Another fantastic collection of far out seventies South East Asian grooves, from rock to garage to surf music, once again HEAVILY influenced by American and European music of the time, although this time we do in fact mean HEAVILY, as this collection features various hard rocking jams from Asia, recorded in the seventies, all songs and sounds that lean toward the heavy, the psychedelic, the metallic even, with lots of fuzzy guitars, pounding drums, distorted horns, throbbing basslines, not to mention some wholesale borrowing from popular rock songs of the time, all given a distinctly Asian sonic makeover, mixing traditional folk vocals with thick super distorted guitar crunch, or wrapping wild psychedelic guitar freakouts around funky grooves and more traditional sounding vox.
This strange hybrid is probably best exemplified by the killer opener, Sroeng Santi's "Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng", which essentially swipes that oh so iconic riff from Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", without doing much to it at all, but then mixes it with a dark slithery low slung verse, all broody and fuzzy and a little bit sinister, with those totally irresistible Thai vocals, which as we've mentioned before, most of us heard for the first time via the Butthole Surfers' track "Kuntz", in fact, "Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng" sorta sounds like an "Iron Man" / "Kuntz" mash up, and it RULES.
Then there's Jalwal, Annie & Geerasak's "Klug Tum La", which is essentially a Thai version of Chicago's "25 or 6 To 4", that immediately recognizable riff, SERIOUSLY fuzzy and crunchy, and then the horns, fantastically atonal and harsh, adding a strange vibe, as do the sweet crooned female vox, which occasionally slip into a powerful witchy howl, there's also a seriously fierce, super distorted psychedelic guitar solo.
Another one of our favorites is Teungjai Bunpraruksa's "Kanong Krung" which is just crazy and over the top and so good, pounding and fuzzy and groovy, with wild horns, twangy guitars, frantic drumming, a fat fuzzy main riff, super strange girl gang vocals, all distorted and often erupting into wails and screams, a total free for all party anthem for sure.
A lot of the tracks here are not necessarily super heavy, but they all share a certain something, whether it's a bit of fuzzy guitar, or some wild chaotic drumming, or some psychedelic guitar leads, and the sounds do vary dramatically, with many on first listen sounding like they could have come from any of the other recent Thai and Asian comps from Sublime Frequencies or Subliminal Sounds, whether it's twang flecked Morricone-esque moodiness, or Ventures like surfiness, or groovy fuzzy exotica, but spend a little time with each song, and no matter how traditional they sound at first, before you know it, some fuzzy riff or tangle of psychedelic guitar, or burst of skronking horns, or flurry of tribal drums will surface, and the song is transformed into something else. And we do mean SOMETHING ELSE!
Includes a booklet with photos, and liner notes, with more details about the history of the music, as well as the artists and the songs.
Another Finders Keepers / B-Music treat here, folks! A collection of kooky, creepy, very cool music from the films (many of them about vampires, and many of THOSE about sexy lesbian vampires!) by French underground auteur Jean Rollin, circa 1968-1979. The late Rollin has been proclaimed the "father of European Horrortica". On the freaky fringes of free jazz and psych rock, the tracks found here are the perfect accompaniment to the director's sexy, surreal cinematic phantasmagorias. And unless we're much mistaken, we recognize one of the tracks here, Acanthus' theme to "Le Frisson Des Vampires", as having been surreptitiously covered in heavier fashion by drugged-out doomlords (and horrotica fans) Electric Wizard on their Witchcult Today album!
Another one of note is Pierre Raph's aptly-titled "Gilda & Gunshots", a track of consisting of excited percussion, jazzy bass and pretty trumpet, overlaid with whipcrack-like gun shots, girlish whimpers and cries. It could almost be some noir-jazz experiment by the Boredoms. What the heck was happening in the film scene this scored, we don't know...
We could go on describing this track by track, but there are 31 cuts in all on this disc! With great titles like "Abstract Procession", "Bizarre Cult 2", "Crotch Batterie", "Crimson Gates", and "Violent Library", these vary widely and weirdly, encompassing spooky theremin-like tones, chamber music drones, somber choirs, flute-laced grooves, melodic reveries, arrhythmic interludes, all sorts of stuff. It's a real cornucopia of suspenseful strangeness and freeform avant-rockin'. Composers/performers responsible include the aforementioned Acanthus and Pierre Raph, along with many more by Phillipe D'Aram, Yvon Gerault, Francois Tusques and others. Much of this is previously unreleased. And of course Finders Keepers provides plentiful, fully illustrated liner notes in the cd booklet.
By the way, we also have a couple copies each of the soundtracks to Rollin's films Requiem Por Un Vampire (1972, composed by Pierre Raph) and Fascination (1979, Phillipe D'Aram) on import 10" vinyl, reissued by Finders Keepers as well (key tracks from which appear on this cd collection, naturally).
Second collection of vintage 78 rpm records from the Sublime Frequencies label, following the fantastic Scattered Melodies compilation we reviewed recently, which focused exclusively on music played on the kayagum, a Korean instrument similar to the Japanese koto. This new one is all music from Burma, now Myanmar, all ultra rare recordings from 1909 to 1960, and again assembled by Robert Millis, a member of aQ faves Climax Golden Twins, and more recently, the curator of many of our favorite world music compilations.
The provenance of these recordings is almost as fascinating as the music itself. The liner notes explain that these records were collected by Millis and former Sun City Girl Alan Bishop over the course of several trips to Burma, some given to them by a dealer with boxes of records tied to the back of his scooter, others from small shops in tiny villages, one in particular where the proprietors would wash its records under the town's single faucet, and still others from their driver, who handed over a bag of records belonging to his dead father. The music itself is as varied as the sources, the A side made up of various 'zat pwe's, a term avid Sublime Frequencies fans might remember from several other SF comps we've carried in the past, and which refers to troupes that would travel throughout Burma performing their musical dramas, soaring emotional vocals, wild squiggly melodies, tinkling chimes, and darkly shimmering gamelan like percussion, some of the tracks are sung by children, the vocals almost always the focal point, the wild melodies in the background tightly wound up in those vocal melodies, making for lush tapestries of exotic inspirational sound, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
The flipside offers up several tracks featuring the Burmese harp, one of the most important instruments in Burmese music, with some tracks sounding like American blues, rich throaty vocals over laid back twang, and what sounds like wildly sawed fiddles, and the thick layer of crackle definitely furthers that whole early shellac / old timey sound. A few of the tracks are more modern, with piano, and male/female vocals, some of the tracks even sound almost like big band jazz, a definite Western influence for sure, but deftly woven into a distinctly Burmese sound. And then it's right back to another stretch of quavery almost traditional sounding Burmese folk music, buzzing strings, intricate vocal melodies, dreamy and dramatic and so divine.
When we first got this in, we sold two copies within minutes of putting the needle in the groove. Fantastic, gorgeous, utterly unique, emotional and haunting, all in equal measure. Obviously recommended for international / world music enthusiasts, but the sounds here totally transcend any sort of classification, anyone into adventurous listening and discovering new (old) sounds should most definitely take a flyer on this, you won't be sorry. Pure sonic bliss that will hopefully open up your mind, and ears, to a whole other world of music out there, past and present.
Comes housed in a heavy, old school Stoughton style tip-on full color jacket, and includes a printed insert with extensive liner notes, and rare photos.
Ecstasy Of Gold, besides being the name of an iconic Ennio Morricone track from the legendary Italian Western, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, is also the name of this incredible series of compilations, five volumes in all, this being part two, collecting classic and rare tracks from Italian Westerns. Sure, Morricone is probably the most well known, but like on the first volume, you'll find more amazing music here from some of the lesser known composers, some we knew and already love, like Bruno Nicolai Francesco De Masi, Alessandro Alessandroni, Riz Ortolani, Piero Umiliani, but plenty of unknown to us before now: Stelvio Cipriani, Vasco Vassil Kojucharov, Carlos Pes, Nico Fidenco, Marcello Giambini, Armando Sciascia, Guido & Maurizio De Angelis and loads more. But really, you don't need to know the names to dig this stuff. It's wild and psychedelic, twangy and atmospheric, all dramatic vocals, dusky guitars, exotic percussion, fluttering woodwinds, mariachi horns, groovy wah wah fuzzguitar, orchestral swells, playful xylophones, jawharp, loads of sound effects, explosions and gunshots, even some futuristic sound electronics, and yeah, of course, even some whistling. Haunting and cinematic one second, dark and brooding the next, slipping easily from jazzy and jaunty, to strident and tense, some tracks lush and orchestral, others fuzzy and psychedelic, and others ambient and atmospheric, we're digging this as much as the first volume, and like that one, it's got us wanting to track down more music from all of these folks, as well as a hankering to check out some of these films...
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES!! Like the first volume, housed in a super swank eye popping gatefold jacket adorned with more classic images from Italian Westerns, film stills, poster art and more.
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"Ecstasy Of Gold" is one of THEE most iconic songs from perhaps the most famous Italian western ever, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, and was written by none other than Ennio Morricone. And it's pretty much everything you want in a song like that, booming percussion, haunting melodies, reverby twang, galloping rhythms, swirling strings, horns, gorgeous almost operatic vocals, the sound epic and majestic and so dramatic. The only thing missing is that whistling we've come to associate with Italian Westerns (and Morricone in particular), and while Morricone might be the best known of the many composers who scored classic seventies Italian Westerns, there are plenty of others who were making music just as compelling. So while this compilation is in fact named for a Morricone track, you won't find any Morricone here, instead, a bunch of lesser known composers, some we were familiar with: Bruno Nicolai, Francesco De Masi, Alessandro Alessandroni, Piero Umiliani, while others not so much: Gianni Ferrio,, Marcello Giombini, Luis Bacalov, Stelvio Cipriani, Nora Orlandi, Nico Fidenco, but well know or obscure, the sounds here will be instantly recognizable to fans of Italian spaghetti westerns, fuzzed out surf guitar, sinister laughter, plenty of twang, woozy psychedelic exotica, tolling bells, deep dramatic vocals, mournful trumpets, acoustic guitars, barroom piano, rattlesnake percussion, hazy spectral female vocals, swirling strings, whirring organs, and yeah, some whistling of course, plus plenty of strange sound effects, like guns being fired, plus snippets of dialogue, all woven into that dusky, twangy classic Italian western sound, that will hopefully have you searching out more from some (or all) of the composers here, and heading down to your local video store to rent some of the crazy amazing flicks these tracks come from.
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES!!! Packaged in a super swank gatefold with awesome images from classic Italian Westerns, stills from films, and paintings from movie posters. So cool!
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Hot on the heels of the third volume, comes number 4, the second to last installment in this amazing 5 volume series collecting some of the most essential Italian Spaghetti Western soundtrack music, and at this point, we're not sure what else to say without repeating ourselves. Fans of the first three, we're guessing you'll probably want this one too. But for those who are only discovering this series now, odds are everybody knows Ennio Morricone, and his iconic Italian Western soundtracks (in fact the title of the series is a Morricone tune!), and while he may be the most famous, he was far from the only one, folks like Bruno Nicolai, Gianni Ferrio, Francesco De Masi, Marcello Giombini, Luis Bacalov, Stelvio Cipriani, Alessandro Alessandroni, Nora Orlandi, Nico Fidenco, Piero Umiliani and lots more (all represented here), were making equally stunning music for these amazing films. And here (and on previous volumes), you can get a taste of what they were whipping up: deep dramatic crooned vocals, swoonsome strings, lots of dusky twang, fluttery flutes, wild percussion, wheezing organs, some tracks jazzy and progged out, rife with wah and fuzz guitars, others brooding and minimal, haunting and balladic, and still others, sun baked and dusty, Mariachi trumpets over steel string strum, lots of sound effects too, super varied, and in places super psychedelic, this might be the weirdest and most varied of the bunch, and thus is as essential as the first three for sure - if not even more so!
Like the previous volumes, part 4 comes housed in a full color gatefold sleeve, adorned with various images from classic Italian Westerns as well as artwork from classic Spaghetti Western posters, and again, LIMITED TO 750 COPIES!!!
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The fifth in this ongoing series of limited double lps collecting some of the best songs from classic Italian Westerns. Named for Ennio Morricone's iconic song from the Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Ecstasy Of Gold gathers up some equally iconic tracks, as well as plenty of rare and mostly unheard gems, the list of artists should have Italo-Western soundtrack nerds freaking out: Bruno Nicolai, Nico Fidenco, Francesco De Masi, Lusi Bacalov, Stelvio Cipriani, Alessandro Alessandroni, Nora Orlandi and a bunch more. And like the past volumes, the tracks here are overflowing with dramatic crooned vocals, swoonsome strings, plenty of twang, galloping rhythms, fluttering woodwinds, flamenco guitars, wild percussion, a sound most folks are probably familiar with, but a bunch of songs and artists they might not be. And just like after digging into the other volumes, our list of must-see Italian Westerns just keeps getting longer and longer. Top of the list now is Matalo from 1970, the track here from Mario Migliardi sounds like some lost heavy psych gem, or some modern retro-psych outfit, like something you'd here on Rise Above or Cardinal Fuzz, the vocalist a dead ringer for the guy from Redd Kross (themselves genus sixties psych revivalists), with fuzzy, almost metallic riffing, and some seriously psychedelic shred, definitely need to see that movie, and hear the rest of the soundtrack. And the rest of this collection, while not all as fuzzy or psychedelic, is some seriously primo Italo soundtrack gold for sure!
