Two weeks ago when we made Velvet Cacoon's stellar Atropine one of our Records Of The Week, we mentioned the possibility of yet ANOTHER VC release in the not too distant future. Well here it is, way sooner than we had initially predicted.
While Atropine may have baffled some fans of this already baffling band with its total ambience and a complete absence of the blown out black metal they made their name on, it also managed to perfectly convey the drugged out isolation and dissociative bliss that has always been central to their music. Atropine is an intense piece of work, very rewarding when listened to with patience, BUT... we'd be lying if we said we didn't miss the metal. Thankfully, P aa opal poere pr.33 (good grief, what a title!) arrives right on the heels of Atropine, and more than anything, it seems to be the perfect companion piece to that previous album, delivering almost 40 minutes of murky, blissful as fuck METAL, heavy on the nautical themes that have commonly been part of Velvet Cacoon's M.O. Yet even as we write the word "METAL," we are faced with the already obvious realization that Velvet Cacoon pretty much defies any simple classification. Call it shoegaze, ambient, metal, hell, even pop... their sound is unique, and even though scores of imitators have popped up in recent years, the second we put this on we knew who we were listening to (unless they completely stole these recordings like some of their other albums supposedly...) While it does share some certain sonic similarities to the band's previous work, it would be lazy to write off P aa opal poere pr.33 as merely the successor to the band's now classic Genevieve, and here Velvet Cacoon seem to have arrived at the most realized encapsulation of their sound to date. So yes, it's REALLY fucking good. And thus also a Record Of The Week!
According to the notes, vocals here are handled by one Cain of a band called Snowfall. His style falls into a more traditional style of black metal shrieking, acting as the perfect foil to Velvet Cacoon's melodic fuzzed out dirges, but we are also fairly certain that VC mainman SGL (or "Josh" if you want to demystify things) is handling a lot of the vocal duties here. What the fuck? Whatever. The album opens with "2.", with the trademark Velvet Cacoon "dieselharp" guitar sound accompanied by a lumbering drum machine rhythm and a sound that gains momentum as it appears to bubble up from the bottom of the sea. "Claverie" is huge sounding with a nice lazy groove and a hazy narcotic feel, sort of like sleepwalking. As distant drones swirl about, the riff remains steady until changing at the 6 minute mark, with a guitar that is so sustained it almost sounds like a keyboard. The standout track here is "Marylux", with an awesome and unique riff that pretty much sounds like a psychedelic black metal sea shanty. At the same time, it gives off a sort of a '90s indie vibe. What doesn't make sense on paper, however, KILLS in reality. It's catchy, amazing, and dreamy in the sense that a band like, say, Windy and Carl is dreamy... but also "dreamy" in the way that being fucked out of your mind of psychotropic drugs is dreamy, so you really get the best of all kinds of different worlds with this song. With "Grevona", the melodies lie hidden below layers of murky guitar fuzz, everything is so hazy and distant sounding, like a slow moving ship going nowhere while the vocals float around helplessly. On "Oviamoire," a soothing riff wraps you up in its fuzzy majesty while the abject vocals croak below the surface. There is a certain spectral quality to it, all gauzy and whatnot, with krauty keyboard drones adding even more ambience to the affair. The last song on the album, "Sovarine" sways rhythmically back and forth with the vocals sounding like some sort of nefarious bottom dwelling ocean minion. Or something. While the guitars are all warm and fuzzy, the overall vibe here is of coldness and isolation. Not to belabor the point, but it's kind of like being lost at sea, though no one could have predicted it would sound this awesome. The album closes with a brief piece entitled "Flouvonne," with two voices, one male and the other female, speaking in French as the wind blows amid crackling sounds, a weird and somehow totally appropriate end to the journey.
In a music world where few mysteries truly exist, it's always nice to know that Velvet Cacoon will never be making things easy for us. Whether or not they are "true", some sort of pseudo-intellectual performance art, or maybe even a complete fucking joke, their music is never anything less than amazing. If you hated them before, it's unlikely that this album will change any of that. But for those of us who have patiently waited for the last five years wondering if P aa opal poere pr.33 would ever become a reality, you will find much to look forward to.
The problem with a list like this (well one of them at least) and with bands who release a record or two every year, after a few years, you begin to run out of things to say, you end up wanting to just say something along the lines, of "read that old review" or "sounds like that other one we loved". Which is sometimes fair enough, as some bands do continue to mine similar ground. But in the case of Venetian Snares, it's not that easy. We thought we had him pegged, as a mash up jungle drill and bass freak, but then he learns how to play strings, and hits us with a gorgeous elegiac suite of moving Eastern European gypsy jams, with only a tiny bit of manic drum programming, the focus on actual songs, on mood and melancholy, then he'll flip again and kick out a disc of old school rave jams, then some old school raga jungle. The thing is, it's ALL great, and somehow it all sounds distinctly like Venetian Snares, which is especially difficult with this kind of music, sample based, chopped rhythms, but VS has such a distinctive vibe, the rhythms impossibly complex, the samples usually goofy, but sometimes freaked out, other times creepy, all the various elements seamlessly smoothed into something not really seamless or smooth at all, but wild and chaotic and well over the top.
This latest disc is all over the map, but the focus seems to be a mash up of classic hip hop, nineties rave music, and as always furious rapid fire jungle rhythms, often bordering on gabber. Listening to this, it's easy to just get lost in the flurry of beats, the chopped up and reassembled loops and samples, without asking "how the fuck does anybody make this shit?!" One can only imagine he assembles it measure by measure, slowed down to quarter speed, painstakingly assembling each beat, but then somehow being able to visualize it all revved up and lightning fast. Even then, it boggles the mind. It's like trying to figure out the working methods of a mad scientist. It's almost better not to think about it at all, just to revel in the madcap, kick ass blown-out-beat demented dancefloor world of Venetian Snares.
So how does Detrimentalist! stack up? Well obviously it's not at all dark and brooding like his two string-ed records, but it fits pretty well amidst is other dancier discs, this one somehow seems more of a party record, with lots of vocal bits, fragments of raps, bits of toasting, all chopped and tangled up within the impossibly convoluted rhythms, which here are as funky and impossible sounding as ever, thick slabs of buzzing snarling synth, even a bit of a dubstep vibe here and there, some definite nods to that classic Aphex sound, a handful of 8-bit videogame jams, dizzying rave collages wrapped around classic Amen and Apache breaks. There's an awesome ravey raga jungle jam that goes from almost traditional sounding to some sort of video game rave with some of the most awesome drill and bass all synched up with stuttering rave synths, and a toasted refrain about some motherfucker wanting to see his dogs die (?). There are a handful of the tracks laced with minor key melodies and have some serious musical weight to them, moody and intense, droney and atmospheric, even peppered with dizzying squalls of rapid fire rhythms, they still feel like more than dancefloor fodder. But it wouldn't be VS without some seriously cracked and wacked sonic wickedness, and there's plenty of that too. Once again, ESSENTIAL Snares, as it's quickly becoming one of our favorites, and for newbies, as fucked up and freaked out as Detrimentalist is (then again they all are sort of), it's a pretty excellent introduction to what will no doubt blossom into a full blown obsession.
Yet another blast of misanthropic, demented and damaged, ultra complex and super sick splattercore-broken-beat-drum-and-bass madness from Aaron Funk aka Venetian Snares. This stuff is so much more complicated and fucking creepy than any of his contemporaries. Take Aphex Twin at his most complex (Boy Girl maybe) mix in some Lesser (totally irrational beats chopped to bits) plus some truly creepy samples and some hateful misanthropy (Pornography, S+M, Snuff films, Whitehouse, Trevor Brown who once again supplies the suitable pervy album art, etc.) and filter it all through the 'Snares wicked sense of drama and melody, and his knack for making impossibly stuttery beats and retarded rhythms coalesce into some painfully dark, amazingly appealing and truly nightmarish electronic mayhem.
MPEG Download: "Befriend A Child Killer Remix" [/audio/venetianbefriend.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Befriend A Child Killer Remix" [/audio/venetianbefriend.m3u]
We love Venetian Snares, every record, we're faced with the possibility of more of we love, or something new and twisted that's bound to confuse and confound. Whether it's splattery drill and bass, or cinematic string drenched soundtrackisms or old school nineties retro techno weirdness, we're pretty much into everything this guy give us.
That said, the most recent full length, Filth, was the first one in a long time that just didn't hit the spot, it just wasn't... well, filthy enough. A little bit of the same old thing, and even then not the same old thing that we loved, definitely sort of blah.
But then comes along Horsey Noises, and we're flipping our lids. The firs thing you'll notice are the vocals. Yep, vocals, the title track is weird fractured electro Depeche Mode-ish slow burn groove, complete with crooned vocals talking about how he wants to make the horse teethed girl make horsey noises. Sick and twisted, and the music suits it perfectly, rubbery buzzy basslines, skittery beats, even handclaps, but all blown out and woozy, lots of atonal abstract melodies, like Venetian Snares remixed through a mainstream pop funhouse mirror. By the end, all the sounds and the vocals are chopped up and twisted and super distorted and twisted all around into a noise drenched electro noisejam. If there was ever gonna be a hit single (there wasn't!) this could be it, if it wasn't so fucked up and jumbled and chaotic and if the lyrics weren't so bizarre. But we love it. Kinda has us hoping VS will sing more in the future. Picture Venetian Snares as some twisted electro pop crooner. Could be cool.
The title track gets remixed, the vocals get pushed way up, but the music is even more far out, eventually exploding into some classic super damaged drilled out jungle craziness. Might be the jam of the record!
The other two tracks are pretty bad ass too, "Horsey Vag Island" is post Aphex, Squarepushery jazz bass bit of looped skittery buzz and stutter, groovy and danceable, but filtered through a sort of ADD, full frontal lobotomy, DJ meltdown. The second track "Pig Dync", about a pig's special part, is a tad more tame, with woozy synths, haunting late night melodies, some total house music synths, but the beats still plenty convoluted, everything chopped up, and thrown back together, even mixes in what sounds like some 'oinks'. Crazy shit. But so good. So good in fact that we might have to revisit Filth. But for now, "Horsey Noises" and the even more mutated remix "Horsey Noisers" will remain in constant heavy rotation in the wild all night dancefloor that exists only in our heads. That's where we dance to stuff like this. Yeah, weird, we know....
Another twisted electronic gem from Mr. Aaron Funk, aka Venetian Snares, and much like or favorite records of his, and there have been many, My Love Is A Bulldozer, is another dizzying mashup, this one, combining his wildly tangled drill and bass and frenzied jungle, with jazzy torch songs, and haunting Scott Walker like ballads. Sounds like a weird mix, and it is, pretty jarring too, but in a really cool way. All it should take is a few minutes of opener "10th Circle Of Winnipeg", which begins with swoon some strings, then jazzy drum skitter, then throaty female vox, then some thick dub step bass warble, the drums gradually cranking up, the sounds wreathed in weird little flitting fireflies of FX, before exploding into a gloriously chaotic drum and bass freakout, all wound around that swoon some torch song opening, veering wildly back and forth between buzzing droned out skitter, to wild cascades of spastic drum programming, to dark jazziness, and back again, often all of those edges blurring and bleeding into something confusional and downright mad scientist brilliant. And heck, that's just the first song.
The rest of the record is rife with strings, and choirs, the sound classical, baroque, folk, Flamenco, in equal measure, with long passages that could be mistaken for some lost Arvo Part piece, but inevitably, the sound explodes into some classic Snares drum programming.
The male vocals, presumably Funk's, are super emotional and distinctive, dramatic and over the top, sounding a little like Scott Walker, and when wound around dizzying drum programming, it's pretty stunning.
And those vocals definitely define much of this record, those tracks sounding like some weird seventies prog-folk record re-envisioned as modern warped electronica, while other tracks (like "Dear Poet"), are epic and cinematic, and sound like they could be the score for some Game Of Thrones style epic, or some steam punk space opera, the jungle perfectly meshed with the orchestral stapes, the droning synths, the strange chorales, the strings, totally over the top, confusing, and utterly and entirely addictive. Like every Venetian Snares record, we can't stop listening to this one, and feel compelled to proclaim it the best yet, at the very least it's currently our favorite, which is saying something, considering that the Venetian Snares catalog is pretty much all favorites. Needless to say, WAY recommended.
Scott from local heavies Kowloon Walled City turned us on to these guys, knowing full well of our love for classic math rock, and holy shit, how did we not know about these guys? Their sound is essentially a modern version of that classic nineties sound, think Rodan, Shellac, June Of 44, A Minor Forest, Rumah Sakit, the same sort of dense, intricate arrangements, melodic and carefully crafted, with a distinct emo vibe, and blasts of explosive heaviness, interspersed with spidery, skeletal passages of delicate melody and woozy loping rhythms, the best parts when those various elements come together. Probably the most distinctive element is the addition of violin, which gives the sound a darkly dramatic vibe, at times conjuring up a slow build tension a la Godspeed, and at others channeling something more like the Dirty Three or Rachel's, but when the drums are pounding and the guitars are crunchy, and the violin is singing, it's pretty goddamn great. The recording too is crisp and clean, letting all the instruments shine, even at its most dense and busy, and the vocals are pretty ace too, usually a weak spot in bands like this.
