The Masochist, and that's really about the only bands we know. Other until-now-unknown-to-us bands include Sermon Of Foulness, Trasher, Dead... Again, Sacrificial Blood, Talk Sick Earth, Esprit Derange, Brobdingnagian, Infinite Missiles, well we could go on and on, needless to say, for adventurous metalheads, this is the shit! Heavy on the black metal, but with plenty of doom and noise and fuzz and buzz and howl.
Highlights include: a new track from aQ faves Black Vomit, purveyors of True Sheffield Black Psychedelia, which hear means a plodding blown out wall of buzz, peppered with fucked up effects and creepy inhuman vox, so heavy and in the red, it manages to almost slip into shoegaze territory. Almost. Toil offer up some lo-fi blackness, rife with classic metal riffing, but some seriously fucked up howled vocals and some tangled confusional leads. The Wizar'd cover Witchfinder General, the drums stumble gloriously, the guitars SO buzzy and hot, the vocals like a karaoke Zeeb Parkes. Enbilulugugal don't disappoint (do they ever?) with some retro thrash, but rendered all scribbly and lo-fi with INSANE vocals that sound like a million pterodactyls. Infinite Missiles are all old school retro punky thrash, with killer riffing and shouted vocals. Gaiman offer up the 'short version' of their track, which clocks in at almost 8 minutes, a sluggish Burzumy trawl through sonic black swamps with some gurgling underwater vokills and a bit of Viking riffage here and there. V.A.C.K. offer up some maniacal basement black metal, furious drumming, buzzsaw riffs and howled hellish shrieks�Fuck, who are we kidding, all the tracks here rule, not all of them will have us running out to track everything down by the band, but in the context of this comp, they are all pretty darn near perfect, in their own totally fucked and fractured, demented and damaged way.
There are cult bands and then they are the TRUE KVLT bands. Few fit that bill better than San Francisco's Von. Von existed for a few years back in the late eighties / early nineties, recorded only two demos, and then split up and disappeared.
But that's just the sort of stuff that creates the cult, that turns a band into something more, that and an incredible collection of furious grim thrashing black metal madness. Fourteen songs, all fast and black, all quite similar sounding, almost like one long song chopped up into 2 minute movements, but like very few bands, there's just something special about Von, sure the sound, the production, the energy, but it has to be the songs too, since even played by other bands, those songs exude a strange black power, a grim malice and hellish energy that belies their simple composition.
Lots of folks have covered Von over the years, most recently SF's own Leviathan, on his split with fellow Bay Area black horde Crebain, but here we've got a whole disc of covers, most of them true to the spirit of Von, in that they are raw and primitive and buzzing, but each special in its own black way.
Very few bands here that we've actually heard of: Enbilulugugal, Black Vomit, Godless, Execrator, Beastcraft, Tjolgtjar, Raw Hatred and that's about it. Check out the names on some of the other bands: Blasphemophager, Unholy Crucifix, Godslaying Hellblast, Sermon Of Foulness, Nuclearhammer, Ceremonial Castings�
And they all sound just how you might think, carrying on in the grim tradition of Von, lo-fi, thrashing, black, brutal, buzzy, the rhythms fast and relentless, the riffing and drumming in a constant fury, the vocals in various shades of howl and gurgle, lots of the tracks peppered with wild squiggly leads, sometimes the sound is thick and caustic, a white noise blur, other times it's a tinny practice space recording, once in a while, like with Black Vomit, the song is transformed into something freaked out and damaged, but for the most part, this is one for the true, the grim, those of black heart and cursed soul.
Definitely for fans of Von (obviously), Beherit, Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Darkthrone and other practitioners of raw raw raw primitive black metal.
It seems like of all the Sublime Frequencies releases, all of which are incredible, many so incredible we felt compelled to make them aQ Records Of The Week, none has been as hotly anticipated as this one, ever since word of this release first surfaced, we would constantly get requests and inquiries, folks DYING to get their hands on a copy, and we'd be lying if we said we weren't pretty excited ourselves. So finally, here it is, Saigon Rock & Soul, a collection of fuzzy psychedelic Western influenced Vietnamese garage rock and pop, from the late sixties to the early seventies, heavily influenced by Western music of the time of course, but still somehow so totally and uniquely Southeast Asian.
And like most of these collections, the sounds vary greatly, from super distorted acid drenched psychedelia, to fuzz guitar funk, to wild ramshackle garage rock, to dark smoky soul ballads and pretty much every stop in between.
The history of this music, and the story of its creation, is as amazing as the music itself, as all of these tracks were recorded while the Vietnam war raged, recorded in makeshift studios, sometimes in US Army, camps, released as super limited 45's and tapes, the sounds constantly evolving as local musicians were exposed to the music American G.I.'s would bring over with them, from the surf rock of the Ventures and the Shadows, to stuff like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Santana, Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, hence the heaviness of some of these tracks, with bands emulating that super distorted guitar tone and that druggy sixties psychedelic vibe.
And some of this stuff really is heavy, the record opens with CBC Band's "Tinh Tuyet Voi", which explodes out of the gate with some seriously fuzzed out caustic guitar riffing, and then there's the "yeah yeah yeah" chorus, that almost sounds like the record is skipping, totally psychedelic and mesmerizing, wild drumming, lysergic leads - here's hoping Sublime Frequencies has a CBC Band reissue in the works!
