The title roughly translated is "What once was," but Det Som Engang Var is more about what is to come, the perfect bridge between the grim raw primitive Burzum of old and the beautifully bizarre grim blackness / haunting electronic hybrid that Burzum was to become. Originally released in 1994, the year he was sentenced to prison for murdering Mayhem's Euronymous, Hvis is a buzzing droning black metal masterpiece. Which would have probably remained the most essential Burzum document had Filosefem not been released 2 years later.
BE WARNED! THESE BURZUM LPS ARE EXTREMELY LIMITED!! ONCE THESE ARE GONE, IT'S QUITE POSSIBLE THAT THEY'LL BE GONE FOR GOOD. IF IT ENDS UP WE CAN GET MORE, BE PREPARED TO WAIT PATIENTLY!
More of Andee's favorite not-exactly-traditional electro-dub from the Bush Chemists. The appeal for me, used to be the exaggerated use of effects (even for dub!) that the Bush Chemists seemed to treat everything to: vocals, drums, guitar, EVERYTHING! Making
Busta Rhymes has always been a sort of guilty pleasure...well, not really a guilty pleasure, since I've never really felt at all guilty for digging this stuff, but more like a pleasure that's tough to explain. People have a hard time believing (and rightfully
Few bands have managed as perfect an opening career salvo as Texas drug addled psychedelic noise rock weirdos the Butthole Surfers. Sure lots of bands have pulled off a perfect debut. And of those, a handful somehow avoided the sophomore slump, and even then, a few managed to make a third record as good as the first two, but by record four, we're talking a very select few, a handful of pantheon worthy bands, who made four records in a row, each one as good, if not better than the last, one of those rare bands would indeed be the Butthole Surfers. Their first four records are pretty much untouchable, their 1984 debut, Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, 1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Locust Abortion Technician from 1987, and finally 1988's Hairway To Steven. Each a very different, very dementedly fucked up beast, but each a stunning milestone in knuckle dragging outsider psychedelic drug rock, and all four, recently reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages.
All four of these records are essential, and hell, even if you already have all four, these are the kind of records that are worth buying again, and again, and again. And if you've somehow made it this far through life without damaging your brain with these cranium crushing sonic gems, now's the time to do some catching up and start eroding those brain cells (and destroying those ear drums)...
Hairway To Steven, was the group's last truly great record, and truly great it is, worth the price of admission alone for the opener "Jimi", which is totally one of the greatest songs of all time, thick, buzzy guitar, killer twisted psychedelic leads, garbled processed vocals, low in the beginning, than pitched way up later on, the sound woozy, and warped, oozing and melty, and tripped out and absolutely confusionally warped and warble, and Paul Leary's guitar playing is like a Texas drug rock burn out Hendrix, knuckle dragging guitar god nirvana, and it just goes on and on, and somehow it just gets weirder and weirder and weirder, and then suddenly, after a blast of lazer beam electronics, the song turns into a detuned blues jam, laced with bird song, and the sounds of goats and other barnyard animal, dogs barking, the song trippy and creepy and a weirdly haunting coda to the dirge rock crush of the first half. There's also the classic "I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas", which sounds a little like R.E.M. after a bad batch of meth, meaning AMAZING, there's the stream of consciousness WTF weirdness of "John E. Smoke", with some of Gibby's best lyrics by far, not to mention the crowd sounds, and more of Leary's amazing guitar playing, and of course "Backass", another track that displays the band as maybe way more accomplished than they pretend not to be, a moody psychedelic dirge that's hypnotic and hauntingly lovely. And like the other Buttholes records, that's only the tip of the iceberg...
Let's get the negative stuff out of the way first. The Butthole Surfers suck. Not in the 'Primus sucks' self deprecating ironic sort of way, they really do suck. They have for years now. Everything post 'Hairway To Steven' has been total dreck. And those of you unfortunate enough to have heard their most recent record thus bore witness to the saddest beck-meets-eminem-meets-land-of-the-loops-meets-king-missile bid for MTV stardom. And on top of that, they are total assholes, as evidenced by their greed-not-common-sense based lawsuit against Touch and Go records, who were basically responsible for their popularity, and who were already paying them probably the best royalty rate in the industry. But apparently that wasn't enough. So it's with a little bit of trepidation that we recommend you buy anything on the Butthole's label Latino Bugger Veil, but RECOMMEND WE MUST! 'Cause this collection of live tracks and outtakes is vintage Butthole Surfers, at their drug-addled, tribal-drumming, chaos-causing, club-crushing, strobe-lighted, naked-dancing, on-stage puking, audience-pulverising BEST! Lots of rare compilation tracks (from P.E.A.C.E., God's Favorite Dog, Cottage Cheese From The Lips Of Death, A Texas Trip, the Roky Erickson tribute), 4 track and 8 track home recordings, practice tapes, outtakes from the Rembrandt Pussyhorse sessions, alternate versions of album tracks, and more. Weird sickly sweet warbly ballads to full on tribal drug stomps, with war whoops and processed vocals careening all over the place. Supposedly culled from close to 300 tapes. Hope there's more on the way!
Few bands have managed as perfect an opening career salvo as Texas drug addled psychedelic noise rock weirdos the Butthole Surfers. Sure lots of bands have pulled off a perfect debut. And of those, a handful somehow avoided the sophomore slump, and even then, a few managed to make a third record as good as the first two, but by record four, we're talking a very select few, a handful of pantheon worthy bands, who made four records in a row, each one as good, if not better than the last, one of those rare bands would indeed be the Butthole Surfers. Their first four records are pretty much untouchable, their 1984 debut, Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, 1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Locust Abortion Technician from 1987, and finally 1988's Hairway To Steven. Each a very different, very dementedly fucked up beast, but each a stunning milestone in knuckle dragging outsider psychedelic drug rock, and all four, recently reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages.
All four of these records are essential, and hell, even if you already have all four, these are the kind of records that are worth buying again, and again, and again. And if you've somehow made it this far through life without damaging your brain with these cranium crushing sonic gems, now's the time to do some catching up and start eroding those brain cells (and destroying those ear drums)...
This might be the most famous/infamous Surfers record there is, and a great place to start for newbies, it's definitely the weirdest, with the least proper 'songs' and the most warped sonic experiments, starting with the oft quoted opening intro, culminating in Gibby howling "SATAN SATAN SATAN�" before the band kick into their own damaged version of Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf", hear rechristened "Sweat Loaf", one of the group's finest moments for sure. Then we oughta skip ahead to "Human Cannonball", which is the Surfers at their poppiest, one of the catchiest jams in their arsenal, and were it by any other band would have been a massive hit, but here, it's just still to twisted and freaky and goddamn great. Then there's the truly terrifying "U.S.S.A", with some of the most intense and freaked out vocals ever, all over a weird bed of pulsing buzz, and balloon animal squeak, there's also "Kuntz", a pretty much straight up sample of some Southeast Asian folk song, with just the chorus manipulated to accentuate the unfortunate refrain, all twisted up and pitch shifted and somehow, it becomes crazy and confusionally catchy, and finally, there's "22 Going On 23", which takes a phone call to some sort of call in radio show, and sets it to some classic Buttholes dirgery, and transforms this poor woman's story into the 'lyrics', for one of the most haunting and harrowing songs in their catalog. And somehow between all these classics, there's still even more killer stuff...
Few bands have managed as perfect an opening career salvo as Texas drug addled psychedelic noise rock weirdos the Butthole Surfers. Sure lots of bands have pulled off a perfect debut. And of those, a handful somehow avoided the sophomore slump, and even then, a few managed to make a third record as good as the first two, but by record four, we're talking a very select few, a handful of pantheon worthy bands, who made four records in a row, each one as good, if not better than the last, one of those rare bands would indeed be the Butthole Surfers. Their first four records are pretty much untouchable, their 1984 debut, Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, 1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Locust Abortion Technician from 1987, and finally 1988's Hairway To Steven. Each a very different, very dementedly fucked up beast, but each a stunning milestone in knuckle dragging outsider psychedelic drug rock, and all four, recently reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages.
All four of these records are essential, and hell, even if you already have all four, these are the kind of records that are worth buying again, and again, and again. And if you've somehow made it this far through life without damaging your brain with these cranium crushing sonic gems, now's the time to do some catching up and start eroding those brain cells (and destroying those ear drums)...