And while these guys tend toward the more melodic side of math rock (unlike some of the above mentioned bands who leaned toward the heavy), Ventid are certainly capable of some serious rocking, but the fact that the playing is so nimble is what makes this stuff so good, these guys can flit from spidery psychedelic tangle to mathed out churn, to near metallic pound and back again without breaking a sweat. Plenty of stop/starts, and some serious stretches of progged out majesty, and all the while, these guys are writing some seriously catchy songs, you'll find yourselves lulled and entranced by some mathy movement, when all of a sudden a guitar or vocal melody will pop out, and lodge itself in your head. Really great stuff, and kicking ourselves big time for only finding out about these guys now.
Packaged in super cool hand screened jackets, and probably pretty limited.
We've been meaning to list this record for ages, the second release from mysterious German horde Verdunkeln, a huge favorite around these parts. And while these guys are often compared to mid period Burzum, they are so much more than that.
Just take the first song, with its weird gothy into, processed Joy Division bassline, over plodding simple drum line, chanted monk like vocals, as far as we're concerned, the track could have continued on like that, a weird minimal stripped down goth doom jam, vibes of early 4AD, old militaristic industrial, but instead, the chorus offers up a thick slab of crunchy superdistorted guitar, and howled, effected shrieks, before slither back into the same gothy crawl, until it finished off with a furious freak out, all pounding drums, blown out guitars, wild leads and huge chunks of throbbing bass.
And that sort of defines their sound. It's almost like some eighties goth band, like Christian Death, the Abecedarians, or Kommunity FX, were transported to some grim black forest, where they continued to play basically the same music, but with the surroundings seeping into every note, the starlit sky, the dense canopy of trees overhead, the whipping wind, the snow capped mountains, turning them into something basically undefinable. Sure it's black metal. Sort of. And yeah, it's some kind of weird dark gothwave, but the way those two elements are incorporated transform Verdunkeln into something so bizarre, and so unique, that it's hard to really describe.
Each song begins as a lurching midtempo bass heavy crawl, the bass heavily reverbed and effected, the vocals haunting and deep, when the guitars do come in, they are massive, chugging away at one moment, soaring majestically the next.
Our favorite song might be the second track, "Im Zwiespalt", beginning with that haunting reverbed twang, the sound of rainfall, cracks of thunder, the guitars finally come in, and the song lurches into motion, some sort of lumbering downtuned blackdoom behemoth, that plods along until a sudden break, when a delay drenched guitar offers up a strummed minor key melody, and the song explodes into a weird majestic cinematic blow out, the chords and notes soaring, until that delayed guitar break comes back in briefly, and the song resumes it's dense plod, but this time the riffing following the clean guitar, a weird post rocky, mournful vibe. Bleak and harrowing, and super epic and emotional. Midway through the track, the tempo picks up and the band begins to rock seriously for the first time, replete with tangled leads, haunting melodies, still strangely melancholy and emotional, before fading out into a drifting drone-y shimmer, peppered with huge bursts of crumbling downtuned chug, beneath a washed out smear of lonely synths, only to finish with a strange mathy outro.
And even though for right now, that might be our favorite song, this is one of those discs, that whatever song you happen to be listening to is your favorite. Next song, "oh wait, THIS one is the best song". Next song. "Actually, THIS one is way better. And so it goes. The whole record is just this impossible black metal goth, downtuned post rock doom, majestic cinematic post metal, avant metallic rock, who the fuck knows, and really who cares. There are definitely some Burzumic elements, some distinctly black metal tropes, but Verdunkeln are one of the very few, incredibly rare BM bands around who absolutely and completely sound like nothing you've ever heard.
The first full length from Vessel, aka producer Sebastian Gainsborough, 2012's Order Of Noise, was a perfect fit for the Tri Angle label, sounding very much like labelmates oOoOO, Balam Acab, Holy Other, etc. All warped and woozy, fractured slo-mo soul, dark, slithery, downtempo creeps that sounded like Portishead 12"s melted down, and then repressed into something much more alien, and otherworldly.
Punish, Honey is something else altogether, though. Gone are the pitch shifted vocals, the spare dubbed out minimal moodiness, and in their place, something much more bombastic and percussive, dense and collaged, and WAY more experimental. While that first record channeled the soulful murk of Burial, the sound here is almost more post industrial, still soulful for sure, but with hints of Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, and other much more avant influences, that you might not expect to hear woven into what is ostensibly dance music. That said, the music here is truly not designed for the dancefloor. Instead, in some ways at least, it hews closer to the sound design of folks like Ben Frost and Roly Porter. In fact, imagine some sort of Portishead / Ben Frost mash-up and you'd be getting close. From the opening intro, you know something has changed, what sounds like a solo performance on snare drum, in a big empty room, that blown out snare soon joined by processed recordings of what sounds like jackhammers, the result is some super abstract 20th century sounding weirdness, replete with skittery, stuttery rhythms, and keening siren like tones. It's not all that far out, but a lot of it comes close.
"Red Sex" sounds like Latin Playboys if the group was made up of robots, Marc Ribot like guitars wrapped around metallic buzz, and a churning looped beat, the vibe hazy and nocturnal, you can almost imagine someone like Tom Waits hearing a track like this and then recruiting Gainsborough to work on his new record. It's the moody, murky "Drowned In Water And Light" that really seals the deal, a cloud of swirling tones, gives way to a lumbering big beat, those tones bleeding and blurring into sinister shimmers, the sound almost like the score for some silent movie, wound around a lurching plod and pound, the atmosphere in constant motion, buzzing and thrumming, rich and lustrous and seriously haunting. From there on out Gainsborough continues to push the envelope, his mutant electronica harrowing at times, wistfully obtuse at others, a few tracks, like "Anima" sound almost like Amps For Christ, a sort of noise-folk psychedelia subtly infused into the otherwise mesmeric churn, or tracks like "Black Leaves And Broken Branches", that sounds like some lost Jewelled Antler campfire jam, all wheezing chords, muted percussion, lazy, languorous melodies, clouds of cymbal shimmer, distant horn bleats, albeit pocked with the occasional industrial burst. The final track is the 'danciest' of the bunch, but even there, the sound is noisy, and distorted, and dizzying, clattery and psychedelic, and it's preceded by two tracks of dreamy soft noise skitter and blurred Caretaker like ambient drift. Love it!!!
Cloud Seed marks the first appearance of Vex'd on the aQ list which makes no sense at all. Of all the outsider dubstep going on, of which there's more than you might think, but still not nearly enough, Vex'd might just be the coolest, and most compelling, at least amongst folks IN the actual dubstep scene. The core elements are still present, THAT skittery beat, the fuzzy warbly basslines, but beyond that, Vex'd drags the dubstep tropes through the sonic mud, and comes out the other side with something totally original and twisted, and with only a passing resemblance to dubstep proper.
From spare and skeletal do dense and dark, Vex'd's sound manages to be simultaneously lush and rough and raw, the recordings themselves as much a part of the sound, if anything, deconstructing the sound into weird ambience, and dark textural soundscapes, occasionally coalescing into something more dubsteppy.
The opener is super dubbed out, ultra minimal, lots of space, tons of reverb, with Warrior Queen's toasted vox laid over streaks of fuzz bass, loping clanky rhythm, almost like some sort of double dutch jam, but slowed waaaaay down.
But that's followed by some abstract experimental ambience. Hazy and washed out, very Tim Hecker-ish, but laced with some strange grinding skitter, lush string swells, and clipped sampled crunch.
"Heart Space" is maybe the most commercial of the bunch, like a dubstep Portishead, with some sultry female vocals, some awesome warbly bass, all tangled up into a druggy psychedelic dubby drift. But it's all a stumbling druggy descent into madness after that, from the ominous trancelike skitter of "Out of the Hills" to the blurred softly glitchy dreamdrone shimmer of "Out of the Hills", to the super grime-y blown out bass churn of "Slug Trawl Depths", to the warped cosmic hip hop bass heavy dub of "Disposition" with some awesome lugubrious vocals, dipping into Kode9 territory.
The comes the remixes, which are just as good as any of the tracks proper, Plaid's "Bar Kimura" is all swoonsome and swirly and skittery, with a subtle bit of dubstep bass, bleary eyed and sun dappled, with weird crooned vox, "Killing Floor" is the heaviest dubstep jam here, the bass fucking fierce and sharp, the beats jagged, about as hard as it gets, the Distance track "Fallen" gets reworked into something a bit more spaced out, with some serious bass warble, and some fragmented melody. Then there are two sort of classical mixes, one "Suite For Piano & Electronics", is all deeeeeeep drones, rumbling thrum, peppered with streaks of high end, fragments of melody, but overall dark and grim and intense, while Prokofiev's "String Quartet No.2" gets reworked into a stuttery string-ed lurch, super strange and very Timbaland-like, you can almost imagine some weirdo rapping over the top, with lots of grinding strings, and stop / starts.
Finally the record finishes off with two thick, almost doomy dubby dirges. The first layers a simple beat over a thick blackened rumble, an ominous minor key melody, deep thick swells, like a dubby Jesu almost, and then comes record closer "Nails", a creepy, thick swath of industrial crunch and buzz, big pounding beats, cinematic melodies, the bass thick and intense, finishing off with a killer collaged burst of sliced and diced death metal all tangled up with grinding pummeling industrial dub.
So awesome. And while this is definitely the best Vex'd record yet, and well deserving of Record Of The Week honors, this also maybe makes up for somehow not listing any of the other awesome Vex'd records. Another record to add to your aQ dancefloor destroying DJ kit!
We've gone on at great length about our love of French black metal, the more grim and gnarled and fucked up and fierce the better. And it doesn't get a whole lot better than VI, a record we got a while back, but not enough to list properly, instead, the few copies we had sat lurking in the shadows...
But since it looks like we won't actually get more, we figured at least a few of you would love to get your blackened little paws on this sonic sickness, and sick it is. About as heavy and punishing and furious as French black metal gets, definitely on par with say Deathspell Omega, maybe not quite as weird and progressive, bur easily as intense and evil, the sound supremely black and utterly grim, but the vibe, and the atmosphere... so oppressive and so so evil. The guitars are massive, and so fast and buzzy, they almost blur into trancelike drones, the whole band a blasting black beast, careening wildly, only occasionally slowing down to something less than lightning speed, mixing in haunting melodies, strange angelic voices, but focusing mostly on the sheer brutality and black ferocity of their sound. Kind of shocked actually that these guys aren't huge. Anyone into orthodox French blackness, should definitely bow down.
More from the label: "In their first gospel, French black metal devil worshipping misanthropes VI launch a ceremonious attack on the sheep-like practices of God-fearing man. Armed with dark fervor, diabolic discipline, devilish devotion, frenzied insectoid riffing and apocalyptic blasting, the deviant duo unleash their profane scriptures amid a rapturous cataclysm of scorn and disgust. Abiding by an alternate set of tenets, VI dutifully exercise their (anti-)faith, whilst exorcising the belief system of the virtuous. Espousing hedonism, individualism and overt Satanism, these prayers are composed (in the native tongue) with reverence and respect, venerating all things vile and vicious. Consecration of the depraved; sanctification of the obscene; emancipation of the human spirit. Bless them, father, for they have sinned..."
Indeed!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The Vibracathedral Orchestra is a hypnotic free noise group out of the UK which features current collaborators in Sunroof (whose most notable member is Matthew Bower of Skullflower and Total). Cyclical clatter of strumming guitars, not-quite-but-almost-drum-circle percussive swells, and squawking horns build the majority of these loosly improvised tracks that fall squarely between the free jazz of Albert Ayers and the dissonance of the experimental sides of Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo.
While many assumed that Paradigms was an exclusively heavy music label, seeing as many of its early releases were metal, and that it was born out of the death of the truly kick ass Rage Of Achilles label, in fact, from the very beginning, Paradigms has been releasing drone records and free folk records, weird prog records, along side the heavier metal and black metal and noise records, discs by bands like Gnaw Their Tongues, The Angelic Process, Throne Of Katarsis, Titan, Utlagr were balanced by discs from Plants, Tropes, Amber Asylum, Somnam, Snowdrift, this latest from California's The Victim's Shudder definitely fits more with the latter group.
Long dreamlike expanses of synthesized shimmer, drifting female vocals. The obvious reference is Cocteau Twins, maybe Dead Can Dance, TVS would have been right at home on 4AD, or at their most bleak and drone-y on Cold Meat Industry. TVS is essentially a one man band, who weaves massive reverby drifts of soft sound, shimmery and dreamlike, ethereal and New Agey at times, flurries of delicate piano drift over synthesized strings, cooing vocals hover in wide open expanses of sun dappled ambience, everything is gauzy and soft around the edges, bleary eyed and blurred.