The rest of the tracks, while maybe not quite as heavy, are still super fuzzy and rocking and groovy, from wild horn drenched exotica, to organ driven garage rock grooves, to funky psychedelic soul, horns all over the place, wild psych guitar leads, super distorted fuzz basslines, pounded piano, loose chaotic drumming, lots of distortion and reverb, even some sampled birdsong (!), the vocals wailed and howled and growled, some of the tracks getting all dark and soulful and smoky, no doubt a nod to the Motown sound, also a huge influence on Vietnamese music of the time, but for the most part, the sound of Saigon at the time was fuzzy and buzzy, wild and rambunctious, rocking and totally psychedelic. Fantastic stuff, and while many of the groups featured here are some of the most popular artists in Vietnam at the time, most of them have remained pretty much entirely unheard by Western ears, until now.
SUPER LIMITED of course, vinyl-only, and it's pressed on nice heavy vinyl, and housed in a thick full color gatefold sleeve, with extensive liner notes on the music, the musicians, and the era, as well as some amazing photos.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
I'm just going to admit that I love the name Rural Electrification Program for a label. It's just so antiquated and it fits so well with the squalid noise that Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof, Total) has collected for this compilation. As a whole, this compilation offers an excellent state of the union for the free noise compatriots around the globe. Humid blasts of muddled guitar feedback from Flies Inside the Sun, Sunroof, and Ashtray Navigations. The tectonic plate shifting from Surface of the Earth's low-end amplifier rumble. The bad-acid improvised 'pipe fights' of No Neck Blues Band's offshoot K. Salvatore. Also featured are Bradley / Campbell, Richard Youngs & Simon Wickham-Smith, and Dr. Gretchen's Musical Weightlifting Program.
Holy crap! This record almost immediately became our favorite new record, while at the same time, proving to be maybe the most fantastically aggravating record of all time. Folks from Baltimore are probably well familiar with this kind of stuff, DJ Technics and the like. A sort of dizzying mash up of Miami bass, four on the floor techno, and druggy house music, but stripped down to its bare essence, usually a single loop, synths, drums and vocals, repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. But somehow we just can's stop listening to it. Super primitive, and maddeningly catchy, this must drive people fucking nuts on the dance floor. This is get wasted and dance until you drop club music for sure. Like those Rio Baile Funk comps, all cranked up, looped and let loose. Not many of us around here actually go dancing, but this relentlessly funky disc has at one time or another got every single AQ staffer if not dancing, at least bouncing or swaying, which is a serious testament to the sheer dance floor funk power of these joints.
Some of the tracks are fierce and gangsta like "Murdaland" with it's gunshot percussion, almost jungle rhythm and raspy voiced rapping. Others are like nursery rhymes set to club music, like "Oxy's Anthem Featuring Roxy Cottontail", with a tired sounding club girl talking about shaking her ass endlessly over a super mesmerizing shuffling loop. And some are just bizarre, like "Kidstuff" featuring vocals by a gaggle of kids, over a stuttering, chopped up house beat. And those are just a few picked at random, every track here is somehow totally fucked, totally catchy and absolutely irresistible. Absolutely, THE dance party record of the year. Just toss this in your player, push play and let it spin over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
Part of the same series that included the B'More Gutter Music compilation that we made record of the week on the last list, as well as the killer Science Faction: Grime comp (definitely a would've/could've/should've been record of the week as well), Science Faction: Dubstep is another killer slab of throbbing, shuffling, stuttering electronic griminess. And in some ways it's a lot more listenable than those other two. There's a very blurry line separating grime and dubstep. Grime is snotty and super syncopated, hiccupping beats, and lightning fast tongue twisting rapping, while dubstep seems to be the late night blissout version of grime. The grime version of the reggae/dub "version", with the vocals stripped off, more of a focus on the rhythms, the bass thick and resonant, dense stabs of fuzzy roof rattling synth. Sort of like chill out music you could dance to (if you were so inclined). Imagine stuff like African Head Charge and other modern digital dub given a seriously grimey 21st century makeover. Ominous and creepy, slithery and dark, but laid back and groovy. Lots of strange samples and loops, minor key melodies, over some of the most hypnotic beats EVER. Like jungle at 16rpm, convoluted and brilliantly unfunky in the funkiest way imaginable. But it's all about the low end, the basslines, the massive slabs of fuzzy synth, we had this blasting at the store and it literally had stuff on the desk rattling, and threatened to knock the plaster on the ceiling loose. The bass lines are thick wiggling eels of tectonic rumble, weird reverberating pulses that swallow entire rhythms whole, the synths sound like tuned airplane engines, thick fuzzed out warbling whirs like someone dumping a truck-full of low-end over your head. This sort of stripped down, instrumental dance music is supposed to be for dancing, and by all rights it should be totally boring to just -listen- to, but this comp is anything but, so massive and heavy and grimey and funky and fucked up that we haven't actually been able to stop -just- listening to it!