On one of the most perfect debuts EVER, "Concubine" starts things off with a detuned dirge, dueling tribal drumming, and Gibby's hysterical insane vocals, the sound loose, and unhinged, and weirdly crazy catchy. Which really describes most of Psychic, but other highlights include "Negro Observer", which might just be the catchiest Buttholes song ever, there's even some bleating sax, not to mention that main guitar part that is pretty much perfect. There's the old school punkiness of "Butthole Surfer", the stumbling, lumbering "Woly Boly", with its ridiculously demented vox, but then it gets really good. "Lady Sniff", is a lurching sound effects loaded psychedelic dirge, with Gibby doing his best raspy bluesman vocals, and did we mention those sound effects, pure genius. Then in rolls "Cherub", that's like the Buttholes doing krautrock, tranced out and motorik, and it goes on and on, every track here a WTF classic.
Few bands have managed as perfect an opening career salvo as Texas drug addled psychedelic noise rock weirdos the Butthole Surfers. Sure lots of bands have pulled off a perfect debut. And of those, a handful somehow avoided the sophomore slump, and even then, a few managed to make a third record as good as the first two, but by record four, we're talking a very select few, a handful of pantheon worthy bands, who made four records in a row, each one as good, if not better than the last, one of those rare bands would indeed be the Butthole Surfers. Their first four records are pretty much untouchable, their 1984 debut, Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, 1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Locust Abortion Technician from 1987, and finally 1988's Hairway To Steven. Each a very different, very dementedly fucked up beast, but each a stunning milestone in knuckle dragging outsider psychedelic drug rock, and all four, recently reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages.
All four of these records are essential, and hell, even if you already have all four, these are the kind of records that are worth buying again, and again, and again. And if you've somehow made it this far through life without damaging your brain with these cranium crushing sonic gems, now's the time to do some catching up and start eroding those brain cells (and destroying those ear drums)...
Rembrandt Pussyhorse found the Butthole's sound getting a little more polished, but no less demented, starting with "Creep In The Cellar", a haunting, malevolent tribal dirge, with some great lyrics, a wicked hook, and some wild, psychedelic fiddle playing that makes the song. And of course there's the Surfers version of the Guess Who's "American Woman", which has to be one of thee greatest covers EVER, the woozy guitar, the heavily effected drum pummel, the weirdo vocals, the whole thing is just fucking twisted, and yeah, totally genius, with some wicked blown out psych guitar courtesy of an unsung guitar hero, Paul Leary. It's hard to review any of these records without going through the whole thing song by song, cuz they're all so good. "Whirling Hall Of Knives", creepy and weirdly lovely, "Moving To Florida", perhaps the creepiest, grossest blues jam EVER, "Waiting For Jimmy To Kick", piano driven, sample heavy WTF creep out, "TP Parter", who knows what the fuck is going on, or why it's so good, but it is, as is every single song here.
We're willing to bet that Kurt Buttkrieg is the only musician you can think of that calls Malta home. This is gorgeous otherworldly musiqe concrete. Far away drones, swoops of modulated electronics, keening feedback and speaker rattling low end
Cryptic and creepy, Caacrinolas is the "black metal" project of German AQ-pal Bjoern Eichstaedt and his colleague Larry Luer, both of whom more typically make music in the realms of avant-garde jazz and experimental electronics. But, inspired by the likes of Burzum and Emperor, Bjoern and Larry created Caacrinolas, whose first, cultish cd-r release "A Thousand Cries Has The Night" was much liked by AQ staff and customers. Now they're returned to terrorize us further with "Caacrinolas 2: Valley Of The Dead". Again, it's a single track, but a longer one, at 36 minutes this time. Again, it's in a limited, numbered edition of 100. The packaging is a bit fancier -- a clear dvd-sized "Super Jewel Box", with a suitably chilling black-and-white cover photo beneath a sheet of blood-red acetate. Nice (and thus, the price is a bit more than before). And again, this is a scary 'lil disc! It does seem like they maybe have less of an overt black metal concept going on this time -- they're really establishing their own style of horror soundtrack jazz vs. metal, seemingly referencing both Bohren & Der Club of Gore and Cradle of Filth, Fantomas and Morricone, Bernard Herrmann and Sigh!
This disc's journey of darkness begins with classical strings and malevolent petrodactyl squawks, seguing into a Bohren-esque, noirish jazz-drone soundscape with zombie monk vocals in the background. But sudden changes will constantly catch the listener unawares -- lurking at every turn there are bursts of jagged metalcore riffing with roiling drums, passages of doleful organ, blasts of noise and distortion, dark and droney Tangerine Dream synth-work, and, as the disc concludes, pensive, pretty piano a la David Shire's soundtrack for The Conversation. Yep, it's good! (and evil.)
From the same mysterious Russian otherworld that brought us the blackened genius of Ithdabquth Qliphoth comes the amazingly monickered Cadaver Yelleth At Amber Tower, which as far as we can tell is one of the many side projects that IQ mainman AL-LA-ShT-ORR employs to explore some seriously twisted and esoteric sounds.
And it doesn't get much more esoteric than this. Falling somewhere between the mysterious shortwave broadcasts of the Conet Project, and the disembodied ghostly blacknoise of Prurient, Code:Algeria is a strange sonic artifact, a manufactured lost transmission from the abyss, voices from some recovered black box recorder, broadcast from some other dimension, travelling through the atmosphere, gathering strange distortions and interference as it goes, a dizzying assemblage of beeps and hiss and warm buzzing textures, the voices speaking French? Arabic? Russian? Hard to tell, distorted as they are, 3 voices, 4 voices, the cadence and interplay almost musical, interrupted by bursts of hiss and sonar like pings, by the second track, some woozy warbly organ has joined the mix, the hiss sounds more scuplted, stuttering and skittering almost rhythmically, still wound around those strange voices, and the hiss taking on an almost Sunroof! like melodiousness, but those voices, continue to haunt and perplex, is it a military exercise? Is it something more sinister? Definitely sounds like it. Whatever it is, it's fantastic, and enthralling, and like the Conet Project, transcends its parts to become melodic and musical and surprisingly listenable. For field recording freeks too, especially ones into EVP and the Ghost Orchid and the like...
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What a fucking nut. Two discs of Cage reading, calmly and without expression, cut-up non-sensical passages from Henry David Thoreau's journals, live in Milan, 1977. The audience reaction is, however, quite expressive! Over the two discs the outcry builds: clapping, jeering, stomping, shrieking. Eventually the recording is more of the noise-making audience's near-riot than of Cage's performance, which is certainly in keeping with the man's philosophy of "music". Amazing and absurd. What a fucking nut!
These German hardcore kids play metal better than most American metalheads. Caliban (along with Heaven Shall Burn) seem to be leading the new wave of metalcore, where almost every trace of hardcore has been eliminated, leaving nothing but METAL. Vent starts with acoustic guitar and howling wind like all great metal records, but by track two Caliban are tearing heads off with a
From the same label that brought us that killer disc of mutated minimal techno sound design from Akkord, which we made our Record Of The Week back on list #442, comes the latest from Call Super, who apparently has a clutch of releases before this one, but Suzi Ecto is the first we're hearing, and we're digging it like crazy. Things start out pretty twisted, with a jagged stretch of creepy John Carpentery techno, very sinister and cinematic, the opening track sounding a bit like the main melody from the soundtrack to Phantasm (that's one Death Waltz should reissue!!) transformed into some avant electronica. Nothing else here is quite that noisy, but it remains plenty weird, the sound settling into something more stuttery and skittery, the fractured rhythms looped beneath blooping melodies and laser blast bleeps, the occasional jazzy shimmer, bleating trumpets, all sorta laid back and groovy, swirling and swoonsome, and that swirly swoon is all over the record, the various melodies and loops always woozy and warped and underwater sounding. At times it's like the record is melting and oozing from the speakers, at others, it's like listening to the record through speakers at the bottom of a swimming pool. That said, we're definitely reminded of the watery Detroit techno of Drexciya, somehow fused with the post Boards Of Canada, sepia toned electronica of recent aQ fave Dalhous.