Packaged in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve, adorned with bad ass illustrations from vintage Italian Western movie posters, as well as iconic images from the films themselves. LIMITED TO 750 COPIES. No download.
We reviewed the Dean Carter disc a few lists back, a killer collection of super twisted rockabilly and garage rock, ultra distorted, tons of weird effects, super rocking and far out, especially for the time. We sold a ton, and still can't seem to stop listening to it. In the liner notes, they kept mentioning a comp called The Midnite Sound Of The Milky Way, a collection of singles from the label that Dean Carter called home, and we figured if it was even half as weird as the Carter disc, we had to have it, and guess what, it totally is.
This one is not new either, a few years old in fact, but somehow we missed out both on the Carter, and the Milky Way, so we figured maybe some of you did too. More twisted garage rock, weirdo rockabilly, some proto-doom (really!) and some stuff that we're not exactly sure how to describe. One name keeps popping up all over this disc, with NINE tracks, and that's Kookie Cook, who just so happened to be a member of Dean Carter's band, and judging from these tracks, had much to do with that twisted sound. "Workin' Man" is a total classic, with a killer main riff, a bunch of whistling, some weirdly delivered sung spoken vocals, lots of "HEY!"s, some awesome drumming, and a screaming lead that lasts all of two seconds. Woah. "Don't Lie" is a slithery twisted swampy bit of blues, with frenzied howled vox, and some strange female back ups. "Revenge" is a total reverbed surf jam, with some more super strange vocals, frenzied and maniacal, all over some shimmery twang, and some seriously pounding drums. "Misery" and "I Feel Alright" are classic fifties sounding rockabilly blues jams, with bad ass guitar wrangling, all super distorted and tangled. "Ooby Dooby" is another fifties style groover, with lots of nonsense lyrics, and some really weird female back up vox, and finally, "Drums" begins with Cook shouting "Drums! Baby!" and then two minutes of wild drum freakout and occasional shouts. So good. We hope this guy has a lost album somewhere. Cook also contributes two tracks with his band the Satalites, one of which sounds a little like the Benny Hill theme mixed with surf rock, while the other is a weird slow jam, all wild manic laughing, and weird horns and 'whoop!'s in the background. And that's just Cook's tracks (which are more than enough reason to buy this), there's also the mysterious 12th Knight, whose "Death Row" is total fuzz drenched proto-doom, like Sabbath played on shitty little amps, so grim and weirdly heavy, and there's a bunch of other groups, The Cobras, Dave Marten, Four A While, George Jacks, Jack Johnson, The Grapes Of Wrath and Willie & The Travelaires, all of them cool, although not as weird or far out as Cook or as heavy and haunting as 12th Knight. Such a killer comp. Anyone who dug the Dean Carter, or just loves lost outsider gems from the sixties, this is definitely well worth checking out!
Here's one of those Good News, Bad News reviews. The good news is this 4cd box set is really fantastic, the bad news is that it's out of print and we only have 3 copies to sell. It actually came out over a year ago, but somehow we utterly missed out on it then, whoops! Too bad 'cause we probably would have made it Record(s) Of The Week! Sticking to the good news side of things, once we did finally find out out about it, despite it being already out of print, we fortunately were able to acquire a small handful of copies from Drag City, who as luck would have it had just received a few back in a return from a European distro. So, THREE of you out there are in luck. But might not know why, yet. What's the deal with the Total Groovy? Well, a while back, we reviewed what was then a vinyl-only Drag City reissue of an album called Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners, which appears as one of the discs in this box set. That lp of previously unreleased material came from the archives of Pete Shelley's own Groovy label, the Buzzcocks' singer's DIY outlet for the krautrock inspired, avant-garde experimentation of himself and his friends, and the other three discs in this box are reissues of Groovy's first three original lp releases, all from 1980.
So, first off, here's more or less what we said about Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners back in 2011:
Best band name ever? Definitely a contender. Never really thought that Pete Shelley of famed UK punks The Buzzcocks had anything like this in him, but this album is pretty damn good - almost living up to the ridiculous moniker! Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners was Shelley's oddball synth-wave project that began even before the Buzzcocks broke up in 1981. Back then, he took up the habit of inviting any number of unidentified 'guests' over to his studio to jam with anything and everything in the place; and these Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners recordings came from the many tapes that he made by these means circa 1980-1984. Who those guests in Shelley's studio might have been is anybody's guess. Ours? Maybe Eric Random, maybe Francis Cookson (who co-founded Groovy with Shelley), maybe Sally Timms from The Mekons. Regardless, the resultant recordings are an electronic-heavy art-punk with plenty of weirdo synth meanderings, Keith Levene sounding guitar splinterings, dub-inflected basslines, and scatterbrained effects. None of the punk-pop hooks of the Buzzcocks are found here, even when guitars, bass, and drums enter the picture; it's pretty much all about the studio as instrument with lots of effects swarming about the drum machine rhythms and bare-bones post-punk grooves. One could think of The Storm Bugs, Crawling Chaos, The Psyclones, or Jeff & Jane Hudson.
Then there's the other three, equally confusional discs also found here: the oscillator insanity of Shelley's solo lp Sky Yen, 41+ minutes of delightful knob-twiddling distorted drone actually recorded in 1974; some shambling drone-rock and dadaistic vocals shenanigans from a soundtrack by Sally Smmit And Her Musicians (aka Sally Timms, Pete Shelley, and others); and a record with four untitled tracks of lo-fi industrial improvised (?) rock from a unit called Free Agents. All stuff for which the terms 'weird and wonderful' were doubtless invented! Each disc comes in its own cardboard sleeve reproducing the original album art, the Free Agents one complete with miniaturized insert advertising the Groovy catalog, and tip-on cover. Also inside this eye-catching, Op Art adorned box is a booklet containing an interview Drag City did with Shelley all about everything Groovy, talking about other related projects like The Tiller Boys, revealing various influences (Eno, Can, Ralph Records), etc.
Totally great for anyone into the oddest of Messthetics tracks, NWW list stuff, or even the Boredoms' Super Roots series. Again, kicking ourselves for idiotically overlooking this when we could have gotten more, argh. So now it's first come, first served (and since we have so few, if you're mailordering this, it's always a good idea to pick an alternate as well). Good luck though - sorry to provide such a big review of something we probably won't be able to sell you!
This is an awesome collection of early and way out of print 7"s from San Diego's The Way Out Sound label. A glance at the artists is all it will take to convince you how essential this really is. All exclusive tracks from: Merzbow, Muslimgauze, Skullflower, Truman's Water, Pure, The Silver Wizard, and Holland Skin Tunnel. Essential.
Numero group return with yet another amazing reissue, gorgeously packaged, meticulously researched, It's All Pop is the second collection of power pop from the label, the first being the genius Yellow Pills, a collection of essential groups, lost gems, and classic tracks. This one is a bit more specific, and insanely obscure, as seems to be Numero's way, focusing this time on the short lived and almost completely unknown power pop label Titan, headquartered in Kansas City, existing only briefly from 1978-1981, and having only released a handful of records. But you know what they say about quality versus quantity.
Anyway, the groups on Titan's roster are who's who of unknowns, a few maybe recognizable to only the most obsessive power pop fanatics: Boys, Secrets* (yep, the asterisk is part of their name), Gems, Scott McCarl, Bobby Sky, Millionaire At Midnight, Gary Charlson, Arlis!, JP McLain, and this is normally where we'd say "and loads more", but there really isn't any more. That's it, the whole roster, a handful of tracks from each, and if you love that Yellow Pills comp, then needless to say, this will probably hit the spot too. Obvious references are the Shoes, the Rasberries, Badfinger, E.L.O., Big Star, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, the Nazz, you know what we're talking about. Simple and stripped down, jangly guitars, vocal harmonies, and hooks galore. The sound varies a bit, some of the tracks are a bit glammy, some are total straight Beatles-esque pop, a few have a more classic vibe, others are a bit more hard rocking, but however the sound is twisted or tweaked, the heart and core of these songs is super catchy, super rocking ultra catchy total old school power pop bliss.
Killer packaging of course, deluxe slip cover, two digipaks, a massive book, with extensive liner notes, loads of rare flyers and photos, and a note from label co-founder Mark Prellberg.
A bit of a Record Store Day tradition at this point, it's the yearly Todo Muere lp, a sampler of sorts from the Sacred Bones label, featuring a handful of tracks, some exclusive, others from forthcoming releases. We managed to get enough so some of you mailorder folks can nab a copy too. And like every year, it's a pretty great listen, all over the sonic map, much like the label, starting off this time with Amen Dunes, from the forthcoming full length Love, a strummy psych folk drifter that's all hazy and dreamily druggy. There's also an outtake from the Zola Jesus record Versions, which found her teamed up with Foetus, aka Jim Thirwell, for some moody, drum machine driven string heavy goth. There's an outtake from David Lynch's The Big Dream, a creepy atmospheric sprawl of drum machines, and softly swirling atmospherics, all underpinning Lynch's ominous sung/spoken vocals.
This year's comp would be worth it just for recent Record Of The Weeker Marissa Nadler's gorgeous cover of Nick Cave's "The Kindness Of Strangers", delicate and haunting, and as good as anything on her most recent full length. Pharmakon deliver another exclusive track, a super trippy industrial-gloom cover of "Bang Bang", transforming the bombast of the original into a creepy, noise flecked torch song. Pop. 1280 kick out the jams on one of the comp's exclusive tracks, a pulsing synth driven garage-punk groover, all clanging jagged guitars, snarly vox, tripped out FX, and gloom-garage noise rock stomp. The spacey psychedelic drift of Follakzoid gets the remix treatment from someone called Oskreuz-Huidobro, and turns the original into a murky sprawl of softly pulsing minimal techno-psych mesmer, that sounds like Kompakt by way of Agitated. Nice! And finally, you get a teaser for the upcoming Lust For Youth full length, a shimmery, jangly, eighties style synth popper, that sounds weirdly upbeat after the mostly dour and downer vibe of the rest of the tracks.
Killer stuff as always. Only have a handful of these left, and once they're gone, they're likely gone for good! Includes a download code as well!
We've been seeing a bunch or reviews, harshing on this, the latest in Kompakt's ongoing Total series, number 9, complaining that it's more of the same old, but hell, we love the same old Kompakt, it's the one modern techno label that has managed to sway the techno naysayers around here, and to our ears, this Total sounds just as good as any of the others. The Kompakt sound is so immediately recognizable yet on Total 9, the sounds are all over the place, it's the usual suspects, sure: Justus Kohncke, DJ Koze, Superpitcher, Thomas Fehlman, Jurgen Paape, Gui Boratto, Kaito, and a bunch more, but a few new names tossed in here and there. And the sound is glorious, less minimal than some past installments, and much more effusive, sun dappled, feel good... this could sound so good to us cuz some of the pop ambient vibe of Kompakt's other long running series might be seeping into these Total comps, but whatever, this stuff is fantastic, muted minimal beats, warm synths everywhere, bubbly loops, all woven and blurred and smeared into woozy beatscapes. Kaito's "Everlasting Dub" is one of our new favorite tracks, a gorgeous blend of Pop Ambience, modern dub, and minimal techno, SCSI-9's track is like dubstep gone Kompakt, the Gui Boratto is some awesome eighties style soundtrack techno, Superpitcher chops up some lady vocals and makes a loop that sounds like a calliope, over a soft skittery beat, Burger / Voigt do a sort of Kompakt post rock, all strummed acoustic guitars and swirling ambience, over a loping simple beat, DJ Koze employs some serious stereo panning to send your headphones spinning, we could go through track by track, but you probably already know you need this. Kompakt fans, Pop Ambient heads not averse to some beats, you'll want this for sure, and for folks thinking about getting into techno, or at least curious about modern minimal techno, this would most definitely be a great place to start.