Oh man, these Science Faction comps are KILLING us! The B'More Gutter Music comp reviewed elsewhere on the list. A killer dubstep comp we'll be reviewing soon, and this, the latest blast of grimey goodness from the UK. It's been a long time since we've gotten some serious grime. Seems like the world has discovered grime's mellower side and made the move to dubstep. Which is cool, don't get us wrong, but there's something about super blown out over the top grime that just totally kicks our asses. Totally hits the spot for us the way hip hope used to. It's just so aggressive and weirdly rhythmic. It's like the best parts of hip hop, jungle, and ragga, all wrapped up into a wild and goofy, funny and fucking fierce blast of fuzzed out, stuttery what-the-fuck. The flows are even faster, mush mouther and tongue twisting, wildly leaping to and fro, over weird snippets and loops and samples, all over a crunchy dancehall like rhythm and thick squelchy synths. This just might be the best collection of grime so far though. From Crazy Titch's bastardized classical music jam "Sing Along" all strings and flutes and huge moaning symphonies chopped into funky little bits, to Roll Deep's crunchy synth and growly ragga toasting, to the sci-fi videogame freakout funk of Bruza's "Doin' Me", to the gangsta ragga skitter of the Regal Players' "Rude Boy Remix". This is all just completely nuts. Funky, phat and fucked up and freaked out. If I was a dancing man, which I am most certainly not, but if I was, I'd be all over this shit. As it is, I don't have a single dancing bone in my body, and every track on this comp totally kicks my ass and gets my toes tapping and my head nodding, which is as close to actually dancing as I will ever get.
Completely mental. And of course, recommended!
Another super limited lp installment in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding collection of fantastic and mysterious world musics. It's unclear, why a few releases have been vinyl only, and if the shelf-life of the last Sublime Frequencies lp was any indication, these won't last long at all.
So what is Shadow Music Of Thailand? Well, it's Thai pop heavily influenced by UK instrumental rockers The Shadows of course. More specifically it's a strain of sixties Thai guitar pop heavily influenced by Western music, rock, garage and especially surf. The guitar being the most obvious influence.
So here we have a collection of some of the most notable purveyors of "Shadow Music": The Son Of P.M., P.M. Pocket Music, P.M 7 / Jupiter and Johnny Guitar. You may have noticed the recurring P.M., well that stands for Payong Mukda, one of the most prolific composers and performers of the time and the music genius behind all of those P.M. groups.
On first listen, the Shadow Music here doesn't sound all that different than much of the Thai Pop we've heard before on other collections, and no doubt there is some overlap. But keep listening, and all sorts of strange and unique little sonic flourishes reveal themselves. Really, where else can you hear gamelan percussion with super fuzzed out ? And The Mysterions style organ and wailing surf guitar? From groovy garage rock to shimmery surf, lots of organ, and plenty of gamelan, vibraphone, xylophone, gorgeous vocals, strange harmonies, mysterious melodies, but it's those guitars, it buzzes and howls, chugs and twangs, woven into all of the songs here, creating this strange hybrid, Thai Pop, Bollywood, surf rock, blues rock, latin, soul, all woven into a wild groovy psychedelic fuzzy funky garage folkpop that will totally hit the spot for fans of exotic grooves and wild and wonderful sounds.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF ONLY 1500 COPIES. 180 gram vinyl, super thick, gatefold sleeve, full color with tons of original Thai artwork and extensive liner notes.
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a review of another Sublime Frequencies release, the Shadow Music Of Thailand, where we discuss how hard it is to pick a favorite release, cuz they're all so goddamn good.
And such is the case with this one too, a sequel of sorts to 2007's Thai Pop Spectacular 1960s-1980s, this one titled Siamese Soul, but the first one was pretty soulful as well, so we'll presume that it was just chosen as a catchy title, because this does play out like a continuation of the first part which is in no way a bad thing, in fact, we'd been hankering for more ever since that first volume.
As the loner notes discuss, Cambodian pop has gotten so much attention lately, that it seems almost criminal that Thai pop wasn't getting the same attention, which becomes even more apparent listening to Siamese Soul (as well as the first volume). In the review of the first volume we described Thai Pop as "an awesomely confusional mix of Molam, Bollywood, Ethiopian groove, funk, soul, American pop and surf rock, all tangled up into amazing shapes, and peppered with killer hooks, amazing vocalists, bizarre production techniques, but most of all amazing amazing songs." Which of course still absolutely applies. Heavy Western funk to Ethiopian sounding grooves, tripped out organ drenched fuzz rock, with creepy sexy female vox to Shadows / Ventures style surf rock, a bunch of the songs like many of the tracks on the two Molam: Thai Country Groove Sublime Frequencies comps, totally remind us of whatever Thai song the Butthole Surfers appropriated for their song "Kuntz", that distinctly Thai vocal melody is so unmistakable and unforgettable. The whole record is just so wild and fun and varied and out there, slipping easily from classic sounding pop, to mysterious folk music, to stomping funk, to twangy soundtrack sounds to smokey bar ballads, to slithery soul, to far out almost Bollywood sounding exotica, all with a distinctly Thai flavor. Funky, groovy, soulful, so so good. Check out the sound samples. Sometimes we feel words can't quite do sounds like these justice. And the more we listen to this, the more THIS one is becoming one of our favorites, and heck, we could very well have made this another Record Of The Week too!
Skull Disco is dead. Hence this sonic gravestone, collecting a handful of the label's last few 12"s on one disc, and some remixes on the other. Definitely one of the most kick ass and ground breaking electronic labels of the last few years (certainly one of our favorites) Skull Disco took dubstep, minimal techno, and various other electronic offshoots and created their own incredibly distinct sound, murky and skittery, mysterious and otherworldly, with deep rumbling bass, skeletal rhythms, and the occasional vocal, usually some strange deep voice intoning rather than singing, making the sound even more ominous and harrowing. And while that sound is most definitely dubstep, as we mentioned in our review of the first collection, the sound is equally indebted to Muslimgauze, On-U-Sound and Spectre. Heck a few years ago, and Shackleton would probably have been putting out records on WordSound!