The record continues to sprawl and drift, touching on moments of dubbed out house, trippy techno and electronic jazziness, churning mesmeric rhythms winding their way throughout, sometimes dense and tribal, busy and polyrhythmic, other times skeletal and spare and barely there, the beats surrounded by all manner of percussion, fractured melodies, constantly shifting textures, that watery vibe a constant presence, the sound seeming to get more murky and liquid as the record progresses, the record, and the listener, sinking ever deeper, culminating in the washed out, submerged dub of closer "Acephale 1", which is where we settle on the bottom of Call Super's sonic sea, staring up at the world, everything gorgeously distorted by bottomless blue depths, now above us...
Latest solo outing from one half of SF dronedoom duo Barn Owl, coming right on the heels of another solo record, that one from the OTHER half of Barn Owl, Jon Porras, a former aQ-er, whose Black Mesa we dug quite a bit. It would be tempting to try some rock nerd math, and imagine that Black Mesa plus Night Dust might simply BE Barn Owl, but strangely enough, the sounds Porras and Caminiti conjure up on their own, while not really deviating sonically too much from the soundworld they've created with their group, do end up being markedly different. And in many case more experimental and abstract than the twang flecked smolder and drift the two conjure up together. Caminiti's new one might be the strangest (and perhaps coolest) of the bunch, although that strangeness definitely creeps up on you, as the opener, "Near Dark" does sound like it could have been plucked right off a Barn owl record, all billowy clouds of warm softly roiling guitar thrum, shot through with streaks of high end melody, and a warm washed out haze, but even hear, Caminiti pushes the sounds, and the sound itself, pegging the needles, and moving WAY into the red, with sound buzzing and distorting in a way that gives the song a strange outsider psych vibe. But it's on the next track "Returning Spirits" where things get really good. A haunting sprawl of ethereal shimmer, peppered with deep pulsations, and dubbed out percussion, the guitars unfurling little tangles of melody, which get super distorted, a gorgeously muted blown out space-psych (those sounds could be synths, hard to tell, but both Porras and Caminiti, have been experimenting with synths, in Barn Owl, and on their own), but those little soft squalls are gorgeous, and haunting, the vibe super cinematic, dark and otherwordly. Then Caminiti lets loose with a glimmering starfield of super high glistening harmonics, that sound almost like chimes, all over a slow building swell of lush chordal thrum, just might be our favorite Caminiti track yet. But don't want to speak too soon. The rest of the record definitely continues to explore less familiar territory, the pulsing glitchy synths that underpin the warm guitar whorls on "A Memory Or A Mirage", the dense, crumbling, super distorted organ like wall of sound, that churns its way through "Star Circle", the brief blast of wild Neil Young like guitars draped over a woozy tranquil low end drift on "Moon Is The Hunter", the almost Nadja like doomgaze of "Last Blue Moments", the haunting blackened kosmische of "Slow Fade Of Stars", that sounds like Loren Mazzacane Connors playing in some massive cave, wreathed in thick, warm reverb, delicate and skeletal, drowsy and dreamlike, and finally, the two part closer "First Light", which stretches out incendiary guitars into keening dronescapes, again laced with glimmering harmonics, and deep mesmerizing tones, before drifting off into the ether with a final few minutes of spare, soft focus drone-psych blues, wreathed in clouds of whir and hiss, a haunting lo-fi soft noise coda.
Gorgeous full color gatefold sleeves with super striking original art by Caminiti. Includes a download coupon.
From our pals at Lal Lal Lal, the Finnish label that introduced us to the mighty Avarus, and has released records by AQ faves Kemialliset Ystvat and Anaksimandros, who are kind of like the Finnish No Neck Blues Band, comes a limited 12" from the Vibracathedral Orchestra's Neil Campbell. And it's definitely some of his nicest stuff. A gorgeous shimmering ambience of burbling and bubbling tones and melodies. Dreamy and hypnotic. A bit more soothing and 'ambient' than Vibracathedral but still with the same ur-drone aesthetic. There are couple tracks that stick out though, one is a rhythmic Krautrock workout complete with pulsing drum beat and looped guitar, and the other is an almost-techno track that sounds like with a little less resistance it could've become a house track! Another gorgeous drone record and another fine addition to the Lal Lal Lal catalog. Be warned, this is very limted and won't be around for long!
The true heirs to the Cale / Conrad / Maclise / Palestine / Flynt throne just happen to be kindred souls thousands of miles apart. And in cosmic slip up (or inside joke) they've both been given the same name, only transposed! I mean, come on, it was only a matter of time before Campbell and Kneale (or Neil and Campbell) would realise their destinies, and realise how perfect this collaboration would be aesthetically, as well as sonically! And it couldn't be more perfect. Tinkling chimes, shimmery cymbals and bells, creaking feedback, wild splattery percussion, bowel loosening rumbles, warm late night drones, all woven together into a wild and free, gorgeously invigorating, but completely soothing, otherworldly tranced out raga. Absolutely sublime. Fans of NC's Vibracathedral Orchestra or CK's Birchville Cat Motel need this for sure.
Flutes. For Andee that seems to be all that really matters for a record to be incredible. But for the rest of us who need a little more than flutes to convince of a piece of music's merits, we're quite pleased that Neil Campbell and Richard Youngs seemed to
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"This album is dedicated to the greatest band of all time -- Black Sabbath." So it says, quite rightly, in the liner notes of this release. This is the second effort by the reformed (not reunited) Candlemass, the Swedish metal legends who in the '80s almost single-handedly established the genre of "Epic Doom Metal."
The *new* Candlemass, tho, harkens back earlier in time, wallowing fully in the early '70s heaviness of the gods Sabbath. Gone are the high pitched operatic vocals of their old singer, gone are the shred guitar leads of their old axe-slinger (not that there was anything wrong with those things...) Instead, the band's massive riffs are supported by dirgy, Ozzy-like vox and spacy, psychedelic electronic effects. There's even sounds of rain and bells to complete the Sabbath homage. The abstract song titles ("Arx/Ng 891", "Cyclo-F") and sometimes mysterious atmospheres make this its own record though, kind of a timeless art-doom for the nineties.
Seems like the future of hip hop belongs to either Company Flow and their progeny or cLOUDEAD and the Anticon crew. Both seem to be the only crews really pushing the boundaries of hip hop. Cannibal Ox is a duo from Harlem, and for 'The Cold Vein', they hooked
This is the 'slow jam' from the mighty Cannibal Ox's 'The Cold Vein' record. But not like -any- slow jam you've ever heard. Funky and sinister, the meanest saddest love song in quite a while. Huge burping bass and minor key synths under a growled flow full of
It's strange that Miami's Capsule managed to remain so below the radar, their grinding, short attention span math rock metal core post prog weirdness seems tailor made for folks looking for extreme obscure heaviness. We raved about their full length Blue, a dizzying chunk of million parts a minute chug/crunch/howl/shred/grind, a furious onslaught of extreme heaviness, but also surprisingly extreme tunefulness, summing their sound up pretty succinctly as 'grindmetal Polvo', that classic twisted math rock / post rock sound, complex rhythms, woozy off kilter chords, buried vox, lots of texture and mood, but sped up, super charged and blown out.
This lp collects all of the pre-Blue material, demos, splits, tour eps, cassettes, and amazingly it plays pretty much like a proper full length. Like Blue, but a bit more raw, a bit less polished, their ADD-core still fully intact, but with even more melody than the full length, still loads of stop / start lurching tempos, tangled gnarled riffage, blasting bursts of pummel countered with lots of cool, more restrained post rockisms, with the added strangeness of weird group vocals, not harmonies exactly, but it does sound like the whole band is singing simultaneously, which definitely gives the sound a super unique vibe.
Again not sure why these guys aren't huge, if you dig Dillinger Escape Plan, Hayaino Daisuke, Converge, Coalesce, Cavity, then Capsule should definitely be required listening.
Incredible packaging too, super nice design, thick colored vinyl, and yeah, probably WAY limited.
Killer new split 7" featuring one of our favorite Chinese indie rock outfits, Carsick Cars, teamed up with a Minneapolis psych rock band we'd heard of, but hadn't actually heard until now. The Carsick Cars side is super bubbly, poppy, and sunshiney, fuzzy guitars, fizzy melodies, effervescent almost power pop, crunchy and jangly in equal measure, maybe the best sounding jam we've heard from these guys, which makes sense as it's an outtake from the sessions for their newest record 3 (which we'll review on the next list, and it's great! And we DO have them in stock, cd and vinyl, both kinda different too!), produced by NZ legend Hamish Kilgour and Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom. It's kind of hard to figure out why this was an OUTTAKE, cuz it's a scorcher, and the Hamish Kilgour connection makes a lot of sonic sense, cuz this totally sound like it could be some lost Flying Nun rarity, which is high praise indeed!