A few tracks up the ante heaviness-wise, like "For Francesca" with its buzzing synths (or could they be real guitars?), growling demonic vox, lots of distortion and crumbling rumbles, grit and interference, all draped over a soaring chunk of stately neo-classical, or the cinematic drift of "A Godless Serene", replete with the sound of water and wind, field recordings layered beneath quivering strings and mournful melodies. The disc closes with the 13 minute "One Last Fatal Suite", beginning as another delicate crystalline blur, vocals indistinct and wordless, piano, simple and pointillist, eventually joined by strange electronic specters, high end streaks, grinding bits of crunch, static, hiss, building to a haunting caterwaul before drifting away completely. Beautiful and haunting, definitely for the 4AD inclined, and fans of neo-classical dark ambience. Maybe not heavy enough for some of the Paradigms faithful, but quite pretty nonetheless.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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It turns out that Phil "Anton Crowley" Anselmo of Pantera's primitive black metal project Viking Crown wasn't just a one-off thing, because now in addition to the "Unorthodox Steps of Ritual" cdep of material recorded in '94 that was finally released last year, comes this, Viking Crown's newly recorded debut full-length. You may remember us raving about how incredibly fucked up and amazing the ep was. Well, this album is a bit more produced, a bit less fucked up, but still an admirable effort of evil musical intent. With Killjoy (from one of Phil's other, other bands, Necrophagia) on vocals, this is also more of a real 'band' effort, not just a lone, drunk Darkthrone maniac with a home studio. The raw, blasting black metal tracks segue into spooky drone-scapes, giving dimension to Phil's true black metal art...definitely superior to anything Pantera has released in recent years.
You know we like repetition here at Aquarius. We like repetition. We like it. Repetition. Whether it's the motorik pulses of Neu! and Circle, or the minimalist throb of Steve Reich and The Necks, or the crackling loops of Philip Jeck and Thomas Brinkmann, or the headnodding riffs of Om and Les Rallizes Denudes, or the blurring buzz of Wigrid and Wold... we like it! Keep it goin' and we'll keep listening. Well of course one of the many musical forms that makes good use of repetition is dance music, and although sometimes we give the impression that techno and house music "isn't our thing" that's definitely not true about all techno music. Not when it's really, really about the mesmeric repetition, and in an interesting way, like the clicks and cuts of Ryoji Ikeda or the "heroin house" of Fluxion. Or the whole Kompakt catalog of pop ambient drone and beats.
Or this new disc by critical darling Ricardo Villalobos! Which is probably getting a lot of attention because of the sheer length of the tracks on it -- there's two of 'em, clocking in at more than a half-an-hour each! The title cut, "Fizheuer Zieheuer" is truly hypnotic, based on endless, slightly altered iterations of the same happy little horn riff (sampled from a Balkan brass band?), expertly joined to echoing four-on-the-floor techno beats, slowly morphing and shifting over time -- 37 minutes! Deceptively simple, but brilliantly crafted. And yes, totally, totally mesmerizing. Allan turned on the "visualizer" function on his iTunes while playing this and we all got totally tranced-out watching the flashing lights...
This album is maybe really sort of an extreme maxi-single, as the 35 and a half minute second track "Fizbeast" is a stripped-down (minus the horns) recap of the first track -- yay, more repetition! But you might also just hit play on track one again, 'cause you're gonna want to hear that infectious Balkan horn part again and again and again. Recommended, recommended, recommended...
FYI this cd is intentionally packaged by Playhouse without a tray card in the jewel case. Either 'cause it's sort-of a single, or 'cause they feel that electronic music is so modern it doesn't need a back cover, we don't know. Just mentioning this fact so that if you mailorder it, you won't think there's something wrong with your copy...
We've long been fans of minimal techno maven Ricardo Villalobos, his records spare and skeletal, rhythmic and repetitive, the sort of electronic music we find utterly mesmerizing and totally irresistible. In addition to that, Villalobos does not shy away from strange sonic experiments, and is thus no stranger to odd samples, considering he made a whole record out of sounds borrowed from French prog legends Magma, so this new record really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, nor should we have been surprised by just HOW great it turned out, but it was, and we were, which should speak to just how incredible this strange sonic experiment truly is. Villalobos teamed up with Max Loderbauer and created this sprawling double disc which is essentially a minimal techno mash up of modern classical and European jazz, with all the sounds culled from various releases on the legendary ECM label, which include, most excitingly for us, Arvo Part, but also loads of ECM stalwarts like Bennie Maupin, Paul Giger, John Abercrombie, Christian Wallumrod, Alexander Knaifel, Miroslav Vitous, Louis Sclavis, Wolfert Brederode, Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani and Paul Motian. Never heard of any/most of those, it hardly matters, as the duo of Villalobos and Loderbauer stretch out the sounds of the originals into spare rhythmic minimalism, looping and layering, adding subtle bits of rumble and crunch, deep pulses and abstract shimmer, fields of glitch and muted crunch, but to our ears, it sounds like very little was added to the mix, and much of the magic came from deftly manipulating the originals. The techno element is really negligible here, the sound is much more abstract avant jazz, or hushed minimal drift, in fact, the sound is so unique it's quite difficult to really describe simply. The sound actually reminds us quite a bit of Aussie free jazz minimalists The Necks, the same sort of subtle shifting sonic palette and the gradual evolution of sound. Opener "Reblop" is a hushed super spare bit of solo piano, wreathed in clouds of occasional cymbal shimmer, and some melodic harp, the notes on the piano wreathed in reverb, the cymbal shimmer strangely distorted, the wide open spaces peppered with soft synthy streaks and bloopy squelches, which often mirror the melody, it's really strangely pretty, but also subtly alien. "Recat" is about as close as things here get to techno, which is not that close, but the original brushed snare rhythm is looped into a clipped minimal electronic flecked skitter, that rhythm delicately processed and gradually transformed while all around it pianos and strings unfurl melodies that become gnarled and softly distorted into new shapes, the result a sort of warped lo-fi kraut-jazz. "Resvete" is super spare and spaced out, cymbal shimmer and angelic female vocals, Villalobos and Loderbauer's contributions so subtle, that barring a few glitchy bits, it's difficult to tell how different this version is than the original, quite we're guessing, but it's so deftly transformed, that it's not hard to imagine this as just some strange slab of experimental European jazz. And the tracks that sample Arvo Part, manage to make magical music even moreso, taking Part's lush liturgical drift and making it even more washed out and ethereal, mysterious and dreamlike.
One of our favorite tracks is "Reannounce", which is very tribal, almost African sounding, hypnotic rhythms, and processed chant like vocals, underpinned by some throat singing like buzz, and some wild almost free sounding percussion, "Recurrence" too with its lazy drumming, and slo-mo late night smokey slowed down jazz feel, the whir of the trumpet buzz turned into a muted drone, the sound almost like the music is melting. "Rebird" finds the duo building what sounds like an imagined field recording, underscored by delicate, slightly warped piano, and a barely there rhythm, while "Retikhiy" sounds like some sort of alien world music, or some reimagined forest folk transformed into looped electronic minimalism. We could really go track by track, every song here is mysterious and magical, the rare sort of record that transcends it's genre, it's hard imagine anyone into adventurous music not loving this. It's jazz, it's classical, it's electronic, it's plunderphonics, but it's also none of those, the sound truly more than its constituent parts. The extensive liner notes go into great detail about the creation of this collection of songs, explaining that the duo did not have access to the original tracks, so had to use the records themselves, and thus chose tracks where rhythms and instruments were isolated in the composition, in addition, gaps and pauses and record noise, as well as the natural room sound were also sound sources, with much of this improvised live, with the intention of "combining the functionality of reduced electronic structures with the living textures of ECM productions", with the most important thing being "to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other, to keep both - the organic and the electronic - in balance." So great, definite contender for record of the year, jazz, electronic, classical or otherwise!
Full length number two from these local post punk noise poppers, and according to the liner notes, it might also be their last. But with VC, it's pretty hard to tell if they're taking the piss, usually safe to assume they are. And while their self-titled debut was gloriously lo-fi and ramshackle, noisy and chaotic, enough that we made it our Record Of The Week, A Celebration Of Taste manages to be even MORE, with much of it sounding like it was recorded in a cave, or a huge metal box, or underwater, on what we can only assume is probably a broken 4-track, everything with dying batteries, but then out of some impossibly impenetrable murk, will emerge a burst of crunchy, fuzzy power pop, that sounds like an unearthed gem from back in the day. So we figured this one too had to be another Record Of the Week...
Check out the opening 1-2-3 punch, "(I'm A Star) In Outer Space" is some seriously classic songsmithery, jangle guitar galore, some impossibly catchy guitar melodies, plenty of background buzz, keening vocals and hooks for days, but the tinny, no-fi production makes Guided By Voices sound like U2, but then there's "Micro Flesh", which takes that same sound, and piles on the murk, treble turned to zero, bass to ten, then slowed down, so it's a muddy, woozy, warmly creep, grinding, and gristly, before suddenly, "Faster" explodes into action, sounding like some weirdo lost Mod outfit from the sixties, this still lo-fi but cranked up, gloriously noisy and psychedelic, feedback everywhere, and buried under all that noisiness, a fucking killer, classic jam.
And so it goes, these guys dipping their toes into seventies power pop ("I Was Never Young" sounds like an outsider Purling Hiss), glammed out punk rock stomp ("Malleable Love"), all swaggery hip shaking crunch, total experimental noisescapery ("Abductors Pt. 1"), fifties style balladry filtered through cracked modern noise rock, and crumbled into something barely songlike ("Hairline-esque"), super distorted fuzz pop a la GBV ("Someone In This House")... Needless to say, we could go on and on and on. But if anything, this new one is somehow both more fucked up and damaged, and more catchy and well crafted, than their debut, that well crafted-ness pretty much entirely disguised by all the noise, and weirdo production, and detuned damage, and constantly in-flux production, and the varying degrees of shitty sound, but it's all glorious, and freaky, and psychedelic, and catchy and freaked out, and we're really really really hoping this isn't the last we're gonna hear from these guys, cuz this record is some seriously next level outsider pop genius! Fucked up and utterly confusional obviously, but then that's a big part of what makes it so goddamn great.
Includes two inserts and a download code.
Debut release from this new SF band, born from late great punk pop weirdos the Sopors, who basically went mostly unheard outside of their little scene (which also included pop tUMULt pop heroes the Ovens!). And while we're doing our best to track down copies of the Sopors lp to review, we've got this new record from Violent Change, at the time of this tape essentially a solo record by Sopors mainman Matt Bleyle, although since, the band has been expanded to an actual group that includes Tony from the Ovens. And all of these mentions of the Ovens is not for nothing, cuz Violent Change definitely has the same sort of pop vibe as the Ovens, but where the Ovens take the Beatles and Weezer and the Champs, Violent Change are a much more twisted and lo-fi proposition, an obvious comparison is definitely Guided By Voices, in fact, we'd imagine fans of GBV would flip for these guys, who kick out perfect pop jams at the drop of a hat, but don't shy away from getting more punky, or twisting a perfectly good pop song into a gloomy chunk of deeply crooned post punk dirgery. That said, the bulk of this tape is some of THEE catchiest lo-fi pop you're bound to hear EVER, with excursion into blasting punk rock, noisy freakouts, and at least one track that is a dead ringer for the Ovens, but the whole thing all fuzzy, and ramshackle and gloriously lo-fi, and punky and catchy and probably the most listened to tape in the shop!!
When we were first told about this Violet record, it was described to us as a noise record, and we just sort of assumed Violet was the woman making the noise, when in fact, Violet Ray Gas And The Playback Singers is way more of an experimental drone record, and Violet is the name of the group, which in fact is the work of one fella, not sure what he's called, but none of that really matters, what does, is that this record is amazing. Dark and mysterious, mixing in bits of Jeck and Tim Hecker, Wolf Eyes, blending them into Violet's ominous world of sound.
There's feedback all over the place, but it's far from harsh or jagged, instead it's used like color, to paint greyed out landscapes burnished reds, and melted oranges, thick tones, reverberating chimes, bits of buzz and crunch, disembodied voices, intercepted broadcasts, clouds of hiss, chugging machinery, industrial sonic detritus, warped strings, woozy synths, all wound up into dense walls of sound one second, blurred into delicate crystalline lattices the next.
"Plague Numbers" is total Jeck, a skipping scratched record smeared into a gauzy washed out living portrait of sound, indistinct figures, flitting shadows, mysterious shapes, all moving as if through a thick field of static, not even four minutes, but we found ourselves wishing it would never end.
Elsewhere the sound of lapping water is swallowed up by a crackling crumbling fog of burnt melodies, and slowed down riffs, a sort of sun dappled lysergic sonic swirl. The title track is a tuning up orchestra stretched out into a softly chaotic symphony of angular tones and fractured melodies, of sine waves and groaning creaking low end rumbles, augmented by curious crackles and strands of distortion arranged in patterns resembling speech, but rendered in impressionistic shards, finishing off with a gorgeous high end ur-drone, a softer Sunroof!, a field of static bagpipes, their overtones creating otherworldly patterns in the ether. Gorgeous.
Boy do we love Grime!! But we're getting a bit frustrated at the relative dearth of grime stateside. We can only listen to our Dizzee Rascal and Wiley records so many times. Plus to be honest, as much as we dig those, we're sort of hankering for something a little more, well, you know, grime-y! Overseas, you got Kano, Lethal Bizzle, Lady Sovereign, More Fire Crew and loads more but it's taken forever for any of their records to make it over here. But in the meantime, we've got the debut from the Virus Syndicate, courtesy of Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu label. And it's a corker. The thing with grime is, well, it's sort of like drum and bass, you just gotta love the sound. We can't get enough of the super distorted classic ragga drum and bass. So much so that we could listen to that shit forever. And we're beginning to feel the same way about grime. It's sort of like hip hop sure, but the rhythm is this super repetitive, slurry, stuttering beat, a very clumsy funk, over and over, every song has the same general head nodding shuffle, with grimy fuzz synth bass lines, and then maddening, tongue twisting flow over the whole thing. Virus Syndicate take that formula and give it their own twist. Big fat beats, throbbing and hiccuping, haunting stabs of operatic vocals, fuzzed out synths, burbling booming system bass, all rocking that instantly recognizable grime rhythm, while the Syndicate spit bizarre marble mouthed rhymes, talking trash, a wildly confusional flow, catchy and soulful, occasionally slipping into some almost Jamaican style toasting. So fucking awesome.