Shuffling abstract beats, rumbling bass, subtle shadings and effects, these are low slung late night grooves. More chillout than dancefloor, more dub really than dubstep. Some tracks get a little Kompakt, but even then, it's dialed WAY back, tinted windows, tinted shades, dark corner of the club, cruising moonlit streets, hanging out under bridges, gathered around flickering fires, this is brooding moody midnight shit. So good. Not sure what else to say, if you bought the other one (and if you didn't, why the heck not?!) you're need this one too, if you've been into all the dubstep we've been listing, you'll probably want this too, or if you're just looking for some killer dark anti-dance music, or some chill out bliss out drift off lullabies, then this will do the trick.
But wait! What about the second disc? All the remixes, some previously released, but others available for the first time. The Pole mix is a killer, and as unlikely as it may seem, it's LESS minimal than the original, the Rupture mix is cool too, but way too short at 2 minutes. Other remixers include T++. Geiomix, Brendan Moller, Bass Clef, Badawi and others, nothing too dramatic, just subtle variations on the original, the Badawi maybe being our favorite, looooong at 12+ minutes, and super spare, super dark, mostly drums, the sounds processed and effected, the whole thing even more dubbed out than the original!
Packaged in a super striking oversized mini gatefold lp style cd sleeve, with that immediately recognizable Skull Disco artwork.
Dub is all about the bass. The darker and more cavernous the better. The more you feel it, the more your fillings rattle, the better. So it makes sense that the same would hold true for dubstep, but maybe to an even greater degree, as the sound of dubstep is even more spare and skeletal than dub, leaving nearly nothing except for the rhythm and the bass.
Soundboy Punishments collects the first 5 vinyl releases from UK label Skull Disco on cd for the first time, and while ostensibly this stuff is dubstep, it almost sounds more like Muslimgauze or old On-U sound stuff or even Spectre at times, but way more stripped down, way heavier, and with the sort of massive undulating bass that washes over everything like a thick black wave.
The first 5 12"s on Skull Disco, split pretty evenly between the artists Shackleton and Appleblim (with one track from Gatekeeper) are all epic slabs of blown out bass heavy skitter, with blurry distant synth and little Eastern flourishes, as well as the occasional dubbed out vocal, smeared into blurred ripples of reverb. Super abstract and minimal, hypnotic and groovy, the beats and shuffling and subtle, not the huge pounding of 'traditional' dubstep, or the manic grind of jungle, instead, the sound is laid waaaaaaay back. A sort of more modern digi-dub, varied percussion, tablas, hand drums, all woven into simple rhythmic frameworks, always with a rumbling low end pulse lurking right beneath the surface, until part way in, the bass DROPS, and suddenly everything has changed, what was a lazy lope is transformed into a throbbing lurch, a wall of gut churning low end, fuzzy and distorted and blown out, sounding almost like the hardest jungle track ever, slooooooooowed way down. The first disc is pretty blissed out, hard to imagine these tracks filling dancefloors, although they have been, it sounds more like music to get wasted, and sort of just lounge about, head nodding, the vibrations washing over you. With all the hype about this disc and these tracks, initially we were a bit let down, but gradually, this has grown on us like crazy to the point where we pretty much don't ever want to listen to anything else.
The second disc is where it gets weirder, and a bit harder, featuring unreleased cuts as well as non-Skull Disco tracks, including the long anticipated nearly twenty minute mix of Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" by Ricardo Villalobos. Anyone who dug that last Villalobos disc, Fizheuer Zieheuer will definitely dig this. Simple shuffling and ultra minimal pulses, stretched out endlessly, so dark and hypnotic, with slow shifting synths in the background. Our only complaint are the vocals, a slowed down mysterious voice intoning apocryphal lyrics over almost the whole song, a la Spectre or the last Plastikman record, it's a little distracting, and we have to say we probably would have liked it without, but even so, it's beginning to growing on us too. The rest of the second disc is like a supercharged version of disc one, more synths, thicker bass, stranger arrangements and creepier melodies, a lot more like slowed down jungle, with heavy beats and reverb and delay everywhere, the more laid back abstract cuts definitely remind us of the Bush Chemists, a totally druggy and dreamy outerspace dub. So good. And based solely on how much this gets played in the shop, this just might be a brand new unanimous AQ fave.
Packaged in a cool, creepy black and white cardboard sleeve that looks way more metal that electronica...
WAY recommended.
Interesting compilation of recordings from the 20's and 30's which have in common the Hawaiian steel guitar as their backbone. From as early as 1916 Hawaiian music had become an obsession not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, and by the 20's ukuleles and steel guitars were out-selling guitars for many manufacturers. What is documented here are recordings of Hawaiian influenced hokum blues, calypso, country, jazz, as well as straight up Hawaiian music, captured in France, Greece, China, Argentina and the U.S.
We had to do it. How could this NOT be an aQ Record Of The Week? Some folks will no doubt cry foul, and accuse us of arty pretension, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sure we love lots of strange stuff, and we love difficult listening, and challenging, arty sonic WTF weirdness, and have been known to champion some seriously bizarre records and groups, but we do love all that stuff. Like we love jangly pop, and buzzy black metal, we also love field recordings of abandoned buildings, we love the sound of record crackle, tape hiss, we love industrial sounds, the whir of heating units, the thrum of traffic bleeding through the walls, we love the drone found in everyday life, the music hidden in the most unmusical of places. In fact, it's almost become a running joke around here, we'll be somewhere, and some piece of machinery will be buzzing or humming, or some construction site will be emitting a strangely rhythmic crunch, and our first thought it often "We could definitely sell a bunch of these at aQ!" And after all these years, we know you're right there with us. Buying recordings of hospital rooms and life support machines, recordings of mating deer and drag races, records made entirely from runout grooves, we could go on and on, but c'mon, you love that stuff as much as we do. Which brings us to Sounds Of Silence, which as the title suggests, is in fact a collection of the most famous musical silences! That's right, a silent record. Or at least mostly, bear with us.