The Flavor Crystals side is a bit more downcast, moody and broody, with gothy guitar shimmer over a lowslung bassline and motorik drumming, the vocals a reverby whispery croon, Moon Duo fans will definitely flip. Soon the surrounding sounds build, pulsing and pulsating, adding a dark sonic swirl to the proceedings, as the song proper follows suit, growing more dense and driving, heavy and hypnotic, before launching into some serious spaced out psych for the last few minutes, that will definitely hit the spot for fans of White Hills, The Heads, Moon Duo, etc. Definitely need to hear more from these guys.
Gorgeously packaged, super eye popping, over the top cartoon art sleeves, each with a different, equally eye popping postcard inside, and pressed on dark red vinyl! Oh, and probably pretty limited as well!
Cardinal, the duo of Eric Matthews and Richard Davies (of legendary NZ outfit the Moles), only released one record, a self titled album that came out in 1994, and while commercially it didn't make that much of a splash, it become THEE modern orchestral pop record that pretty much set the bar, a collection of songs that owed as much to the classics as it did to the indie rock of the time, dark brooding pop gems driven by strings and horns and gorgeous unlikely vocal harmonies, "You've Lost Me There" from that record still ranks as one of the greatest pop songs ever. And while both Matthews and Davies continued to make records, and some good ones at that, none of those ever approached the sublime majesty of that one record. Which is maybe why the two have reconvened almost two decades later and revived their old partnership. For those of us who spent the nineties obsessed with that record (which is most of us at aQ), and heck, let's be honest, most of the 2000's as well, the prospect of a new Cardinal record had us quivering in anticipation.
And on first listen, opening track "Northern Soul" brings us right back. Lush and lovely, haunting and dreamily jangly, acoustic guitars, chiming major key chords, those strange harmonies that so defined that first record, and Cardinal in general are still present, whether it's weird little falsettos, or that deep throaty croon mixed way in the background, it's really what gives Cardinal it's otherworldly energy. But the music here, remains fantastically rich and evocative, the trumpet, the big strummed acoustic guitar, those vocals. And while a record as good as their debut was probably too much to hope for, the record still holds up pretty well. Replacing the timelessness of their debut with a slightly more modern sheen, and with a much broader sonic palette, expanding beyond symphonic pop, giving some proper indie rock a go here and there, but for the most part, this is a pretty great second chapter in Cardinal's two decades long two album career, and it's one of those records, that definitely blossoms with repeated listens, where the initial thrill of a new Cardinal record, no matter how it sounds, is eventually replaced with a a pure and honest appreciation for this disc of catchy, off kilter, symphonic pop. The fact that it sounds like Cardinal only makes it that much better. Like that first record, WAY recommended pop fans of all stripes, but especially folks who dig the timeless pop sounds of the Zombies, the Beach Boys, (Early) Bee Gees, and more modern practitioners like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Elephant 6 stable, Jellyfish, Belle And Sebastian, Sparklehorse and the like..
This is one of those perfect pop records that happens very rarely, one in a million, like a total eclipse, or an alignment of the planets, or some rare comet, flaring brightly but briefly and then fading away. A band that put everything it had into a single set of songs and then exhausted, sat back and let those songs float free. In the case of Cardinal, those songs immediately resonated deeply with pop obsessives all over the world, but then far too quickly disappeared, with the folding of their label and the seemingly immediate disbanding of the group after the original release of this record in 1994. But here we are, more than a decade later, and if anything, these songs sound better than ever, timeless and classic, and not at all dated. This is classic pop in the tradition of the Beatles, the Bee Gees, the Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks, the Zombies, Phil Spector, but with a distinctly modern twist. Richard Davies, half of the Cardinal core, fronted the Australian pop band the Moles, and for Cardinal contributed the raw material, the songs and the melodies, while Eric Matthews was the arranger, taking these simple and perfect pop songs, and opening them up to reveal their hidden beauty, adding strings and pianos and vocal harmonies, shine and sheen, turning simple lovely pop into lush expansive pop masterpieces! Multiple vocals swirl and intertwine in unlikely harmonies, over horns and soaring strings, gently weeping guitars, moody piano chords, and simple shuffling drumbeats. An impossible, and impossibly perfect mix of classic sixties pop, lush easy listening, indie jangle and moody balladeering. Any one who likes any sort of pop music, will be immediately and unalterably smitten by this record. Fitting somewhere between the above mentioned bands and modern pop practitioners like Neutral Milk Hotel, Zumpano, Belle And Sebastian, the Pernice Brothers, Sparklehorse, Iron And Wine, Unrest, the Decemberists and the like, Cardinal fill our souls with pop music and we float dreamily heavenward, humming right along.
Includes extensive liner notes and ELEVEN bonus tracks including demos, b-sides, out-takes and the tracks form the first, long out of print ep!
One of Wire magazine's records of 2008, the Caretaker's Persistent Repetition Of Phrases was in fact, when we finally got to hear it, incredible. Gorgeous, hazy, mysterious, destined to be one of OUR favorites as well. Unfortunately, when we tried to order it, intending to feature it prominently on the list, we discovered that it was in fact so limited that it was already out of print, not to be repressed. Argghhh.
Thankfully, the vinyl version showed up recently, so we grabbed as many as we could, so we could shower it with the praise it most definitely deserves. CD only folks are shit out of luck, but for now (and we mean NOW, these are crazy limited too) we have the vinyl, so grab one before they disappear.
The Caretaker has two modes, slow shimmery gauzy ambience, and slowed down warped and blurred big band and jazz. Often combing the two into some sort of otherworldly slow motion spectral dream jazz. We've been joking that the Caretaker is sort of like the DJ Screw of the avant underground, seeing as he takes scratchy old jazz records and reworks them Philip Jeck style into, woozy buried drifts of jazz shadows and haunting otherworldly vocals. Most of the jazzier tracks, sound like the soundtrack to some super creepy dream sequence, a la the Shining, like when Nicholson finds himself in that bar filled with ghosts, you can almost imagine, a dusty old saloon, broken mirrors, cigarette burned tables, sawdust floors, a lone figure sitting alone, hunched over in a dark corner, while all around him, nearly transparent figures move about as if still alive, a ballet of phantom familiarity, spirits unaware that they've moved on, going on with the machinations of daily life, their essence flickery and indistinct, like an old filmstrip. And a filmstrip soundtrack is exactly what the music of the Caretaker evokes, warm, effusive, burnished, old timey, antiquated, the sounds are dark and woozy and and bleed together, blurring into fuzzy stretches of lost memory, of suspended time. The music here is the sound of faded old photographs, of old super 8 movies projected on a wall in a dark and dusty old room, of abandoned skating rinks, of boarded up windows, of black clouds filling a slate grey sky, of life slowing to a crawl, before ven more slowly fading away. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
We're kind of running out of superlatives for these guys, and new ways to describe the deliriously druggy din they whip up. If only there was a psychedelic space rock thesaurus... So bear with us if it sounds like we're repeating ourselves, but in a way, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, because even though every Carlton Melton record definitely stands up as its own album, they all sound linked, which makes sense, as they're all recorded in the same space (the DOME), and are all culled from sprawling mega-jams, but instead of sounding simply 'jammy', it's almost as if these guys are psychedelic shamans, tapping into some alien sonic continuum, that the rest of us just aren't privy to, and CM are the conduit, the portal, channeling mysterious cosmic vibes from the ether, and transforming them into some of the sweetest (and hard rockingest) psych we've heard. The core members of CM are once again joined by unofficial 4th member John McBain from Monster Magnet, and together, whip up another gorgeous blast of wasted zoner dreaminess, and driving tranced out kraut-psych. The opener here is definitely familiar territory, easing us in with a sound that seems like it bled over from one of the other recent records, all softly billowing shimmer, and blurred melodic tangles, abstract and dreamily drifty, a serious kosmische kraut-age vibe, and as always, if these guys had stretched that out to fill up the whole record, we'd have been perfectly happy. Instead though, they mix it up, with "Keeping On" being one of the weirder jams we've heard from these guys, driving and propulsive, drum heavy, with thick crumblingly distorted guitars, and some awesome progged out synths, that give the sound a serious seventies prog epic/opus vibe, that these guys manage to craft into something way darker and meaner, with some seriously kick ass drum pound, and wild psych freakouts, super heavy AND heady.