Also boasts some truly and brilliantly atrocious cover art (continued inside the cd booklet with a Virus Syndicate comic!).
We're so so psyched to finally be getting everything that comes out on UK heavy space/psych label Cardinal Fuzz, and this week's list brings two more goodies, elsewhere is the latest from Dead Sea Apes, whose collab with Black Tempest from a few lists back was a heady dose of psychedelic drift, and these guys, who we had never heard of before, but who sound right at home on Cardinal Fuzz, their sound a bit more tranced out and angular, just check out "Heavy Saddles", that almost sounds like a heavy psych Television, a woozy angular main riff repeated over and over, draped over a super motorik unwavering rhythm, the band locked tight into a total head nodding trance-out groove, while in the background, synths whir and thrum and effects swoop and swirl, it may be about 5 minutes, but it feels epically endless. And that's pretty much what these guys do, the guitar locks into a weird little melodic tangle or a woozy riff, sometimes jangly, like on "Natural Faze", sometimes murky and detuned like on "Drag", both sides of the band given plenty of space, "Natural Faze" sounds like some Velvets outtake, stretched even further out, with echo drenched vocals, the melodies spidery and the notes sort of melty and bendy, trance inducing and super hypnotic. That melty bendiness is all over "Drag" too, making it sound like Polvo gone space rock, which as you might imagine is a VERY good thing. More vocals surface here, the song slipping easily from blown out synth buzz, to murky motorik psych-groove and back again.
"In My Father's House There Are Mansions" jacks up the tempo a bit, and cranks the buzzing synth, to conjure up some snake charmer melody infused garage dirgery that should have Moon Duo and Liminanas fans freaking out in equal measure. And finally, "Black Ocean Glow", slows things back down, and unfurls some sprawling mid-tempo hypno-rock moodiness/broodiness, which churns and roils mesmerizingly until some surprise horns swoop in for the last couple minutes, giving the proceedings a seriously downer-jazz vibe, especially when all the other instruments drop out, and the horns lock into a dreamy, reverbed slo-mo outro, that could have stretched out forever.
Fans of all things Cardinal Fuzz (Dead Sea Apes, Hills, Janitors, Cosmic Dead, Heads, etc.) as well as other psych space combos (Carlton Melton, Moon Duo, etc.) will dig BIG time.
Not sure when/where/how we first found out about Visitors and their 1974 self-titled album, but for the prog lovers here at Aquarius, it was love at first sight - literally, check out that cover art! A hyperencephalic space alien standing in a glowing doorway, the open door labeled "Sesame". The back cover is pretty freaky too: the disembodied heads of members of Visitors floating in front of an atomic mushroom cloud that's exploding out of a giant egg! And, yes, the music lived up to these silly-strange images. The album's heavy opener, "Dies Irae", with backwards effects, faux-Gregorian chant, wild synth flourishes, and wailing psych guitar, among other outre ingredients, is a grand(iose) introduction to the Visitors' over-the-top prog pleasures, coming off like a hybrid of Magma and an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. The tracks that follow maintain the same majestic/eccentric momentum. Imagine our favorite, craziest '70s Italian prog (Osanna, Area, Museo Rosenbach, etc.) meeting up with groovy orchestrations of a Serge Gainsbourg or Jean-Claude Vannier album. Visitors being in fact French, hence the latter comparisons.
Both Andee and Allan acquired copies of this cd for themselves as soon as they could, and always wanted to get it for Aquarius too, but only recently did we manage to contact the label in France and were able to order a bunch of this reissue to highlight. At the same time, we also finally figured out that a lot of AQ customers might be interested in this for another, specific, reason - Visitors was an exploitation-prog project of musical mastermind Jean-Pierre Massiera, whose surreal pop productions were the subject of two recent, quite popular collections we've been selling: Psychoses: Freakoid (1963-1978) and Psychoses: Discoid (1974-1981). Visitors actually appeared on both volumes, with "Flatwoods Story" (from this album) on Freakoid and "V-i-s-i-t-o-r-s" on Discoid.
Now's your chance to hear, from start to finish, an entire cult sci-fi concept album as envisioned by Massiera, unabashed prog bombast that's often haunting yet groovy at the same time. Although, at the time of its release, Visitors was a one-off album intended a cash-in on the progressive rock fad of the early '70s, its sci-fi concept probably not meant to be taken seriously either, nowadays it seems as valid, and certainly as enjoyable, as any other of the fabulous prog excesses of its era.
The cd booklet with this reissue includes photos, and liner notes in English giving a detailed history of Massiera's career, and includes full credits for all the twenty musicians and singers who participated, left anonymous on the original release. Among them, you'll find a future member of Magma, virtuoso violinist Didier Lockwood. And we were interested to learn that the "deep vocals" that occasionally pop up on the album were by Massiera himself.
Debut from this French black metal supergroup, featuring members of Ataraxie, Hyadningar, Funeralium, Mhonos and others, who here have come together to conjure up a heady strain of avant psychedelic blackness. Present are the usual BM tropes of course - blasting beats, buzzing insectoid riffing, harsh demonic vokills - but all of that stuff is reimagined and recontextualized into something much more abstract, a swirling, psychedelic blackened mesmer, those blasting relentless beats suspended in field of crystalline minor key guitar melodies and black ambient swirls, everything wreathed in a smeary black buzz. And even in full on blast/buzz mode, instead of sounding blown out and super distorted, the sound is more smeary and indistinct, washed out and weirdly hazy, the vibe much more droned out and trancelike than brutal and black, transforming here and there into Voivod like black prog, and often slipping into distinctly un-black-metal-like sprawls of clean guitar shimmer, mesmerizing Slint like post rock lope. The group do occasionally explode into a more punkish pound, but the bulk of the record is spent drifting through strangely ethereal black clouds of blurred buzz, minimal post metal Ved Buens Ende style dirgery, and hauntingly atmopsheric psychedelic black minimalism, culminating in the stunningly gorgeous ambient closer, all whirling processed murk, muted melancholic melodies, lush layered shimmer, and chiming bell like melodies. So good!
Been meaning to review these for ages now, finally getting around to it, the first two records from this legendary Boston band, originally released on the legendary and now defunct Homestead Records label, and who are often compared to Husker Du and Mission Of Burma (the band that drummer / vocalist Peter Prescott played in before the Volcano Suns), the latter especially appropriate since Prescott's drumming was a big part of MoB's sound, as was his occasional singing, and it definitely sounds like some of Burma's songwriting stuck with him.
But Volcano Suns were much more of a pop band, meant to be more fun and a little bit more light hearted than Burma, the songs catchy, the riffs super memorable, but that doesn't keep much of the music from being brooding and intense and complex, super rhythmic, and hypnotic, with long instrumental passages butted up against super catchy choruses, like the Merge website says, these songs are so good, and so memorable, that they really do sound like greatest hits records. We hadn't listened to either of these in ages, but throwing them on recently, we remembered pretty much all of these songs, 20 years later! And they still sound pretty fresh considering how much indie rock has changed over the last two decades.
All-Night Lotus Party was the band's second record, originally released in 1986, and found the band getting a bit darker, and a little more aggressive, the guitars heavier, but without sacrificing any of the pop smarts that made the first record so awesome, and like that record, pretty much every song here is a could have/should have/would have been hit. Catchy as all get out, but super rocking and intense.
This is the first time either of these records has been available on cd. This reissue includes a ton of bonus tracks, B-sides, etc., including some really odd covers, including the Beatles' "Polythene Pam", the Amboy Dukes' "Journey To The Center Of The Mind" and Leonard Nimoy's "The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins"(!!)...
Been meaning to review these for ages now, finally getting around to it, the first two records from this legendary Boston band, originally released on the legendary and now defunct Homestead Records label, and who are often compared to Husker Du and Mission Of Burma (the band that drummer / vocalist Peter Prescott played in before the Volcano Suns), the latter especially appropriate since Prescott's drumming was a big part of MoB's sound, as was his occasional singing, and it definitely sounds like some of Burma's songwriting stuck with him.
But Volcano Suns were much more of a pop band, meant to be more fun and a little bit more light hearted than Burma, the songs catchy, the riffs super memorable, but that doesn't keep much of the music from being brooding and intense and complex, super rhythmic, and hypnotic, with long instrumental passages butted up against super catchy choruses, like the Merge website says, these songs are so good, and so memorable, that they really do sound like greatest hits records. We hadn't listened to either of these in ages, but throwing them on recently, we remembered pretty much all of these songs, 20 years later! And they still sound pretty fresh considering how much indie rock has changed over the last two decades.
The Bright Orange Years was the Volcano Suns first record, and was originally released in 1985, very reminiscent of Mission Of Burma, a killer collection of classic indie rock, equal parts that classic Homestead sound, with a little SST thrown in for good measure, the songs range from jangly and hooky, to dense and rocking, to noisy and chaotic, but all of them super catchy. We loved this record back in the day, and we're loving it all over again now.
This is the first time either of these records has been available on cd. This reissue includes a ton of bonus tracks, B-sides, etc., including a pretty cool live cover of Prince's "1999" that transforms the original into a weirdly angular post punk jam...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's been long enough since we've had anything new from this mysterious one man black metal band, that probably most of you out there have no idea who VO are, and thus, would very likely appreciate the Voltaic Omen origin story, so here it is, one more time...
It all began with two unidentified mp3's sent via email, no message, no anything, just two HUGE files. We were wondering if there was something wrong with our email, and then POW. Two songs, identified only by title, but nothing about what they were, the name of the band, where they came from. Our first impulse was to just trash 'em, but we thought what the heck? And holy shit were we immediately floored. Exactly the sort of buzzing warped blackness we love around these parts, lo-fi, tripped out, druggy, heavy, space-y, we had to figure out who the heck this band was and how to get MORE!! After a few emails back and forth, we discovered this filthy black chaos was the work of a one man band from the Northwest called Voltaic Omen, a little more digging revealed than not only did that one man have the most bad ass corpse paint, but his corpsepainted visage was an integral part of one of the VO logos, one of the best black metal logos ever by the way. So we were smitten, if one can be smitten by something as grim and fucked up and blown out as Voltaic Omen, and thus, ever since, we've done our best to track down every single goddamn thing we could get our hands on, which so far, has been a handful of tapes and cd-r's. To which we can now add this one, another chunk of twisted WTF outsider blackness, which if it's even possible, might be the weirdest thing we've heard from him yet.
Opening with a weird sort of orchestral fanfare, all bells and horns, and strings, weirdly warbly, and growing more and more atonal as it goes, speeding up too, before disappearing beneath a blast of weird mid-tempo lo-fi black buzz, lurching rhythm, belched vokills, wild shredding leads, stumbling and chaotic, the vocals echo drenched and WAY up in the mix, especially the weird goat grunts, which get all dubbed out and black out all the other sounds, before fading right back into the churning chug. The leads too, sore over the top, it's the twisted mix, that makes this as weird as it is. Dizzying and druggy and seriously demented, the two relatively short sides here delivering more than enough to overload your feeble brain, from galloping punked out blackness, beneath bellowed monster vox, wreathed in relentless metallic shred, to murky almost D-beat sounding pound, muddy and washed out, blurry and black, to weird soundscapes of samples and sinister pitch shifted laughter, chugging downtuned riffage, and more squiggly leads, to wild grinding over the top black buzz dementia, crooned demon vocals, over insectoid guitars, and loping drum pound, the whole thing twisted all up into some of the weirdest black metal you'll ever hear. WAY recommended for fans of twisted, outsider black metal, including such WTF geniuses as Benighted Leams, Goat Thrower, Furze, Necrofrost, Vondur, etc...
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! As in 20 or 25 copies maybe, which means these are likely the last copies ever...
It all began with two unidentified mp3's sent via email, no message, no anything, just to HUGE files. We were wondering if there was something wrong with our email, and then POW. Two songs, identified only by title, but nothing about what they were, the name of the band, where they came from. Our first impulse was to just trash em, but we thought what the heck? And holy shit were we immediately floored. Exactly the sort of buzzing warped blackness we love around these parts, lo-fi, tripped out, druggy, heavy, space-y, we had to figure out who the heck this band was and how to get MORE!!
After a few emails back and forth, we discovered this filthy black chaos was the work of a one man band from the Northwest called Voltaic Omen, a little more digging revealed than not only did that one man have the most bad ass corpse paint, but his corpsepainted visage was an integral part of one of the VO logos, one of the best black metal logos ever by the way. VO was only too happy to send us more, the result being several weeks of mp3's and downloads and demos and cassettes and 3"cd-r's and often a new track every few days as they were hatched. It's almost like we won the fucked up demented lo-fi black metal lottery! But now it's time to share our good fortune with you. Not only will there hopefully be a compilation coming soon on Andee's own tUMULt label, but we have a brand new proper cd-r demo, called Supreme Satanic Substorm, and crammed with the swirling, stumbling, off kilter, fucked up and freaky black metal weirdness that had us so smitten in the first place.