This comp is sort of an advertisement, a promotional item, which would normally turn us right off, but this disc killer, and it just so happens to be promoting a line of hand crafted 'caveman' effects, created by none other than Nelson from Man Is The Bastard, Sleestak and Geronimo. Wondering where those fucked up sounds were coming from? The damaged electronics on the Geronimo record? Well, most likely it was a Trogotronic device helping to create that racket. They look beautiful and sound even better. Check it out:
http://www.thumbprintpress.com/trogotronic.htm
So this here comp features a who's who of noise artists who apparently endorse Trogotronic. But you know what? Even if you had no clue what the hell Trogotronic was, this comp would still stomp your ass. Check out the lineup:
Geronimo, Unicorn, Sickness, Drunk On Blood, Mike Shiflet, Torso, Bastard Noise and more and more. The sleeve even lets you know which Trogotronic device was used in each specific track. We can't tell you how close we've come to blowing our paychecks on some of these noisemakers. But for now, we're happy to make do with this disc. First off, an unreleased Geronimo track, worth it right there. An awesomely creepy electronic krautrocky crawl, all crumbling and distorted, low end crunch beneath, squealing high end siren like skree. Sounds like an outtake from their full length, which it probably is, and which of course means it's awesome! Drunk On Blood, another Man Is The Bastard side project, offers up a symphony of electronic jackhammering, pounding and pulsing, almost musically, percussive and relentless, and weirdly listenable. The Sickness track is a heaving wall of analog fury, crumbling and crunchy, the Bastard Noise track is downright pretty, a sea of squelches and a distant beastlike howling, Torso unfurl some seriously creeped out hissy dronemusic, Unicorn offer up a weird symphony of shrieks and stumbling percussive clatter, Astrogenic Hallucinating spits out some fucked up, horror movie analog video game music, we could go on and on and on.
All the tracks here are pretty amazing, some textural and drone-y, others blown out and white hot, still others, rhythmic and abstract, at the very least, you'll probably listen to this like crazy and do some serious damage to your speakers, worst case though, you'll end up like us, freaking out and NEEDING some of these noisemakers for yourself, then you can do some REAL damage!
Beautifully packaged in a fold over, silkscreened sleeve.
From the darkest past we summon thee: early 7" vinyl releases from several of Norway's elite black metal tyrants, now collected on one handy cd. So if in 1992 you missed picking up Immortal's 7" debut, or failed to get Emperor's "As The Shadows Rise" 7" ep in '94, now's your chance to add those tracks to your collection. Rare 7" tracks by Dimmu Borgir, Arcturus, and the somewhat out-of-their-league Ancient are also found here. Far from most of those bands' current highly-polished, produced sounds, these early singles are nothing if not steeped in a raw, primitve black metal urgency and atmosphere that still makes the blood run cold. And, if these classic cuts weren't enough, this digipak also includes an amazing fold-out "map" of the Norwegian blackmetal community, a kind of convoluted family tree demonstrating the unholy links among these bands and many many others. Very cool, almost essential for true black metal fiends.
We are all quite excited about the cd release of Turkish Delights comp (though Byram's a bit irked 'cause he bought the original vinyl and now is faced with a cd version that adds 11 extra tracks!). In total, there's 26 tracks here, dating from 1965 to 1971,
Along with the new cd version, we now have more copies of the "Turkish Delights" LP (which was so hard to get when it first came out that we only ever had a handful and were never able to list it). 15 tracks on this baby instead of the 26 on the cd, but what you lose in bonus cuts you gain in, uh, vinyl. And the art looks better, we think.
Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff. Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it...
Here is the ubiquitous 'label sampler', but in this case, it's almost better to treat it like its own release, since there is so much overlap/incest among the Fflint stable of artists. All unreleased stuff form almost everyone on the label. From ear-splitting noise to soothing drones to pounding distorted beats to hypnotic pulses. From calculated compositions to all out mayhem. A good overview of an awesome new label.
Another ear shredding, lung collapsing, skull crushing, hair raising, gut wrenching, ass kicking, soul soothing, spiritually devastating missive from out pals at Fflint (supplying us with some of the best experimental electronica in the world!) to tide you over until the results due from the even more unholy alliance between Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer and our own Andee's tUMULt label.
This here 'Unholy Trinity' collects tracks from Fflint regulars Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer and Cousin Silas as well as newcomer The Gideon Leeches. The 'Leeches start things off with some shimmery ambience, underpinned by a shuffling jazzy snare and lots of crystalline burbling and what sounds like the theme from the Partfridge Family, slowed down and transmitted from the bottom of a swamp. Track two finds the Leeches in more of a noisy mood, weaving together synth pulses, timestretched buzz and clattery mahinery into a drizzly doomy soundscape. Cool stuff. Look forward to more in the future. Tracks 3 and 4 come courtesy of Cousin Silas, who has one Fflint full length under his belt. Track three is a gently dreamy ambient wash of soothing tones and warm thrum. Track four is SCARY. Creepy castle ambience, with drones, and distant clanks and skittering insects in your headphones, threatening to find their way into your dark warm brain. Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer close things out with two tracks of ominous doom and gloom. Like the soundtrack to an Argento or Fulci film, this stuff is SINISTER to the nth degree. Gloomy ambient drones and ghoulish wails swirl through the abyss while people chant what sounds like 'Do it!' in the distance. Huge throbbing bass notes punctuate the grim atmosphere and the anguished (and heavily reverbed) voices of disembodied spirits reach from beyond the grave. By the final track, a thick granular drone is introduced adding tension to the already frightening proceedings, while Keith Emerson keyboards are dismantled and slowed down and spread in a thick paste over the whole damn thing until the whole thing finishes in a cacaphonous burst of desiccated samples and dismantled melodies. Another awesome release from the mighty Fflint central!
We're beginning to think, in addition to our biweekly Record(s) of the Week, we might just have to institute a Box Set of the Week. There's so many amazing reissues, so many collections of lost gems, we'd probably just make them Records of the Week proper if they weren't so expensive... this item is would be a good example. But you know what, screw it, for what you get, $45 bucks is not that much, a massive gorgeous book and two cds. So much amazing music, and fascinating graphics. Let's just do it. Record of the Week!!!
Alright. Feel better already. And it makes sense. If you're anything like us, and you sort of must be since you're reading the AQ list, this kind of HAD to be record of the week, everything we love, strange sounds from all over the world, dusty record crackle, tape hiss and vinyl warble, a beautiful music related object� A total slam dunk. And there's the fact that EVERYONE who works here has one or wants one. Dust-To-Digital are like the new Smithsonian Folkways, constantly unearthing sonic treasures and then assembling them into beautifully curated collections. And we just can't get enough.
There was the Goodbye, Babylon box, collecting classic gospel music, housed in a huge wooden box with raw cotton and a huge book, the Fonotone Records box, 5 cds and a huge book in a cigar box with a bottle opener, The Art Of Field Recording set, that WAS just like a continuation of the Smithsonian Folkways series, and assorted other single disc reissues, all meticulously researched, fantastically laid out, and packed with some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.
But this new one, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts From Bygone Days, just might be our favorite yet. Not only is it an amazing and head spinningly varied collection of musics, from African folk to country yodeling to Cantonese Opera, big band jazz to Hawaiian guitar to rhythm and blues, music from all over, Burma, Japan, Greece, Thailand, Portugal, China, Egypt, but the design is fantastic, a cloth bound hard cover book, with almost NO text, what text here is thoughtfully sequestered at the very end of the book. Where most boxes are packed with notes and recording info, the bulk of this handsome book is made up of gorgeous archival images, 78 labels, old record tins, posters, pamphlets, old greyed photographs, mailing labels, instruction booklets, all sort of Victrola ephemera. It would be well worth it just as an art book. Makes you dread the oncoming MP3 takeover, what will future generations discover of our music, old busted hard drives? None of these cool old sleeves, decaying from years of moisture and insects, gorgeous little visual artifacts offering clues as to the music contained inside.
But of course it's NOT just a book, included are two cds, a collection of various recordings drawn from the ongoing Victrola Favorites project, masterminded by AQ faves the Climax Golden Twins. Where old 78s are played on a vintage Victrola, and recorded with a microphone placed in front of the Victrola, none of that digitizing and cleaning up the sound, removing pops and clicks, this is all about the experience of listening to old 78's, sitting in a darkened parlor, in a big overstuffed chair, the air alive with dust motes, gorgeously crackly and timeworn sounds washing over you. And listening to these tracks, it does in fact feel just like that, or alternately, it's like hopping on a sonic time machine and traveling all over the world, different places, different times, a modern day Folkways, hopping in and out of times to capture brief snippets of sound and then moving on. So fantastic. If you love the Sublime Frequencies releases, and the Secret Museum Of Mankind series, this is essential listening. And the amazing thing is that even with all of these disparate sounds and styles, as a whole the collection flows if not seamlessly, in a way that is oh so pleasing to the ears.
Korean bamboo flute solos, amazing and amazingly insane yodeling, a bit of Arabian country dance music, super dramatic Greek folk music, super festive jug band music, Japanese kabuki, dark droning Indian ragas, recordings of Big Ben and traffic sounds in the UK and so much more. It's almost overwhelming. But not enough to keep us from wishing that there were ten more discs of this stuff!
So absolutely recommended.
And the packaging. WOW. Like we mentioned before, a clothbound hardcover book. In either red or white, with a Japanese style obi, packed with the above mentioned images, the liner notes and essay left for the final few pages, the cds, are uniquely held inside the front and back cover, in circular cut outs, beneath which lurk drawings of silverfish, the bane of all 78 collectors, as they eat up the sleeves!!
We got our first real taste of Mauritanian music via the Hadrami Ould Medeh single that we reviewed on the last list, which we described like this: "fluttering flutes, muted wah wah guitars, shuffling drums, and the vocals, emotional and oh so lovely", which it most definitely was, but it definitely did not prepare us for this a collection of, as the title suggests: Wezin, Jakwar and GUITAR BOOGIE From The Islamic Republic Of Mauritania. Guitar boogie? Sure some of those Sublime Frequencies comp featured some guitar playing that loosely resembled boogie, a little bit of buzz and distortion, Group Bombino let loose once in a while, but we sort of assumed that the above title was a bit of a creative exaggeration, that is until we pushed play. And immediately, some heavy, fuzzy, circular riffing, all wound around a muted rhythmic pulse, the sound slipping from low end riffy chug to wild psychedelic tangle. This is most definitely psychedelic boogie, it just so happens it's being played in some backyard or living room on the other side of the world.
The history of Mauritanian music is pretty fascinating, as is the provenance of this music, and the booklet/liner notes go into great detail, but for now, all you need to know, is originally, music in Mauritania was played either on the tidinitt, an hourglass shaped lute with 4 or 5 strings, which is played exclusively by men, and has since been replaced by an electric tidinitt, which became popular as a faster form of dance music developed. Then there was the ardin, a type of many stringed harp, played only by women. But as this comp, and the liner notes make clear, the electric guitar has become the instrument of choice, originally the amplification made it easier to play for bigger crowds, but soon, a style of playing was adapted to this new music, and the classic Mauritanian music was transformed into something totally new. This heavily distorted, strangely flanged groovy boogie flecked African folk. The songs here may drift and shimmer, but they inevitably explode into some super droned out cyclical buzz drenched riffage, the drums following along, sometimes the sound growing so intense and frantic, one can almost imagine the sort of energy this evokes in a crowd. And that's the other interesting thing about Mauritanian music, there is no music industry, no record labels, no real recording studios, yet music is happening all the time, in homes, and weddings, parties, every night, in town squares, and when someone hosts a function and has musicians perform, they record the performance, as a sort of keepsake, which is often thrown into a drawer, or an old box. So Matthew Lavoie, who compiled this collection, over the course of years and many visits, gathered up as many recordings as he could and sifted through boxes and boxes of tapes, as many of them were unusable, recorded on broken boomboxes, or with a microphone in the back of a room capturing more conversation than music, but the selections here, hand picked, are indeed divine, and so powerful, the music trancelike, raga-like, melding certain Western musical tropes with traditional African sounds, and the traditional sounds that over the years have grown less and less traditional, or in fact have simply created new musical traditions.
Just listen to the samples, this stuff is so hard to describe, to do it justice, this is the ultimate instance of 'you just gotta hear it', the sounds are cyclical, repetitive, looped sounding, mesmerizing, hypnotic, heavy, and buzzy, and distorted, the melodies so completely enthralling, the rhythms as propulsive as the guitar playing, the recordings too, raw, in-the-red, intimate and urgent and emotional, so passionate, unfettered by any concerns removed from the actual joy of music making, and the interaction between performer and audience is evident in the vocal response to these jams, the crowd singing along, hooting and hollering, the vibe wild and loose and alive, the music magical and incredible. Easily some of THEE most amazing sounds we've ever heard. And definitely our new favorite world music comp.
Housed in a nice 6 panel full color digipak, with a massive booklet, jammed with liner notes as well as tons of photos, and lots of info on the musicians, the various songs, a history of Mauritanian guitar playing and more!