"Spiderwebs" pairs creepy Carpenter-ish cinematic synth with some lazy sun dappled slo-mo dream-psych languor, while "Sarsen" seems to fade into a jam already in progress, one that sounds like it's been going on since the beginning of time, primal and primordial, another muscly hard rocky, drum driven psych-kraut blow out, again laced with swirling synths and dense clouds of freaked out FX, all the while the band locked tight into some serious post-Hawkwind heaviness, and finally, "The Splurge" finishes things off with a sound much more raw and blown out, sounding like it was captured live, lots of reverb and echo, like they're playing in a big concrete bunker, the sounds crumbling and in-the-red, the vibe sorta German Oak-ish, definitely super bunkurfunk mixed into the slow-burn psych, noisy, and trippy and fucking awesome.
Killer psychedelic cover art. The cd is housed in a digipak, while the vinyl comes in two versions, one on green wax, one on black wax with a poster, make sure you order the one you want, they're listed as two different items. (And maybe let us know if you're willing to take the other, if we run out of one...)
We're kind of running out of superlatives for these guys, and new ways to describe the deliriously druggy din they whip up. If only there was a psychedelic space rock thesaurus... So bear with us if it sounds like we're repeating ourselves, but in a way, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, because even though every Carlton Melton record definitely stands up as its own album, they all sound linked, which makes sense, as they're all recorded in the same space (the DOME), and are all culled from sprawling mega-jams, but instead of sounding simply 'jammy', it's almost as if these guys are psychedelic shamans, tapping into some alien sonic continuum, that the rest of us just aren't privy to, and CM are the conduit, the portal, channeling mysterious cosmic vibes from the ether, and transforming them into some of the sweetest (and hard rockingest) psych we've heard. The core members of CM are once again joined by unofficial 4th member John McBain from Monster Magnet, and together, whip up another gorgeous blast of wasted zoner dreaminess, and driving tranced out kraut-psych. The opener here is definitely familiar territory, easing us in with a sound that seems like it bled over from one of the other recent records, all softly billowing shimmer, and blurred melodic tangles, abstract and dreamily drifty, a serious kosmische kraut-age vibe, and as always, if these guys had stretched that out to fill up the whole record, we'd have been perfectly happy. Instead though, they mix it up, with "Keeping On" being one of the weirder jams we've heard from these guys, driving and propulsive, drum heavy, with thick crumblingly distorted guitars, and some awesome progged out synths, that give the sound a serious seventies prog epic/opus vibe, that these guys manage to craft into something way darker and meaner, with some seriously kick ass drum pound, and wild psych freakouts, super heavy AND heady.
"Spiderwebs" pairs creepy Carpenter-ish cinematic synth with some lazy sun dappled slo-mo dream-psych languor, while "Sarsen" seems to fade into a jam already in progress, one that sounds like it's been going on since the beginning of time, primal and primordial, another muscly hard rocky, drum driven psych-kraut blow out, again laced with swirling synths and dense clouds of freaked out FX, all the while the band locked tight into some serious post-Hawkwind heaviness, and finally, "The Splurge" finishes things off with a sound much more raw and blown out, sounding like it was captured live, lots of reverb and echo, like they're playing in a big concrete bunker, the sounds crumbling and in-the-red, the vibe sorta German Oak-ish, definitely super bunkurfunk mixed into the slow-burn psych, noisy, and trippy and fucking awesome.
Killer psychedelic cover art. The cd is housed in a digipak, while the vinyl comes in two versions, one on green wax, one on black wax with a poster, make sure you order the one you want, they're listed as two different items. (And maybe let us know if you're willing to take the other, if we run out of one...)
We're kind of running out of superlatives for these guys, and new ways to describe the deliriously druggy din they whip up. If only there was a psychedelic space rock thesaurus... So bear with us if it sounds like we're repeating ourselves, but in a way, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, because even though every Carlton Melton record definitely stands up as its own album, they all sound linked, which makes sense, as they're all recorded in the same space (the DOME), and are all culled from sprawling mega-jams, but instead of sounding simply 'jammy', it's almost as if these guys are psychedelic shamans, tapping into some alien sonic continuum, that the rest of us just aren't privy to, and CM are the conduit, the portal, channeling mysterious cosmic vibes from the ether, and transforming them into some of the sweetest (and hard rockingest) psych we've heard. The core members of CM are once again joined by unofficial 4th member John McBain from Monster Magnet, and together, whip up another gorgeous blast of wasted zoner dreaminess, and driving tranced out kraut-psych. The opener here is definitely familiar territory, easing us in with a sound that seems like it bled over from one of the other recent records, all softly billowing shimmer, and blurred melodic tangles, abstract and dreamily drifty, a serious kosmische kraut-age vibe, and as always, if these guys had stretched that out to fill up the whole record, we'd have been perfectly happy. Instead though, they mix it up, with "Keeping On" being one of the weirder jams we've heard from these guys, driving and propulsive, drum heavy, with thick crumblingly distorted guitars, and some awesome progged out synths, that give the sound a serious seventies prog epic/opus vibe, that these guys manage to craft into something way darker and meaner, with some seriously kick ass drum pound, and wild psych freakouts, super heavy AND heady.
"Spiderwebs" pairs creepy Carpenter-ish cinematic synth with some lazy sun dappled slo-mo dream-psych languor, while "Sarsen" seems to fade into a jam already in progress, one that sounds like it's been going on since the beginning of time, primal and primordial, another muscly hard rocky, drum driven psych-kraut blow out, again laced with swirling synths and dense clouds of freaked out FX, all the while the band locked tight into some serious post-Hawkwind heaviness, and finally, "The Splurge" finishes things off with a sound much more raw and blown out, sounding like it was captured live, lots of reverb and echo, like they're playing in a big concrete bunker, the sounds crumbling and in-the-red, the vibe sorta German Oak-ish, definitely super bunkurfunk mixed into the slow-burn psych, noisy, and trippy and fucking awesome.
Killer psychedelic cover art. The cd is housed in a digipak, while the vinyl comes in two versions, one on green wax, one on black wax with a poster, make sure you order the one you want, they're listed as two different items. (And maybe let us know if you're willing to take the other, if we run out of one...)
aQ Hits is a new collection from beloved SF psychedelic space rock minimalists Carlton Melton, and is our second annual official aQuarius recOrds Record Store Day release. Last year's was a live disc called Black Valleys, a document of a killer aQuarius instore by NY psych rockers White Hills, and that one sold out in a flash. This year's looks to do the same - if you like White Hills, you like Carlton Melton, right?!
It's a super limited (just 300 copies) compact disc, collecting a handful of rare, and now out of print vinyl tracks, from various singles and split lps from the last couple years, including one super extended version.
Let's run through the various tracks... "Bottle Of Heat [Extended Version]", is, as you can probably tell from the title, the aforementioned alternate cut, which takes "Bottle Of Heat", originally released on the 2011 Agitated Records 12" comp I'm So Convoluted!, and offers up the unedited full-sprawl recording, stretching out to more than 19 minutes, thick smoldering clouds of soft focus psychedelia, drifting and blissed out, free form and abstract, a meandering epic of lush chordal swell and shimmery FX drenched swirl, all over a shuffling hypnotic and motorik kraut-psych beat. "Handling Snakes" is the A side from the group's Valley King 7" single, and is a jolt of heavy hypno-blues a la Wooden Shjips, but in the hands of Carlton Melton, somehow even heavier with wailing riffs and pummeling drums.
The next two tracks are from Carlton Melton's split 12" with Empty Shapes, originally released on Mid-To-Late Records in 2010: "Call and Response" is an epic (and originally nearly side-loooong) blowout, beginning with a heavy rumble of monolithic sludge eventually progressing into a slow wave of burnt-out blues riffage a la early Comets on Fire, that churns and steeps into a gnarly brew of molten fuzz. While "Purer", is more cosmic and dreamy, built on a layer of percolating synth drones that give way to a more uplifting space rock jam trajectory, total heart-of-the-sun zoner blissout.