SSS starts out appropriately enough with Carl Sagan from Cosmos, his voice drenched in reverb, before the record stumbles into motion, a lugubrious tarpit blast, under some oozing riffage and bizarre echoey vocals, which suddenly switch gears into what sounds like some lo-fi noise pop jam gone black metal. And it only gets weirder from there, lumbering doomic blurred buzzscapes wrap around woozy minor key guitars, heaving strangled vokills drift over programmed beats, the vibe shifting from washed out Burzumy dirge, to total psychedelic outer space blackened skree, the third track "Blood Bound" is all growled vocals, over tinny high end swirls of guitar, and splattery blast beats, a sound less metal, and more sort of washed out grim bliss, then the low end kicks in and the track seems to ooze and sprawl and slip into even more chaos. Elsewhere, tracks drift into weird muted skitter, or are laced with dizzyingly out of tune synths, funhouse melodies, even some weirdly poppy jangle, but it always seems to collapse inward, into a swirling black cloud of gloriously outsider whatthefuck. This is not the sort of stuff for folks looking for super tight blazing black metal, or even Burzumic depressive blackness, no, Voltaic Omen is for the freaks, the folks who like their black metal as demented as it is black, who want their black metal records to sound like they were left on the dashboard of the car in a heatwave, the grooves all melting into one another, the result a warped, woozy, warbly weird as fuck ambient black space blow out. And even when it seems like he's going for classic black metal, a frenzied riff, flurries of double kick drum, soaring epic melodies, it only lasts for a few seconds, before it gets pulled apart, wrapped in a vocal that sounds like a dying foghorn, or sent tumbling through some spaced out stretch of demonic vox and whirring amp buzz, or pelted with off kilter D-beat drumming, or splintered into thick swirls of intense (but still twisted) black ambience, often slipping into abstract, almost funereal doom or even indescribable bursts of total blackspacepsychdrone freakout.
As the above review demonstrates, this stuff is super hard to describe. But think Abruptum, Lugubrum, Vondur, Striborg, Necrofrost, that's the sort of damaged delirium Voltaic Omen explores. So now all of you loyal aQ weirdo black metal obsessives can add Voltaic Omen to your fucked up freaked out damaged and demented outsider lo-fi space drone black metal pantheon!
We have to admit, we almost didn't listen to this, which we know is sorta hypocritical, considering the ridiculous bands we dig, many with even more ridiculous monikers, but something about the bandname Vomitface had us expecting something else entirely, and something we thought we might not dig. But dig this we do. Lots. Basically, these guys sound like they were cut from the very same cloth as Nirvana's Bleach. Fuzzed out grunge, plenty of quiet/loud, the same sort of minor key clean guitar, and explosive choruses, with some killer distorto leads, and warmly vocals that sound a lot like Kurt Cobain, especially when in the early days and on those old demos, or when he was just going for it and shredding his voice live.
"Sloppy Joes" is the most Nirvana-ish of the bunch, with its loping chugging verse, and blown out chorus, the warmly keening vocals, the main hook a killer, the drums blown out too, the whole production super hot and in-the-red. it's pretty tough to resist, the vocals in the verse are a dead ringer for the Grifters too, which is most definitely a very good thing.
And hell, once you get done playing that track over and over, "Bill Me Later" explodes into some serious noise drenched post-grunge heaviness, with plenty of slither and swagger and crunch, and a distinctly nineties verse with weird spidery guitars, some 'oooooh' background vox, more wild drumming, and yeah, another bad ass hook. We were pretty blown away when we played this the first time, and within minutes we had already sold one! The other two tracks are just as ruling, total grunge radness, that takes the Nirvana/grunge worship of Roomrunner, maybe even further, but if that's a sound you love, nobody does it this good anymore, and hell, these guys do it now, better than lots of bands back in the day too. We can't stop listening to this, and are really hoping there's a full length on the way.
LIMITED TO 133 COPIES! Includes a download with a bonus DL only track!
This is the first solo record from Steve Von Till, guitarist/vocalist for bay area tribal teutons Neurosis (in fact I think it's the first 'solo' record by anyone in Neurosis). It is a dark and somber affair, as you might expect, but what might surprise you is it's restraint and fragility, just voice, acoustic guitars, and occasional strings. The sounds on this record were hinted at on the last Neurosis record; droning and hypnotic, whispery balladry, replete with cellos and violins (courtesy of Amber Asylum who definitely share some sonic qualities here). Steve's voice is a gruff whisper, abrasive, but subtley melodic, bringing to mind Michael Gira, Nick Cave and Tom Waits.
Finally!!! It's taken us years (literally) but we finally managed to track down the second record (in a quantity enough to review and list) from one of our all time favorite outsider weirdo whatthefuck metal bands, VORAK! If you're a regular reader of the list, you know how much we love the damaged and demented, the fucked up and freaked out metal, so believe us when we tell you Vorak just might be the weirdest and most fucked up EVER. When we reviewed the first Vorak years and years ago, we summed it up suggesting that Lord Vorak, the man behind one man classical nihilist black metal commando unit Vorak "either must be joking or is totally out of his mind" and record number two only furthers that sentiment.
The first record was a dizzying logic defying head spinning blur of spastic drum machines, sped up vocals, garbled metal guitar and snatches of piano, all tossed in a blender and spewed out in a confusional froth. Well if anything, record number two, Rhetoric Of The Supermen, demonstrates a little bit more song structure, but manages to sound not one whit more sane. In fact Vorak's sound is almost even weirder when applied to actual sort-of-actual-song arrangements.
But let's start from the top. Vorak. Aka Lord Vorak, a man we're led to believe must be a classically trained pianist, whose record covers are covered in metallic gold busts, flaming eagles, and barbed wire, who's partial to song titles like "Dies Irae: Kruel And Glorious Purgation Of The Untermenschen", "Synthetic Nepenthe", "Australyan Uber-Volkslieder 1", there seems to be some sort of obsession with fascism, inside the booklet, it mentions that "All aspects of this supreme music of the future production emanate from the mind of Lord Vorak entirely for his own amusement and gratification"... and heck, we haven't even gotten to the music yet.
An ultra fucked up and completely fractured assemblage of super distorted classical piano, screeching metallic buzz, damaged chipmunk vocals, stumbling chaotic drum programming, interspersed with some straight classical piano, some soaring strings, all tangled and convoluted, every track rife with new head scratching (and head banging) moments...
The record opens with some wild tangled harpsichord sounding piano, dense flurries of notes, strangely recorded, but distinctly classical, until the super distorted metal riffing takes over at the beginning of track two, laid over a series of struggling stumbling drum machine rhythms, and super high pitched vocals, sounding a bit like that girl at the beginning of Kiss's "God Of Thunder" but more maniacal... The guitar is furious, the riffing relentless, with wild squiggly leads everywhere, huge swells of string like synths, and the vocals squawking and bleating all over the place, the drums a head spinning splatter... The next track slows things down a little bit, a thick sheet of blurred distorted guitar laid over some gorgeous minor key piano, the vocals sporadic and drenched in reverb, creepy more than weird, the whole thing super emotional and dark, but still completely unhinged.
Then comes "Blood-Reich 2000", with its relentless metallic onslaught, that gives way to strange piano / helium vocals / sputtering drum machine interludes, always returning to that furious minor key riffing. Several tracks are just piano, and those are quite stunning, atonal and modern, but still melodic and emotional, also strangely recorded so the lower notes are super distorted and at times sounding like a harpsichord. And there's one long track of blown out ambience, fuzzy and blurry, and strangely cinematic, thick swaths of buzz over strings all arranged into sweeping movements. But those tracks are surrounded on all sides by mind melting flurries of manic metal and furious freaked out metallic damage.
The disc includes two bonus tracks, both solo piano, both pieces by Richard Wagner, a strangely lovely and sedate finish to a record that most definitely ranks as one of the weirdest, and absolutely one of our all time favorites.
Totally recommended. And absolutely essential for all lovers of damaged, demented, fucked up, freaked out, outsider metal weirdness.
Is it a screeching petrodactyl attacking a piano? Wagner gone mad with a drum machine?? Actually this is a Nietzsche-obsessed multi-instrumentalist manaic from Austrialia. Vorak is his one-man "black metal" band, and he's either got to be joking or he is
So totally demented, so totally retarded, Vorak's 1996 debut "Triumph Of The Will" might even edge out Benighted Leams' "Astral Tenebrion" as the most retarded black metal album ever -- which means it's so amazing you'll die. Among other things, Vorak plays fretless bass and vibraphone, but it all comes out as utterly nonsensical noise. Perhaps the only "metal" thing we've heard that's more fucked than Vorak are the mp3's by Exhumed Narcissist Paleontologist (http://www.reckankomplex.com/enp) but that's definitely a joke (being Keith "Hrvatski" Whitman's death metal band).
Why did a label even release this?? We don't know, but we're glad they did. We've been dying to share this with y'all ever since we discovered it a while ago, but only just recently managed to get a few copies of this disc, cheap. (Unbelievably, there's a second Vorak album from 1998 that's equally insane, but perhaps not surprisingly it doesn't seem that anyone we deal with stocks it!).
The return of these Finnish freaks, and another awesome disc of blown out, ultra raw, ultra grim black metal buzz. Vordr may feature a member of aQ faves Circle Of Ouroborus, but as we mentioned in our review of the last Vordr, you won't find any stumbling folk, or abstract black ambience, or bizarre fractured WTF here, the domain of Vordr is reserved for tweeter destroying high end brittle lo-fi blast and pound, a swirling melee of chaotic skree drenched buzz, D-beat death pounding drums and sharp slivers of buzzing insectoid riffage, unfurling in long blurred streaks beneath anguished tortured wails and teeth gnashing demonic shrieks.
There is most definitely plenty of melody lurking below the surface, but those bits of melody are well protected, only the blackest of souls can withstand the constantly churning sea of fucked up sound that surrounds them, billious bursts of abject fury, in-the-red shards of buzz drenched rrroooaaar, festering gouts of sonic virulence, this is sick, ugly, gloriously noxious black grimnity, a series of musical ice picks to the inner ear, a tinnitus inducing swarm of beautiful blackness, which will most definitely warm the cold dead hearts of all who worship at the altars of Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Akitsa Vegas Martyrs and the like.
Words can't describe how fuckin' happy we are to see this! Finally, The VSS's long out of print (and pretty hard to track down even when it was in print!) 1997 album Nervous Circuits has been remastered and reissued... and how! The new edition is bursting at the seams in sound and visuals with tons of bonus historical documentation packed on the cd and dvd!
The VSS = a short-lived yet incredibly influential and genre defining band from Southern California / Colorado in the mid-90s.
The VSS = Josh Hughes' deeply textured apocalyptic air-raid guitars, Andy Rothbard's lithe double fisting of snaking bass guitar and Juno 60 synthesizer, Dave Clifford's fevered muscular drumming, and Sonny Kay's clenched spewed vocals delivering cryptic wordplay and caustic socio-politically charged lyrics (mind you, due to his impassioned expulsionary singing style they're pretty unintelligible, you'll need to refer to the lyric sheet!).
The members of The VSS surfaced from the ashes of legendary post-punk band Angel Hair, burned incredibly hot and bright for only a couple years, and then later went on to other mighty bands Slaves, Pleasure Forever, Year Future, Rabbits, Red Sparowes and solo projects (Andrew Douglas Rothbard!) and an independent record label (Gold Standard Laboratories).
These days on paper, the marriage of post-punk, hardcore, synth-wave, electronic rock and metal is nothing short of commonplace. It's become a hip lifestyle genre, but this wasn't the case back then. And even so, this album still sounds fresh and immediate eleven years after its original release! Seeming at once wild and untethered and totally in control, it's a remarkably composed aural assault with plenty of quick shifts in mood, atmosphere and tempo that still stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.
The dvd offers what criminally few were able to witness in person back in the day... a young band who absolutely slayed in the live setting! There's nine song clips from various stops on their '97 U.S. tour as well as three sets in Brooklyn (six songs), Boulder (seven songs) and Berkeley (four songs). Be forewarned though, the quality of a lot of the footage is pretty poor -- having been culled from many fans' handheld home camcorder vhs tapes -- but our eyes have become accustomed to this sort of grainy, shaky stew a la murky cellphone-shot YouTube clips. Nevertheless a welcome electrically charged video document.
Yeah, definitely recommended!
Many of you probably remember a strange release from a group called Throne Of Blood, that we reviewed years ago. Beyond the music, the packaging was ridiculous and amazing, a rubberized dvd style case, with evil looking faces and vines and flowers and a unicorn, complete with a glass eye, all molded into the cover, Evil Dead Necronomicon style. At the time we thought no bad could live up to that crazy packaging, but somehow Throne Of Blood did. A furious grinding noise metal juggernaut with wild splattery drumming and shrieked vocals, short sharp bursts of fuzzy, fucked up lo-fi Melt-Banana like noiserock math metal which KILLED. And then to seal the the deal, the second half of the record was just the first half in reverse, which transformed the sound into a tripped out metallic psychedelia. We had often wondered what happened to ToB. And now we now what happened to at least one of them, they ended up in this warped, twisted outfit, a duo called Vvltvre, whose sound we had seen described as sludge/doom, and while much of this is, some of it is way more fucked up and far out, in fact, most of it is. Just check out the opening title track, which spends its first few minutes unfurling some sort of creepy ritual, all tinkling chimes, distant drum pound, weird breathing, seriously demonic vocalizing, the sound growing increasingly more agitated, louder and more caustic, the drums becoming more tribal, the vox weirdly processed, resulting in something that sounds like a way more damaged and demented and blackened version of No Neck / Sunburned Hand / Avarus, until about 7 minutes in, the song explodes into a churning blackbuzz dirge, the black buzz provided by what sounds like an insanely distorted bass, while the tribal drums pound away underneath, think The Body crossed with Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, a sort of blacknoise doom, or a noise rock sludge, when the band lock into these dense looped rhythms, it almost sounds like a Lightning Bolt 45 spinning at 16 rpm. The opening track gradually begins to revert to the opening, like some sort of doom sludge palindrome, the sound getting more abstract, the rhythms more spare, a death march pound, over rumbling crumbling low end, laced with some cool tripped out backwards effects.