Documenting the sound of Middle American hippie rockers heavying it up and heading to Middle Earth, singing songs about wizards, sorcerers, Sauron, and Satan, this is just so up our alley. Heck, there are several of us here, who by virtue of our particular, peculiar subcultural enthusiasms, were primed to flip out HARD over this. So if anything was ever meant to be a Record Of The Week, this sure was! Man, those nerds over at Numero have outdone themselves. It's not like Numero hasn't brought us some great compilations of long lost gems before - heck that's what they DO - they've got a well deserved rep for digging up truly obscure vintage soul music that's also totally top notch stuff. But as you've surmised, this ain't no soul. In the past, Numero have unearthed some wonderful rarities in other genres, from folky female singer-songwriters to Southern rock to power pop. But now, with this latest entry in their Wayfaring Strangers, er, WARfaring Strangers, series of comps, entitled Darkscorch Canticles, they've entered another dimension entirely, a dark and mystical hard rockin' realm of fuzzed-out, bellbottomed, pot-scented, proggy proto-metal basement jams!!
There are 16 tracks of fantastical garage rock from the depths of the '70s to be savored here, rescued from one-off, privately pressed 45 singles done by sub-sub-sub-Sabbath acts that seriously nobody has ever heard of before. That's kind of what's most amazing about this, that these tracks are so great, and yet also so unknown. We've talked to a few friends who consider themselves proto-metal experts, some of whom were rather incredulous about this, halfway suspecting it must somehow be a fake just cuz they didn't already know of ANY of these bands! By the way, we're convinced it's not a hoax - though if it were, that would actually be even more amazing - especially considering there's a densely-packed cd booklet / lp insert filled with vintage band photos, original 45 label graphics, and in-depth, highly detailed liner notes provided about each artist in tiny, tiny print (backgrounded by graph-paper dungeon drawings).
Last year Numero put out a vinyl-only archival collection of tracks by one of the bands found here, Chicago's Medusa, that we thought was pretty cool, and really should have reviewed but for some reason never did (we do still have a copy in stock, in all its black velvet glory!). At the time, Numero told us that release was a teaser for an entire compilation of obscure "D&D" rock of the same ilk that they planned to do, and they spoke the truth. Through the mastery of the dark arts, presumably, they somehow assembled this, digging up an outrageous assortment of over-the-top tunes from all these forgotten bands, whose names alone conjure vibes of myth and magic, sword and sorcery: Wrath, Triton Warrior, Stone Axe, Stonehenge, Dark Star, Stoned Mace, Hellstorm, Wizard, Arrogance, and more - including not just the aforementioned Medusa but also another band from Chicago called Gorgon Medusa. The earliest entry is from 1970, the latest from 1980, but they're all equally ancient-sounding. More like rickety sixties-ish heavy psych really, than anything metallic from the '80s or beyond, the stress here being on the "proto" side of the proto-metal tag. Stuff in the vein of Iron Butterfly and Bloodrock and Bubble Puppy and Captain Beyond.
You get low-budget occult organ prog epicry, and uber-distorted riff-rockin', and spaced out downer rock balladry, and badass boogie in Satan's service. We won't go track-by-track, though we're tempted, but a few of the standout faves for us include Wrath's "Warlord", especially due to the zombified vocals from someone who sounds like a brainwashed adolescent girl / cult victim (the guitarist's wife, apparently) intoning the scary lyrics about "living in lust as Satan must"; Inside's "Wizzard King", a blown-out, lo-fi rocker that asks the musical question: "Don't you wanna be a wizzard king, don't you wanna be free? / Don't you wanna be a wizzard king, don't you wanna be me?"; and Stone Axe's "Slave Of Fear", which sounds like Arthur Brown fronting a very early Black Sabbath or Blues Creation. But there's so much good stuff on here, enough to require a saving throw vs. acid rock or else become completely addicted, spinning this repeatedly.
The art and design deserve a mention as well. Both formats come in slipcased cover art consisting of newly-rendered stylized logos (embossed, in metallic ink!) for each band on the comp, like some artistically-inclined burnout teen doodling on a school binder. In terms of packaging, this really couldn't be any cooler - oh, wait, well, maybe it could - we should tell you, that if you wait a couple months, Numero will be selling (direct mailorder only, not in stores, grrrr!) a special edition of this consisting of the lp, the cd, AND a vaguely D&D-esque BOARDGAME, where the players take on the roles of these rock bands competing with each other in the fantastic realm of Darkscorch. Even if you never actually play the game we're pretty sure it will be an amazing artifact just to look at. It's gonna be, like, $100 though.
Ok, to wrap up: trying to explain why this comp is so rad is kind of like trying to explain the appeal of The Lord Of The Rings to someone who hasn't read it. Or D&D to someone who hasn't played. So just trust us, and we recommend trying those two things as well if you haven't!
Killer intercontinental compilation from Israeli label Heart & Crossbone, who in the past have brought us equally killer releases from black thrash duo Barbara, weird noise metal combo Cadaver Eyes, ultra noisemakers Lietterschpich, blown out avant noise rockers Grave In The Sky, one-man experimental grind band Mildew, and most recently, the mysterious field recording-ed skitter and clang of Lagan Tapes. Not a bad track record at all! For this comp, curiously called What Pleasing The Lord Looks Like Marriage, they've gathered up 8 of their favorite extreme noise and metal bands, 4 from Israel, 4 from Japan, some mentioned above, all pretty kick ass.
First up is Ryokuchi, a bass and drums doom duo from Japan, who start out with some shakuhachi and tribal drumming, before launching into a crushing, lurching sludge, dense downtuned heaviness, tons of shrieking feedback, chugging crunch, and bellowed vox. Cadaver Eyes are up next, their track begins with a thick caustic slab of undulating drone, all buzzing overtones, and layered rumbles, eventually the drums kick in, and a Khanate-like pace, the vocals tortured and harsh, the backdrop a low end slow motion doom, definitely for the ultramegadoomlords out there. Back to Japan for Zenocide, who also offer up their own sludge-y slowness, with some incredible, monstrous vocals, WAY up in the mix, the music a stripped down sort of stonery doom, think Church Of Misery crossed with Corrupted, but those vocals, holy shit, SCARY.
Not sure why Lietterschpich appended 'diet' to their name, this doesn't sound any lighter or less heavy than past outings, instead, more super abstract percussive freakouts, shimmery soft noise and dubbed out doom, a swirling skree or chopped and processed sounds, all layered over a wall of buzzing crumbling sound, and those chaotic drums. MONEYISGOD from Japan are another band new to us, but again, we have to say HOLY SHIT, these guys are fucked up and heavy and awesome! Buzzing glitchy layers of noise, super blown out heavy percussion, and the occasional vocal blurt, like a way more ominous angry Boredoms, quickly giving way to a cloud of caustic white noise, all the while those drums keep pounding away. Poochlatz are another longtime aQ fave from Israel, and here they get their Whitehouse on big time, although it's like a muddy, murky, muted Whitehouse, another squall of swirling noisiness, of fuzz and buzz and hiss, peppered with strangled super processed vox, the whole thing stuttering and skittering and constantly pulsing and throbbing, almost like a Buttholes Surfer noise mix!
The comp finishes off with two more new-to-us combos, first up Remesh, from Israel, who are also plenty noise, there noise expelled in great big blown out gouts, industrial, heaving, hissing, effects drenched vocals bellowing beneath that undulating sea of harsh sound, but not so harsh that it isn't listenable, although certainly harsh enough to keep away all but the very iron eared.
And finally, Japan's Nerveless, mistakenly credited as Neverless, who close things out with a massive 20 minute noisedoom freakout. There is a riff, a massive crumbling super distorted bassy one, that lurches glacially, while all around it swirls dense sheets of low end throb, and a symphony of what sounds like that wind-on-microphone crackle and crunch. It's like Corrupted and Boris filtered through a blown Merzbow subwoofer. Noisy, but strangely hypnotic and heavy.
Like all good comps, this will definitely leave you wanting more from most, if not all of these outfits, another noisy heavy winner from Heart & Crossbone!
Yet another killer dubstep comp, this one focusing on the Bristol scene, which may not mean anything to you, until you get a gander of the folks on this comp: Pinch, Peverelist, Appleblim, Joker, Guido, RSD, Headhunter, Gatekeeper, names anyone into dubstep is familiar with, but a whole bunch of lesser knowns like Hyetal, Dubkasm, Gemmy, Jakes, Forsaken, Shortstuff, Wedge, Shadz, Dubboy, Komonazmuk, Atki2 and more.
There are extensive liner notes about the scene, and one of our favorite quotes, courtesy of Pinch,which pretty much sums up what's so awesome about dubstep, the Bristol strain specifically:
"I knew straight away that this was a sound that would fit perfectly in Bristol. There is a lot of tension in the music that carries a satisfactory darkness with it but it's also lazy music. You don't have to dance hard to move with it. It was born with a reefer in its gob."
No need to dance, just sit back, bliss out, and let the music wash over you. And this comp is full of the perfect sounds. Dark and minimal, skeletal and skittery, for dubstep obsessive, you probably already have a handful of these, but there are probably plenty you don't. Moody and mysterious, dark and haunting, some of the tracks are hushed and muted and murky, others are fully dubbed out and drenched in reverb and echo, while still others, our favorites, and thick, and buzzy, with huge warbly bass, and minimal stuttery beats, Headhunter's "7th Curse" is a killer, a sort of grim sci-fi slow motion groove, RSD gets all jungle-y with his "Pretty Bright Light", Smith And Mighty unleash some serious ragga dubstep on "B Line Fi Blo", Joker lays down some synthy buzz and big ass bass warble on "Holly Brook Park" and Hyetal gets all videogame electro, weaving 8bit melodies and swirling synths into a seriously cinematic sprawl of futuristic stutter and pulse, throb and buzz. So good. Pretty much every track here slays, another unanimous AQ fave for sure, getting crazy play in the store...
We've been totally digging the always amazing Ethiopiques series, documenting the rich history of Ethiopian music, and it just keeps getting better and better with each volume. You think that would be plenty to keep the folks at Buda Musique busy, but apparently not, as they've gone ahead and launched a new series entitled Zanzibara, chronicling the Swahili popular music of the East African Coast. Future volumes will be more archival, but this first installment celebrates Ikhwani Safaa, Zanzibar's (and most likely Africa's too) oldest music club, which turned 100 in 2005. These recordings, captured in Zanzibar in 2004 and Dubai in 2005, feature some of the region's most revered singers and players, all gathered to play classic songs and celebrate the last 100 years. The music here is dramatically different than anything in the Ethiopiques series, much more moody and hypnotic, less festive and jubilant, but no less captivating. The interesting thing is that the music here sounds unlike any of the African music we are familiar with and instead sounds much more Indian or Arabic. The vocals especially, sound distinctly Indian, as well as the swooning soaring strings. Lush, moody, swirling, slightly saturnine, and absolutely wonderful.
BACK IN PRINT, this former Record (or Records, or Book, or whatever it is) of the Week!!!
Holy cow!!! A freaking flexidisc BOOK. And if that wasn't already cool enough, just check out the lineup: Thee Oh Sees, Bare Wires, The Fresh & Onlys, Blasted Canyons, Ty Segall And Mikal Cronin. Almost entirely unreleased and exclusive tracks. And did we mention the flexidisc book?
Yeah, a big book, it sort of feels like one of those baby books kids can take in the bath, thick heavy pages, still softcover, but hefty, and the design is incredible, full color, super retro, all the band pages some old product reimagined using the name of the band, presented on thick glossy pages, over which lays the band's flexidisc, printed in cool metallic inks, and see through, so you can see the picture in the book through the record. And just an aside for folks who don't actually know what a flexidisc is, it's a sheet of plastic, into which record grooves are cut, and back in the day, that's how magazines gave away songs, by including flexidiscs (Mad Magazine used to include flexidiscs all the time!), but anyway, five flexidiscs, all housed in this cool spiral wire bound book! And if this wasn't already worth it as just a cool musical object, this musical object just so happens to have ten tracks from five of our favorite bands!
Thee Oh Sees get all abstract and post punky on "Burning Spear", channeling Wire through their reverby garage crunch, before slipping into the shimmy shake of "What You Need (The Porch Boogie Thing)" complete with falsetto vox. The Fresh & Onlys offer up two short sharp tracks of vintage retro jangle pop, all reverby and echoey and hooky as hell, laced with girl group backup vox and warm whirring organ. Bare Wires kick out the jams on two total retro classics, sounding more and more like they were actually transported here from the sixties, total Who worshipping jangley mod-pop radness. Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin try their hand at some Bowie covers, transforming "Fame" into an echo drenched dirge, and "Suffragette City" into a supercharged garagepunk blowout. Recent Record Of The Week-ers Blasted Canyons contribute two songs from their Record Of The Week (this was actually meant to come out first), but if you needed a teaser/taster, these two songs should convince you, fuzzy blown out, synth heavy garage pop space punk bliss, dueling boy/girl vocals, thick buzzing synths, wild crashing drums, big riffs, sixties girl group shimmy via modern garage rock crunch, and of course hooks galore. The mysterious bonus track which was available with the first pressing, and was cut right into the back of the book, is sadly no longer included, but it IS included in the digital download!