We've had other 'silent' records at aQ before, from the not-so-silent Blank Tapes, which found Argentinean weirdos Reynols constructing a whole record from recordings of, yes, blank tapes, that disc a fantastic sonic landscape of hiss and hum, subtly textural and weirdly mesmerizing, to (in the used bin once), a purported compilation of Billy Joel's "Greatest Hits", which was in fact a recording with no sound at all, an obvious artprank jab at the ubiquitous piano man. Hell, we even poked fun at ourselves by listing a cd that didn't even exist on our April Fools list a while back, waxing poetic about the 'nothingness' and the 'void' and the concept behind the lack of actual music, we even made a mock up with an empty jewel case, that spent a good long while on the employee favorites shelf in the store. But the thing is, we do love silence, or at least, the attempt to capture silence, in a world, where true silence doesn't actually exist. From barely there recordings by Francisco Lopez and Bernard Gunter, to field recordings of industrial spaces, it's not so much about the silence, as what surrounds it, and what threatens to destroy it.
So yeah, maybe you'd have to be a pretty big music dork to want to pay thirty bucks for a silent record, but then, we're all pretty big music dorks after all. C'mon, check out the lineup! Andy Warhol, Ciccone Youth, Sly & The Family Stone, Robert Wyatt, Afrika Bambatta & Family, Orbital, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Crass, Whitehouse, The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Soulfly, John Denver, The Count Backwards and lots more. Maybe the most unlikely lineup on a compilation ever. Who knows if this is some super provocative art-prank, or a lovingly curated collection of experimental sound, or heck, a little of both, it's pretty goddamn fascinating, and weird, and cool, fans of lowercase sound will find much to dig, lots of crackle and hiss, of course even beyond the original recordings, depending in your method of playback, each person's listening experience will be different, more noise and hiss and hum and crackle and pop, you could even scratch the shit out if it before you play it and truly individualize it, Christian Marclay style! But the sounds themselves are surprisingly varied, those that come from digital sources, are truly nearly silent, while others are actually not so silent, and still others, don't even exist at all, their length listed as 0'0'', presented here as they were when they were originally 'released', the original intention unclear, high concept, political statement, who knows, but tracks like Sly & The Family Stone's "There's A Riot Goin' On", which was mentioned on the album cover, but was then conspicuously absent from the actual lp, or Andy Warhol's "Silence (Copyright 1932)", which was supposedly created by Warhol when he was 4 years old, or the Afrika Bambatta track "Beware (The Funk Is Everywhere) (Silent Version)", which was originally presented as a "Radical Mix". But fear not, Sounds Of Silence, is not all high concept, there are actual tracks, well, actual sort of silent tracks, it seems a little pointless to describe each one, since, they are all essentially 'silent', and they ARE, both sides, track after track of barely there thrum, fields of crackle, the occasional pop, most of that we're guessing from OUR turntable, but close listening reveals much of the source, some tracks have barely there sounds, whether it's the sound of the room, or the vinyl from which it was mastered, or who knows, maybe we're just hearing what we want to. Maybe there is nothing but silence. A long time ago, we at aQ dreamed of a record made entirely of vinyl lp crackle, which led sound artist Loren Chasse to do just that (sort of, he simulated it with field recordings of surf and rain actually), so in a way, if you remove the high concept angle, Sounds Of Silence, is kind of like that, like maybe a more minimal version of our long dreamed of record crackle record. Either way, you know if this is your cup of tea or if you think it's a total crock of shit. If you've read this far, we're guessing you're in the first camp, but really either way, we LOVE this. It's brilliant, hilarious, confusional, baffling, there are extensive liner notes too, track by track discussing where each one came from, why each one is important, the concept behind them, there's even an essay on silence, it's of course fantastically packaged, and totally over the top. Well, as 'over the top' as a silent record can be.
Recommended for music nerds, weirdo sonic obsessives and anyone who would dig having such a ridiculous record in your collection. Don't believe us? Check out the sound samples? What sound samples? Exactly!
Cool Simon & Garfunkle parody cover art too. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES ONLY!!
This double disc compilation is a music geek time machine. For a handful of you, these collected singles will immediately tranport you right back to your bedroom, where you'll find yourself laying on your bed, headphones on, a messy pile of 7"s spread out on the bed in front of you, as you meticulously assemble the perfect mixtape. And for those of you who somehow missed out on this stuff, holy shit are you in for a treat!
Some of the best singles ever released on the super cool No. 6 label, run by legendary A&R man Terry Tolkin.
Highlights include the two Ornament tracks, which was a short lived group featuring the Afghan Whigs and Marcy Mays of Scrawl, doing a killer cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow", appearing here on cd for the first time, the very first Dwarves single, a filthy, heavy drug fueled racket, the first two post Galaxie 500 songs from Dean Wareham, the very frist US Tindersticks release, two killer versions of Unrest's "Winona Ryder", the Cagney And Lacee single, which was Dean Wareham and his wife, some brooding noisy creep fron King Carcass, and Bewitched, Bob Bert of Sonic Youth's sort of solo project band thingie. All that and some lesser knowns who still kicked ass: Vegetarian Meat, Pork and Glue! This stuff is so good, and has definitely stood the test of time. Hate to sound like old fogies, but they sure don't make indie pop like this anymore...