The B side follows a similar pattern, beginning with some ritualistic ambience, chanted vox, soft focus chordal shimmer, barely there percussion, then the drums come in, and it remains hauntingly tribal, like some ancient sonic ritual, and then eventually, the track again splinters into some seriously harsh heaviness, reminding us a bit of Monarch for sure, but with a definite Whitehouse vibe, the sort of droned out buzz beneath near hysterically shrieked vox, which again eventually erupt into some pounding noise rock dirgedoom mathiness. The third side mixes things up by foregoing the heaviness completely, and instead offering up a sprawling rhythmscape, all abstract drum pound, gurgling low end, subtly employed effects, lots of dark drones and washed out thrum, a gorgeous bit of meditative abstract ambient doom minimalism, which gives way to the closer, the 15 minute D side, which is all bass drone for the first 6 minutes, super minimal and hushed, before the drums creep in, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer, the bass growing more distorted, the final few minutes, a strange lurching, stuttering feedback drenched, super dynamic slo-mo math doom that ends WAY too soon.
WAY recommended for fans of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, Gnaw Their Tongues, Monarch, Wicked King Wicker, Wolf Eyes, Otesanek, Habsyll, Human Quena Orchestra and other purveyors of slow, low sonic sickness.
Fantastically packaged in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with some super striking artwork, while inside lurks a gorgeous handmade 32 page booklet, hand painted and glitter-ed, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
A while back we reviewed the self titled debut from Ethiopian-Finnish guitarist/vocalist Mirel Wagner, released on local label Friendly Fire, and we were pretty smitten, a haunting collection of lush, almost murder ballads, the sound crystalline and clear, but the vibe and the mood murky and ominous. Not sure what we were expecting, but it definitely wasn't something nearly that bleak and dark. And with a jump to Sub Pop, we were perhaps expecting Wagner to deliver something more polished, less intimate, less sonically harrowing than that debut, but we're beginning to think this is just where she wants to be, and while it sounds like a frightening, heart breaking place to be, she manages to make it sound strangely inviting.
Right from the opener, Wagner conjures up a mysterious world of sound, one that's mostly just guitar and vocals, the guitar generally spare, the vocals deep, and smokey, "1 2 3 4" is almost like a lullaby or a nursery rhyme, but one of those cautionary tales, that warns children what terrible end awaits if they disobey. "The Dirt" is a bit folkier, but has the same sort of sinister vibe, a dark slo-mo folk-blooze, that again, seem to be all about loss and death, the sounds as spare as they are, wreathed in clouds and shadow, and emotionally overcast, and soul baring threnody.
And even later in the record, when the sound blossoms, and the production follows suit, the music stays dark and mournful, every track some kind of lament, and when the subtle strings surface, it only adds to the pretty pathos. The rest of the record finds an uneasy balance between darkly psychedelic dreamfolk ("The Devil's Tongue"), haunting chamber folk ("Dreamt Of A Wave"), and moody almost country ("What Love Looks Like"). The more we listen, the more it makes sense that this record ended up on Sub Pop, as it wouldn't be entirely out of place on your shelf somewhere in-between Fleet Foxes, Red Red Meat, Iron & Wine and Codeine, although wherever it ended up, would darken that corner of your collection considerably. Haunting, harrowing and pretty goddamn fantastic.
Well Dang! Why it seems we're in the midst of a full-on Porter Wagoner revival. Not only has the man just released one of the best country albums of the year (Wagonmaster, which we reviewed last list), but at the ripe old age of 80, just played to a sell-out audience at Madison Square Garden opening for The White Stripes. While for a time, he seemed to epitomize everything that was old-fashioned about Nashville, from his vintage glittering suits to his often overtly pained and sentimental delivery on many a song about love and The Lord. No truer did that image seem to be when Dolly Parton, who first debuted on Wagoner's TV show before becoming his most popular singing and song-writing partner for nearly ten years, decided to part ways for a solo career in the mid-seventies. Surely a low point in his career, but the man never went away, quietly releasing records and remaining an ambassadorial presence on the Grand Ole Opry circuit ever since.
Yet, it also looks like all that flash and kitsch so present in Wagoner's performances and recordings have inspired a hip cult following through the years after all. But not because of his more popular hits. We mentioned in the Wagonmaster review about an early seventies song that was a bit of a novelty hit, called "The Rubber Room", a dark, wrenching, reverb-soaked ode to mental illness. Well, most of his records from the mid-sixties onward had a track or two that delved similarly into the darkest of themes: revenge, murder, murder-suicide, insanity, prison, parental abuse, neglect, drinking, punishment, and redemption. The album covers similarly shared his fondness for theatricality, sometimes dressing up as a hobo, wino, prisoner, or shown walking in on his unfaithful wife. These songs weren't always his biggest hits but they had the highest Nashville production values with strings, choirs and dramatic special effects, and put together they create a bizarrely surreal patchwork of the Southern Gothic. So what better way to celebrate Porter Wagoner's big career revival with this mighty anthology put out by the awesome folks at Omni (who also brought us the Bruce Haack Electric Lucifer reissue we made record of the week, a couple lists back). Instead of focusing on charted singles and successes, this anthology compiles together 29 left-field tracks recorded between 1966 and 1977 (with the exception of only one charted single, "The Carroll County Accident") that cover all the dark themes mentioned above, many in poetical song-story form and loosely sequenced in themes.
So let's give a brief summary here of the main themes, after "The Rubber Room", there are some country-crossover songs, reminiscent in style to Lee Hazlewood and Jimmy Webb, that deal with the savage life of Native Americans outlaws ("George Leroy Chickashea", "Indian Creek"). Then, there are the achingly lonely tear-in-your-beer songs ("Lonely Comin' Down", "Lonelyville"), which then segue into the cheating songs, ("My Many Hurried Southern Trips", "Woman Hungry") then the wife-killing and wife/other man-killing songs ("First Mrs. Jones", "The Cold Hard Facts of Life" "Julie"). After that there are some tear-in-your-BOTTLE songs ("Wino", "Bottom of The Bottle") then the hobo songs ("Life Rides The Train", "My Last Two Tens"), then a prison song sung from the point of view of the prisoner's only son ("Let Me In"). Then the devastating Dolly Parton duet, "The Party" about a couple's children who die tragically while the parents were out partying. And finally a couple of songs about prayer and redemption ("Little Boy's Prayer" and "Moments of Meditation") just to give a slight semblence of hope to things. Phew! and there's so much more!
Surely not the happiest of records, but one that will still undoubtedly put a smile on your face. It's definitely one of the most well curated, intriguing and exciting country collections to be put to disc from a man who is finally getting his due. Absolutely Essential!!!!!!!!!!!
Please note: The first pressing is currently out of print. We've got a bunch of these, but it may take a while to get the next batch, so please be patient if and when we run out.
A sort of greatest hits collection from one of the greatest songwriters of our time. Being a huge fan as I am, I'm inclined to blow off the greatest hits and tell you to just buy all the albums since, Waits, up until 'The Black Rider' had almost never
Whether you are enamored of them or perplexed by them, there is nothing quite like Scott Walker's suite of solo records from the late sixties. Exquisitely produced with dizzyingly lush orchestrations to emphasize full pop dramatic effect, they are also literally dripping with visual and visceral lyricism, filled with vile and wondrous characters and sung in Walker's deeply mellifluent and over-the-top croon. Tortured torch songs, incendiary victory songs, pop fantasias, ghostly ballads, and folk pop are eccentrically intermixed through dynamic interpretations of popular songs, and as the records progress, uniquely original compositions. Each one a perfect piece on its own, yet as a whole suite offers a dazzling entry into an incomparably visual sound world like a rich confection that begs to be slowly consumed. Finally reissued on vinyl, the way they were meant to be heard, we have fallen in love all over again. While we wholeheartedly recommend all four, for those looking for a good starting point, our favorites as whole records are Scott 2 and Scott 4. For those not blessed with record players, the cd versions are also available.
Recorded after the breakup of the Walker Brothers in 1967, the American born British resident Scott Walker (nee: Noel Scott Engel), embarked on these solo efforts to explore his fascination with European musical, literary, and theatrical forms: The creepy wonderment of classical composer Saint-Saens, The French Symbolist literature of Baudelaire and Huysmans, the political theater of Brecht and Weill, the stark existentialism of Bergman, the theatrical whimsy of Anthony Newley, and most of all, the celebrated street urchin poetry of Flemish singer-songwriter, Jacques Brel, of whom Walker covers nine English versions of his songs throughout.
Seemingly out of step with his time, these records must have been too serious for the youthful psychedelic era, yet too odd for the older pop-vocal market. The first three enjoyed minimal success, enough to get a short-lived TV show, but the fourth (and one of the best) was a commercial flop (probably due to his attempt to release it under his given name; it was later changed to Scott 4). Yet, over the years, these records have developed an increasingly avid cult following, enough of one for Walker to come out of his reclusiveness and occasionally record a new album. Though what he's on about now makes these first solo albums seem like a ride at Disneyland, you have to respect an artist who explores his vision relentlessly and never looks back. Yet, as fans, we will always come back to these first four records, which amazingly have withstood the test of time and should be canonized amongst the most highly influential records ever! High Art or High Camp? Generous heapings of both, please.
Although comprised mostly of covers, Walker already began to show strong songwriting skills on his first solo record, Scott, especially with "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" where he describes unsavory neighbors in his tenement flat, one as a "bloated belching figure", and another "whose thighs are full of tales to tell of nights she's known". But it's "My Death", one of three Brel covers that is the album's centerpiece. Later covered by David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust phase, Walker's version features such hypnotic orchestration, serpentine guitar passages and swelling stabbing strings that it almost feels like we're being brought to the threshold of death on a cloud of poisonous perfume.
Overall, a fine selection of songs that show his range of performance and promise for the records to come.
Whether you are enamored of them or perplexed by them, there is nothing quite like Scott Walker's suite of solo records from the late sixties. Exquisitely produced with dizzyingly lush orchestrations to emphasize full pop dramatic effect, they are also literally dripping with visual and visceral lyricism, filled with vile and wonderous characters and sung in Walker's deeply mellifluent and over-the-top croon. Tortured torch songs, incendiary victory songs, pop fantasias, ghostly ballads, and folk pop are eccentrically intermixed through dynamic interpretations of popular songs, and as the records progress, uniquely original compositions. Each one a perfect piece on its own, yet as a whole suite offers a dazzling entry into an incomparably visual sound world like a rich confection that begs to be slowly consumed. Finally reissued on vinyl, the way they were meant to be heard, we have fallen in love all over again. While we wholeheartedly recommend all four, for those looking for a good starting point, our favorites as whole records are Scott 2 and Scott 4. For those not blessed with record players, the cd versions are also available.
Recorded after the breakup of the Walker Brothers in 1967, the American born British resident Scott Walker (ne: Noel Scott Engel), embarked on these solo efforts to explore his fascination with European musical, literary, and theatrical forms: The creepy wonderment of classical composer Saint-Saens, The French Symbolist literature of Baudelaire and Huysmans, the political theatre of Brecht and Weill, the stark existentialism of Bergman, the theatrical whimsy of Anthony Newley, and most of all, the celebrated street urchin poetry of Flemish singer-songwriter, Jacques Brel, of whom Walker covers nine English versions of his songs throughout.
Seemingly out of step with his time, these records must have been too serious for the youthful psychedelic era, yet too odd for the older pop-vocal market. The first three enjoyed minimal success, enough to get a short-lived TV show, but the fourth (and one of the best) was a commercial flop (probably due to his attempt to release it under his given name; it was later changed to Scott 4). Yet, over the years, these records have developed an increasingly avid cult following, enough of one for Walker to come out of his reclusiveness and occasionally record a new album. Though what he's on about now makes these first solo albums seem like a ride at Disneyland, you have to respect an artist who explores his vision relentlessly and never looks back. Yet, as fans, we will always come back to these first four records, which amazingly have withstood the test of time and should be canonized amongst the most highly influential records ever! High Art or High Camp? Generous heapings of both, please.
Scott 2 is one of our favorites, not that it's necessarily different from the others but the choice of songs flows perfectly together. In fact the first side of Scott 2 is pure pop vocal perfection, beginning with the Brel cover "Jackie", whose enthusiastically fast delivery is mind-boggling (Youtube this!). Then the bitter torch of "Best of Both Worlds", the Tim Hardin cover, "Black Sheep Boy", the original "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" about a man escaping from the claustrophobia of domestic life into a tragic fantasy. "Next" is next, one of Brel's most visceral and theatrical tunes about the dehumanizing experience of a military coming of age, which is then followed by Walker's companion sequel "Girls From The Streets" told by the same character as a man resigned to a life of bitterness and depravity. Yet the centerpiece is the fantasia "Plastic Palace People", which begins side 2. A dizzying dualistic fairy tale about a boy's embrace of his youthful innocence and a girl mourning the loss of hers. This kills!