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PLAYING YOUR GROUP FLEX: Do not tear out the flexidiscs, just fold the book back, with the record you want to play on top, then set the whole book on your turntable, when it's time to play the next record, simply turn the page, and put the book right back on the turntable. And repeat.
And look out for Group Flex volume 2, which we hear is upcoming!!
Okay, it's time to come clean. After fighting it for years. And beginning every techno review with a disclaimer like "we don't really like techno all that much", it's time to just admit it, we love techno. We do. well, we must, this is the SECOND comp called I Love Techno that we've raved about on the list. And we've been listening to it nonstop since it first came in. Sure we love Pop Ambient, and heroin house, and all the more minimal weirdo shades of techno, but the stuff on this comp falls closer to the French stuff we also love, Daft Punk, Justice, with wild buzzing synths, pounding big beats, crazy melodies, and this comp is overflowing with total dancefloor destroyers. The first I Love Techno comp, was a bit more on the minimal side of things, playing into a sound we already loved, but this 2008 collection is not minimal at all. It's maximal. Big time. Snarling, swirling, buzzing, pounding, wild, sweaty, strobe lit, electro flecked, synth heavy techno, and if we actually were inclined to dance, this comp would keep us moving FOREVER.
Opening with a brief burst of old school electro, the sound quickly shifts to a killer mashup, pounding beats and buzzy spacey synths, and cold clinical spoken female vocals, IN GERMAN. Cold wave via Daft Punk. Or something. And after that's it's on, and it don't stop. Synthesizers buzz and howl, squeal and shriek, beats shuffle, skitter, pulse, throb and pound, this shit is wild and weird and freaked out and actually sort of heavy in its own way.
Two tracks right in the middle, one by Bingo Players, the other by Les Petits Pilous, are completely nuts, jagged chunks of synth buzz, shooting out staccato style, locked in with pounding beats, like the frenzied climax of the ultimate techno jam, stretched out into whole songs. The record closes with the ultimate techno one-two punch. Boys Noize, who assembled this comp, offer up "My Head", which begins a hiccupping chopped up stutter, laced with squiggly synths, and it just gets more sharp and caustic and jagged and blown out and groovy and funky and far out as fuck. Which segues perfectly into Errorsmith's "In A Sweat", which starts out all fuzzy and hiss drenched, muted beats all strangled and stunted, before the beat drops, a super distorted fuzzy groove, that just gets weirder and weirder, the various synths slip from super low end buzz, to super sharp high end skree, constantly shifting tone and timbre, while the beat manages to stutter and skip all over the place, the whole thing culminating in a high end hiss storm.
So yeah, I suppose we do love techno. That is, as long as techno always sounds this funky and freaked out and fucked up and kick ass. Way recommended. Even for technophobes, as this has definitely won over a few of those around here.
Second archival release (the first one sold out before we could get enough to list) from this legendary underground New Zealand rock combo, whose name is most likely familiar to only the most NZ obsessed, but a list of the bands whose members got their start in Vacuum, should definitely get your attention: Pin Group, Terminals, Scorched Earth Policy, Bilders, etc. This was WAY pre-Flying Nun, these tracks culled from late seventies cassettes, but it's easy to hear the sound that would eventually help define a sound that we (and much of the rest of the world) would grow to love. The Christchurch sound started here, and it sounds as good now as it ever did, especially considering how many current bands, whether knowingly or not, continue to borrow and steal from the early NZ days.
The first track "Walking Slow" is a scorcher, murky and lo-fi but somehow still jangly and lush, a droned out jangle pop that manages to take the sounds of the Velvets and make it their own, super catchy, but also sort of cyclical and mesmerizingly repetitive, an early instance of the 'hypnorock' we love so much. "Born & Bled" is even murkier, with drums that sound more like a janky drum machined, the riffage definitely looped sounding, the vox here anguished, the sound more damaged, and way more lo-fi, bordering on experimental, a darkly gloomy pop that definitely foreshadows much of the current crop of gloom poppers.
The flipside is all organ driven drone rock bliss, mumbled vox buried beneath crashing waves of jangle and buzz, churning chords and sixties style drum thump, finishing off with a hooky slab of slithery garage pop stomp rife with crooned vox, the sound blown out, and gloriously distorted.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
The tongue twistingly monickered Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, who shell henceforth be referred to as VEGA, has been a huge favorite around these parts, ever since we first laid ears on their Cocaine album.
When we first got that record we were really expecting something fucked up and damaged and bizarre, but instead, Cocaine ended up being one of the fiercest most frenzied and fastest black metal discs we had ever heard, a total soul shearing onslaught so drenched in buzz it seems impossible that the whole thing didn't collapse under the weight of all that buzzing and blasting.
Well here we are revisiting VEGA's past, and guess what, they actually did used to be seriously fucked up and bizarre, their black metal still fierce and frenetic, but tempered by weird eighties style Goblin-y synthscapes and weirdo new wave and all sorts of other whatthefuck-ness.
The opener is appropriately black metal, an intro, but even there, the brooding synths and ominous drones are laced with processed children's voices which are FREAKY. So then, as black metal record law dictates, the next track should be a serious blast of black metal fury, but here, well, it sounds like some eighties John Carpenter soundtrack, or the chase scene in some cheesy sci-fi flick, or Goblin at their new waviest, but fuck it, who cares what the BM bylaws dictate, this stuff is awesome. Haunting and cheesy, dramatic and so over the top, and all over the place, slipping into some ominous synthy drones, before transforming into some minimal almost jungle jam, the skittery beats underneath warm woozy synths and creepy minor key melodies, and finally some harsh black metal vox over the top. And then buzzing guitars. Dropping in with about 50 seconds to go. Fuck yeah. Did we mention we love these guys? Well we love them even more now.
It's not all insane cheesy new wave weirdness, the follow up "Kill Me" explodes in a frenzy of grinding blackness, but even then, part way in, shifts gears and becomes super melodic with soaring melodies, and mathy rhythms, but you know what, by the end, the track has somehow transformed into another synth drenched skittery new wave outro.
And so it goes. Easily half the record is soundtracky new wave-y weirdness. And these guys nail it. Zombi, Proscriptor, you Carpenter / Goblin revisionists better watch your asses, cuz this takes all that stuff and gets it all tangled up with black buzz and blurred blasts. And those are definitely the best moments, when harsh vocals are laid over skittery electronic drums and whirling synths, so wrong it's right!
The band are still capable of spewing black filth with the best of them, "Insex Infect" is a solid 4 minutes of blown out in-the-red black heaviness, putting most BM bands to shame, but then moments later, they offer up a creepy bit of synthy ambience, only to lurch right back into another black frenzy.
The black metal here is top notch, so heavy and brutal and grim, incredible riffs and wild drumming, harsh vokills, and dense tangled arrangements, but the other stuff, it's not just throw away, like most bands tossing in a little keyboard interlude, it's well crafted, dark and mysterious and haunting, ominous and sinister, even without the metal, this would have been an awesome retro chunk of new wave Goblin worship, but with the metal, it's something far more fucked up and GENIUS.
Packaged in one of those oversized super jewel cases. Andee's black metal reissue of the year!!!!
While we are admittedly totally obsessed with damaged and demented, freaky and fucked up, bizarre and obtuse outsider black metal, every once in a while we'll discover a band who manage to incorporate bits of all of those things, but in a way that's much more subtle. A band can be really weird without being totally fucked up. Completely demented without stumbling and struggling and sounding totally damaged. A band can be furious and fast, heavy and complex, brutal and intense, but still be super far out and perplexingly bizarre. Think Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, and now the VEGA Corporation. Or V.E.G.A. Or more specifically, Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere. Thanks to AQ pal Drew for turning us on to these guys. We were definitely surprised when we finally heard them. Not at all what you might expect. With a name like Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, and a record called Cocaine. Some trippy abstract very UN-metal artwork and a liner note proclamation that goes like this:
"(V.E.G.A.) supports freedom of thought, sometimes misunderstood as insanity by the most.
The band was born at the last breaths of black metal and dies soon after.
This album is a gift to its memory... a dead-born child... a trip went wrong... a nightmare in your brain...
Feed your insanity...
We now live in the future... as lights, always hiding in the dark, yet shining... as a new band, "VEGA-KORPORATION"
Totally devoted to the exploration of mind, soul and technology..."
We were totally prepared for some stumbling recorded-in-a-cave, howling, midtempo, warbly damaged black buzz. And we would have been totally happy with that for sure. But this band is absolutely nothing like that at all.
V.E.G.A. are impossibly grim and so Incredibly fierce and furious. We talk about black metal bands sounding buzzy all the time, but this is a whole 'nother thing. The first track is some sort of ultimate demonic buzz direct from the fiery pit. A buzz that is sharp and jagged, so blown out and strangely panned, that it almost makes you dizzy listening to it. Careening like a pissed off swarm of hornets from speaker to speaker, the buzz distorts and crumbles, fades out and then swoops back in super hot and completely oversaturated. It definitely sounds like there is something seriously wrong with your speakers, in a GOOD way! And within that buzz is a twisting squirming vortex of fuzzy riffs, insanely blasting beats, shrieked vocals, all in a dense super complex tangle of black fury. One song was all it took. Not only were we totally and completely sold. We were also totally brutalized. Exhausted. Our ears beaten to a bloody pulp. And we LOVED it. The record veers wildly back and forth between impossibly brutal buzzing and more Burzumic midtempos with just a bit of a groove like Khold. But either way, the songs are dense and dark, furious and brilliantly fucked up. And that's not even taking into account the non-metal elements which are legion. Songs are peppered with weird sonic bits, and separated by haunting interludes that range from creepy children singing to women screaming in terror, stretches of industrial pummel with skittery drum machines and super processed Laibachian Teutonic growls to dreamy blissed out minor key jangle with Mark E. Smith sort-of-spoken vocals, massive glacial dirgescapes of downtuned sludge, peppered with Godflesh style beats to weird folky foresty ambience. But unlike a lot of bands, those bits are just that, bits, little bits of unlikely shading, small demented complements to the bands furious metallic onslaught.
That is until you get to the epic fourteen minute closing track. A vast expanse of weird record crackle spread in a thick patina over soaring minor key strings and distant muted drums. Creepy and dreary, but sort of super emotional and sublime. It sounds a bit like an old scratched up Godspeed 45 being played on a Victrola while on another Victrola, someone is playing a super scuffed copy of some old Scorn 12" on the wrong speed, the machine like beats perfectly drifting into the majestic grandeur of the strings and swoonsome ambience. After a brief bit of silence, we're suddenly tossed into some sort of weird eighties sounding synth rock, a bizarre electronic drums drenched video game music sort of jam that is just totally twisted and not a little bit out of place. It eventually morphs into a more metal version of Goblin, creepy and slightly cheesy with big thick distorted guitars laid over top. Woah.
A definite contender twisted black metal record of the year for sure!
Some cool post rock doom weirdness from Sweden, taking all the usual elements, pounding drums, chugging downtuned guitars, etc, and mixing in plenty of post rock, which yeah, is not such a huge deal these days, but all the PIANO probably is! Yep, Piano! Vaka is piano driven, drum heavy post doom heaviness. The drums, like the piano are crucial to the sound, recorded LOUD, way up in the mix, locked in with the piano, creating these killer brooding slow burning post rock epics, pounding, hypnotic, looped, repetitive, imagine a doomier heavier more stripped down Godspeed, or Neurosis if you swapped out most of the guitars for piano. That all makes sense when you realize Vaka is basically a one man band, the same guy playing drums and piano, crafting his perfect band, a crushing, pummeling, doomic piano / drum duel, with occasional bellowed vox, moaning cellos, and distorted riffage.
Because of the focus on the piano and the drums, the sounds often ends up sounding less like doom metal or post rock, and something much more akin to post punk / post industrial a la the Birthday Party, or Einsturzende Neubauten, Swans or even Cop Shoot Cop, very rhythmic, dark, with a hint of cabaret, grand and epic and dramatic and majestic, pounding and for sure industrial at times, definitely melodic, yet still dense and mathy and heavy.
Another vinyl only release from the Tower Recordings' Matt Valentine and it's a doozy. Two massive sides of druggy, psychedelic drone folk clatter. Side A starts with a dreamy smear of reverbed banjo, very gorgeous and thick. Quickly gives way to an extended spaced out clattery free form jam, definitely informed by No Neck Blues Band and the like. Side B is a hazy, shimmery raga of sonic swirls and buzzing melodies, very reminiscent of Vibracathedral Orchestra or Sunroof!.
Pressed on gorgeous swirled green vinyl and of course limited.