This would have easily been a contender for record of the week, if we got in enough in, so it will have to do as a highly recommended highlight. But let it be known that this latest volume of Spiritual Jazz is fast becoming our favorite of the series! We loved all the others of course and the first one was hard to beat, but they really brought out the big names and heavy hitters on this volume (Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry & Krzysztof Penderecki, Bobby Hutcherson, Hampton Hawes and Albert Ayler) and it's on two discs so lots of long form modal cosmic expansion is at the ready. The theme this time around is Americans in Europe and it documents a fertile period in the sixties and seventies where many American jazz musicians fed up with racism and decaying socio-economic conditions in the US found solace working in Europe on festival circuits and collaborating with great European jazz groups abroad in Denmark, France, Italy, UK and Germany, exploring new directions in sound. Many of these tracks are from rare recordings (some of them live), not released in America and are reissued here for the first time. Besides the big names, there are plenty of lesser known players like Billy Gault, Sahib Shihab, Frank Wright, Clarence Peters, Lee Konitz, Noah Howard and Grachan Moncur III. Beautifully packaged with lots of liner notes and record covers, this is some real deep and mind-expanding stuff! Like we said above, Highly Recommended!!!!
Pretty soon we're gonna have to stop complaining about not getting enough dubstep. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the double cd collection from PDX label Lo Dubs, and now we've got this, another killer collection from Soul Jazz, a follow up to their Box Of Dub collection. But where Box Of Dub seemed to cover a wide sonic spectrum of dubstep and modern dub, Steppa's Delight is all the current hyped shit, dubplates, white labels, singles, lots of names we already know and love, Kode9, Benga, The Bug, Shackleton, but loads more we've never heard before.
Right out of the gate, it's already a winner, with Kode9's "9 Samurai", a dubstep classic if there ever was, sounding like the RZA gone dubstep, ominous cinematic samples, a strange skittery beat, brief squalls of intense synth buzz, some creepy spoken word, this is like the dubstep version of that ubiquitous Massive Attack song, groove but so full of dread. Would be surprised if this didn't start showing up in soundtracks pretty soon (Guy Ritchie? You listening?). Next up is Benga, who while not as grim sounding, still offers up some intense minor key grooves, complex skitter, and some jagged buzzing synth melodies. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" we already loved from that Skull Disco comp a while back, and it still sounds amazing, murky and menacing, the drums muted and murky, except for the occasional gunshot-like snare blast, mumbled vocals, haunting swells and deep atmospherics. The Bug Teams up with Warrior Queen, for a dense slab of buzz, some super heavy low end, a slithery bass line, simple stripped down beats, and some crazy catchy sing songy toasting. There's even some grime here and there, with Skepta contributing a killer convoluted flow to Plastician's "Intensive Snare". Uncle Sam's dubstep is almost straight old school reggae, except for that little dubby shuffle. Goth-Trad offers up some seriously darkened dub, the neverending bassline buzz, the clattery percussion, the haunting sampled vocals, a horror movie melody straight out of Halloween. Shit, we could go on and on, track by track, but by now you probably realize this is a must have. Like we mentioned in the Lo Dubs review, the dubstep and grime obsessed absolutely need this, and if you dug Milanese, Kode9 and the Box Of Dub comps then this too is another must have.
Pretty soon we're gonna have to stop complaining about not getting enough dubstep. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the double cd collection from PDX label Lo Dubs, and now we've got this, another killer collection from Soul Jazz, a follow up to their Box Of Dub collection. But where Box Of Dub seemed to cover a wide sonic spectrum of dubstep and modern dub, Steppa's Delight is all the current hyped shit, dubplates, white labels, singles, lots of names we already know and love, Kode9, Benga, The Bug, Shackleton, but loads more we've never heard before.
Right out of the gate, it's already a winner, with Kode9's "9 Samurai", a dubstep classic if there ever was, sounding like the RZA gone dubstep, ominous cinematic samples, a strange skittery beat, brief squalls of intense synth buzz, some creepy spoken word, this is like the dubstep version of that ubiquitous Massive Attack song, groove but so full of dread. Would be surprised if this didn't start showing up in soundtracks pretty soon (Guy Ritchie? You listening?). Next up is Benga, who while not as grim sounding, still offers up some intense minor key grooves, complex skitter, and some jagged buzzing synth melodies. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" we already loved from that Skull Disco comp a while back, and it still sounds amazing, murky and menacing, the drums muted and murky, except for the occasional gunshot-like snare blast, mumbled vocals, haunting swells and deep atmospherics. The Bug Teams up with Warrior Queen, for a dense slab of buzz, some super heavy low end, a slithery bass line, simple stripped down beats, and some crazy catchy sing songy toasting. There's even some grime here and there, with Skepta contributing a killer convoluted flow to Plastician's "Intensive Snare". Uncle Sam's dubstep is almost straight old school reggae, except for that little dubby shuffle. Goth-Trad offers up some seriously darkened dub, the neverending bassline buzz, the clattery percussion, the haunting sampled vocals, a horror movie melody straight out of Halloween. Shit, we could go on and on, track by track, but by now you probably realize this is a must have. Like we mentioned in the Lo Dubs review, the dubstep and grime obsessed absolutely need this, and if you dug Milanese, Kode9 and the Box Of Dub comps then this too is another must have.