Whether you are enamored of them or perplexed by them, there is nothing quite like Scott Walker's suite of solo records from the late sixties. Exquisitely produced with dizzyingly lush orchestrations to emphasize full pop dramatic effect, they are also literally dripping with visual and visceral lyricism, filled with vile and wonderous characters and sung in Walker's deeply mellifluent and over-the-top croon. Tortured torch songs, incendiary victory songs, pop fantasias, ghostly ballads, and folk pop are eccentrically intermixed through dynamic interpretations of popular songs, and as the records progress, uniquely original compositions. Each one a perfect piece on its own, yet as a whole suite offers a dazzling entry into an incomparably visual sound world like a rich confection that begs to be slowly consumed. Finally reissued on vinyl, the way they were meant to be heard, we have fallen in love all over again. While we wholeheartedly recommend all four, for those looking for a good starting point, our favorites as whole records are Scott 2 and Scott 4. For those not blessed with record players, the cd versions are also available.
Recorded after the breakup of the Walker Brothers in 1967, the American born British resident Scott Walker (ne: Noel Scott Engel), embarked on these solo efforts to explore his fascination with European musical, literary, and theatrical forms: The creepy wonderment of classical composer Saint-Saens, The French Symbolist literature of Baudelaire and Huysmans, the political theatre of Brecht and Weill, the stark existentialism of Bergman, the theatrical whimsy of Anthony Newley, and most of all, the celebrated street urchin poetry of Flemish singer-songwriter, Jacques Brel, of whom Walker covers nine English versions of his songs throughout.
Seemingly out of step with his time, these records must have been too serious for the youthful psychedelic era, yet too odd for the older pop-vocal market. The first three enjoyed minimal success, enough to get a short-lived TV show, but the fourth (and one of the best) was a commercial flop (probably due to his attempt to release it under his given name; it was later changed to Scott 4). Yet, over the years, these records have developed an increasingly avid cult following, enough of one for Walker to come out of his reclusiveness and occasionally record a new album. Though what he's on about now makes these first solo albums seem like a ride at Disneyland, you have to respect an artist who explores his vision relentlessly and never looks back. Yet, as fans, we will always come back to these first four records, which amazingly have withstood the test of time and should be canonized amongst the most highly influential records ever! High Art or High Camp? Generous heapings of both, please.
Scott 3 has the best cover art of the bunch. The others are pretty straight ahead portraits, but 3 is a close up of an eye with vibrantly purple eyelashes. Inside the pupil we see a melancholy Walker, which is apt, as Scott 3 is the most melancholy of the four records. The tempo is slower and apart from the Brel inspired original, "We Came Through" and the quirky acoustic tribute to Cryogenics of "30th Century Man" (featured on the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic"), most of the tracks on Scott 3 are ballads to the ghosts of romance. Definitely a rainy day record, and probably not the best place to start for newbies.
Whether you are enamored of them or perplexed by them, there is nothing quite like Scott Walker's suite of solo records from the late sixties. Exquisitely produced with dizzyingly lush orchestrations to emphasize full pop dramatic effect, they are also literally dripping with visual and visceral lyricism, filled with vile and wonderous characters and sung in Walker's deeply mellifluent and over-the-top croon. Tortured torch songs, incendiary victory songs, pop fantasias, ghostly ballads, and folk pop are eccentrically intermixed through dynamic interpretations of popular songs, and as the records progress, uniquely original compositions. Each one a perfect piece on its own, yet as a whole suite offers a dazzling entry into an incomparably visual sound world like a rich confection that begs to be slowly consumed. Finally reissued on vinyl, the way they were meant to be heard, we have fallen in love all over again. While we wholeheartedly recommend all four, for those looking for a good starting point, our favorites as whole records are Scott 2 and Scott 4. For those not blessed with record players, the cd versions are also available.
Recorded after the breakup of the Walker Brothers in 1967, the American born British resident Scott Walker (ne: Noel Scott Engel), embarked on these solo efforts to explore his fascination with European musical, literary, and theatrical forms: The creepy wonderment of classical composer Saint-Saens, The French Symbolist literature of Baudelaire and Huysmans, the political theatre of Brecht and Weill, the stark existentialism of Bergman, the theatrical whimsy of Anthony Newley, and most of all, the celebrated street urchin poetry of Flemish singer-songwriter, Jacques Brel, of whom Walker covers nine English versions of his songs throughout.
Seemingly out of step with his time, these records must have been too serious for the youthful psychedelic era, yet too odd for the older pop-vocal market. The first three enjoyed minimal success, enough to get a short-lived TV show, but the fourth (and one of the best) was a commercial flop (probably due to his attempt to release it under his given name; it was later changed to Scott 4). Yet, over the years, these records have developed an increasingly avid cult following, enough of one for Walker to come out of his reclusiveness and occasionally record a new album. Though what he's on about now makes these first solo albums seem like a ride at Disneyland, you have to respect an artist who explores his vision relentlessly and never looks back. Yet, as fans, we will always come back to these first four records, which amazingly have withstood the test of time and should be canonized amongst the most highly influential records ever! High Art or High Camp? Generous heapings of both, please.
Scott 4 is definitely the most unique of the four. It's all original compositions for one thing, but also the arrangements are more upbeat, and while the orchestral elements are there, folk, rock and country elements of guitar and drums appear more than ever before. Still eccentric songwriting abounds. The opener, "The Seventh Seal", a flamenco pop tribute to the Bergman film of the same name about a medieval knight's chess game with Death is full of the pomp we love in Scott Walkers music. And while there are no Brel covers on 4, his influence can be heard on centerpiece "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)", as well as "Hero of the War". A sequel of sorts to "Plastic Palace People" on Scott 2 can be seen in "Boy Child", one of the most beautifully arranged ballads, while the strings in "The World's Strongest Man" brings tears every time. Yet, weirder still, the final three songs take a strange turn into lush country pop with slide guitar, and back-up vocals (for the first time!) that allude to the direction Walker persued unsuccessfully through the seventies. Still very Stellar!
When we first heard about the collaboration, it sounded like a joke, like some internet meme. It did seem crazy, and on the surface, pretty hilarious, but eventually it was proven to be an actual thing. Then when we first heard a little snippet online, we weren't entirely sold, Walker sounded even more over the top than usual, and the title Soused seems to indicate that maybe Walker was in fact completely wasted when he recorded his vocals, cuz it definitely sounded like it. But when we finally got to hear the whole thing, it suddenly all made sense, Walker's vocals, while still insanely dramatic and over the top, were somehow perfect, and SUNNO))), instead of just doing the guitars-against-the-amps drone thing, really seem to be working way outside their comfort zone, and in fact, lots of this record sounds extremely, sonically uncomfortable. Fantastically so. We were so smitten by opener "Brando", we had trouble digging any deeper into the record. Right from the get go, opening with Walker crooning over a whirring organ, shimmery and sun dappled, and what sounds suspiciously like the Guns 'N Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" guitar lick, but then the thick, viscous drones creep in, accompanied by strange ticks and pulsations, as well as what sounds like a bull whip, as well as the occasional burst of distorto guitar, the combination of that low end creep, and Walker's vocals, as well as a cool feedback/high end that seems to echo the vocal melody, it's pretty powerful, and stunning, weird, but also weirdly beautiful. "Herod 2014" was our next obsession, with it's weird squelchy electronic rhythm, buried in thick rumbling thrum, it's Walker who carries the song, some sort of demented, and yeah, likely seriously soused, torch song, flecked with static, and driven by a slo-mo Sabbath riff stretched out into near static sprawl, Walker's vocals wreathed in lots of mysterious noise, the whole track peppered with what sounds like some strange banshee wail, or pterodactyl cry, but it's somehow so perfect, that it becomes as integral to the song as any other element.
"Bull" is downright balladic after the previous heaving monoliths, but not for long, the song exploding into some serious Swans like pummel, with Walker kicking it up a notch, some loose chaotic drum damage, some junkyard percussion, and a 'hook' that manages to be the catchiest bit on the whole record, the song slipping into slo-mo somnambulant creeps, before launching right back into that 'chorus'. We have to be honest, the first three songs are so perfect, it's not until maybe the 20th listen that we even made it to the last two, but they're similarly broody and bombastic, "Fetish" featuring some seriously buzzed out bass (assuming that's a bass), and like "Bull" before it, another killer 'chorus', that sounds like Swans gone haywire, dosed on some serious narcotics, a wild cacophony of elephant like electronic bleats, churning metallic riffing, monstrous drumming, before settling into what sounds like some sick, mutant strain of kraut-doom. And don't even get us started on Walker's INSANE lyrics, in this case, a refrain of "Choo Choo, Choo Choo mama", which sounds ridiculous, but in the context of the song, it sounds mad, maniacal, and like some sort of twisted genius, which we're assuming it is. Finally, there's "Lullaby", which is one, at least for a moment, until another blurt of atonal, moaning, keening, doom cabaret explodes from the murk, only to settle right back down, most of the track spent in hushed lowercase mode, finishing off super dramatically, a field of barely there guitar rumble, distant sonar like pings, ominous swells, mysterious insectoid clicking, and one final, haunting stanza from Walker. Most definitely a twisted outsider masterpiece, and considering how skeptical we were, it's even more surprising that this might just end up being a record of the year contender for some of us!
Now here's a warehouse find that actually came from a real warehouse, instead of our closet behind the counter or the shelf near Andee's desk. We dug up a handful of these at one of our distributors, the same place we found those rare Japanese cds we've listed lately.
We have always been obsessed with Shimmy Disc. For a long stretch there, everything they put out was weird and wonderful and unlike ANYthing else we had ever heard. Bongwater, Velvet Monkeys, Dogbowl, B.A.L.L., Fred Lane, King Missile, Carney-Hild-Kramer, Spongehead, Shockabilly, Jellyfish Kiss, and long before they became household names, Shimmy Disc was introducing us to groups like the Boredoms, the Ruins, Gwar, Naked City, Ween, Damon And Naomi we could go on. Needless to say, our Shimmy loyalty was not misplaced.
One other band we discovered via Shimmy Disc, was UK psychedelic space rockers Walkingseeds, and as luck would have it, one of our local distributors had a handful of copies gathering dust in their warehouse, of the group's final, and some would argue best, record, Bad Orb, Whirling Ball. If you're a reader of Julian Cope's Head Heritage blog (and if you're not you should be!), you might remember him raving about Bad Orb, describing it thusly:
"An album of malign, choppy cosmic fuzz that Killing Joke would have died for, an album that twists American delta blues and English folk shanties into strange psychedelic vistas that far better musicians can only dream of... a relentless, cathartic, pysch-rock album that spins with malice towards its final conclusion!"
Tough to argue with that, and why would you? This is some fantastically tripped out, spacey, weirdly poppy, psychedelic fuzz garage heaviness, produced by Shimmy Disc head honcho Kramer, so instead of sounding heavy or spacey, it sounds gorgeously washed out and cosmic, otherworldly, but still raw and urgent and super rocking. Don Fleming of B.A.L.L. and at one time Dinosaur Jr. contributes some "Chinese alien guitar" on one track, which is a strange coincidence since head Walkingseed Frank Martin is an almost dead ringer for Fleming, with a similarly nasal, ragged style of vocalizing.
Equal parts Stooges, Blue Cheer, Hawkwind, Blue Oyster Cult (who they cover on another record), the Beatles (who they cover brilliantly here), vintage psychedelia, classic sixties pop, seventies classic rock, druggy space rock, crunchy, fuzzy, gritty, garagey, loose and still fucking amazing. Puts the current crop of wannabe psychedelic space rockers to shame! We figure fans of The Heads should dig.
The cd version includes three bonus tracks which are remixes of songs from the group's previous record, Upwind Of Disaster, Downwind Of Atonement, and offer up more of the same, and will most likely have you desperately searching for a copy of that one too. Good luck! Worth the hunt for sure. Unfortunately, we have a very limited number of these, especially the cds, which we most likely will NOT be able to get more of, it's long out of print, so we took all the copies our distributor had, but they do have more of the lp, and while that's 3 tracks shorter than the cd, it's also cheaper!
First we've heard (other than a split single with Mikal Cronin) from these far out psychedelic garage rockers from LA and fans of outfits/folks like White Fence, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees will be wondering how it took them so long to discover these guys. 'Cause the sound is pretty much a perfect mix of fuzzy, jangly crunch, dense, distorted psychedelic swirl, and retro sixties psych pop, the record opening with what is essentially a blast of psych-noise, before blossoming into some impossibly dreamy fuzz pop, the vocals soft focus and almost gently delivered over a bed of rumble and crunch, which appropriately eventually devolves into another squall of psychedelic freakout. Which is precisely how the second track begins, another swirling cloud of spacey squiggles and glitchy squelch, before in comes a crunchy, almost metallic riff accompanied by wild Keith Moon style octopoidal drum splatter, again, a perfect pop song tucked amidst all the howl and skree and noisy druggy trip out, the band seemingly constantly right on the edge between twee pop sugar sonic overload, and total damaged FX drenched psychedelic collapse, but that sweet spot is all theirs, the band claiming it as their own, and navigating it effortlessly, creating what might be our new favorite psych-pop/garage rock record, and is just the sort of record/sound that should, if all the stars align, give the above mentioned garage rock big boys a run for their money. Makes lots of sense that this found a home on Ty Segall's label (you'd easily be forgiven for thinking THIS was in fact the new Ty Segall record), and that Wand mainman Cory Hanson used to play in Mikal Cronin's band!