From John Fahey to Jack Rose, we've reviewed loads of amazing modern Appalachia, from straight folk / bluegrass to buzzing droning acoustic ragas. But this just might be the perfect mix of the two, and thus may be the nicest chunk of acoustic / Appalachia / Raga / drone / avantfolk EVER. Really. Tower Recordings' Matt Valentine and Erika Elder give us nine tracks that slip smoothly back and forth between delicate, fingerpicked acoustic bluegrass and almost straight folk workouts, to snarling swirls of dense acoustic drones, with thick buzzing melodies, that wrap you in thick layers of shifting overtones and prickly hum. The vast (and unlikely) instrumentation: guitar, cumbus, oscillator, harmoniaca, big muff, carhorn, dogs, tamboura, kecapi, wood flute, Indian flute, pennywhistle, kazoo, percussion, sruti box, and siren help make the sound super dense and super rich and totally all enveloping. Limited, sorry.
Killer collab between Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, JK Flesh, etc.) and Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Hototogisu, Sunroof!, etc.) along with Samantha Davis who plays with Bower in Voltigeurs, who team up for some seriously old school blackened industrial noise dirge bliss. aQ pal Matt described it as sounding like Skullflower's Birthdeath / Form Destroyer / IIIrd Gatekeeper records "but maybe just a little prettier", which is definitely not that far off the mark. Four long tracks, thick clouds of caustic guitar swirl, blurred riff-noise, and churning chordal thrum, shot through with buried melodies, streaks of feedback, all anchored by a primitive plodding drum machine rhythm. That's the first track at least, best listened to through headphones, which like a lot of recent Bower projects, reveals a whole other world of sonic subtleties beneath the roiling surface, and here it's dreamily keening melodies, some woozy downtuned chugs, and some dense layered noisiness that ends up sounding more trancelike and hypnotic that harsh or brutal.
"Ourobous" is more of the same, only with the treble dialed way back, and the low end cranked as high as it'll go, a murky muddy dirge, with a more forceful, double kick driven beat, the dueling guitars sparring in jagged tangles over a swirl of blackened buzz and crunch, until the drums drop out, and the song is transformed into a weirdly mesmerizing ur-drone, one guitar rumbling and whirring while the other unfurls almost black metal sounding riffs, that soar skyward like some black metalized Sunroof! "Naga" pushes the robotic rhythm to the fore, letting the guitars (and this time a very audible bass) grind away, plenty of skree and howl, the bass providing some serious heft, the rhythm section seriously pulverizing, wreathed in a cloud of wild psychedelic guitar freakout.
"The Exit Door Leads In" is the longest of the bunch, at 12+ minutes, and is the perfect mix of Godflesh industrial dirge, and Skullflower blackened skree, with all sorts of riffs and melodies and rhythms seeming to gradually come into focus only to dissipate back into the endless psych-noise squall. This final track also seems to have a driving melodic component, that makes it feel the most songlike, sort of gloomy and haunting, like if you stripped away all the guitar noise, you'd be left with some sort of gloomy gothic almost cold wave sounding dirge, but add the guitars, and the noise, and it becomes a dense, darkly driving noise rock space-psych jam that could go on forever and ever, and is the sort of thing that might even appeal to super adventurous fans of outfits like White Hills, The Heads, Carlton Melton and other psychedelic space rockers.
Needless to say, fans of Skullflower, Godflesh and and various like minded, Broken Flag beholden, industrial psychedelic noise outfits, will dig this A LOT!! Limited to 500 copies.
Here's a pretty fantastic discovery we just made (although the disc was released a few years ago). It's a seventy-minute long single track entitled "Neheh", the result of four members of French prog-weirdos Magma jamming together one night in '73. We thought this would sound like a scaled down Magma, or some sort of jazz improv session. But, instead, this neither. It's absolutely unlike the jackboot precision of Magma circa '73's "Mechanik Destructiw Kommandoh" (which was in fact recorded, like, the next day!). Although this does share the esoteric spiritual aspects of Magma, there's none of Magma's grandiose rock/jazz/Wagner fusion here. Rather, it's a late-night excursion into kosmiche avant-hippy freakout realms, starting with unearthly vocal chant/drone and moving into percussion spasms, clarinet eruptions, and organ improv. So, instead of mother-band Magma, this should be compared to Amon Duul, the Sun City Girls, the No Neck Blues Band, Yahowah 13, and (closer to home) Thuja. Beautiful and wild, totally inspired. It's strange that this went unreleased until the '90s-- maybe Vander and Co. didn't want to dilute the Magma concept with something so loose and organic and, uh, 'of the times'. Still, it's one of our absolute favorite Magma-related documents, and should even appeal to those scared off by Magma's prog/fusion chops. Recommended!! (By the way, along with this, we've restocked a bunch of Magma classics, and we definitely have 'em at the best price you'll probably find anywhere.)
Vanessa Van Basten are from Italy and are a they, not a she. We were never able to get copies of VVB's last record, so we wanted to make sure we didn't miss out this time around. Two long tracks, total post rock nirvana, equal parts, Mogwai, Pelican, with plenty of nineties style mathrock mixed in, a bit of Polvo, a little Pitchblende, the result is a super rocking, epic and majestic sound that may borrow much in terms of sound and influence, but is totally all their own.
Anyone who's been digging any of the various post rock, math rock and shoegaze stuff on the list lately will no doubt be digging VVB's particular strain of instrumental rock, with the occasional sample filling in for vocals, these guys definitely rock, there are moments where the sound drifts and shimmers, but when the band are on, they are ON, super heavy, aggressive riffing, kick ass drumming (replacing the drum machine that drove the last release), and some awesome songwriting, super dynamic with plenty of push and pull, back and forth, not the usual start slow, get loud, although the title track does lean in that direction, beginning as a brooding drift, before the drums kick in and the song slowly transforms from minor key shuffle to super crunchy almost metallic heaviness, before getting all glimmery and shimmery and finally slipping back into a softly tangled mathy fade out.
It's definitely short, 2 tracks, 23 minutes, but these guys pack a lot into those two tracks, and again, any one digging on Pelican or Isis or Anapparatus or Conifer or any of that stuff, this will definitely hit the spot.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Packaged with a thick cd booklet in an oversized black and red sleeve.
Varghkoghargasmal. When we first discovered this German one man band, it was via a cassette, with a black and white photocopied cover, a washed out image of some wintry forest landscape, accompanied by the legend 'wooden metal'. Needless to say we were totally intrigued, only to discover, that there wasn't anything really that metal about it, or wooden even. Not sure if 'wooden' referred to the trees, or to acoustic guitars, but none of that mattered once we head the music inside. A twisted confusional mix of slowed down Dick Dale style surf riffage, stumbling drums, haunting melodies, warbly organs, all wrapped around a simple motorik almost krautrock groove. We had no idea what to call it, or really even what to think, other than being totally smitten, transfixed and ensorcelled. Definitely ensorcelled.
So here we have the brand new album from Avenger, the man solely responsible for Varghkoghargasmal, and if anything, it's even more haunting and mysterious, more creepy and strange, and somehow way more beautiful.
It's a difficult sound to explain, the guitars are clean, but are often still playing in a black metal style, frantic riffing or rapid picking, but just as often the guitars are spidery and minor key, unfurling lugubrious tendrils of creepy twang, or reverbed shimmer. The vocals are minimal, a hushed whisper here and there, a Viking style chant during one song, but it's mostly left to the music, which is incredibly evocative, it's like some sort of acoustic black metal, mixed with slowed down surf rock, dark languorous krautrock, and a distinct Morricone vibe as well. And then there are the drums, which by design or by happenstance, are a definite sonic focal point, as they are WAY up in the mix, and they are all over the place, the fills are chaotic, the rhythms stumble and stutter, but in their imperfections lie a truly unique sort of emotion and feeling not found in most music. The drums anchor everything, locking into foresty krautrock grooves, sputtering into dense little tumbling squalls, the prefect framework for Avenger's rickety moonlit jams.
Most of the songs creep and crawl, sometimes behind a curtain of rainfall, the sound of the forest spirits, flickering firelight, fireflies lighting up the canopy overhead, pianos pick out mournful melodies, the drums, lurching along, a perfectly imperfect accompaniment, organs wheeze, synths whir, steel strings twang, the whole thing so impossibly transcendent, effortlessly evoking ancient atmospheres and deep emotions. When the band lock into a more rocking groove, and the rhythm builds into something propulsive, the guitars stretch out into long streaks of buzzing melodies, the organ plays along like some old time music box, and the sound transforms before your ears and transports you to some truly mysterious otherworld.
There are some black metal references for sure, mostly the ambient bits of Burzum, and some of the riffing recalls suicidal black metal, albeit played with no distortion and more melancholy really than miserable, some of the more frenzied parts even sound like Iron Maiden played on acoustic guitars, and sometimes the guitars manage to sound like banjos, but still the creepiest and prettiest moments occur when the sound winds down into something much more minimal and muted, letting the keyboards weave fluttery melodies, over whirring drones and spare guitar melodies, only occasionally flecked with little flurries of haphazard drumming.
One of the few records that we can unequivocally describe as being utterly unlike anything else you will ever hear! Hauntingly beautiful, beautifully bizarre, and WAY WAY recommended.
One final teaser before the tUMULt release of Varghkoghargasmal's Drowned In Lakes full length. Another glorious slab of "wooden metal" from this German one man band, that as always, is not particularly metal, or wooden. In fact, it's more like some strange off kilter krautrock, warbly organs, stumbling drums, lurching grooves, off kilter tempos, simple downtuned clean guitar strum, haunting keyboard melodies, all tangled up into a gorgeous creepy forest jam. The track begins all doomy and droney, the keyboard wavering over the deliberate drumming and the muted riffing, very spare and space-y, eventually locking into a more propulsive groove, the drums impossibly off, in an amazing way, totally in their own dimension, the guitar a mere mumble, except for the spidery melody that holds the whole thing together, the keyboard louder than anything else. Imagine a cross between Avarus and Benighted Leams and you might get something close to Varghkoghargasmal. Awesome as always.
Splitting the disc with V. is October Falls, another one man band, this one from Finland, who specializes in dark ambient folk, and here, it's just that, all mournful minor key acoustic guitar, lilting and sorrowful, moody and meandering, so darkly pretty.
Super thick sleeves and jackets, a handful are on colored vinyl, so you might get lucky, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
The Dark Lord Nordvargr has been threatening us with it for ages, but as the sky blackens, and the thunder rolls in, the air grows thick, the ground rumbles and cracks beneath our feet, it is finally here, the debut from Nordvargr's grim black kvlt alter ego Vargr. And just like it says in the liner notes "Vargr plays True Black Nekronoise Metal exclusively."
We sure don't need to tell you how much we love Black Nekronoise Metal (at least now that we know such a thing exists) and there really is no better way to describe this caustic chaotic brutality here, but we'll give it a try�
Wehrmacht Satanas begins with soft swirls of sound and cold winter winds, dark and drifting and very much like much of the stuff we love from Nordvargr, but then super harsh vocals surface from within the muted drone-y backdrop and are promptly swallowed up by a massive wall of some of the harshest, heaviest, crustiest, most distorted and buzz drenched noise metal chaos we have ever heard.
Riffs are more sort of big prickly downtuned smears, drums (are there actually drums in there?) blast like a hailstorm of hiss and buzz, the vocals hissing and howling, all crumbled into a serious ear shredding rrrooooaaaar�.
It actually sounds bit like a Darkthrone record on DHR, imagine Alec Empire, had he grown up on Venom And Bathory� Primitive, grim black buzz, but completely blown out and in the red. The riffs are looped and cyclical, totally hypnotic, definitely for fans of the ultra raw BM like Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Beherit, Ancestors� "The Crushing Weight Of Sin" is about as hooky as it gets, with an actual melody, and plenty of space, in the context of the rest of the record it's practically a pop song. But it's quickly followed up by "Svavelsjalar" a gorgeously thick washed out blast of blackness, everything so blurred and buzzy that it almost sounds like a black metal Fennesz, until about halfway through when the sound lurches suddenly and transforms into what sounds like a radio station between stations, bits of some super lo-fi live Beherit rehearsal coming through between the jagged shards of static and white noise.
And most of the record sort of straddles that line between blasting black metal and buzzing ambience, much of this disc actually, reminds us of weirdo Canadian black metallers Wold, a twisted convoluted blurred black metal warped and wrapped in layer after layer of distortion, but where Wold was all smeared and soft focus, Vargr sharpens the edges, everything black and glinting, sharp and harsh�
Later in the record, "Total Cryptic Darkness" is everything the title would lead you to believe. Gorgeously thick and viscous black bottomless sonic pit, a near static sea of low end whir and deeeeeeeeeeeeep dark drones. A bunch of the tracks are super intense, almost techno-like looped shards of hissy crunch, almost like black gabber, while others bliss out big time, like a blackened Total, with epic ur-drones, huge swaths of metallic reverberations and warm washed out skree.