And finally, the last two tracks are from CM's split 12" with Qumran Orphics, also originally released on Mid-To-Late Records, that one in the beginning of 2011. "March Of The Cicadas" is a glorious ten minute slab of psychedelic heaviness, that sounds exactly like the title implies, a slowmotion dirge over martial rhythms with buzzing electronic hisses and stratospheric guitar leads. And things finish off with "Murder Ridge", a noirish Bardo Pond-like spiral of burning sonic embers and sustained decay, a gorgeous hazy stretch of blurred lysergic drift, the perfect final movement, psych-drone comedown.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the artwork is printed on metallic silver cardstock, everything housed in a slim dvd style case, only available here!
Blazing fast, super melodic swedish death metal, ala In flames/At the Gates.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
To say this record is the most amazing thing I have ever heard wouldn't be all that far from the mark. But at the same time it would be fairly accurate to say that this record is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
This French duo is definitely metal, definitely on the black side of metal; raspy evil vocals, crazy leads, pounding programmed drums, but with healthy doses of electronics, crazy sound effects, some bizarre lounge style vocals, and some truly questionable cover songs. The record starts off with a fairly straight cover of Ozzy's 'Bark at the Moon', albeit with weird electronic warbles and silly over the top vocals. But then it gets really weird. They tackle the eighties classic 'Maniac' (the theme from Flashdance) and it's nothing short of baffling. So baffling in fact, that I can't even explain it. Then comes a cover of the fm radio classic 'Baker Street' by Gerry Rafferty, the infamous sax melody played by blazing electric guitars. So stupid , but so so great. Seriously. And to finish it all up, they do a truly inspired version of Pantera's 'Fucking Hostile', Phil Anselmo's shouted '1,2,3,4,' segues into a calypso cabaret that has to be heard to be believed, with a lisping chorus '....definitlely hostile...'. Andee recommends this. Above all other things on this weeks list. Everytime we play this in the store, someone laughs hysterically, someone looks perplexed, and someone buys it. You could be one of those people. Or probably all of those people.
Buy it.
Their first record in three years, Norwegians Carpathian Forest return with their dark and primitve 'Misanthropic Black Metal' but with some new twists. Their overall sound hasn't changed too much, a noisy thrash metal assault tempered with the primitve buzz of
This is not new, but we only just discovered this head spinning slab of totally demented fifties style (recorded in the sixties) rockabilly genius (or madness!) thanks to our pal Brian Turner at WFMU. And holy crap are we kicking ourselves for missing this. You'd never know from the cover, featuring Carter in a zebra striped jacket mugging with his guitar behind big colored letters, what freakiness lurks inside. And freaky it is. Not all of it. There are of course some straight up old school garage rockabilly jams, but some of the songs are soooooo far out, Carter was a bit like a rockabilly Joe Meek, always after new sounds, on the hunt for new equipment, anything to realize the twisted sounds in his head. He also reminds us of Michael Yonkers!
Take for example the cover of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" which opens up this collection, a totally twisted off kilter take on the original, with way more aggressive vocals, some weird high end tones over almost the whole thing, and a completely over the top insanely psychedelic guitar freakout (made by grinding the neck of the guitar against a mic stand) right in the middle, which was meant to sound like an actual jailhouse riot going on. As if that weren't enough, besides the usual rock instruments, Carter gathered up various friends and family members to contribute ukulele, accordion, and clarinet, played by a neighbor's 12 year old daughter!! But that's only the tip of the iceberg, the second track is a super rocking garage jam that sounds like early MC5, but then the third "I Got A Girl" is all buzzy garage stomp, with super raw vocals, and a weird looped female "ahhh" that repeats non stop throughout the entire song. Weird? Oh yeah, and it only gets weirder. "Rebel Woman" is a super heavy organ driven Screamin' Jay Hawkins style workout, and then there's the killer cover of "Fever", a classic jam for sure, but made a little bit more creepy with Carter's occasional croak, and his yelped vox throughout, as well as a droney looped sounding main guitar part. "Run Rabbit Run" is a lurching weirdo bit of gloomy garage pop, with growled vox, an amazing main guitar riff, that sounds almost metal at times, some awesome tribal drumming, and a weirdly innocent sounding female chorus.
But "Midnight Sun" might just be our favorite, after a spoken intro, the main guitar riff seems to slow down, the guitar creating a woozy dizzying seasick loop, the vocals dramatically crooned, some warm warbly organ, and a hook to die for, we've been listening to this track EVERY DAY. But heck, we end up playing this whole disc over and over and over. A perfect mix of outsider experimentation, classic rockabilly garage rock jamming, sixties psychedelia, and that Joe Meek like kitchen sink inventiveness, plus, it's SUPER rocking, suprisingly heavy, killer stuff for sure.
Lots of liner notes and tons of pix too. WAY RECOMMENDED.
For some reason, we've never reviewed any records by garage folk duo the Dutchess And The Duke, which means that to many folks Case Studies, aka Jesse Lortz, will be an unknown quantity, but sometimes that's the best way to experience a group or a record, especially when it's a new direction and/or a new sound for an established artist, it makes taking the music on its own merits a bit easier. So as you may have surmised, Jesse Lortz is in fact The Duke, one half of the aforementioned group, and fans of that band will definitely find some connections between that groups' songs and the music of Case Studies. But the music of Case Studies is much more stripped down and moody, the songs here apparently based on a year in the life of Lortz, and quite a year it must have been these songs painting lush miniatures of sorrow and loneliness, of bitterness and misery, but also of happiness and hope, or at least the promise of such.
Case Studies is at its core, country music, Lortz' deep croon, a dead ringer for country legend Townes Van Zandt, even his phrasing is eerily similar, the music is minimal but rich, the production spare but lush (produced by Greg Ashley), the songs mostly simple steel string strum, fingerpicked melodies and those deep moody vocals, but the voice and acoustic guitar are sometimes fleshed out with mournful strings, reverbed piano, sweet female harmonies, but for the most part, it's Lortz's voice that drives this record, that and his bittersweet (sometimes just bitter) lyrics and subtle way with melodies.
Dark and dreamy, hushed and melancholy. Opener "From The Blade Of My Love" is a heartbreaker, the melody, the vocals, the lyrics, the perfect start to a harrowing and ultrapersonal dark country missive, a song suite / melancholy missive that culminates in the droney slowcore twang of "California Ghost Story", a dark dreamy depressive creep, that drifts and shimmers, wreathed in the faded haze of forgotten love, and record closer, a surprisingly jaunty stretch of hushed minimal twang, replete with whistled melody, a glimmer of hope, as if finally, the clouds might part and the sun might shine down. Nice!
The Casket Lottery was borne of the mighty Coalesce, but their sound is far removed from Coalesce's pummelling metalcore. More a bizarre hybrid of emo, power pop, weird almost-prog, new wave and just balls-out rock. Huge emotive swells of thick rich chords,
As much as we feel like we oughta hate this stuff, Cassetteboy are just so good at their schtick that we can't seem to get enough. This is a bit like Negativland, only with that dry British humor and a much wider self deprecating streak. Most bands who do the whole cut and paste, spoken word taken out of context, weird sound bites over dance music thing end up sounding stupid and like they're trying way to hard to be funny and cool and hip and still somehow failing miserably. Cassetteboy on the other hand, sound like they're just fucking around, and thus there's no hipster weight to what they're doing, but the stuff they're doing is so perfect, and so funny, we can't help but dig it. Cassetteboy sound like blokes you'd want to have over, and sit around listening to crazy fucked up music. Mick's Tape is indeed a mix tape, made up of CB's wacky and sometimes tasteless chop jobs, turning innocent speeches and silly folks songs and instructional recordings into laugh out loud nasties. Then some bizarre and random actual songs (Ivor Cutler, Curtis Mayfield, Ramsey Lewis, Astrud Gilberto, Fennesz, Happy Mondays, Fela Kuti, Shalamar) as well as somekiller tracks from MF Doom, Jaylib, and Squarepusher. It's basically the ultimate aQuarius mix, tons of insane weirdness and laugh out loud silliness, some killer classic tunes, some super dope hip hop, some way out experimental noise, all woven together into a somewhat cohesive but joyously chaotic whole!