The return of The Wandering Midget!! Sounds like the title of some lost Tolkien novel, as it well should. The Wandering Midget are not in fact a 'he', but rather a 'they', and THEY are a group of true doomlords from Finland, who rule the riff and have an amazing vocalist who deftly straddles the line between classic doom wail, and over the top insanity.
We reviewed the Midget's I Am The Gate ep a while back (we still have a few copies left), and ever since had been jonesing for more more more. And now we have it. The Serpent Coven. Nearly an hour of modern doom, troo doom, total Sabbath / Pentagram worship in the best possible way. Massive riffage, pounding drums, incredible grooves, some serious hooks. A bit like Electric Wizard, but not as sludge-y, much more classic sounding. And the vocals, holy shit, a bit of an Ozzy wail, but WAY more campy and over the top, definitely a make or break for most folks, but if you're anything like us, and you love Messiah from Candlemass, Scott Reagers of Saint Vitus, and other high end howlers, then Samual Wormlus (good name!) will fit pretty comfortably in your doom vocal pantheon.
The thing about doom, is it's pretty easy to make, like drone music, simple minor key riffs, tuned way down, lugubrious tempos, and blammo! Wrap that in enough buzz and satanic imagery, and you're doom! But to make doom magical and mysterious is a whole 'nother thing. That requires some sort of alchemy, that is indeed rare, and that sort of power is possessed by a very few, but listening to The Serpent Coven, there is no doubt in our minds that The Wandering Midget is made up of such otherworldly alchemists.
The Midget slip from churning Sabbathy groove, to super slowed down ultra doom, to spaced out doomic drift, all within the space of a single looooooong track, even mixing in some seriously unlikely elements (the strange prog / folk clean guitar into tangled psychedelic space rock middle section of "Bring Forth The Accused" being the perfect example), to create their own unique and seriously idiosyncratic take on a WAY overplayed genre.
ALL HAIL THE WANDERING MIDGET, BOW BEFORE THESE MIGHTY DOOMLORDS FROM THE NORTH, AND DIG THEIR EPIC DOOOOOOOM!
From a label known for supreme downer doom dirge comes this surprise debut by a group of happy, heavy, hot-rockin' throwbacks called The Want, from Jersey. Playing it in the store had amazed customers asking if this was an obscure '70s hard rock reissue. It's not just the tunage that's retro, but the production is authentic '70s sounding too. Amazing. Channelled directly from the likes of Zep, Budgie, Captain Beyond, Free... Great stuff, recommended (despite their violation of two of Allan's many pet peeves: an album title like "Greatest Hits vol. 5", and the unnecessary use of the Greek alphabet on the packaging).
We've been trying to get enough copies of anything on the amazing Sylvan Screams Analog label to review and list, but previous releases were so limited, that we were only able to get a couple. And while they're just as limited, we did now manage to get a handful of the two most recent releases, this one is super raw, primitive old school black metal, the label references Blazebirth Hall and Les Legions Noires, and it most definitely has that feel, the guitars swarm insect like, the drums skeletal, the bass inaudible, the vokills a buried rasp, like a lot of that stuff it's about emotion and energy, the feel and the vibe, and the vibe here is definitely grim and frostbitten, even though these guys (this guy?) hail from Georgia. They somehow manage to channel France and Scandinavia, into something equally kvlt, blown out and brittle, sounding like it was recorded in practice space, a forest, or a cave, the second track is a weird creepy dirge, all stumbling lumber, and frosty black buzz, the vocals in-the-red, the whole sound blurring into blacknoize before settling back into that death march creep, only to eventually explode into another blast of galloping black buzz.
LIMITED TO 44 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered.
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: II
Well, "Columbodia, Missouri's" own Warhammer posse showed up not too long ago here at aQ enroute to all corners of the country and they stopped in long enough to rock the asses of the San Francisco scene in a wickedly intimate "bus show" (AQ pal and former A Minor Forest-er has a huge mobile venue, IN A BUS, with a stage, a solar powered generator and an engine that runs on vegetable oil!) and to hand us off a a big pile of their new self-released second cd entitled An Ethereal Oracle.
By the looks and sounds of it, the title holds true to the old adage "what you see is what you get". That is if you can figure out what an ethereal oracle is -musically- speaking.
While the mind-melting debut Uber Om was more of a big loud thud upside your melon, An Ethereal Oracle is more like some forbidden fruit. That something or someone, you've been warned about, you know it's dangerous, potentially deadly, but you just can't resist. It's the temptation of the darkside, the dangerous, you know you're in for it, you know you're done for, you just can't ever be sure when. Or how!
The record starts off with a long scary radio broadcast track, you know, like one of those Emergency Broadcast System things warning you about "the big storm approaching", and just when you start feeling REALLY nervous, you start to get dizzy, everything becomes blurry, your head is spinning, your ears are ringing, you feel flush, you start to sweat, goosebumps, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end, you try to resist, fight it off, but it's too much, you are completely under its spell.
You let the jagged guitar lines, birds chirping in the distance, strange what-the-fuck acoustic folk fuckery, drugged out laid-back droned-out blissful warmness and full on red-line space jam experimental shredding pummelry drag you into the darkness. Before you know it, you're bruised and bloody, naked and tied up with broken guitar strings, ears ringing and bleeding, you have strange WH48K images burned into your flesh, laying atop a pile of bloodstained broken drumsticks, surrounded by a Stonehenge like circle of towering totem like amps, in front of which stand the mysterious members of Warhammer, smiling wickedly as they prepare to do it all over again.
And that's only the first half of the cd!
Limited to 500 intricately illustrated/hand printed/hand assembled copies, and we only have about 30 left of the ones we got.
So act fast...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Debut cd from this Boston doom metal band (which we have been waiting for ever since we reviewed their "Priestess" 12" on list #99, which we still have in stock). In a word: heavy!! Devastatingly so. Compares well to very early Cathedral and Electric Wizard in that department. Indeed, they're going on tour with the Wizard! But their heaviness is moderated with occasional quiet parts -- piano, acoustic guitar, jazz bass interludes, all nice moves giving them an original sound, enhancing the heaviness when the electric guitars crush back to the fore, while also giving "As Heaven Turns To Ash" a bit of a psychedelic, '70s cosmic vibe. Highly recommended to those in the mood for doom!
Our good customer John Botz liked the record so much that he emailed us this mini-essay about it, which we asked him if we could print since it expands nicely (and enthusiastically) upon the points made above: "Let me say up front that of all of the retro movements in recent memory, this stoner/doom metal thing has me scratching my head the most. Yes, I admit that I really enjoy some of this "new"/old stoner metal myself, esp. bands like Eternal Elysium, but as great as old Sabbath was, I think that even Ozzy, Tony, Bill, and Geezer themselves, have to shrugging a bit to the degree in which their sludgy sound has been deified at the turn of the millenium. The other thing about this "movement" that amazes me is how little resemblance a lot of this new doom bears to the original (but, then again, I guess every retro movement only resembles that which spawned it by no more than half, since anything taken out of time by a generation or more is bound to be somewhat removed from the times from whence it came), for example, the "original" retro Sabbathy tribute stoner band was Saint Vitus, which was already quite a bit slower than most vintage Sabbath. Also, many of these new doom bands use gravelly, deathmetalesque vocals (i.e. Burning Witch, who to me, suck beyond being good, if you know what I mean) which bear little resemblance to any circa 1970 vocals, let alone Ozzy's plaintive wail which, in addition to the sludgy guitars and bass heavy sound is what I associate with stoner/doom metal. All of that said, the new Warhorse is damn good, and may actually live up to most of the pre-release publicity! Warhorse's website claims that this apocalyptic doom metal includes some of the "most vicious (I originally typed "viscous," but I suppose you could say that, too) sounds ever put to vinyl...Crushing Bass with Obscenely Overdriven Guitar (yes, they capitalized those words) melted with intense psychedelic effects...bludgeoning doom mixed with soothing, trance-inducing interludes...(sounds like) death metal on quaaludes..." blah blah blah...you've heard it all before, only this album may deliver the goods better than any other that's tried to make such cocksure claims...no, really! Most of the myriad albums that try to emulate the dynamics of "Master of Reality" come off sounding weak to me, but all of the quiet "flowers and beads" interludes on this album are quite effective, and authentic-sounding, with an eastern flavor, like you really are walking into a c.1970 drug den with beads hanging in the doorway. And you gotta love titles like "Lysergic Communion." The vocals? Well, they're of the gravelly kind, but they're effectively recessed into the sound stage so that they are not obtrusive. Anyway, you guys may already know all of this stuff, but I just thought I'd let you know that this collection of doomy dirges may very well be the best I've heard in this new retro stoner/doom metal craze -- in fact (throat clear), okay, here I go (drum roll, please) giving hostages to fortune by making a hyperbolic claim: this could be the stoner/doom metal album to end all such albums."--John Botz
Record number two from local retro garage power pop geniuses Warm Soda, fronted by none other than Mr. Matthew Melton, who avid readers of the aQ list no doubt remember from his previous outfits, the equally genius Bare Wires and Snake Flower 2. But with Warm Soda, Melton and crew continue to hone a practically perfect strain of Yellow Pills style power pop, that sounds, right down to the production, and the songwriting, straight out of the seventies. In fact, if this was 1978, we can only imagine these guys would be HUGE, playing with Dwight Twilley and Cheap Trick, and heck, it's not hard to imagine a Warm Soda Live At Budokan record, cuz holy shit, if we dug the first Warm Soda record, this one is even better. In fact, EVERY time we play this in the store, someone comes up to see what we're playing, and often ends up surprised that it's in fact actually a NEW band. But it's easy to see why, Warm Soda's sound is pitch perfect, jangly fuzzy guitars, woozy super melodic basslines, simple propulsive drumming, and Melton's whispery croon, and of course the SONGS, which are amazing, so catchy, the sort of songs, that even on first listen, sound like you've heard them before, and get immediately lodged in your head, and even after only hearing them a couple times, you'll find yourself humming them days later. Assuming it was something you might have just heard on the radio. The production too, somehow manages to sound modern, while still sounding exactly like some classic vintage recording from back in the day. And the way the choruses are all fuzzy and washed out and reverb drenched, it's hard to explain, but they seem to just soar. We could go on and on and on, as we like to do, and describe this record song by song, but why bother, if you dug the first record, or any of Melton's other projects, you NEED this, and if you've never heard anything, all it should take is a couple of the samples below to convince you, that like us, you might have just found your new favorite retro-garage power pop record!!!
Not sure how many folks remember lowercase, but they were definitely one of our favorite SF bands back in the nineties, a brooding dark rhythmic post rock with a total AmRep noise rock edge (they put out a couple records on AmRep appropriately enough). Lke most bands do, the duo (sometimes trio) called it a day, and the two lowercasers went their own way. Drummer Brian Gurgis went on to play in local noisepop combo Track Star, indie reggae outfit Still Flyin' and recording solo as Si, Claro, while Wasif's career trajectory took a much stranger tack, first a stint with Lou Barlow in the Folk Implosion, a brief stop in a group called Alaska! with Russ Pollard from Sebadoh / Folk Implosion, and even a pretty sizable part in the film Laurel Canyon (where he sported a fake British accent!). After touring as a second guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wasif recorded a solo record released on Kill Rock Stars, finally forming the group Two Part Beast (with Bobb Bruno from the Polar Goldie Cats) which brings us to Strange Hexes, which is quickly becoming one of our most listened to records recently. Not noisy, or all that aggressive, instead, the sound of Strange Hexes is dark and brooding, falling somewhere between Woven Hand, Wasif's old band lowercase (or any nineties slowcore post rock outfit, Codeine, Seam...) and Jeff Buckley. Sounds strange, but it's really not, it's quite lovely, a dark twangy indie rock, Wasif's vocals rich and emotive, soaring and slithering over clever arrangements and lush instrumentation.
Album opener "Wanderlusting" is fantastic, epic and majestic, with a killer hook, an awesome main riff, a sound heavier than almost anything else on the disc, even offering up some serious Sabbath worship part way through, and Wasif's vocals suit the sound perfectly, rough and raw, but still somehow soft and smooth. The follow up "Unveiling" is another dark slow rocker, with a killer hook that sounds like it was transplanted straight out of some classic rock jam, but spread out into something much folkier and driftier, always with a barely restrained bombast, sounding like under different circumstances, that these songs could explode into full on Muse-like stadium rock, but the fact that they never do, adds all sorts of tension and drama to the sound. The rest of the record is just as great, each song an expansive mini epic, with folky flourishes, subtle twang, brooding moodiness, dark heavy riffing, lots of hooks and heartfelt emotional vocals.
It's tough to explain what it is exactly about this record that has us so entranced, other than the usual stuff that makes a rock record rule, the songs are awesome, the arrangements are great, the playing is top notch, and Wasif's vocals seal the deal, so distinctive, his voice having definitely developed into something really really special.