The disc finishes off with a Burzum cover, and weirdly enough it's an ambient number, one that Nordvargr, deftly tweaks into something slightly grittier and more bleak, a gorgeous slab of groaning ambient drift� very tidal and hypnotic, the perfect aural balm after the skin flaying sonic assault you've just endured�
Noisy, crushing, harsh, grim, nekro, black, brutal and fucked up. Hail the True Black Nekronoise Metal!!!
By now, we know exactly what to expect from a new Echospace record. Total soft focus Pop Ambient bliss out. Abstract, ethereal, gauzy, murky, meditative, Variant is the perfect addition to the Echospace stable, exploring similar sonics, but adding a definite darkness, wreathing the shimmer and drift in a surf like crackle and hum, the buried melodies, more like pulses, distant throbs, the heroin house of classic Chain Reaction rendered even more indistinct, the beats, skeletal and glitchy, just as often slipping into the background, to lurk rhythmically below the constantly shifting layers of bristly texture. And it's that texture that defines The Setting Sun, where plenty of electronica is wispy and shadowy and otherworldly and effervescent, Variant is most definitely a much more grim, and foreboding proposition, the dubbed out elements floating in a morass of processed record crackle, of blurred white noise, the hiss of electronic rainfall. The best moments in fact are when the texture and ambience swell and swallow up all the other elements, leaving a dark shimmery cloud of sound particles to drift and glimmer and glisten before the beat, or melody finally struggles back to the surface.
The 23 minute closing track is a gorgeous (and surprisingly) crystalline chunk of slow burning shimmer, pulled apart into a sort of ultra abstract slowcore, all the above mentioned buzz and crackle relegated to the background, a sibilance WAY off in the distance, the sound warm, and melancholy, sun dappled and delicate, a pretty and sunshiney coda to an otherwise dark and dense disc of dubbed out electronic ambient hiss and pulse. Easily our new favorite late night drifting off disc...
Our definition of pure pop perfection would have to be Scotland's Vaselines! They embody everything a perfect pop band should be. They are charming and clever, dirty and sweet, sensitive and sassy. They have the ability to rock out or get all dreamy with equal potency. Coinciding with their reunion tour that will find them playing San Francisco in just a few days, Sub Pop has compiled pretty much all of their material onto this 2 disc collection. The first disc includes all of their studio recordings (the Son Of A Gun EP, the Dying For It EP, and the full length Dum Dum). The bonus disc includes three demo versions and two live shows from '86 and '88. Fair warning to fans, the first disc is identical to the Vaselines collection that came out a few years back, so if you have that, you'll be getting this for the demos and live stuff on disc two. Or cause you want it on vinyl, if you opt for that format. And if you have no Vaselines, well, needless to say this is ESSENTIAL.
Now that we have all that out of the way we can go back to gushing about why The Vaselines are the perfect pop band and how they pretty much influenced all the rad underground (and overground) pop stuff we've loved in the decades since they first hit the scene. Nirvana, Belle And Sebastian, Yo La Tengo, Hole, Vivian Girls, Beck, Dum Dum Girls, The Breeders and so many more owe so much of their sound, style and aesthetic to the Vaselines and everything they created during their short existence from 1986-1990. They predated the era when indie bands began to experience more widespread success and appreciation, but their songs and style pretty much set the blueprint for the alternative nation that would explode in the years following their breakup.
Listening to these songs is like hearing some crazy greatest hits collection as every single song is so totally classic and memorable, hard to believe that it's actually just their complete discography. Every song was truly unique and so goddamn catchy. Some of their songs were popularized when Kurt Cobain declared his undying love of the Vaselines and had Nirvana cover "Son Of A Gun", "Molly's Lips" and "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam". The Vaselines had a charisma that makes their songs appeal to such a wide cross section of music fans. They are the band K records wish they could have had, and have been trying to sign ever since. The Vaselines had the wit and smarts so many of their Glasgow followers try a little too hard to emulate, but most of all they had SONGS, songs that are so damn endearing and so completely timeless!
Yet another killer collection of murky, Middle East obsessed gothic industrial slo-mo techno from Dom Fernow, who in addition to recording as Vatican Shadow, also does time in new wave combo Cold Cave, runs the Hospital label, and also has about a million other projects, including Prurient, Christian Cosmos, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and loads more.
As Vatican Shadow, Fernow weaves a murky, moody landscape of slow, skittering beats, zombie like lumbering grooves, primitive lo-fi synth melodies, whirring drones, everything washed out and grey, each track nearly a static loop, a core rhythm, and an abstract melodic component, locked into a tranced out mesmer, while all around, strange sounds drift in and fade out, soft washes of atmospheric shimmer, reverbed synth squelch, lots of echo and reverb, giving much of the sound a dubby vibe. Muslimgauze is definitely an apt comparison in places, as are outfits like Techno Animal, although Fernow's approach is much more reductionist, his soundworld more about the minutiae of the sounds, the mood, the texture, the vibe, a track like "Muscle Hijacker Tribal Affiliation", is super simple on the surface, a looped synth, a clattery bit of percussion, a crawling techno pulse, and what sounds like some processed heavy breathing, but somehow Fernow deftly transforms those constituent parts into something much more harrowing and haunting, making the over the top song titles sound like plausible descriptions of what exactly Fernow is trying to evoke with these minimal masterpieces. Some tracks do crank up the tempo, but even then, the skittery rhythmic jitter is often wrapped in heaving swells of crumbling blacknoise, or distant swaths of ominous chordal rumble, so instead of propulsion, those jacked rhythms, simply add more texture, the gristled skitter bleeding into the black sonic shadows surrounding them, and when the beat does fragment and explode as it often does, not only does it inspire a sort of music malevolence, and emotional dread, it also again harkens back to Fernow's gothic roots, sounding like the sounds could be emanating from some dank gothic bunker in the East Village, circa early eighties, from a mysterious dark room way in the back of the club. The same is true when electric guitars enter the mix, the weird metallic riffery often sounds a bit like a way more minimal Ministry, stripped down to its very essence, and once locked into the inevitable looped out trance, gradually transforms into something much more mysterious and mesmeric.
Wierd Records have brought us some amazing records over the last few years, from Led Er Est, Martial Canterel, Xeno & Oaklander, Staccato Du Mal and others, but this one might just be the coolest, and the weirdest (wierdest?) of the bunch. From the above mentioned bands, it's obvious that Wierd traffics in darkwave / coldwave / newwave music primarily, and this debut from Canadian outfit Vaura, definitely does fit in there, somewhere, sort of...
But unlike those bands, Vaura is HEAVY, the sound dense and epic, and times intense and downright crushing, while at others, droned out and dour. At their gloomiest, we're reminded of French retrowavers Soror Dolorosa, the sound a sort of death rock, beholden to groups like Joy Division and the Cure, but there's no denying the metal element, hinting at the likes of both Liturgy and Katatonia, which makes more sense when you know Vaura's pedigree. A group you might not expect to include members of Dysrhythmia, Kayo Dot, Secret Chiefs 3, and maybe most surprising of all Gorguts, who are responsible for what might be one of aQ's favorite death metal records of all time, Obscura. So the real question is maybe what is a death metal guy doing in a band like this, and how the heck did these weirdos and metalheads end up with a dark, gloomy, heavy record on Wierd? And really the answer is who cares. We're just happy to have this strange slab of moody heaviness, and it's quickly become the only thing we want to listen to.
The sound is a bit confusional, but only when you're trying to describe it, cuz on paper, it seems like a mess, like a weird whatthefuck that would never work, but in action, it's awesome. Hooky and heavy, brooding and moody and metallic, thick guitars, chiming and shimmering one second, churning and chugging the next, sinewy basslines, the vocals deep and dramatic, subtly processed, the songs proggy and intricate, some incredible drumming, the songs super melodic, even poppy in places, but occasionally peppered with bursts of gloom infused black metal, complete with blast beats, and deep ominous vox, atonal chords, often splintering into a grinding almost death metal, but more muddy and gothic and less distinctly metal, everything wreathed in cool textured psychedelic guitars, dense squalls of dark sonic energy, layered chordal thrum and swirls of FX and streaks of feedback. And while the sound seems to always return to a sort of dark, and heavy, gloom rock, it's what the group do to and with that sound that makes this so transcendent.
And while the record definitely works as an album, the individual songs and sound are super varied, from the washed out black metal flecked gloominess of "Obsidian Damascene Sun", with its furious double kick drumming, and swirling psychedelic guitar filigree, to the churning bombastic almost doom-ed heaviness of "Uncreated Light (Transfiguration)", to the strangely ritualistic sounding "The Column's Vein", all rumbling low end, and chanted monklike vox, to the acoustic gloom-folk of the title track, a gorgeously moving softly psychedelic steel string ballad, the record culminating in our favorite track, "The Zahir" which begins as a barely there rumbling drone, underpinning steel string guitar strum, some softly crooned vox and chiming harmonics, which disappear in a squall of massive distorted riffage and swirling feedback, the whole song transformed into a whirling propulsive sprawl of melodic drone-psych, a brooding slow build that becomes a heavy gloom pop, driving and intense, in comes some metal vokills and some tangled super catchy guitar melodies, all over tribal drumming, and thick buzzing guitars, the sound gradually falling apart, and transforming into a woozy detuned dirge, only to explode into a crushingly heavy, gloriously blown out Godspeed style epic outro, wild streaks of psych guitar, pounding chaotic drumming, clouds of swirling effects, definitely the sort of thing that should have been stretched out for another 20 minutes or so, but instead, collapses in a field of glitch and static, buzz and crumble. So fucking awesome. A practically perfect slab of heavy gloominess / gloomy heaviness. And a new aQ favorite for sure.
Praise Odin! At long last, a reissue of the sole full-length Ved Buens Ende album, originally released in 1995 on the now defunct cult label Misanthropy. A black metal super session of sorts, this band featured past, present, and future members of Satyricon, Dodheimsgard, Aura Noir, Cadaver Inc. and Arcturus. But Ved Buens Ende ('At The End of the Rainbow' in English) hardly sounded like ANY of those black metal stalwarts -- as avant garde as any of them ever got, Ved Buens Ende went way beyond. Yes it was heavy and dark and the vocals had a unique Viking/monk chant strangeness that isn't typical of black metal but would make even less sense coming from another genre of music... but rather than black metal, Ved Buens Ende could just as easily be categorized as a post-rock or math-rock band. A really amazing math-rock band, with Don Caballero's "2" being the closest comparison! But totally sad and metallic and strange and forlorn and beautiful. Utter weird progressive instrumental genius. And the vocals, once you get used to them (and they do add to the bizarre vibe already created by the unsettling, atmospheric music) are used to deliver some mysterious, poetic lyrics as well. Overall, this is not like anything else!
It's too bad they never released another record (except for a disc of demos) but it's also unlikely that they could have surpassed this masterpiece anyway. Over the past eight years, this record has really proven itself to be a lasting classic, growing in stature, foreshadowing (but still exceeding) much of the 'post-black metal' innovations to come -- such as the most out-there psychedelic parts of recent Enslaved albums, for instance, or Opeth's epic dynamism. It's been out of print for a long time, and hopefully now will reach a whole new audience with this remixed, remastered re-release, which features brand new cover art/graphic design that's not bad at all, kind of a fancier, Ralph Steadman ink-splatter take on the original artwork. As one of our favorite so-called black metal albums EVER, this gets the highest recommendation, though the vocal style may be a test that hopefully you will pass.
MPEG Download: "I Sang For The Swans" [/audio/vedbuensendeIsang.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "I Sang For The Swans" [/audio/vedbuensendeIsang.m3u]
Not to be confused with the double e'd Midwestern punk rockers Vee Dee, this is the triple e'd Veee Deee and are American expats living in Japan. Well, at least one of em. AQ customer and long time pal Clay, most well known around here for sending us scathing (and hilarious) anti Keiji Haino hate mail, doing his very best to get Allan all riled up, much to the snicker delight of Andee (another misguided Haino hater).
Anyway, this is all sort of funny, as the sound of Veee Deee is not all that far removed from Haino's white noise psychedelic squall. Whoever is handling the ax duties here, could probably meet Haino on the sonic field of battle and hold his or her own. Dense flurries of rapid fire runs, weird moaning chords, bits of reverbed soft strum, all wound around some fierce and furious drumming.
While there are some Haino-ish elements, this falls way closer to modern freaked out spazz rock a la Strom And Stress, Coptic Light, Hella, Lightning Bolt, especially on the first track, with the band locking into hyper complex convoluted grooves, occasionally slowing things down for some tripped out drift, other times erupting into full on distorted crumbling NOISE. Someone must be manning the recording deck, as there is plenty of fucked up glitch and production weirdness. The second track (of three) is much more rock, with a seriously angular riff, wailed emo vocals, the drums still a chaotic clatter, sounding a little bit like Drive Like Jehu, slowing down for some minimal groove a la Stinking Lizaveta.