The newest exercise in plunderphonia comes from merry old England in the form of Cassetteboy! Taking cues from People Like Us, Negativland, Tape-beatles, and John Oswald, Cassetteboy excel in the art of making people say naughty things. As such The Parker Tapes is probably not the best disc for those who don't enjoy the baser and more puerile forms of humor (or channel surfing style editing.) But for those who do revel in such things, Cassetteboy is the best source for your plunderfix. Unlike most of the artists who work in the realm of media reappropriation, Cassetteboy is decidedly un-musical. Which isn't a rib against them. Though there are bits of music sampled in the course of events, it's the narrative of television and radio voices that are the primary focus of Cassetteboy's wrath. The 98 tracks crammed onto this disc don't lend themselves to much in the way of instrumental interludes. But goddamn is this stuff funny, from subtly changing Bowie's lyrics to "here I am shitting in a tin can.... and farting in a most peculiar way...." to Bill Gates admitting that Microsoft gets in to schools to control our kids... to an awesome monkey themed montage to... well, you get the idea. Relentless and stupidly brilliant. EVERYTIME this is played in the store, customers are either silently chuckling, laughing uproariously or coming up to find out what the hell we're listening to! This is the party cd/mix tape/answering machine message record of the year!!
The two members of NY black metal duo Castevet may have a pedigree heavy in grind and death metal, but their gnarled angular take on black metal owes way more to post rock and noise rock, these two songs sounding like two parts of the same song, that song an alternately pounding, loping chunk of Voivodian chug and primitive old school blast.
Angular and off kilter, tangled blackened riffs over relentless muscled pound, all wrapped around tortured anguished howls, the rhythm lurches and stutters, ferocious and heavy, but also weirdly moody and atmospheric, almost more like noise rock with a hint of blackness, flurries of double kick, some classic BM guitar buzz, eventually breaking down into some pounding old school black metal. The second side sounds like a part two, but the second part is much more melodic, with some woozy, spidery minor key guitar melodies and short stretches of muted post rockiness, even some Black Flaggy guitars here and there, but this side too gets more black as it goes, slipping into serious Darkthrone territory, before a dense mathy breakdown/outro that revisits that opening minor key melody.
Really awesome stuff. Can't wait for a full length. Cool packaging too, milky clear vinyl, no label, in a sleeve with a very spare insert, visible through the record, and one weird thing, the center hole is slightly too big, so be careful placing the record on the turntable, it's easy to get it off center, which makes the whole record sound even woozier than normal, which is actually kind of cool.
This killer slab of blown out noise rock ferocity, NOW ON CD!!
These guys must destroy live. Check out the picture on the sleeve, wild frenzied sweaty kids mid-mosh, a bloodied microphone, and then of course there's the music, a fucking skull crushing unholy post punk noise rock racket that manages to take all the stuff we loved about Sub Pop and AmRep and nineties noise rock and amp it all up two thousands style. A little bit of screamo, a bit of post hardcore, but really, these guys could have come straight out of 1995, cuz they just don't make shit like this anymore. Only, they do. Catalyst does, and it sounds as good as it ever did.
Heavy as fuck, catchy as fuck, wild tribal drumming, buzz drenched super distorted riffage, howled vocals, soaring choruses, plenty of mathy breakdowns, a little bit off groove, hooks galore, warped woozy guitar harmonies all tangled and melodic reminding us big time of Drive Like Jehu, and heck, they even have a song called "Lars Ulrich's 1986 Funeral (It Should Have Been You)".
We raved about their previous record Marianas Trench, which we still have a few copies of, but this one is even better, heavier, catchier... We often lament the lack of actual BANDS, y'know, bands that write songs, there's so much dronemusic, and experimental ambience, and free folk improv, and blackend buzz, and we do love all that, but sometimes nothing hits the spot like an actual rock band, pounding away on actual instruments, sweating, bleeding, leaping off the stage, rolling around on the floor, and spitting out actual songs. Of course it helps when the band is this bad ass and the songs rule this hard, so if you've been hankering for some seriously heavy post punk noise rock in your life, and who amongst us HASN'T? Well, then these guys should definitely hit the spot.
We had the one sided 12" version of this here disc a while back, but now it's been reissued with those 4 songs, as well as a whopping 9 more from an earlier lp and a split with fellow noisemakers Mass Movement Of The Moth. So all you record impaired folks can finally dig in to this monstrously noisy slab of post punk rrroooaaar.
This is some seriously crushing, heavy, post hardcore stoner grunge screamo heaviness coming at you straight from Richmond Virginia. Grinding, pummeling, super distorted and angular post punk, but with some serious groove, and vocals that go from howled to screeched to crooned (well almost), killer riffs, filthy and heavy, pounding drums, mathy and chaotic, think Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid, Mudhoney, Halo Of Flies, the Melvins, lots of AmRep, some Sub Pop, and here and there, Nirvana at their noisiest and heaviest.�
Definitely old school, and can't help but remind us of the good old grunge days, but it's hyped up, and filtered through a more modern take on post screamo hardcore, some seriously heavy, hooky ass kicking stuff.�
Way recommended.
These guys must destroy live. Check out the picture on the sleeve, wild frenzied sweaty kids mid-mosh, a bloodied microphone, and then of course there's the music, a fucking skull crushing unholy post punk noise rock racket that manages to take all the stuff we loved about Sub Pop and AmRep and nineties noise rock and amp it all up two thousands style. A little bit of screamo, a bit of post hardcore, but really, these guys could have come straight out of 1995, cuz they just don't make shit like this anymore. Only, they do. Catalyst does, and it sounds as good as it ever did.
Heavy as fuck, catchy as fuck, wild tribal drumming, buzz drenched super distorted riffage, howled vocals, soaring choruses, plenty of mathy breakdowns, a little bit off groove, hooks galore, warped woozy guitar harmonies all tangled and melodic reminding us big time of Drive Like Jehu, and heck, they even have a song called "Lars Ulrich's 1986 Funeral (It Should Have Been You)".
We raved about their previous record Marianas Trench, which we still have a few copies of, but this one is even better, heavier, catchier... We often lament the lack of actual BANDS, y'know, bands that write songs, there's so much dronemusic, and experimental ambience, and free folk improv, and blackend buzz, and we do love all that, but sometimes nothing hits the spot like an actual rock band, pounding away on actual instruments, sweating, bleeding, leaping off the stage, rolling around on the floor, and spitting out actual songs. Of course it helps when the band is this bad ass and the songs rule this hard, so if you've been hankering for some seriously heavy post punk noise rock in your life, and who amongst us HASN'T? Well, then these guys should definitely hit the spot.
Falling somewhere between AQ faves the Burning Brides and other AQ faves the Electric Eels or Rocket From The tombs, the Catheters are about as close as anyone's come to being a modern day Stooges. Big praise, but this record smokes. It's heavy and noisy and
San Diego's masters of Carcass worship finally see their awesome debut lp get the digital treatment. Fast and furious, super technical, but kind of sloppy at the same time, Cattle Decapitation take their love of Carcass and all things gore and treat us to
Finally! Some new music from Chicago drone kraut post everything combo, Cave, whose now sadly out of print Hunt Like Devil record was one of favorite jams of the last however many years. The funny thing too, was that Cave was sort of an accidental discovery, as we were way into the related band Warhammer 48k, whose sound was a confusional crush of noise rock, space rock, and psych rock. So is really shouldn't have been that surprising that some of those guys would split to from another somewhat confusing, but no less appealing hybrid - Cave's sound a sort of post krautrock, looped guitars, tribal percussion, almost funky, definitely groovy, wild and energetic, mesmerizing and totally hypnotic, falling somewhere between the blown out swirl of Hawkwind, the looped mesmer of Circle, but with groovier, almost alien dancefloor vibe, or better yet, some cosmic ritual, like a spaced out drug drenched drum circle, but with heavy guitars.
For this ep, the band launch into action with the weird protofunk of "Butthash", a bouncy groover, with swirly synths, caffeinated rhythms, and buried vocals, a bit angular, a little new wave, equal parts krautrock, and spaced out shimmer, but all tangled up and kaleidoscopic, which leads directly into "Machines & Muscles" with its Circle-like guitar groove, some hand drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings and smears of soft effects in the background, the drums get a little more obtuse, a bit busier, but that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get ALL tripped out, distorted, effects drenched, swinging from speaker to speaker, dizzyingly tripped out, and then finally, the drums kick in proper, and we're in total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper, the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer. Fucking awesome. Live they must stretch that out for ages, at least we hope so, in fact we sort of wish that this wasn't only a 7". Thankfully, it's NOT only a 7", as it comes with a cd-r, that includes the two tracks from the 7", and also an awesome even more blissed out version of "Machines & Muscles", the keyboards much more prominent, the vibe much more electronic and new wave, almost like Circle meets Stereolab, with plenty of buzz and glitch, lacing the propulsive groove. As well, there's a brief 85 second closer, that sounds like it was yanked from the middle of an hours-long live drug jam, with tripped out keyboards, buzzing bass, looped drums. Such a tease to only give us a 85 seconds!