Pretty soon we're gonna have to stop complaining about not getting enough dubstep. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the double cd collection from PDX label Lo Dubs, and now we've got this, another killer collection from Soul Jazz, a follow up to their Box Of Dub collection. But where Box Of Dub seemed to cover a wide sonic spectrum of dubstep and modern dub, Steppa's Delight is all the current hyped shit, dubplates, white labels, singles, lots of names we already know and love, Kode9, Benga, The Bug, Shackleton, but loads more we've never heard before.
Right out of the gate, it's already a winner, with Kode9's "9 Samurai", a dubstep classic if there ever was, sounding like the RZA gone dubstep, ominous cinematic samples, a strange skittery beat, brief squalls of intense synth buzz, some creepy spoken word, this is like the dubstep version of that ubiquitous Massive Attack song, groove but so full of dread. Would be surprised if this didn't start showing up in soundtracks pretty soon (Guy Ritchie? You listening?). Next up is Benga, who while not as grim sounding, still offers up some intense minor key grooves, complex skitter, and some jagged buzzing synth melodies. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" we already loved from that Skull Disco comp a while back, and it still sounds amazing, murky and menacing, the drums muted and murky, except for the occasional gunshot-like snare blast, mumbled vocals, haunting swells and deep atmospherics. The Bug Teams up with Warrior Queen, for a dense slab of buzz, some super heavy low end, a slithery bass line, simple stripped down beats, and some crazy catchy sing songy toasting. There's even some grime here and there, with Skepta contributing a killer convoluted flow to Plastician's "Intensive Snare". Uncle Sam's dubstep is almost straight old school reggae, except for that little dubby shuffle. Goth-Trad offers up some seriously darkened dub, the neverending bassline buzz, the clattery percussion, the haunting sampled vocals, a horror movie melody straight out of Halloween. Shit, we could go on and on, track by track, but by now you probably realize this is a must have. Like we mentioned in the Lo Dubs review, the dubstep and grime obsessed absolutely need this, and if you dug Milanese, Kode9 and the Box Of Dub comps then this too is another must have.
One of my favorite drone records in recent memory (Streets=X, see above) gets the remix treatment from a who's who of NZ artrock / dronerock / freerock artists. Birchville Cat Motel, Seht, 3rd Octave Band, AM and a bunch more, take the sound of the Street=X record, all droning shimmering high end skree, and try to make it their own. Birchville Cat Motel, smooths the edges and adds some humming dreaminess. Seht chops and pastes and adds the sounds of a busy highway. 3rd Octave Band turn up the volume and add some layers ofgrit and grime, feedback and amp buzz. Paul Wickham slows it all down and adds even more hum and hiss. A pretty amazing remix project in a world that certainly doesn't need anymore. It helps that the original was so goddamn good!!
Third installment of Word Sound's notorious Subterranean Hits compilations. More fucked up hip hop than you can shake a corn dog at. If nothing else, the pre-pubescent antics of Hawd Gangkstuh Rappuh MCs Wid Ghatz track on this will have the snot running out of your nose and make you scream for more... Or less. Once again these freaks single handedly make this album worth its cost. But wait, there's more: you also get excellent tracks by Sensational, Scotty Hard, Spectre and more!
One of two new dubstep comps on this week's list. The other is a sort-of-mixtape from DJ/beat maker Diplo, and is more a collection of dancefloor destroying party jams, big beats, HUGE wobbly basslines, booming system sort of stuff, and then there's this one, a double disc collection of past, present and future 12"s cut on the legendary lathe at Transition Studio, which is South London dubstep HQ, with most of those 12"s being released on one of the two in-house labels, Transition and Ringo. A quick look at the lineup should be all it takes: Distance, Skream, Cluekid, Kromestar, LD, Coki, Benga and more, all the big names, as well as a handful of up and comers, crafting some seriously deep and dubbed out darkness.
And that is basically the difference between these two comps, obviously, we're nuts for dubstep so we think both are essential, but the Diplo one is the one you're gonna blast in your car, the one that will get you out on the dancefloor and all sweaty, where this one is more laid back, stripped down, this is for after hours, winding down, late night drinks, chilling out, making out, and sure, you might blast this in your car, but you'd have the windows up, speeding down the highway, into a black expanse, or rolling slowly through rainswept empty city streets.
Low slung, dubbed out, skittery and stuttery, the beats minimal, the bass still warbly and wobbly, but more muted, this one's more about mood and atmosphere, and has some of our favorite dubstep jams yet.
Benga's "The Germ" is a haunting cinematic spy theme, with some very old school sounding horns, draped over the pulsing bass buzz and the skeletal rhythm. Distance and Skream team up on "Wiseman", a sample heavy bit of dubbed out crawl, dark and atmospheric, laced with occasional swells of ultra dense rib cage rattling bass. Kromestar takes that dubstep bass wobble and works it, choped and looped, sped up and slowed down, layered, pulled apart, the song is mostly a single stripped down beat without it, but that bass is so heavy and hooky and groovy and goddamn great! And speaking of heavy bass, Coki takes it even further out on "Goblin", playing that synth bass like some sort of metal guitar, buzzy and fuzzy and distorted and totally blown out. LD swaps his dubstep for some classic jungle on "Guerilla Warfare", a hazy old school drum and bass workout. We could go on, but needless to say, two discs, full to overflowing with some of the best dubstep out there, and if you're like us, you're gonna want this. Actually NEED this. This AND that Diplo dubstep comp. Cuz really, this is the perfect companion to that comp, one hard and heavy, one deep and dark, both totally bad ass...