The final track mixes the disparate sound of the first two, a definite post rock post punk groove, but here muted and muddy, buried in a sludgy mix, emerging from a cloud of glistening atonal guitar splatter, and throbbing bass, tinkling chime like ambience and what sounds like croaking frogs, and finishing off in a flurry of buzzed out distorted skree. Cool stuff. Can't wait to hear more...
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Last year we raved about the Insane Technical Sci-Fi Thrash Metal Mastery of this group's 2nd album, Outer Isolation. And, having subsequently seen 'em play n' slay live, we're even more convinced that Arizona's Vektor are one of thee very best metal bands currently going. Live, their music was complex yet ragin', these guys effortlessly, amazingly technical, but ready to party at the same time. Plus one of the guitarists has a tattoo on his arm that sez, 'Sci-fi or die', how cool is that?
Sadly, though, the record label Vektor was signed to, Heavy Artillery, has just folded. And so for the time being, the Outer Isolation cd is out of print, with its planned release on vinyl also in limbo. WTF? But, since Vektor has gotta be a hot property, we imagine they'll soon be signed to another label... However, for the time being, we can't get their newer album. But, we DID manage to grab a last few copies of this, their 2009 debut, for those that missed it. We didn't actually review it when it came out before, either, though we should have.
Utter next-level mind-boggling shred, that's heavy and hectic, and impossibly catchy too, like a brilliant mix of Voivod, Coroner, Destruction, and Megadeth. With their chugging rollercoaster riffs, exquisite neo-classical melodies, and outer space atmospherics, plus the vocalist's uncanny ability to switch from guttural tones to an inhuman shriek (they say in space, no one can hear you scream, but you'll hear this guy, and your dog will hear him better!), Vektor are one of the few 'retro-80s-thrash-revival' acts that we consider to be actually equal or superior to the best bands back then.
Basically, If you liked Outer Isolation, you'll like this too, in fact, how come you don't have it already?? And if you haven't yet heard any Vektor, well, check this out! But be quick, we only got like 5 copies, and then they're gone...
The first thing you notice about this ESP reissue is the amazing cover photo, featuring the artist, with a sort of Hitler moustache, sunglasses and sideburns, in a hospital bed after hitting a tree in his car. The poor soul in the bed is Karel Velebny, one of the most prominent composers in Czech, who when invited to record for ESP was asked by label head Bernard Stollmann to "Take it as far out as you can". So far so good.
And while the record itself isn't really THAT far out, it is a pretty fantastic chunk of flute flecked free jazz, light on the skronk, heavy on bop and mood and texture. The opener, "The Uhu Sleeps Only During The Day" starts out all hushed and atmospheric, mostly vibes and fluttery flute, rubbery bass, lots of space, the instruments drifting in space, a wild flute freakout ushers in the band, and away we go, the drums shuffle and skitter, the flute ships wildly over the top, the bass and piano all tangled up, the vibes anchoring the whole track. The second track "Joachim Is Our Friend" is another cool groove, lots of vibes, Velebny handles both vibes and sax (as well as occasional clarinet), a whole lot more sax this time around, some cool stretches of just drums and vibes, with a sort of far out exotica feel, and a super tripped out bass solo.
"Beetles On The Head" begins with some cool saxophone harmonies, before slipping once again into some serious post Bird bop, the sound is wildly melodic, dense and complex, with a serious groove. In "Waldi On The Castle Steps", Velebny and his crew channel the spirit of Ornette Coleman, banging out a super dynamic, and ultra rhythmic workout, culminating in a bad ass drum solo. And finally, the record closer, "Andulko Safarova" finishes off with a somber elegiac drift, all long tones and notes, lots of moaning low end, strange harmonics, until the instruments drop out, leaving a cacophony of creaks and croaks, which gives way to what sounds like detuned guitar, until the flute begins a flight of fancy over deep low droning tones, creating woozy harmonies beneath a brief haunting spoken outro. Very strange for sure, and pretty far out after all.
It takes a lot to be "controversial" these days, even if you are a black metal band, and it's unlikely at this point that we would have to be the ones to tell you about all the craziness that has shrouded Velvet Cacoon since God knows when, so we're just not going to bother. What we can tell you is this: Atropine actually does exist, we got it, and while it may not be exactly what anyone was prepared for, it is no doubt an intense piece of work, one that cannot be listened to as mere background noise and instead requires lots of focus and patience for the full, um, "experience". The biggest surprise here is the absolute, 100 percent absence of any actual metal, with Velvet Cacoon's droning ambient side taking over for a colossal two hour suite of dissociative, druggy as fuck BLISS. Atropine's subtleties are also its greatest qualities (though to be fair, they are its only qualities), because this is only going to make even the slightest amount of sense if you stick around for the whole trip, and there's no way that will happen if you're blasting it in your car on the way to work. You're probably gonna want to turn off the lights, break out some sort of mind altering substance, close your eyes, let the tones take over, and contemplate your complete nothingness in the universe. It's difficult to imagine what exactly is influencing Velvet Cacoon (other than a whole lot of drugs), because this stuff is clearly coming from somewhere else, and whatever bullshit may or may not be true, at the end of the day it only really makes sense to judge them by their music, which is powerful and evocative in ways so many other bands will never achieve. Then you realize that the mysteries surrounding the duo are pretty much legitimized by the strangeness of their music alone.
"To find out how, insert." With these words printed on disc 1, we did just that, and we were off. Opener "Candlesmoke" kicks off the long journey, beginning with a low rumbling and semi-rhythmic white noise followed by a slowly creeping spectral ambience. Things are calm, but dark, and possibly a bit sinister. Your mind conjures thoughts perfectly captured in Velvet Cacoon's artwork: hazy images of lonely trees in unfathomable wildernesses, bits of nature peering out of grey expanses. It's hard to discern what instruments are actually making the noise, but none of that really matters, because before long it's like your floating in a mountain lake looking up at the stars. The piece is murky and majestic, and just as you begin to detect a pattern resembling an actual "song", things simply fade away into eternity. With "Funeral Noir," we were expecting Velvet Cacoon to rip our faces off like in the good old days, but nope. The song begins to bloom out of the cavernous ambience with static-y background crackles and super slow fuzzed out heaviness way off in the distance. The emphasis, however, is on the blankets of atmosphere, and though the song is pretty much formless, it manages to sound incredibly sad and evoke feelings of loneliness and separation from the world. "Graveside Sonnet," writhes with movement, but definitely not within the traditional methods of songcraft. Rather than trying to control the music and color it with any traces of human personality, the band instead appears to accept the will of its subconscious and let the song simply go where it will. The first disc closes with "Dreaming In A Hemlock Patch," which begins the first moments of its 37 minute (damn!) existence with almost total silence. Then, true to its title, you fall into a trance and journey deep into thought, as stuttering sounds, uh, stutter about, moving you forward and sending you way off into the atmosphere. A barely noticeable pulsing rhythm comes in around the six minute mark, but you are now totally lost and removed from time and location. And guess what? No one else exists. Crackling sounds continue, and a foggy drone takes over everything in its path. The song is a bit reminiscent of the minimalism of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, but even more minimal. Even so, it's scope is massive and sleep inducing, and if for some reason you wanted to stop a 37 minute track, say, 20 minutes in, you can't, you can only accept it. The noises change shape and shift to other directions, and an undefinable but very psychedelic sound takes over, moving like a heartbeat before slipping away. Pretty cosmic stuff. And, holy fuck, that's only disc 1!
The second disc begins with "Nightvines," which perfectly exhibits Velvet Cacoon's ability to establish a sound that would best be described as "nautical." With a vaguely bell like drone and a sound that seems to emerge out of a thick mist, you get the feeling of drifting evenly along in unknown waters. A definite coldness prevails, and the sound has a quality that is almost like breathing. "Nocturnal Carriage" is the sound of being lost, its catatonic drones sounding like a ghostly choir buried deep under layers of fog. It brings to mind Popul Vuh's "Aguirre," only stripped of all its melodic definition with just the ambience intact. It's like that last moment of consciousness before sleep sets in, with that last moment being prolonged for 27 minutes, like walking around in total blackness, and it fades out like a dream that will continue forever. The shortest track, "Earth And Dark Petals," makes you think of forces from within the earth trying to make their way out of the ground and into the world, struggling to define themselves within the overwhelming hugeness of nature, only briefly before the final track, "Autumn Burial Victoria," which seeks to sustain the drones all the way to infinity. At around the 10:30 mark, there is a muted percussive crash, just once, but that's really the only other thing that manages to seep out. The album concludes very softly with sounds that are almost not there. When it ends, maybe you'll wake up, or maybe you won't.
Whew. Listening to Atropine, as in "really" listening to it, takes some dedication, but the results are rewarding enough for anyone up to the task. There will most likely be a serious bitchfest in the works from those expecting the blown out shoegazing fury Velvet Cacoon built their name on. But crying over something like that overlooks just how essential the more subdued sounds of Velvet Cacoon have been since the beginning, and in the event that it's not a total hoax, the band should be delivering an actual "metal" album in the near future. Until then, zone out and give yourself up to the unexplored regions of your mind with Atropine.
This went out of print way too fast, not long after we listed it and has finally been re-pressed. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
We were sold on this band before we even heard 'em (thanks AQ pal Drucifer for the recommendation). First off, they're called Velvet Cacoon. That's right C A C O O N. WTF? Not sure if it's just a typo that was never corrected, to maybe save face, or if it means something entirely different that we couldn't possibly understand... Second, they're a super reclusive eco-fascist (huh?) black metal horde from Oregon. Yep, OREGON. And finally they invented, designed and built an instrument they call a dieselharp, a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. Wow. So before we even threw this on, we were already pretty into it. And thankfully, the music is every bit as cool and weird and grim and haunting as we could've hoped. Massive slabs of blackened fuzz, and we mean FUZZ. Imagine the buzziest fuzziest Burzum riff, smeared and stretched into a mesmerizing black metal blur. The droning dieselharp is the key, turning what could otherwise be some straight up grim black metal, into a blown out, buzzing black drone. The drums and vocals are barely even there, satisfied to lurk under an oppressive cloak of suffocating heaviness and the seemingly endless, relentlessly hypnotic crush. Fans of the buzzy drone-y end of the black metal spectrum will be blown away. And drone freaks will luxuriate in the absolutely gorgeous final twenty minute track, a slow building lowercase shimmer, worthy of Chalk, Coleclough, Hafler Trio and the like.
We fell in love with this band before we even heard 'em! And the more we find out about this mysterious outfit the more we can't get enough! A while back an aQ customer suggested we check out this bizarre black metal band from Portland called Velvet Cacoon. Supposedly they were super reclusive eco-fascists who built their own instruments, their main home-built instrument was the diesel harp, a huge diesel powered guitar contraption that spit out impossibly fuzzy and Burzumic drones, and when we finally heard the record, we could totally tell! No guitar could sound that heavy and fuzzy! It was that fucking diesel harp! Holy shit. That record (which we still have in stock) was a dense drone-like slab of buzzing black metal like we had naver heard, heavy enough for metal heads but deep, dark and droney enough for folks into stuff like Troum and Lustmord to get into.
Well, a year or so later, another aQ customer pointed us toward a website where they had posted an interview with the band, and guess what? It was all a hoax. Well, not the music obviously, but they were not in fact eco-fascists, there was no diesel harp, they were just a couple dudes from Portland who loved black metal but were intent on pissing off the black metal community. In the interview the band went on to talk about how they had short hair, and listened to Nina Simone, and that one or both of them played music in a local wine bar. Pretty hilarious actually. And then if you went to the Velvet Cacoon website, there was a solitary link, to an Air mp3. Yep, the French electronic group Air. What the fuck? But c'mon, it just made us dig their band even more! They now have a much less mysterious website and Velvet Cacoon now apparently consists of just Josh "and his dreampop muse Angela, two souls mesmerized by chemicals and the after-hours". Woah.
So no more mysterious politics, no more homemade instruments, but the band are indeed working on a second album, but in the meantime, their first two demos have been packed up and released as a single cd. And WOW! It's just as amazing as the first one. The oldest demo, Music For Falling Bulidings, shows the band at the beginning, when they were super raw, super aggressive, total Burzum / Darkthrone worship, fierce and fuzzed out and furious, but even back then, they employed plenty of experimentalism, strange ambient interludes, studio fuckery, found sounds. The later demo, Red Steeples, finds the band much closer to where they would end up with Genevieve. A buzzing droney black metal mixed with suffocating dark ambience. Monstrous drones, rumbling minimalism, fuzzed out soundscapes, above, below, beneath and amidst thick swaths of ultra grim black metal. Considering how much we love Genevieve it's really saying something when we say that this whole disc is AS good as, if not even better, due in no small part to the fact that it's WAY more damaged and freaked out sounding, and you know how much we love that!