And as if that weren't enough, the cd-r also includes a super abstract prismatic video / light show, to accompany, Cave's relentless space-y groove, all rainbowed blur and staticky colors, swirling and shimmery and a perfect visual complement.
Comes in a full color sleeve, pressed on swirled green vinyl, with a proper printed cd-r, and of course CRAZY LIMITED!!!!!
At first glance, it might be difficult to know what this record it all about. The sleeve is just a photo of trees and leaves, a dense overgrown forest. Pull out the cd, that too is cryptic, just some random letters on the disc, the sleeve, an old crinkled photo from some seventies porn mag of a topless cowgirl with a gun in her mouth. There's an insert, with a bunch of strange shapes, the word CAVE right at the top. But we know what it is. We've been waiting for this disc for ages. The debut recording from, wait for it� CAVE! Who just so happen to be the spacerock krautrock dronerock riff heavy jam band side project of one Warhammer 48K, who were already spacey and krauty and droney to begin with, so needless to say this is some seriously kick ass, aQ freakout worthy shit.
For the attention span impaired, howabout some Hawkwind, Can, Circle, Lightning Bolt, Pharaoh Overlord? Sounds good huh? Well, it's easy to hear bits and pieces of all of those bands in the sound of Cave, a dual drummer-ed riff heavy psych rock, that takes single riffs and hammers at them, pounding and pummeling, repetitive and mesmerizing, a sort of kraut flecked hypnorock, but with all sorts of strange twists and turns, bizarre arrangements, baffling breakdowns, but woven into longform jams that should have anyone into the above mentioned bands frothing at the mouth.
The opening track is a gorgeous little tangle of minor key melodies, looped and repeated, over a tense distant drone, thick swaths of keyboard whir over soft tangles of acoustic guitar and space-y backwards guitar swoops, but then the opening riff of the second track kicks in, and it's all fuzzy and feral, the greatest riff Pharoah Overlord never wrote, and they just hang on it, way longer than any normal band would, FOREVER, before the drums kick in, and they're off, a relentless and hooky groove, with brief blasts of super dynamic chaos, before slipping right back into it. Keyboards lay still more hypnotic melodies over the top, vocals, when there are any, are shouted way down in the mix, or are wordless falsetto la-la-la's, adding more texture and sonic complexity than anything. The dual drummers mix it up spitting out occasional tribal squalls, sometimes thick swirls of staticky fuzz wash over the proceedings, but their propulsive fortitude never falters. The first two tracks would almost be enough. Nearly 12 minutes of heavy freaked out space jam nirvana. You can practically feel the walls heaving and the sweat dripping through the speakers. You'll probably need a lie down afterwards. But there's no time, cuz hell, there's 6 more tracks to dig through. The sound is punk rock, lo-fi, but lush and epic, damaged and delirious, like garage rockers raised on Magma and Faust, there's plenty of Neu! in there, Stereolab too then, but it's way heavier than that, the guitars crunchy and thick, occasionally opening up into wailing psychrock blowouts, the drums getting more and more distorted and frenzied. Imagine an amphetamine fueled Circle or Can, but via the basement, the sound a sweat soaked drug drenched mostly instrumental kraut groove
Mathy, murky, like the fucked up younger brother of Yes, a Neanderthal krautrock, laced with awesome grinding space rock riffage, blown out squalls of ur-psych, flurries of percussive splatter, chanting cult vocals, bits of what the fuck vocoder (!), but for all the weirdness, the core sound of Cave is THE RIFF. Whether it's a warbly synth, or a superdistorted guitar, or tra-la-la vocals, they all align themselves with that riff, the mission, to entrance, to ensorcel, a heaving, pulsing, throbbing mass, the sound magnetic and irresistible. Endless jams that aren't really, but feel like they should be. Like they are anyway. Transcending the laws of time and space, dragging us kicking and screaming, bouncing and bobbing, into some blissed out basement at the end of the universe, where we subsist of nothing but riffs, drums and FX. We never want to leave.
Killer packaging, it's an lp AND a cd, same music on both, fold over full color sleeve, full color one sided cd sleeve (all described above) and a full color thick cardstock insert. And of course, limited, only 500 copies!
Along with the new Cave full length, which is one of this week's Records Of The Week, comes this super limited 7", which features maybe our favorite jam from Psychic Psummer, but more importantly, an exclusive and unreleased track on the flipside! And it's a doozy. Hard to figure out why the heck they left it off the record. Could be that it's a bit darker and heavier, which is always a good thing in our book.
Fuzzy, spaced out, murky, krautrocky, lysergic, druggy, lots of trippy effects laden psych guitar, a propulsive garagey groove, pounding metronomic drumming, WAY more Hawkwind and Monster Magnet and especially Loop than the full length proper. Think Heads and White Hills and other purveyors of hypno space rock, and this track will definitely push those very same buttons. Bad ass artwork too.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Not one but TWO repeat Record Of The Week honorees, elsewhere, the latest from French alchemical post rockers Aluk Todolo, and this, the latest from Cave, whose recent instore performance totally blew us away. It says a lot about a band that can put together a totally improvised set, with limited gear and various members changing up instruments, and still sound better and tighter and catchier and more rocking than most bands playing their own songs on their proper gear NOT in a record store.
Born from the space drone psych outfit Warhammer 48K, these guys left Missouri, ended up in Chicago, added a whole bunch of new members and became Cave, a kick ass spaced out kraut-drone hypno rock collective, equal parts Circle, Can, Lightning Bolt, Wooden Shjips, and Hawkwind, but so much more. Their first record, Hunt Like Devil, was a glorious cacophony of circular riffage, frenetic drumming, woozy basslines, wild synths, and killer hooks, groovy, hypnotic, space-y, and while this record is more of the same, it's somehow transcends, taking everything we loved about the first record, and making it, well, MORE. We'd have probably loved it even if it was Hunt Like Devil part 2, but thankfully, Psychic Summer finds the band exploring some new territory, but dragging that old sound with them.
The opener begins with just a stripped down guitar, and some subtly noodly synth, before exploding in a sun dappled burst of super distorted, in-the-red psychedelia, before shifting again into a muted sunshiney krautrock groove, laced with some cool synths, and electronic filigree. The song locks into the groove and slowly builds to a triumphant climax, eventually slowing down to a sort of chiming jangly groove, which leads right into "Made In Malaysia" which might be the jam of the disc. Stuttering synths, stop start dynamics, chugging guitars, which gives way to a wild woozy twisted riffy bridge, with shouted vocals, and warble bended guitar notes, and an irresistable staccato groove, first just the synth, but then the drums, motorik and relentless, live it's not hard to imagine this track being stretched into a whole set. A single song, so hooky and loopy and mesmerizing. But it's Cave, so two seconds later, they're locked into a different kind of groove, a tribal rhythm, warm organ chords, underneath blooping effects, buried vocals, it's almost danceable, definitely groovy, like they just took one measure from some classic old school dance track and looped it into some space aged kraut disco space jam.
The other three tracks are just as mesmerizing, the muted space-y throb of "High, I Am", wrapped in a slithery bit of warped synthage, to the dense drum heavy "Requiem For John Sex", with some grinding mathy guitar and a bit of indie jangle all wound up in the tracks summery drift, before a wild super sped up free for all psych out finish, and "Machines And Muscles", which was originally released on the now out of print Butthash single, this seems to be a slightly different version, and is definitely another of the record's highlights, total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer, a Circle-like guitar groove, shuffling drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings, warm organ whir and smears of soft effects in the background, that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get a bit more tripped out, a little distorted, more effects, the synths skitter and stutter, and then finally, the song fades out in a blinding kaleidoscopic burst of warm sunshine-y synth.
And that's really the magic of Cave, we're all so partial to the dark and doomy, the buzzy and droney, that it's so exciting for a record to sound so heavy and tripped out and hypnotic, but at the same time so sunshiney, so Summery, so FUN. These guys totally rule, this record is fantastic, and if you can believe it, live they might be even better.