Writer Daniel Ekeroth really loves death metal. Specifically SWEDISH death metal. He's Swedish, yes, and plays in a Swedish death metal band, so maybe he's biased... but we DO have to agree, there's something special about the death metal scene in Sweden, particularly back in the very early '90s when it was at its fullest flower. Sweden has bestowed upon the world some of the best in guttural growling and blasting beats, crypt-rattling riffs and of course the "Sunlight sound". We reviewed Ekeroth's encyclopedic book Swedish Death Metal a while ago. Now, here's the audio companion compilation to said book. Maybe reading a 456 page tome all about the wonders of Swedish death metal is more than you're ready for. But even if you didn't read the book (and most definitely if you DID) you might still be interested in this. Either from reading the book you'll be curious to hear the obscure bands collected here, or from listening to this you too will develop an obsession with Swedish death metal and thus need to read the book... and listen to nothing else but Swedish death metal for the foreseeable future! Don't say we didn't warn you.
Lovingly put together, this triple cd set is packed with crucial examples of the SDM phenomenon. Mostly rare demo tracks, or songs taken from vinyl-only eps... There's quite a few of the big names of course (Grave, Entombed, Dismember, At The Gates, Unleashed, etc.) but also many, many more obscure but also important bands. There's pioneering early tracks from the likes of Obscurity, Merciless, and Nihilist. Forgotten and/or underrated greats like Crematory, Afflicted, and Nirvana 2002. And, keeping death alive, the set wraps up with a couple newer bands, like genius throwbacks Repugnant!
Here's some more names either to pique your curiosity, or if you know 'em, to whet your appetite: Edge Of Sanity, General Surgery, Grotesque, Desultory, Sorcery, Carbonized, Carnage, Tiamat, Furbowl, Seance... and there's tons and tons more. 52 tracks here by 48 bands!!! And we're telling you, it's quite possible, nay probable, that the heaviest, most brutal song EVER is one of the ones included on this cd. It must be.
Disc one, covering 1986-1990 is the rawest, thrashiest stuff, exploring the cult origins of the movement, some if it super lo-fi but still crushing. What's a little tape hiss and distortion when you're listening to singing that sounds like an asthmatic cookie monster anyway? Disc two, 1989-'93, includes some all time classics, in Ekeroth's book and ours, and also delves into death/black crossover with tracks from Marduk and Dissection. And then disc three celebrates some lesser known greats, mostly covering the period 1990-1994, with a track from '98 and another from 2007 just to demonstrate that true Swedish death metal will never die.
Like we said, this is clearly a labor of love, packaged in a handsome book-like package (it looks like the book, we mean). The four-panel digipack includes a thick cd booklet with notes on each and every track by author Ekeroth, who of course was one of this release's compilers. Awesome.
This new compilation from legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun, their first proper greatest hits collection, has been getting played like crazy in the store, and it makes sense, just check out the line up, a dizzying collection of some of the greatest jangle pop and noise rock and everything in between that New Zealand has had to offer over the last THIRTY years: tracks from The Clean, The Verlaines, The Chills, The Bats, Straightjacket Fits, Chris Knox, The Dead C, The Gordons, Bailter Space, The Pin Group, Tall Dwarfs, Snapper, the 3Ds, and so many more. From the early days of the label, to now, the label having recently been re-activated/re-invigorated. Nothing here is super rare, no lost B sides or unreleased gems, so folks well versed in NZ rock, with a record collection to prove it, might not have a need for this, UNLESS you were after pretty much the ultimate kick ass NZ underground rock Flying Nun mixtape, cuz then outside of compiling your own, you'd be hard pressed to do better than this. And for folks who might have missed out on Flying Nun the first time around, this collection is overflowing with new discoveries, and so many potential new favorite bands. All sides of the label is represented, most notably, that distinctive jangle pop side, which went on ti influence pretty much every indie rock outfit since. Whether it's The Clean's impossibly catchy keyboard driven lo-fi classic "Tally Ho!" (from which this comp takes its name), or the dreamy jangle of the Chills' "Heavenly Pop Hit", which couldn't have been more appropriately titled. There's the jangly bass driven sweet harmonied girl pop of Look Blue Go Purple, that sounds like it could easily be a new retro pop 7" on Slumberland, the dreamy strum and jangle of the Bats, the quirkly lo-fi home brewed weirdo pop of The Tall Dwarfs, and then there's "Outer Space" by the 3D's which sounds like the best song the Pixies never recorded, but then there's the other side of the label, the darker, heavier more experimental side, represented here by the Dead C (of course) with a sub 2 minute blast of murky, tape manipulated, noise drenched weirdness, and the Gordons, with their dirgey, almost doomy swagger, and seriously fierce guitar crunch, Bailter Space, arguable one of the loudest bands ever, their track here dreamy and darkly shoegazey, there's the scuzzy garage rock blues of Solid Gold Hell, the Joy Division-y new wave of The Pin Group, and let's not forget about Snapper, who are like some weird sci-fi space rock, garage pop hybrid, with hooks galore, and that's totally just a taste. Like all the best comps, Tally Ho! is perfect as it is, a killer mixtape, but also, a launching of point for avid listeners to track down records by all these bands and become as obsessed now with this stuff as some of us have been for years!
Fans of The Steps, Ho: Roady Music From Vietnam and fans of instrumental exotica weirdness take note. We are happy to have chanced upon this brand new collection of gems from the cracks of music history. According to the notes on the back of the case, the
